A TUNNEL SCHEME
In the earlier chapters of this book I have mentioned the fact that some
months previous to my capture my people at home and I had invented a
simple code which would enable us, to a very limited degree, to
correspond, if ever I were unlucky enough to fall into the hands of the
Germans.
This may seem to have been morbid anticipation of a lamentable
occurrence, but I assure you it was only a most obvious precaution. Not
only did I belong to the R.F.C., in which the chances of capture were
unavoidably greater than in any other service, but my brother had been
badly wounded and captured at the second battle of Ypres, and for over a
year we had received no news of him that had not been most strictly
censored. Soon after my arrival at Ingolstadt I wrote home several
sentences--it was difficult to write much more--in our prearranged code,
and received answers in the same way. But to obtain my mother's
efficient cooeperation in plans of escape some more detailed instructions
than could be compressed into our code were necessary. We desired
accurate maps about 1:250,000 of the country between Ingolstadt and the
Swiss frontier, a luminous compass, saws for cutting iron bars, cloth
which could be made into civilian hats, condensed and concentrated food
of all sorts, and in addition detailed instructions must be sent as to
how these things were to be hidden in the parcels. As we were only
allowed to write one letter a fortnight and one post card a week, to
send the information home by my code would have been an almost endless
task, so I took the risk of writing a couple of letters in sympathetic
ink, merely using my code to say "Heat this letter."
The results were successful beyond my wildest hopes, for not only were
instructions obeyed, but my family showed very great ingenuity in
packing the required articles. In due course two luminous compasses and
two complete sets of excellent maps were received safely. Each set of
maps consisted of about six sheets each a foot square. The letters came
from England quicker than the parcels, so that, at the same time as my
mother sent off the parcel containing the maps or compass, she sent me a
post card to say in what parcel it was coming and in what article it was
concealed. After that it was my job to see that I obtained the article
without it being examined by the Germans. Watching a German open a
parcel in which you knew there was a concealed compass is quite one of
the most amusing things I have ever done. Most of the maps came baked in
the middle of cakes which I received weekly from home, and as I was on
comparatively good terms with the Germans who searched our parcels, they
used to hand these over to me without ever probing them.
One of the compasses came in a glass bottle of prunes, and I was not
surprised when the Germans handed this to me without searching it, as
it looked impossible that anything could be hidden in it. A second
compass came in a small jar of anchovy paste, and, as I dared not risk
asking for it, I told the German to put it among our reserve store of
food and found an opportunity of stealing it about a fortnight later.
I remember decoding one post card from my mother, and making out the
message to be "Maps in OSWEGO." But what was Oswego? No one had any
idea.
When the Hun opened my parcel, I was feeling rather nervous. Almost the
first thing he picked up was a yellow paper packet. He felt this
carefully, but passed it to me without opening it, when I saw with joy
that "Oswego" was marked on it. There was a large bundle of maps in the
middle of the flour. Another "near thing" was when the whole of the
crust on one of my cakes was entirely composed of maps, though the
baking had browned the oilpaper in which they were sewn so that it
looked exactly like cake. Altogether there is no doubt that I was
extraordinarily lucky to get all the things I did without being
detected.
Many other Frenchmen and Englishmen in the fort had maps and compasses
smuggled through to them, though owing to the energy of my people at
home, and sheer good luck on my part, I doubt if anyone was more
successful than I was. However, in one way or another, by bribery,
stealing, and smuggling, I am pretty sure there was an average of at
least one compass per man throughout the fort, and traced maps in any
quantity, though originals were scarce.
There was rather an amusing incident which happened when Moretti was
chef in Room 42. Buckley was in the habit of receiving dried fruit from
home, which, for purposes of his health, he kept for private use. One
day Moretti raided this store, in order to give the mess stewed fruit
for dinner, but, when he was cooking them, messages from home were found
floating about in the stew. Examination showed that the prunes had been
cut open very cleverly and a small roll of paper substituted for the
stone. I have given the above description of one of the methods by which
maps and compasses were obtained, not only because the possession of the
things was of immense importance in our ultimate escape, but because it
illustrates a fact, which many people believed with difficulty, namely,
that the Germans are extremely inefficient when the use of the
imagination is necessary to efficiency. They believed they were
searching with the greatest possible thoroughness: every tin, for
instance, was opened by them and the contents turned out on to a plate,
but it was obviously impossible to examine every small packet in every
small parcel, so that a certain discretion had to be used as to what to
examine and what to pass, and it was quite extraordinary how they
invariably spotted wrong. I have often wished to know whether the German
prisoners in England smuggled forbidden goods into their camps with the
same ease as we did.
