The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  The heat from the spreading inferno reached several bullet cartridges that Griffiths had not thrown out of the plane. The crack of exploding bullets stopped the advancing soldiers. Blain and Griffiths kept their hands high in the air. The soldiers started forward again, one with an Alsatian dog on a leash. They were almost upon the two airmen when the petrol tank burst. The shock sent the Alsatian dashing away in fright, its handler sprinting across the uneven field after him. For a moment, as the villagers laughed at the absurd scene, Blain could push away the crushing truth that he was about to become a prisoner of war.

  The patrol seized the two Englishmen and marched them into Caudry. Blain, who during his time in South Africa had learned Cape Dutch, similar to German, was able to decipher some of the soldiers’ orders. The town did not have a jail, so they were held in its post office. An hour later, a German officer named Röder, who spoke English, arrived on the scene. He had the two searched and took away some personal letters and money in their possession. Blain managed to hide his silver cigarette lighter. Then Röder and a guard took them away in his car. On the road to Cambrai, they passed columns of worn-out soldiers followed by a line of horse transports. The old French fortress town stood on a slight hill, its stone ramparts stretching fifty feet high. Guards stopped the car at the edge of the old moat. Röder barked at them and was allowed to pass across the drawbridge and under the massive archway of the fortress.

  Blain and Griffiths were directed into a sliver of a cell. The stifling heat hit them first, then the foul smell. Two straw mattresses covered what little floor there was. When they tried to sleep, they found their threadbare, soiled blankets alive with lice. In the morning, a guard brought them some square hunks of sour black bread, their first meal in twenty-four hours. Lunch and dinner was cabbage soup that resembled filthy bathwater. It was served in slop pails. When briefly let out of their cell, they found the citadel crowded with other prisoners and plagued by dysentery. Blain saw a wounded soldier lying on the stone floor, his upper arm a fetid gob of open flesh, dried blood, dirt, and straw. Guards forbid anyone from helping him. The cruelty made Blain seethe.

  Night after night the airman lay on his mattress, too troubled to sleep. Thoughts of escape crept around the edges of his consciousness, but the shock of his capture overwhelmed him.

  Two

  Early on August 17, 1916, under the red glow of a falling flare, Second Lieutenant Will Harvey made his way through the front line trench. The narrow passages were sunk a few feet into the earth, then built up with sandbag walls that rose high over his head, resembling crenellated battlements. Duckboards covered the trench floor, but the slick planks were not enough to prevent his boots sinking into the river of mud beneath as he pushed through the mass of soldiers who inhabited this bleak underworld.

  Those on sentry duty stood up on the fire step, rifles in hand, peering into the dark for any hint of a German advance. Others worked to shore up crumbling walls, hauled supplies, rebuilt parapets destroyed by shelling. Some clambered back down into the trench after fixing a patch of barbwire in no-man’s-land. Those who were off duty huddled along the passageways, smoking cigarettes, brewing tea on charcoal braziers, or trying to catch a couple of hours of restless sleep amid a scurry of rats.

  Harvey continued through the trench, checking on his platoon in the 5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment. He did not look like the typical decorated officer. “I never saw anyone less like a hero in my life,” one soldier wrote. “Imagine a small, dirty, nearly middle-aged man, wearing glasses and an apologetic air, trudging along the pavé under a huge pack . . . He looks as if he stuffed birds in civil life.” At twenty-eight years of age, Harvey was hardly middle-aged, but his short, sturdy frame and soft round face made him easily forgettable. Few have better proved that a book is best not judged by its cover.

  Only the day before, his battalion had moved into the Fauquissart sector. Near the village of Neuve Chapelle, site of a fierce onslaught by the British across two thousand yards of no-man’s-land in March 1915, the area was now in a state of relative calm. They were far north of the Somme, the latest fixation of the Allies in their attempt to break the stalemate of the Western Front.

