THE TUNNELLERS OF HOLZMINDEN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
LONDON: FETTER LANE, E.C. 4
[Illustration]
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY ⎫
CALCUTTA ⎬ MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
MADRAS ⎭
TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TOKYO : MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
[Illustration:
The track of the Holzminden Tunnel after being dug up.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE TUNNELLERS
OF
HOLZMINDEN
(WITH A SIDE-ISSUE)
BY
H. G. DURNFORD, M.C., M.A.
FELLOW OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
MY WIFE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
Almost exactly two years ago, as I write these lines, the famous
Holzminden Tunnel became history. Even then, when the sordid camp was
still lending (and seemed likely to lend _in perpetuum_) its grey colour
to every aspect of life, when sense of proportion was practically
dormant and racial animosity intensified to the highest pitch, it was
impossible to overlook the peculiar dramatic proprieties of the event.
Some day, it was felt, this story might be fittingly told.
And in the retrospect the feeling remains unaltered. The harsh angles
have softened: the tumult and the shouting have died away to the remoter
cells of memory: Captain Niemeyer (of the Reserve) has departed—God
knows where! His imperial master is dragging out an unhappy old age in
exile. The British protagonists and walkers-on in the 9-months struggle
have scattered to the ends of the Empire on their lawful occasions. Once
in a blue moon perhaps they think of it and rub their eyes. The details
are already vague. The whole of their prison existence seems absurdly
far away.
But it is in the hope that they will care to follow with not uncritical
interest the following plain unvarnished account of the Tunnel episode
that I, a mere looker-on, have sorted out the threads and fitted the
jumble together. If any think this an impertinence, may I plead that an
ordinary stage hand may see more of the workings of a nine months run
than the star performers? To them at any rate, protagonists, walkers-
and lookers-on in the event, and their friends and relations I would
address myself particularly. Through them alone can I hope to interest
the British public in this simple tale of a strategically unimportant
but highly successful side-show, in Germany, in the dog days of 1918.
I am indebted to one friend in particular for assistance in the true
description of the actual Tunnel. He prefers to remain anonymous. Many
others of my ex-fellow-prisoners have helped me in various ways. The
design which is reproduced on the cover was drawn by Lieutenant Lockhead
while in captivity at Stralsund and was intended to serve as a Christmas
card; I am indebted to him for the loan of the block. To Messrs
Blackwood I am obliged for permission to reprint the personal
experiences contained in the final chapter.
H. G. DURNFORD.
KING’S COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE.
_24th July 1920._
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PROLOGUE 1
I. A CAMP IN BEING 14
II. NIEMEYER—AND PINPRICKS 32
III. INTRODUCING THE MAIN MOTIF 49
IV. ESCAPES 60
V. ACCOMPLICES 71
VI. IN THE TUNNEL 89
VII. REPRISALS 101
VIII. THE LAST LAP 118
IX. THE ESCAPE AND THE SEQUEL 131
X. CLOSING INCIDENTS 148
XI. MAKING GOOD 164
------------------------------------------------------------------------
ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS
The track of the Holzminden Tunnel after being dug up _Frontispiece_
A street in Ypres ⎫
The Cloth Hall in 1917 ⎬ _to face p._ 2
The Menin Gate of Ypres⎭
The Battery in action N. of the Menin Road⎫
The Menin Road ⎬ ” 5
At the waggon-lines ⎭
View from Kaserne B, showing skating rink made in January
1918 _to face p._ 30
Karl Niemeyer ” 36
General plan of Holzminden Camp _p._ 53
Kaserne B _to face p._ 54
Scene of the Walter-Medlicott attempt⎫
A dining-room at Holzminden ⎭ ” 61
Section and ground-plan of staircase, chamber, and tunnel
entrance _p._ 73
Course of the tunnel ” 93
At the tunnel mouth _to face p._ 100
Section of attic roof _p._ 112
Orderlies digging out the tunnel between Kaserne B and the
outer wall _to face p._ 142
Group of recaptured officers in a room at Holzminden ” 162
Facsimile of the original permit-card copied by Lockhead
_to face p._ 169
Facsimile of the forged railway passport _between pp._ 174-5
Map of N.W. Germany and frontiers _p._ 189
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROLOGUE
“B/—th will detail the liaison officer for the Group for to-morrow the
5th.”
The Brigade orderly splashed in bearing the unwelcome message. I had
just turned in. The never-to-be-forgotten fatal three days’ downpour
which had set in on the 31st July 1917 and had upset so many
calculations had just stopped and we had enjoyed an afternoon and
evening of bright sunshine and cloudless skies. The water in the
dug-out, which had risen steadily in spite of temporary responses to our
efforts with an old trench pump and a chain of buckets, was now
gradually beginning to abate and the stretcher on which I slept was once
more high and dry. Also I was due to go down to waggon-lines in two
days’ time, and life generally was taking on a less sombre hue.
It could afford to. Our six weeks in action in the Salient had been
lived in an atmosphere of almost unrelieved gloom, an atmosphere—so we
had come to believe—inalienable from the place itself.
One had come to realise what men had meant who in earlier days on the
Somme—when all was said to be quiet at Ypres—had trekked south into the
Valley of the Shadow of Death and remarked that “it was better than the
Salient.” Now we had seen for ourselves. It had not merely been the
shelling and the fact that there was not a really safe spot, except in
the very ramparts of the Eastern wall themselves, between Belgian
Battery Corner and the front line. It had not merely been that the
German gunners conveyed the impression that they were _aiming_ at _you_,
that they knew exactly where you were, and that they were doing it—had
been doing it all along—more as a pleasure than as an allotted task. It
had not been the fact that no fatigue or waggon-line party could set
great hopes on returning scatheless from a job of work; nor that here
hostile aeroplane observation seemed more acute than in other parts; nor
again that rarely a night passed but one saw or heard of some shambles
on a main traffic road. It was none of these things. The spirit of Ypres
was abroad, impregnating those new to her. From the very morning when,
accompanying a harassed, jumpy acting C.R.A. on his round of battery
inspections, I had first seen her, I had felt the spell upon me. It was
like grey skies and a wind in the east, the quintessence of sombreness.
