by Nigel Jones
I began to say something to Lemmens about how sorry I was that he should be involved in this mess, and Stevens said something about Klop; “Looks as though he were dead,” or something like that. This raised a storm and the Germans shouted at us to be silent and said that severe measures would be taken if we did not hold our jaws.
Our driver and another man got in and we were just about to make a start when one of the men who had been carrying Klop came running up holding some papers in his hand. He gave these to the captain saying in an excited voice, “We have made a great find. The other one is a Dutch officer.” All the men seemed to be excited and in a state of great nervous tension; just as though they had accomplished some very dangerous mission. There was a lot of talk between them about the hair-breadth escapes they had had from the shots fired by poor Klop; one man kept repeating that one bullet had passed so close to his head that he had felt the wind. Compared to them I felt myself to be quite calm and collected. I was in no way worried about what might happen to me; all my thoughts were about May and the shock the news of my capture would be to her. I thought, ‘She will probably hear about it in the eight o’clock news’. Actually, she waited up for me all night, every hour in greater fear, and had no definite news till she was rung up from the legation next morning.
Our car started and off we went into the blue.
We had only gone a short distance when we turned down a lane on the left which seemed to lead only to some fields. I wondered whether this was ‘journey’s end’ and this quiet spot considered suitable for the disposal of the bodies. The leader shouted “Halt!” and, after some discussion with the driver, we backed out on to the road again and continued our journey in the direction in which we had been going.
It was an open car and on the back seat one got the full force of the blast. I was lightly clad and the evening was chilly; perhaps too, I was affected by the shock of our capture; however it was, I felt abominably cold and besides, badly wanted to relieve myself. Mention of these two points to the captain resulted in a coat being thrown over Stevens and me which afforded us some protection, but for the rest, I was told to hold on and wait until we ‘arrived’.
By this time, I was acutely conscious of the fact that I was a prisoner, sitting handcuffed in a German car, and being rapidly driven towards some unknown destination and fate. I began to think quite a lot about what might happen to us, but I can’t say that I felt downhearted; rather, my state was one of enhanced mental alertness. I am essentially a practical man and seem to have insufficient imagination to be able to worry about the future. Stevens, from what I could see of him, was immersed in blackest gloom and poor Jan looked pathetically puzzled and startled. I felt so sorry for him. He ran a small garage at The Hague and for years past had looked after my cars and had played the part of a devoted and benevolent mechanical father to them and to me. Really, he was one of the best and staunchest friends I have ever had. He had a wife and four children, all still small, and worked single-handed, almost day and night to keep his little business going. He had nothing to do with my intelligence work and it was only by chance that he was with us today. I hoped that the Germans could be made to realize this and that they would let him go. It would be simply terrible for him if he were kept prisoner with us, perhaps for years.
I badly wanted to say something to comfort him and, as I was not allowed to speak to him, I began to tell the captain about him in German which I knew Jan could understand. As no objection was made to my breach of the silence I went on talking and said to the captain:
“I suppose you think that you have made a great capture in getting us like this. Really, your show was very well run.”
“I don’t care about you two,” he said, “but I am glad to have got those German swine who were trying to betray their country. They will get short shrift. I wish I could hang them with my own hands, the pig-dogs.”
Now this was most interesting and a very valuable pointer. So they intended to go on pretending that Schaemmel and Co. were genuine conspirators and like ourselves prisoners. Of course, by now I had no shadow of doubt but that Schaemmel was the nigger in the wood pile and that it was he who had given the signal for our capture. Still, if this were the line which the Germans had been instructed to take, it might possibly be better to play along with them and see how matters developed. It was always possible that they wished to keep a loop-hole open in case there was too much fuss made abroad about our capture; they might then plead that the raiders were sent to arrest some Germans and that Stevens and I owed our capture only to excess of zeal on their part.
