by Neal Bascomb
Prisoners spotted the brazen move from the windows of both barracks blocks. At first they could not quite comprehend what they were seeing. Two sentries were walking a beat in no-man’s-land behind each block—surely they would notice them. But the officers had carefully timed their movements: at this point the sentries were walking away from each other, headed to the western and eastern ends of each barracks block, their backs to the two escapees. Once they reached the end of the blocks, however, they would turn around and come back. If they turned early, Medlicott and Walter would be lost. There was the guard who patrolled outside Holzminden’s perimeter wall to contend with as well.
Still Medlicott and Walter continued. They were now at the northern wall. Medlicott hoisted his partner up on his shoulders, and Walter snipped a hole in the barbwire palisade. As soon as the hole was complete, he passed the wire cutters down to Medlicott, pushed through his rucksack, then crawled through after it. Still, no alarm was raised.
Medlicott threw the wire cutters back across no-man’s-land for Cash to retrieve. Then, just as the two guards made their about-face, he scaled the wall like a spider and dove through the hole in the palisade. No alarm was raised from the sentry posted beyond the perimeter.
Outside the wall, Medlicott and Walter calmly stood by the wall, unfolded gentlemanly Homburg hats from inside their jackets, lit cigarettes, and started down the road like two villagers out for a Sunday stroll. What the men didn’t know was that a sharp-eyed German guard watching over the isolation cells in Block B had, through a small, high window, caught sight of them mounting the wall. By the time the guard ran up the steps into the yard, the two breakout artists had turned off the road and were heading toward a span of woods half a mile away up an incline.
They were still within sight of the camp when the alarm was finally raised. At first they kept to a fast walk, hoping they might yet be mistaken for civilians. When guards poured out of the main gate and headed in their direction, they quickened into a jog. Soldiers from a nearby garrison, alerted by telephone by Niemeyer, cut them off before they reached the woods.
When he was brought back to Holzminden, to the sound of cheers from the officers, Medlicott looked like a caged animal ready for another break. Niemeyer met him in the yard, flushed with pride. He clapped his hand to the escapees’ chests and declared, “All my boys come back to me.” When the officers standing in the windows would not be quiet, Niemeyer ordered his guards to fire at the barracks. Nobody was hit, but the crashing glass forced the men to back away. Medlicott and Walter were brought down into the cellars and eventually sent away, not to be seen again at Holzminden.
At the next roll call, triumphant at the capture of the great Harold Medlicott, Niemeyer boasted about his “unblemished record” of no successful home runs to Holland by the prisoners in his charge. But if he thought that the foiled attempt had crushed the morale of any who would dare to be next, he was wrong. As one prisoner wrote to Medlicott’s family, the staggeringly brave display only proved to them all that “it was impossible for the Germans to confine a determined man.”
Captain David Gray, “Father of the Tunnel”
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Second Lieutenant Caspar Kennard
COURTESY OF DIANA GILLYATT
Second Lieutenant Cecil Blain
COURTESY OF HUGH LOWE
Telegram to Kennard’s family
© RAF MUSEUM
FE2b biplane
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Oswald Böelcke, German ace who shot down Gray
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Second Lieutenant F. W. Harvey, “the Poet”
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
Clausthal prison camp
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Life at Gütersloh, by C.E.B. Bernard, from F. W. Harvey’s Comrades in Captivity
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
Crefeld camp exodus, by C.E.B. Bernard
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
General Karl von Hänisch, 10th Army Corp Division
LANDESARCHIV BADEN-WUERTTEMBERG 456 G NR. 228
Sublieutenant Leonard James Bennett
COURTESY OF LAURIE VAUGHAN
RNAS observer Bennett’s first letter to his mother after his capture
COURTESY OF LAURIE VAUGHAN
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Rathborne
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Captain Edward Leggatt, Blain’s escape partner
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Holzminden, “the Black Hole of Germany”
COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
Karl Niemeyer, Holzminden commandant
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Canteen, Holzminden
COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
Holzminden cookhouse
COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
Dining area, Holzminden
COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
Holzminden bedroom
COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
Officers in front of Block B, Holzminden
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Holzminden bed with wood planks missing, by C.E.B. Bernard
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
Inspections at Holzminden, by C.E.B. Bernard
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
Tunnel entrance underneath the stairs
© RAF MUSEUM
Escape artists’ contraband: shaving brush with hidden map
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Escape contraband, including compass, hidden in a tin of tongue
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Imperial War Museum A Gaiety Theater performance at Holzminden (left), and a theater program (right)
THEATER IMAGE REPRODUCED WITH THE PERMISSION OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, LEEDS UNIVERSITY LIBRARY: LIDDLE/WWI/POW/016; PROGRAM COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
