The Escape Artists

by Neal Bascomb

  He had good reason to be worried. Socialist revolutionaries had already assassinated his superior, General Hänisch. The following day, while the officers and orderlies at Holzminden wondered how and when they would return home, Niemeyer disappeared, no doubt with the riches he had extorted from them. Most of the guards fled as well. A company of German soldiers was sent to watch over the camp, but they largely allowed the men to do as they liked. Dick Cash was one among many who used the new freedom to take walks into town. Its residents were in a desperate state, and a riot nearly broke out when he presented packages of rice and tins of cocoa for trade.

  Weeks passed without word of their fate, and the prisoners’ supply of food soon dwindled down to potatoes and cabbages. Instead of scheduling a departure date, the Germans handed out pamphlets sent from Berlin, entitled A Parting Word. They began, “The war is over! A little while—you will see your native land again.” The propaganda promised a new Germany and concluded, “The valiant dead who once fought against each other have long been sleeping as comrades side by side in the same earth. May the living who once fought against each other labour as comrades side by side upon this self-same earth. That is the message with which we bid you farewell.”

  Yet this farewell remained at a considerable remove: no help came from Berlin to evacuate the Holzminden camp. Finally, Stokes-Roberts commandeered a train to take the Holzminden men west. On the moonless night of their departure from the camp, December 10, there was one last hurrah. The men piled tables, boxes, chairs, trunks, old clothes, and anything else combustible they could find into the Spielplatz and lit a huge bonfire. The German soldiers tried to extinguish the flames, but the men stabbed holes in their hoses. Framed by the glow of the blaze, they assembled into four columns and marched out of the gates.

  In town, the Germans lined the streets to watch them pass, a look of “awe, envy, and hate” on their faces, as one officer wrote. The officers and orderlies boarded their train, making no separation for rank as they packed the carriages. With a jolt, the train started forward down the rails, the bonfire at Holzminden growing fainter in the distance with each minute that passed, until they could see it no more.

  Epilogue

  On the evening of July 23, 1938, Lieutenant Colonel David Gray, commanding officer of the 48th Pioneers, headed down London’s Fleet Street. He ducked through the door of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, the pub that had served Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens under its famous dark vaulted ceilings. This night, it was hosting the twentieth anniversary of the Holzminden tunnel escape. Air Commodore Charles Rathborne chaired the dinner, and Jim Bennett was its organizer.

  After two decades, Gray reunited for the first time with his former roommates Jack Tullis and Stanley Purves, their lead sapper, Walter Butler, and a number of other officers and orderlies involved in the breakout. His two closest friends from those dramatic days would sadly not be coming. In early 1919 Cecil Blain had crashed and died while test-piloting a Sopwith Dolphin for the RAF. He was in the middle of writing a memoir about the Holzminden escape. Gray was stationed in Russia at the time, battling the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War there, and could not return for the funeral. King George V sent his condolences in a letter to the Blain family, recalling the “gallant and able Officer” he had met only months before.

  So too did Gray miss the burial of Caspar Kennard. After the war, Kennard had gone home to Argentina. He married and became the manager of a large ranch. In 1935 he was killed in a freak shooting accident. “Kennard was a stout fellow, a good pal,” his obituary concluded. “His untimely death will leave a feeling of great regret in the hearts of his fellow officers.”

  There were many others missing at the dinner, albeit because of distance rather than tragic circumstance. Dick Cash had returned to Australia to reunite with his family. Likewise, the Holzminden prisoners had spread out far and wide after the Armistice—from South Africa to New Zealand, to Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Barbados, Vancouver, and New York City. Those absent were recognized, but most of the evening was spent in laughter and conversation over “weisse wine,” recalling the moments both comic and horrifying they shared while tunneling to their freedom.

