INTRODUCING THE MAIN MOTIF
Such, in brief, were some of the major pinpricks in this winter of our
discontent. Needless to say that from the beginning heads had been put
together to discover a means of escape. The camp did not, at first
sight, appear an easy one to get out of, but before we had been there a
month seventeen had been out. A hole was made in the passage of Kaserne
A at the end next to the Kommandantur and through this parties in twos
and threes, and even in sixes and sevens, had crept, walked down the
stairs of the Kommandantur and, in the guise of German sentries under an
N.C.O., made their exit through the main gate. When the first party got
away—three of them—their names were answered for them on _appel_ for the
next day and a half, giving them two full days’ start. This was the more
creditable performance as one of them was a field officer, and as such
paraded on _appel_ with the few other officers of his rank in the camp
in front of the vulgar herd, easy to be seen and equally easy to be
missed.
Unfortunately Niemeyer’s luck was in. All were caught before they
reached the Ems and were brought back to the camp. The passage was
discovered, the hole was filled up, a system of permit cards initiated,
and the most promising escape channel in the camp was abandoned as being
no longer practicable. Niemeyer was immensely relieved when the last of
his errant lambs was brought back for incarceration. He had had his
lesson and profited by it. Henceforth the English should be allowed no
rope.
So the wire was heightened and a No Man’s Land was created round the
enclosure between the line of sentries and the Platz, wherein it was
death to walk. Censoring redoubled in vigilance. British control in the
parcel room seemed more distant an event than ever, and Niemeyer became
more blatantly cocksure than before.
“You see, yentlemen,” he would say, “you cannot get out now. I should
not try; it will be bad for your health.”
And in reply, and having nothing very much better to do, a select little
band assumed the habits and characteristics of moles and started on the
long task which was to result in convincing Niemeyer that he had made a
mistake, and that where there is a will there is also somehow and
somewhere a way.
The history of the Holzminden Tunnel is the history of a great
adventure. It was over 60 yards in length, and it took nine months to
complete. It was dug, except for one brief period, in the hours of
daylight between morning and evening _appel_, and its workers, in order
to reach and return from the scene of their labours, ran daily risks of
being identified by the German sentries. Much of it was dug through
layers of stones; all of it was dug with appliances that a miner would
have scorned. During all its long travail it was never actually
suspected—and this though the Camp Commandant prided himself as the
“cutest” gaoler in the Fatherland. Lastly, it was above all expectations
successful, and in a way which satisfied to the full the dramatic
proprieties.
An attempt has been made in this story to show its readers something of
Holzminden Camp as it was, not because it bristled with barbarities, as
some previous accounts of it might have led credulous people to believe,
but because it did most effectively supply a suitable background to the
tunnel episode; a background of grey, monotonous imprisonment, of minor
indignities considerable only in their cumulative effect, of permanent
tension, of seeming unendingness, and a queer depression beyond the
ordinary. All who were there will testify to that. Holzminden, even in
its lighter moments, was a gloomier camp than many where the actual
conditions were infinitely worse.
The secrets of the tunnel are not the author’s at first hand; he did not
personally experience its dank embrace; he did not “labour and pray” in
its recesses with a sense of intimate proprietorship. In fact, except
for some organising assistance on the actual night of the escape, he had
nothing actively to do with it. The control of the enterprise rested in
the hands of a select few who were known as the “working-party” and on
whom devolved the whole responsibility of doing the job and seeing that
it was done in secret. It was impossible for those whose business it was
to keep in close personal touch with the whole community to remain long
in ignorance of the identity of the various members of this party. But
what they were doing, how or exactly where they were doing it, when they
would finish doing it—on these points one was not, and did not expect to
be, enlightened. When the working-party discussed plans, they did so
behind closed doors and in an undertone. The results of their
deliberations were communicated to those whom it concerned and to those
alone. Once the shifts had been arranged there was no need for a member
of the party to do more than be in his appointed place at the appointed
time and carry out his appointed task. In the intervals the less he
talked the better. It was only when the scheme was nearing its maturity
and when it became desirable to let a favoured few into the secret that
tongues began ever so circumspectly to wag.
When the essay became an event, and the tunnel the one topic of
conversation through the camp—and, be it said, through Hanover as
well—it was possible to join the odd ends together and follow the whole
enterprise through in the retrospect from its modest beginning to its
glorious conclusion. This is all that this account pretends to do.
* * * * *
At this juncture it may be well to describe the premises.
