John Worsley

07 Oct 2000

War artist who made the dummy prisoner 'Albert RN' that covered up an ingenious escape from a German camp

JOHN WORSLEY, who has died aged 81, was the youngest member of Sir Kenneth Clark's team of official war artists in the Second World War, and the only one to be captured by the enemy; subsequently he created the dummy PoW celebrated in the film Albert RN.

In November 1943, Worsley accompanied a small team of saboteurs to the island of Lussin Piccolo, in the Gulf of Venice, where it was hoped to make contact with some of the Allied prisoners who were on the run following the Italian armistice. It was known that the Germans were planning to occupy the island, but not that they had moved their timetable forward by a week. Worsley's fishing boat sailed right into the midst of the German forces.

He was taken prisoner and sent to Marlag O, near Bremen, which was the only camp in Germany for naval PoWs; on the way the train halted for the night in Berlin, and narrowly survived the first of the 1,000-bomber raids. At first, Worsley was placed in solitary confinement for two months, since his artist's materials convinced the Germans that he was a spy. He improved his lot by trading pornographic drawings in exchange for more rations from his guards. When he was released into the main camp, he began to record life behind the wire.

He sketched portraits of three naval VCs - Beatty, Cameron and Plaice - as well as some scenes of the camp hospital, and even took his pad into escape tunnels. When he ran out of canvas he resorted to painting on the 5ft by 3ft ceiling slats of his hut. His fellow prisoners willingly subscribed old shirts to help clean his brushes, and visiting German admirals came to inspect his work. To keep him warm while he worked, he constructed central heating from empty condensed milk tins stuck together and run from the only stove around the walls.

His most ingenious creation however was Albert, a dummy prisoner. Every Thursday the PoWs were marched half a mile to the showerhouse, and it was here that Albert was assembled. His head was made of painted newspaper, while his eyes were ping-pong balls. These could be made to blink by a sardine-tin pendulum. Other prisoners contributed scraps of hair for his wig. The body was a collapsible wire frame covered by a naval greatcoat.

After their shower, one prisoner, Lieutenant Mewes, hid in the bathhouse and then made his escape. Albert, propped up on either side by PoWs, took Mewes's place in the thrice-daily count of heads, and it was four days before the escapee's absence was discovered. He made it as far as Lübeck before he was recaptured. Albert was then used for another escape, but the prisoners' ruse was rumbled when the escaper was found hiding in a lavatory.

Worsley was a connoisseur of gun-deck language and enjoyed recalling how the commandant of the camp subsequently addressed the PoWs in his fractured English. "You think we Germans know f*** nothing," he told them. "But in fact," he went on confidently, "we know f*** all." It took some time to restore the parade ground to order.

John Godfrey Bernard Worsley was born in Liverpool on February 15 1919. His father, a retired naval officer, emigrated with the family soon afterwards to Kenya, where they took up coffee farming. Young Worsley was sent back to England to be educated at Brighton College and at the 16 went to study Fine Art at Goldsmiths' College, London. He graduated in 1938, and then worked as an illustrator for romance magazines, drawing courting couples.

On the outbreak of war, he joined the Naval Reserve, and for a time was the Navy's only bearded midshipman. He spent three years on escort duty in the North Sea and the Atlantic, sketching his shipmates in his spare moments.

This work, together with a picture of the armed merchant cruiser Laurentic which he drawn while in her lifeboat after she had been torpedoed, brought him to Clark's notice, and in 1943 he became the official Admiralty artist in the Mediterranean. His orders were to "get into the lion's mouth." Worsley had the rapid technique necessary to record action such as the Allied invasion of Italy. At first he worked in paint, but after being dive-bombed at Reggio di Calabria - "I had just got a nice wash going" - he switched to pencil.

After the war, Worsley painted many portraits of the Allied leaders, including Field Marshal Montgomery and the then First Sea Lord, Sir John Cunningham. Sixty-one of his paintings hang in the Imperial War Museum, while another 29 are owned by the National Maritime Museum. Another of his works, the dummy Albert, is in the Naval Museum at Portsmouth; its exploits were turned into a play, and then in 1953 into a film, for which Worsley recreated Albert.

Worsley later painted Edward Heath when he was Leader of the Opposition, but he was best known to the public as a painter of sea scenes. In 1980, he captured the attempt of Lionheart to win the America's Cup, and in 1983 was elected President of the Royal Society of Marine Artists.

But there was a less-well publicised side to Worsley's career. He was an extremely versatile artist, prepared to work in glass, bronze and stone as well as paint, and in the 1970s even made 700 colour drawings for television versions of The Wind in the Willows and Treasure Island. He also drew the illustrations for PC49 in the Eagle comic.

Then, from the late 1960s, Worsley also began to help Scotland Yard as their official police artist, drawing the faces described to him by victims of crime. For Worsley, it was his way of giving something back to society. His first great success was a portrait of one of the men involved in the death of Tommy Steele's manager, Roger Thornley, on Hungerford Bridge in 1974.

Thereafter he made more than 1,000 sketches, which were far more lifelike than police photo-fits. One of his pictures was of the woman who in 1990 snatched a baby from St Thomas's Hospital, London. So accurate was it that the abductor was recognised by a neighbour and apprehended.

John Worsley was an amusing, entertaining man, with an inquiring mind and many friends. He was a member of the Savage Club and devised the menu for their dinners.

He published, in 1993, John Worsley's War.