James Bennett’s Holzminden parole card
COURTESY OF LAURIE VAUGHAN
Caricature of Karl Niemeyer, by C.E.B. Bernard
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
An escape at Holzminden, by C.E.B. Bernard
WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE F. W. HARVEY ESTATE
Holzminden parade ground during the winter—an impromptu skating rink
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Forged identity card for “Carl Holzmann” (Blain)
COURTESY OF HUGH LOWE
Forged pass for the transportation of “lunatic Kurt Grau” (Kennard)
© RAF MUSEUM
Blain, Gray, and Kennard (left to right) in their escape disguises
COURTESY OF HUGH LOWE
Block B, Holzminden, and the dug-up tunnel
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Lieutenant Edgar Garland, hero of the collapsed tunnel
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Captain Hugh Durnford, adjutant to Rathborne
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
The escape artists in free Holland
COURTESY OF PATRICK MALLAHAN
Congratulatory note to James Bennett from King George V
COURTESY OF LAURIE VAUGHAN
Recaptured tunnelers at Holzminden
COURTESY OF THE CLOUSTON FAMILY
Invitation to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the Holzminden escape
COURTESY OF KEIL TULLIS
Program for the thirtieth-anniversary dinner reunion, 1948
COURTESY OF KEIL TULLIS
The escape artists’ anniversary dinner, 1938
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM
Bennett with his children
COURTESY OF LAURIE VAUGHAN
James Bennett’s notes for his MI9 lectures
COURTESY OF LAURIE VAUGHAN
Fifteen
In late February 1918 the tunnel plot ran into trouble yet again. The sap was some twenty-five yards long when the men began to encounter root
s and flat rocks embedded in hard clay. Progress slowed, and the tunnelers emerged after their shift with cuts to their hands and a brawl’s worth of bruises from bumping their arms, legs, and heads against the stones. They suspected they had run into an ancient riverbed.
At the same time, their team was falling apart. Since the Boxing Day announcement about prisoners being transferred to internment in Holland, similar declarations came almost weekly. Often these were contradicted the very next day—names dropped, dates postponed.
Mossy, Rogers, Ellis, Colquhoun, and a handful of the original tunnelers received word to pack their bags. Rather than welcoming the news, they were devastated. They had spent their time in captivity risking death, suffering solitary confinement, and exhausting themselves—all with an eye on escape. They saw the transfer as failure, especially since, under the terms of the agreement between the Germans and the Allies, released soldiers were forbidden to return to the battlefield. Further, although they would be free from Niemeyer and the trials of Holzminden, they would be leaving their friends behind in Germany, among them Will Harvey, who was being moved to another camp, Bad Colberg, on account of his “bad character.” As Colquhoun said, “I felt like a deserter, nothing more or less.” Given the choice, he would gladly have traded places with someone to remain.
At the end of February, Gray said his goodbyes to Colquhoun and the Pink Toes. They left the sap in his hands, as the “Father of the Tunnel.” Now only Kennard and RNAS observer Frederick Mardock remained from the original team. Gray would not only need to figure out how to burrow through the layers of rock the men had encountered, but also to recruit a new band of tunnelers to the effort.
Picking the right men was essential. They needed to be resilient, coolheaded, brave, and most of all discreet. Not even their roommates could know about the tunnel lest word slip to someone who might give them away, either deliberately or inadvertently. Thanks to Hänisch sending the most diehard escape artists to Holzminden, Gray had a long list from which to choose. He entrusted Mardock, whom he had known since Osnabrück, with the task of sitting down with potential candidates.
Quietly, usually at night, over a glass of wine or some treasured brandy, Mardock held his meetings. Walter Butler and William Langran were both infantry officers who had been captured during the first fighting on the Western Front. They were such troublemakers, they were considered ineligible for transfer to Holland. They were perfect for the team.
Next Mardock recruited Sublieutenant David Wainwright of the Royal Navy. Wainwright had been on board the HMS Nomad, a British destroyer, on May 31, 1916, when it was sunk during the Battle of Jutland, the largest sea battle of the war. Time and again he had rankled his captors with his escape schemes. Next was Oxford-educated Neil McLeod, Second Lieutenant of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. He had been shot and captured in early 1917, in advance of the Allied offensive at Arras. He’d escaped from other camps twice since then, until being delivered to Holzminden. Lieutenant Arthur Morris of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers had also proven tough to keep locked up.
Gray then added Robert Paddison and Clifford Robertson. Like Colquhoun, they were officers of the Canadian infantry. They had been caught in April 1917 while trying to take German emplacements during the Battle of Arras. Fellow Canadian Andrew Clouston was also invited to join the team. His scheme to escape by chute over the Holzminden wall might have failed, but he had shown his fearlessness. Mardock also recruited his fellow RNAS pilot Colin Laurence. The two shared the same rare experience of having force-landed off the coast of Belgium before being taken ashore by U-boat. Since being captured with Bennett, Laurence had attempted to escape from several camps. He was one of those who had broken out through the secret panel in Block A but was captured again after becoming lost in a fog.
