The days wore on, lengthening to the advantage of the cause and permitting of longer shifts. The working-party added to its numbers, allotting a few more privileged places without difficulty; for by now the thing was beginning to be known and discreetly talked about, and founders’ shares were at a premium. A few who might have been able to obtain them, but whose turn had come for exchange, were unable to resist the temptation and departed for Holland. The working-party and some others, on being asked their intentions, politely intimated that they preferred to remain in Germany. Had Niemeyer only taken more intelligent stock of the particular quarter from which so many unexpected refusals emanated, it is possible that he might have drawn valuable conclusions.
But Niemeyer, astute German though he was, disregarded these and other even more valuable hints which were to be offered him before the scheme was ripe for launching, and which could have told him easily enough in which quarter the wind blew. As an instance of one, there arose in early June a sudden and curious demand on the part of certain individuals for transfer from A to B Kaserne. Three officers, comfortably situated in a small room in the former house (the same room, by the way, as that in which the Letter Boy used to spend so much of his time), overlooking the picturesque suburbs of Holzminden, and blessed with apparently every comfort that a prisoner-of-war could require, asked unashamedly if they might become one of a motley, closely packed crew in one of the big rooms on the ground floor of B Kaserne. Many of the reasons given for the desire to change were ingenious, but if submitted to anybody with a less cast-iron mould of thought than the German camp officers it is unlikely that they would have convinced. However, change they were allowed to, and change they did; and the working-party of twelve were now all lodged in B Kaserne.
This was a very necessary move for the following reason: when—if ever—the tunnel was used in earnest, it would be used after dark and lock-up. Consequently those who intended to use it would have all to be in B Kaserne at the time. For any less important occasion it might have been feasible for the A house members of the scheme to arrange to change places for the night with accomplices in B house, the A house officers answering to the B house officers’ names and vice versâ. This used to be done sometimes for occasions such as a birthday party or a theatrical show, when the presence of some member of the other house was essential to the success of the evening’s programme. But more often than not it was spotted, and either condoned or reported according to the nature and temper of the Feldwebel taking the appel. On a large scale and for an event of the nature of the tunnel, for the success of which complete absence of any suspicion on the part of the Germans was an absolute sine qua non, such a risk was not possible, and, indeed, could not be allowed. It was intended that, whatever happened, and whatever the hardship that might occur in individual cases, the night of the escape should not find a single officer in B Kaserne who was not domiciled there with the permission of the Germans. This intention was happily carried into effect.
Meanwhile, the owners of the founders’ shares, knowing, as they did, pretty well the conditions under which the scheme was to be submitted to the public, took time by the forelock and changed houses before the rush.
It was indeed an undertaking in which the home policy was fraught with almost as many dangers as the foreign, and required the most patient and tactful handling. Fortunately there was only one of the allied nations in the camp, and this fact of itself quartered the risk. Inter-allied jealousy, or merely Latin or Slavonic exuberance, had many a time ere this during the war wrecked a promising and well-laid plan. But even in a camp where all were English and the loyalty to the cause of the whole community never for an instant came in question, there were yet grave risks of discovery through some intemperate speech or action of the newly captured or the not overwise.
It was just after the arrival of one hundred newly captured officers from the big March offensive of 1918 that the cat was most nearly let out of the bag. A “show” was on, and the audience were sitting in packed rows and eager expectancy in front of the curtain, waiting for the intellectual fare of the evening to be set forth on the dining room tables. A canteen “boycott” was in full force at the time, and the company, in the absence of the bottle that cheers, was comparatively quiet. The Germans used to make so much money out of the English over the wine—and wretched wine at that—that the senior British officer had every now and again to clap on a drastic boycott on the canteen and forbid officers to buy anything there at all. Sometimes this policy was two-edged and as much in the interests of peace and quiet in the camp as to the detriment of German profiteers. At all events you could always tell whether a boycott was on or not by the amount of noise which attended the fortnightly shows, and it so happened that on the particular occasion with which we are concerned you could hear your next-door neighbour speak.
Suddenly a padre—one of the new arrivals—leant over to make a remark to an officer sitting near him, and in bell-like tone uttered the dreadful question:
“Are you in the tunnel?”
A shiver ran through the whole of the adjoining rows. Two of the German interpreters were seated within two yards.
On another occasion an ingenuous youth was found leaning out of one of the first floor corridor windows and carrying on an animated conversation about escapes, past and future, with one of the occupants of the cells. They were apparently analysing the causes of failure of a recent attempt and discussing the prospects of success of another imminent one. Any English-speaking German who happened to be in the building at the time—it was midsummer, and all the windows were open—could not fail to have been suitably impressed with this dialogue.