by Neal Bascomb
And then, unable to contain himself, he started to laugh. Uproariously. His roommates hurled boots, sponges, and other sundries at him to be quiet, but Harvey kept laughing. “What the devil is the matter?” they asked.
“I was just thinking,” he said. “What an extraordinarily funny thing is a duck.” After the wake-up call the next morning, he sat down and began a new poem—the first in a long while. It was all thanks to Mossy’s unexpected gift.
From troubles of the world I turn to ducks,
Beautiful comical things
Sleeping or curled
Their heads beneath white wings
By water cool,
Or finding curious things
To eat in various mucks
Beneath the pool,
Tails uppermost, or waddling
Sailor-like on the shores
Of ponds, or paddling
—Left! Right!—with fanlike feet
Which are for steady oars
When they (white galleys) float
Each bird a boat
Rippling at will the sweet
Wide waterway . . . !
…
At Christmas, Colquhoun announced that the tunnel now ran beyond the wall and would soon be finished. They should all finish preparing their escape kits and be ready in the new year.
There were great celebrations throughout camp for the holidays. The men sang carols, handed out homemade cards, raised money for the British Red Cross, staged a pantomime of “Sleeping Beauty,” and ate whatever feasts they could muster. Despite Niemeyer’s ban on the sale of wine, Douglas Lyall Grant threw a grand affair supplied with a cellar’s-worth of bottles that he joked cost more than a night out at London’s swanky Carlton Hotel. Such was their revelry—clapping hands, stomping feet, howling to the heavens—that at one point they wondered if their party was causing a disturbance in town.
In another room, one of the tunnelers put together a lavish menu using most of his stores of food—signaling his optimism of their soon-to-be-found freedom. Using shaving mirrors for serving plates and blankets for tablecloths, the men had a fine time.
The following morning, Boxing Day, Niemeyer announced that twenty officers, most of them prisoners since 1914, were being sent off by train to Holland. After half a year of promises, internment transfers had come to the 10th Army District. A few slated to leave were part of the tunneling party. Since the sap was almost complete, they did not feel the need to recruit replacements and thereby risk revealing its existence. The men shared farewells at the gate, and many other old-timers hoped they would be next.
But into this cascade of goodwill and good news came a terrible surprise from Niemeyer in the form of a new security measure. Without explanation, the commandant ordered guards to take up permanent stations outside the stone walls of Holzminden. When the guards took their positions, the tunnelers’ hearts sank. One guard was standing opposite the east postern gate, at almost the exact location Colquhoun had set for the tunnel exit. Had someone informed on their operation? Could they still manage to escape from that spot if they waited for a shift rotation? Would the guard stations be temporary? There was no intensive search, so it was likely their secret was safe. But the men decided that the shift rotation would not allow them enough time to break through to the surface and get away unseen.
They watched day after day to see if the guards abandoned their new posts; they remained. The consequence was profound. To extend the tunnel beyond this new guard’s line of sight, they would have to proceed another forty-five yards past the barren flat field that bordered Holzminden until they reached some rows of rye, which would provide the necessary cover only come July. It was January now. Without such cover, the tunnelers knew, they risked a bullet on emerging at the exit; they all remembered what had happened to Morritt, at Schwarmstedt.
At a foot a day of digging, this distance calculated to almost twenty weeks of work. Such an amount of time would make keeping the tunnel secret almost impossible. One errant word, one slip-up caught by a vigilant guard—and all would be lost. Then there was the sap itself. A fifteen-yard tunnel was a manageable affair, but at sixty yards, cave-ins would be more likely, as would obstructions that demanded a change in direction.
More important, the time spent underground would become even more insufferable. The farther they dug, the longer it would take—and the more exhausting it would be—to wriggle through to the end of the hole. Such long periods in such a cramped space so far from a safe retreat would be both physical and mental torture. Finally, a sap of such distance would run short of fresh air. Some in the team lost heart, but not the once-reluctant Gray, one of its senior leaders. He was determined to continue. The officers would need more men. Gray turned to Caspar Kennard.