After a drive of about two hours we came to the Rhine and I recognized the approaches to Düsseldorf. We drove a little way through the town and then turned under an arch into the courtyard of a large building. Here, we were bundled out of the car and with more prodding of pistols hurried at the double into a sort of basement where I was put into a small cell, furnished with a bunk, a table, and a chair. I was then made to strip to the buff and was subjected to an examination which most certainly was intended to leave no stone unturned. A dirty finger was thrust into my mouth and run around my cheeks and between tongue and teeth; ears, hair, nostrils, and indeed, all apertures of my body were probed and inspected—yet, they omitted to examine my feet although I might easily be hiding the poison phial for which they were searching between my toes. After this, I was given a blue serge training suit, which I was told with emphasis was quite new, and at last was permitted to visit the lavatory. Ah-h-h-h! what a relief!
(I’m sorry, but I cannot write about prison life without touching on such matters, for in prison you find that life is centred on and revolves about the elemental facts of food, sleep—and defecation. All three are of equal importance and, even to me, smoking came a bad fourth.)
As I came back from the lavatory I saw that my cell was one of a row. In the one next to me I saw Stevens, sitting on his bunk and looking just about as miserable as I really felt. Next door to him was Jan, but he was lying down on his bunk and I could only see him indistinctly.
My handcuffs had been removed whilst I undressed and dressed but now they were put on again, luckily, not so tightly as before, and I was told to lie down on the bunk.
Handcuffs are really most unpleasant things and the effect of having them on singularly demoralizing. You feel, not only helpless, but absurd. Then too, every part of your body out of scratching reach begins to itch and in time this becomes real torture. Having yet to make my début in crime my experience of handcuffs is limited to those in vogue with the Gestapo and I do not know whether they are subject to the vagaries of fashion. These, which I had on, with their highly chromed finish, combined elegance with lightness and, as I was assured, enormous strength. Shaped rather like a pair of spectacles they could be folded along a central hinge so as to fit the pocket. The two arms or hooks which fitted round the wrists had serrated ends which entered with a ratchet action into the central lock. They were so shaped that, when closed, they formed oval apertures which prevented the wrists from being turned. The degree of discomfort depended upon how far the ratchet was pressed in for the edges of the arms were razor sharp and they could, as I was later to discover, cut deeply into the wrists. Handcuffs can be worn either with the palms of the hand facing each other, or with the hands crossed, one above the other. Both methods are equally uncomfortable.
The next step in my initiation into prison life was a thorough examination of my clothes and the contents of my pockets. This was rather ostentatiously carried out in my presence. With grief and annoyance I saw my fountain pen roughly broken open and the back forced off my watch; worst of all, some 200 cigarettes which I had with me in the car were, one by one, broken into bits. How often did I think of these cigarettes and long for them in the months that followed. Then, all my money and other belongings were placed in a large envelope which was sealed. Everything perfectly honest and above-board. Yet, when the envelope was opened in my presence in Berlin a day or two later, f.500
(more than £50) which I had seen put in at Düsseldorf had faded away into nothing. Probably there was another envelope and more sealing wax at Düsseldorf.
I was next brought a couple of sandwiches which tasted like a mixture of sawdust and axle grease; there was also a mug containing that filthy dark fluid which in Germany passes for coffee. It was months before I could swallow it at all. This concoction made of an infusion of beach nuts and parched malted grain is a German heritage from the First World War, and is still generally what is called coffee. Real coffee is distinguished by the name of ‘Bean Coffee’ just as ‘Black Tea’ serves to distinguish real ‘tea’ from infusions of dried peppermint or other herbs.
I was very tired, for this was the third day in succession that I had been up at five, and my one wish now was to sleep. But this was not allowed. Every time that I was on the point of dropping off I would be given a shake by one of a number of men who seemed to spend the night tramping in and out of my cell. “Don’t go to sleep. It is forbidden.” At the time I thought this a most senseless regulation and I became so angry that I began to feel more and more myself again and ready to cope with anything that might befall me. Later, when I experienced the frequency with which prisoners attempted suicide, I realized, that in preventing me from sleeping, a normal routine precaution was observed. It was always just possible that, in spite of the search, I might still have poison secreted somewhere on me.
