THE ESCAPE AND THE SEQUEL
The reader will excuse if at this point in the story the first person
pronoun figures rather prominently. I was myself at this time the
Adjutant of the camp, and, as such, had been fairly thoroughly coached
how things were to be done. I was very glad to have the opportunity of
contributing, in however modest a degree, to the success of the plot.
The glorious nature of the adventure came home to me at last, and I
experienced some rather severe eleventh-hour twinges of regret that I
had not availed myself more fully of any chances that I might have had
of actually participating. There had been times of late when I had
almost given up the tunnel. There had seemed to be no end to the
difficulties and obstacles in completing it. Added to which, the
ordinary routine duties of Adjutant had kept me too fully occupied to
acquire the proper escaper’s atmosphere and spend long hours over
preparing maps and packs and securing the necessary money and disguise.
Frankly, I had been a little sceptical.
Later on, in another camp, where there was full latitude to mature one’s
scheme and the Germans interfered hardly at all with one’s daily doings,
I experienced the complete escape fever. But that is another story.
The actual night of the escape was the 24th July.
I was warned just before evening _appel_, at 6 o’clock, that if B house
harboured no aliens that night, the escape would take place. I got hold
of Grieve during the evening and we held a long confabulation as to how
the policing had best be done. It was arranged that I should do all the
warning and escort people to the rendezvous in the attic, and that he
should do the actual controlling and keep in communication with the
orderlies. The evening passed away and I don’t think anybody outside the
working-party was aware that anything was actually in the wind.
The doors in B house were safely locked at 9.0 p.m. without a single
intruder from A house. Several people had been keenly on the watch to
see to this point. We went off quietly to our respective rooms to have
our names called.
After the Feldwebel and his minions had finally left the building, there
was still another hour or so to wait before the coast was clear for
action. A German sentry used to come round some time after 10 o’clock to
close all the windows in the corridors and incidentally remove anything
that he saw to his liking which might be lying about. Until he had gone
it would be unsafe to have any undue movement, and only the cutting-out
man—i.e. the first officer to go through the tunnel—and the two next on
the list would go down to the chamber before he was well clear.
During this period of waiting the senior British officer paid me a visit
in his dressing-gown and said good-bye. I wished him good luck. We had
worked together for two months or more and had discussed the tunnel and
his particular plan to escape countless times. He had a very good
disguise and, without wishing to disparage his features, they were—with
the aid of glasses—wonderfully Teutonic. He was, so far as I knew, the
only one who was proposing to travel all the way to the frontier by
train, and with his excellent knowledge of German and forged papers he
looked to have a very good chance.
I sat in my room until the outside door had slammed behind the German
sentry and I knew the working-party would have already begun making
their way through the tunnel for the last time. Then I began going round
the rooms and warning personally every man on the list. They were to get
their kit ready and get into bed fully dressed and then wait until they
were called. There was to be no movement in the corridors of any sort.
For all the secrecy that had been attempted, they were most of them more
than half expecting the long-deferred call. Probably someone had seen a
member of the working-party in his disguise and had passed on the
information. A few of them wanted to know where they were in the list,
but I told them that they were not to know and had only to obey orders.
Everyone would have to come upstairs in his socks, carrying his boots in
his hand. After I had completed the task of warning everybody I went up
to see Grieve. It was now past half-past eleven. He told me that the
working-party were all well away already and that the thing was going
well.
The hour’s law for the working-party was strictly adhered to, and at
12.30 the supplementary working-party began to go through. They, too,
were all through by about 1.15.
At 1.10 or thereabouts I began my duties of assembling those on the
waiting list. Two or three passed through all right, and then the
orderly on the orderlies’ side of the attic hole passed the word back
that there was a hitch. He would let Grieve know when it was all clear
again.
The next man due to go through had overweighted himself and his pack to
such an extent that the delay proved perhaps a blessing in disguise. If
we had let him go through as he was, he would probably have stuck in the
tunnel, would most certainly not have forded the Weser, and could, in
any case, not have marched for more than three days. We sent him back
with some stern advice to remove a dozen tins or so from his pack,
discard his stick, and take off his hobnailed boots which had made an
infernal clatter in the passage. A few more such performers and the
secret would be out!
No news came through from the tunnel, so I decided to turn in for an
hour or so, and Grieve arranged for a message to be sent to me if the
coast was clear before that time.
