The Grand Escape

by Neal Bascomb

  They could either take the short flight of concrete steps up to the ground floor, or the ten steps to their right, down to the cellar. They went down. Before they arrived at the locked cellar door, something caught their attention. The Germans had walled off the space underneath the steps with six-inch wooden planks. A quick rap on them revealed the space behind the wall to be hollow, and they guessed it was there to prevent anyone lying in wait to jump an unsuspecting guard. They both realized that the space might well present the perfect opportunity: It gave them access to the cellar floor and walls, it was out of sight, and it was out of the way of the normal foot traffic of the guards. Starting a tunnel in one of the cellars would have risked discovery. If they could create a secret door in the planks, Colquhoun was sure, they had a very good chance of keeping their activities secret. But if the edge of the door was in any way obvious, the Germans were sure to find it.

  “Will you join our tunnel effort?” That was the question on Colquhoun and Ellis’s lips. The answer was a definite yes from David Gray. It was the best chance of escaping Holzminden. The answer was also an easy yes for infantry captains Joseph Rogers (a former coal-mine engineer) and Frank Moysey. They had been involved in tunnel attempts at all their previous prisons, where they had built sliding steps and hinged walls to disguise access. They nicknamed their band of tunnelers the “Pink Toes,” likely due to the state of their feet after hours burrowing through the frigid ground.

  In comparison to some of those projects, this new tunnel was a small matter. First, they would need carpenter’s tools, and for those they would need a carpenter. They smashed in a door in their quarters, making sure to knock it off its frame and mangle the lock—something only an experienced tradesman could fix. One such arrived later that day, his box of tools in his hand. A guard was there to watch over him while he worked. Next, the distraction. Colquhoun and his coconspirators, including Gray, launched into an argument with the guard—some minor disgruntlement. There was a lot of shouting, and a few of the officers staged a scuffle with each another. While the carpenter watched the affray, one of the officers slipped behind him and nicked almost everything apart from the toolbox itself, including a fine-toothed, thin-bladed saw. After the melee had ended and the officers cleared away, they waited to see if there would be a search for the missing tools. What they suspected, and hoped, was that the carpenter, and the guard responsible for him, would not admit to anybody that they had been foolish enough to fall for the deception. Their suspicion proved well founded.

  The next day, disguised in borrowed yellow-banded tunics, Moysey and Rogers ventured through the eastern entrance of Block B, accompanied by a real orderly who was there to keep lookout. A quick examination of the walled partition showed that the best place to create a door was near the bottom of the steps where the planks were longest. At the top of the last plank, there was a small opening from some badly fitting boards where a slide bolt could be hidden. Reaching it would be a tight fit for even the most slender of fingers, but possible.

  Moysey and Rogers were quick to the task. They unscrewed the whole V-shaped panel from its placement. An inspection of the chamber behind confirmed exactly what Colquhoun had hoped: It gave access to the floor as well as to the main, load-bearing walls on the eastern and southern sides of the building, and it was almost tall enough to stand up in. Measuring five yards long and four yards wide, it was also big enough to pack the excavated soil and rubble for a 15-yard tunnel, which eliminated the need to smuggle it out for dumping. They cut a three-plank door out of the partition wall and then reattached it with two hinges. Such was their precision that there was almost no visible seam between the 18-inch-wide door and the wall. They also mounted a bolt on the door, its latch just within reach behind the wall. After sweeping the sawdust into their secret chamber, they replaced the whole panel and secured the bolt. So snug was the fit they could barely spot the door themselves. Tools hidden under their tunics, they walked back up the steps and out into the Spielplatz.

  Illustration of a secret panel made in a door by World War I escapees, using similar techniques as the Holzminden men.