  Before dawn came the chilling call of “Stand to!” Soldiers scrambled to take their positions along the parapet wall with fixed bayonets, knowing well that the rising sun often brought an enemy attack. In the silence that followed, Harvey and his men stared across the tangled hedges of barbwire for any sign of movement. Minute after minute passed, but the only assault came from the swarms of fetid, blue-bellied flies that thrived in the summer heat and flesh of the dead. An hour later, “Stand down” passed through the line, and drams of rum were given out.

  The morning looked to be the usual start of another day in the trenches. Harvey tried to get some rest in a dugout, but he could not shake loose his thoughts about the patrol he was tasked to lead that evening. He had more experience—and success—with such dangerous missions than anyone in his battalion, but this did not ease his mind.

  The British command wanted to ensure that the Germans did not divert resources from other areas to the Somme, and ordered sporadic raids up and down the line to keep them on edge. For the upcoming raid by Harvey’s battalion, a reconnaissance of the German trenches was considered necessary.

  The more Harvey thought about it, the more determined he was to check out the terrain himself before venturing out with his men. This action might well save one of their lives. Once he had resolved to go out alone first, Harvey was able to shut his eyes and sleep for a couple of hours.

  Later that morning, he searched out his friend from home, Ivor Gurney. Although they were in the same regiment, they rarely saw one another, given the shifting schedules of the trench. The two shared a love for poetry, music, and books. Harvey gave Gurney his pocket edition of The Spirit of Man by Robert Bridges, and they spent a few moments in conversation about Britain’s poet laureate, whose latest work urged his fellow countrymen to face the “intolerable grief” of war by training their minds to “interpret the world according to [their] higher nature.”

  In the early afternoon, Harvey sent word of his proposed scouting mission to his company officer, then alerted the British sentries about the same, to avoid being killed by friendly fire. At 2:00 p.m. he readied to go, a mud-stained copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets in his pocket as always. A sentry pulled aside the sally port in the parapet wall. Mouth dry from nerves, Harvey climbed through it. As the soldier returned the defense into place, Harvey wriggled across a stretch of tall grass that had somehow avoided being burned or destroyed by shelling.

  Three hundred yards away stood the German lines. The next few hours were typically the part of the day when both sides rested before the long pitch of night. Few were on duty apart from the sentries—and even they were not at their keenest. Harvey hoped to reconnoiter a forward sap, a span of trench that ran out perpendicular from the enemy’s front line that was used as an observation post. He believed the sap was lightly defended or altogether unoccupied. If it was, it might serve as a point of attack in the upcoming raid.

  An unsteady wind blew, rustling the tall grass, camouflaging Harvey as he moved forward on his stomach. When he came upon twists of barbwire, he either crawled over them or brushed them aside with the wooden bludgeon he always carried on such patrols. At times, he was hidden in shell holes or in the shadow of a short hedge that ran through this former farmland. Other times, he was all but exposed if he lifted up too high on his forearms.

  Every move risked detection. If his equipment rattled, if he knocked into an unseen tin can or other piece of litter, he was lost. Although he held his bludgeon in one hand and an automatic pistol in the other, he knew that neither would serve much purpose if a German sniper spotted him. All the way forward, he made note of where the barbwire was thickest as well as any shell holes that might serve as temporary shelters from machine-gun fire.

  He crawled down into a drain that ran toward the
German parapet. Very close now. At this point, if he had been there with others, he would have turned back. Alone, confident in his ability, he inched onward until he reached the front line trench. Resting in the shadow cast by the stacked sandbags, he held his breath and trained his ears for any sound beyond: a cough, a whisper of conversation, a footfall, a cleared throat, a rifle stock shifted into place. There was nothing. Lifting his head slightly, he peered left and right along the parapet, searching for a spying German periscope or the top of a head. Nothing. After a few seconds, he rose slowly onto the parapet, then popped up to look down into the trench. It was empty.

  There was no doubt he should return to his own line. He had scouted a path through no-man’s-land and had found a potential access point for the raid on the German trenches. Although his objective was fulfilled, he wanted to explore further, to see how much of this section was undefended. Every yard of weakness in the line he could scout would save many lives. He’d already come this far. “Be damned if I go back,” Harvey muttered to himself.

