THE LAST LAP
After a brief spell of smoother working, both above and below the
surface, things began to go wrong again.
In the first place, the exasperating stratum of stones recurred and
persisted. The tunnel was now being inclined upwards. From rough
measurements it had been estimated that the face must now be approaching
the desired spot and be nearly abreast with the edge of the rye-field.
But the obstinate stratum added to the difficulty of working uphill, and
reduced the rate of progress almost to the lowest on record; and, work
as they might, it was the last week in June before those directing
decided that the distance had been accomplished and the tunnel might be
inclined to the surface.
On the last day in June Lieutenant Butler, one of the leading spirits in
the concern, went up to the face on the important duty of breaking the
surface and pinpointing the position. The tunnel had at length been
pushed through the clogging stratum, a total ascent of nine feet had
been made from the lowest point, and it was judged that the end of it
must now be very near the surface. To confirm this, a narrow hole was
bored straight upwards from the face. It was found that there were still
six feet of clay and soil to be negotiated. This was disappointing, but
it was not so disappointing as was the result of verifying the actual
position. Butler very gingery pushed a stick with a piece of white paper
attached to it up through the hole. The watchers from one of the upper
end-corridor windows groaned as they discerned the damning piece of
paper moving slowly to and fro, _still eight or nine yards short of the
rye_.
The interest and general tension had now become so great that, although
nothing was said, half the camp knew the same evening that something was
wrong and guessed fairly shrewdly what the something was. To carry on
into the rye would take at least three weeks’ hard work, by which time
the rye would probably have been cut and the only cover afforded would
be the darkness of the night. But about three or four yards nearer than
the rye was a row of beans, and it was decided to make a last effort to
reach these and to trust to luck and the darkness to carry the party
across the bare space between the beans and rye. The beans in themselves
would afford no mean screen.
Meanwhile, “Munshi” Gray, another of the conspirators, the Father of the
Tunnel, and in every way one of the most important personages concerned,
fell due for a fortnight of solitary confinement. He had some time ago
had a violent altercation with the most odious of the parcel room
attendants, and had, in the course of it, absent-mindedly handled a
large knife which was lying on the parcel room counter. The attendant
promptly brought a charge against him for attempted homicide, and—the
word, as well as the body, of even the vilest German being sacrosanct
when brought into collision with those of prisoners-of-war—Gray was in
due course brought up before a court-martial. It says something for his
judges on this occasion that they did not give him more than a
fortnight, which in reality amounted to acquittal. There existed
tribunals which would have given him six months of the best without the
slightest twinge of conscience, or—more melancholy still—without the
thought of having been in the least unjust. This was but an instance of
the perversions of all the accepted canons of fair play which frequently
occurred; fortunately for Gray and the tunnel, it was a mild sample. So
the Munshi languished and knew nothing of what was passing in the
tunnel, except from guarded scraps of Hindostani spoken to him in an
even voice from the window of the camp adjutant’s room, immediately
above his cell.
Finally, Tim and his young woman made their long deliberated effort and
were caught most unluckily at the main gate, thereby throwing the camp
officials and Niemeyer in particular into a most undesirable mood of
added watchfulness. Everything had gone according to plan up to a
point—the Kommandantur staircase had again been made use of, and a most
seductive little flapper typist had tripped his unassuming way
unchallenged through the gate. Tim himself, dressed in a German
private’s uniform (but otherwise unmistakably Tim), had attempted to
follow suit; but he was unable to avoid his doom in the shape of one too
curious and too intelligent pair of eyes at the guard-room window. Their
owner recognised him as an English officer and promptly gave the alarm.
Result, the usual Tim débacle, and the work of months once again
nullified. The pair were marched off to the cells under escort amidst
sympathetic expressions from every side. Even Ulrich, the German officer
of B Kaserne, was loud in his admiration of the disguises used; ‘he had
of course suspected something was up for months.’ Of course.
Lieutenant Lincke, the officer who had succeeded the pot-bellied Gröner
in charge of A Kaserne, a pharmacist by trade and the personification of
pompous absurdity, seized the opportunity to show his ignorance of the
English and his unsuitability for his post by intimating that the female
disguise had been culled from the theatrical wardrobe allowed us on
parole. Once again, and in accordance with cherished tradition, war had
to be waged on the parole question, and the artificially good relations
which were being promoted in the interests of the tunnel were
temporarily suspended until Lincke could be induced to retract his
entirely inexcusable inference.
