Escape and Evasion Maps: Background information when reading Ilium

Escape and Evasion Maps

This article relates to Ilium

In Lea Carpenter's Ilium, some of the spies have escape and evasion maps. Also known as escape maps or silk maps, these are scarves imprinted with maps that intelligence officers and soldiers have historically used when they've ended up behind enemy lines. They offer information about how best to escape or at least find somewhere safe to hide.

These maps were heavily used by Allied forces in World War II thanks to the genius of British intelligence officer Christopher Clayton Hutton. Hutton's career path was eclectic (including stints as a pilot and film marketer), as was the man himself. A fan of Houdini, Hutton used his love of escapes in his capacity as Technical Officer in the Escape Department at MI9.

Making escape maps was one of his priorities, but they needed to fit certain criteria. Eventually, he came up with the idea of printing on silk; they could be stored easily and quickly, they didn't make any noise, and, with their waterproof ink, they could survive getting wet. Soldiers not yet deployed carried them in a secret compartment in their boots. Getting them to soldiers in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps was another matter.

One of the most ingenious ways of delivering the maps was in special versions of Monopoly games that were made to help captured soldiers escape. In Germany, POWs were generally treated in accordance with Geneva Convention rules, which meant they were provided with supplies and even recreational items like board games donated by charities. Christopher Clayton Hutton got together with Waddingtons, who manufactured Monopoly, to produce these very special editions which came with folded escape maps and secret compartments containing metal files and compasses.

The game pieces were solid gold, so prisoners could sell or trade them as they needed. Barely noticeable markings that would have passed for misprints on the exterior of the box were used to illustrate which games were escape kits, and even to which region they should be delivered (so the appropriate maps would be included). It's estimated that 700 POWs escaped thanks to Monopoly and other games.

After the war, newspapers published information about the escape kits, expediting their declassification. The maps became collectors' items and are now seeing a resurgence in fashion. Designer Christopher Raeburn of RÆBURN serendipitously found a box containing 800 untouched Cold War-era silk maps, which have played a big part in the company's design aesthetic. In 2016, the BBC reported that a vintage dress made from the maps had been sold in Harrogate for an undisclosed sum. The boutique owner, Cathy Smith, said she'd only encountered two similar garments, one in the Imperial War Museum and one in the Victoria and Albert Museum, both in London.

The escape maps portrayed in Ilium are from the present day. It's unknown if or how similar maps are used today in real life. But who's to say what tools spies do or don't use? For all we know, spies are among us, hiding codes in innocent-looking book reviews.

Silk escape and evasion map, courtesy of the CIA

Filed under Cultural Curiosities

This article relates to Ilium. It first ran in the February 21, 2024 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.