  The breakout artists still wondered about the fate of Karl and Heinrich Niemeyer. At the Versailles Peace Conference, it had been agreed that certain “enemy officers” should be brought to justice for their crimes. The Niemeyer brothers made the list, particularly after the death of William Leefe Robinson was ascribed to the privations he suffered at Holzminden. The twins, however, were never found. One report had Karl committing suicide in Hanover; others said that he had escaped to South America.

  Whatever the truth, perhaps the best laugh of the anniversary night came when a mocked-up telegram from one of their fellow tunnelers was delivered to the pub from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I know damn all about you and your dinner [Stop] Niemeyer [Stop].” The roars from Gray and others were heard into the night.

  Over the next few decades, the tunnelers and other Holzminden prisoners—friends for life—would meet again for anniversaries. Over time, they would join with fellow escape artists from other camps—and other wars. Gray, however, would not attend another of these dinners. After Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, Gray left the 48th Pioneers to join the RAF as a squadron commander. Although fifty-five years old and graying at the temples, he was still rigid of spine and eager to the fray.

  When he had to leave the RAF in 1942, for reasons of age, he signed up for the Home Guard, a voluntary defense organization. That November, he died in a lorry accident—an inglorious end to an otherwise glorious and bravely led life. David “Munshi” Gray, the “Father of the Tunnel,” was buried with honors in Wonston, Hampshire. Most treasured among the items he left his family, his wife, Violet, and their nineteen-year-old son, were the escape kit, old maps, fake identification, and compass he had used in his home run.

  In total, 573 British and Empire prisoners (54 officers, 519 other ranks), escaped during World War I. Remarkably, by one historian’s estimate, there were over ten thousand attempts. Those who succeeded were a small, select group out of the 192,848 POWs held in Germany.

  Throughout World War II, Jim Bennett continued to travel for MI9, brown leather suitcase in hand, to base after base, for week after week. He usually began his talks by saying that becoming a POW was “improbable but possible.” His message to the young men was always the same: in the event that they were taken prisoner, their war effort was not finished. Each and every one of them had a duty to escape.

  Then he recounted his own experiences, his lack of preparation, the missed opportunities, the false starts, all before his final dash across the border. In his mistakes, and in those of his friends, there was much to learn. “Forewarned is forearmed,” he liked to conclude.

  As a speaker, Bennett played only a small part in the vast organization that coordinated escape and evasion across Europe and the Mediterranean, but he and his fellow breakout artists—Gray, Blain, Kennard, Leggatt, Medlicott, and so many others—were very much the inspiration for MI9 and its American counterpart, MIS-X. Their bravery and daring paved the way for the establishment of these organizations.

  Before the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, 33,578 British, Commonwealth, and American members of the armed forces managed to return to Allied lines after finding themselves on the run or captured behind enemy lines. Further, some of the most remarkable escapes, including ones from Colditz and Stalag Luft III, bear too many echoes of Holzminden and other World War I breakouts to be a coincidence.

  Outside his MI9 lectures, Bennett rarely spoke about his captivity or escape. His family had no idea about his subsequent service in World War II until they found a dusty folder with papers that included his speech notes and travel receipts after his death in 1983 at the age of ninety-one. Instead, he focused his life on building a business, being a good friend, investing in a happy marriage, and raising a son and daughter. He was there to ensure that his childre
n, Graham and Laurie, followed his version of the Golden Rule—“Do as you would be done by”—and to teach them how to ride a bicycle and drive a car. The opportunity to do so in freedom, in his own country, was reward enough for his contribution to the greatest escape of the Great War.

