Christopher “Clutty” Clayton Hutton was a pilot in the Royal Air Corps in WWI. After the war he worked as a journalist and publicist in Hollywood. When WWI broke out, his country needed him. Someone in the Military Intelligence Section 9 (MI9) remembered that in 1915, Hutton had challenged Harry Houdini to escape from a box built by his family’s lumber mill. Houdini had asked only that he be able to talk to the carpenter. He then bribed the carpenter to make the box escapable. This incident sparked Hutton’s interest in magic and escapes. MI9 wanted Hutton to put his interest to work helping prisoners of war escape. He discovered that the Germans allowed games to be sent to prisoners. He designed a Monopoly game board that could hide key items needed for escapes. Inside the board were hidden tiny silk maps, knives, chords, and compasses. Real money would be placed amongst the fake money. Sometimes the tokens were made of real gold. These items were used in an estimated 10,000 escapes. One of those escapes may have saved thousands of lives. When prisoners learned that SS head Heinrich Himmler was contemplating killing off the prisoners to free up the guards for combat service, Lt. David Bowling was tasked with getting the news out. He escaped to Switzerland and then the Allies, through Swiss envoys, threatened Himmler with consequences after the war if he did it. He backed down.
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