Ron the Yarn Spinner

 

It’s In The Cards

 

Playing cards on the frontline  has always been part of a soldier’s life. It was the simplest way to pass the time and to get your mind off the stressful everyday life in the war zone. In WW I, the United States Playing Card Company (USPCC) realized this, and started producing card decks, affordable to soldiers who were going overseas to Europe, to fight on the Western Front. Since then, the U.S. Army cooperation with the United States Playing Card Company has gone a long way, but it was the company’s brand Bicycle that took this cooperation to a whole new level.

During WW II, Allied intelligence officers contacted USPCC’s Bicycle brand  in order to produce the most clandestine deck of cards in history. What the British and American intelligence agencies had in mind was to produce a deck of cards that included a hidden map, showing escape routes, directions, and valuable tips and other information which might help an escapee reach friendly lines or cross  into a neutral country. 

 Allied POWs scattered around camps across Germany and occupied Europe were allowed to receive mail and packages from the International Red Cross, provided the  packages did not contain weapons of any kind. This allowed Allies an opportunity to smuggle card decks to POWs to facilitate any planned escape. The objects were disguised to avoid detection by the captors.

The decks were included in parcels distributed during Christmastime by the Red Cross. Red Cross Christmas parcels always contained a deck of playing cards to help the prisoners pass their time in captivity, so the special packs went unnoticed by camp guards.

The map was concealed between the two layers which formed a playing card. Once submerged in water, the POW would peel off those layers and find a part of the map on each card. Then he would assemble the parts and voila―a functioning map of his area!

The now famous, but once top-secret, map deck helped at least thirty-two people escape from Colditz Castle and encouraged more than 316 escape attempts. Little is known about the details concerning the clandestine decks, even today, for it was kept a secret after the war as their use was a violation of the Geneva Convention.