The unlikely chess combination

When I played chess with Rudolf Hess
Nov 24 2007 Evening Chronicle

ONE was a notorious Nazi war criminal, the other a young Tyneside soldier.

They came from different countries and from different backgrounds, but they forged a friendship of sorts and ended up playing chess together.

This is the remarkable real life story of Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess and Maurice Williams of the Durham Light Infantry.

Charged with guarding Hess in Berlin’s Spandau Prison, Maurice the pair ended up playing a game of chess.

“It was 1951 and our Battalion was taking up guard duty at Spandau Prison,” said Maurice, who lives at Ovington in the Tyne Valley.

“There were a number of Nazi war criminals there and I was curious about the place.

“I decided to take a tour of the prison and it certainly was a grim place. On my travels I came upon this guy in the prison garden, reading a paper.

“It turned out to be Rudolf Hess. We weren’t supposed to talk to either him or the other Nazi prisoners and, if caught, I would have been on a charge, but I was curious about him.

“He had a chess board and I asked him about it. He asked if I played chess and, luckily, I did.”

Hess challenged Maurice to a game and Maurice said: “In the end, he beat me easily. I said to him that I only thought two moves ahead and that he must be thinking about 10 moves ahead. He laughed and said: ‘Maybe a few more than that’. We played a second time and this time I gave him a much better game but, again, lost out.”

Maurice said Hess was unlike the picture he painted in the Nuremberg Trials of a man on the edge of sanity, adding: “He was a perfect gentleman and asked such things as ‘are you married?’ He spoke perfect English, better than myself!

“I told him I was single and he asked about my family, it was just like talking to the man next door. I really wanted to ask him how he felt about the Jews but the opportunity didn’t arise.

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