The intervals of quiet could not be called peace; they served only to
intensify the solitude. The history of the place seemed to cast its
stamp on those who sojourned in it.
[Illustration:
A street in Ypres.
]
[Illustration:
The Cloth Hall in 1917.
]
[Illustration:
The Menin Gate of Ypres.
]
We had come into action at the beginning of July. Our instructions had
been to get “in” and camouflaged and registered and then wait for “the
day,” and that waiting had been sorely trying to the patience. It had
been far worse than sitting on the Messines Ridge in June. We had been
told we should be “silent,” but we had fired steadily nevertheless, and
this meant, of course, more ammunition and added risk of casualties
amongst horses and men. It had meant having the men out of cover to
shift the shells from their depôts to the gun-pits; and such things were
considerations when we were losing men at the rate of about two a day
and the stock of capable gunners and N.C.O.’s, depleted at Messines, was
beginning to run dangerously low. “D” Battery on our immediate right had
had an even worse time. Poor old “D.” They were always getting the rough
of it since Courcelette, and this time they had got it very rough
indeed. They had had no cellar to put their gun-crews in and we had been
unable to spare them a share in ours, so they had left emergency crews
at the guns and worked them by nucleus shifts, the remainder sleeping a
long way behind.
The preparations had dragged their slow course along, and we had gone on
with our daily routine, never knowing what the next minute was not going
to produce, unloading and storing the ammunition, and heaving a sigh of
relief when the last pack-horse had discharged his daily load and that
anxiety at least was off our shoulders for the day; checking the sights
and aiming-posts, strengthening so far as we could the pits, watching
and shepherding the men; gassed one night and on duty all the next and
then gassed again the third—the deadly mustard fellow had just made his
costly début; counting the leaden hours, congratulating ourselves each
time that—our duty over—we made the dug-out door afresh; and ever and
anon looking hopefully through the tattered screen which still served to
shield our part of the Menin Road from hostile observation to where
Passchendaele Church stood prominent and quite intact on the opposite
slope.
In five weeks the Corps Artillery alone had lost (I believe the figure
is correct) 568 officers, killed, wounded, or gassed, and other ranks
also had lost in proportion. We ourselves had lost one officer (gassed
almost as soon as we had got in), five out of our six N.C.O.’s, and
twelve gunners or bombardiers. “D” had had a young officer just out from
England killed with a sergeant immediately behind our own guns, and a
direct hit on one of their dug-outs had deprived them of three more
sergeants and two gunners at one fell swoop. The toll had mounted up
steadily, and though the C.-in-C. had issued a special appreciation of
the bearing of the artillery in these difficult circumstances, we had
day by day been feeling more the heavy strain.
Then had come the last days of July. All the conceivable practice
barrages had been fired and the Huns made wise to the uttermost.
Then again—amidst rumours that the French were two days late—the storm
clouds had gathered from the unfavourable quarter, and finally on the
31st July the great unwieldy barrage had unwound its complicated length
in drizzling rain on the Hun lines. The infantry had gone over and
reached the “black line” up to scheduled time: but on the “black line”
they had lost co-ordination; when the barrage advanced again they had
been late to follow up; the barrage had rolled on unheeding; our men,
floundering in its wake on hopeless ground and now in a steady downpour,
had had to come back and consolidate on the “black line,” while the
batteries awaited in vain the longed-for order to advance.
* * * * *
Well, what was one job more or less after all? One might as well be hung
for a sheep as a lamb, and I should go down to waggon-lines with all the
clearer conscience on the 6th, and sleep.... How I would sleep! I would
get down there for lunch if I could, have a quiet ride in the afternoon
into “Pop,” and come back to waggon-lines for an early dinner and bed.
How glorious to wake up once more, and to hear the birds twittering
outside! It seemed ages ago since one had done so last, and it was in
reality just eight days. My waggon-line billet was in a small
farm-house. Madame and her man had been, for those parts, friendly
enough. I remembered having tried to convey to Madame that next time I
visited her, Ypres would be free. She had not understood, and perhaps it
had been just as well.
[Illustration:
The Battery in action N. of the Menin Road.
]
[Illustration:
The Menin Road.
]
[Illustration:
At the waggon-lines.
]
Yes, a late breakfast, after a sluice-down in the open air, a leisurely
toilet, and a stroll round the horses; and then perhaps a real joy-ride,
an all-day affair towards Nieppe Forest....
I rang up the battery and gave my orders for signallers and an orderly
on the morrow. There was only one other subaltern available for the job,
and as the Major was out at the time I deputed myself. It is the
unwritten rule.
I read through the standing orders for the Group liaison officers,
finished my chapter of _Sonia_—I was to read the next in a very
different setting—and went to sleep.
The Menin Road was a populous concern in those days and the varied
traffic comforted our gregarious souls as we walked down at a round pace
next morning after breakfast to pay our respects _en route_ to Infantry
Brigade and the senior Artillery Liaison Officer of the Group in the big
labyrinth of dug-outs at the bottom of the hill. Hell Fire Corner,
though still occasionally shelled “on spec,” was no longer the shunned,
depressing cross-roads that it used to be. Now it even boasted a
military policeman to control the traffic. Ambulance cars and heavy
lorries passed and met us. The road was thick with infantry and
fatigue-parties of various kinds going up and coming out.
