The Grand Escape

by Neal Bascomb

  After leaving the tavern, Rathborne walked on, but without a map of the town he soon found himself lost in its tangle of streets, with their half-timbered houses and steepled churches. It would not do to ask for directions. Finally, he saw a sign pointing to the railway station and made his way there. The next train was not until 8 p.m. Not wanting to be seen loitering, he went back into town and bought a ticket for the cinema. The film was unmemorable, but the newsreel, which showed a macabre scene of the Kaiser’s soldiers standing over the bodies of Allied soldiers—Rathborne’s comrades—struck him to the core. The war had seemed at such a remove when he was in prison. Minutes before 8 p.m., he returned to the station and boarded his train. From his comfortable seat, he watched the fields and hills he had marched through that morning blend past outside his window.

  A handwritten railway timetable for trains from Holzminden.

  After their antics in Gellersen, Gray, Blain, and Kennard found a copse of trees and got some sleep. They had barely left the woods after sundown on July 25 when they spotted a company of soldiers and scrambled back into the trees to hide. The soldiers were so close the three officers could see their bootlaces as they passed. Gray learned from their conversation that another patrol had arrested an escaped prisoner farther down the road. There was nothing they could do to help him. After the soldiers were gone, Blain struck his lighter, and Gray examined the map. Every alteration of their route was laden with compromise: A longer distance weighed against a smaller risk of encountering another patrol; moving quickly along a road against the safer but more taxing option of a hike through the countryside. They decided to strike through some fields to circle around the soldiers and then across a well-hidden stretch of road. Then they marched on a northwestern course, sometimes cutting through farms and forested hillsides, other times keeping to the winding roads.

  Every couple hours, they took a break and smoked a cigarette, hands cupped over the ends so the orange glow was not seen in the dark. At sunrise the next day, as they neared Hohenhausen, they had the advantage of some dense woods and so decided to hike on through the daylight hours. For the next two nights, much of the hours spent in a steady downpour, there were no main roads to follow. They took a yeoman’s route, down country lanes and muddy paths, halting often when they saw soldiers and civilians—clearly part of the manhunt. They never stopped for any length of time, knowing well that a tracker or a bloodhound might be closing in on their trail. The patter of the rain was their only cover. Every blind turn down a track or into a gully left their breaths trapped in their throats. Their limited meals and constant thirst exhausted them, but the prospect of someone coming upon them at any moment without warning was even worse. The fewer confrontations they had, the better their odds. Their lunatic cover story might convince—or it might not.

  As the bright red dawn of Sunday, July 28, was breaking, they reached the outskirts of Exter—only 36 miles from Holzminden. With the many cutbacks and looping roads, they had trekked much farther in their five nights on the run. They had still so far to go.

  For the next several days, Rathborne continued with his plan to crisscross Germany by train, taking third-class carriages on slow local trains that stopped in almost every town along the route. He knew that conductors and the police were much more rigorous in their inspections of express trains and better-class carriages than the ones he was on. A downside of third class, as well as the discomfort, was that it was full of chatty passengers with too much idle time. One young girl prattled away for their entire journey. Another time, a German soldier on leave from the front carried on and on about those nefarious Brits.

  In Bebra, he went to rest outside the town, finding a spot in a stack of corn. After a late breakfast of beer, listening to the bitter complaining from his waitress about the shortage of potatoes, he returned to the station and headed on to Fulda. His train came in too late for him to go straight to Cologne, so he bought a ticket to Frankfurt. On arrival there, he cleared out of the station as quickly as he could to avoid any chance encounters with the authorities. His gray suit was dirty, but it was nothing compared to his white shirt, which was so soiled he might have spent the night in a coal mine. He stopped into a tailor’s shop to replace it, but when asked what size he needed he could only stare blankly, then make a fast exit. He had no knowledge whatsoever of German collar sizes.

