The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  Niemeyer claimed that Germany would win the war in three months. But it was a fool’s wish to believe he would show some magnanimity to the prisoners until then. He seemed impervious to rebuke. Another inspector came in the spring, this time reporting accurately to the Dutch legation on some of the abuses, but nothing changed. Dozens of former Holzminden prisoners now interned in Holland chronicled these abuses in even more scathing terms to Downing Street, but still nothing changed. Public shaming of the Germans in the Times had no effect. Nor did diplomatic calls from Lord Newton to remove Niemeyer and Hänisch from their posts. Reprisals against German POWs in Britain in the form of limited parole and privileges also did nothing to alter conditions at German camps. Victory—and its guarantee of not being held accountable for his crimes—only emboldened Niemeyer further, as it did with other camp commandants. Escape fever ran high everywhere, particularly as the influx of Allied prisoners captured during Operation Michael overcrowded the camps.

  At Schweidnitz, a camp on the eastern edge of Germany, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Rathborne prepared for his breakout. He fashioned a suit out of a Merchant Marine uniform. He forged a passport and travel papers, stamping them with a Prussian spread eagle carved into the rubber sole of a tennis shoe. He tracked the movement of the guards and found a moment when only one was watching the wall. A little nighttime boxing match might distract the guard from his duty, Rathborne decided.

  He had briefly returned to Holzminden after being shipped out in advance of the November 1917 inspection visit. Then he was moved again—to Schweidnitz. There, he declined to join two competing tunnel projects because he was sure that one or the other would be discovered. Instead, he aimed to hop the wall, and then, using his fluent German, buy a train ticket to Holland. An army major was in on the plan.

  One night in late March, while a group of prisoners were boxing in the yard under the arc lamps, Rathborne and his partner climbed over the wall. They walked into town and bought their train tickets. Rathborne even won a smile from the girl in the booking office.

  They were in a crowded fourth-class carriage, awaiting departure and confident they were in the clear, when a station guard appeared and began moving through the carriage, checking documents. Rathborne handed over his passport. When asked why he was in Schweidnitz, seeing as his hometown was Leipzig, he rattled off, in German, that he was a “commercial traveler trying to sell some musical instruments.” This seemed to satisfy the station guard, who moved on to the major.

  When the second man stumbled on some responses, the two were asked to leave the train. In a guard room, they learned the reason. The stamps in their passports were wrong. Unlike Schweidnitz, which used the Prussian spread eagle for its stamp, the Leipzig stamp symbol was a lion. On such simple mistakes were the best-laid plans foiled. After a stay in solitary at Schweidnitz, Rathborne was returned to Holzminden. Niemeyer confronted him at the door of his cell in the cellars of Block B and told him that he was back at Holzminden because it was “impossible to escape.”

  A short distance from Rathborne’s cell, three officers were cutting a path through the earth, aiming to prove Niemeyer wrong.

  Cecil Blain was breaking his own promise never to tunnel again. As he clawed the dirt to drag himself forward, the flickering candle cast a devilish dance of shadows about him. Too often as he dug, rats scurried across his back or stared him straight in the eye. Worms and a host of unseen insects crawled through his hair and squirmed underneath his work outfit, which stuck to him like a mildewed second skin. And the air . . . there was never enough to fill his lungs as he forged his way around the sandstone wall that had slowed the tunnelers progress for weeks. As he advanced, he made sure to limit the swing of his elbows, the kick of his feet, the rise of his back. One indiscreet move in an unlucky spot, and the walls or roof might give in under the weight of the earth above. There would be no warning, no thunder boom to announce the cave-in. The dirt would simply cover him like a heavy shroud, immobilizing his body with its terrible weight, snuffing out his breath before he could cry for help.

