The Grand Escape

by Neal Bascomb

  Holzminden escape equipment, including a railway timetable and map of the surrounding area, hidden in a shaving brush.

  None of these prisoners had informed Rathborne, the senior officer, about their plans, and their attempts caused fear to stab at the tunnelers that another search or punishment order would stall—or, worse, uncover—their own efforts, particularly since rumors about a sap still persisted. Anticipating a search, they kept constant watch for any movements around the camp that were out of the ordinary.

  A creative escape attempt.

  Compounding this anxiety, Niemeyer had the whole camp riled up over his treatment of Captain William Leefe Robinson—an RFC pilot who had destroyed a German Zeppelin on a bombing raid over England, killing its 16 German crew members but undoubtedly saving many British lives. Since Robinson came to Holzminden in mid-May 1918, Niemeyer had made it his mission to break him. He had rarely seen the outside of a solitary cell, and when he did, Niemeyer forced him daily from his bed at bayonet point, inflicted additional roll calls on him, restricted his movements, demeaned him in front of camp visitors, and whipped him in private. Niemeyer’s treatment of Robinson had every British officer spoiling for a fight.

  With these incidents and the burden of leading the tunnel project at its most critical hour, Gray was uncharacteristically on edge when one day he found himself confronted by an irksome German attendant in the parcel room. Something about his tone, or look, or the way he mishandled packages set Gray off. The two exchanged words, and the attendant grabbed the British pilot. The level-headed reaction would have been to submit, particularly at such a crucial time as this, but Gray had had enough. He rooted himself to the floor and refused to budge. Shouts of alarm brought a host of German guards. Perhaps to shield his embarrassment at being unable to manage the situation, the attendant accused Gray of brandishing a large knife that had remained on the table throughout the short scuffle. Gray was hauled down to a solitary cell, and Niemeyer sent him to Hanover for a court-martial.

  For once, the scales of justice tipped in favor of a British prisoner, and Gray received only two weeks’ solitary imprisonment for “simple disobedience.” Through Captain Hugh Durnford, a fellow Anglo-Indian officer who spoke Hindi and occupied a room in Block B right above his cell window, Gray was kept apprised on the tunnel’s progress and relayed messages to the team. He urged Blain and Kennard to launch the escape once the sap reached the rows of rye, even if he was not yet free himself. They could not risk a delay. On one of the walls in Gray’s cell was scribbled with the line, “Stone walls do not a prison make. Nor iron bars a cage.” As he languished in the cellar, looking at those words, the tunnel approached its most critical hour.

  Jim Bennett, an RNAS observer, and his two shift mates crept from their rooms in Block B and climbed the stairs to the attic floor. Another officer accompanied them to unscrew the door-handle plate, let them through, then refasten the plate so the padlock and chain looked secure if a guard came by. The three men removed the panel in the unused attic room that gave access to the eaves, hurried down the sloped space, and exited on the orderlies’ side. At the bottom of the stairs, they slipped through the narrow hidden door in the panel.

  A half hour later, Bennett reached the face of the sap. The 26-year-old from Somerset, England, came from a family of farmers. He had been hunting for U-boats in the North Sea when his plane had mechanical trouble and crash-landed on the roiling waters. Bennett and his pilot were captured by the crew of a German submarine. In the almost year since, he had attempted to escape several camps before being sent to Holzminden. There, he was reunited with his pilot Peter Campbell-Martin, who was already in on the tunnel scheme. Bennett proved a tireless worker.

  Now their new method of entry provided round-the-clock access, and the tunnelers really did need every minute. The “last lap” of their dig had proved to be the most difficult. This was not only because of the distance from the entrance to the end of the tunnel, but also because they had hit another layer of stones as they began to gradually angle the tunnel up toward the surface. After a long stint prying these stones loose from the hard clay, Bennett shimmied his way backward down to the start of the tunnel, to change places with one of his shift mates.

  Jim Bennett.