Fourteen
Caspar Kennard wriggled on his belly through the tunnel. Dragging a sack of tools and the circular basin behind him, he used his forearms and the toes of his boots to move himself through the tight, low burrow. Cascades of loosened dirt fell down into his collar. The dirt stung his eyes and grit lined his mouth. None of this discomfort compared to the rising swell of fear that seized him. He hated confined spaces, and even though every instinct told him to break loose from this burrow, to retreat, he continued ahead.
His life had shifted in such strange and unimaginable ways over the past two years: from ranching in the open ranges of the Argentinean Pampas, to flying in the wide blue skies over England and France, to trading one solitary-detention cell for another. Not one of those cells could compare to the dreary darkness of this sap.
But since recruitment to the secret effort early in the new year, Kennard had managed his claustrophobia. There was no better way out, especially given the chance to get a head start before a manhunt was launched, than through a tunnel like this. His own impetuous run from Holzminden had proved this fact.
On reaching the tunnel face, Kennard lodged his tin-can lamp into the dirt by his side and drew out the gauge created by the Pink Toes to maintain a consistently sized hole. Too small, they would not be able to crawl through without a collapse. Too big, they would waste time and excavate too much dirt that would have to be hauled out and stored away. The gauge was of basic construction: two thin boards—one 18 inches long, the other 14 inches—secured by a pivot at the center. Kennard swung the boards open until they formed a cross and placed them in front of him, the shorter board vertical and the longer horizontal. The ends marked the boundaries of their roughly oval tunnel.
Once the gauge was fixed, he began to dig, using a chisel and trowel to scrape, stab, and pry loose the earth ahead of him. Progress was almost imperceptible, akin to emptying a bucket of water with a thimble. Only the slowly rising mound of dirt and stone under his chin gave any sign of progress. When this mound impeded him, it was time for the basin at his feet. He stretched his arm under his body, rotating at the torso to lengthen his reach. As he moved, the roof and walls littered dirt all over him. He dragged the basin up his side until it lay flat on the base of the tunnel. Completing such a simple task in such a small space was exhausting. Kennard’s fear of the walls closing in on him only heightened the strain.
After scooping the mound into the basin with his hands, he screwed his body sideways again to push the basin back down to his feet. Then he tugged at its attached rope so his mates knew to haul it out. A moment later, the shallow basin skittered and danced its way into the darkness behind him. He took a brief rest from the strain of maintaining a constant fixed position on his belly, arms out ahead of him, neck craned. He was sweating heavily, his nerves frayed.
After he had advanced a little farther, he stopped digging and made a brace for the ceiling and walls. These braces were placed every three feet to prevent a collapse. He had brought some planks down with him, nicked from the support boards of the beds in the barracks and cut to size. The tunnelers had taken so many of these boards that new arrivals to Holzminden often found their beds collapsing under them if they sat down too quick
ly.
First, he wedged a board into the roof. On the floor he set another of the same length. The third plank he angled between the two horizontals, then knocked with his fist until it stood on the left edge of the tunnel. He did the same on the right. An experienced sapper had found that the oval shape of the tunnel was sufficient to carry the weight of the earth above. Kennard could only pray that their reinforcements would hold.
On January 26, 1918, Jim Bennett stood on the icy parade ground, waiting for morning roll call, when a line of police officers followed by plainclothes detectives marched into the camp. They were from Berlin, Niemeyer informed the men, and they would be conducting a special inspection. All prisoners were to return to their barracks and wait in the corridors by their rooms until called. No one would be allowed back into the yard until the detectives had finished. Searches were common at Holzminden, but a quick rifling through their belongings rarely uncovered their hiding places: compasses secured in the handles of shaving brushes; maps folded inside book covers; civilian clothes and money concealed in false bottoms or sides of footlockers. This search, however, was something altogether different.