One set of maps I cut down and sewed into the cuff of my tunic, and the
smallest compass I stowed away in the padding on the shoulder. The rest
of the stuff I divided between Moretti and Decugis, both of whom had
been very good friends to me. It was from the latter indeed that I
received information as to the position of the sentries on the Swiss
frontier at Riedheim, where Buckley and I ultimately crossed into
Switzerland.
Towards the end of our strict confinement in Fort 9, while the moat
still remained frozen, the prisoners became very restless and a large
number of abortive attempts to escape were made. These mainly consisted
of attempts to burrow through the walls or in some way to obtain access
to the inner courtyards during the night. Once in the courtyard it was
thought that it would be easy to run between the sentries across the
moat if the night were only reasonably dark. Three Frenchmen actually
did get out, and, owing to successful "faking" of _Appell_, their
absence was not discovered, but they were caught in the courtyard before
they had crossed the moat. On another occasion some Frenchmen, by piling
tables and chairs on top of one another, had managed to get up to one of
the ventilators in the passage outside our rooms. Unfortunately they
were seen by the sentry on the ramparts, who crept up to the ventilator,
without apparently being observed, and fired two shots down through the
glass into the crowd below. By some extraordinary chance no one was hit,
and before the _Feldwebel_ and about a dozen soldiers with fixed
bayonets could arrive, the temporary structure beneath the ventilator
had been cleared away and everyone was looking as innocent as possible,
especially the culprits. Several men, including myself, who were
gambling or walking quietly in the passage, only escaped being bayoneted
by displaying considerable activity at the critical moment. Some of the
Frenchmen spent three weeks of most skilful labor in making a hole
through 4 feet of masonry into the inner courtyard. As these walls were
inspected daily by the Germans the stones had to be replaced every day
so as to leave no trace of the work. I inspected this place myself
several times in the day time, and am prepared to swear that it was
impossible to tell which stones were solidly imbedded and which were
loosely held together by imitation plaster. Somehow or other this also
was discovered when it was almost finished. A sentry was placed outside
the hole. In spite of the sentry, however, the Frenchmen removed and
threw down the latrine all the stones which they had loosened, leaving
in their place a placard on which was written, "Represailles pour le
Chateau de Chauny." In France the Germans had wantonly destroyed, only a
few days before this, the beautiful Chateau de Chauny. Bar-cutting was
also attempted by several Frenchmen and Englishmen--Bouzon, Gilliland,
and others; but somehow unforeseen circumstances always turned up at the
last moment to prevent an attempt to escape being made.
On one work, a tunnel,[4] in which Gaskell and I were assisting, an
immense deal of labor was spent in vain. In Room 49 the Corsican colonel
and Moretti and about four other Frenchmen had sunk a hole in the corner
of their room close under the window. This shaft was about 6 feet
deep--that is to say, to the water level of the moat. Farther one could
not go, as the water came in. From here a gallery was bored through the
foundations of the wall--4 or 5 feet of very solid masonry. This alone
took them three weeks. For the next few yards the tunnel made better
progress until, owing to the nature of the soil, they found it necessary
to revet the tunnel with wood as they advanced. The gallery was so
small--only 20 by 24 inches as far as I remember--that it was impossible
to crawl along it. You had to drag yourself along on your stomach, and
soon the conditions under which the work was carried on became so
unpleasant that two Frenchmen gave it up. Gaskell and I came in as the
new recruits. It was a horrible job. Most of the time one lay in water
and worked in pitch darkness, as the air was so bad that no candle would
keep alight. Gaskell was so large in the shoulder that he could not work
down the tunnel, and I am so long in the arms that I could only do it
with the greatest difficulty and exertion. After a time it was found
necessary to pump air to the man at work by means of a home-made bellows
and a pipe, and this made the work slightly more tolerable. From the
window, the ground, starting at about the same level as the floor of our
rooms, sloped down to the bank of the moat, dropping about 3 feet 6
inches, and from there there was a sharp drop of about 2 feet 6 inches
to the water or, at the time we started the tunnel, to the ice.
