The Grand Escape

by Neal Bascomb

  Some in the team lost heart, but not Gray, one of its senior leaders. He was determined to continue. They would need more men. Gray knew Caspar Kennard would be eager to join.

  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 gritted his mouth. None of this discomfort was much 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.

  On reaching the tunnel face, he lodged his tin-can lamp into the dirt by his side and drew out the gauge the tunnelers used to maintain a consistently sized hole. Too small, they would not be able to crawl through without causing a collapse. Too big, they would waste time excavating 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 scattered dirt all over him. He dragged the basin up beside him. The exercise of 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 of soil 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 barrack-room beds and cut to size. The tunnelers had taken so many that new arrivals to Holzminden often found their beds collapsing under them if they sat down too quickly. First, he wedged a board into the roof. On the floor he set another of the same length. The third he angled between the two horizontals, then knocked with his fist until it stood on the left side of the tunnel. He did the same on the right.

  Illustrations of riveting a tunnel with wooden struts to keep it secure.

  Kennard’s 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, he had managed his claustrophobia. There was no better way out, no better way to get a head start before a manhunt was launched than a tunnel like this. His own impetuous run through the escape hatch had proved this fact.

  Illustration of a double-decked prisoner bed, ransacked for escape supplies.

  Most of the prisoners at Holzminden 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 allowed them. Some of them checked books out from the bustling library—its diligent attendant had collected almost 5,000 volumes. Others joined study circles to discuss architecture or the evolution of man. 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 threw one another around 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. “There was a man there who seemed to be able to play anything,” one orchestra member said. “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.”

  The ice pond at Holzminden, for skating.

  The orchestra accompanied the upstart “Gaiety Theatre,” which Niemeyer finally permitted, perhaps in part because it gave 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. 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.”

  There was a multitude of characters at Holzminden from all over the British Empire. One captive described “a motley crew”: “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. They came in all categories of personality. “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.”

  A Gaiety Theatre program.

  The arrival in December 1917 of Harold Medlicott bolstered the mood throughout the camp, for the breakout artists and those not interested alike. Medlicott was Britain’s answer to Harry Houdini and had almost a dozen breakouts under his belt, several in broad daylight. One time he slid down the outside of a castle tower: His cell at its top was so high that the Germans did not believe it needed bars. Another time he rigged a plank of wood straight out from a second-floor window to cross a deep moat surrounding an old prison fortress. The officers believed that if anybody could escape Holzminden and shame Niemeyer, Medlicott was the man. A legend to even the German guards, he had broken out of nine camps already, never using the same method twice. With his usual bluster, Niemeyer assured Medlicott that Holzminden was escape-proof, a declaration that guaranteed his success would be all the sweeter for the whole camp.

  On Sunday, February 10, Medlicott and his partner, Captain Joseph Walter, were all set to go, their plan timed to the second. At 3:30 p.m., wearing old Burberry jackets, rucksacks looped over their shoulders, they emerged from Block B. All was normal 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 barrack 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. The orderly Dick Cash had provided the needed wire cutters—he traded food with a German workman for them.

  Prisoners spotted the brazen move from the windows of both barrack blocks. At first they could
not quite comprehend what they were seeing. Two sentries were walking a beat in the no-man’s-land behind each barrack block—surely they would notice the two prisoners. Then they realized that the guards were walking away from each other, headed to the western and eastern ends of each barrack block, their backs to the two escapees. Once the guards reached the end of the blocks, however, they would turn around and come back. If they heard anything and turned early, Medlicott and Walter would be lost.