It must be explained that the whole of the theatrical wardrobe, both for
male and female parts, was kept strictly apart under lock and key and
under the supervision of a particular officer. It had always been a
strict injunction of each successive senior British officer that on no
account was there to be any tampering with these clothes for the
purposes of escape, and that any infringement of this order would be
looked upon as a breaking of parole. This unwritten, but none the less
thoroughly understood, reservation was as clear as it was necessary in
the interests of that large section of the community which relied on the
periodical “shows”—whether as performers or spectators—for their
principal means of relief from the _ennui_ of prison existence. The
disguise of Tim’s accomplice had, as a matter of fact, been smuggled in
from the town at a considerable expenditure in German money and British
kind.
But Lincke, having been, till within the last year, a German pharmacist
in a small way of business, had about as much idea of British (not to
say German) military honour as he had of field operations. His training
had consisted of three or four months in a Reserve of Officers Training
Battalion, and he came out of it vibrant with the glory of two
things—the German military system, and himself as reflecting a modest
proportion of that glory. He was perfectly genial, self-satisfied, and
common. On _appel_ he insisted on believing that he was dealing with a
company of recruits on parade, and the long, shuffling, indifferent rows
of British officers winced or laughed at his antics, according to the
state of their nerves. He used to begin operations by a salute with the
top half of his person inclined almost at right angles with the ground;
some of the lighter spirits used to go one better and execute a complete
_salaam_, and this, of course, made him querulous. He would recall to
the senior officer on parade the great day when he and his brother
officer-aspirants stood poker stiff at attention under inspection by one
of the very biggest of the German Generals. “Scarcely a _pickelhaube_
moved.” That was his triumph—scarcely a _pickelhaube_ had moved. And so
why could not now the British officers do likewise, instead of appearing
on parade in dirty uniforms and without caps and saluting so raggedly?
Oh it was too bad.
He was of course a complete nonentity and disregarded alike by Niemeyer
and the British, as well as by his non-commissioned officers. But even
nonentities exercise awkward powers if placed in positions where they
should not be, and Lincke, for all his mildness, was about as
troublesome to deal with as a Junker of the real Prussian school. His
pharmaceutical soul and his hopeless inability to understand the British
point of view made him in fact a serious thorn in the flesh, as was
evidenced in the wardrobe incident.
Ultimately he crashed badly. He was in the habit of paying frequent
visits to the tin room, nominally to inspect, actually to satisfy his
craving for the sight of our English delicacies. He was insatiably
inquisitive, as well as greedy, and used to spend hours together down in
the cellars, questioning officers as to the contents and origin of
particular tins. Finally there became reason to suspect him of something
rather more serious than mere curiosity; a trap was set, and he was
marked down by three witnesses in the act of abstracting tins from one
of the shelves and putting them hurriedly in his pocket.
This gave us a most valuable handle, for even at Holzminden the German
officers had never stolen our tins from our own tin room, or if they
had, had not been such fools as to be caught doing so. In due course,
and at a seasonable moment, the card was played, the written statement
of the witnesses handed in, and an explanation asked for. Niemeyer took
a day or two before he replied—what passed between himself and the
luckless Lincke in the interval we could only guess—and then explained
that it was in the regulations for German officers at any time to take
tins out of the tin room in order personally to examine them for
contraband articles.
The senior British officer politely noted this explanation and asked
leave to refer the question to the _Kriegsministerium_ for a ruling.
Lincke, meanwhile, was relieved of his post. It was one of the few
occasions (besides the tunnel) upon which we ever succeeded in getting
really up on them.
The capture of Tim caused gloomy anticipation of a search and with it
the discovery of the attempted hole in Room 34, and thereby, as a
natural corollary, of the tunnel itself. In the second week of July—with
three yards or so further to go before an exit could be made behind the
beans, with the prospect of a search imminent at any moment, and with
the added danger of an early harvest to spur their efforts—the
working-party began to make their final arrangements. A week—possibly
ten days—hence, and the thing would be put to the proof for better or
worse.