The shattered boughs and fallen branches, which had blocked the unused
road before, had now been side-tracked; only dead mules and horses here
and there had created fresh obstructions. Fritz was putting most of his
metal this morning on to the front line and the ridge where we were due
at noon; but even back here he had guns enough to send over his one a
minute, searching—now that he might no longer observe—for some of his
old favourite spots. So we did not loiter.
At Infantry Brigade they were making their toilet. The senior Liaison
Officer told me that battalion had shifted its headquarters during the
night: “too hot to stay where it was.” He gave me what he understood
were the map co-ordinates of their new abode, and I took my departure.
We crossed the old No Man’s Land, passed the working-parties at their
thankless tasks of road-making in the churned morass, and picked our way
warily round the crater lips across the old German front line system
till we struck the railway. It did not seem to be getting shelled, and
would at least afford better going than if we plunged through the
crater-field direct towards the front line. My intention was to nurse
the railway for a mile or so, and then, leaving it, to strike across up
the ridge in order to hit off “The Rectory,” where Battalion H.Q. were
reported to be.
I had not been forward myself since the show. It was worse even than I
expected. The ground was just beginning to harden in the hot sunshine,
but every hole was filled with water and one had to plan out one’s
course with long detours, jumping precariously from island to island.
The rusted wire, half buried in the loose earth, tore one’s puttees. The
whole place stank. There were very few dead about; the Hun communiqué
had probably not lied in saying that their outposts had been lightly
held. But the railway embankment gave possible lodgment for the feet and
we kept along it as I planned, with six paces between each man and one
eye on the 4·2’s falling just to our right in the valley. The effect on
that ground was only local and we had no fears of splinters.
At last, panting and thirsty, we reached the crest which our infantry
were holding. We could see no movement. Over the bleak expanse of
shell-holes there was no human being to be seen; one had got to cast
one’s eye right back to where the working-parties were.
A line of ruined houses and pill-boxes ran along the ridge. One of them
was “The Rectory.” I went into it; there was a concreted cellar facing
Boche-wards, but nobody inside it. I hailed a Red Cross man who was
wandering about forlornly. He hadn’t seen anyone, didn’t know anything.
It was rather annoying. I looked up my book of the rules and tried a
cast back to the original map reference for Battalion Headquarters. It
must be a ruined pill-box which they were shelling. I waited till there
was a pause and then looked inside. No, not a sign of anyone.
Confound Brigade! That part of the programme must wait, that’s all. I
had to establish connection by visual with our Brigade signallers at
Hell Fire Corner and must plant my lamp.
We went down into one of the pill-boxes on the ridge and deposited the
gear. The dug-out was a foot or more deep in water, but must have been a
comfortable, secure home. Two wounded infantrymen were lying on the
bunks on one side of the dug-out. They told me they had been there since
the first day, untended save by chance arrivals. I tried to cheer them
up and we offered them our water-bottles.
We stuck the lamp up just behind the pill-box on the top of a bank and
flashed it full in the direction of Hell Fire Corner. There was no
answer. “Nothing’s going right to-day,” I thought, and the shells were
pitching just to our right and inviting retirement to the safe—if
damp—recess beneath us.
But I was overdue and had not found sign or trace of the infantry. The
place might be deserted for all the world, save for our little party. I
had one more cast round in various ruined pill-boxes on our side of the
slope, and then made up my mind to go forward—east—a little. My Major
had told me yesterday that our fellows were digging in in front of the
ridge. Perhaps the infantry Colonel was with them.
It did not seem very likely, on the forward side of a ridge sloping
towards Hunland, but unusual things were done in those days of
disorganisation and I had not seen a single infantryman since we left
the working-parties behind us early in the morning. Our infantry, if
they were not a myth, must be east of me, not west.
I left my signallers still flashing vainly and took my orderly with me
to the forward slope of the ridge. We stalked down a hedge about 50
yards, then turned due right along another. There was another “pill-box”
just half right of us.
“That might be them, sir,” said my orderly.
We swung sharp right and walked up to it. I saw an unusual helmet. “One
of our Tommies decking himself out,” I thought. Then another helmet of
the same sort, and the truth flashed on me just as it was too late and
we were within a few paces of them, with the pill-box between us and
home, covered by a couple of German rifles.
A dozen very vivid thoughts raced through my mind. “Somebody’s made the
most awful howler.” “I can’t get back.” “Where in thunder were our
infantry, then?” “This is the end.” “I haven’t even got a revolver on
me.” “Prisoner!—what will they say?” “What the devil _will_ they say?”
I gave the lad an order and we held up our hands. I will not labour the
apology. The back verandah of the pill-box—so it looked—was bristling
with amazed and animated Huns. Cut off from retreat, unarmed and utterly
flabbergasted, what would you? I stammered out a few words in bad French
to their officer and then asked leave to sit down. I was exhausted and
quite overwhelmed. So this was the result of my fourteen months of
cumulative experience. What a culmination! To walk over No Man’s Land on
a bye-day in broad daylight into a German nest! Such a thing had never
come into our ken that I could remember. And if it had, I should have
been the first to pass uncharitable comment. What hideous irony! I
looked at the boy I had led unwittingly into captivity. What sort of an
officer did _he_ think I was now? He would bless me before it was all
over, if all one heard, had read of, was true. Suddenly one began to see
the prisoner-of-war question in a new light. What was it like really?
And all the time I racked and racked my brains to think whose fault it
was, where the mistake had lain. I knew the range on the map to “The
Rectory,” which I had just left, and the range of our S.O.S. barrage.