  There was more trouble when he went to eat dinner at a restaurant. The garrulous owner remarked that he could not quite place Rathborne’s accent. The British officer replied that he was Polish by birth—but he did not stay for dessert in case he was asked any more about his background. He spent the next couple hours in the cinema before it was time for his overnight train to Cologne. He slept fitfully on the 100-mile journey, coming into the station on Sunday morning. Cologne was in a sorrowful state. Most shops were shuttered, and those that were open—butchers, bakers, and grocers—had long lines snaking out the doors. The faces on the streets wore a forlorn gaze, and men, both young and old, hobbled past with war injuries. Concerned about his appearance, Rathborne visited a barber for a shave and a haircut. His next train—to Aachen, a spa town a mere five miles from the Dutch frontier—departed that evening. He spent the afternoon in parks, beer halls, and the cinema, having become an expert in whittling away the hours, seen but unseen, a travel-weary businessman who just wanted to get home.

  At 9 p.m., two hours after his train rumbled out of Cologne, Rathborne arrived into Aachen. He hopped on a tram that terminated at the Ponttor, the medieval gateway northwest of the old city center. From there, he walked to the town outskirts. He had a meal and a glass of gin at a small bar, fortifying himself for the last leg of his escape. Then he hid out behind a railway embankment. With map and compass in hand, he charted a route to the border that stayed clear of any roads or villages. At 11:30 p.m., the sky completely dark, he stashed his valise by the embankment and started west. He had gone only a short distance and was walking through some cornfields when a steady rain started to fall. The pitter-patter masked the sound of the stalks crackling underfoot. For an hour he pushed his way through the crops.

  All of a sudden a pack of dogs started barking. Rathborne dropped down and lay flat, sure that the dogs were close enough to sniff him out. When the dogs quieted, he heard the voices of soldiers. For a long while, he remained absolutely still as the rain soaked through his clothes, leaving his skin cold. Neither the barking nor the voices came any closer. He decided to move ahead. He crawled on his hands and knees, fallen corn stalks cutting his palms as he went. He heard soldiers now and again but decided that his best option was to continue. He was uncertain as to how far he had gone—with the dense stalks it was slow going. On he crawled, hoping the border would come before the sentries pounced. He had to be close …

  On their own, or in bands of twos and threes, many of the escaped officers were recaptured and returned to Holzminden. Captain Frank Sharpe and Lieutenant Bernard Luscombe, numbers 28 and 29 out of the tunnel, were the first to come back through the gates. Niemeyer glowered at them as they passed. The two men had made little preparation and had only a slim head start before the tunnel was discovered. Soldiers nabbed them 15 miles downriver, on the banks of the Weser. With the return of each tunneler, the mood among the rest of the Holzminden prisoners darkened. Would not any manage the home run to Holland?

  Although filthy and stinking, Sharpe and Luscombe were sent immediately to the cellars. No water to wash, no change of clothes was offered, and they were put on a bread and water diet. Niemeyer followed them down to solitary, in a venomous mood. He took Sharpe’s gold watch and put it on the table. Using a knife, he stabbed and crushed the precious heirloom into pieces. Then he ordered the guard to tear the civilian outfits Sharpe and Luscombe were wearing into “ribbons.” The two were left half-naked. Niemeyer gave strict orders that nobody was to communicate with them nor provide any additional food. As far as he cared, they could rot.

  Others soon joined them. The police, soldier
s, and bloodhounds sent out on the manhunt had less impact than the countless German citizens who had been summoned. Whether out of patriotism or greed for the reward, they were incredibly effective. Butler, the first out of the tunnel, was nabbed in a village after he stole a bicycle. Others were flushed out of fields or taken while lost at crossroads. By Monday, July 29, 10 of the 29 escapees had been returned to the camp. Their sorry state—grubby outfits, sallow faces, bodies wasted from loss of food—only darkened the mood further. Morale among the prisoners deflated. It looked like none of the fugitives would make it to Holland.

