The Grand Escape

by Neal Bascomb

  Not all was easy diversion, especially for Gray. As senior British officer at the camp, it was his job to persuade Blankenstein to provide better conditions. The floor of the latrine was like an ice-skating rink in the cold, so Gray demanded coal for its stove. He also pushed for bigger exercise grounds. Blankenstein, who turned out to be a reasonable man, acceded to both. Gray also led a protest against a spike in canteen prices. A French pilot, a man named Allouche, tried to stop it, saying the Germans were only passing off a rise in costs. Gray threatened him into silence.

  A group of Allied POW officers at Osnabrück.

  Every day, Gray, Blain, and Kennard checked the parcel room for word from their mothers. At last Blain received a package from his. Closely watched by a guard, he opened the box. Inside was a handful of soft candies wrapped in wax paper and a sealed tin containing a nutcake flavored with crème de menthe. Blain thought there must have been a mistake. His mother would never have sent it—he hated mint. In the next moment, he realized what it might actually contain. He passed the tin to the guard, who shook it like a child rattling a present.

  Blain remind himself to breathe so as not to give away his nervous expectation. If the guard grew suspicious, he would surely pry open the lid and look more closely. If the contraband were discovered, Blain could face time in isolation, a beating, and likely both. The guard handed the tin back and waved him away. The three men made haste to Blain’s room where, sitting on his bed, Blain removed the lid of the tin. Wafts of mint rose from the sugar-coated dessert. When he lifted the cake out, he noticed that its weight was off. He dug his fingers into it and pulled out something wrapped in oilskin cloth. “Dear old Mum. God bless you,” he said, hands trembling as he uncovered a compass. Overcome with thoughts of his family, how much they supported him, how much they must have missed him—and he them—tears pooled in his eyes. Gray and Kennard felt homesick too and left him to be alone.

  Over the course of the week, Gray received a map, hidden at the bottom of a box of chocolates, and Kennard found a small flashlight and a file in a parcel of his own. They also collected clothes and a week’s worth of tinned meat, chocolate, Oxo cubes, and milk tablets for the run to the Dutch border. But not everything they needed could come by mail. The canteen had a manicure set on sale. The Germans must not have considered how sharp it was, nor how well made: The nail clippers sliced through wire like it was paper, perfect to cut a hole in the fence. They also sewed haversacks from some canvas and made a rope out of parcel string with which to lower themselves from the window.

  In early December, their preparations complete, the men were set to go but were stalled by an unexpected snowfall. No matter how dark the night, the guards would have no problem spotting their figures in the light reflected off the snow. Then a rumor started that Blankenstein knew an escape attempt was imminent. According to the prison grapevine—which the British called “The Poldhu,” after the wireless station in Cornwall where Guglielmo Marconi sent the first transatlantic radio transmission—the commandant had placed six sharpshooters in the streets outside the barracks to take out anyone who managed to make it outside the wall.

  At first, Gray, Blain, and Kennard did not believe it, but they kept careful watch for the next few nights and spotted some figures with rifles stalking the dark outside the walls. They decided to put the escape on hold. Surely the Germans would not maintain such vigilance throughout the long winter. Then, on December 17, Gray was informed that he was to be moved to another camp. The three were shattered by the news. Their cabal was broken.

  Two months passed at Osnabrück, and, at last, suspicion over an escape attempt abated—and the sharpshooters disappeared. On the night of February 22, 1917, Blain and Kennard slung their haversacks over their shoulders and peeked out of their room. They would have been better off with Gray still on their team, but they would have to make do. The hallway was empty. Before they could reach the broken window, they heard the whine of a door closing at the corridor’s end. Someone had seen them—perhaps the French pilot Allouche whom Gray had threatened months ago, whose room was located in that direction. Even his own countrymen despised Allouche, a stickler for rules, who dressed every day with his crowd of medals on his uniform. Some even thought him a German spy.