I took a turn up and down the corridors before I lay down. There were
the sentries outside walking up and down, with their chins sunk on their
breasts and their rifles slung on their backs, wonderfully as usual. It
was odd to think that within a hundred yards our fellows were wriggling
away through the rye. Clearly nothing had been suspected so far. It was
a calm night and fairly dark.
I lay down knowing that there would be heaps of work to do the next day,
whatever happened, and that I should want my wits about me. But I could
not sleep, and at about 2.30 I went upstairs to see Grieve again. He
reported there was no change in the position. We tried to get an answer
from the orderlies’ quarters, but there was no reply. It was rather
baffling. At 3 o’clock we held a council of war with Captain Sharp, who
was one of those due to go through early in the list, and we
agreed—although it was against the instructions given us, which had been
that the orderlies should alone be responsible for letting anyone
through the attic hole—that Sharp should go through to reconnoitre. He
did so, and came back in about a quarter of an hour’s time to report
that no one was about, and that the tunnel was empty[10].
[Footnote 10: It was never found out exactly what caused the check and I
do not think it ever will be.]
It was rather a nasty moment. We had a sudden new suspicion of
insecurity and a feeling that valuable time might have been lost. It now
wanted about two hours to dawn, and so far we reckoned that only 24 were
out of the camp. It did not look very promising for most of the waiting
list.
In the absence of the orderlies—we hardly felt justified in giving them
further orders—we sent through the next five officers on the waiting
list, headed by Sharp, allowing five minutes between each. They did not
return, so we concluded that the tunnel was still clear and that they
had got away, thus bringing the total number to 29. About half a dozen
more had followed at regular intervals, and it was getting on for
half-past four, when the last—Captain Gardiner of the A.I.F.—came back
to report that the tunnel was blocked and passage impossible. According
to his report the tunnel was reverberating with groans, curses, and
expressions of encouragement. Someone apparently was stuck in front and
was urging those behind him to get back in order to let him out. Those
behind, on the other hand, like the Tuscans in the famous Lay, were
crying “Forward” in no uncertain tones, and urging him to get out and on
with it. It had clearly become a hopeless impasse. It seemed best,
therefore, at this juncture to call a halt and clear the course before
daylight, so as to defer the chance of discovery till the last possible
moment. Recommendations were therefore passed along to evacuate the
tunnel.
But here arose another difficulty. Those now labouring in the tunnel
were not used to its ways. It was hard enough to wriggle along in a
forward direction, but withdrawal, with a heavy pack in tow, was an even
more strenuous proposition. It will be remembered that the
working-party, with muscles attuned by long practice, had experienced
the utmost difficulty in pulling out the sacks of earth when the rope
method broke down. And to get the packs out was an absolute necessity,
for otherwise there would be a complete block both before and behind,
which would result in the foremost unfortunates being entombed until the
tunnel was discovered and they were dug out.
The situation called for desperate measures, and fortunately the right
man was at hand. A New Zealand officer called Garland, who was high up
on the waiting list, came up to the rendezvous to prospect. He happened
to be about as strong physically as any other two officers in the camp,
and possessed the biceps of a Hercules. He at once volunteered to go
down and try to pull out the rear-most man.
After about half an hour he succeeded in doing so, and the two
collaborators in this severe physical exercise crawled back through the
attic hole completely exhausted and dripping with sweat.
There still remained four men stuck in the tunnel, it was already
getting light, and in an hour and a half—at 6 a.m.—a German N.C.O. was
due to open the outside door and call the orderlies. It was essential,
therefore, to get everyone back into the building before that time. If
the alarm of the escape was not raised before 9 o’clock _appel_, the 29
fugitives now at large would have all the better opportunity of making
cover some distance away from the camp before they lay up for their
first day out.
An hour past a look-out from an upper window at the end of one of the
corridors had reported that two figures had been seen in the dim half
light of the dawn making off through the rye-field. It was guessed that
these would probably be the last pair out before the accident had
happened in the tunnel which had barred further passage. If this couple
could gain the Duke of Brunswick’s hunting woods—some three miles
distant—before the hue and cry was out, they could lie up snugly and
safely, and their predecessors would be in all the better plight.