  With each recapture, Niemeyer swelled in his blue greatcoat. Never one to let good fortune pass without boasting about his own hand in it, he invited in reporters to chronicle each one. They wrote down what Niemeyer dictated, with embellishments for color. Without exception, Niemeyer insisted, the prisoners only succeeded in their escapes because of British accomplices outside the camp. There was an army of spies in the vicinity, he claimed, with no end to their supplies of clothing, food, and intelligence.

  Try as Niemeyer did to wring a confession from the captured escapees, not one of them admitted to even using the tunnel, let alone to having dug it. His attempts to befriend and bribe the orderlies, Cash included, to get them to spill on the conspiracy and on who was involved, also failed. Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Stokes-Roberts, senior officer since the departure of Rathborne, believed that the mass escape would surely see Niemeyer removed from his position. But when General Hänisch sent an officer to investigate the events, he made clear that Niemeyer would stay. No crime of war or level of incompetence seemed capable of dislodging that bully from power.

  Niemeyer’s inquiries and his abuse of the returned prisoners stirred the pot of rebellion throughout Holzminden. One day, the officers lit cigarettes and pipes at roll call, which was not allowed. A thick cloud of tobacco smoke billowed around the Spielplatz. Another day, they refused to answer their names at roll call. Another, they came out bare-chested. Each time, Niemeyer sent in his guards to herd them back into the barracks, each time with a little more violence. So many prisoners had been arrested for violations that they eventually had to be housed in the town jail.

  By looking at where the escapees had been caught, Niemeyer had a bead on the remaining men’s westward line of flight: Holzminden, Bodenwerder, Hamelin, Lohne, Bielefeld, Ahaus, Gronau, and on to the Dutch border. He focused his attention on seeing his fugitive prisoners returned, directing the search himself and calling for local assistance along that route. Even if the prisoners did find their way to the border, he knew well that they would be bedraggled and half-starved. The German sentries would find them easy picking—and his record might yet go unblemished. The easy capture of an exhausted Jack Morrogh by the Ems River was sign of this truth.

  By early August, 15 prisoners were still on the run. But Holland was a long way off, and Niemeyer was confident that he would win out in the end. Then one day he received a random telegram sent from Holland. It was written by one Lieutenant Colonel Charles Rathborne. It said: “Having a lovely time [STOP] If I ever find you in London will break your neck [STOP].”

  The first of the breakout artists had made it.

  Dogs were barking in the village of Twiehausen, but the surrounding fields were too thick with mud to allow Gray, Kennard, and Blain to circumvent the hamlet. Rain poured from the sky. They thought they wouldn’t have any trouble passing unnoticed through the single lane of cottages in the middle of the night, but with every step they took, another dog howled in one of the cottages. They would have a better chance tiptoeing through a kennel with steaks around their necks. A few cottage doors opened, and villagers peered out to see what was causing the ruckus.

  Earlier in their journey, they might have hurried ahead—or not risked going through the hamlet in the first place. But after more than a week without proper rest, hiking miles every day, sleeping outdoors, eating half rations, and wearing damp clothes, they were cavalier. At last, they cleared the village, the cacophony from the dogs fading into the distance. Nobody had stopped them that time, but the three knew well that it only took a single mistake—the misreading of a sign, a careless hiding spot, an inquisitive passerby—and all would be lost.

  The next night, they trudged through the swamp that encircled much of Dümmer Lake, bedeviled by mosquitoes. By the time they reached dry land, they were covered in bites. It was almost dawn, on August 1, but they continued until they had gone around the town of Damme. Every one of their 11 miles hurt. At last they hid in some woods to rest, the afternoon sun blazing overhead. They barely grunted in conversation they were so hungry and tired. During their almost two years of captivity, they had all lost weight, but after the past eight days of strain, half rations, and limited water, they were like skeletons. Their clothes hung loose on their frames, their eyes stared listlessly, and they were all suffering from colds. Blain’s cheeks were sunken; he looked twice his age.