Our object was to come out in the steep bank of the moat on a level with
the ice and crawl across on a dark night. With the ice there I think the
idea was an extremely good one, and as nearly certain of success as
anything could be in Fort 9, but it is obvious from the dimensions given
that the tunnel towards the end must necessarily come within a few
inches of the surface of the ground. Actually for the last 3 or 4 yards
we were within 6 inches of the surface, and were able to drive a small
tube up through which we could breathe. Working in the tunnel was a
loathsome task, and one hour per day, in two shifts, was as much as I
could stand. You had to lie 12 yards or more under ground, in an
extremely confined space, in total darkness and in a pool of water. The
atmosphere was almost intolerable, and sometimes one had to come out for
a breath of fresh air for fear that one would faint. But we did this
unwillingly, as it took quite two minutes to go in and about four
minutes to get out, and so wasted much time. By getting into an
excruciatingly uncomfortable position, it was possible to shovel earth
into a wooden sledge made for the purpose, and when this was full, at a
given signal it was dragged back by a man at the pit-head, whose job it
was also to work the bellows. To your left wrist was tied a string, and
when this was twitched you stopped work and lay still waiting for the
sentry to tramp within 6 inches of your head, and wondering when he
would put his foot through, and if he did whether you would be
suffocated or whether he would stick you with a bayonet. Our safeguard
was that the top 8 to 12 inches of ground were frozen solid, and as long
as the frost lasted we were fairly safe, and later on we revetted the
tunnel very thoroughly with wood.
All the earth had to be carried in bags along the passage and emptied
down the latrines. This was Gaskell's self-appointed task, and he must
have emptied many hundreds of bags in this way. Considering that there
was a sentry permanently posted outside the windows of the latrines it
needed considerable skill and judgment to avoid being detected. We soon
found that we needed more labor, and two more Frenchmen, de Goys being
one of them, joined our working party. Moretti was not only chief
engineer, but also the most skilful and effective workman in the tunnel,
and it was entirely owing to him that it came so near to being a
success. I was a mere laborer, and not entrusted with any skilled work.
Unfortunately before the work was finished, the thaw came, and we had to
make other and much more complicated plans for crossing the moat.
It was generally agreed that we could not afford to get our clothes wet
through in crossing the moat. Moretti, the Colonel, and the two other
Frenchmen in their party decided to wade through the moat naked,
carrying two bundles sewn in waterproof cloth, one containing their
clothes and the other their food and other necessaries for a ten days'
march and life in the open in the middle of winter.
Gaskell and I and de Goys and his partner disliked the idea of being
chased naked in the middle of winter carrying two bundles, each weighing
20 pounds or more, so we decided to make ourselves diving-suits out of
mackintoshes. After waterproofing the worn patches on them with candle
grease, and sewing up the front of the neck, where a "soufflet" or extra
piece was let in to enable one to enter the garment from the top, and
binding the legs and arms with strips of cloth, we felt pretty certain
that little or no water would enter during the short passage of the
moat. Whether or not this would have been successful I cannot say, for
thank Heaven we never tried. As the ground gradually thawed, and as the
tunnel approached the moat, the question of revetting became ever of
greater importance. In some places the earth fell away and left cavities
above the woodwork, which we blocked up to the best of our ability.
There still remained a 6-inch layer of frozen earth above us, but for
the last week of the work we could never be sure that a heavy-footed
sentry would not come through if he trod on a tender spot. Towards the
end, the difficulty of obtaining sufficient wood became very acute, for
a large part of the woodwork of the fort had already been burnt in our
stoves during the winter. We all of us reduced the planks in our beds to
the minimum, and Moretti, by means of a false key, entered some unused
living-rooms which were kept locked by the Germans, and stole and broke
up every bit of wood he could find--beds, furniture, stools, shelves,
partitions and all. He was one day occupied in this way in one of the
empty rooms when the sentry outside the window saw or heard him, and
shot into the room at him from about 3 yards' range but missed, and
Moretti retreated with the wood. At last, after three months' work in
all, the tunnel was finished, and a night selected for the escape. As
the sentry who walked between our windows and the moat was never, even
at the far end of his beat, more than 30 yards from the exit of the
tunnel, we considered it essential that there should be sufficient wind
to ruffle the surface of the moat, and not too bright a moon. To a
certain extent by skill, but mainly by good luck, we had come to the
exact spot on the bank at which we had aimed. The place was close under
a lantern which was always hung at night near the edge of the moat, but
owing to the way in which the shadows fell we reckoned that the light
would dazzle rather than help the sentry to see the mouth of the hole
when it was opened. In the day time the open hole could not fail to
attract immediate attention, so that we intended to cut through the last
few inches of earth only an hour or so before the escape.