The work of extracting the remaining four went on slowly and
laboriously, and by a quarter to six two more mudstained objects had
been salved and had been sent back, cursing bitterly, to their rooms to
get rid of their mud and cover their traces. It appeared that the tunnel
had caved in about five-sixths of the way up—at the bottom of the slope
up to the final exit. Stones loosened in the traffic had found their way
to this—the lowest point in the whole tunnel, and were blocking further
progress. A landslip on the most modest scale would be quite enough to
block up the tiny hole.
There was now nothing left to do. The two officers still in the tunnel
with the volunteers assisting them to get out would have to be left to
take their chance. Everybody else went back to their rooms and to bed,
hugging themselves in anticipation of the 9 o’clock _appel_, and the
fireworks which would inevitably ensue when the Feldwebel of B house
reported with a rueful countenance that according to his reckoning there
“failed” (_fehlen_) no less than twenty-nine _Herren_.
This hope was, however, frustrated, and the bubble burst two hours too
soon. The two last men in the tunnel were eventually retrieved, and
emerged from the plank entrance with their rescuers to find the door at
the orderlies’ entrance open. The under-officer had duly called the
orderlies some twenty minutes previously and had gone away suspecting
nothing. Their obvious course was to obey instructions and go back to
their house by the same way as they had come. But for some reason they
failed to do so and ran out very foolishly into the cookhouse in the
enclosure, where they met Niemeyer out for an inopportune early morning
stroll. Their salvage party meanwhile had gone back by the proper way.
In ten minutes the whole of the camp staff had appeared on the scene.
The two officers, of course, refused to say anything or to explain their
muddy condition. Even then Niemeyer failed to tumble to what had
actually occurred. But a few minutes later an excited farmer appeared at
the postern gate and led the whole party to where, amid the trampled rye
in which a dozen different tracks were visible from the camp windows, a
gaping hole brought recognition and late wisdom to Milwaukee Bill.
“_So, ein Tunnel._”
Tunnel. The same dangerous word, common to either language, which had
been whispered for so long by the one side, now ran like electricity
through the ranks of the other.
The next question from Niemeyer’s point of view was, how many? The fat
Feldwebel went off and counted an expectant house. He found everybody
unusually wide awake and good humoured for that hour of the morning. The
fat Feldwebel was himself thoroughly amused by the eventful happenings
since his last appearance in the house, and he merely chortled
good-humouredly as name after name elicited no response. He returned to
the rye-field to report to Niemeyer an absentee list of 26. In his
excitement he had forgotten to count the “Munshi’s” room, from which all
three occupants had flitted.
Then came the real moment. Niemeyer’s jaw dropped, his moustachios for a
brief instant lost their twirl, his solid stomach swelled less
impressively against his overcoat. Just for a moment he became grey and
looked very old. But only for a moment. The sound of laughter in the
upper corridor windows floated down to him and roused action and the
devil in him forthwith. As an initial measure he put all the windows at
that end of the building out of bounds and told his sentries to fire at
once if a face appeared. Then he had the outer doors of both houses
locked. Then he placed a sentry over the tunnel head and stalked away to
the Kommandantur to ring up the Company Captain in Holzminden, inform
the police, report events to Corps Headquarters at Hanover, and issue
emergency orders “for the safety of the camp.”
These were posted up in both houses and caused considerable amusement.
Briefly, they permitted the officers remaining in the camp to eat,
sleep, and breathe, but that was about all. “No one,” so ran the order,
“when inside the building was to move from his own room. Conversation
with other officers in the corridors or by the notice boards was
forbidden. Officers were not allowed to stand about at the doors of the
buildings. No officer belonging to one house might enter the other.
Officers were not to walk about in groups of more than two.” And so on.
Of course we had amply expected all this. Indeed, there was ground for
congratulation that things had panned out up to the present without
murder being done. Stringent orders had been issued that, in the event
of the escape only being discovered at the 9 o’clock _appel_, there was
to be no laughter or demonstration calculated to aggravate. Months
before, the more serious-minded had discussed the prospects of someone
being shot in the Commandant’s first wild ebullition of fury and baffled
rage at the defeat of all his precautions. It was one advantage of the
premature discovery of the escape that what shooting was ordered was
confined to the windows.
