by W. N. Brown
Rose was dismayed, but he didn’t find this hard to believe. The North and South would sometimes trade their prisoners. Major Turner decided who would be traded and sent home and who stayed to rot. Libby was such a horrible place that Rose almost couldn’t blame the Yankees who betrayed their fellow prisoners . . . almost.
Despite the potential danger of betrayal, if the escape were going to be a success, they’d need some extra workers.
“One of the men ratting us out to Turner is a chance we’re going to have to take,” Rose said.
Out of the four hundred prisoners cramped into the Chickamauga Room, Rose and Hamilton eventually settled on thirteen new recruits by mid-January.
Anxious to escape, the men immediately agreed to help.
“I was wondering why you boys took so long to ask,” Lieutenant Bennett told Rose.
With their team assembled, that night, Rose and Hamilton led the new recruits down to the kitchen and through the secret passageway. Once they were in the east cellar, he could see the look of horror on the thirteen men’s faces in the flickering candlelight. The rank air combined with the hundreds of rats was a lot for anyone to take. Libby Prison was a house of horrors, but the cellar made the upper rooms look like a fancy New York hotel.
“The walls,” Captain Isaac Johnson, a young man from Kentucky, muttered. “They’re moving.”
“Get used to it,” Hamilton said. “Welcome to Rat Hell, fellas.”
After showing the newcomers the tunnel, Rose explained how things would go. They’d split up into three teams, working in shifts. One team would work on the tunnel one night, while another team would take over the next night. This way, no one got exhausted.
“Because make no mistake,” Rose told them, “by the end of the night, you will be very tired. Each of you will have a job—one will dig while another fans air into the tunnel. One will hide the dirt under the straw while another stands guard. One more of you will be waiting to take over when a digger gets worn out. With enough hard work, I know we’ll make it to the sewer and then to freedom.”
“Only at a place like Libby,” Hamilton noted, “would a man be thrilled about the prospect of entering a sewer.”
The next morning, Bennett approached Rose in the Chickamauga Room.
“I knew it was going to be a challenge,” Bennett said. “But I must admit I had no idea.”
The colonel grinned as Bennett described the previous night’s misadventures. He and another recruit, Major B. B. McDonald, had been among the first of the new team chosen to dig.
“Rats were crawling up my pant legs,” Bennett recounted. “Major McDonald almost lost it after his turn digging. One of the squealing vermin had crawled out of its hole into the tunnel and scratched his face. McDonald scrambled out, sweating and cursing. Thankfully, we were able to calm him down before he got too loud.”
“Well, it shouldn’t be long now,” Rose said. “If my calculations are correct, we’ll hit the sewer sometime next week.”
Bennett ran a dirt-encrusted hand through his hair.
“I sure hope so,” he said.
Captain Johnson approached Hamilton with a disappointed look on his face. The new recruits had worked well together, and the team had made a lot of progress over the past week without a hitch—until now.
“We’ve got a big problem, Major,” Johnson said. “While we were digging we ran into some of the wooden posts supporting the prison. There’s no way we can carve through them with our tools. The wood’s got to be almost a foot thick. Half of the men are ready to quit.”
Hamilton scratched his beard. “Don’t quit yet,” the major replied, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “Let us take a look.”
That night, Hamilton and Rose crept down into the basement. As Hamilton fanned air, Rose went into the tunnel. It wasn’t long before he ran into the large, wooden, dirt-covered posts. He attempted to dig around them on both sides, only to find more posts running parallel and close together. Removing a knife from his pocket, Rose began furiously cutting at the wood. After an hour and many splinters, he had hardly put a dent in one post.
Exhausted, he turned and went back up.
“The war will be over by the time we cut through those posts,” he told Hamilton.
The major shivered and pulled his coat around him.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to survive another winter in this place,” he said.
As a colonel, Rose knew better than anyone that, among soldiers, once disillusionment set in, it could be hard to shake. While he thought about what to do next, Bennett walked over and crouched next to them.