  The tunnelers wasted no time and launched immediately into the digging. Colquhoun and Ellis had the honor of going first. Once inside the chamber, they removed the bricks on the southern wall, then dug into the concrete with a chisel. After a few inches, they hit some reinforced iron rods. Even the sharpest of hacksaws would be challenged by the iron. They took the obstacle in their stride. What they needed was sulfuric acid, to burn through the iron like a flame into paper. They could not exactly buy a vial of sulfuric acid in the canteen, and obtaining some via a coded message to friends or family in England would take too long—if they managed to avoid its interception. Outside help was required.

  They wanted their cabal small, twelve officers at most, to keep the tunnel secret and to avoid having too many different faces going in and out of the building. The solution, they decided, was to ask more orderlies for help. They would not need to know their purpose, except for a select few. Given that the orderlies had greater ability to move around the camp than the officers, they might be able to obtain any special items needed. Willing accomplices were soon found. One of them happened to know a civilian workman at Holzminden who could obtain some sulfuric acid. A bribe of 50 marks was the price of his conscience.

  On November 5, without explanation or warning, several of the most senior and outspoken prisoners were removed from Holzminden, including Major Wyndham, Lieutenant Colonel Rathborne, and Captain Gray. Throughout the day, and into the next, Holzminden received what one prisoner labeled an “eye-wash.” Officers and orderlies alike were instructed to straighten their rooms and barracks. The bathhouse was opened for use, burned-out electrical bulbs were replaced, windows were opened, walls were given a fresh coat of paint, and fuel was supplied to heat their rooms. The next day, they discovered the reason: a “surprise” visit from Dr. Rudolf Römer, the Dutch attaché assigned to inspect German camps for compliance with the Hague Convention.

  The men tried to air their unjust treatment, even in the presence of the camp commandant, but Niemeyer always had an answer. On the poor quality of the food: This was simply a matter of “taste”; anyway, the men had their “private supplies.” On charging for boiling water: The men were not “compelled to pay this sum.” On the exorbitant prices at the canteen: “Most of the articles were sold at a loss.” On the excessive stays in solitary, including those suffered by Kennard and others who had escaped from the attic hatch: The accused needed to be secured before their court-martial; only after that did the new 14-day punishment limit come into effect. On the lack of recreation space: This could be created out of sleeping space, but then the displaced men would further crowd the other rooms. On the long lines to obtain parcels or food tins: The prisoners simply showed a “lack of enterprise.”

  The whole inspection was a charade. When Römer’s report was released, it stated that there was little cause for concern. The officers’ complaints were minor in nature and “could be obviated with a little mutual goodwill.” After chronicling the need for some slight improvements in the exercise grounds and sleeping arrangements, he concluded, “The general impression that I was able to gather was of a favourable nature. All the officers looked well and appeared to be in good spirits … The Commandant, although maintaining strict discipline, appeared desirous of doing everything possible to render the life of the prisoners as bearable as circumstances could permit.”

  In London, Lord Newton, head of the Prisoner of War Department at Downing Street, doubted the official report. He had received troubling secret intelligence about Römer from contacts in the Foreign Office. Informants suspected that he had compromising connections with German high officials, and, according to Römer’s former colleagues, he was “professionally incapable,” “amenable to bribery,” and “a pathological liar.” He had issued similarly positive reports of other camps controlled by Hänisch that were contradicted by a binder fu
ll of interviews from escaped prisoners. Similar testimonies were now coming in to London about Holzminden, one by an RFC captain who smuggled a coded letter out of the camp. He recounted a string of brutalities, including one occasion when four guards cleared his room to make way for newly arrived prisoners. “The first officer was seized by the throat and shaken; the second was struck with a rifle, and the third chased down the passage, his pursuer jabbing at him with his bayonet.” Other prisoners, who had been sent away from Holzminden only to escape from their next camp, recounted much the same. One said that Hänisch ran his camps with “organized malevolence.” Another that “Holzminden was an inferno.”