  Several hours later, the three heaved their sacks over their shoulders and climbed back up the stairs. With the tunnel chamber packed from floor to ceiling with sacks of dirt and stone, they now had to carry out their excavated debris. They scattered the contents of the sacks about the eaves, then returned to their rooms. The finish seemed close enough to taste.

  On June 30, the team figured that their tunnel extended into the rye field at last. By a length of parcel string, it measured almost 60 yards. Infantry lieutenant Walter “Basil” Butler volunteered to pinpoint the tunnel’s exact position. He scrabbled through the hole while some others from the team watched from a fourth-floor window in Block B. For most of its distance, the tunnel ran nine feet underground, but the incline at the end brought it to within five feet of the surface. Butler had with him a long, rigid wire with a white cloth tied to its end. When he reached the face of the tunnel, he would push the wire’s point up through the earth. The team scanned the field for any flash of the cloth. If the guard outside the wall spotted a dirty white flag suddenly emerging from the ground, they—and the tunnel—would be done for. After what seemed a lifetime, the cloth finally emerged. As Bennett described it, it “nosed its way up through the earth like some strange new plant.” Then it quickly disappeared underground again. The sight, a full eight yards short of the field of rye and completely exposed in the wide open field, left the whole team crushed.

  They had no choice than to keep digging. The rye field was farther than they had predicted, and all the rises and falls, twists and turns of their tunnel had thrown off their measurements as well. Any day, the tall stalks of rye might be harvested and their cover lost. Desperate, they worked shift after shift, with a frenzy that left them exhausted and rattled. Not only did they have to excavate another 24 feet of earth, but they also had to cut an offshoot chamber to house the dirt that would be brought down on the night they dug to the surface. One July day followed the next, the layer of compacted stones continuing to dog their efforts, and they had only advanced a few yards. They were simply not making the progress they needed.

  Illustration of a device for carrying sand and soil out underneath a coat.

  Gray’s two weeks of suffering the heat and small confines of solitary complete, he emerged from the cellar more resolved than ever to escape, and they held a late-night meeting in the barracks to bring him fully up to date. They still had six yards to go to reach the rye field, and the jeopardy to their plan of the approaching harvest was too great. The end of the sap was almost within reach of six rows of green beans that had been planted in front of the rye. Although they were only two feet high and were in range of the camp’s arc lights, their dense bushy leaves would go some way to concealing the emergence of the escapees from the tunnel. If they crawled low enough—and, by now, all the officers were experts in that—they could get to the tall rye and away. After some debate, the men voted to revise their exit point. It was their only option.

  In mid-July, as the sappers approached the bean rows, Niemeyer unwittingly helped them with their preparations by lifting the ban on parole walks. It was an odd sensation walking easily out of Holzminden when they had been laboring so hard underground. On one walk, their guard even allowed them to wade into the river Weser to cool off from the hot summer sun. Some of the tunnelers pushed deep into the water to find the easiest crossing point. The other restrictions were also lifted, and, after a month of not being allowed any theater, the prisoners were permitted to stage a revue, Home John, in the Block B dining hall. Some of the actors wore tuxes and evening dresses, and one, playing a statue of William Shakespeare, was in white robes and stood on top of a box engraved with the great dramatist’s name. Even David Gray played a small role. It was
almost as if he had no plans to escape in a few days’ time.

  Jim Bennett’s Holzminden parole walk card.

  Officers crowded into every available space to watch, and Niemeyer sent interpreters to make sure that no criticisms were made of the German Reich. During the intermission, a newly arrived prisoner turned to the fellow next to him and asked indiscreetly, within earshot of the interpreters, “Are you in on the tunnel?” The very utterance of the word sent a shockwave through the surrounding men, some of whom were indeed in on the scheme. The interpreters gave no sign of having heard, nor did anyone dare respond, but it was proof that the existence of the tunnel was common knowledge. There were whispers about it all through the camp. Prisoners who were unaware of the nature of the plan knew there was an escape in the offing. One recent arrival, who was pushing to be a part of whatever the plan might be, wrote in his diary, “Expecting something big to come off any night now … The whole camp is getting kind of anxious.”