“I think this could help,” he said, revealing a pocketknife. The sharp edge of the blade had tiny nicks in it, like a saw. “Using the blade of one of the other knives, I’ve managed to carve teeth into this one. It could help with the timbers.”
Rose grinned. “Bennett, you’re a genius. I’ll saw some teeth into another knife as well.”
That evening, Rose climbed into the tunnel. When he got to the timbers, he began cutting with the newly modified knife. The blade immediately started sawing into the wood.
It’s working!
After a few hours, Rose had cut halfway through one of the posts. His hand was sore and splintered, so he was happy to let one of the other men take over. This process would repeat itself over the next two nights. The work was painstaking, but eventually the men were able to cut all the way through the timbers.
With the posts no longer an issue, the dig continued to progress smoothly. Until one night, when Rose was digging through the clay with his hands, he began to feel cold water seeping through the ground.
That’s odd . . . I didn’t think we were that close to the river.
At first it wasn’t much, but after a few minutes he noticed that his trousers were completely soaked. Then, after removing a particularly large clump of dirt, freezing river water began pouring in through the roof of the tunnel!
The tunnel quickly filled with mud and river water, leaving Rose no time to take a breath before he was submerged.
Rose desperately jerked his leg in an effort to shake the rope attached—his signal to the man outside that he was in trouble. But more mud was piling on top of him in the darkness. Soon he couldn’t move his leg anymore.
So this is how it ends for me, Rose thought, as the darkness and mud enveloped him. Drowning in a filthy, rat-infested underground tomb in a POW prison!
Chapter Six
The Sewer
Desperate for air, Rose swallowed the filthy water. The sludge caught in his throat. Panicking, he tried to move his limbs, to no avail.
I’m going to die!
Then, after what seemed like an eternity, he sensed the rope around his ankle tighten. As his body was pulled out of the tunnel, Rose felt the weight of the earth around him lessen. Before he knew it, he was back in the east cellar, lying on his stomach and throwing up what seemed like gallons of brown water. The others crowded around him.
“Good God, man!” Bennett said, still holding the rope. “How much water and mud did you swallow?”
Finally, Rose wiped his mouth and sat up, his bloodshot eyes glowing like two red embers in the candlelight. Bennett wrapped his coat around Rose, who was soaked and shaking violently in the cold.
“Th-that’s t-twice you’ve saved me now, B-Bennett,” he stammered.
“You must have nine lives, Colonel,” Bennett said. “Looks like we got a little too close to the river.”
“This t-tunnel is d-done for,” Rose wheezed, “We’ve g-got to start a new . . . one.”
Despite the setback, Rose and Hamilton soon began work on the next tunnel—one that hopefully wouldn’t cave in or get flooded.
After studying the prison grounds, Rose had observed that there was a smaller sewer that led to the larger pipeline. This other sewer pipe was close to the east cellar and, if they could crack into it, they could crawl through the pipe and escape through the main sewer.
�
��All we’ve got to do is chisel into that smaller pipeline,” Rose told the men.
They were huddled in a far corner of the Chickamauga Room, speaking in hushed tones. It was cold and snowing outside. Thin from the lack of food, the prisoners shivered violently in the late January chill. They only had their tattered uniform jackets for warmth, and these were dirty and lice-infested.
* * *
LICE!
Imagine you’re a young cadet who’s recently joined the Union army. You’ve only been in the field for a few weeks. You’re tired, filthy, and scared. You’ve been marching for what seems like days without a proper wash. Then one day, you begin itching under your wool uniform. Only a little at first, but the itching gets worse as the day goes on. By nighttime, it’s unbearable. At camp, by the light of the fire, you peel your sleeves back. Your arms are covered in red bite marks. A grizzled veteran looks at your arms and gives a knowing smile.
“Looks like the graybacks found ya, son!” he says.
