The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  “Chocks away,” Blain said, tossing his kit ahead of him into the hole, but the bravado he had maintained throughout the evening quickly dissipated as he crawled in after it. He was the sixth man into the tunnel. Kennard followed, then Gray. Those who had gone before them had left a few tin-can lamps burning along the path, but given the passage’s many kinks and turns, the three crawled mostly in the pitch-black. They did not want to waste time by holding candles of their own.

  In the lead, Blain kept to a good pace. He pushed his rucksack ahead of him. Wriggled a few inches on his elbows. Pushed. Wriggled. When his jacket caught on a rock or when he slowed to take a breath, he felt Kennard brush up against his feet with a push of his own bag. During one stretch, which was illuminated by candlelight, Blain suddenly found himself staring straight into the face of a rat. Its eyes looked like black beads. He had encountered his share of rodents in the tunnel, but they still sent shivers down his spine. Before he could brush the rat away with his arm, it disappeared into the darkness ahead of him, no doubt its senses alive to an exit into the field.

  As he continued, he found himself panting for breath, and his arms grew heavy from pushing his kit ahead of him. In all his shifts underground, the tunnel had never felt so long nor looked so ominous. The shadows cast about the narrow, misshapen bore resembled monsters waiting to attack. He wanted nothing more than to be free of it. Then he saw, up ahead, a light shining down into the tunnel. The Germans must have found the sap exit, he thought. They were lost. He would have scrambled away had there been anywhere to go. Instead, he lay flat and motionless as a stone.

  “What’s up?” Kennard asked, his voice little more than a muffled mutter. His claustrophobia was making him more anxious than ever. Blain angled his head to the side, his eyes adjusting enough to the light to see that it was simply the glare of the arc lamps through the hole. But he found himself immobilized all the same. Thoughts of the Pink Toes at Schwarmstedt overcame him, thoughts of Bill Morritt, shot as he emerged from underground.

  Behind him, Gray added his muffled voice to the demand to know what was the problem. Kennard thumped the back of Blain’s boots. Finally, the young pilot wrenched free and moved ahead again, his heart beating like a drum in his chest. After several more feet of crawling, Blain reached the tunnel exit and breathed a cool draft of fresh air. He rose to his knees, then to his feet, in what he figured might well become his vertical grave. Only the encouragement from Kennard and Gray kept him moving.

  Blain eased his kit out into the field, then squirmed himself upward. As his head rose out of the tunnel, he expected to hear the crack of a gunshot. When he was met only by the patter of raindrops, he finally caught his breath again and calmed. It was almost 1:00 a.m. Sixty yards away, Holzminden was cast in a ghostly pallor of white by the arc lamps swinging in the wind. The guard paced back and forth by the wall, his rifle tucked under his arm, his coat collar tight around his neck. The wind blew from the southwest, providing them audible cover for movement. Taking care anyway, he eased himself slowly up into the field. He kept his body low as he scrambled through the rows of beans.

  Then he stopped and looked back toward the tunnel exit. Kennard, then Gray, then the others behind them emerged in close succession. It was like their heads and feet were almost connected. They resembled to Blain a huge, mud-splattered crocodile, and he almost laughed at the curious but exhilarating spectacle.

  As he reached the stand of rye, some fallen stalks rustled beneath him. Even with the steady beat of rain, the sound met Blain’s ears like a series of small detonations. He waited at the edge of the field for Gray and Kennard to reach him. In whispers, they debated advancing into the rye versus crawling along its edge until they were far enough away from the camp. Taking charge, Gray made the decision to proceed directly through the stalks. It was the quickest way, and he was sure that the rainfall and wind would sufficiently drown out the noise of the stalks underfoot.

  The three threaded their way into the rye field, with Blain convinced the guard would soon hear their movements and set the dogs on their trail. When no cry of alarm was raised, he relaxed enough to straighten up from his crouched walk and hasten his pace.

  After traversing the rye field they came to the main road that ran between Holzminden and Arholzen, the nearest town to the northwest. They knew, from the reports of their German accomplices, that during the night the police patrolled the stretch of road on bicycles, and they waited at the side of the road until they were sure the coast was clear.