Bennett was worried. Although yet to determine a path of escape, he had collected a fairly complete kit. Six weeks after sending the coded letter to his family about obtaining a photograph of a Rolls-Royce, a parcel arrived containing a badminton bat. He noticed that the leather binding on the handle was slightly loose. On unwrapping it, he spotted a plug cut into the wood. Inside the hollow handle was a rolled map and a small compass, two items critical for any home run to Holland. If these were found by the detectives, he might not have another chance to replace them; and he would most certainly find himself back in solitary confinement.
Similar fears pervaded the barracks, especially among the tunnelers. The intensive inspection might uncover the secret door cut into the cellar stairs wall. A mad scramble ensued as prisoners tried to bribe guards with soap and wine to pocket their contraband—or at least to allow them to hide it away for the time being. There were also fake scuffles and a hullabaloo to distract the detectives from their job. One prisoner clapped his hand onto a guard’s back, sticking a card to his tunic chalked with the message “You know my methods, Watson.” As the guard stormed down the corridors, laughter followed him.
The detectives went from room to room, for hour after hour, and uncovered forbidden goods hidden behind beds, underneath floorboards, and on the prisoners themselves. Among the piles of contraband they collected were wire cutters, maps, German money, tinned food, and civilian clothes. While the inspection was under way, prisoners pickpocketed watches, cufflinks, and even a hat from the detectives. They also managed to steal back a few of the sacks of contraband while the Germans were occupied elsewhere.
In the evening, they finally came to Bennett’s room. He waited out in the corridor, on edge that his cache would be found. Inspired by the false wall built by Gerald Knight to effect his escape from Ströhen, Bennett had installed a false beam in his ceiling, camouflaging its seams with the same mixture of cornstarch, dirt, and cobwebs Knight had used. The detectives looked high and low through his room but missed the unusual appearance of the beam.
After twelve hours, the search at Holzminden finally ended—the tunnel undetected. Crowded in their corridors all day, given nothing to eat, the prisoners were miserable and on the verge of rebellion. Niemeyer shut them in for the rest of the night. Although relieved his kit was safe, Bennett was beginning to lose hope that he would find a way to escape the camp. Since the recent death of his eldest brother, Robert, who had been an RFC pilot stationed in France, Jim wanted nothing more than to be home with his family.
Normal life, as far as that was possible, resumed at Holzminden the next day.
One prisoner likened the routine there to the diary entries Mark Twain quipped he kept as a boy: “‘First Day—Got up, dressed, went to bed.’ 2nd Day—‘Got up, washed, went to bed.’ 3rd Day—‘Got up, dressed, went to bed.’” The rigid schedule of roll calls and meals, long lines, torments by Niemeyer, and early lockdown reinforced this slog, but not all was oppression for those who were open to the possibilities.
As January moved into February, Will Harvey found his way to that place of possibility. He realized that surrounding him at Holzminden were a multitude of characters from all over the British Empire. “A motley crew,” a fellow captive described: “Australians—South Africans—Canadians—New Zealanders—Irish—Scotch—English and Welsh.” Every branch of the armed services was there too: pilots, cavalrymen, infantry, engineers, sappers, and garrison gunners. All manner of conflicting personalities was represented. “The intellectuals regard with disdain the flighty scandalmongers. The foxtrot outfit squabbles with the churchgoers, both requiring the same room at the same time for their widely different purposes. Then there are the drunks and the blue ribald army—the studious and the do-noughts—the night birds and the gamesters.”
Most of the prisoners had no intention of burrowing a tunnel or concocting an elaborate breakout scheme. They filled their hours in other ways, taking advantage of the small liberties that Niemeyer now allowed them. Some of the men checked books out from the bustling library—its diligent attendant had collected almost five thousand volumes. Others joined study circles to discuss architecture or the evolution of mankind. Some took classes taught by other prisoners practiced in farming, construction engineering, bookkeeping, horse management, and town planning as well as French, Russian, German, and even Portuguese. There were hockey teams knocking about on a half-sized oblong ice pond formed on the Spielplatz, and officers sought to best each other in jujitsu classes. Bridge and poker sessions ran around the clock, often fueled by too much wine, and there was even a knitting circle. Several prisoners became amateur painters and sketch artists.
