CHAPTER VIIN THE TUNNEL

We left the trio next for duty in process of disappearing behind the planks, and about to start on their three-hour shift at the face of the tunnel. Let us keep company with them awhile at their difficult and absorbing task.

Tunnelling had at least one great advantage over other methods of escape, that the interest attaching to the actual preparation was able to over-ride, to some extent, the suspense and anxiety as to ultimate success. There was no opportunity to mope. The immediate business was to defeat not only the Boche but Nature too, with all the odds on the latter’s side.

The bolting of the wooden partition behind the last of the trio shuts out the day and adds the proper molish touch to the scene. However, what at first appears pitch dark becomes gradually less so, and presently the party can see enough to change their more or less clean orderlies’ clothes for the filthy, sodden, mud-stained rags which they wear for work in the tunnel. There are other minor discomforts besides the darkness and the damp. There is an indescribable musty smell produced by a mélange of damp clay and earth, mice, old clothes, and much-breathed air, a smell which you have to go down into the bowels of the earth to get.

The working clothes are soon on, the clean orderlies’ clothes stowed carefully away, and a move is made to the tunnel mouth.

Look at the plan on p.73and glean a rough idea of the shape of the chamber and the siting of the tunnel mouth. The ground area is roughly four yards by five. The height varies, for, on the near (Kommandantur) side, the roof consists of the concrete foundation to the first flight of the orderlies’ staircase, while on the far side—that next to the Eastern wall of the building—are the cellar steps. The ground level, which is also the roof level at the southern end, is about five feet above the chamber floor.

Into the available recesses formed by this irregular enclosure all the tunnel earth must be stowed away. The hollow under the cellar steps is already full, and so will be the opposite hollow under the orderlies’ staircase before the end is reached, for a 60-yard passage through the earth must be displaced somewhere, and it will be a near thing and will require the most careful and economical storage if the displacements can be kept within the narrow cubic space which is all that can be earmarked for them. A passage from the partition door to the tunnel mouth must be preserved at all costs.

The tunnel mouth has been hacked through the main southern wall of the building just where it joins the cellar floor. It issues about three feet below the ground level—immediately underneath the orderlies’ entrance—and then bears sharp left in the direction of the outer wall.

Now the outer wall is but ten yards away at this point, and had the original scheme of the tunnel gone as it had been planned, all would have been over long before this particular May day, and the conspirators would have made their bid for freedom. There was nothing very Herculean involved in getting the tunnel to the other side of the wall and popping up on a dark night, with the friendly wall acting as a screen from the view of the nearest sentry.

But unfortunately, as has been explained, Niemeyer had taken precautionary measures just before the party were ready to move, and had put a sentry at the outside corner of the building, effectually covering the spot. Unless this sentry was removed it would be necessary, in order to have a reasonable prospect of success, to continue the tunnel until a point was reached where it would be possible to emerge under cover.

These bald words cannot attempt to convey the bitter disappointment caused by Niemeyer’s manœuvre or the seriousness of the altered prospect.

But the Tunnellers of Holzminden set their teeth and prepared themselves, if necessary, to go on digging for a year rather than run the risk that any of the party should be spotted by a sentry as he emerged. It was known how many a previous tunnel scheme had been shattered miserably on this rock, simply through lack of the necessary patience to go on with the job. At Schwarmstedt, not so many months before, this had happened. The tunnel came out quite close to the wire. One officer got out and got away, but in so doing was observed by a sentry. His successor had no sooner put his head above ground than he was shot dead in the most cold-blooded and treacherous manner—legitimately murdered, if one may venture on the paradox.

There was a road immediately beyond the outside wall, and the ground beyond the road was planted with low-growing crops and vegetables over a belt of about 40 yards in breadth. The whole of this belt was searched by the glare from the strong electric lamps at the corner of the wall. Day and night there was now a sentry outside the wall. If Niemeyer had posted machine guns at intervals of 50 yards round the camp, he could hardly have felt more immune from attack, more absolutely secure from any attempt to spring him by the tunnel method.

It was early days—in April—to offer any decided opinion as to what the vegetables were likely to be. If they turned out to be crops which were not high enough to offer adequate cover to the escapers, there would be no choice—as the sketch will show—but to tunnel grimly on till the rye-field was reached, several yards further away. But the rye would be cut in early August at latest, and meanwhile the tunnel had advanced barely ten yards beyond the outside wall, and at best a two-foot progress crowned during this period the effort of each laborious day. This meant about 40 yards still to tunnel and three months to go in a losing race, probably, unless progress could be accelerated; and this, as the work took the party further and further from their base, was hardly to be expected.

