Soon after the afternoon Appell, Bill and Eddie strolled from their barrack down to the Abort. As dusk descended, the camp seemed its normal self. On the sports field a rugby game was in progress, a kriegie international, England vs. Australia. The shouts and grunts faded and the muddied players made their way back to their blocks, passing the small, innocuous knots of men wandering through the dusk. Inside the Abort, Bill went through the familiar routine for the last time. Up came the lid of the lavatory bench. He ducked through the hole, inhaling once again the stench rising from the morass below, disengaged the brick hatch and pushed it inside. He reached for the handles under the bench, lowered himself down and jack-knifed through the hole and into the chamber.
NINE
Soon the chamber was crowded with bodies as the first batch of escapers clambered in. The margarine lamps gave off an orange light, casting gigantic shadows over the walls. Many of the escapers were wearing dyed black combinations to protect their civilian clothing. It looked to Tommy Calnan like a ‘scene from Dante’s inferno’. He made his way over to Eddie Asselin, who was preparing to squeeze his broad ice-hockey player’s shoulders into the entrance of the shaft. ‘Good luck, Eddie,’ he told him. ‘I hope you make it home. I’ll buy you dinner at Prunier’s in a week’s time.’1 Asselin managed a smile. He seemed nervous. ‘That’ll be the day,’ he replied. Then, after urging Calnan to see that he ‘got plenty of air’, he disappeared into the black maw of the tunnel, followed closely by Bill and the first escapers in the queue.
In the chamber Calnan and Kee were working the air pump, pushing it back and forth like demented oarsmen. Then more feet were swinging through the chamber entrance and it was their turn to go. Up at the front, Bill and Eddie wriggled towards the tunnel’s distant end, pushing their luggage before them. Although strict silence had been ordered they could hear the grunts and curses of the human chain crawling nose to toe behind them. By about 7.30 the tunnel was full up, with twenty-six men stretched along its length. Another half a dozen waited in the chamber. The last part of the operation was the most risky. Bill knew very well that potential catastrophe was awaiting them. Tunnel collapses were an occupational hazard, but in normal circumstances if the shoring was sound there was no great cause of alarm, for it was a relatively easy matter for one or two men to dig themselves out. This was different. ‘With the men lying head to toe all the way back behind us, even a slight tunnel collapse would mean the end,’ he wrote. ‘It would take hours for each man to wriggle backwards, allowing the one ahead to do the same.’ In that case only those nearest the entrance stood any chance of getting out alive. The rest would face a slow death by asphyxiation.2
Tommy Calnan was also feeling a mounting sense of alarm. It was pitch black and a boot in the face told him he had caught up with the man in front. His shoulders were scraping the walls on either side and if he raised his head an inch it hit the roof. He felt the first stirrings of claustrophobia.
I tried not to think of the tons of sand above me, supported only by flimsy pieces of wood. But the closed-in feeling was growing. The absolute darkness, the physical impossibility of making any but the slightest movement, and worst of all, the knowledge that any retreat was completely blocked by the long line of men lying behind me, all these sensations were beginning to strain my self-control to the limit.3
Robert Kee, lying behind him, had a different anxiety.
I found myself listening in the darkness to my heart beating against the packed earth of the floor, clutching an attaché case filled with escape food and fingering a pocketful of false papers, but still not really believing that I should escape… Somehow I was sure that the alarm would be given before anyone had got away and we should all be hauled ignominiously out again.4
Either that or they would be spotted when they emerged from the tunnel. ‘There would be a shot, a thumping of heavy boots down the path over our heads and then, provided that the guards did not start more shooting, fourteen days solitary in the “cooler”.’