  Lord Newton had tried the diplomatic route, submitting letters and complaints. These had little effect. He also sat down with the Germans and negotiated to improve conditions. In summer 1917, both parties had signed up to reduce punishment lengths and to begin exchanging some prisoners, but Newton’s faith in this process had been challenged by reports that the Germans were continuing indefinite detentions and had only just begun sending POWs to internment—and in limited numbers at that. The other tool available to Lord Newton was instituting reprisals against German POWs until things got better for the British. But this only provoked countermeasures by the enemy, a tit-for-tat “special treatment” that worsened conditions for all.

  There was never enough food at Holzminden, and some of the men were suffering from malnutrition because their diet relied almost exclusively on tinned food. There was scarce fuel for the stoves too, leaving the barracks frigid. Many had already stripped their rooms of any available wood to burn—bedboards, locker doors, even furniture. Niemeyer continued to harass them at every turn. He opened and closed the bathhouse and the parcel room on a whim. He promised the new senior British officer that he would reopen negotiations around parole walks only to rescind the promise soon afterward. He offered to allow concerts and theatricals only to cancel them before the performance. In response, some acted out little revenges. They crafted an effigy and dangled it from an attic-floor window, a noose around its neck. Niemeyer went berserk, firing at the dummy as the prisoners bobbed it up and down, shattering the glass in several windows. Another officer dumped a sack of potatoes from a window as Niemeyer passed underneath. The greatest revenge of all, they knew, would be to escape.

  Gray was returned to Holzminden from Ströhen in mid-December, and he went straight back to work with the Pink Toes on the tunnel. On one of his first days back, he met two officers at 11 a.m. in Room 24, on the ground floor of Block B’s officers’ quarters. From under a false bottom in a wooden box they took out orderly uniforms and dressed. They smudged their faces with dirt, the better to look like common-rank prisoners who had just finished a work detail. Then they waited to get the call from the lookouts. One orderly stood watch at the entrance to his quarters, making sure there were no guards lingering in the stairwell or cellars. Once he counted the last guard to leave for his midday meal, he walked onto the Spielplatz and scratched the top of his head. Colquhoun, who was loitering outside the officer entrance, ostensibly reading a book, received the signal. He glanced toward the Kommandantur to ensure no guard was coming out. Seeing no one, he hurried inside and straight to Room 24. “All clear,” he said. With that, Gray and the two others put on their black caps banded in yellow, stuffed some struts of wood under their shirts, and emerged from Block B.

  Kennard, gaunt from lack of food and malnutrition at Holzminden.

  Other officers in their cabal kept a keen eye on the guard stationed in no-man’s-land, 12 yards opposite the orderly door. If he made a sudden movement, or gave any indication of recognizing the orderlies were in fact officers, he was to be approached and distracted in conversation. The tunnelers figured this was unlikely. There were roughly two platoons of 30 guards each that patrolled the camp grounds. They rotated beats and hourly shifts frequently to maintain sharpness, a routine that resulted in the same guard occupying the same spot only once every other week. With 550 officers and 100 orderlies, the chances of a guard detecting an unusual face entering the orderly quarters was minimal.

  Gray and his digging partners arrived at the orderlies’ door without trouble. On closing it behind them, they waited for another lookout to confirm that all was still clear. Only then did they move down the steps. At the panel wall, they were met by another orderly. He reached into a thin hole at the top of the secret door and unlatched the bolt. The thin door swung open, and the three officers stepped sideways into the dark chamber. The orderly closed and bolted the door behind them. He would return in two and a half hours so the officers could return to their quarters, change, and be nearby for the afternoon roll call.

  Slivers of light between the planks were all that illuminated the space until Gray struck his lighter and the shadows of the three men danced upon the low walls. After unburdening themselves of the wooden struts they had smuggled inside their shirts, they lit a few lamps. These were made from empty shaving-cream tins, with holes punched through the top from which extended wicks made from twisted cloth soaked in alcohol. They could now see well enough to change out of the orderly uniforms into the plain work outfits they would wear while digging. For Gray, these damp, streaked clothes used by all the tunnelers were anathema, as even in captivity he kept himself spotless and his shirt and pants pressed to sharp creases. The clothes smelled too, as did the whole chamber—a mix of mud, rot, sweat, dead mice, and stale air. Nevertheless, stifling his disgust, Gray put on the outfit.