  Then Gray led them northward through more fields of rye and corn, to the top of a low hill. They dropped their rucksacks to the ground and took a brief rest. They had been on the run for a half hour. In the distance, the town of Holzminden looked to be floating in a sea of surrounding darkness. They could not distinguish the two barracks blocks, which seemed to blur together as one. The three officers savored their freedom at last. They were masters of their own fate again. The air they breathed never tasted fresher; the hunk of Caley’s Marching Chocolate never sweeter.

  “Bet Niemeyer wouldn’t be sleeping so well if he knew where we were,” Blain said.

  “Let’s hope nothing disturbs his slumbers until morning,” Kennard replied.

  “Just let’s make sure,” Gray said, “we never see that bastard again.”

  They let the thought linger, then tramped down the hill to the Weser. The river served as a natural barrier to any escape westward. Bridges over it were routinely patrolled, and its fast, deep waters had delayed—or altogether foiled—earlier runs from Holzminden. They needed to cross to its opposite bank before first light of dawn, at roughly 4:30 a.m. Otherwise, they were sure to be recaptured.

  Twenty

  Charles Rathborne thrust his body into the tunnel, the fit almost as tight as a cork pushed back into a bottle. The already stout officer had been made stouter by the pair of suits he wore: one was to be thrown away after the trip through the tunnel; the other was his disguise—a German civilian on a cross-country train journey.

  He had only once before been down into the sap and had never made the passage through its full length. He was quite unaccustomed to the claustrophobic environment and the effort it took to crawl through. The fact that his face was almost level with the dirt floor only deepened the horror. Nonetheless, he kept pushing himself forward, grunting and sweating as he went. Behind him, Jim Bennett was like a racehorse stalled behind a mule, but there was no way around the senior officer, nor could Bennett do anything about the walls and roof of the tunnel being abraded by Rathborne’s movement.

  Alerted to the “all-clear” at midnight, Bennett and Campbell-Martin had hurried down through the orderly quarters and into the chamber. They were the fifteenth and sixteenth men into the tunnel. Despite Rathborne’s troubles, he was not the first to disturb the already marginal structural integrity of their burrow. With their kits and their eagerness to reach the exit, some of the officers who had gone before had knocked out struts, loosened rocks that had been dug around long before, and left chunks of dirt (as well as tins of food fallen from their rucksacks) along the path. Once the ruck arrived, the state of the tunnel would surely deteriorate further.

  After over an hour in the tunnel, Rathborne finally squirmed free. Stretched out in the bean rows, he was certain he could hear the sentry breathing. Bennett rose from the sap after him, followed by Campbell-Martin. They wished each other well, then Rathborne wriggled on his belly into the rye stalks. Once deep inside the field, he lifted up to his hands and knees and continued on. Such was the denseness of the cornfield beyond that he found himself almost trapped in the midst of its narrow rows. Finally he broke free, crossed a cabbage field, and brazenly hiked alongside the road that led south from Holzminden. If stopped, he believed he had a good chance of talking his way out of the situation. The others were headed west, the direction in which Niemeyer, when alerted to the escape, would immediately begin the search. Rathborne had decided to go the opposite way. He planned to catch t
he first of several trains toward Holland in Göttingen, thirty-five miles to the southeast.

  Bennett and Campbell-Martin made their way through the same rye and corn fields as Rathborne had traversed, but traveling much more quickly and in the opposite direction. Their route might be the first to attract a search party’s attention, but they intended to move at such a pace that no one had a chance of catching up with them.

  In Block B, Durnford made his rounds, alerting members of the ruck about when they could take their turn at escape now that the core team of tunnelers were out. At 12:45 a.m., he knocked at the door of thirty-four-year-old Jack Morrogh of the Royal Irish Regiment, number 22 on the list. “Your turn, Major, and God bless you,” Durnford said. Morrogh thanked him and rushed up the two flights of stairs to the attic.