Lice were common in both armies during the Civil War. These tiny pests, called “graybacks” by the Union soldiers, thrived in humidity and unwashed wool. They fed on human blood, and could jump from one person to another. Fun fact: by World War I, lice were also called “cooties.”
In addition to causing the horrible itching, some of the parasites were carriers of deadly diseases, such as typhoid. Two-thirds of the estimated 660,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War passed away from disease, typhoid fever being chief among them. Signs of typhoid included diarrhea, fever, and overall tiredness. Men with typhoid could often be seen lying around with a dazed look in their eyes. Despite efforts to stave off the disease by enforcing cleaner conditions in encampments, the fatality rate for typhoid was approximately sixty percent by the time the war ended.
* * *
“We’re with you, Major,” McDonald said through chattering teeth. “Let’s do it.”
Hamilton nodded. He knew the men were tired—tired of spending their nights in the dark. Tired of pawing through the earth like animals, of lying on their backs and stomachs underground . . . But they weren’t ready to give up, at least not yet.
“Good,” Rose said. “And I think I know how to make things go faster. We’ll work around the clock.”
“What do you mean?” Bennett asked.
“Exactly what I said. Instead of just working at night, we’ll work during the day as well. One team at night, and then another can sneak down into the cellar in the mid-afternoon, before the cooks come in to start making dinner. If no one’s around, a team will climb through the fireplace while another man stays to move the stove back in place. The Rebs only count heads in the morning, so we should be able to work undisturbed.”
“That’s a great idea,” Hamilton said. “No one’s in the kitchen except for during the two meal times anyways. The more we work, the sooner we can get out of here.”
“Dangerous, but worth the risk,” Bennett agreed. “Let’s do it.”
The others noticed Rose knock on the wooden floor for luck as they quickly dispersed.
“We’d better find a way out soon,” Hamilton said when he and Rose were alone. “I don’t know how many more holes these boys are gonna be willing to dig.”
The colonel nodded solemnly.
“Hopefully,” he said, “as many as it takes.”
A few days later, Rose was resting in the Chickamauga Room after a particularly grueling shift digging in the cellar, when he was awoken by a weary and smelly—Bennett. The lieutenant told him that they’d reached the sewer pipe, but there was a problem.
“We can’t saw through the wood lining the pipe,” Bennett said. “It’s oak and as hard as petrified wood. It’s impossible!”
“Keep your voice down,” Rose hissed, covering his nose from the smell. “My God, what have you been crawling in?”
“Sewage is seeping out into the tunnel,” Bennett replied. “The stench is unbearable.”
“I’ll take a look,” Rose told Bennett.
Rose made his way to the basement. The smell coming out of the tunnel was indeed horrible. It was so bad, in fact, that the man fanning air into the tunnel had to cover his nose with the frayed collar of his uniform. Rose did the same, and it did little to block the toxic odor.
A few seconds later, Hamilton emerged from the mouth of the tunnel. Even in the candlelight, there was no mistaking how covered in filth he was—except this time it wasn’t the usual dirt and mud.
“Tarnation.” He gasped. “The stench . . . It’s as if it were released from the bowels of the devil himself.”
Rose helped him out of the tunnel.
“Were you able to get into the sewer line?” he asked.
Hamilton flicked the excrement off his hands in disgust.
“No, sir,” he said. “It’s impossible to chisel into it with our tools, and the ungodly slime leaking out . . . It can’t be done. Even if we managed to carve a hole big enough, I believe the pipe is too small for a man to crawl through.”
Before giving up on yet another tunnel, the colonel had to see for himself. He entered the tunnel and the smell hit him like a cannonball. The rank sewage had already leaked out far into the tunnel, and it wasn’t long before Rose was crawling through it. By the time he reached the pipe, its foul contents had soaked through his threadbare uniform.
