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Donald Currie Caskie, DD OBE OCF
The son of a crofter, he was born in Bowmore on Islay in 1902. He was educated at Bowmore School and then Dunoon Grammar School before studying arts and divinity at the University of Edinburgh. His first charge was at Gretna, before becoming the minister of the Scots Kirk in Paris in 1938.
Having denounced the evils of Nazism from the pulpit, following the German invasion of France in 1940 Caskie had to flee from Paris. Instead of trying to return home (as strongly advised by staff at the Church of Scotland Offices in Edinburgh) he fled south, eventually ending up in Marseilles on the French south coast (having refused the opportunity of a place on the last ship to Britain leaving Bayonne). At the British Seamen's Mission in Marseilles, Caskie set up a refuge for stranded Britons. He would even send telegrams to the Church of Scotland offices in Edinburgh informing them of the number of British service personnel who had escaped. With the help of Lt-Cmdr Pat O'Leary RN (later awarded the George Cross), British Intelligence, local clergyman Pastor Marcel Heuzé, the American consular authorities and others, Caskie helped as many as 500 Allied service personnel to flee France.
The story of how he helped liberate prisoners from Fort de la Revère in 1942 is outlined in his book, The Tartan Pimpernel. Officially acting as a chaplain to the PoWs, he discovered a sewer behind a large bush near the fort and informed his Resistance contact. The entrance to the sewer inside the fort was in the boiler house and within 90 minutes 36 men had escaped. Dr Caskie wrote: "Another 22 men followed them, each ready to take his chance on making a solo getaway. "Still more would have escaped but for a tragic comic miscalculation involving a fat man - a squadron leader from the RAF who got stuck in the tunnel. "The poor man struggled furiously to get through the aperture and succeeded only in becoming more tightly wedged. "Fourteen of the solo escapees were recaptured, eight got clean away.
Caskie came under the suspicion of the Vichy France and German authorities, and a fellow Briton betrayed him. Pastor Heuzé was one of many to be executed. Lack of evidence saved Caskie’s life for the first time; instead he received a suspended prison sentence and was ordered to leave Marseilles. This was partly helped by Caskie’s ability to speak Gaelic, confounding his interrogators.
Caskie headed for Grenoble, where he was employed by the university, and acted as a chaplain for interned British soldiers and resident civilians. The Germans later ordered that all British-born civilians in the occupied countries be interned in Germany; Caskie managed to influence an Italian commandant to release many of them. Caskie was arrested again and spent some time in Italian custody at Sanremo, held in the old fortess prison. Later in 1943 he was transferred back to German custody and eventually put on trial in Fresnes, and sentenced to death. Awaiting execution by firing squad, Caskie asked to see a pastor. This saved his life; the German army padre Hans Helmut Peters successfully appealed to Berlin to spare Caskie. He then spent the rest of the war in a Prisoner of War camp, resuming his ministry in Paris after the war.
The Scots Kirk in Paris had been unused throughout the war, and lack of maintenance led to the church having to be rebuilt during the 1950s. To help pay for the rebuilding, his autobiographical account of his extraordinary wartime activities was published as The Tartan Pimpernel in 1957. The 1950s building proved to have serious defects and had to be again rebuilt in the late 1990s, Caskie's book being again reissued.
Caskie finally returned to Scotland as minister in Old Gourock Church. In 1961 he became a minister at Wemyss Bay and Skelmorlie on the Firth of Clyde.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in September 1959 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the foyer of the BBC Television Theatre.
He retired to Edinburgh in the early seventies and lived the final year of his life with his younger brother in Greenock. He died in 1983 and is buried at Bowmore on Islay. Various personal artefacts, including his wartime medals, can be seen at Kilarrow Parish Church, Bowmore.
