A magician in the First World War used his magic to escape as a prisoner of war of the Turks. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio at its Anzac Day Parade outside broadcast.

Cedric Waters Hill was born on the 3rd of April 1891at Maryvale just north-east of Warwick on the Southern Downs, Queensland, where his father was manager of Maryvale station for the Wienholt Brothers. One of the family was Arnold Wienholdt who was an adventurer, spy, and Queensland politician, who at one stage Hitler put a reward on his head.

The Hill family moved to the Fassifern station at Engelsburg. During the First World War, Engelsburg was renamed Kalbar due to anti-German sentiment. It was at Kalbar where Hill’s father owned one of the best-known Clydesdale horse studs in Queensland.

Hill was living at Kalbar when he met his future wife Miss Jane Mort. She lived at her family’s Franklyn Vale Homestead at Grandchester. Her grandfather Henry Mort was one of the pioneers in the Moreton Bay district who represented West Moreton in the New South Wales parliament prior to the separation of Queensland. Mount Mort in Ipswich is named after him. Nearby Laidley is named after her granduncle.

At around this same time, Hill saw the Swedish-born American magician Nate Leipzig perform, which fascinated him so much that he studied and practised conjuring. Hill became a magician and also developed a passion for flying and even built a glider in the backyard of his home.

When the First World War was declared in 1914, Hill went from Ipswich to England where he enlisted in the Royal Flying Corps. The world was then destined to see Hill’s unique combination of flying and magic applied with devastating effect.

Hill was sent to Egypt where in 1916 his precision bombing resulted in him being mentioned in dispatches. In 1917 his BE2c two-seater biplane was shot down by Arabs in the Sinai Desert. Using his dismounted Lewis-gun, he traded fire for six hours before he ran out of ammunition which forced him to surrender, and he was then handed over to the Turks. Hill had put up such a good fight that a Turkish aeroplane afterwards dropped a message over the British lines recommending him for a decoration!

While at the Yozgat prisoner of war camp in Turkey, Hill befriended Elias Jones who was an officer in the British Indian Army. The pair then set about using Hill’s magic skills to escape.

They convinced the commandant that they were mediums expert at the Ouija board, and that a supernatural informant called ‘the Spook’ would reveal the whereabouts of buried treasure if he were consulted on the Mediterranean coast. To further justify being released, Hill and Jones faked insanity, although a fake suicide attempt almost cost them their lives, but it did convince the Turks to let them go. Hill was actually released and sent back to England.

The story of this amazing escape made Hill and Jones celebrities, and they each published their own accounts. Hill’s book is titled “The Spook and the Commandant” is available at the State Library of New South Wales and the National Library on Australia.

After the war, Hill continued to serve in the Royal Air Force in Egypt where his duty was to protect the Suez Canal. In 1930 he took leave to visit his family back home at Kalbar and Grandchester. Eager for another adventure, Hill took off from Kent in England in an attempt to beat Bert Hinkler’s record time for a solo flight to Australia. He was two days ahead of Hinkler’s time when, on the final leg to Darwin, Hill crashed in the Dutch East Indies, which of course prevented him from breaking the record. Instead, another aviator by the name of Charles Kingsford Smith broke the record and took the global fame that might actually have been Hill’s.

Cedric Hill died in 1975 in Berkshire, England, at the age of 83. But we should remember him today for his pioneering flying skills and magicians talents that helped him escape from a Turkish POW camp and give us an Anzac story from the Ipswich district like no other.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
The Anzac Illusionist of Kalbar – Harold Peacock with Copilot.
Henry Mort – The Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 15th September 1900, page 635.
Cedric Waters Hill – Family Search website.
Operational B.E.2c with RAF 1a engine – Imperial War Museum, Public Domain.
“The Spook and the Commandant” by Group Captain C.W. Hill – Weiser Antiquarian website.
Group Captain Cedric Waters Hill – Sunday Mail, Brisbane, 9th June 1940, page 6 – repaired with Copilot.