  In the attic room, Grieve told the major he would have to wait a bit longer. Someone was stuck in the tunnel. Morrogh hunkered down beside the dormer window, listening to the gale outside and the intermittent rain. Now and again, he looked out the window to watch the German guards on their rounds. Little did the one stationed outside the wall know that at that very moment there were men tunneling through the earth directly under his feet.

  “All clear,” an orderly announced from the eaves. Grieve allowed Morrogh and several other officers to pass. They crept along the length of the barracks, down the stairs, and into the chamber. After shaking hands with a fellow Irishman, Corporal Mackay, Morrogh entered the tunnel for the first time. Following a quick descent of the initial slope, he found himself in the pitch-black. The tightness of the space did not surprise him as much as the noise. The long snake of men ahead of him—their heavy breathing, wriggling bodies, clanging kit bags, and curses—made for an awful din. He wondered how the guard above could fail to hear them.

  Morrogh inched forward. The passage was in sorrowful shape. He wrestled past broken struts and piles of dirt and stone. Just as he began to gather some kind of rhythm, using his grip on his rucksack to pull himself forward, he felt like he hit a wall. Then the wall started to move. The man in front of him was clearly trying to worm his way backward. Morrogh tried to shout at him, but, with his face inches from the damp earth, his voice was muffled. Stuck and panicking, the man ahead thrashed about, kicking his legs and twisting back and forth. Meanwhile, the officer behind pushed at Morrogh’s heels. Caught between the two, Morrogh was terrified.

  Finally, the individual ahead jerked his way free, and Morrogh began crawling again. He was tired, desperate for some fresh air, and harried by the continuous noise of men. He managed only a few feet before he encountered a large stone blocking his path. The officer in front must have dislodged it in his panic. Using his rucksack, he shoved the stone a few inches forward, hoping he might find the place on the tunnel’s wall where it had broken loose. If it had fallen from above, there was no hope.

  Bracing his legs, he thrust against the stone again. Then again. Then again. He was damaging the sides of the tunnel, but he had no choice. Feeling with his hands, he discovered the slot where the stone had separated from the wall. With one last shove, he returned it to its place. The tunnel was disintegrating with the ruck’s every movement. Morrogh feared he might never find his way out.

  David Gray scanned the banks of the Weser for the narrowest point to cross. The storm had tossed and roiled the black waters, which looked like an ocean between them and the opposite shore. As he scouted ahead, Kennard spotted a dilapidated fence bordering a nearby field and had an idea. He started breaking off slats. Blain joined him. Roped together, the wood could serve as a makeshift raft for their clothes and rucksacks. By the time they had gathered enough pieces, Gray had found a point to begin their swim. It would still be at least 140 yards across to the other bank.

  The three stripped down to their underwear, bound their clothes up, and placed everything on the roped-together fence slats. Their watches, before they, too, went into their rucksacks, read 2:15 a.m. The men were already soaked through by the rain when they slipped into the tepid water. The shifting clouds overhead cast the river alternately in darkness and moonlight. Fearing a patrol, they waited for cloud cover before pushing away from the bank.

  They swam furiously for the other side, each holding onto a side of the raft to keep it steady. Waves swept over their heads, and by the movement of the trees on the opposite shore, they could tell that the currents were dragging them swiftly downstream. On they went, kicking their legs and swinging their arms. Halfway across, they were already breathing heavily, their limbs weary.

  A whitecap almost pitched over their raft, but they managed to keep it afloat. Desperation and nothing else drove them to reach the western shore. Finally they climbed onto the banks and collapsed with relief.

  After taking a moment to recover from their exertions, they emptied the raft. The wind and rain chilled them to the bone as they dressed again in their damp clothes. Kennard dragged the raft up the bank a few hundred yards to throw off the German bloodhounds that were sure to follow on their trail. Gray suggested they march as far north as possible that night, believing that the search area would concentrate on the forests west of the Weser. Blain and Kennard agreed. At first, they followed the road bordering the river. Although it ran a sharp, serpentine course, Gray figured the extra distance on the road could be covered far faster than tramping a direct line northward through forests and muck-mired fields. Gray and Blain both carried heavy rucksacks with their food stores (biscuits, black bread, Oxo cubes, and tins of ham and tongue) and other key supplies. Kennard carried their reserve kit, containing extra clothing, tobacco, and chocolate. If they happened on anyone along the way, he would have to ditch it quickly. A madman on the run would not be expected to have provisions.