  At Neunkirchen he had known well the vagaries of tunneling into the earth. That prison, formerly a community center, was unlike any other in which he had been held. They slept in what had been the theater hall—eighty prisoners in double-bunk beds where the venue’s seats had once been. The boarded-up stage provided an ideal location to start a sap unseen. After creating a secret entrance underneath the stage, Blain and several others burrowed through the ground toward the outside wall.

  They rigged up a Morse code buzzer in the tunnel that would warn the men to lie silent whenever a guard was present in the theater, and built an electrostatic generator called a Wimshurst machine—for “entertainment,” they said—to drown out the sound of their digging. Such was the racket its counterrotating disks made to generate static electricity that an elephant could have stomped on the stage and nobody would have heard it.

  With these measures, Blain and his fellow tunnelers dug for two months undetected. It was an awful business. Their sap was always welling with water, and they suffered frequent wall collapses. Fortunately none was lethal, but the scares left the men on edge. They had almost made it twenty-five yards when an inspection rooted them out, and Blain was sent away with nothing to show for his work.

  Now at Holzminden, he was back to the muck and the risk. And the farther they bored their hole, the more muck and the more risk the tunnelers had to endure. By early April, the tunnel was almost ten yards longer than the one at Neunkirchen had been, and it felt even longer, given the bends and pitches on the twenty-minute crawl to its end.

  Finally, Blain arrived at the tunnel face. Today, he was the number 1 man in the shift—the digger. Slowly, but with a certain rhythm, he hacked with a makeshift chisel at the wall ahead, scraped away the loose chunks with a trowel, then filled the bowl with the excavated earth using a small hand rake. Even though he had vowed never to sap again, there was a part of him that enjoyed it. The danger, the toil, the teamwork—it was an adventure and a better way to spend his days than sitting in the barracks . . . as long as the candle wedged into the wall by his side continued to flicker and dance. If the flame dulled into a faint red, he was in trouble.

  Back by the tunnel entrance, Gray was keeping the candle—and Blain—alive. The number 2 man, the pumper, he crouched in a small cave carved into an early left turn in the sap. There he operated what might best be described as a bellows. As the tunnel lengthened past the sandstone wall, the diggers found that they began to grow faint from lack of oxygen. A few grew delirious and had to be dragged out by their feet. Some method to supply fresh air was needed.

  Gray and the others crafted a makeshift bellows out of wooden planks and a leather RFC jacket, set on a vertical stand. To pipe the air to the tunnel face, they collected round shaving tins, knocked out the ends, strung them together, and covered them with canvas. Links were added to its end when needed.

  Being the pumper was monotonous, arduous work. As Gray heaved in and out on the arms of the bellows, the sound the machine produced matched the pace of his own breath. Kennard stood just a few feet away, inside the chamber underneath the staircase. He held a rope in his hand and waited to feel its tug. The number 3 man in the shift, the packer, he was responsible for hauling the bowl of dirt and stone when Blain was ready to send it back. He emptied its contents into cloth sacks and stacked them in the steadily shrinking space in the chamber. On a good, well-run shift, the digger would have another pile to put in the bowl by the time the packer was ready to have him pull it back.

  During each four-hour shift, Blain, Gray, and Kennard rotated through the jobs. Being the digger for too long was simply not sustainable, particularly for the claustrophobic Kennard, who had to summon every shred of will to maintain his calm. The exertion, the foul air, the press of earth in every direction, the threat of collapse, all took their toll. To exit the tunnel, the digger had to snake backward, feet first, inch by inch to reach the opening. There
was simply no space in which to turn around.

  At 3:45 p.m., the shift was over. The three men shed their grungy work outfits, wiped their skin clear of dirt, and redonned their orderly uniforms. Now they had to sneak back to their quarters. First they had to wait for the all-clear. At this late-afternoon hour, guards often used the stairs, either to bring up supplies from the cellars or to deposit them there. Through the thin breaks in the plank wall, the tunnelers could see them pass. Finally, an orderly rapped on the secret door to the chamber, then announced, “Come out now.” The three men unlatched the slide bolt and stepped out through the plank door. At first the light stung their eyes. Then they hurried up the steps as the orderly returned the bolt into place.