  The two men returned to their room. They would delay another day and make double-sure they were not seen. But before they awoke the next morning, six guards roused them from their beds. Commandant Blankenstein stood in the doorway as a search of the room began. The guards found their rope, their haversacks, every tool of their escape. They shoved the two Englishmen into the hallway, then down to the solitary cells in the basement. Neither of them had any doubt that Allouche had given them up. Blain was forced to remain alone in the cell for two weeks, with only plots of revenge to keep him warm. When he emerged, he found Kennard consumed by the same thoughts.

  At the first roll call after their emergence, Blankenstein announced that the Germans were instituting a new policy of separating prisoners of different nationalities into different camps. Accordingly, all the British would be moved out of Osnabrück. Blain and Kennard were fine with the news—a new prison might offer better escape opportunities—but they had no intention of leaving without first exacting retribution on the “evil swine” Allouche. Several fellow British officers wanted to be involved as well. After lights-out on March 7, a dozen men tiptoed to the end of the second-floor corridor, carrying chamber pots that sloshed with the most vile concoctions of ash, urine, excrement, water, jam, and rotting food. Blain was proudest of all about his preparation: a one-pound tin of Morton’s Black Treacle, courtesy of his mother. Allouche would be tasting molasses and scrubbing it from his skin for weeks. At the door, Kennard turned to the others. “Ready?”

  “Not half,” Blain whispered back.

  They burst into the room, followed closely by the others, and pinned Allouche to his bunk, stuffing a blanket into his mouth to silence his roars. Then they poured their awful brews over him as he thrashed about with fright. At one point, Allouche freed the gag from his mouth and bellowed, “Au secours!” Seizing the moment, Blain dumped a fair measure of the treacle into his mouth. Revenge served, the British ran from the room. Allouche staggered down the hallway. “Help! The English have tried to murder me!” he howled. “Strike a match quickly. I am covered with blood!” Awakened by the ruckus, prisoners emerged from their rooms. One lit a match beside Allouche, and the hallway erupted in laughter at the sight of him.

  The next day, Allouche pointed out the culprits to Blankenstein. When asked if they had participated in the attack, with proud smiles Blain and Kennard declared, “Yes.”

  Blankenstein decided to leave their punishment to the commandant at the new British camp, Clausthal. Shortly after, they assembled to go, almost a hundred men with suitcases, mandolins, gramophones, bags of food, and even pots and kettles strung over their shoulders. They aimed to leave nothing behind. A train carried them toward the snowbound Harz Mountains, 150 miles due east, deeper into Germany. Blain and Kennard watched from their carriage as they passed high into the shadowed hills. The lights in the train flickered from the jarring movement on the rails. After midnight, the train halted at Clausthal station, and the guards shouted “Raus!” Snow was falling as they stepped down onto the platform with their belongings. They were told they would have to wait until morning to head up to their new camp.

  After a couple hours shivering in the snow, their guards allowed them into the station restaurant, where the owner spread out some ham sandwiches and hearty soup. The British bought every bottle of wine behind the bar, some of them a lovely prewar vintage. Their guards, wanting a rest too, joined them. In the temporary truce, a fine party broke out.

  An illustration of Allied POWs on the move from one German camp to another.

  At first light, feeling the worse for wear, the prisoners tramped two miles into the mountains, sometimes through heavy drifts that threatened to bury them. In the distance, they sighted Th
e Brocken, the tallest peak in northern Germany. Finally, they arrived at their new prison. Set amid mountain lakes, the building had formerly been the Kurhaus Pfauenteichen (Peacock Lake Hotel), an expansive holiday retreat. Surrounding it now was a 12-foot-tall fence made of iron-wire torpedo netting with a 2-inch mesh. Arc lights stood at intervals, so too did sentries with dogs.

  Blain, Kennard, and the others who had attacked Allouche saw only the briefest glimpse inside before being shunted off to Hanover for their court-martial. They passed the night before their trial in a garrison jail, each in a lone cell with a single, iron-barred window. There were so many rats that the prisoners sounded like a percussion band as they batted the vermin away with their boots. Come morning, guards ushered them across a yard and into a courtroom. The prosecutor read out their penal-code violations for the “cunning attack” against Captain Allouche. In particular, he detailed the tarring with treacle.