The minutes crawled past and turned into hours. Calnan’s incipient panic had subsided now. ‘The familiar touch of the wooden shoring frames and of the damp sand on which I was lying again became ordinary and reassuring sensations. My exaggerated fears dissolved and, after a while I was able to doze with my head resting on my forearms.’5
At the front, Bill and Eddie worked carefully, driving the tunnel upwards at a shallow angle. It was essential that they broke through the topsoil at exactly the right point, so they would emerge in the slight fold in the ground fifteen yards from the wire. Lying in the dip were some clamps, mounds of earth used to store potatoes over the winter. They scraped away, piling the sandy soil in a pit they had dug in the tunnel floor, as there was no possibility of passing it back down the line. Excavating upwards was more difficult than burrowing horizontally, and progress was slow. They also had to fit boards to the side of the exit shaft to prevent it collapsing as the escapers kicked and levered their way out.
None of these preparations was appreciated by those behind them. The orders were for strict silence, but complaints and queries began to ripple up and down the line. ‘From behind me whispered messages were being passed from man to man,’ wrote Tommy Calnan.
‘What the hell’s gone wrong?’
‘When are we going to break?’
‘For Christ’s sake, hurry it up or the last ones won’t be out before daylight.’
Only one message came back from the face and it was rudely unhelpful. ‘——— well shut up and keep pumping.’6
The air was piped straight to the men doing the digging at the front, who needed it most. It was hardly the sweetest, being sucked from the chamber next to the pit. It was better, though, than the deoxygenated fug which was all that the men in the tunnel had to breathe. Anxiety about a collapse alternated with fear of suffocation. How much more of this could they endure?
By now Ash and Asselin were close enough to the surface to hear the tread of the guards’ boots as they passed overhead. The sound was alarming yet inspiring, a harbinger of the world outside the wire. There were only inches to go. Eddie raised his arm and with a triumphant shove of his homemade trowel broke through to the surface. It was a great moment for both of them. ‘The scent of living plants joined the wonderful rush of fresh cold air which will forever be linked in my mind to the smell of freedom,’ Bill remembered. ‘Men further back along the tunnel gasped and gulped in great lungfuls of it. We had reached the outside world.’7
To those inside the tunnel the draught of pure, clean oxygen was as intoxicating as a tankard of cold champagne. ‘As I crawled forward I smelled the fresh air,’ wrote Calnan. ‘It was now coming back from the face in a strong current. I filled my lungs breathing deeply.’ There was no need to pass any progress reports back down the line now, for ‘everybody could smell the cold air of freedom’.8
But they were not out yet. Cautiously, Eddie cut away the roots and shoots around the hole, handing them back to Bill who trampled them into the dirt. Then, slowly, he pushed his head out into the night. They were exactly where they were supposed to be, bang in the middle of the dip and next to a potato clamp. Footsteps sounded near the wire. Eddie froze as a guard came into view. The German strolled complacently past, silhouetted against the wire which was lit up by lights which, mercifully, all pointed inwards on the camp. As the guard’s footsteps faded, Eddie scrambled through the hole. Then it was Bill’s turn. He had just poked his head through when the guard turned back on the return leg of his patrol. Bill waited, afraid to make any sudden movement, feeling that his head must seem as big and obvious as a pumpkin. But the guard strolled past oblivious and then Bill was scrabbling through the hole and crawling commando-style into the cover provided by the hump of a potato clamp. Beyond it lay a field that sloped downward away from the camp, and two hundred yards or so further on stood a wood. ‘The silence held and I waited for the right moment to make a last terrifying dash into the trees,’ he remembered. ‘I scurried f
orward, half-crouching, half-running.’ It seemed that ‘every footstep sounded like someone dropping an entire set of crockery, and every twig snap sounded like a rifle being cocked to finish me off.’9 But then he was inside the welcome darkness of the wood, where Eddie was waiting for him, still panting with exertion. There was no time to see how the others were faring. Once they caught their breath they were off.