  By 3:30 a.m. they had circumvented Heinsen. Outside the town, they shed their pajamas and stashed them in some reeds. They had managed to keep their outfits underneath clean. The small village of Polle was empty as they walked down its main street. A dog barked at their presence, but otherwise they passed through unnoticed.

  A half hour later, they reached another riverside hamlet, Brevörde. Its scattering of old cottages, their walls bulging from settlement over time, looked dark and abandoned.

  With dawn approaching, they marched a little farther north before veering off the road into some thick woods to hide out during the daylight hours. They were roughly nine miles from Holzminden, a distance they hoped gave them a sufficient head start after the alarm was raised. The men ate a light meal—a tin of ham and some black bread—and smoked cigarettes. Blain got a good chuckle when he shared with them his observation of how the men streaming out of the tunnel had looked like a crocodile emerging from the earth. He volunteered to take the first watch. Exhausted, Gray and Kennard assented and went quickly to sleep. Blain stared out into the surrounding darkness of the woods.

  When Bennett and Campbell-Martin arrived at the Weser, they came upon John Bousfield. In the scramble outside the tunnel, Bousfield had lost his traveling companion, Peter Lyon, and reluctantly decided to go on ahead alone. The three officers undressed and bundled their clothes into their rucksacks, which they tied to their waists with ropes. Then they began across the rough waters.

  An unsteady swimmer at best, Campbell-Martin soon found himself overwhelmed by the fast current. Together, Bennett and Bousfield dragged him to shore. After dressing, they struggled through a cornfield, following the same route to Heinsen that Gray had chosen. Once past the town, they abandoned the road and headed into the forested hills to the west.

  Although Bousfield had been a champion three-mile runner at Cambridge, he was hard pressed to maintain the pace set by Bennett, whose long, loping stride seemed to eat up the ground underneath him. After a few miles, as daylight crept over the eastern horizon, he finally slowed. Bousfield argued that they would have a better chance at evading discovery if they bedded down in some farmland. A field of rye would provide superior cover, he argued, and they would be alerted to the presence of any pursuers
by the crackling of their footsteps through the stalks. Convinced, the three hiked onward until they found a stretch of rye.

  Six miles south of Holzminden, Charles Rathborne bedded down alone in a fir plantation, next to a spring of water. He watched the sun break into the sky before resting his head on his small bag and falling into a fitful sleep.

  There was trouble in the tunnel. Lieutenant Edgar Garland, a New Zealand–born pilot, was halfway through when the man in front of him stopped moving. Garland rattled his boot, but the officer did not react. Perhaps he had fainted, Garland thought. He had a flashlight, but its narrow beam did not penetrate far in the twisting burrow. “What’s the idea?” he shouted. “Having a rest?”

  “The tunnel has fallen in, and they are trying to clear it,” the man in front finally called back. “It will only take a few minutes.”

  Garland rested his head down in the dirt and tried to calm his breathing. The air was already bad from all the men crowded down in the hole. If there was a blockage, it was sure to get worse. Moments later, he felt someone jamming up against his feet. The chain of officers behind had caught up. “What’s wrong?” a voice at his feet gasped weakly. Garland explained, confident that the obstruction would soon be cleared and he would begin his home run to Holland. But the obstruction would not be cleared.

  Several feet shy of the exit, the sap had caved in completely. A number of officers had made it through, including Jack Morrogh, but now dirt and stone had cascaded down the slope and rendered it impassable. Major Marcus Hartigan, a thirty-eight-year-old veteran of the Boer War and next in line to break out, only just managed to scramble backward before being buried alive. His desperate attempts to reopen the face of the hole with his hands in the inky darkness were fruitless. There was too much earth blocking his path. If he was to survive, then the men behind him needed to abandon their escape and push themselves back out of the tunnel before oxygen ran out. There were more than a dozen of them in the hole.