  A snowy Clausthal.

  The French major assigned to defend the twelve accused men tried to chalk up the whole affair to a petty squabble between prisoners of different nations. The judges would have none of it. After a brief adjournment, they sentenced the lot to either pay 500 marks each or spend fifty days in solitary. Unwilling to give their enemy any funds that might be used in the war effort, the British took the time. They spent it at Clausthal in huts built behind the old hotel. Their cells grew so cold at night that the rags they were given to wash with became as stiff as boards. Never for a moment did Blain and Kennard regret their revenge.

  Captain David Gray regarded himself in the mirror. Mustache trimmed. Suit fitted. Forged pass in jacket pocket. Wallet stuffed with marks. Folded map, secret report, and some provisions in his valise. Time to go. Civilian clothes were strictly forbidden, and he had made his from a stripped-down uniform and some smuggled items. He stepped out of his room. With its warm stove, real beds, and chintz-covered walls, the Crefeld POW camp was cushy compared to Osnabrück. Holding some 800 British officers and a scattering of other nationalities, it had wide hallways, views for miles, and even tennis courts. It had been built in 1906, to house a renowned Hussar regiment, and Kaiser Wilhelm II had spared no luxury for the young German cavalrymen. Commandant Courth, a local man, was a gentle drunk who allowed his inmates to take long walks on parole in the surrounding woods.

  Nevertheless, Gray was charged to escape. Partly, this was a desire to get back to the fight. Partly too, he had collected testimonies of abuse witnessed—or suffered—by his fellow officers before they arrived at Crefeld. Particularly gruesome were the reports from those in the infantry who were captured earlier in the war. His government needed to know the extent of the German crimes against his countrymen, including dreadful beatings and the cold-blooded mowing down by machine gun of those who had surrendered at the front line.

  With Crefeld only 18 miles from the Dutch border, Gray knew there was a good chance he could reach the frontier—and freedom—once he got outside its high walls. Disguised as a German businessman, he intended to stroll past the guards at the double-arched front gate. His impeccable German and forged pass, stating that he had an appointment with the commandant, should do the trick. Acting like he had not a care in the world, he slowed his walk to arrive at the gate just as a truck pulled up. The guards, busy checking the driver’s credentials, barely gave the suited Gray a look. In a perfect accent, he offered a few words of greeting and flashed his pass. They waved him on. With a danke schön, he walked straight out of the prison. He glanced sideways to see if there was any sign of pursuit or any need for alarm. He saw neither. He was just another local on the sidewalk, going about his afternoon with what leisure the war allowed. He came to a tram stop and waited for the next tram.

  In the months since separating from Blain and Kennard, Gray had been carefully scouting the best way out of Crefeld. Two Russians tried to hide in a rubbish cart, but they were caught before it was taken away. Another scheme saw a dozen RFC officers building a glider plane to fly over the walls. Ultimately, it did not prove airworthy. Most escape efforts, though, were focused on tunneling under the barracks, causing the ground under Crefeld to resemble a busy ant warren. The discovery of each burrow seemed only to embolden others to try. Commandant Courth and his guards had shown themselves effective in rooting out the honeycomb of tunnels by knocking on every wall and floor in the prison, listening for the sound of a hollow space behind. But despite his Woolwich education and experience with the 48th Pioneers, Gray did not much care for the dirty business of sapping; he wanted to try another way.

  After a long wait, Gray boarded Tram 88 and paid his fare, taking one of the wooden seats hidden from the street by curtained windows. Though the drumbeat in his chest had yet to subside, he folded one leg over the other to look every bit the casual passenger. The tram delivered him to Crefeld train station, where there were trains headed due west to Venlo, the closest Dutch town. But given that he had experienced no trouble as of yet, Gray figured that he was safe to journey farther to the north, to Nordhorn, where the border might have slacker frontier guards.