Three hundred yards to play with. I had come barely a hundred. Perhaps
they hadn’t known of this pill-box. To know, O Lord, if only to know—and
I couldn’t[1].
[Footnote 1: I did learn later, at Stralsund Camp in Germany, where I
met the Colonel I was then trying to find. He told me his H.Q. on that
day had been 100 yards _north_ of “The Rectory,” which they had found
too hot to stay in.]
That day seemed an eternity. In the evening I heard the shells from my
own battery come whizzing over. I was to have observed them, five rounds
of battery fire on the German front line at 5 p.m. Since the push this
had been the only method, except by visual; no wires had lived a day up
till then.
My tie alone proclaimed me as an officer. I had left my tunic and all my
impedimenta, with—fortunately—my notebooks and important papers, in the
pill-box on the ridge.
The orderly in his rough way was comforting. I felt sorry for the boy.
It wasn’t his fault anyway.
One had an early insight into the German character. This lot were
Mecklenburgers and good stuff by the look of them, but desperately dull
and earnest. All day long they sat in that pill-box—three officers and
about twenty men—and jabbered. There wasn’t a laugh, there wasn’t even
the semblance of a smile. They smoked cigars most of the time; when food
was brought, they gobbled it down like famished wolves and then turned
to jabbering and smoking once more. Occasionally a British plane caused
a diversion; they rushed to the verandah and craned their necks at it
amidst a babel of maledictions, it would have been funny—if one had been
in the heart for it—to see the way these fellows took their war. They
were perfectly safe, and knew it, until such time as we should attack
again. The pill-box must have been sunk a yard or more beneath the
ground, and had five feet or more of concrete on every side. Only the
back-blast from a shell pitching in their back verandah—short of a
direct hit from a heavy gun—could have done much harm. They were
wonderfully well camouflaged.
They gave me something to drink but could not spare any food, and I
smoked a cigar or two. When it got dark they sent us down under an
escort. We had hardly started when a “strafe” began, so we sat in
another pill-box and listened to our own shells falling all round and
hitting the place more than once.
Then the bombardment died away and we went on our way—across the swampy
Hanebeek, past batteries and groups of infantry in open trenches or yet
other pill-boxes; into Company Headquarters, a crowded cellar in a farm,
where a brief examination of our guides by a pot-bellied, earnest Hun
officer took place; and then away again, on over more open, firmer
country, up a long slope by a narrow bridle-path, with our shells still
falling at intervals round about and fresh corpses of men and horses
showing where our guns had found occasional value from searching tracks
whose use had been established. The warning _Draht_, _Draht_ (“ware
wire”) of our surly N.C.O. guide became rarer, we emerged at length on
to a regular road, and after an hour or so’s walking we were taken into
the roomy and laboriously built and fortified quarters of the Regimental
Staff. There more depositions were taken by the bullet-headed Brigade
Major, a forbidding-looking, efficient little blackguard, I thought, and
a good specimen of their military machine. Cigars were provided for our
guides and we were marched out again once more, items of passing
interest, no doubt, but as human beings inconsiderable. We would be
going towards Moorslede. I was dead tired and faint with hunger, but the
cool night air blew fresh upon my forehead. We passed ammunition limbers
by the score—great, clumsy things they seemed after our neat Q.F.
variety—and now and again a company of infantry coming up to the line at
the rapid, business-like half run, half walk, which struck one so
strangely after our own infantry’s measured pace. They seemed to be in
high spirits, and had a cheery word for our guides. From what I saw, the
German Flanders army went up cheerfully enough in those days to take its
hammering.
And then at last, in the grey dawn and after many questionings of
passers-by by our somewhat uncertain guides, Moorslede, and a brief halt
in a Headquarters of sorts; then on again on the last stage, beyond
shell-fire now and knowing—as every German had enviously said to us who
could speak English at all—that “the war was _over for us_.” It was
their stock phrase, and I believed them with a deep-down feeling
somewhere—in spite of all the bitterness—that it was so, and that I
should at least, given reasonable luck, see home and friends once more.
Into Roulers we fare in a grinding, shaking motor-bus and take our first
impression of black rye bread and _ersatz_ coffee.
And here we may be left—in a Belgian occupied town, in a stifling,
ill-ventilated room, amidst a motley crew of unwashed, sleepy, but not
unfriendly Germans; worn with the fatigue and strain of the last long
fifteen hours, and at first—for my part—probing vainly for an
explanation of it all; and then, as the tyranny of the stomach grows
more ensconced, settling down to the long, absorbing vigil of waiting on
the next full meal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER I
A CAMP IN BEING
A broad, level, methodically cultivated plain; a horizon of wooded
slopes with, every few degrees or so, the suggestion of winding valleys
and watercourses; to the northward, the river Weser, Nature’s barrier
beyond the wire, flowing between us and freedom, and visible from our
upper windows in an occasional gleam of silver against the shadows of
the steep further bank; to the west the town, red-roofed and picturesque
with adjoining allotments; on the edge of the allotments a large square
walled enclosure containing two very recent architectural abominations,
eyesores in the general prospect—to wit, _Kaserne_ A and B of the
_Offizier Gefangenen Lager_[2] Holzminden, that highly advertised
Brunswickian retreat which, on a day in September 1917, flung open its
hospitable gates to its first English guests, an advance instalment of
about thirty from Karlsruhe. Such—in a paragraph—was Holzminden Camp and
its environment.
[Footnote 2: Officer prisoners-of-war camp.]