  The Holzminden Escape List—July 23 to 24, 1918

  SUCCEEDED IN HOME RUN

  Jim Bennett

  Caspar Kennard

  Cecil Blain

  Edward Leggatt

  John Bousfield

  Stanley Purves

  Peter Campbell-Martin

  Charles Rathborne

  David Gray

  John Tullis

  RECAPTURED

  Douglas Birch

  Frederick Mardock

  Thomas Burrill

  Arthur Morris

  Walter Butler

  Jack Morrogh

  Andrew Clouston

  Robert Paddison

  Frederick Illingworth

  Clifford Robertson

  William Langran

  Frank Sharpe

  Colin Laurence

  Alan Shipwright

  Bernard Luscombe

  Philip Smith

  Peter Lyon

  David Wainwright

  Neil McLeod

  Acknowledgments

  Years ago, in a more adventuresome lifetime, I took some flying lessons with a fellow author (and experienced pilot), Tom Casey. I still vividly remember the exhilaration—and heart-dropping fear—of swooping over the coastline of Long Island, then around the tip of Manhattan, and up the Hudson River corridor. The experience sparked an interest in aviation, pursued more safely within the confines of histories of the same. My most avid reading focused on the early days of the Royal Flying Corps and daring Oxbridge sorts who made up its ranks of pilots flying their wood, cloth, and wire contraptions. Among those volumes that inspired further reading were H. A. Jones’s magisterial The War in the Air, Cecil Lewis’s Sagittarius Rising, and Denis Winter’s The First of the Few.

  Besides a hasty path to death, these pilots also faced a good chance of being shot down behind enemy lines, particularly as their activities ramped up in advance of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Those who survived a crash landing were inevitably captured and imprisoned by the Germans. Rascals of the highest sort, many of these men attempted elaborate escapes that might well have been pulled straight from the pages of Boy’s Own adventures. Only the incurious could then resist picking up one of what became a genre of World War I breakout memoirs. They are too many to name, but among my early favorites were Gerald Knight’s Brother Bosch, J. A. L. Caunter’s 13 Days, A. J. Evans’s The Escaping Club, and J. L. Hardy’s I Escape!. Time and again, these memoirs drew a line to what might best be described as the Alcatraz of Germany at the time: Holzminden.

  I quickly fell under the spell of the classic The Tunnelers of Holzminden by H. G. Durnford, who played a bit part in the extraordinary events that led to the greatest breakout of the Great War. Upon consuming his memoir, I was sure I had my next book project in hand. That said, Durnford recounted the events—and characters of those involved—with the kind of emotionless British reserve that left me unsure of who these men were and what drove them. Then I came across the delightfully introspective, quirky, and beautifully written Comrades in Captivity by the poet and Holzminden survivor F. W. Harvey. He put flesh and bone on what it was to be a prisoner in the archipelago of German camps in World War I, and the desperation that pushed some to risk everything to be free.

  All these books were inspiration—and great source material—but they were only the beginning of my journey to chronicle this narrative. One should always start with the low-hanging fruit, and I benefited from three previous works on the Holzminden escape: Beyond the Tumult by Barry Winchester, Escape from Germany by Neil Hanson, and Jacqueline Cook’s The Real Great Escape. Each in their own way provided excellent guidance, same as the holistic study of British POWs in Germany by John Lewis-Stempel in The War Behind the War.

  Given these events occurred almost exactly a century before I started my research, I knew firsthand interviews were out, and I would need to depend on a rich and diverse range of primary documents. Fortunately, I struck gold early and often over the course of the project thanks to the wonderful archivists at the Imperial War Museums, RAF Museum, the British National Archives at Kew (a treasure almost unparalleled), the Bundesarchiv, and the Liddle Collection at the University of Leeds. They provided unpublished memoirs, oral history interviews, repatriated POW reports, letters, maps, and even artifacts from the escape by many of the key participants in these extraordinary events. Of particular note was a handwritten memoir by Cecil Blain at the Imperial War Museums. My frontline researcher for many of these finds was Claire Barrett. At the time, she was studying for her master’s in the history of war from King’s College, London. She proved tenacious and a quick study, and I owe a great debt to her for following up my leads—and generating quite a few on her own. In a word, she is top-notch. Thanks also to early research by Norma Bulman and Almut Schoenfeld.

