ACCOMPLICES
But to return to our moles and their burrowings.
Attention had, from the start of the tunnelling scheme, been directed to
the subterranean parts of Kaserne B. Kaserne A had, for the purposes of
a tunnel, been ruled out for various reasons. For one thing, the
personnel of the working-party as originally constituted belonged almost
exclusively to Kaserne B. For another, Kaserne B was in itself the
building more favourably placed geographically for such an attempt.
Kaserne A was for half its length Kommandantur; its “business end” was
out of reach for the English.
Accordingly, the basement corridor of Kaserne B was studied in all its
aspects. It will be remembered that this floor contained the detention
cells and the various cellars, that it was entered at each end of the
building through a door at the bottom of a short flight of steps, and
that half way down the corridor itself were two doors usually locked. It
will be clear, perhaps, that the business end of the building from the
escape point of view was bound to be the far end, and that the best base
of operations would be somewhere underground in the vicinity of the
orderlies’ entrance. Owing to the near presence of the detention cells
and the consequent risk of meeting the gaoler at awkward moments it
would be useless to enter the corridor at the officers’ end. It would be
necessary to make acquaintance with the underworld by going in the first
instance through the orderlies’ entrance. Thence some part of the
basement floor might be penetrated, either through the door at the
bottom of the steps, or by some other means—to be explained shortly. The
door I have mentioned was used only by the Germans and was kept locked.
It might be possible to tamper with this lock, but it would have to be
done from the outside, at the foot of the staircase.
These points have been laboured, but it is highly essential for it to be
understood at the start that the only possible entry to the potential
base of operations—except by breaking down the barricade or by burrowing
at some point through the reinforced concrete of the actual masonry of
the building (a process which would greatly imperil discovery)—lay, in
the first instance, through the orderlies’ entrance.
I have explained that there was a short flight of steps leading down to
the basement floor. This was on the right as you passed the threshold of
the entrance door. On the left was the first flight of the staircase
leading up to the baggage rooms and orderlies’ quarters. To the left of
the steps down, and completely blocking up the underneath part of the
first flight up, was a palisade of stout upright planks, each about six
inches across, a further Boche precaution against undue communication
with the cellars.
[Illustration:
A. Section, B. Ground-plan of staircase, chamber, and tunnel entrance.
]
Just as a dummy key to open the basement corridor door had been
completed, somebody had a brain-wave which enabled the whole idea of
using the cellar passage at all to be dispensed with. It was conjectured
(correctly, as it turned out) that behind these planks there must be
some sort of square cellar or chamber not actually in use by the
Germans. Two sides of it would be bounded directly by the eastern and
southern walls of the Kaserne, the western side by the last cellar in
the basement corridor (the potato cellar) and the northern side by the
inside wall of the corridor itself. If this supposition was correct, and
if the place could be got at, it would be an ideal spot both as a base
of operations for the tunnel and a receptacle for the excavated earth.
It was decided therefore, by loosening one or more of the planks and
hingeing them so that they could be moved as required in and out of
position, to arrange a makeshift but effective trap-door for the daily
needs of the working-party.
The ceremony at the laying of the foundation stone—one should say,
perhaps, removing the foundation plank—was not largely attended. For one
thing, there were at that time only about four people in the know at
all; for another, a German sentry was standing on guard immediately
outside the door. Two officers in orderlies’ clothes were responsible
for the whole operation. They removed _the whole of the partition_,
loosened the two necessary planks and replaced it.
The structure of planks fitted very closely against the side and top,
except for one place at the top of the plank nearest to the corner post
of the partition next to the cellar floor and immediately under the
concrete of the staircase, where there was a small aperture looking like
a misfit of the boards. Just under this aperture—and on the inside, of
course, of the partition—the bolt was fixed. A small hand could just
reach the bolt comfortably from the outside and slide it in and out of
the corner post. Had the aperture been ever so little smaller, no male
hand could have got in at all, and, in the absence of female society,
the conspirators would have had either to give up this entrance
altogether or increase the size of the aperture, which would have been
most dangerous.
By using this door as a means of entrance to and exit from the chamber
which, as will be explained later, proved to exist behind the planks,
the original party of conspirators succeeded in beginning a tunnel. They
dug through the southern foundation wall of the building, turned east at
right angles and succeeded by about Christmas in reaching a point beyond
the outer wall[7]. A square chamber was made at the far end of the
tunnel, then about 15 yards long, to receive the earth of the roof on
the occasion of the escape, and all was ready for a move when Niemeyer
suddenly put a sentry _outside_ the outer wall, almost on top of the
proposed site of exit.