The new Camp had been freely boomed; the _Lager_ “Poldhu” had got hold
of it and done wonders with it—that mysterious _Lager_ “Poldhu” of
Germany in war time, which spoke not through wires or wireless and
seemingly lacked all means of transmission, but which percolated, none
the less, from _Lager_ to _Lager_ in some mysterious way, so that what
should by rights have remained a close secret in the _Kommandantur_[3]
at X in Baden was known all over the Camp at Y in Silesia within a week
or so. Thus it was noised abroad in a dozen camps that four had got out
from Freiburg and were still at large, that a tunnel scheme had been
discovered at the last moment at Magdeburg, and that poor old C— had got
“jug” again for hitting a sentry in the parcel office at Ströhen.
[Footnote 3: Kommandantur means in a prison camp that part set apart for
the German personnel, and includes the Commandant’s office.]
Holzminden—so ran the “Poldhu”—was to be the real thing, a prisoner’s
Mecca—fine, brand-new buildings, spacious grounds, good scenery, good
air. The report was discussed and swallowed or pooh-poohed according to
temperament. The Schwarmstedt crowd took the news of their impending
departure thither with a pronounced sniff. They were—had been for
several months—in the Xth Army Corps Area. Holzminden also was in the
Xth Army Corps. There could no good thing come out of the Xth Army
Corps. Schwarmstedt was in fact sufficiently sceptical of the Xth Army
Corps to have remained gladly in its flea-ridden huts, had it not been
that the prospect of a winter on the bog-wastes in those flimsy
buildings seemed almost intolerable. That fate was reserved in the
actual event for Italians, with the usual leavening of neglected
Russians.
Accordingly, an advance party of the ‘nineteen-fourteeners’ and
‘-fifteeners’ of Schwarmstedt packed up their household gods and
suffered themselves to be transported to Holzminden. They were told
authoritatively that this was going to be merely a stopping-place on the
way to Holland and exchange; so they threw chests-full of tins at the
starving Russians who were remaining behind, left their heavy luggage to
follow after them, and arrived only with the clothes they stood up in
and a suit-case of tins to last them till they reached the border. The
border took most of them three months to reach; the suit-cases were
empty in under a week. It was galling, after having been led to believe
that they would be dining at the Hague in a few days, to find that they
were to remain prisoners for an indefinite period in a camp in which the
feeding arrangements were, to put it mildly, as yet incompletely
organised. But they had acted unwisely. Three and a half years of doubt
and uncertainty should have taught them better than to travel
empty-handed so far from their refilling point, or to rely on exchange
until they were actually at the border.
Fortunately, however, they were only the advance guard; the main party
from Schwarmstedt had yet to come, and when the nakedness of the land
and the bleakness of the immediate exchange prospect was really
discovered, the wires were set in motion and injunctions passed to the
remainder to save what could yet be saved. Anything edible had long
since disappeared down the throats of the Russians and would, in any
case, have been difficult to reclaim from our unfortunate Allies. But
other things of less immediate value were salved; and the main party
from Schwarmstedt pulled out in their turn from the bog camp, resigned
at least to a temporary stay in their new abode, and properly equipped
with the more essential things. It was a regal transport. There were 200
of them, not to mention their hand-luggage, which assumed vast
proportions, since everything that was left behind as heavy luggage
stood an even chance of being lost in transit, even if transport
exigencies in the Fatherland permitted of it ever being put on board a
train.
What an arrival that was—the main body from Schwarmstedt! We raw
‘seventeeners,’ fresh up in our ordnance boots and Tommies’ tunics from
the sorting camps of Heidelberg and Karlsruhe in mild Baden, could
hardly credit it. We had what we wore, plus, perhaps, an odd shirt which
the Belgian ladies in Courtrai might have given us. Here was an
eye-opener—Schwarmstedt Camp come to Holzminden under a camouflage of
suit-cases! We leaned out of the windows of “A” Barrack as they
staggered in at the main gate, and the Schwarmstedt advance party hailed
their friends as the stream rolled on through the inner gate into the
camp grounds, and bawled out amidst the general babel disparaging
comment on the new camp and its personnel.
Irish Mick in our room was in great form. “Bury your notes,” he sang
out, “bury your notes. They sthrip ye mother naked.” Every one in three
of the incoming cortège had not less on him than 50 marks in German
currency notes. (_Strengstens verboten_, of course, and a search on
arrival was the accepted thing.) So, taking Mick at his word, they sat
them down on the dusty _Spielplatz_, made unobtrusive graves with pocket
knives, and dedicated their money to the land. Perhaps they were seen.
Perhaps the scratches were in some cases too obvious. At all events the
Germans became wise; and one of their N.C.O.’s going round betimes next
morning before the party had been able to see to their investments
unearthed no less than 2000 marks! The Schwarmstedt party lost the first
round.
We have digressed somewhat: but those first few days at Holzminden were
days of digressions, of alarums and excursions, of administration too
chaotic even for a serious strafe. The best organisation in the world
will not get 500 more or less passive resisters satisfactorily
transplanted from one place to another without considerable difficulty,
and the German arrangements at Holzminden were ludicrously insufficient
for their task. The buildings were there, and that was about all. The
crockery had not arrived; there were three large boilers in the German
cook-house to cater for the bodily wants of 500 English officers and 100
Germans; there were two or three wretched cooking-stoves for our private
use; there were about half a dozen British orderlies—the rest, we were
told, were on their way; the bathroom had not even been begun; the
parcel room was not yet open, nor was the canteen; the German staff were
incomplete, new to the ropes, and totally inefficient. The Commandant
was a kindly old dodderer of about seventy who left everything in the
hands of the Camp Officer; and the Camp Officer, as we were to know
before very long and as a good many knew quite well already, was the
most plausible villain and the biggest liar in Germany. Hauptmann Karl
Niemeyer will figure perforce largely in these pages. Let him be
introduced to the reader as he introduced himself to us on our arrival
in the camp. It was one of his stock ‘turns.’