The Colonel and Moretti were to go first, and then the two Frenchmen in
their room, as these had done five weeks' more work than the rest of us.
Gaskell and de Goys played baccarat to decide which team should be the
next, and we won. Then Gaskell and I played to decide who should go
first of us two, and I won. De Goys and his partner lived in the other
wing of the fort, so that it was necessary for them to fake _Appell_ and
remain over in our rooms after 9 o'clock at night. This was carried out
successfully by help of most lifelike dummies in their beds, which
breathed when you pulled a string, and when the German N.C.O. came round
on our side de Goys and partner just hid under the beds. We got a great
deal of innocent amusement out of this sort of thing.
During the afternoon preceding the night on which we intended to go, I
had a bad fit of nerves, and for half an hour or more lay on my bed
shaking with funk at the thought of it. However, I completely recovered
control before the evening.
The night was not a particularly favorable one; we should have preferred
a good thunderstorm, but considering the thaw which had set in we could
not afford to wait. An hour before the time for starting someone went
down to open the species of trap-door which we had made at the far end,
which would enable us to close the exit after our departure. In the
meantime the Colonel and Moretti got ready. I really felt sorry for
them. We, the non-naked party, would be reasonably warm, whatever the
result might be. The Colonel stripped nude and greased himself from head
to foot, and then wound puttees tightly round his stomach, as a
"precaution against a chill," as Moretti said. There was good need for
precautions, it seemed to me, as there were still large lumps of ice
floating in the moat, and it was nearly freezing outside. Moretti just
got out of his clothes and picked up his bundles and was apparently
looking forward to the business, but I think he was the only one who
was.
As soon as they were ready to go, Gaskell and I went back to our rooms
to put on our diving suits, and in the passage were standing three
German soldiers. Close inspection showed that they were Bellison, May,
and another Frenchman excellently got up.
They felt perfectly certain, and we were inclined to agree, that it was
impossible for eight of us to get across the moat without someone being
seen and shot at by the sentry. We knew from Buckley, who had special
opportunities of observing this whilst in solitary confinement, that
when the alarm was given, all the guard turned out at the double from
the guardroom inside the fort and rushed in a confused mob to the outer
courtyard. These three, dressed as Germans, after having opened all the
intervening doors by means of skeleton keys, intended to join the guards
and rush out with them. I think the idea was quite excellent, and that
their chances of escape were much greater than ours.
When we returned to Room 49 we found consternation among our party. The
man who had been down to open the trap-door said that it could not be
done, owing to unexpected roots and stones, under two hours' work, and
by that time the moon would have risen. After a hurried consultation we
agreed to abandon it for that night.
The next three nights were still and calm and clear without a ripple on
the water; an attempt would have meant certain failure. On the fourth
morning a pocket about 6 inches deep and a foot in diameter appeared in
the ground above the tunnel. All that day the sentry did not notice it,
and that night was stiller and clearer than ever. It was impossible to
go.
The next day the N.C.O. whom we knew as the "Blue Boy" came round to tap
the bars of our windows, and the sentry drew his attention to the place
where the earth had sunk. He tested it with a bayonet, and later a
fatigue party came along with picks and dug the whole thing up, and all
our labor was in vain. It was rather sad; but, as I said before, looking
back now, I feel rather thankful that we never made the attempt. The
only result, as far as I know, was that the members of Room 49 were
split up among other rooms in the fort, and a sentry was put on guard
over the mouth of the hole. Moretti came into Room 42 and was instantly
appointed chef. He also started to dig another tunnel somewhere else,
which was also discovered. Personally I had had enough of tunnels, and
swore I would never try and escape that way again, so I returned with
renewed energy to my Russian lessons.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: I have given the story of this tunnel at some length, not
because it was in any way exceptional, but rather because it shows the
labor and ingenuity involved in attempts to escape of this type, of
which there were innumerable examples in Fort 9. A most wonderful
tunnel, 80 yards long I believe, was made by the prisoners at Custrin.]