[Footnote 7: Point _Q_ in plan on p. 53.]
Just at this time the exchange of P.O.W. to Holland began to operate. To
some of the original conspirators, disheartened—and no wonder—at the
apparent complete frustration of all their plans, the chance of going to
Holland seemed too good to be given up for the now very distant hope of
escape, and so it came about that the “ownership” of the tunnel changed
hands almost completely, only three of the original conspirators
remaining in the firm.
As all doors were locked just before dusk, the available time was
necessarily limited to daylight, between nine o’clock roll-call in the
morning and evening roll-call about an hour before dark. The actual
working hours were considerably shorter. In the first place, the coast
was never sufficiently clear in the morning for the tunnel to be
approached until about 11.30 a.m., and in the second place, a
considerable margin had to be allowed, when coming off duty, for any
possible delay in getting a clear exit and so running the risk of being
discovered absent from _appel_. In addition to this, the time spent in
changing clothes had to be taken into account. Consequently the actual
working hours were not, as a rule, longer—in winter—than from 12 noon to
4 p.m. This arrangement, however acceptable to a trades union official,
was not good for tunnelling. As will be understood, the utmost care had
to be exercised in approaching the orderlies’ entrance in order to gain
access to the tunnel, and the ordinary daily programme was carried out
on something like the following lines.
We will assume that it is about 11 a.m.
The party of three on duty for the day assemble in a little room on the
ground floor and near the officers’ entrance. They then take off their
uniforms and slip on the black trousers with yellow stripes, the black
coats with yellow armlets, and the black caps with yellow bands, which
form the distinctive dress of all “other ranks” prisoners-of-war in
Germany. Probably greatcoats are put on as well, for it would be highly
inconvenient if a German came in just at this moment and wanted to know
the why and wherefore of this change of attire. Meanwhile, one or more
fellow-conspirators are standing outside the officers’ entrance,
watching for the “all clear” signal from one of the faithful orderlies
standing in their own doorway, who, in their turn, are waiting for some
Germans working down in the cellars to clear out for their mid-day meal.
Possibly there is a hitch on this particular morning; the stolid German
is working later than usual in the cellars at that end of the building.
Possibly the German may knock off work before his accustomed time and
the signal may be given earlier than usual. But quick or slow, the
signal comes in due course—one of the orderlies comes out and scratches
his head, the sign that all is clear at his end. The officer on picket
duty at the officers’ entrance casts one quick look round to see that no
Boches are approaching from the direction of the Kommandantur, and then
goes to the room in which the party are waiting and tells them to move.
Then he returns to his post to continue his watch until the party are
safely on their way and he gets a further signal from orderlies’ doorway
that they have actually entered the tunnel.
The three in the little room shed their overcoats, don their orderlies’
caps, and sally forth trying to look as much like the British Tommy off
duty as is possible under the circumstances. This is the “umpteenth”
time for them, and much practising has made them reasonably good actors
in the part. Often, however, an additional embarrassment is provided in
the shape of a parcel of timber for strutting the roof of the tunnel or
a bundle of tin tubes to lengthen the air pipe.
Arrived at the orderlies’ door, they enter and stand just inside it, out
of sight of the sentry whose position—outside the wire just
opposite—gives him a good view of the door as he stands still, facing
the camp. But it is unusual for the sentry to stand there long, and as
soon as he begins to march away, the orderly who is standing in the
doorway with one eye on his every movement gives the word, and the party
slips quickly down the steps leading to the cellar, where one of the
orderlies slides the plank and lets them in. The aperture is less than a
foot wide, but they squeeze in somehow. The door is shut and bolted
again in a second, and the orderlies, after making sure that all is
ship-shape outside the partition, go off and leave the party to their
work, where we shall follow them in a little while.
Such was the game of bluff which took place daily on that little stretch
between the doors of Kaserne B for nine long months. Had any of the
party been ever recognised and identified, the game would have been up;
any ground for suspicion on the part of the Germans must have led either
to the tunnel being discovered or at least the door being kept so
closely under surveillance that another plan of getting underground
would have had to be devised. But such a contretemps did not occur until
three-quarters of the work had been done, seven and a half months from
the beginning of it! And even then the mischief was not fatal to the
success of the scheme.