  After dusk, they pushed through their exhaustion and marched down the road to Vehs. Due south of their route was Osnabrück, where they had first banded together to escape. It felt like a lifetime ago. They covered 16 miles that night, but in their ambition stopped too late to find anywhere other than a narrow thicket of trees in which to hide. By their map, Gray determined that they were roughly 45 miles from Sellingen, the Dutch border town, and that they should make their cross to freedom in four nights. They had rations enough for only two. Determination would need to cover the rest.

  The next 24 hours followed much the same. Sleep, then a long, slow trudge, one foot after another.

  In the late hours of Saturday, August 3, near the hamlet of Wieste, the road took a sharp turn away from their steady northwestward course. They left its easy track for a tramp through a deep marsh, their boots sticking in the mud. The only sounds in the night were their grunts of exertion and the sucking sound of the mud taking hold of each step. They did not have the energy to speak.

  Over a dozen miles after they began, they collapsed in some woods yet again before daybreak. They slept soundly. Then, once dusk settled over the countryside, they began yet another trek. They passed through cultivated farmland from time to time, but their efforts to forage from the fields yielded nothing. The best nourishment they found was some rotten turnips that turned the stomach and raw potatoes that were better for cracking teeth than eating. Before morning, they intended to cross a point where the Ems River and canal met. That swim alone was enough to occupy their fears.

  Southwest of Blenheim, perched high in the branches of a tree, Jim Bennett watched German soldiers go in and out of a camp just 300 yards away. It was one thing to see the Dutch border on the map, quite another to see its exact location and surroundings and to determine the best place to cross. Armed sentries patrolled the 350-mile border between Germany and the Netherlands, but there was no high wall, no single line of defense. In some places, there were manmade earthen embankments; in others, a canal or road separated the two countries. Sometimes electrified fences or barbwire divided woods and open fields, and there were also stretches where it was impossible to know what country you were in until you saw a guard or sentry post. In many senses, the border’s irregularity, often dictated by the terrain, was its own defense. The longer you spent looking for an undefended spot, the more likely you were to be caught by a roving patrol or a farmer who would be rewarded handsomely for your return.

  Early that morning, Bennett and Campbell-Martin had taken cover in the tree’s dense foliage. By observing the movements of the frontier sentries, they had a good idea of where the border line lay. They figured their best opportunity was where it ran through some nearby woods. The day passed interminably. There was nothing for them to do but watch the guard and try to forget how thirsty and hungry they were. They had eaten the last scraps of their food, and, connoisseurs of puddle water, were desperate for something fresh to drink. Late in the day, a storm settled over them, turning the sky black. Rain beat down through the leaves, a
nd the thunder cracked and boomed in every direction. It was fairly dark, and they might have set out early, but then the clouds broke and the sun shone brightly again, so they waited in their perch until the sun set and night stole completely over the countryside.

  The two men then dropped down to the ground, fixed their compass for southwest, and started off across the moor. Thoughts coursed through Bennett’s head about what might prevent him reaching freedom—electrified fences, dogs, burly sentries—and he figured out how he would overcome each. Only a bullet would stop him setting foot in Holland before dawn the next day—and maybe not even that. When they reached the woods where they believed the border to be, they dropped to their hands and knees and continued at a crawl. The rain had done little to dampen the crackle of leaves and twigs. It seemed that the closer they got to where they thought the border was located, the more noise they made. A few minutes later, Bennett spotted the line of a barbwire fence. The border. One hundred yards away at the most.

  A lone sentry stood between them and freedom. They straightened up and eased slowly forward through the trees, grabbing heavy branches and sticks in case it came to a struggle. As yet, they had not seen any dogs, nor had they heard barking. Then, all of a sudden, there was a rustle in the woods a short distance away. Bennett stopped cold, and Campbell-Martin drew up alongside him. For a long moment, the two waited. All was silent, but Bennett sensed someone in the darkness ahead—someone restless and on alert. He was sure of it. He advanced—there was no turning back now. He had only gone a few steps when he heard the distinct cocking of a rifle and the sound of its butt being brought quickly to its owner’s shoulder.