Though many had tried, none had ever escaped for long from Stalag-Luft III, deep in the heart of Germany. But past failures did not discourage Captain Richard Michael Clinton Codner of the Royal Artillery, a young (23) and bronzed Oxford undergraduate with a mop of black hair and a sensitive, mischievous face. Around the camp he was known as "a classical fellow, always reading Latin and he could spout it by the yard."
It was Codner, with his knowledge of the classics, who thought of the wooden horse and convinced two others—Navigator Eric Williams and Squadron Leader Oliver Philpot—that it would work. For four torturous months, the three took turns in a sandy, almost airless pit in the center of the camp exercise ground, clawing, inch by inch, a tunnel toward freedom. Above them stood a homemade, hollow vaulting horse. Fellow prisoners dutifully toted it to the open ground every day (with one or two of the diggers inside), and vaulted over it in pretended gymnastics while the human moles worked beneath them.
"Really Living." Their escape, since described by Williams in his bestselling The Wooden Horse, was one of World War II's most exciting contributions to man's long, suspenseful lore of escapes. It also had a deep effect on Mike Codner. Soon after their escape Codner (who was "John Clinton" in the book) explained it to Williams.
"Y'know," he said, "I enjoyed myself when we were escaping. There was something about it. We were really living then. People don't live half the time y'know . . . I think it's only when you're being hunted that you really live ... I liked being hunted ... the feeling that every minute was important, that everything you did would sway the balance . . ."
In the quiet aftermath of peace, Codner married, finished his studies in colonial administration at Oxford, and put in for service in Malaya, the place where he was born (son of a British rubber planter). It was an assignment for an adventurer—a job as assistant district officer in charge of 20,000 Malayans and Chinese in Tanjong Malim. The area was a hot spot in the interminable war between Britain and the Malayan Communists. Codner, often the hunter, could also be what he liked to be—one of the hunted. The village he worked in was ringed with barbed wire, but Codner did his best to keep it from resembling a prison camp.
One day last week, guerrillas sabotaged the pipeline which carries Tanjong Mal-im's water supply. Codner led a party into the jungle to repair it. They had not gone far when a band of guerrillas sprang from ambush with blazing Bren and Sten guns. When help came, it was too late—twelve of the repair party were dead. One of them was Richard Michael Clinton Codner, who had been wounded by machine gun fire, tried to crawl to cover, and was shot dead beneath a bush.