Back in the tunnel the exhilaration the others had felt at the breakthrough was beginning to fade. Forward progress was spasmodic, and after each man exited there was an agonizing wait for those behind as the next one struggled to haul himself out. They were desperate to leave and the flurry of each departure sent more earth tumbling back in, so that by the time Robert Kee got there the exit ‘drew elegantly narrower’ like ‘a bottle of hock lying on its side’.10
He was number fourteen in the queue. When he poked his head out, the guard was still oblivious of the drama taking place a few yards from his jackboots. Kee waited as he ambled past, humming to himself and stamping his feet. When he made his move, his shoulders got wedged in the hole. He tried again, this time poking his arms through first, but his waist would not go through. It did not help that he was wearing a thick, cut-down overcoat, and the pockets were stuffed with escape rations. He now realized that he had left his attaché case behind him. He dropped back into the tunnel, retrieved it and started the whole process again. The entrance was too narrow, even for a skinny man like himself. As he wriggled and kicked the guard came into view again. Kee became frantic. Finally he dragged himself clear just as the guard came level with him. He lay dead still, pressed to the ground, and the guard strolled harmlessly by. He was whistling now. Kee waited a minute or two then set off, half-crawling, half-scurrying through the potato clamps and into a ditch. He dared to turn back for a last glance. The camp looked smaller now, and ‘seemed to hang in the darkness on the chain of lights which shone at regular intervals all around it’.
He picked himself up and set off again in a crouching run across the two hundred yards of open ground to the wood. In the feeble moonlight he could see others doing the same. They reminded him of ‘soldiers of the ’14–’18 war, going over the top’.
When he reached the wood he could hear voices calling out, trying to locate their partners. There was no sign of Tommy Calnan. Just as he was despairing of ever finding him, Calnan emerged out of the field and collapsed in an exhausted heap. Only a few days before he had been in a hospital bed recovering from appendicitis. Kee, though, was anxious to press on. In his account of the episode he fictionalized Calnan as ‘Sammy’ and described the incident thus:
‘Let’s go,’ I said to Sammy.
‘When I’ve got my breath back.’
‘The sooner we put some distance between us and the camp the better.’
‘I quite agree, but I can’t do that without any breath, can I?’11
At that moment Kee ‘realized the strain that was going to be placed on our partnership. Our fate and actions were now linked together as closely as those of Siamese twins and every decision contained a potential quarrel.’ It was the same for all of them. Most preferred not to travel alone. The solace of companionship, though, could easily sour and old friendships would be tested to the limit in the times ahead.
By half past midnight all thirty-two escapers were clear of the tunnel. The last man out was Harry Day. The night was cold and silent, undisturbed by shouts, gunshots or blaring klaxons. It looked as if it would take until morning Appell before the alarm was raised. They had eight hours to put as much distance as they could between them and the camp.
They would be heading to all points of the compass. Bill and Eddie’s plan had been worked out over many hours and was based on what intelligence they could glean from Crawley’s briefings and their own analysis of the geomilitary situation. They both discounted the Baltic route. Once the breakout was discovered the first thing the Germans would do would be to redouble the already formidable security at the ports. They planned to move southwards, hoping that the enemy would be less alert to escapers travelling in an unexpected direction. They were heading to Warsaw in the hope of making contact with the Polish underground in the city. Like Paddy Barthropp they hoped that the Poles would help to pass them to Yugoslavia, where they would join up with Mihailović and the Chetniks. ‘We intended then either to remain with him or if possible be evacuated through the Adriatic,’ Asselin told his intelligence debriefer after the war.12
Calnan and Kee set off north for Bromberg, intending to take trains westward, with the ultimate aim of getting to France and from there across the Pyrenees. Calnan had made a study of train times with information gleaned from German newspapers, and had drawn up a schedule which he believed would get them out of Germany in the shortest possible time. Aidan Crawley had decided to travel solo, by train west to Berlin then south to Cologne and Innsbruck, from where he would attempt to cross the border into Switzerland. Tony Barber was heading to the Baltic with the intention of finding a passage to the Danish island of Bornholm, where his mother’s family lived.
By morning Bill and Eddie had covered more than fourteen miles. They would have got further were it not for the marshy terrain, and the fact that they had to stay clear of roads and houses, knowing that there was a 9 p.m. curfew in place and any movement would raise suspicion. Before dawn they took shelter in a wood and fell into an exhausted sleep.