(Scale = roughly 40 yds = inch.)Course of the tunnel(see alsofrontispiece).

So it is with the depressed feeling of having to work against time as well as nature that our friends assemble behind the partition on this particular morning. They are standing, or rather stooping, at the entrance, and the first thing to do is to light up. Fortunately someone has remembered to bring the matches to-day, so Number 1 lights a couple of precious candles (we were dependent entirely on England for these commodities) and crawls in. He sticks one candle in the pump chamber, which is just round the first corner and about six feet from the entrance, and proceeds on his way with the other. His progress is necessarily slow, very slow, as the tunnel is so small that he is compelled towrigglealong on his elbows and toes. There is no help for this. The hole must be as small as possible, because of the extreme economy to be exercised in the disposition of the displaced earth.

Number 2 enters the pump chamber and starts working the pump. This instrument consists of a home-made vertical bellows, manufactured from wood and from the leather of a flying coat, and is operated by Number 2 with his left hand as he sits facing it and looking along the tunnel towards the face. The pump is screwed to wooden uprights which are securely embedded top and bottom in the clay soil, and the air is forced into a pipe composed of tin tubes made out of biscuit boxes. Little did the glorious company of biscuit makers suspect that in sending us our means of sustenance they were also contributing to an important escape. This pipe is sunk in the floor of the tunnel and is kept always close to the face by the addition of more and yet more tubes.

Number 3, whose duty it will be to pack the earth when it is hauled out, stays outside the tunnel mouth and sees that the rope attached to the basin is running clear, and then hands the basin to Number 2, who puts it in front of him ready to be pulled to the face by Number 1 with that half of the rope which extends from the pump chamber to the face. We shall see what the basin was for if we accompany Number 1 on his journey to the tunnel face.

For the first few yards he goes down a slight slope, then again for a few yards up an incline to the place where it was originally intended to make the exit—just beyond the boundary wall. Here he can hear the thud-thud of the sentry’s footsteps above his head. Then he goes down again pretty steeply for three or four yards and flattens out, the tunnel swinging slightly, first to the right and then to the left. All this time he has been going through fairly soft stuff—a sort of sandy yellow clay, which has been easy enough to dig—but now he comes to the stony part. Working in this stretch has been terribly difficult. A dense, seemingly interminable stratum of large stones has been encountered. The stones are smooth and flat, tightly pressed together in a horizontal position and cemented with the stickiest of clay. Number 1’s progress becomes positively painful: he barks his shoulders on the stones which project from the walls, his toes and elbows suffer from the stones beneath him, occasionally he bumps his head on the uneven roof, and all the time he must keep the candle alight, and swear only in an undertone. Soon he begins to ascend again—steeply this time—and comes to the face, but not before he has had yet one more unpleasant experience. Out of the gloom in front of him appears suddenly a pair of wicked little eyes, horribly bright and menacing. He clenches his teeth and digs his chin into the soil beneath him. The large rat, whose solitude he has disturbed, crawls over him and leaves him sweating with fright and almost faint with the eerie sensation of it.

But the tunnel must go on, so Number 1 sticks the candle on some convenient stone at his side, takes the cold chisel and gets to work. In five minutes or less he has loosened a bathful of stones and he drops the chisel, takes hold of his end of the rope and hauls. The difficulties of hauling on a rope while lying in a tube about eighteen inches in diameter lined with knobbly stones can be imagined but cannot be adequately described. Soon he hears the rattling of the basin on the stones behind him, and it arrives at his feet. Next comes the contortionist’s trick of getting it past his body in the confined space, then the filling, and finally the almost superhuman juggling feat of getting the full basin back past his body again. A couple of jerks at the rope leading to the pump chamber, and he feels it tauten. The basin begins to move away, and Number 1 turns on to his side again and gets to work, taking care that he has theendof the rope attached to some part of his person but that the rest of it is free.

If he is a fairly quick worker, he will have another load of stones ready by the time the basin has been pulled back and emptied. He will then haul it up again and repeat the whole exhausting process. No wonder that the tunnel party did not as a band shine as games enthusiasts amongst their fellow-prisoners. They had their bellyful of exercise down below.

Sometimes the monotony of the proceedings is varied by a torrent of subdued cursing from the pump chamber, while the full basin is on its way back. To the experienced this only signifies that the rope has broken, as it frequently does on account of the damp and the incessant friction against the sides, roof, and floor of the tunnel. A breakage entails a journey on the part of Number 2 to effect repairs while Number 3 pumps.