There were thirteen of them: Lieutenants Mardock and Lawrence of the
Royal Naval Air Service, Captain Gray, Lieutenant Butler, Captain
Langren, Lieutenant Wainwright, R.N., Lieutenant Macleod, Captain Bain,
Captain Kennard, Lieutenant Robertson, Lieutenant Clouston, Lieutenant
Morris, Lieutenant Paddison. They voted for priority of station. After
the working-party proper, places were allotted to Lieutenant-Colonel
Rathborne, the senior officer of the camp, Lieutenant Bousfield, whose
share in a previous attempt has been narrated earlier, and Captain Lyon
of the Australians, who was to travel with Bousfield.
Then came a supplementary working-party of six, who, though not actually
employed in the digging of the tunnel, had contributed valuable
assistance in scouting-out and had made themselves generally useful in
helping to dig the holes inside the actual building.
It was arranged that the original working-party should have a clear
hour’s start, and that another hour should intervene between the last
man out of the supplementary working-party and “the ruck.”
“The ruck”—or, in other words, anyone else who wanted to go—had by now
assumed alarming dimensions. There were some sixty names on the official
list handed to me as Camp Adjutant on the day preceding the escape. The
list had been arranged in order of priority of exit, and to prevent
heart-burnings—as well as to promote the maximum of secrecy—it was
arranged that those on the list should only be warned in the first
instance _after_ the evening _appel_ on the night of the actual escape.
Moreover, no one was to be told his place but only that he was to lie in
bed fully dressed until he was actually warned to go, upon which he was
to get up at once and repair to the rendezvous on the attic floor. This
was a very wise precaution. It excluded the possibility of anyone in A
Kaserne getting wind of the intention to flit and then endeavouring to
get into the other barrack for the night and so endangering the success
of the enterprise. It also precluded the risk of excessive human
circulation in the corridors, the only people authorised to move about
in the corridors being myself, Lieutenant Grieve, who was selected as
traffic controller, one or two look-out men, and each escaper as, in his
proper turn, he left his bed to pass to the tunnel.
The orderlies had been thoroughly warned, and those of them who had
volunteered to help fully understood their duties. One was to receive
officers one by one on the other side of the hole in the attic room and
was to signal the next man to come through when the coast was clear.
Another was to guide officers to the tunnel entrance down the staircase
and through the planks, and two more were to be on duty at the actual
tunnel entrance. Traffic was to be carefully controlled. Not more than
two officers were to be allowed inside the orderlies’ quarters at a
time. If there was a hitch, Lieutenant Grieve, on the far side of the
attic hole, was to be immediately warned. On discovery all the orderlies
were to pretend complete ignorance of the whole business.
This last goes without saying. Just as the loyal co-operation of the
orderlies was essential to success, so it was imperative that none of
them should be implicated. They had all been offered a starting-place if
they cared to accept one, but none of them did. The long expected,
almost despaired of, head-for-head exchange had at last been arranged at
the Hague, and the agreement was now only awaiting ratification. The
fact that privates had been up till now excluded from the terms of the
exchange had of course been very severely criticised, and it was not
until later realised that the arrangements for a general head-for-head
repatriation had been frustrated entirely from the German side. But the
rule of “women and children first”—as our orderlies, half good
naturedly, half cynically, and with that wonderful instinct for the
epigrammatic which characterises the British soldier, had summarised the
situation—was now obsolete. To have imperilled their chances of exchange
by taking a long risk at this stage of their captivity (nearly all of
them were 1914 prisoners) would have been very unwise, even had they
been as well equipped as the officers as regards disguise, money,
reserves of food, and general experience. Moreover, the penalties for
attempted escape were for private soldiers infinitely more severe than
they were for officers. They would have certainly been sent back to one
of the men’s _Lagers_, and their previous experiences reminded them that
any officers’ _Lager_—even Holzminden—was considerably better than the
former’s best. And there were always the coal and salt mines to be taken
into calculation. So they stayed behind, and their share in the night’s
work amply crowned their long record of ungrudged service and devotion
to the cause.