  I would also like to make a special call out to the F. W. Harvey Collection at the Gloucestershire Archives, an extraordinary repository of letters, scrapbooks, personal documents, notebooks, and other papers from the soldier-poet. In writing this book, I am perhaps most proud to have played a part in resurrecting the memoir of this incredible individual. I was ably assisted in accessing this collection by James Grant Repshire and Steve Cooper of the F. W. Harvey Society. Thank you also to Mrs. Elaine Jackson of the Harvey family, who gave me permission to quote from the collection. It is truly a window into the soul of these heroes.

  Where archives came up short, I depended on the kindness and generosity of the families of many of the principal individuals in this escape. After so many years, some were a challenge to track down across the world (online family trees and Facebook are a researcher’s new best friend!), but perseverance paid off. Much of the incredible story of Royal Navy Air Service observer Leonard James Bennett had been lost to history, but thanks to his daughter, Laurie Vaughan, I had access to his unpublished memoirs, lecture notes, and page after page of letters he sent from Holzminden during his captivity. More important in some ways, Bennett verified the link between the breakout artists of World War I and the founding of MI9, the British escape and evasion service that saved so many lives during World War II. I would also like to thank Laurie’s granddaughter, Lily Peschardt, who collected many of these writings in her graduate school project Home This Afternoon.

  Many other families assisted with letters, unpublished memoirs, photos, and other bits of information. This book could not have been written without them. Thanks especially to Hugh Lowe, Brian Tullis, Keil Tullis, Brenda Merriman, Pete Clouston, Jane Gray, Diana Gillyatt, Kit Kennard, Margaret Pretorius, Mal Lyon, Tony Wheatley, and Julyan Peard. Although I could not tell each prisoner’s story in full, I hope the families know how instrumental their efforts were. Thank you also to Jacqueline Mallahan for her generosity in sharing her late husband Patrick’s archival collection and research into the RFC and POWs in World War I.

  Despite such a vast number of sources, there remained some mysteries, particularly as to the arrival and departure times of some of the prisoners to Holzminden—and their specific activities in the early foundation of the tunnel. The tremendous archive/tracking service of World War I POWs collected by the International Committee of the Red Cross was invaluable in accounting for some, but not all, of the prisoners’ movements in and out of camps. Still, there remained a few gaps. I have endeavored to draw as accurate a timeline as possible. Any errors or misinterpretations are mine alone.

  Much-deserved thanks go to my publishing team. First to my former Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein, who gave me that little extra nudge at a critical time to pursue this story. Second to my agent and friend Eric Lupfer, who is always there with steady guidance and cheerful encouragement; this book could not have happened without him. Thanks too
to my film agent on the project, Ashley Fox, as well as the great folks at WME, Simon Trewin and Raffaella De Angelis. I also benefited from an early read by World War I aviation expert James Streckfuss. As always, my appreciation to the support of all at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, including Jenny Xu, Lori Glazer, Bruce Nichols, Megan Wilson, and Michael Dudding. Thanks also to Melissa Dobson, for your skilled copyedit. To the late Carla Gray, I’ll be absent your sharp wit and ever-at-the-ready cheer as we go to publication. You’re missed.

  This book is dedicated to my two longtime editors, Liz Hudson and Susan Canavan. We’ve been together now going on a decade and a half, and to be honest, I simply do not know how I’d do what I do without you at my side every step of the way. Thank you for your patience, insight, and crack-of-the-whip-but-with-kindness. Sometimes I may not show it, but I know how lucky I am.

  Finally, to Diane and our girls (and Moses thrown in for good measure). Words couldn’t do justice in describing your impact on every part of my life!

  Notes

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AC—Family Papers of Andrew Clouston

  AWM—Australian War Memorial, Campbell, Australia

  BA—Archives, British Library, UK

  BARCH—Bundesarchiv, Germany

  CHALK—Chalk Collection, Tasmanian State Archives, Australia

  CK—Family Papers of Caspar Kennard

  CWB—Family Papers of Cecil W. Blain

  DGB—Family Papers of David B. Gray

  GA—F. W. Harvey Collection, Gloucestershire Archives, UK

  HFD—Family Papers of Hector F. Dougall