In the darkness he felt around the wood lining of the pipe and found the place where the others had been cutting. He continued carving in the same area, but the knife kept slipping from his sewage-soaked hands. The stink was overwhelming, and he could barely breathe. Finally, after the knife he was using snapped in two, he gave up and crawled back out.
“Any luck?” Hamilton asked.
Rose shook his head, sending droplets of sludge flying into the air. “Unfortunately, no. I’ll tell the others. But first, let’s get as much of this foulness off of us as we can. We smell like a saloon outhouse.”
Chapter Seven
An Unexpected Ally
The sewage turned out to be the breaking point for most of the men. Even Lieutenant Bennett, whose enthusiasm had been unwavering, seemed to be at the end of his rope.
“I just can’t do it, sir,” he told Rose. “I can’t go back into those tunnels. I’m sore all over. I can’t take the air, the filth, the rats . . . I’m done.”
Hamilton looked at the shivering group of men who were once again huddled in a corner of the Chickamauga Room. They had been digging for weeks. Their tired eyes stared at the floor. Dried, cracked lips and sickly pale skin made them look more like upright corpses than living men.
Feeling deflated, the major was about to walk away when Rose spoke up.
“Gentlemen,” he said. “I know you’re tired. I know your bodies ache and your spirits seem broken. But we’re close. Hamilton and I have been checking the layout of the grounds from the windows, and have figured out a new angle. This next tunnel will be our way out. I give you my word. And if I’m wrong, then quit. No questions asked. Let’s all take tonight to rest, and then commence further discussion on the matter tomorrow.”
The men groaned in unison, then hesitantly agreed to Rose’s terms.
After the group separated, Hamilton turned to Rose.
“I don’t recall having any such discussion about a new tunnel,” he said.
Rose smiled. “I know. Perhaps we should have one now.”
Moving to a barred window, Rose pointed to a shed about fifty feet away from the east cellar. It stood between two larger buildings on the other side of a wooden fence that bordered Canal Street.
“I think we should try to tunnel into that shed,” he told Hamilton, his breath steaming in the cold January air.
Hamilton nodded thoughtfully. “It’s farther from the river, so the ground will be dry and won’t flood. It’s also distant from the rest of the prison, so we won’t have to worry about hitting any foundation posts.”
Later that day, at another meeting in the Chickamauga Room, the two men ran their
plan by the others. It took a bit of convincing, but eventually everyone was on board with this final attempt to escape.
Digging on the new tunnel began that night. Although the men were still tired, once they’d managed to chisel through the wall, they found the soil easier to dig through this time around. It didn’t take long for them to get farther than they had with any of the other tunnels. This did a lot to lift their spirits.
February arrived. One afternoon, as Hamilton lay on the floor exhausted after a long night, he was approached by a young man named Robert Ford. Ford was an officer and one of Libby’s twenty black prisoners, who slept in the west cellar. Before getting captured, he’d been a teamster for the Union—a soldier who drove a team of horses (or oxen) to transport ammunition and other supplies for the war effort.
At Libby, Ford had been given a job as Turner’s hostler, the person who took care of the horses. Hamilton knew Ford was allowed to freely roam the grounds outside the prison walls during the day.
“Are you Major Hamilton?” Ford asked.
“You guessed right, friend.”
“Name’s Robert Ford.”
The two shook hands.
“How can I be of service to you?” Hamilton asked.
“It’s I who can help you,” Ford countered. “One of your associates approached me with the knowledge of your recent activities. I’d like to assist you in any way that I can.”
Hamilton felt he could trust Ford. There were rumors that Ford had helped previous escapees and that he knew a Union sympathizer in the area, a woman named Elizabeth Van Lew, who offered her home as a safe house for prisoners to hide. Some inmates said that Ford was in contact with Van Lew and that he had given previous escapees directions to her house.
“We’re attempting to tunnel into a shed on the other side of the fence, to the east,” Hamilton told Ford. “I think we’re close, but we don’t know exactly how far it is.”