Twenty-five of us had arrived at midnight from Heidelberg, dead tired
and hungry, and had been greeted in fluent Yank beneath the flaring
electric lamp at the door of the Kommandantur by someone whom at first
sight and sound we took to be rather a genial and sympathetic person. He
told us that he was glad to see us, that he was always glad to see any
Englishman, that he had been great friends with the English himself
before the war, and that he hoped to be so again. But that in the
meanwhile war was war. That we had better, y’know, write straight away
to our friends for our thickest clothes, y’know. It was very cold here
in winter, y’know—(he did not then add that there was also very little
fuel and that wood was going to cost us 18 marks a pailful). He
concluded his speech of welcome on a note of old-world hospitality which
made us think of bedroom candles and a comforting ‘night-cap’:—
“So now, yentlemen, I expect you will be glad to go to your bedrooms. I
will wish you good-night. You will be searched in the morning.”
We crawled upstairs full of hope and were sorted out into three of the
upper rooms reserved for newcomers. There was nothing to eat and no
night lingerie to slip into; and we were locked in because we had not
been searched.
In the morning we appeared again, empty and unshaven, for the search.
Our kind mentor of the night before must have pierced our secret, for
almost his first enquiry was whether we had breakfasted. A menial was
then despatched to bid the cook provide breakfast for the _Herren_ with
all despatch, and we solaced our impatience with unreasoned thoughts of
a sizzling rasher, or at least some _wurst_. Breakfast, when it came,
was one cup each of _ersatz_ coffee, and lukewarm at that. But the
genial Karl pretended not to understand our disgust.
It must be admitted that he did not confine his innocent pranks to the
newly captured. All was fish that came to his net. The only difference
was that he got so little change out of those who knew the ropes. They,
for instance, might have guessed what “breakfast” (German 1917 version)
meant. Also they knew their rights and how far he—and they—could go,
pretty well to the last centimetre. So, be it added, did he. It was one
thing for the whole camp to laugh at him on _appel_ (roll-call).
Laughing and shouting on _appel_—Homeric ripples of merriment or short
sharp barks from the entire assembly—were recognised as means of
entering effective protest when the Germans began to exceed their
prerogatives. But it would be quite another thing to tell Niemeyer to
his face to shut up. One officer did this and was promptly marched off
to the cells. These two had waged bitter war since Ströhen days and the
Englishman had renewed the offensive by openly refusing to shake
Niemeyer’s hand on arrival at Holzminden. It was natural that the latter
should get back on him as soon as the opportunity arrived. Holding, as
he did, all the scoring cards, Niemeyer never went out of his way to
avoid trouble. On the contrary, he welcomed it. His power to deal with
the situation to his own satisfaction only failed when, as sometimes
happened, his temper passed completely beyond his control.
Under him, and in charge of Kaserne A, was one Gröner, a saturnine,
sallow, heavy-moustachioed fellow, reputed a schoolmaster in civil life,
and from all appearances a worthy exponent of Kultur. By the
Schwarmstedt lot he was known and loathed, and his stomach bulged
temptingly as he stalked on to our _appel_.
And there was Ulrich, who arrived shortly after the opening of the camp
and assumed command of B Kaserne and its two hundred and fifty
inhabitants. Ulrich had stopped something very recently in the
Passchendaele fighting and was generally understood to be “swinging the
lead.” At all events no brisker or jauntier figure was to be seen most
days of the week. But if a General hove in sight, or there was a rumour
of further drastic combings-out in the home service cadres, Ulrich
forthwith assumed a halt and woe-begone gait. His chest caved in, his
left leg lagged behind his right, and he appeared supremely miserable
and C3. These seizures were chronic, but were noticed to be of brief
duration. For the rest, Ulrich was polite, but a doubtful character. To
a privileged few he was communicative and expressed his doubts as to the
orthodoxy of the conduct of prison camps in the Xth Army Corps. But his
billet depended on his keeping in with the authorities; he was a
border-line case for the front, and he had a wife and numerous children.
What would you, or he?
Let us take the opportunity to introduce the rest of the minor
characters. There was a _Feldwebel-Leutnant_ called Welman who
rejoiced—justly enough—in the sobriquet of the “Jew Boy.” He had never
been to the front, was reported to be permanently unfit and to get fifty
per cent. of the profits of the canteen. At all events he was the
officer in charge of the Quartermaster’s Department in this Camp, and
was credited accordingly with a snug war billet. He was not
discourteous, but if unduly harassed by his own superiors, or by a long
row of sneeringly critical English, he became excited, and his voice
used to sound as if it came out of the bridge of his Semitic nose. He
spoke vile Berlinese and was generally regarded as a harmless enough
little soul with a capacity for business.
There was “Square-eyes,” an old farmer Feldwebel who had been promised
his discharge months since and loathed his present job. He never made an
enemy among the English in the camp and used to speak broken English,
beaming through enormous horn spectacles. Unfortunately his reign did
not last long. Either his discharge came, or he was regarded by the
authorities as too mild for his job. At all events he left us
comparatively early.
And there were other gentlemen Feldwebels who construed their duties too
humanely for the taste of the authorities and were removed; and one or
two who gained full approbation, and remained to add to the gaiety of
things.
What a fate to have the charge of officers in a prison camp! Theirs was
not an enviable lot. If they were too severe, they forfeited all moral
control over us. If they were too complaisant, they risked losing their
jobs. There was no more difficult fence on which to sit and preserve
balance. A few—the more democratic—were doubtless intrigued by the idea
of exercising control on the sacred officer class; on most it weighed as
an irreconcileable anomaly.
