CHAPTER IIIINTRODUCING 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 onappelfor 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 onappelwith 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 eveningappel, 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.
General plan of Holzminden Camp(Scale approx. 1 inch = 50 yards)
General plan of Holzminden Camp(Scale approx. 1 inch = 50 yards)
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.
Kaserne B.
Kaserne B.
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 stepsdownwardbrought 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 dooroppositethe 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 anEminus 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 ofgefangenschaft. 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 theydidget a little peace now and again. It is the way of the world.
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.
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-circularSpielplatztill 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.