They also formed an orchestra. Some prisoners were professional musicians who wrote and performed original pieces. “There was a man there who seemed to be able to play anything,” one orchestra member later recalled. “He taught me the double-bass and trombone. The orchestra kept me going . . . It kept our spirits up; it would have been terrible if we’d just had to mooch about all day long.”
Will Harvey loved music and composed a few pieces himself. He gave a lecture on the “Relations of Music and Poetry.” Such was its popularity that he packed the dining hall with two hundred men on two consecutive nights. “Nothing has the power of music to lift one out of one’s surroundings,” he argued, “and to none more poignantly than to prisoners-of-war does Music bring her valiant reminder of things ‘Outside,’ the refreshing comfort of a world of realities transcending human chance.”
The orchestra accompanied the upstart Gaiety Theater, which Niemeyer finally permitted, perhaps in part because it offered his guards free entertainment. A rotating cast of prisoners-turned-actors from the “British Amateur Dramatic Society” put on variety shows and plays in the dining hall of Block B, pushing together the tables to make a stage. The night after the big search they ran a sketch comedy called The Touch of Truth. Other productions included Home John, The Just Impediment, The Crimson Streak, and The Pigeon. Besides actors, the theater occupied a small army of prisoners who became practiced stage hands, set designers, costume makers, and directors. James Whale, who would later become famous for his early Hollywood films Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, got his start in drama at Holzminden. “Pots of paint, wigs, flats, and all the properties in true Bohemian confusion,” he wrote. “And yet on show nights they jumped together like magic.”
Harvey, too, began to savor this magic—and the antics that came from creating it. One of his roommates played some of the female roles in drag, and Harvey found his friend’s unusual effect on the other prisoners hilarious. “They insisted on giving up their seat to me,” he recounted to Harvey. “It was quite pathetic to see the efforts made to engage my female interests in subjects no sane POW would consider. How pretty the room looked! And the costumes, so picturesque, weren’t they
? . . . I had to pull them back to reality by swearing vigorously.”
Only in fleeting moments since first being captured had Harvey managed some respite from the “green mold” of imprisonment. At Schwarmstedt he had even given a talk on the best way to lessen its terrible toll, namely “the comradeship of men.” But it took the worst of Holzminden, and his dark time there, for him to completely embrace his own advice. Mossy’s ceiling sketch—and the humorous poem it inspired—had put him on this path. In friendship and community, Harvey escaped the prison at last, without ever reaching beyond its walls.
The arrival in December of Harold Medlicott had bolstered the mood throughout the camp. The officers believed that if anybody could escape Holzminden and humiliate Karl Niemeyer, it was Medlicott. A legend even to the German guards, he had broken out of nine camps already, never using the same method twice. In his usual bluster, Niemeyer assured Medlicott that Holzminden was escape-proof, a claim that guaranteed any success would be all the sweeter for the camp.
On Sunday, February 10, Medlicott and his partner, Captain Joseph Walter, were ready to go. Their plan was timed to the second. The orderly Dick Cash provided the needed wire cutters—he had traded food with a German workman for the tool. Cash was more than willing to take the risk: the week before, Niemeyer had cut off parcel deliveries to the orderlies after accusing them of shirking their duties.
At 3:30 p.m., wearing old Burberry jackets, rucksacks looped over their shoulders, Medlicott and Walter emerged from Block B. It was an ordinary afternoon in the camp. Officers warmed their hands around the cookhouse stoves; some strolled about the Spielplatz. Patrolling guards paced the grounds. Nobody paid the two any mind. In the bright light of day, they made a hard right turn and crossed the gap between the two barracks blocks. Without hesitation, they lifted the single strand of wire that marked no-man’s-land. At the barbwire fence, a few feet beyond, they bent down and quickly cut a hole.