One little fellow, Mandelbrot, curiously combined respect and authority
in his behaviour to us. He was an incorrigible disciplinarian and never
allowed any liberties. But if he had to address a British officer,
whatever the officer’s rank, he would click his heels together and stand
to attention.
The first ten days at Holzminden were chaos itself. Even Niemeyer was
unable to exert himself as actively inimical in the complete
disorganisation. He was too busily engaged in strafing his own staff.
Moreover, he was as yet only Camp Officer. The doddering old Commandant
still reigned and Niemeyer’s time was largely spent in interposing his
unwelcome oar into conversations between the Commandant and an aggrieved
senior British officer.
The English, moreover, were at sixes and sevens amongst themselves. It
was frankly a struggle for food. Schwarmstedt, as stated, had brought
very few tins. We from Baden had none. The German commissariat was of
course execrable. There was no “common box” or relief store of tins and
food for new-comers such as had been instituted in the prosperous days
of Crefeld and Gütersloh, when the odd captives straggled in from the
battle of the Somme and found plenty awaiting them. Parcels had in many
cases been already countermanded on the strength of the Holland rumour,
in others they were in process of being diverted from Schwarmstedt, and
this would probably be a matter of weeks. For the first time since 1914
the old campaigners were casting about for their next meal. It was a new
experience. The German canteen, of course, had nothing edible for sale.
There was barely fuel enough for our few stoves; the baths were not yet
open; the beds were hard and rocky.
It needed but a brief acquaintanceship with the Xth Corps to be able to
put one’s finger on the _fons et origo mali_, which went much deeper
than the doddering Commandant and his graceless Lieutenant. Everything
that was unpleasant in our new surroundings had been hatched, we might
be sure, at H.Q. from the brain of von Hänisch, the fox, _General
Kommandierende_ of the Corps. Now von Hänisch, besides being by nature
fox-like, had got a bad hammering from the English on the Somme, and had
lost many men, and his field command into the bargain; and now, with a
third or so of the British officer prisoners-of-war in Germany under his
amiable tutelage, he was not the man to waste any time in getting back
on the country which had been the means of breaking him.
The camp was not ten days old before von Renard took a preliminary prowl
round his prize covert to appraise the value of his new hunting grounds;
the magic word went forth “_Inspection_.” The taps were turned on; the
available brooms were brought forth; the British orderlies—what there
were of them—were set on to every conceivable form of fatigue; the
German staff worked overtime, and general electricity pervaded the
place. And amidst the general preparations the senior British officer
girded up his loins for a battle royal and noted down with his faithful
adjutant a long list of complaints....
It is the next day, some time after morning _appel_, which the General
has attended and which has passed without incident. The senior British
officer, the better to forward his many just claims, has ordered a
punctiliously correct parade.
From Room 69 on the second floor of Kaserne A we may get a good view of
the interview which, one way or the other, is destined to fashion our
existence for the immediate future. The General having made a tour of
the Camp is about to pass through the gate into the precincts of the
Kommandantur. Our senior officer will apply for an interview. The
General will doubtless unbend so far as to go through the form of one.
He is surrounded by his staff, as well as by the old Camp Commandant,
with his insufferable Camp Officer, the Paymaster, and the other
officers attached to the camp. They are grouped respectfully behind
their Chief, very splendid in their best uniforms, and stiff as pokers.
Every now and again he turns and addresses a question to one of them,
and then the poker back grows even stiffer, and the gloved hand goes up
to the peaked cap in salute and stays there till the General is pleased
to turn away again. How we used to loathe this German habit. One
conceived a frantic longing to tear their hands forcibly away and fasten
them down. It seemed so thoroughly Prussian, this habit of talking to
their superiors as if they were shading their eyes from the sun! How
infinitely better our own brisk method seemed than this long-drawn
apotheosis!
The interview is graciously accorded and takes place on the bleak patch
of grass graced by the euphemistic title of _Spielplatz_ and already
worn bare by the trampling to and fro of 500 pairs of feet. Here,
against the back wall of the squalid cook-house, across one of the
dining room tables (symbol of conference!), ringed in by smug
supercilious Huns, and with the eyes of his own countrymen riveted on
him from the adjoining barrack, our senior officer joins the issue. It
exemplifies the scant attention which has been paid to the spokesman of
the British community that the interview should be held in the open air,
almost as an afterthought, instead of, as it should properly have been
held, in the Kommandantur itself.
The senior British officer has no enviable task, but he has at least the
armour of experience and knows how far he may go and to what he is
entitled. Years of this sort of thing—ever since First Ypres—have taught
him that only too well. There is nothing novel to him in this interview;
only that the nature of the Hun opposite to him partakes of the
attributes of the fox rather than of the pig, and that he has if
possible a stiffer job in prospect than ever heretofore, and one which
he would gladly delegate.
It is no sinecure being senior officer in a bad German prison camp. “The
stiffest job I ever took on in my life,” a veteran of both the Boer and
the European war was heard to say once. “I have never known a position
where one weak link in one’s own argument, one single individual who is
beyond control, will so completely crack one’s line of defence.”
But of that anon. For the present we will follow Major Wyndham at his
uphill task, as the interview begins. He trusts to his own moderate
German rather than to an interpreter and speaks direct to the Fox, who
listens with eyes askance and a sneer on his face.
The first complaint is the building accommodation. It is at present
quite inadequate. There are no public rooms, no library, one solitary
cook-house, and no bathroom. When are these going to be allowed, please?
The General confers. The extra cook-house and the bathroom will be put
up as soon as possible. As to the public rooms and the library, there is
nothing in the Regulations which prescribes for these. They have been
permitted in other camps, but that was a luxury.
“But every German officers’ camp in England has at least one public
room. It is well known.”