When I was first put into my cell I was for some time alone with one of the men who had taken part in the raid. He was a nice looking fellow of some twenty-five years of age. He told me that the men who had taken part in the raid were officers who had volunteered for dangerous duty and that they all came from different units; he himself was a naval officer from Kiel. He said that they had been told that they were to go into Holland to capture some Germans who were plotting against the Führer and who were responsible for the attempt against his life which had taken place the day before. Now though, he did not know what to think. Nothing had been said to him about Englishmen, and the German whom they had found at the frontier had returned with them as a free man and seemed to be a friend of ‘the chief’. He didn’t like the look of things at all and wished that he had had nothing to do with it. Now, we were to be handed over to the Gestapo and he hoped that I would not hold him responsible if they treated me improperly.
I think that this young man was perfectly genuine and felt that he had been duped into performing a dishonourable action. He was certainly very kind to me and helped me over some very difficult moments. They had taken all my cigarettes away, so he fed me with some of his own; he also asked for extra blankets for me, as he thought I looked cold. This was the first example of that kindness which I was to find, often in the most unlikely quarters, throughout my imprisonment.
It must have been in the small hours of the morning when I was told to get up. I was taken out through the courtyard and through another door, up several flights of stairs, and into a comfortable room where there were two men and a girl typist. I was told quite politely to sit down and was offered a cigarette. Then details were taken down as to my name, age, and place of birth. They expressed surprise when I said that I was British. “Your German is very good, but you speak like a Dutchman; not at all like an Englishman.” This was not surprising after twenty years in Holland, for even Germans who lived there for any length of time seemed to pick up a Dutch accent. After a short talk which was quite amicable on both sides I was taken down again to my cell, passing Stevens in a sort of antechamber on my way down.
The dreary sleepless night dragged on and my thoughts of my poor wife waiting in vain for my return left me no peace; my thoughts and feeling of impotence were such that they almost caused me physical pain. Yet I knew that I must put away all thoughts of the past and of the might-have-been and concentrate only on the problems of the present if I were to have any hope of finding a way out.
At last the night came to an end and I was told to get up. “We are going farther,” it was said. I was handed my clothes but was not able to wash or comb my hair. I dressed in one corner of a room and Stevens in another. Several of the men who had captured us were about; most of them now dressed in uniform. The leader of the party was a smart army captain instead of the dirty unshaven bandit with a shapeless felt hat pulled over his eyes who had sat with us in the car. He seemed to be the man in authority so I protested to him about not being allowed to wash; I also asked for food. He was quite civil and said that he was sorry, but there were no facilities for washing; as for food, I would get some later on—very much later on, as it turned out.
When I was dressed, I was again urged to move elsewhere by the now familiar prodding in the small of my back. This time we went out into the courtyard where I was told to get into the back of a touring car of which the hood and side curtains were closed. The captain got in next to me, the driver and another man sat in front.
I did not take much notice during the first part of our journey as by now I was pretty well all in and fell asleep immediately. I must have slept for quite a while, for when I awakened we were on the Reichsautobahn approaching Hanover. I felt pretty rotten, both tired and hungry—I was still soft from good living—the worst infliction though was the lack of my eye-glass which had been taken from me and which they had refused to let me have back. This strained my eyes and gave me a bad headache. I saw a notice board where the by-pass to Hanover left the Autobahn, but we went straight on and the signposts now said ‘Berlin’. An hour or so later, about two o’clock I should think, we stopped at a filling station attached to which there appeared to be something in the nature of a café or restaurant. As we stopped I was able to catch a glance in the rear mirror and saw that another five or six cars, amongst them my own, were drawn up behind us.
