After the successful escape by Trebels and van der Veen, the Dutch officers were moved in July 1941 to the POW camp for "special prisoners", sonderlager
Oflag IV-C Colditz. At this moment, there were Polish, British, French and Belgian POWs in Colditz. Escape attempts before the Dutch arrived were made. Few were successful, amongst which were the escapes by French Lieutenants
Pierre Mairesse Lebrun and
Alain le Ray. In August and September 1941, only one month after arriving in Colditz, the Dutch could claim two successful escapes during which four Dutch officers (naval lieutenants
Hans Larive and
Flanti Steinmetz, major C. Giebel and 2nd Lieutenant O. Drijber) escaped to Switzerland. On 5 January 1942, Luteyn made his successful escape together with British Lieutenant
Airey Neave. Neave was the first British officer to make it back to Britain from Colditz. In December 1941, the British had discovered a way of escape, posing as two officers dressed in German uniforms. From the third floor from the saalhouse and the theatre, they had made a hole in the floor which gave access to the attic above the guardroom. As they needed an officer who could speak fluent German, the British asked the Dutch to work together. Luteyn and Airey Neave were teamed together, and on January 5, 1942, after evening roll call, they were led to the saalhouse by British escape officer
Pat Reid and Canadian
Howard Wardle. Both prospective escapees were dressed in three sets of clothes: first, civilian clothes, second, German uniform, and third, their own uniform. Through the hole under the theater they were led to a tower in which they could reach the stairs to the guardroom. The two escapees had to wait a few minutes so Reid and Wardle had time to return to the theatre and camouflage all traces of this escape. Luteyn and Neave cleaned and checked their German uniforms and proceeded downstairs to the German guards. Several guards sprang to attention when "lieutenants" Luteyn and Neave passed them. They went to the park because passing the final guard at the gate required identification, which they didn't have. The park, however, was lightly guarded, and there they climbed the wall without many problems. After passing the wall, they buried their German uniforms and went to
Leisnig, where they took the early train to Leipzig. Targeting a cross into Switzerland via
Hans Larive's
Singen route, they had to wait for twelve hours before they could continue to Regensburg. To pass the time, they went to a local cinema. They reached Ulm through Regensburg and Augsburg: here they tried to buy a ticket to Engen, a village near Singen. The lady selling train tickets was suspicious and warned the local police. Luteyn and Neave were taken to the local police station and questioned. There, they told their cover story: as Dutchmen working for the
Arbeitseinsatz. The police only half believed their story and brought them to the local
Arbeitseinsatz building to check their story. In this building, they escaped and walked 40kms to Biberach, where they took a train to Stockach, from which they could walk the final km to Singen. Travelling for three days and living on a few pieces of chocolate and sucking snowballs as drinking water, they were exhausted. They were discovered again by workers and fled and hid in an empty garden shack. Here, they tried to sleep on a small bench. When they wanted to leave, they discovered their shoes were frozen to the floor: they had to defrost them with their breath. They took a spade and axe to look like local workers. On the evening of the fourth day, they reached the Swiss border. As a police car was checking the local border posts, they could clearly see them. They picked their position and decided to cross the border running. They shook hands and wished each other luck. Running with bleeding blisters and falling and stumbling through snow-covered holes, they reached the village of Ramsen in Switzerland. == Post-escape ==