  Theater performance right before the escape at Holzminden.

  Some rival schemes aimed to get out ahead of the tunnel crew, knowing that it would result in a crackdown. Rathborne made it his mission to deter these attempts. Soon after the revue, he got wind of a scheme in Block A. Several officers intended to short-circuit the camp lights at night. In the confusion that followed, a decoy would be hung from the windows on one side of the barracks, to look as if someone was climbing down to the yard, while the escapees cut the wire fences on the opposite side and dashed away. It was a clever idea, but Rathborne instructed its ringleader (call him “Livewire”) to put a stop to it. Livewire resisted. Rathborne made it clear that the tunnel had been in the works for almost nine months, and that, as senior British officer, he was forbidding all other attempts until it had gone ahead. Livewire reluctantly agreed but asked to be part of the breakout. “Impossible,” Rathborne said. Over the past several months, any tunnelers occupying rooms in Block A had gradually won transfers to Block B. At this late stage, any requests to be moved might raise suspicions in the Kommandantur. Rathborne won the argument again—or so he thought.

  On July 21, the tunnelers scraped away their last horizontal length of dirt and stone. By their measurements, their sap reached beyond the first two rows of beans. The rectangular offshoot chamber that would store their upward diggings was also complete. At a meeting in the barracks that afternoon, the tunnelers decided that “Zero Hour” would be the following night, after lockup.

  Gray led the meeting. He wanted an orderly breakout. Nothing could be left to chance. Any unnecessary bustle in the corridors of Block B, whether on the officer side or on that of the orderlies, might be noticed by a guard. He wanted no logjams in the eaves, the stairwell chamber, or, worst of all, the tunnel itself. The men would be on edge already, and he did not want a stampede or a scuffle to erupt, nor any panic within the sap. Every man must know his place in the line and when he was to move. There was to be a buffer of time to allow for any delays or hiccups along the way.

  The first escape party would be the 13 officers who made up the team assembled after the departure of Colquhoun and the Pink Toes (with Blain as a late arrival). Once this baker’s dozen was clear, the rest of the team would start to move. First off would be Rathborne. Then Bennett and Campbell-Martin, followed by John Bousfield and Lyon, and finally John Tullis, Stanley Purves, and Leggatt.

  There were also others to consider: “the ruck.” The team drew up a list of other officers who had contributed in some way to the escape. The more important their contribution, the higher on the list their name appeared. Outside of these individuals, each tunneler was allowed to nominate an officer they trusted to be included in the attempt. In total, there were sixty men on the list, almost 10 percent of the total camp population. To maintain secrecy, the men in the ruck would only be informed that the escape was in progress after lockup. Those willing to attempt an escape would be instructed to ready what kits they could and await the signal to go. Allowing the tunnelers a head start, the ruck would begin to move an hour after the last of the core team was out of the sap.

  The orderlies were asked if they wanted to use the tunnel to escape themselves, but they were not willing to trade Holzminden for a coal or salt mine, which would surely be their punishment if they were caught. It would be reward enough to know they had helped the tunnelers escape and had made Niemeyer look a fool. Two officers volunteered to oversee the escape operation. Captain Durnford, Rathborne’s adjutant and a friend of David Gray, was selected to manage the list. He would be responsible for alerting each officer when it was time to go. Lieutenant Louis “Swaggy” Grieve would serve as doorman on the attic floor. Nobody would get past the short, barrel-chested Australian without his permission—not least because he was well loved by the whole camp for his Sydney cheer. On the other side of the eaves, four orderlies would take control: one to oversee flow out of the eaves, one to lead each officer down the stairwell, and two in the chamber itself, sending men into the tunnel. Their plan in place, the men concluded their meeting and went out to the Spielplatz for what they hoped would be one of their last roll calls in Holzminden.