[Illustration:
General plan of Holzminden Camp
(Scale approx. 1 inch = 50 yards)
]
The two Kasernes were identical in structure, but the fact that the near
end of Kaserne A was sacred to the Kommandantur and the far end of
Kaserne B was set apart for orderlies gave rise to some more or less
improvised alterations in the internal structure. Here it should be
mentioned that “near end” means nearest to the main gate. As you walked
in through the main gate the Kommandantur lay immediately on your left,
the sentries off duty sniggered at you from the guard-room on your
right, and the officers’ enclosure through another (inner) gate directly
faced you. The portion of Kaserne A set apart for the English was that
part which was beyond the inner gate. The windows of the nearest room to
the gate on the ground floor were whitewashed in order that we might not
read—and thereby be in a position to copy—the permit cards which it was
necessary for every German, military or civilian, to show the sentry on
duty before being permitted to pass in or out of the prisoners’
enclosure. This regulation was a safeguard introduced after the original
escapes, and it used to afford some amusement. On one occasion a sentry,
having been duly cautioned as to his orders, let Niemeyer himself
through without asking him for his card. The result was an
intensification of the air in the neighbourhood for a good five minutes,
and loud sounds of merriment from the British quarter. Next day the
fellow, on his metal, stopped Niemeyer—in a hurry. The sentry said very
little, Niemeyer said a very great deal; the consequence was that the
sentry got seven days for his pains, and the world—meaning the British
quarter—again cooed with merriment. But that is by the way.
Going straight on down the main cobble-stoned thoroughfare of the camp,
you reach Kaserne B, about 70 yards apart from Kaserne A.
[Illustration:
Kaserne B.
]
Kaserne B was a 50-yard long, ugly, four-storied affair, with an
entrance doorway and a flight of stairs at each end of it. From each
entrance doorway a few steps _downward_ brought you through another door
to the basement corridor—(the distinction between these doors should be
kept clear in mind). On the outer side of this basement corridor, i.e.
looking towards the uncommunicative outer wire of the camp, were the
punishment cells; on the inner side were the various cellars—the tin
cellar, the bread cellar, the store cellar, the potato cellar, and other
cellars necessary for the economic administration of the camp. Half way
down the basement corridor, and shutting off the British from any
possibility of prying into the cellars at its far end, was a partition
consisting of two doors usually locked.
The near entrance door was the officers’ entrance, the far door the
orderlies’ entrance. Going through a swing door _opposite_ the officers’
entrance on the ground floor, you found yourself in a long corridor
which traversed the entire length of the building and connected about a
dozen large rooms wherein the inhabitants of the ground floor lived,
slept, and made shift generally. The rooms averaged about twelve
occupants apiece and looked out on to the inner (enclosure) side. The
lower part of their windows had to be kept permanently shut, even in the
daytime, a source of never-failing contention and resentment.
The first floor was the counterpart of the ground floor, except that the
windows might be opened and the general appearance was correspondingly
brighter. At the end of each of these floors were the “small” rooms
which opened off in little passages or saps at either end of the main
corridor. These small rooms constituted the wings of the main building,
which was constructed after the pattern and in the proportions of an E
minus its central appendage. The sketch shows this clearly enough.
These rooms were keenly competed for. They held three to four occupants
each and the actual amount of cubic space per occupant was less in them,
if anything, than in the larger ones. But the moral effect of only
having to reckon with the individual proclivities of two, as against
eleven, other of your fellow-men, was reckoned as an inestimable
advantage; and no sooner was the rumour abroad of one of those
periodical “general posts” occasioned by the departure of a party for
exchange to Holland or elsewhere than the House Adjutant’s[5] room was
besieged by a crowd of applicants and their backers, the insistence of
whose claims was, as a rule, in exactly inverse proportion to their
merit. Thus A, who is being strongly run for the shortly-to-be-vacant
billet in Number 35, is a second lieutenant with eight months’
experience of captivity, and B, whose inclusion in Number 37 opposite
seems no less essential to its existing occupants, is a Flying Corps
captain aged 21, not yet through his first six months of
_gefangenschaft_. C and D, however, who have commanded companies on the
Somme, remain unchampioned and unambitious in their large rooms amidst a
welter of disorder, discomfort, and possibly discord, and have to be
prodded into admitting that they wouldn’t mind if they _did_ get a
little peace now and again. It is the way of the world.