All told, that made a core group of twelve, to which Gray decided to add a supplemental work party of six to dig, serve as lookouts, and perform other tasks. The only distinction was who would have priority of escape on the night they decided to use the tunnel.
Two of his first selections were both observers: Peter Campbell-Martin and Jim Bennett. In early 1918, Campbell-Martin was shot down west of Brussels. He escaped from a German encampment in a small village the day he was captured, only to be nabbed nine days later while trying to make it to Holland. At his first prison camp, he escaped again. Campbell-Martin and Gray had much in common; both were born and raised in India, and military educated. Bennett was an obvious choice, not least because Laurence knew him to be brave and trustworthy. Although his first tunnel, at Ströhen, had been discovered, Bennett was inspired by the bold escape of Medlicott and Walter to try anything. He was known as a hard worker, and—from his ceaseless walks around camp—he was surely in shape for the job.
One day in March, Gray was in his barracks room when some of the new team came in, back early from their shift. They explained that they had run into a hunk of sandstone whose dimensions they could not measure, although it was assuredly too big to break apart and haul through the narrow tunnel. He needed to come take a look.
Gray hurried from his room, changed into an orderly outfit, and made his way down into the secret chamber. Lamp in hand, he crawled to the face of the tunnel. Poking at the sandstone confirmed it was too hard to chisel into pieces. He bored holes in the dirt around the rock to see how far it went, but he could not find its edge. There was only one solution. They would have to tunnel around the obstruction, no matter how long it took. The news depressed the men, particularly since they were already engaged in the difficult task of cutting through roots and the compacted riverbed. More work, more time, more risk: Gray asked all of this from them, in no uncertain terms. And they accepted. As one of the tunnelers succinctly said, “The turn had to be made, and it was so.”
Soon after, a new prisoner arrived at Holzminden: Cecil Blain. Happily and at long last, he was back together with Kennard and Gray. Blain became a key part of the team. He had spent over two months digging a tunnel at Neunkirchen, experience he offered to Gray, who accepted straightaway. If they were ever to break free from Holzminden, they needed every practiced hand available. Reports from the Continental Times and smuggled-in newspapers portended that it was unlikely peace would come anytime soon.
Just before dawn on March 21, 1918, Operation Michael was launched. Named after the sword-wielding archangel and patron saint of Germany, the offensive involved 6,608 guns and 3,534 trench mortars from German positions southwest of Saint-Quentin in France. Allied lines were hit with such continuous tumult and fury that the whole world seemed to be exploding around them.
Five hours after the barrage of artillery came the call “Out of the trenches!” Seventy-six elite German divisions hurled themselves on their enemy through dense fog, smoke, and clouds of chlorine and phosgene gas. More than a thousand planes provided air support. General Erich Ludendorff, the operation’s mastermind, mustered 1,386,177 soldiers for the attack. “We will punch a hole [in their line],” he told his staff. “For the rest, we shall see.” With Russia out of the war, he intended to deliver a knockout blow against Britain and France in advance of the Americans joining the fight in great numbers. Put simply, Ludendorff’s aim with the crushing offensive was to win the war.
Within days, the British 5th Army was in tatters, and a fifty-mile gap had been cleaved into the Allied lines. Two hundred thousand men were dead or wounded, ninety thousand had been taken prisoner, and thirteen hundred guns were lost. There was little but “open field” ahead of Ludendorff: the heart of France. Wilhelm II sang the praises of his soldiers, showered medals on his generals, and, over toasts of champagne, promised, “If an English delegation came to sue for peace, it must kneel before the German standard for it was a question here of a victory of the monarchy over democracy.”
In the town of Holzminden, bells pealed and children were let out of school to celebrate. At roll call, guards boasted that “England ist kaput.” Gathering the prisoners for a speech, Niemeyer was no les
s boastful. “Well, gentlemen, for you the war will soon be over. Germany will rule the world, and you will return to your homes. Our Kaiser has given an order that the flags shall be hoisted and that we should cheer the German victories.” With that, he ordered a lieutenant to raise the flag atop the pole. In conclusion, he said, “Thousands of Germans are going west every day.” To his surprise, the prisoners cheered—“going west” was a euphemism for a soldier dying.
Although the news in the Continental Times was always suspect, on March 25 its headlines were particularly sobering: “German Offensive Sweeping Success.” According to the “Latest News” on the front page, “A considerable portion of the English army has been defeated.” Long-range German artillery was bombarding Paris every quarter of an hour. The British were burning French towns as they retreated. “In the Grand Offensive,” the paper’s editor wrote with faux equivocation, “the victorious verdict is going to be won by the most brilliant leadership and the individual military intelligence of the men. On which side those qualities stand superior, why, we leave it to our readers to judge for themselves.”