  The next night, the tunnelers ate the heartiest meals they could assemble, got dressed for their journey, and inspected their rucksacks one last time before cinching them closed. All had their journeys to the border planned. They waited for the guard who always made one last check of the corridors and rooms at night to finish and leave the barracks. Suddenly, Livewire, the ringleader of the Block A escape plot, was discovered hiding in Block B. He had heard that the breakout was scheduled to come off and planned to be a part of it. This could not be allowed to happen. First, Livewire was not on the list. Second, if it was discovered that he was missing from his own barracks during the final check of the night, an alarm would be raised.

  Rathborne took control of the situation, ordering Livewire to go directly to the guard on duty and tell him that he had mistakenly stayed in Block B after lockup. He could say that he had lost track of time, that he had fallen asleep—whatever he decided—but he had to go. Defeated, Livewire left to take his medicine. To be on the safe side, the tunnelers postponed “Zero Hour” for the following night.

  “Tonight!” All through Tuesday, July 23, the tunnelers whispered this to one another. Roused from their beds and herded onto the Spielplatz for morning roll call. “Tonight!” Drinking tea, eating stale biscuits for breakfast, waiting in line for one last parcel or letter. “Tonight!” Shuffling about the yard, watching a game of football, a tasteless lunch. “Tonight!” Reading in their rooms, checking their kits again, playing poker, another roll call. “Tonight!” Another circle of the yard, a stretch of the legs, a pot of coffee. “Tonight!” The evening roll call, a final harangue from Niemeyer, murky brown soup for dinner. “Yes: Tonight.”

  At 6 p.m., Gray assembled the team in the barracks. Their long captivity was almost over, and they were anxious, knowing well the perils that lay ahead. They would go tonight, he confirmed. Everybody was to be ready after lockup. The halls and rooms were to be swept of any officers who did not belong in Block B. Lookouts would be posted at the entrance to ensure that neither Livewire nor any other interlopers tried to come inside. There could not be another postponement.

  The tunnelers left to prepare, and Gray sat down with Durnford. The two men were of similar age and experience and shared a particular style: well-trimmed mustaches and a stiff look. A decorated officer of the Royal Field Artillery, Durnford had been captured in the Ypres Salient after getting lost amid the ruined, featureless landscape in August 1917. He had known about the tunnel for months but thought it nothing but a fool’s errand, sure to be discovered. Now that it was finished, he regretted not being on the list, but he swore to do everything he could to see it come off smoothly.

  The sky darkened, and clouds swept quickly across the rising moon—a storm was blowing in. Gray waited with Blain and Kennard in his room, where they passed the time until lockup, examining their maps again, m
aking sure they knew exactly where they would go in the first few hours of their run to Holland. Blain turned his silver cigarette lighter over and over in his hand. He had prematurely inscribed it with the words, “Holzminden—Escaped July 22”—the previous night’s date. Kennard practiced his madman act. He wandered about the room, rolling his eyes, jabbering incoherently, blowing spit bubbles, and whimpering like a wounded animal. “Oh, shut up and listen for a minute!” Gray interrupted at one point, drawing his attention back to the maps. Not even the Father of the Tunnel was immune to the tension of the night.

  Throughout Block B, officers were nervously waiting. They ate what food they could stomach and smoked cigarettes. Some drank wine to bolster their courage. Others declined, believing alcohol would dull their senses and their reflexes when they needed them the most. Jim Bennett was one of those who stayed sober. In his mind, he played out the journey through the tunnel, then the swim across the Weser. Once on the opposite bank, he hoped to navigate quickly—and quietly—through the surrounding fields of corn and rye, eluding any pursuers.

  Rathborne strode the barrack hallways, checking with the lookout at the door that there had been no more surprise visits from Livewire. He confirmed that there were no interlopers inside the barracks. Rathborne then dropped by Durnford’s room to say good-bye. When he put on his feathered cap and glasses to show off his disguise, Durnford praised his look as “wonderfully Teutonic.” Then he wished him good luck.