“That may be. But England is not Germany. It is war-time, and the
English officers must learn to do without luxuries.”
“Is it to be understood that this is a ‘strafe’ camp?”
“It may please the English officers to understand that. It is deserved
_allerdings_. Next please.” The General glances at his watch.
The next complaint is the size of the exercise ground. It is too small
to admit of games being properly played. There is plenty of room if the
General will permit the barbed wire fence on the southern side to be
moved back 15 yards. It will not encroach on the allotments. And a
corner at the south-east end of the camp might also with advantage be
put inside the wire.
This is a reasonable proposition. As things are, we can play a
half-sized game of hockey on the available ground. One half-sized game
of hockey will not go far amongst 550. And there is no necessity for the
curtailment. Along the southern side of the ground the inner wire runs
parallel to the outer wall, but full 40 yards away from it; immediately
under the wall are the allotments of the camp staff. There is a space 20
yards in breadth between the wire and the allotments. Why should we not
have this? One can do a lot with 20 yards on a hundred yards’ stretch in
a prison camp.
But Foxy-face knows only too well where he can hit us on the raw, and is
obdurate. “Later, perhaps, we will see, but now impossible. Neither can
the gymnasium at the south-eastern end, or any of the ground round it,
be included.”
Next on the programme comes the conduct of the Camp Officer. Why has
Hauptmann Niemeyer, whose behaviour at Ströhen Camp has been already
reported to and strongly condemned by the _Kriegsministerium_ (War
Office), been again placed in a position of responsibility in so large a
camp? Has the General been made aware of his previous record?
The senior British officer regrets that he cannot command greater
fluency as he makes this point-blank attack. If he succeeds, Niemeyer
will have to go. If he fails, it will be war to the knife between the
two of them, and he knows it.
But the General has already prejudged the issue and our Major might just
as well have saved his powder. Niemeyer has been standing with his hand
at the peak of his cap for three minutes gabbling all the time. A clever
man can get quite a lot of self-justification into three minutes. He
will stay. We can trust him for that ... the General beams on his
faithful henchman.
The Major sees that it is hopeless, but keeps his temper and carries on.
There is one more complaint, and a big one, for it touches honour rather
than comfort. It is on the delicate subject of parole.
Now it should be explained that in the Great War captivity meant
confinement in the strictest sense of the term, and the roystering days
at Verdun in the Napoleonic Wars were not repeated. In those days
prisoners on parole kept their private apartments, their carriages, and
their mistresses, and racketed, if they wished to—so long as they kept
within a reasonable and elastic law—to their heart’s content. In the
Great War it was the wish, rightly and clearly expressed by Lord Grey,
that officers should use the privileges of parole to take walks outside
the camp only when they could not get sufficient exercise within it to
keep themselves fit. When, therefore, in previous camps the British had
availed themselves of this privilege, they had been in the habit, before
starting on the walk, of handing in a signed card to the Germans on
which it was stated that they undertook not to do two things:—to escape
or in any way to facilitate future escape, or to damage German property.
The arrangement had proved perfectly satisfactory.
But at Holzminden, when the cards were produced for us to sign, there
was a whole charter of other things that we must or might not do when we
went out for walks. We were required, for instance, to sign to the
effect that we would unhesitatingly obey the orders of the German
officer or N.C.O. accompanying us; this hit at the whole basis of the
parole idea. We were asked to append our names underneath a clause which
stated that we _knew_ that the breaking of our parole was punishable
with the death penalty; this merely insulted our intelligence. We were
determined that we would either take walks on parole on the terms of
heretofore or not take them at all. This spirit of dogged conservatism
when there was so clearly everything to lose and nothing much to gain
might seem petty and unreasonable, were it not remembered, firstly, that
any attempt to interfere with our parole was in honour bound to be
furiously contested, and secondly, that if in the course of business you
conceded the German an inch, he was pretty certain shortly to make
overtures for a mile.
Such, at any rate, is the opinion of the senior British officer, as he
now bluntly demands the _status quo ante_ in the matter of parole.
The General laughs and turns to his escort. Who are these British after
all who should set themselves up on so high a pedestal? It is known that
their parole was broken at Schwarmstedt, in the spirit, if not actually
in the letter. The Major asks for corroborative detail. It is given and
denied roundly.
The high and mighty _Stellvertreter Kommandierende General_ does not
lightly brook flat contradiction in his own domain, and begins to lose
his temper. In other words, he begins to shout. The word “Baralong,”
spat out so that all can hear, floats up to our upper window. He is
presumably making some general allegation against the lost British sense
of honour. Neither is our Major quite so cool as he was; “Lusitania”
counters “Baralong.”
There is no further any attempt at concealment and the Fox bares his
teeth in a snarl.
“If every Englishman in this command,” he storms, “got his deserts he
would be shot.” And he stalks away with his staff in a white heat of
passion.
The senior British officer sends for his Adjutant and an order goes
round the camp that all parole cards will be torn up and no walks will
take place until an apology is forthcoming.
[Illustration:
View from Kaserne B, showing skating rink made in January 1918.
]
The apology took months to come. It took weeks only to report the full
circumstances of the case to the British Legation in Holland, thence to
the Dutch Minister in Berlin, and finally to the Kriegsministerium
itself. And in the meanwhile 500 odd British officers took their sole
exercise in the slushy compound, pounding round and round the eternal
triangle, forbidden to play games, and longing for the frost which would
at least enable them to build a slide.
And on the evening after the General’s departure a groan went up from
the entire _appel_ as the Interpreter announced the fact that the aged
Commandant had taken his expected departure and that Hauptmann Niemeyer
reigned in his stead.
------------------------------------------------------------------------