Luck indeed, but perhaps not quite so much a matter of mere luck as
might appear at first sight. In the first place, there was the
irrefutable law of mathematical probabilities. There were two platoons
of Landstürmers detailed for the guard of the camp, and these relieved
each other every 24 hours. Each platoon was divided into three relays of
about ten men each, who did two hours on and four hours off. The
allocation of “beats” varied for each individual sentry every time he
went on duty. It might quite likely be a fortnight before the same man
occupied the same station opposite the orderlies’ door. Add to this the
fact that there were 550 British officers and over 100 orderlies in the
camp; that the personnel of both the _Wachshaft_ and the prisoners was
continually changing; and that the thoughts of any sentry at this period
were more likely to be occupied with memories of meals in the past, with
dreams of meals in the future, with the rottenness of the war in general
and of Niemeyer in particular, than with the comings and goings and
physiognomies of any British prisoners-of-war; and the conclusion is
arrived at that the risk of detection on this account alone was, when
all was said and done, comparatively slight.
Yet risk there undoubtedly was from chance recognition, if not by a
sentry, by one of the motley crowd which comprised the German personnel
of the camp. We have seen that the attendant at the detention cells
could remember faces. His comings and goings to and from the cellar
floor were extremely irregular and difficult to anticipate; at any
moment he might bob up from the cells and plump face to face into the
three going to or returning from their shift. The German interpreters
were another difficulty. They might come into the enclosure from the
Kommandantur at any time, and not infrequently their business led them
into the orderlies’ quarters. So might the corporal in charge of the
officers’ baggage room. If such a thing occurred, and was at all likely
to synchronise with the passage from door to door of Kaserne B of three
officers dressed for no apparent reason in orderlies’ clothes, it was
the task of the picket on duty to intercept the intruders, dally with
them, pilot them on any pretext into securer waters until time had been
given to pass the danger signal either to the changing room or to the
orderly waiting innocently at the foot of the orderlies’ staircase.
Sometimes the “all clear” was delayed for hours on this account and a
half-day’s shift was lost to the cause.
Those not in the know—the vast majority of the camp—used sometimes to
wonder why it was that at certain times of the day there were always one
or two members of a particular set loafing aimlessly by the officers’
entrance of B Kaserne. Some critical people were even heard to remark
that they were wasting their time!
Generally speaking, the immunity from scares was wonderful. Wonderful,
too, was the dog-like fidelity of the Germans, officers and men alike,
to their sacred dinner-hour. It was indeed only on the most exceptional
occasions that a German ever came within the enclosure during this
period. It is actually on record that no German officer, except on
special occasions such as inspection days, search days, or “strafe”
days, _ever_ did. Even Niemeyer, most active of belligerents in the
early hours, was a party to the universal mid-day torpor. About three in
the afternoon he would wake up and sally forth for a little potter round
the premises; sometimes he came in at the postern gate by the orderlies’
entrance, for which, of course, he had a private key. Therein lay danger
always.
The fact is that Niemeyer, although no fool, had left the possibility of
a tunnel out of his scheme of defence; or rather he must, after mature
consideration, have discarded any such undertaking as physically
impossible. He had been round and round the camp, viewed it inside and
outside in all its aspects, seen every means of entry to the cellar
floor blocked, boarded up, or else permanently watched, and had come to
the conclusion that below the surface at any rate he was absolutely
secure against attack.
He did not realise, as undoubtedly he should have done—being, as he
said, a man of the world and priding himself on his intimate knowledge
of the British—that, given time and sufficient freedom from observation,
holes could be made without battering rams and tunnels without the
proper tools; that he was himself too unpopular with his own people to
depend upon clockwork execution of his orders; and that most of his own
cowed staff and every German civilian who knew much about Holzminden
camp were only too willing—for quite a moderate consideration, in the
shape of soap, dripping, or chocolate—to contribute indirectly to doing
him a bad turn. And here, before we follow our conspirators behind the
planks under the staircase, it will be well to describe these various
agents, the bureaux to which they repaired with their information, the
caches and repositories for the contraband articles which they brought
into the camp, and some of the hundred and one devices wherewith dust
was thrown in the eyes of authority.
There was a youthful Prussian known as the Letter Boy, and so called
because his principal task was the sorting out and distribution of
letters. He had a little broken English and a fair amount of French, and
he used either language to lament publicly the fact that his nationality
was what it was. This young man also acted as the confidential clerk of
Niemeyer and was often used by him instead of the official interpreters
to take messages and issue orders to individual officers in the camp.