It was 5 March, almost a year since Bill had been shot down. Sleeping on a bed of leaf mulch was nothing new to him. It was how he had spent his nights on the first days after the crash. He was better prepared now. He and Eddie had a map and compass, a few days supply of food and some cash. Their clothes were rough and ready, made from cut-down uniforms and dyed blankets, but that did not matter too much in a land where many of the men were dressed like scarecrows. They had come to accept, though, that if they relied on their own resources alone they were bound to fail. If they were to make it to Warsaw, sooner or later they would have to seek the help of the local population.
Calnan and Kee planned to cover the sixteen miles to Bromberg in time to catch the 6 a.m. train heading west to the town of Schneidemühl (Piła to the Poles). That was a reasonable ambition, providing there were no setbacks or diversions. Taking their course from their compass, they would head north-east until they hit the railway line, then follow it to Bromberg station. Calnan noted warily that Kee was ‘eager and energetic’. He knew he would have trouble keeping up. Walking on a moonless night across unknown territory proved much more difficult than it had seemed when they were drawing up their plan. They ‘fell into ditches, walked into fences, tripped over logs and startled a number of animals out of their wits. Frequently we frightened ourselves.’13 At one point Kee plunged chest-deep into a pond. The mishap only spurred him on, but Calnan had the compass and he was forced to wait for him to catch up, teeth chattering in the cold.
They reached the railway two hours after setting out, and their spirits rose. It was now simply a matter of walking in a straight line along the permanent way to their destination. But as other escapees had found before them, following a railway track was more difficult than it seemed. The space between the sleepers was just short of a normal stride, so they could never hit a regular marching rhythm. Calnan was feeling the effects of his illness and after a few hours he was exhausted. They tried resting for five minutes in each hour but he fell further and further behind. They finally arrived in Bromberg at 7.30 a.m. The train to Schneidemühl had long gone. The town was wide awake. It was the first time on their journey that they had come across other people, and it seemed to them that every eye was upon them and everyone must know immediately who they were.
Aidan Crawley had a definite destination when he emerged from the tunnel. He was friendly with a Polish officer called Alexis Kowalski, who gave him the address of some relations living near Bromberg who, he believed, would harbour him for a day or two. He was well kitted-out in an overcoat, cardigan, plus fours made from blanke
ts, and a felt trilby obtained from one of the guards. He had 200 Reichsmarks, which was a good supply of cash, and plenty of escape ‘mixture’ in his suitcase. He walked all night without encountering anyone except a boisterous Alsatian dog. He caught a few hours sleep before dawn then went on his way, passing through a small village. A man eyed him knowingly then spoke to him in French. ‘The next time you spend a night in the forest you must clean the sand off your back,’ he told him, and proceeded to do it for him. It seemed like a good omen. He thanked him and carried on walking.14
Tony Barber was eighteenth out of the tunnel. He was well turned out in an air-force raincoat that could easily pass for a civilian one and had forged papers identifying him as a Danish Freiwilliger – a volunteer worker – a role he was able to carry off since he had learned the language from his mother. He had managed to get a swastika lapel badge from one of the guards, an adornment that would come in very useful. He also had a good supply of Reichsmarks, which had been sent into Schubin in a phoney relief parcel by IS9. His plan was to catch a train from Bromberg back to Schneidemühl, then get a connection to take him to the Baltic port of Kolberg. From there he could catch a ferry to the Danish island of Bornholm to shelter with his relatives. He was sure they would be able to arrange for a fishing boat to take him to Sweden. Back in the camp he had made friends with a prisoner known to the Germans as John Thompson but in reality Jørgen Thalbitzer, a 22-year-old Dane who had escaped from Denmark in December 1940 and made his way via South Africa to Britain, where he joined the RAF. He was shot down during a cross-Channel operation in July 1942. They had discussed travelling together but in the end Barber had decided to go it alone and Thalbitzer teamed up with Jimmy Buckley.
The Cooler King Page 14