  At the exit, they waited for one of their lookouts to give them another all-clear. With the single word, “Right,” the three moved out, forcing themselves not to so much as glance at the guard opposite the door. If he got a look at their faces, he might recognize one of them as an officer. Onward they continued, to the right, trying not to walk too fast or too slow. They were famished, exhausted, and suffering stabbing headaches from the terrible air and the slowing of adrenaline. They relied on others from their team to intercept and distract any Germans who might be crossing their path from the cookhouse or elsewhere. At last, they were back in Room 24, where they quickly changed back into their officer uniforms.

  Sixteen

  Whether they were walking the yard, sitting in their rooms, or working their shifts, the tunnelers continually hashed out how, once through the sap, they would make it 150 miles to the border. The distance they would have to travel as fugitives would be far greater given the detours and circuitous route needed to avoid towns, major roads, and other areas. Gray was particularly aware that most escapes fell apart in this phase. Day and night, he considered different plans, searching for something foolproof.

  Most of the tunnelers were banding up in teams for the flight to Holland, and Gray was committed to going with Blain and Kennard. He would not do a solitary run again; his own had proved how important it was to have partners who would look out for each other. There were few braver, tougher, and more coolheaded when it mattered than Blain and Kennard.

  Travel by train Gray discounted, chiefly because a mass breakout would surely result in Niemeyer dispatching police or soldiers to every nearby station and alerting conductors to confront any suspicious passengers. This left a journey by foot. Moving at night and hiding out during the day limited their chances of discovery, but Gray also knew that there was almost no way to cover such a distance without being spotted and forced into some kind of interaction. They would need disguises and cover stories.

  In previous attempts, he and his fellow breakout artists had pretended to be civilians or soldiers. But disguises and forged papers only went so far in an escape effort. If questioned while in enemy territory, they would need to respond in flawless German and have a legitimate reason for being in the area.

  Gray spoke German fluently, but Blain and Kennard lacked proficiency. Blain knew Cape Dutch from his time in South Africa and could make a decent attempt at answering simple questions in German, but Kennard was unable to manage more than a few prepared phrases. Knowing this, Gray considered a plan where he would be in the position of speaking for both men: he would act as an officer escorting a pair of privates. However, that plan did not eliminate the possibility that Blain and Kennard would be required to speak if addressed directly by a German officer. Further, the uniforms the escapees would be wearing in disguise would never remain sufficiently clean to pass for military inspection after they had tramped through woods and slept out of doors. No, Gray decided, the three needed a plan that was sure to convince any doubters. Something fail-safe.

  There was a lot the tunnelers needed to do in preparation. They needed good maps and compasses as well as food for fifteen days of travel and Tommy cookers to heat meals. They needed warm clothes and durable boots. They needed waterproof sacks to get their belongings across the river Weser. There were documents to forge, clothes to tailor, photographs to take. In the unoccupied Room 83, the tunnelers assembled a veritable escape factory—or, as they called it, “a temple to the Goddess of Flight.” They hid items under the floorboards and behind sliding paneled walls, along with all manner of equipment used in their preparations, including locksmithing and woodworking tools, a sewing machine, and dyes, inks, and paper for passes. They had built their tunnel bellows in this room.

  By mid-April they were hard at work making passes and creating backpacks from old jackets smeared with lard. In all these efforts, they had help. Since first arriving at Holzminden, Gray and the others had bribed and inveigled some of the guards and other Holzminden staff, turning them into willing accomplices who provided information or special items. Their poor treatment by Niemeyer made them easy turncoats. As one British officer described, when the commandant tired of abusing his prisoners, he vented his “black gusts of bilious passion” at his staff, often leaving them “literally trembling as he flayed them with his tongue.” The war’s harsh economic rationing was added motivation.