Twenty-nine. The magic number flitted from mouth to mouth and was
shouted across from B house to A, who cheered heartily on hearing the
figure. It was indeed a good number and constituted an easy record for
Germany, if not for all time. _Neun und zwanzig._ Long ere now it had
permeated to the town, and the road outside the camp was strangely
peopled with unusual figures of both sexes and all ages, anxious to view
the scene of the occurrence, and most of them no doubt vastly pleased at
the discomfiture of the notorious bully, Hauptmann Niemeyer. Always the
camp had been the diversion of a Sunday evening stroll for the burghers
of Holzminden; now we played daily to crowded houses, until the
Commandant, in his exasperation, put the confines of the camp out of
bounds to civilians. Those who had been stuck in the hours of the dawn
exchanged experiences and friendly recrimination. Personal
disappointment was merged in the general triumph. For triumph it was.
Twenty-nine loose in Germany. Twenty-nine. He would have been a bold man
who would have breathed that number in Niemeyer’s hearing.
The sentries grinned as they echoed it. Kasten, the fat old Feldwebel,
laughed as he notched it on the next (mid-day) _appel_. And Niemeyer
tried to digest it.
He was not very successful. We were let out of the barracks after
mid-day. No attempt was naturally made to fall in with the newly posted
camp regulations, and serious collisions with Niemeyer, as soon as he
came abroad, were inevitable. There was at the bottom of everybody’s
mind a feeling that the time had at last come to be rid of him, that now
the star of the Great Twin Brethren might at last wane and the wrath
from Hanover or Berlin descend on the discredited favourite for being
unable either to keep his gaol-birds at home or to keep order in his own
house. But bloodshed was to be avoided. It was a difficult policy, to
annoy by pinpricks, to goad an already maddened creature, but to keep,
as a community, within the law. But it was the right policy, and one
which commended itself to the new senior British officer, Colonel Stokes
Roberts, who succeeded to the position vacated by Colonel Rathborne, now
well on his way to freedom.
Accordingly the red rag was discreetly held out, and Niemeyer retained
just enough self-control not to draw and flourish a revolver. All the
available cells were filled within the first few hours with candidates
for three days’ arrest. Their crimes were imaginary and were not stated.
They might have failed to salute at 40 paces, they might have laughed,
they might merely have happened to be standing somewhere in Niemeyer’s
path. It did not matter. They had certainly all broken the latest camp
regulations.
All the orderlies were taken off duty and set to dig up the tunnel. The
tin rooms and parcel rooms were closed until further notice. I myself,
whose complicity with the plot was highly suspected, was removed from my
own room and bundled unceremoniously into one of the large rooms on the
top floor of A house. The windows of the cells were barricaded up and
made quite dark by day and the lights in them were kept on all night.
Every German in the camp personnel was put on to sentry duty and
sentries paraded the passages three times in the night. The use of the
bath room attendant for this purpose precluded baths. In a word we were
“strafed,” and the camp knew once more the open warfare which had
prevailed for the first unforgettable month of its existence.
[Illustration:
Orderlies digging out the tunnel between Kaserne B and the outer wall.
]
The inconveniences of such a state of affairs were lightly borne, and
even relished, by the large majority. The Tunnellers had scored too
heavily for us to mind doing scapegoat for them. It was a pleasant
thought that all twenty-nine were still abroad, and that there was a
reasonable certainty of a fair proportion of them getting over and
putting a stop to Niemeyer’s run of atrocious good luck in the matter of
escapes. Apart from the hue and cry which had already been raised
through the North German press, the fugitives had everything in their
favour. They had had months to deliberate on their route and travelling
tactics; their packs had been stocked at leisure so as to combine the
maximum of nutrition with the minimum of weight; their civilian
disguises were adequate for their purpose. Most of them were going to
trust to their legs to carry them over the border and would be only
night birds of passage, lying up during the day. But Colonel Rathborne
possessed a knowledge of German and a superb civilian suit, over which
he had put pyjamas in going through the tunnel, and which would be able
to set casual interference blandly at defiance. He was walking due south
to Göttingen and was there going to entrain for Aachen _viâ_ Cassel and
Frankfurt. If all went well with him and his forged passport passed
muster, he would be over the frontier in under three days. And later,
when six days had gone by and he had not returned, the camp knew that
the spell had been broken and that an Englishman was over from
Holzminden. But we said nothing to the Germans.
However, before six days had passed a good number of the twenty-nine had
already been rounded up and brought back to camp. As they were kept in
the strictest isolation, it was only possible to hear their stories by
bribing the cell attendants to bring written messages from them. If
bribes failed, the message was concealed somehow in their trays of food.
