John B. Dodge

John Bigelow Dodge was born in New Jersey, USA, on 15^th May 1894, the second child of Charles Stuart Dodge, a retired officer of Schieffelin & Co., wholesale druggists and importers, and Flora (née Bigelow). He had an older sister, Lucie Bigelow, born in 1880.

John’s parents later divorced, and his mother remarried The Hon. Lionel Guest, a first cousin of Winston Churchill. Although American by birth, he would become a naturalised British citizen in 1915. The family lived for a time in Canada, but by 1913 John was back in the United States, working in New York for the investment bank Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., gaining early experience in finance and international business.

Following the outbreak of war, John travelled to Britain and was granted a Sub-Lieutenant’s commission in the Hood Battalion on 15^th September 1914. It should be noted that his middle name is recorded as “Bigdon” on his RND service record. After serving with the Battalion during the defence and evacuation of Antwerp, he was deployed with the Division to Gallipoli in the spring of 1915.

On 4^th May 1915 John was wounded by gunshot wounds to both forearms and was evacuated from the peninsula, first to Cairo and then to England via Marseilles. He was not recorded as fit for service again until 16^th October, returning via Blandford to rejoin the Division. In the meantime, on 7^th June, he had been promoted to Lieutenant, and on 22^nd September he was Mentioned in Despatches for his conduct at Gallipoli.

On 9^th November 1915 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, as announced in the London Gazette of 12^th November.
John Dodge DSC citation

After the evacuation of Gallipoli, John’s RNVR commission was terminated, and he transferred to the Army to continue his war service on the Western Front.

Promoted to Temporary Captain, he served with the Queen’s Own Royal West Surrey Regiment before transferring to the Machine Gun Corps, where he rose to the rank of Temporary Major. He later commanded the 16^th Battalion, Royal Sussex Regiment, finishing the war as an Acting Lieutenant-Colonel. During this period he was wounded on several occasions, and in 1919 he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in recognition of his leadership and gallantry. Demobilised in 1920, he retained the substantive rank of Major.

Courtesy of the
National Potrait Gallery

In the immediate post-war years John resumed an adventurous and international life. He travelled widely in Southeast Asia and in regions bordering the newly formed Soviet state, establishing offices for a trading company in the Caucasus. In 1921, while visiting the area, he was arrested by the Russian secret police, the Cheka, on suspicion of spying for British intelligence. He was held for around two months in harsh conditions and narrowly avoided execution before being expelled from Russia with orders never to return. The episode left a lasting impression on him and became one of the most dramatic interludes of his inter-war career.

Returning to Britain, John became a partner in Nathan & Roselli, a London investment firm, and began to combine business with political ambition. In both 1924 and 1929 he stood unsuccessfully for election to Parliament. He did, however, serve as a member of the London County Council for Mile End from 1926 to 1931. In 1929 he married Minerva Sherman (née Arrington), an American divorcee whom he had met in the United States. She had a son, Peter, from her first marriage, and together they would have two further children: David (1930) and Lionel (1934).

With the outbreak of the Second World War, John once again returned to military service, re-enlisting in the British Army and serving with the Middlesex Regiment, holding the rank of Major. He was attached to the 51^st (Highland) Infantry Division and went to France with the British Expeditionary Force. In June 1940, during the fighting around Saint-Valery-en-Caux, he was captured with the Division and began a long captivity as a prisoner of war.

John quickly established a reputation as an irrepressible escape artist, earning the nickname “the Artful Dodger”. Standing 6 feet 3 inches tall and unable to master spoken German, he was ill-suited to blending in with the local population, and each of his many escape attempts ended in recapture. He was held in a succession of camps, including Dulag Luft, Stalag Luft I, Stalag Luft III (East Compound) and Oflag XXI-B, before being transferred once more to Stalag Luft III, this time in the North Compound.

At Stalag Luft III he became one of the senior British officers involved in the preparations for what would become known as the “Great Escape”. Although his age and accumulated wounds prevented him from taking part in the heavy digging of the tunnels, he played an important role in organising distractions and cover to mask the noise and movement associated with the work underground.

After the escape in March 1944, John was one of the men recaptured. He was fortunate to be among the first taken, before the Gestapo began the systematic murder of fifty of the escapees. Instead, he was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Even there he attempted escape yet again, and when recaptured was brutally chained to the floor in solitary confinement. In February 1945 he was taken to Berlin, where he was asked by German officials to act as a peace envoy to his cousin, Winston Churchill, proposing a British–German alliance against the advancing Russians. There is no record that this extraordinary request was ever delivered.

At the end of the war John learned the full extent of what had happened to the murdered Great Escape men and became a leading figure in the investigations that sought to bring to justice those responsible. His role in this grim pursuit of accountability was later dramatised in a television film, in which he was portrayed by Christopher Reeve.

In 1945 John again stood for election to Parliament, but without success. The following year he was awarded the Military Cross for his conduct and leadership as a prisoner of war. He returned to civilian life and his business interests as a stockbroker in London, but the cumulative strain of two wars, captivity, and repeated escape attempts had taken a heavy toll, and he was never to fully recover his health or peace of mind.

On 2^nd November 1960, John died of a heart attack while hailing a taxi near Hyde Park. He was cremated, and his ashes were buried at St Andrew’s Church, Ferring, in West Sussex.