The Tunnellers of Holzminden (with a side-issue)

by H. G. Durnford

Tunnelling had at least one great advantage over other methods of escape, that the interest attaching to the actual preparation was able to over-ride, to some extent, the suspense and anxiety as to ultimate success. There was no opportunity to mope. The immediate business was to defeat not only the Boche but Nature too, with all the odds on the latter’s side.

The bolting of the wooden partition behind the last of the trio shuts out the day and adds the proper molish touch to the scene. However, what at first appears pitch dark becomes gradually less so, and presently the party can see enough to change their more or less clean orderlies’ clothes for the filthy, sodden, mud-stained rags which they wear for work in the tunnel. There are other minor discomforts besides the darkness and the damp. There is an indescribable musty smell produced by a mélange of damp clay and earth, mice, old clothes, and much-breathed air, a smell which you have to go down into the bowels of the earth to get.

The working clothes are soon on, the clean orderlies’ clothes stowed carefully away, and a move is made to the tunnel mouth.

Look at the plan on p. [73] and glean a rough idea of the shape of the chamber and the siting of the tunnel mouth. The ground area is roughly four yards by five. The height varies, for, on the near (Kommandantur) side, the roof consists of the concrete foundation to the first flight of the orderlies’ staircase, while on the far side—that next to the Eastern wall of the building—are the cellar steps. The ground level, which is also the roof level at the southern end, is about five feet above the chamber floor.

Into the available recesses formed by this irregular enclosure all the tunnel earth must be stowed away. The hollow under the cellar steps is already full, and so will be the opposite hollow under the orderlies’ staircase before the end is reached, for a 60-yard passage through the earth must be displaced somewhere, and it will be a near thing and will require the most careful and economical storage if the displacements can be kept within the narrow cubic space which is all that can be earmarked for them. A passage from the partition door to the tunnel mouth must be preserved at all costs.

The tunnel mouth has been hacked through the main southern wall of the building just where it joins the cellar floor. It issues about three feet below the ground level—immediately underneath the orderlies’ entrance—and then bears sharp left in the direction of the outer wall.

Now the outer wall is but ten yards away at this point, and had the original scheme of the tunnel gone as it had been planned, all would have been over long before this particular May day, and the conspirators would have made their bid for freedom. There was nothing very Herculean involved in getting the tunnel to the other side of the wall and popping up on a dark night, with the friendly wall acting as a screen from the view of the nearest sentry.

But unfortunately, as has been explained, Niemeyer had taken precautionary measures just before the party were ready to move, and had put a sentry at the outside corner of the building, effectually covering the spot. Unless this sentry was removed it would be necessary, in order to have a reasonable prospect of success, to continue the tunnel until a point was reached where it would be possible to emerge under cover.

These bald words cannot attempt to convey the bitter disappointment caused by Niemeyer’s manœuvre or the seriousness of the altered prospect.

But the Tunnellers of Holzminden set their teeth and prepared themselves, if necessary, to go on digging for a year rather than run the risk that any of the party should be spotted by a sentry as he emerged. It was known how many a previous tunnel scheme had been shattered miserably on this rock, simply through lack of the necessary patience to go on with the job. At Schwarmstedt, not so many months before, this had happened. The tunnel came out quite close to the wire. One officer got out and got away, but in so doing was observed by a sentry. His successor had no sooner put his head above ground than he was shot dead in the most cold-blooded and treacherous manner—legitimately murdered, if one may venture on the paradox.