  Still Medlicott and Walter continued. They were now at the northern wall. Medlicott hoisted his partner up on his shoulders, and Walter snipped a hole in the barbwire palisade. As soon as the hole was complete, he passed the wire cutters down to Medlicott, pushed through his rucksack, then crawled through the hole after it. Still, there was no whistle of alarm. Medlicott threw the wire cutters back across no-man’s-land for Cash to retrieve. Then, just as the two guards made their reverse turn, he scaled the wall like a spider and dove through the hole in the palisade. The sentry beyond the walls must have been out of sight as well, since, again, there was no shout of alarm. Outside, they stood calmly by the wall, unfolded gentlemanly Homburg hats from inside their jackets, lit cigarettes, and started down the road like two villagers out for a Sunday afternoon stroll.

  Medlicott and Walter would have made it away except that a sharp-eyed German guard watching over the isolation cells in Block B had, through a small, high window, seen them mount the wall. By the time he ran up the steps into the yard, the two breakout artists had turned off the road and were heading toward some woods half a mile away. They were still within sight of the camp when the alarm was raised. At first, they kept to a fast walk, hoping they might yet be mistaken for civilians. When guards poured out of the main gate and headed in their direction, they quickened into a jog. Soldiers from a nearby garrison, alerted by telephone by Niemeyer, cut them off before they reached the woods. Niemeyer met them in the yard, flushed with pride. He clapped his hand to the escapees’ chests and declared, “All my boys come back to me.”

  When the officers standing in the windows would not be quiet, Niemeyer ordered his guards to fire at the barracks. Nobody was hit, but the crashing glass forced everyone to back away. Medlicott and Walter were brought down into the cellars and were not seen again at Holzminden before being sent away. At the next roll call, puffed with pride at the capture of the great Harold Medlicott, Niemeyer boasted about his “unblemished record” of there having been no successful home runs to Holland. But if he thought that the foiled attempt had crushed the morale of any who would dare to be next, he was wrong. As one prisoner wrote to Medlicott’s family, the staggeringly brave display only proved to them all that “it was impossible for the Germans to confine a determined man.”

  In late February 1918, the tunnel plot ran into trouble yet again. The sap was some 25 yards long when the men began to run into roots and flat rocks embedded in hard clay. Progress slowed, and the men emerged after their shifts with cuts to their hands and covered with bruises from bumping their arms, legs, and heads against the stones. They believed they may have run into an ancient riverbed. At the same time, their team was falling apart.

  Since the Boxing Day announcement about prisoners being transferred to internment in Holland, similar declarations came almost weekly. Often these were contradicted the very next day—names dropped, dates postponed. Moysey, Rogers, Ellis, Colquhoun, and a handful of the original tunnelers received word to pack their bags. Rather than welcoming the news, they were devastated. They had spent their time in captivity risking death, suffering solitary confinement, and exhausting themselves—all with an eye on escape. They saw the transfer as failure, especially since, under the terms of the agreement between the Germans and the Allies, released soldiers were forbidden to return to the battlefield. Further, although they would be free from Niemeyer and the trials of Holzminden, they would be leaving their friends behind in Germany. As Colquhoun said, “I felt like a deserter, nothing more or less.” Given the choice, he would gladly have traded his place with someone else.

  At the end of February, Gray said his good-byes to Colquhoun and the Pink Toes. They left the sap in his hands, and so he became the “Father of the Tunnel.” Only Kennard and Frederick Mardock of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) remained from the original team. Now, Gray needed not only to figure out how to burrow through the layers of rock, but also to assemble a whole new band of tunnelers while he was at it. Thanks to Hänisch sending the most diehard escape artists to Holzminden, he had a long list from which to choose.

  In March, a new prisoner arrived with the boldness and experience they needed: Cecil Blain. He had spent over two months digging a tunnel at Neunkirchen, another prison camp. After it was discovered, he had vowed to never tunnel again. He quickly broke this vow to be with Kennard and Gray, working together again at long last. They were glad to have him.