  By now, Colquhoun and the other Pink Toes had burned through the iron rods in the southern foundation wall—just up from the cellar floor—by pouring sulfuric acid against them from clay cups. From there, they had started the tunnel proper. Using spoons and the legs of their iron bedsteads, they created an oval sap, almost one and a half feet in diameter. At first, they extended the tunnel three yards straight out from underneath the orderly entrance. The depth was minimal, and the men could hear the voices of those walking above. Then they veered the sap sharply to the left (eastward) toward the camp wall. To increase its depth, they dug at a 45-degree downward slope for roughly six yards before leveling out.

  The ground, a compacted blend of yellow clay, dirt, and loose rock, was tough to burrow through, but they still managed to cut about a foot a day. By the time Gray returned to Holzminden, the tunnel was now approaching the eastern wall and the excavated debris nearly filled up the entire space underneath the stairs. They had made remarkable progress, and now it was his turn to do his bit, no matter his reluctance to enter the dark hole.

  Gray knelt down by the tunnel entrance. First he pushed the shallow washbasin they used to collect the dirt from their digging into the hole. Then he followed it, lamp in hand. The earth closed around him like a tomb.

  At Christmas, Colquhoun announced that the tunnel now ran beyond the wall and would soon be finished. They should all finish preparing their escape kits and be ready in the New Year.

  There were great celebrations throughout camp for the holidays. The men sang carols, handed out homemade cards, raised money for the British Red Cross, staged a pantomime of Sleeping Beauty, and assembled a feast. Despite Niemeyer’s ban on the sale of wine, Douglas Lyall Grant, of the London Scottish Regiment, supplied a cellar’s worth of bottles that he joked cost more than a night out at London’s swanky Carlton Hotel. At one point, such was their revelry—clapping hands, stomping feet, howls to the heavens—that they suspected their party must have been heard in town.

  Holzminden theater performances.

  The following morning, Boxing Day, Niemeyer announced that 20 officers, most of them prisoners since 1914, were being sent off by train to Holland. After half a year of promises, internment transfers had finally started. Some of the men slated to leave were part of the tunneling party. They shared farewells at the gate, and many other old-timers hoped they would be next.

  But into this cascade of goodwill and good news came a terrible surprise in the form of a new security measure. Wit
hout explanation, Niemeyer ordered guards to take up permanent stations outside the stone walls. When the guards took their new positions, the tunnelers’ hearts sank. One was standing opposite the east postern gate, on almost the exact location Colquhoun had planned for their tunnel exit. Had someone informed on their tunnel? Could they still manage to escape from that spot if they waited for a shift rotation? Would the guard stations be temporary? There had been no intensive search, so it was likely their secret was safe. They watched day after day to see if the guards abandoned their new posts; they remained.

  The consequence was profound. To extend the tunnel beyond this new guard’s line of sight, they would have to tunnel another 45 yards, under a barren flat field, until they reached some rows of rye—which would only provide cover come July, six months later. Otherwise—as the tunnelers knew well—they risked a bullet when they emerged from the ground. At a foot a day, this distance calculated to almost 20 more weeks of digging. Such a long time would make keeping the tunnel secret almost impossible. One errant word, one vigilant guard—and all would be lost.

  Then there was the sap itself. A 15-yard tunnel was a manageable affair, but at 60 yards, cave-ins would be more likely, as would the chance of obstructions that demanded a change in direction. The time spent underground would become even more insufferable. The farther they dug, the longer it would take to wriggle in and out of the hole—and the more exhausting it would be. Such long periods in such cramped space so far from a safe retreat would be both physical and mental torture. A sap of that distance would run short of fresh air.