Every officer in detention cell had to have a friend to feed him—i.e.
cook his food and see that it was delivered to him; otherwise he existed
in semi-starvation on the German ration. It was the usual thing,
preparatory to an attempt to escape, to arrange for your feeding
arrangements in “jug”; and the penalty of recapture was shared to the
full by the luckless partner, who thus had double work.
Sharp and Luscombe were the first pair back, as they had been the last
pair away. They had had two days and a night out and had been caught
passing through a village at night about 15 miles down the Weser. Sharp
reported that at his search on being brought back to the camp, Niemeyer
had vented his spleen on him by picking a valuable gold watch to pieces
with his pocket knife, and by giving instructions for his civilian
clothes (which included a brand new coat from England) to be ripped to
ribbons. Every day brought in some fresh recapture, and, the cell
accommodation being completely inadequate to cope with the numerous
criminals, the town gaol was drawn upon to afford relief.
It was a sad blow to the camp when some of the foremost spirits in the
adventure—Mardock, Lawrence, Butler, and Langren—were brought back after
being out about ten days. Butler had stolen a bicycle and was caught on
it while passing through a village. The others had been taken in the
vicinity of the Ems. All these separate captures used to be described at
length and with appropriate embellishments in the Hanoverian press. Thus
in one organ it was stated that the refugees were all wearing British
uniform; another had it that British naval uniform was the mode, with
the buttons altered; yet another explained that the prisoners had
escaped in civilian disguise procured from British friends outside the
camp. To be sure, we had British friends outside the camp—what
prisoner-of-war did not? But one could imagine the burghers of Hanover
reading this sort of stuff and commenting on the lax policy of the
Government towards enemy aliens!
A detective from Berlin had arrived shortly after the escape and
displayed the usual aptitude of his species in examining the tunnel.
Several hours elapsed before he found the door in the partition. This
was all in Niemeyer’s favour, since a mere Commandant, a layman in the
science of crime, could not reasonably have been expected to guess the
secret which had temporarily baffled the expert. Such acuteness would
have been unseemly and unprofessional. The detective took a large number
of photographs[11] and made a large number of notes, and the two parted
on the best of terms. When Niemeyer had bowed the important visitor off
the premises, he turned his attention once more to the safe keeping of
the British officers still remaining under his wing.
[Footnote 11: Three of these are reproduced in this book.]
For several days he achieved a crescendo of fury and malevolence and
maintained all the outward characteristics of a mad bull. Unfortunately
he had not in any way fallen from grace. A staff officer from Hanover
specially sent down to examine the affair was, to our disappointment, an
apparently appreciative witness of his behaviour. We had calculated that
von Hänisch would by now have discovered a flaw in his chosen
instrument, and that the attitude of the chief might be seen to be
reflected in his subordinates. But we were out of our reckoning. The
captain from Hanover used even to accompany Niemeyer in his periodical
incursions into the camp precincts and stand stolidly by while the
latter blackguarded every Englishman within reach or hearing.
Possibly Niemeyer had got ideas from reading Don Quixote on his dull
evenings. One of his favourite amusements during this period was to make
fierce onslaughts with his stick on the washing hanging out to dry on
the wire fence between the two main buildings. He would lunge at some
unoffending under-garment, spit it, brandish it violently in the air,
and then trample on it. It was against the regulations for washing to be
hung on the wire, and the Commandant sacrificed his personal dignity to
see that these regulations were unflinchingly obeyed.
His behaviour towards the orderlies was a delightful contrast. Usually
domineering and foul-mouthed towards them beyond the ordinary, he was
now honey-tongued good fellowship itself. The orderlies were all
employed digging up the tunnel; and Niemeyer used to stand by them for
hours at a time, asking the men questions about their homes in England,
their wives and children, and generally trying to put himself on the
best possible terms with them.
Niemeyer was looking desperately hard for a scapegoat. It is to be
remembered that no one had been caught actually _in_ the tunnel, and
every officer recaptured stoutly refused to say how he had got out.
There was no tangible evidence of any conspiracy. Consequently unless an
admission of complicity was wrung from one of the orderlies, the charge
of doing damage to German property, levelled against a number of
unconvicted and unconvictable persons, would lose weight, however
circumstantial the evidence; and it was punishment to the hilt which the
Commandant, in his wounded pride, yearned after. But his clumsy
overtures took in nobody. The men knew that he was trying his hardest to
pump them and gave nothing away.
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