The working time is divided into three equal parts, and at the end of the first part Number 3, who is time-keeper as well as packer, informs Number 2. A low hail informs Number 1 that his digging is over for the day, and he retraces his steps—or more accurately wriggles back feet foremost, for there is no room to turn round. He then becomes Number 3, Number 2 becomes Number 1 and goes to the face, whilst Number 3 becomes Number 2 and pumps.

So the work goes on till 3.45 p.m. Then it ceases; all three come out of the tunnel and change back into their orderlies’ clothes to await the signal to come out. At the orderlies’ entrance to the building stand two of the orderlies waiting for a favourable opportunity to let them out, and, just as during the morning manœuvre, there are two or three officers loafing about for no apparent reason at the other end of the building. On some days there are no Boche about at this time and immediate exit is possible, but to-day they happen to be carrying potatoes down to the adjoining cellar, and pass to and fro close to the hiding-place, quite plainly visible through the cracks in the boards. They could not see anything, naturally, even if they thought of looking, as they are in the light and the chamber is practically in the dark.

At last they go. “Come out now,” sings out one of the orderlies, looking skywards and as if singing a snatch of a music-hall song from sheer light-heartedness. The trio unbolt the plank door and, slipping quickly to the top of the steps, stand just inside the orderlies’ door, precisely as they had stood in the morning with the day’s work in front of them; and an orderly waiting for a moment at the bottom of the steps fastens the secret door. The orderly standing at the entrance looks down the enclosure to make sure that no Germans are about, and then says “Right.” Off they go again. If the sun is shining, the light is very dazzling after the darkness.

At the last moment, perhaps, and when home is so nearly reached, a German Feldwebel appears from nowhere in particular and heads for the same door. Out from the cookhouse, which stands just opposite the officers’ door, walks one of the aimless, lounging, loafing officers above mentioned, and delays the Feldwebel with some question, no matter how trivial. So home is safely made again, and the party become officers once more and put off their orderlies’ clothes. Then followsappel, and the joy of a good wash in hot water and something to eat.

The hours have not been long, but the foul atmosphere has caused considerable fatigue, perhaps a bad headache. And in case anyone should still think, after reading this, that the work was light, he should be invited to wriggle 50 yards on elbows and toesin the open, and if he is unduly sceptical, in public. He will lose dignity, but he will gain an appreciation of the difficulties of the performance in a very confined space.

There are a few other points in regard to the construction of the tunnel which may not be without interest.

When and where necessary, the roof was revetted. The revetting was done with bed boards. The foundations of all beds in the camp were boards placed cross-wise across an iron frame and supporting a mattress made of paper, straw and shavings, and uneven as the Somme battlefield. Many of these boards had been commandeered as firewood during the early stages of the camp, when there had been, as related, a regrettable hitch in the arrangements for our warming. Many more now found their way underground by driblets into the orderlies’ quarters and thence into the recess behind the planks, or were carried direct by the working-party. People clamoured querulously for the missing boards which they had saved from the burning, and of which they had now been robbed. No one except the very few in the secret and an orderly or so had the ghost of a notion what had really happened to them. The Boche when appealed to of course shrugged their shoulders and quoted the equivalent German proverb about eating your cake. What would you? Very nearly all is fair in escapes.

The only tools used in the digging of the tunnel were a trowel or “mumptee” (an instrument with a spike at one end and an excavating blade at the other) and the cold chisel. The chisel was useful for levering apart the smooth heavy stones which presented so much difficulty. It seems probable that these stones had once formed the bed of some river and had been worn smooth and packed by the action of the water. Attempts were made to dodge this difficult stratum of stones which retarded progress so seriously, but in the absence of proper instruments it was impossible to gauge the level with any degree of accuracy. A descent of four feet bringing no better results, it was decided to come back to the previous level of about eight or nine feet below the surface.

The chamber was just—and only just—sufficient for the earth. When the last sackful[8]had been piled the chamber was practically full of earth from floor to ceiling and in every crevice.

8.See the photograph opposite. The sacks were mostly mattresses stolen from beds and quite unaccounted for also!

Orientation was not an easy matter. It was necessary of course only to bear in a general easterly direction as straight as possible. There were rough compasses galore in the camp, but it was very difficult to dig the tunnel straight and the compasses were too small to check errors accurately.

Towards the end the tunnel had become too twisted and hilly to permit any longer of the rope and basin method being used, and it was necessary to fill sacks and drag them back from the face. This method was even more wearisome and exasperating than the other. To wriggle back by oneself was bad enough: to wriggle back, and every yard or so pull a heavy sack after one, was infinitely more so. Nevertheless, all this practice had its advantages: it braced the muscles of the working-party for the great night when each one of them would have to worm his way through the tunnel, pushing a loaded pack in front of him.

At the tunnel mouth.

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