[Footnote 5: At Holzminden the senior British officer worked through a
personal adjutant, known as the Camp Adjutant, who handed on orders to
officers in charge of each Kaserne, known as House Adjutants.]
On the second floor there was the difference that two large dining rooms
were interspaced between the living rooms. Dining room, it should be
added, was a term purely of courtesy. It is true that in these rooms the
large majority of officers in the Kaserne stored their cooking utensils,
prepared their food for cooking, and gulped it down as quickly as might
be when cooked. But this feature of the rooms was not stressed, and they
were used in turn, and during the greater part of the day, as theatres,
lecture rooms, concert rooms, reading rooms, and churches; on Saturday
nights, or whenever a “show” was on, officers were requested to have
finished their dinner by six. Dinner over, the cups and plates were
dumped in a convenient corner, the tables were pushed up together to one
end of the room to form a solid platform, and in an incredibly short
space of time the drop scene and the wings were hoisted triumphantly.
Then, after two hours’ rapt forgetfulness of the surroundings, down came
the final curtain, out trooped the audience, and back the tables were
pushed into their respective sites. The drill was clockwork. There was
nothing that we would less willingly have foregone than our “shows,” and
the scene-shifters would have done so least of all.
But we must leave the dining rooms and mount the stone staircase once
again to the attic floor. This consisted of a few small rooms at the
near (Kommandantur) end, and the orderlies’ quarters, with a stout
wooden partition, strengthened with sheet iron, in between. The small
rooms were remarkable only for their extreme cold and the fact that one
of them played a highly important part in the subsequent proceedings.
The orderlies occupied the farther end of the attic floor. We had the
opportunity of inspecting their quarters when we went up at certain
fixed times to the baggage room, which was at that end of the passage,
to remove, under the surveillance of a German Feldwebel, such articles
as we might require from our heavy luggage. To do so we of course used
the further (orderlies’) staircase. This was supposed to be the only
occasion on which the officers might enter the building by the further
doorway. To check irregularities in this respect a sentry was always
placed at a spot outside the outer wire and exactly opposite the
doorway.
It should be added that—as the barrack was originally built—the far ends
of the ground, first, and second floor corridors were exact replicas of
the near ends, and gave directly on to the orderlies’ staircase through
swing doors. These doors had at the outset been securely boarded up.
Early in the history of the camp a trap-door had been made by some
officers through the boards on the dining room floor, but it had been
discovered by the Germans, who were now on their guard for any
repetition of the attempt; so that it was now a physical impossibility
to reach the orderlies’ quarters or their staircase by any other means
than walking in at the further doorway. Similarly, orderlies could not
reach their own quarters except through their own door.
From the near door of Kaserne A (the Kommandantur door) to the far
(orderlies’) door of Kaserne B was a distance of some 150 or 160 yards
and constituted the base of the segment formed by the conformation of
the buildings and enclosure. The arc of the segment was represented by
the barbed wire fence with its neutral zone which ran from just opposite
the orderlies’ door (E)—where it joined the outer wall—round the
semi-circular _Spielplatz_ till it merged in the parcel room and guard
room opposite the Kommandantur. The space thus enclosed between the base
of the segment and the arc represented the gross amount of outdoor elbow
room for the inmates of the camp, and measured about 410 yards round.
The net available space was much less. One German and two English
cook-houses, a twenty-yard square potato patch, a wood shed,
cobble-stones, horse troughs, parallel bars, and a cinder path running
inside the wire, were factors which considerably reduced our field of
sport.
Just behind the length of the two Kasernes ran the outer barrier, barbed
wire superimposed on iron palings five or six inches apart, with
sentries on the inside and later on the outside beat as well. The whole
of the ground directly between the two Kasernes, and again between them
and the outer barrier, was No Man’s Land and forbidden to the British.
If you looked from the whitewashed window at the end of the ground floor
corridor in Kaserne B, you saw an eight-foot wall between you and
freedom. This wall ran at right angles from the far end of the wired
palings and was wired on top. There was a sentry permanently posted at
the angle on the inner side, and early in the year the defence was
further strengthened by posting an additional sentry outside. This fact
had an important bearing on the history of the tunnel.
The wall had a postern gate (D) just opposite the orderlies’ entrance.
This, of course, was always kept locked. It was in any case impossible
to get at without either jumping from the end window of the corridor and
braving No Man’s Land, or cutting the wire near its point of junction
with the end of the building by the orderlies’ door.
------------------------------------------------------------------------