The captain got out and with him the driver; the man who sat next to the latter was left to guard me, which he did with his pistol at the ready. After a while the captain came back alone and told the other man to go and get some food. As soon as he had gone the captain produced an apple which he cut into pieces and gave to me. He told me that I was not allowed to have any food and that we must be very careful as the other two men were from the police. He gave me a cigarette and later, when we were under way again, fed me with bits of sandwich which he cut up and popped into my mouth. Whilst we were alone together he also unlocked and slackened my handcuffs which had been so closely clamped together that my fingers were quite numb and swollen.
When we left the filling station, my car, a Lincoln Zephyr and very fast, passed us and soon vanished in the distance. I was much annoyed to notice that they had already succeeded in losing the cap of the petrol tank—I was in a mood when little things like this made me very cross.
We continued to jog along at a steady forty miles an hour which seemed terribly slow along the empty expanse of the Autobahn. Except for one or two heavy lorries stinking of paraffin and a group of military motor-cyclists looking like great frogs in their voluminous overalls, the Autobahn was quite deserted. When at last we reached Berlin it was already quite dark and the black-out was complete. Our driver, at one point, seemed to lose his way and got out to make inquiries. Whilst the captain and I were again alone for a few minutes, he said to me: “Up to now you have been in the care of the Wehrmacht. Soon I shall have to hand you over to the Gestapo. If you have disagreeable experiences with them, I hope you will not blame me too hardly, for I have only obeyed orders and done my duty. I am sorry to have had to capture you in this way for it is no work for a soldier.” I said that I quite understood, and we gravely shook hands. I can’t say that I felt exactly encouraged by this conversation for it seemed to me that both the army and the navy took a very dim view of what might happen when the Gestapo got me.
The car started off again and after about a quarter of an hour we stopped at a spot where it seemed to be darker than ever. The car door was opened and a rough voice asked: “Is this number one?” and, on receiving an answer in the affirmative: “A
re his legs fettered? No? Then, out you come.” My hat was torn off and a sort of hood pulled over my head. Then I was seized above the elbows by two men and dragged out of the car. We went through a doorway into a lighted passage (I could dimly see through the hood which covered my face) and then I was pulled, almost at the double, along passages, up stairs and down stairs, until I was exhausted and breathless. Although I had managed to clasp my fingers together and could so take some of the strain with the muscles of my arms, the two men holding me kept jerking at my elbows so that my handcuffs were forced deep into my flesh cutting my wrists badly. I must have been taken about three times from attic to basement, up one stairway, across the building, and down another one, for I found out later that the Gestapo Headquarters building in the Prinz Albrechtstrasse into which I was now making my entry was far from large. I suppose they thought that I needed exercise after the long drive. The hood over my face greatly impeded my breathing and when at last we stopped, and I was pushed into a lighted room and on to a soft seat, I had almost passed out. I was just conscious that my feet were being tightly strapped together and then a voice said: “Take off the hood.”
When I had recovered sufficiently to take notice, I found that I was sitting on a couch in a comfortable looking room with, sitting facing me, a rather pleasant looking and seemingly quite harmless little man. There were a number of other men either sitting on chairs or standing in a semi-circle behind him, all looking at me as though I were some strange and possibly dangerous animal. It was some time before I had breath enough to speak, but when I had, I just let fly. I was in a furious passion and used up every ounce of German invective that I possessed. My performance must have been masterly and almost worthy of Hitler himself for the effect was magical. My handcuffs and the straps round my ankles were removed. I was offered a cigarette and the little man sitting opposite to me began to explain in a soothing voice that nothing offensive had been intended and that I had only been given a taste of the way in which German prisoners were treated at “Your Scotland Yard”. This set me off again and I told him very plainly that his remark was slanderous and simply showed how ignorant Germans were about everything outside their own rotten country. So far I had never believed the stories told in England about the Gestapo because all the Germans I had ever met had been ordinary civilized human beings, but now I began to see how mistaken I had been.