  He arrived at the small German textile town well after dark and left the station on foot, heading north over a series of small canals. Then he followed a road toward Neuenhaus, seven miles away. By his map, once the road intersected with a railway line, he would be a mile from the zigzagged border. A heavy rain was falling, which gave him the advantage of there not being anybody out for a late walk, but it made the going miserable. At the railway line, he turned west and started through some soggy fields. He did not have a compass, but he hoped there was little chance he would get turned around over such a short distance.

  Half an hour into his hike, trousers muddy up to his knees, he reckoned he had reached the border. If there had been a demarcation, he had missed it. He took out his map. Rain pelted his face and soaked his collar. Cold, wet, and potentially lost, he dared light a match to divine his location. If a German frontier post was nearby, the guards would see the flicker of light. After several attempts to strike a match in the downpour, one remained alight long enough for him to read the squiggles of lines. He had veered a little northward in his slog, but if he made his way due south he should reach the Dutch border village of Breklenkamp.

  Eventually he spotted the dim glow of a village and a wooden signpost that read “Breklenkamp.” Elated, he headed down the road until he sighted an illuminated military post. A pair of soldiers in dark greatcoats sought shelter from the rain under its awning. In English, Gray explained that he was an RFC officer who had escaped from a prison camp. Saying nothing, the guards led him inside the cabin. Rising from a desk to meet Gray was a German officer, and behind him the guards seized his arms. There was not one, but two Breklenkamps, the officer explained later, separated by the border. Gray had the bad luck of having a map that only showed the Dutch town, and he had missed it by a short walk. The devastation of coming so close was profound. The next morning, they returned him to Crefeld, his secret report still hidden in his valise.

  Two hundred miles east, in Clausthal, Blain and Kennard suffered their punishment for the revenge attack on Allouche. For almost two months, the two men were in solitary confinement, inhabiting 10-by-6-foot cells between a pigsty and a mechanic’s shed on the northern end of the camp. The pigs’ squeals maddened them more than the tight confines and the absence of windows. At the end of May, at long last, they were allowed out. They had not bathed or exercised in weeks and had to shield their eyes from the piercing sun.

  Commandant Wolfe, or “Pig Face”—as he was called by the men for his bald, round head; puffy face; and tiny, closely spaced eyes—had stripped Clausthal of everything that had once made it a tourist resort. Six officers crowded each guest room; the overflow was housed in wooden barracks. Mattresses were replaced with wooden planks and straw palliasses. Guards shook awake anybody sleeping past 7 a.m. and limited the 260 imprisoned officers to four shower heads whose pressure was little more than a trickle—they had a better chance
of a wash by squeezing a damp rag over their heads. Flies infested the latrines, meals were rushed, roll calls were drawn out, and searches were frequent. Sentries and guard dogs patrolled the fence, and all parcels, including those from the Red Cross, were hacked apart to test for contraband. Still, compared to their solitary cells, Blain and Kennard thought it a palace.

  The prisoners made the best of the limited grounds available to them. They laid tennis courts and imported a net at their own expense. They built a six-hole golf course, staged boxing matches, and had a theater troupe, bridge tournament, gambling den, and language lessons. When allowed out on parole, they hiked through the pine-forested hillsides under a limited guard. Some groups were content to do nothing but entertain themselves. Others passed their days reading and studying.

  Blain and Kennard were a different breed—they fell into the small but distinct class of men that one veteran labeled “escape fiends.” They were indefatigable.

  Illustration of a parcels search.

  It began with tunnels. Kennard was invited to join a breakout effort under one of the wooden barracks; then he brought Blain into the fold. The sap only needed to be 10 yards in length to reach beyond the fence, but the earth was a mix of granite and shale, and it took hours of intense digging to go mere inches. It was tough going and also made for an awful din. During the noisiest bits, the prisoners distracted the guards by holding boisterous tennis matches. Work would have continued, but Commandant Wolfe discovered another tunnel in progress, starting underneath the stage the prisoners had built for their makeshift theater. Any further digging would have been a fool’s errand.