  “Letter Boy,” the commandant’s clerk, was easily charmed with coffee and cookies. His work delivering mail gave him free rein to move about the barracks, and he met almost daily with the conspirators to pass along the latest intelligence or material he purchased on their behalf. What was more, he always knew when searches were coming and where they would occur. The “Sanitary Man” was the only civilian at Holzminden who could go about without a guard accompanying him. In exchange for some cash and something from Fortnum & Mason—the upmarket London grocery store—he would shop in town for any goods the prisoners requested. “The Typist,” a young secretary in the Kommandantur, helped them for less mercenary reasons. She had fallen in love with Peter Lyon, a six-foot-three-inch Australian infantry officer who was a member of the back-up working party. Since his capture in spring 1917, Lyon had lost over sixty pounds due to an insufficient diet, but he had retained his good looks. While exchanging love notes with Lyon, the Typist provided sample passes and the paper stock on which they were printed.

  Finally, there was Kurt Grau, a well-meaning camp interpreter. He had been stationed in India and once proclaimed, “I do not care for Germany. I do not care for England. My heart is in India.” As Gray had served a number of years in the army there, not to mention it being his birthplace, he was able to convince Grau that he could help set him up in India once the war was over. Grau became a friend to their cause.

  The tunnelers benefited as well from their continued alliance with several orderlies. Beyond providing access to their quarters, these men were also helping with the escape factory. With his photography experience, Dick Cash was foremost among them. Not only did the officers need photographs for their passes, each needed a copy of a map for his journey. It was one thing to chart a general westward course and quite another to have a map on hand to identify every village, road, waterway, and town they came across. The ability to do so might mean the difference between success and recapture. They had managed to smuggle into Holzminden a large military map that covered the expanse of territory they would cross from which copies were to be made.

  Cash made a shopping list: camera, plates, chemicals, printer paper, and a carbide bike lamp to develop the film. With the officers, he started collecting what he needed. Each week, Gray asked for additional copies of the map, because as the sap lengthened the number of officers brought into the fold increased. Two of them, John Tullis and Stanley Purves, were Gray’s roommates and provided cover for him during his frequent disappearances into the tunnel. Edward Leggatt, Blain’s former escape partner from Clausthal, who had recently arrived at the camp, was also included.

  On his emergence from solitary, Charles Rathborne became the senior British officer at Holzminden. Protocol required he be informed of the plan, and Gray also knew the lieutenant colonel was keen to mount his own escape and could stall other attempts that might result in their tu
nnel’s discovery. When notified, Rathborne not only gave his blessing but volunteered to join the scheme and help in any way he could.

  Thanks in part to his relationship with the Typist, Lyon had been welcomed into the group, along with RFC observer John Bousfield. Others were brought in to stand lookout as well as to obtain boards to brace the tunnel walls, sacks to pack dirt into, and tins to extend the ventilation pipe. With each additional member, the chance of exposure grew, but Gray accepted the risk. There was no other way to build a tunnel of such length and to orchestrate a well-prepared, properly supplied home run to Holland.

  One afternoon, Gray finally struck on an idea of how to execute his own escape run with Blain and Kennard. He was in the tunnel chamber with the two of them, preparing to start their shift. Kennard lit a candle and kneeled down by the sap entrance. Looking into the dark hole, he muttered, “We must be bloody mad.” In that moment, Gray had his inspiration. “That’s it!” he exclaimed. Blain and Kennard looked at their usually taciturn friend as if he had suddenly lost himself. “Mad!” Gray chuckled. “Mad! That’s the answer. It simply couldn’t miss!” The two tried to get him to explain, but he said he wanted to think on it some more to investigate its faults and merits. “Come on, let’s get on with it,” he said, taking the candle from Kennard. “I think I’ve come up with the answer to our prayers, that’s all.” With that, he crawled into the tunnel, the first digger of the day.