  He heaved himself up and over the parapet wall into the trench. Unseen, he moved down the sap toward the adjoining traverse and peered down the path, finding it also to be empty. Creeping onward, pistol at the ready, he thought about hiding out in the German lines throughout the night, to scout their mortar placements and machine-gun nests. If he found an exit gap in the back wall of their trenches, he could lie in the grass until early morning. With this idea in mind, he searched for such a gap but found none.

  Reaching the next turn in the line, he heard from behind him the sound of advancing soldiers. There was no going back. He continued on ahead, glancing left and right, urgently needing an exit now. The walls were uniform, tall, and without a break. On the next traverse, he turned the corner to discover a dugout braced with iron—a mortar shelter. He could hide there until whoever was coming from behind had passed. Rushing toward the doorway, he was suddenly confronted by two German soldiers on their way out. In his shock, Harvey did not have time to raise his pistol. The two men seized the poet-soldier of Gloucestershire with little trouble.

  …

  When earth was a chalice

  Of wonder, not malice,

  And time but a palace

  Built for a boy.

  So had written Frederick William Harvey from the trenches, in a poem about his childhood home, the Redlands. Constructed by his father, a farmer and horse breeder, the Georgian house sat amid gardens, orchards, and water meadows on the banks of the river Severn. The eldest of five, Will enjoyed a happy middle-class childhood, mucking about in the duck pond, riding ponies in the surrounding countryside, and sporting against other kids in nearby Minsterworth village, west of the city of Gloucester. While their father tirelessly worked the farm and bred shire horses, their mother was the gentle but firm hand that ran the household. Laughter and love surrounded the Harvey dinner table at night.

  Within the bounds of this normal, pleasant life, Will stood apart from his siblings. He was almost a head shorter than his younger brothers and shared none of their stark good looks. Although he liked the rough-and-tumble of cricket and hockey, he was equally content reading a book. At seven, he could recite by heart whole poems by Shelley and Browning, and he loved to sing. Prone to mood swings, he was never quite at peace within himself. He was also cavalier about risk, whether handling unbroken horses or engaging in a rugby scrum. He measured danger with a different yardstick than others did.

  As the eldest, Will carried the greatest weight of his parents’ expectations. Good school, proper job, proper life. After his eighteenth birthday in 1906, he began the study of law in Gloucester at the urging of his mother. He found the subject dry and soulless. While in the city, he befriended Ivor Gurney and a host of others whose passion was the arts rather than the rule of law. Harvey began writing lines of verse and despaired that he was not being true to the “real me.” His father’s unexpected death, then the failure to pass his law examinations after four years of study, only heightened this feeling that he was being caged into a life he did not want.

  The same rumbling against convention roiled all of Britain at that time. Queen Victoria died in 1901 after almost sixty-four years on the throne, espousing throughout her reign the virtues of order, class, duty, and Empire. Her death unmoored the country, and her son and successor Edward VII ushered in a new age while putting a much lighter hand on the helm. Those insulated from change—or blind to it—looked forward to the first decade of the twentieth century as a languid stroll through a comfortable afternoon. The economy was stable, incomes and trade were up, and there was peace between most nations. Regardless, the modern age was steaming into the station, with all its possibilities and pitfalls. Workers unionized, women demanded the right to vote, parents clamored for better schools for their children, and the poor for opportunities for a better life.

  In the House of Commons, upstart politicians promised that they better represented the people’s will than the bluebloods of the House of Lords. The Irish raised to a fever pitch the right to home rule. Playwrights like Bernard Shaw fought to stage stories of life as it was, not as moralist Victorian censors wanted it to be. Novelists and poets published works with the same intent. The Church fell exposed to advances in science and technology. The secrets of the atom revealed by Ernest Rutherford called into question the very nature of the world, while the invention of radio, the telegraph, motorcars, airplanes, and turbine-powered ships showed the power of humankind to bridge expanses once unimaginable.