Hating Niemeyer as he did only one degree less than Prussia, and being
ready to go to any lengths of treachery—which did not involve
detection—in return for favours received, he was, as may be imagined, a
useful informant. Every morning he would repair to a room on the attic
floor of Kaserne A, which was inhabited by five hardened and inveterate
escapers, and which was regarded as the distributing centre of escape
materials to the entire camp. Here, over a cup of coffee and some
biscuits, he would save the latest news from the Kommandantur, e.g.
“there was going to be a search, he had seen the telegram ordering it. A
new list for Holland had come in from Hanover. Ulrich had had high words
with the Commandant on account of the alleged appropriation by Niemeyer
of his (Ulrich’s) Christmas wine ration. For the last week a Fortnum &
Mason’s parcel had found its way every day into Niemeyer’s kitchen,”—and
so on. And he usually turned out to be right. He was a useful lad; he
was asked every kind of leading question and he asked none back. If he
was commissioned to buy anything and it was small enough to go into his
pocket, he bought and brought it, regularly and punctually. He must have
guessed enough of what was going on to be in a position to wreck the
entire scheme if he had wanted to. But he remained to the end
punctiliously loyal to his disloyalty, and smiled quite complacently at
the fullness of the final success.
Then there was the electric-light boy, a sturdy young Frisian who, for
some occult reason, had contrived to confine his active service in the
war to six “cushy” months on the South Russian front. Theoretically he
was Prussian, Pan-German, and all that was horrible; actually he was
friendly and useful, though not, of course, to be trusted to the same
lengths as the Letter Boy. He spoke good German and not the villainous
dialect which made direct negotiation so difficult with most of the
German-speaking personnel of the camp. He was good for any number of
pocket electric torches, and an occasional bottle of _Kriegs Cognac_.
Another “string” was the sanitary man—the only civilian who was allowed
into the camp without a sentry to watch his movements. This gentleman
kept a wife and family on the adjoining premises and was always ready,
in return for services rendered, to enrich his scanty larder with a
store of English tins. He was difficult of access, as his duties did not
as a rule take him into the buildings, and he was in a terrible funk of
being found out; most of his business was transacted in innocent
conversation with the orderlies over the state of the refuse bin, or in
consultation over a choked-up drain. Ultimately his larder was found too
convincingly full of English tinned foods and he disappeared from our
midst; but he had contributed his quota.
There was a girl typist in the Kommandantur whom no one ever saw but who
conducted a passionate love intrigue with an Australian Flying Corps
officer through the agency of letters attached to a weight and collected
by an accomplice sentry. Letters outward from the camp were dropped in
this way from the window, picked up by the sentry, and so reached their
destination in the Kommandantur. The inward mail used to be thrown up by
the sentry and caught at the window. Whenever news of general interest
was included in the love passages, an excerpt was made and handed to the
senior British officer. As the girl worked in the Commandant’s office,
there was often valuable material in these missives, and she also acted
as a check on the information supplied by the Letter Boy. As to the
satisfaction got out of the purely personal side of the affair, opinions
might vary. An interchange of photographs was considered too risky, and
it is believed that neither party to the adventure ever knew what the
other really looked like at close quarters!
The orderly-barber had a similar affair, but was found out and banished
to a men’s camp, forfeiting thereby a comfortable monthly income from
cutting officers’ hair, and leaving an awkward gap both in the tonsorial
staff, of which he was the only really efficient member, and the
orchestra, in which he had for many months been the recognised authority
on wind instruments.
An obliging canteen attendant, a patriotic Alsatian amongst the parcel
room staff, and half a dozen frankly neutral sentries completed the list
of what might be called, from our point of view, the German effectives.
The N.C.O.’s—to do them justice—were beyond suspicion. The majority of
them would have been infinitely rather on the Western front than in
their present uncongenial position. We never attempted to meddle with
them, and indeed there was no need.
The interpreters, although in every way friendly and obliging, were too
closely occupied with the multitudinous tasks of their daily routine to
invite overtures. There were only three of them in the camp; and what
with acting as intermediaries in disputes, visiting the cells,
distributing letters, and dancing attendance in and out of season on
their German superiors, they were the most hard-worked people in the
camp and had hardly a minute to call their own.
Adders was a spotty-faced Dusseldorfian with a perpetual smile and a
woman’s gait, and was regarded generally with perhaps unmerited
distrust.
Grau had been interned early in the war at Ahmednagar in India, and
would do anything for anybody who came from India and whom he hoped
might be instrumental in restoring him one day to his beloved Nilgiris.
“I do not care for Germany,” he would say; “I do not care for England.
My heart is in India.” Poor Grau! He stands very little chance of
getting back there. He must pay for the misdeeds of his countrymen.