During the last few days, when it was generally known that at any moment
the cat might jump and it became a question of concealing “zero” day
from your own side, the tension was positively painful. With the best
will in the world, the injunctions of the senior British officer came to
be overlooked. Even the senior British officer himself was not innocent
in this respect. Small parties clustered at the ends of corridors or
roamed disconsolately round and round the camp, discussing the eternal
question, _When?_ Civilian disguises, maps, and packs were brought out
from their hiding-places and set ready for the road. More risks of
detection were run during this period in a day than had been run before
in a whole month. Maps were studied. An unwise and rather insubordinate
eleventh-hour attempt on the part of one or two of the more desperate
characters in Kaserne A to effect a transfer of rooms to Kaserne B was
fortunately quashed. The senior British officer, who was somewhat
square-rigged in shape, was given a trial run down the tunnel to see if
he could manage it. It took him an hour to get back!
Walks had been allowed again as a consequence of the “lifting” of the
reprisals, and most of the intending starters availed themselves of this
opportunity to get into good marching trim. Fit as they were in
consequence of the strenuous work down below, they felt the need of
using every available opportunity for a good heel-and-toe movement over
a stretch of unconfined ground. The Holland border was 120 kilometres
away and would not easily be reached by those who had let their walking
muscles lie too long dormant. In addition, it was pleasant to get away
for a space from the strained atmosphere of the enclosure and the
tremendous secret of the camp, and without constraint to think and talk
for a little of other things. In high midsummer the plain in which we
walked was only less lovely than it had been in the spring. As then the
trees, so now the young crops invited us to build up a new calendar in
terms of growing things. We may not have felt the need perhaps, in the
years gone by, to pay due note to the wonderful kaleidoscope. Now the
very circumscription of her lecturing hours made Nature’s lessons the
more highly prized.
Sometimes, when the weather was warm and the Feldwebel in charge
sufficiently lazy and complacent, we bathed in the Weser—clandestinely,
for river bathing was not allowed by the municipal authorities. Then for
a glorious half-hour the river would be alive with the nude bodies of a
hundred happy men. It was established at these bathes that the river was
easily fordable at one point. In our parole cards there was nothing down
to tell us not to _notice_ things. And the river lay between the camp
and Holland.
At the last moment another painful incident occurred. It became known
that a certain desperate party in A Kaserne were proposing to anticipate
the tunnel, and the increased restrictions which its discovery would be
bound to create, by some wild-cat scheme of their own. It appeared to be
their intention to fuse the lights all over the building and make a bid
to get over the wire in the darkness and confusion thus created. There
was also going to be employed a “blind” in the shape of a large dummy
figure dropped from a window at the opposite end of the building to that
at which the actual attempt was to be made. The scheme in ordinary
circumstances would have been worth trying and was a courageous one. But
at this juncture of affairs, when the work of nine months was on the
verge of bearing fruit, and when the one thing needed was to lull the
suspicions of the authorities, it was foolish and selfish. To make
matters worse, the participants had received the unofficial support of
the senior officer in the building.
The senior British officer in the camp, however, took a very different
line. He had the ringleader up and put the argument fairly and forcibly
before him. He sympathised, of course, but—there was a train already in
the tunnel. The line was not quite clear for it yet, but would be
shortly, and it must be let through first. It was very important not to
have a collision at this moment, and the advent of another train might
spell disaster. He must definitely forbid any prior attempt.
But for the above-mentioned ringleader, the tunnel would have been
essayed a night earlier than it actually was. On the doors of the houses
being locked at nightfall on the 23rd July, it was found that the fellow
was in B Kaserne. He had got wind of it somehow and was determined to be
in at the death. The only course was to cancel the operation for the
night and induce this officer to realise that he had made a mistake and
explain his appearance in the wrong house to the Feldwebel as best he
could. Elaborate measures were also taken to put him off the scent for
the ensuing night. Disciplinary methods were really useless with this
type; besides, the senior officer was too closely occupied in the final
arrangements of his own intricate disguise—he was intending to travel by
train in broad daylight and not as a thief in the night—to feel any
inclination for taking any further steps with this refractory
individual.
Such difficulties may sound petty, perhaps, and inconsistent with the
spirit of comradeship. But it was not in human nature to risk the fruits
of eight months’ incessant labour to benefit the crowd. Nerves were
badly on edge, and the wonder really is that this particular intruder
was let off as lightly as he was.
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