  Blain clawed the dirt to drag himself forward. Every so often, a rat scurried across his back or stared him straight in the eye. Worms and other unseen creepy-crawlies squirmed through his hair and underneath his work outfit, which stuck to him like a mildewed second skin. And the air … there was never enough to fill his lungs as he forged his way around the sandstone wall that had slowed and diverted the sap for weeks. As he advanced, he made sure to limit the swing of his elbows, the kick of his feet, the rise of his back. One indiscreet move in an unlucky spot, and the walls or roof might give in under the weight of the earth above. There would be no warning, no thunder boom to announce the cave-in. The dirt would simply cover him like a heavy shroud, immobilizing his body with its terrible weight, snuffing out his breath before he could cry for help.

  At last, he arrived at the tunnel face. Slowly, but with a certain rhythm, he hacked with a chisel at the wall ahead, scraped away the loose chunks with a trowel, then filled the bowl with the excavated earth using a small hand rake. Part of him enjoyed it—the danger, the toil, the teamwork—it was an adventure and a better way to spend his days than sitting in the barracks … as long as the candle wedged into the wall by his side continued to flicker and dance. If the flame ever dulled into a faint red, he was in trouble.

  Back by the tunnel entrance, Gray was keeping the candle—and Blain—alive. Crouched in a small cave carved into an early left turn in the sap, he operated what might best be described as a bellows. As the tunnel lengthened past the sandstone wall, the diggers found that they were growing faint from lack of oxygen. A few went delirious and had to be dragged out by their feet. Some method to supply fresh air was needed. Someone dreamed up a bellows made out of wooden planks and a leather RFC jacket, set on a vertical stand. To pipe the air to the tunnel face, they collected round shaving tins, knocked out the ends, strung them together, and covered them with canvas. Links were added as needed. Being the pumper was monotonous, arduous work.

  Kennard stood just a few feet away, inside the chamber underneath the staircase, holding a rope in his hand and waiting to feel its tug. He was responsible for hauling back the bowl of dirt and stone when Blain was ready to send it back. He emptied its contents into cloth sacks and stacked them in the steadily shrinking space inside the chamber. On a good, well-run shift, the digger would have another pile to put in the bowl by the time the packer was ready to have him pull it back.

  Illustration showing a cross-section of the beginning of the tunnel—and its cramped quarters.

  During their four-hour shift, Blain, Gray, and Kennard rotated through the jobs. Being the digger for too long was simply not sustainable, particularly for the claustrophobe Kennard, who had to bend every shred of his will to maintain his calm. The exertion, the foul air, the press of earth in every direction, the threat of collapse, all took their toll. To exit the tunnel, the digger had to snake backward, feet first, inch by inch through the tunnel to be free of it. There was simply no space to turn around.

  At 3:45 p.m., the shift was over. The three men shed their grungy work outfits, wiped their skin clear of dirt with a cloth, and dressed
in their orderly uniforms. Now they had to sneak back to their quarters. At this late afternoon hour, guards often used the stairs, bringing supplies up or down from the cellars. Through the thin breaks in the plank wall, the tunnelers could see them pass. Eventually, an orderly rapped on the secret door, then whispered, “Come out now.”

  The three men unlatched the slide bolt and stepped out through the plank door. At first the light stung their eyes. Then they hurried up the steps as the orderly returned the bolt into place. At the exit, they waited for one of their lookouts to give them another all-clear. With the single word “Right,” the three moved out, forcing themselves to not so much as glance at the guard opposite the door. If he got a look at their faces, he might recognize one of them. They tried not to walk too fast or too slowly, relying on others from their team to intercept and distract any Germans who might cross their path. At last, they were back in Room 24, where they quickly changed back into their officer uniforms, famished, exhausted, and suffering stabbing headaches from the terrible air.

  Whether walking in the yard, sitting in their rooms, or working their shifts, the tunnelers continually hashed out how, once through the sap, they would make it across the 150 miles to the border. In fact, the distance they would have to travel as fugitives would be far greater given the detours needed to avoid towns and major roads. Gray was particularly aware that most escapes fell apart in this phase. Day and night, he considered different plans, searching for something foolproof.