And Wolff was a little cock-sparrow of a Frankfurter Jew, with an accent
acquired on the other side of the Atlantic.
They used to come to the theatrical shows and sit enraptured through the
most scurrilous and thinly veiled allusions to Niemeyer and other
ornaments of the Xth Army Corps. The fact that they were there solely as
censors rather added zest to the humour of it. Sometimes, even, they
lost dignity. Wolff in particular was not proof against the attractions
of the chemical compound which in those days used to pass for Rhine
wine; and after one entertainment at which the bottle passed somewhat
freely he became violently intoxicated, and was found next morning
asleep in an orchard on the other side of the town, having temporarily
thrown off the bonds of barrack discipline and made a regular night of
it.
The hardened criminals of Room 83 on the attic floor covered equally
satisfactorily the traces of their contraband consignments and the
tracks of the consigners. To the outward eye there was not a more
innocent-looking room in the whole of the two buildings. But
hiding-places lurked everywhere. The floor in this as in nearly every
other room was, fortunately, straightforward planking laid without bolts
or intersections. Once one plank had been loosened and removed, there
was a space about five to six inches deep between the planking and the
foundation of the floor wherein to store treasure. When one plank had
been removed the remainder could be slid up and down at leisure and the
whole of the space filled up, if necessary. This practice was universal,
and before the end there was hardly a room without its cache, not one of
which, in spite of two or three most conscientious and Berlin-inspired
searches, was ever discovered.
In this room also there were sliding panels in the walls, false
partitions in the cupboards, false bottoms in the drawers. Almost
everything that ought to have been solid was hollow.
Here maps were photographed without cameras and developed without
solutions; German uniforms were made for use if a suitable opportunity
arose; an air pump was constructed out of bits of wood and the leather
of an R.F.C. flying-coat; air pipes were made out of old tins; a device
was thought out to fuse the electric wires outside; dummy keys were
fashioned. It was the temple of the Goddess of Flight.
Room 24, the little room on the ground floor in B House where the
working shifts changed into their orderlies’ clothes, was almost as
complete a mask. The clothes themselves were kept unlocked at the bottom
of several British uniforms in a wooden box. If a search came they would
have to take their chance of being found; it was impossible to “cache”
them afresh under the boards every time that they were returned from
actual use.
In this room it was usual to find at least four or five seated in
conclave, in a space officially allotted to two. “Tim” was the owner of
the room and had come to be regarded as the doyen and authority amongst
escapers in the camp. Tim had had a curious war. He had carried
despatches for a fortnight in August and early September of 1914 and had
then been taken prisoner at a cross-roads by an ex-Rhodes Scholar of New
College. Since then he had spent his time either preparing to escape or
being confined for doing so. He had probably been out of more camps,
done more solitary confinement, and had on the whole harder luck, than
any other prisoner-of-war in Germany. He spoke correct German with a
strong Irish accent. The very perfection and thoroughness of his schemes
seemed somehow to have militated against their success. In all his time
in Germany he had not been actually at large for more than half an hour.
He had always been caught—perfectly disguised and by the purest
mischance—at the gate or just outside it. He had gone with the first
exchange party for Holland, but at Aachen he had announced his intention
of coming back to Germany, and had brought back a full report of the
proceedings at Aachen and the lie of the land generally—for the benefit
of future parties. It was generally understood that an attempt to escape
while on the journey to Holland was permissible when in, or on the
German side of Aachen, but not when once the party had left Aachen for
the frontier. This was Tim all over. When he was not working for his own
hand, he was helping others. He disdained such vulgar expedients as
tunnels and was now hard at work on his most elaborate scheme of all. He
intended to walk out of the main gate through the Kommandantur in a
German private’s uniform, accompanied by a young curly-haired and
dimpled flying officer disguised as his sweetheart. The plot was by now
almost mature, and the curls were already growing in a most beautiful
and highly suspicious cluster low on the nape of the young man’s neck.
Room 24 also harboured such of the official documents of the senior
British officer and his adjutant as it was unwise to have lying about in
the event of a search. One of these was a most damning, authoritative,
and complete narrative of the misdeeds of Niemeyer during the first
three months of the camp’s existence. It was called the Black Book, and
was biding its time to be thrust as red-hot evidence into the hands of
some superior inspecting official from the _Kriegsministerium_.
Unfortunately that opportunity never arrived, and the book did not
attain publicity till it was produced in Copenhagen after the Armistice.
It then made interesting reading.
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