  Despite these reverberations of change and his own unease, Harvey tried to remain dutiful to family and a stable career. After renewed study in London, he managed to pass the law exams and began working as a solicitor, writing business contracts, settling will disputes, and the like. Now with a steady salary, he aimed to marry a young Irish nurse, Sarah Anne Kane, who went by her middle name, whom he had met during a short stay in hospital for a minor infection. Everything was falling into place as it should in terms of familial expectations, yet Harvey longed to devote himself to poetry.

  One afternoon in 1914, bored with the law, believing he was helping industry at the expense of the worker, Harvey walked away from his solicitor’s job. He returned to the Redlands, hopeless and unsure of his future in every way but for his love of Anne.

  Then, on June 28, Serbian nationalists assassinated Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Although the death of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire may have lit the fuse of war, any number of acts could have stamped it out before the explosion, but hapless diplomats, and the leaders they served, failed to do so. Indeed, many never tried, giving in to the suggestions of battle-hungry generals. Hastening the disaster was an assembly of ossified empires, tangled alliances, inflexible war plans, massive standing armies, and the views of Germany, most prominently those of Kaiser Wilhelm II, that the country must choose “world power or downfall.”

  At its outset, the march to war looked often like a celebration. In capital cities throughout Europe, crowds poured into the streets, waving flags and singing national anthems. Czar Nicholas stood on the balcony of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, and thousands kneeled to pay him homage. Kaiser Wilhelm appeared in field uniform and spoke to the German people of the sword “forced into our hands.” Mustering in the millions, soldiers prepared for war by sharpening swords, cleaning pistols, polishing their boots, and readying the saddlebags for their cavalry horses. Flowers garlanded their paths to trains and ships, and words such as “honor” and “glory” were spoken with reverence. In his poem “1914,” Rupert Brooke wrote of his thankfulness for this fine hour:

  To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping

  Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary.

  Many believed the war would be over by Christmas. Swept into this patriotic tide, Harvey and two of his brothers, Eric and Roy, enlisted in the army, while their sister Gladys volunteered as a nurse. The youngest, Bernard, stayed at home to help their mother run
the farm. Before leaving for training, Harvey wandered the lane that led to the Redlands. In farewell, he embraced each of the trees along its border.

  While Private Harvey was learning to be a soldier, the true nature of the war manifested itself. Under the Schlieffen Plan, Germany intended a swift march through Belgium, followed by a broad sweep south to envelop Paris; this decisive thrust would allow its armies to focus their attention on defeating Russia. They made quick early progress. Their huge artillery took mere hours to level Belgian forts that had stood for centuries. To forestall future local resistance, they torched villages and executed their inhabitants. It was a first shiver of the horrors to follow. As armies of a scale never seen before engaged one another—marshaling rifles, machine guns, high-explosive shells, and even poison gas—deaths mounted at an alarming rate.

  In the west, the British and French slowed the German advance on Paris, then pushed it back. A series of flanking offensives and counteroffensives followed. In the east, the Russians threw themselves against German and Austro-Hungarian troops with abandon. By winter, any chance of a swift victory was lost. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were already dead, on both sides, and the murder mill of the trenches had only just begun. Now this struggle became what some predicted it always would be—a war of attrition and wholesale annihilation—that enveloped countries around the globe.

  On March 29, 1915, Harvey disembarked in Boulogne, France. After a frigid night bivouacked on a hillside, he climbed into a cattle truck packed with soldiers, and a train carried them toward the front in Belgium. Marching to reach Plug Street—or, more formally, the Ploegsteert sector—his battalion passed a hastily dug graveyard whose rotting stink made them retch. Later, they dashed through woodland, threatened by gunfire. Finally, they scrambled into trenches pooled with the heavy April rains. A sniper’s bullet soon took the left eye of a private in their battalion. Another killed one of their lieutenants. At Plug Street, and across the Western Front, death came from everywhere, every minute of every hour, up close.