A newly captured officer with a bump of observation startled those near him one day by singing out to a friend to know whether he too had recognised “these officers walking about in orderlies’ clothes.”
The senior British officer did, of course, from time to time issue stringent orders about the paramount importance of secrecy, and sometimes personally harangued the occupants of each building. But the difficulty was to cater for the odd handful—what we used to call “the elusive half per cent”—who either succeeded in absenting themselves from such harangues or, if present, failed to understand their purport, and of whom it might fairly be said that they were so stupid and perverse as to be a real danger to their own side, on whichever side of the line. A bump of carelessness, a bump of cussedness, a faulty sense of discipline, and a penchant towards selfish individualism—when two or three endowed with these qualities were gathered together, the lot of those responsible for their actions was not a pleasant one. The senior officer was powerless, if any chose disloyally or unintentionally not to support him; he exercised the authority vested in his person by virtue of King’s Regulations, and there it ended. A court of enquiry and a threat of post-bellum action against the offender was the limit of his power. Nor was it easy to enjoin general secrecy on a subject which was never put publicly into words. Hole, not tunnel, was the word used, if a word had to be used—and then only in an undertone, or behind closed doors.
But in spite of these potential sources of leakage, nothing occurred to mar the progress of the tunnel until the middle of May, when it had been in full swing for five and a half months and reached to somewhere about the middle of the vegetables. Then a bomb-shell fell. It was announced one day on appel that in consequence of measures of reprisals which had been taken against German officers in a certain camp in England, counter-reprisals would be put into force in the Xth Army Corps until further notice. There would be no less than four appels a day, at 9 a.m., 11.30 a.m., 3.30 p.m. and 6 p.m.; music, theatricals, games, and walks were to be stopped; and no newspapers were to be permitted into the camp. The Commandant regretted, but orders were orders, and so on in the usual vein.
It struck us as deliciously ironical that counter-reprisals on ourselves should be the first outward and visible sign that anything had come of the agitation which had, we knew, been raised on our behalf by influential officers amongst the earlier Holland parties. It ultimately transpired that strong representations had been made to the German War Office as to the maladministration in the Xth Army Corps and particularly in the camps governed by the Twin Brethren, Heinrich and Karl Niemeyer; when it became clear that no attention was being paid to these representations, steps were taken to collect in one camp in England all the German officers who belonged to Hanoverian regiments and to deal with them as a measure of reprisals on appropriate lines. The measure signally failed, after the manner of reprisals. In the first place, it was impossible to find any Englishman at all like the Niemeyers, and therefore the conditions ruling with us could not be even approximately reproduced at home; in the second place, a German government that was as yet impenitent and still sanguine of ultimate success decided that their best course lay in prompt counter-reprisals. One of the features of this “strafe” was that we were invited to send full accounts of it home in our letters, provided only that we also mentioned the alleged reason. An extra letter was offered us in which to do so[[9]]. This was a clumsy and typical German device to endeavour to alienate popular feeling at home. Needless to say, it was seen through, and not a single letter mentioned the subject at all.
[9]. Normally we were allowed to write two letters in each month (six sides to a letter) and four post-cards.
Any alternative to reprisals as a means for one belligerent power to stop the malpractices of another was not, so far as I am aware, discovered during the war. But it was a poor arrangement at the best.
The added appels had a serious effect upon the output of excavated earth, for the working hours were now considerably reduced, and there were long faces amongst the initiate. Those in authority began to have serious qualms as to whether—even if all went well from now on—the tunnel would have advanced near enough to the rye crop before it was ripe for the sickle. Such local papers as we were now compelled to smuggle into the camp spoke of an early harvest. Added to this, the entire camp, having now no games to play and nothing particular to occupy itself with, began to take notice of things to which they had been blind hitherto; and an embarrassing number of enquiries—most secretly and impressively conducted, but embarrassing withal—began to be made as to the progress of the unmentionable thing. Certain people all at once discovered that they could in future only support existence if buoyed up by the hope of escape, and began to ingratiate themselves accordingly in the proper quarter. There arose a strong and inconvenient demand for places in what came to be known as the “waiting list,” which did not in the least help the progress of what they were waiting for.
During these days of counter-reprisal, which lasted about a month, the event occurred which might so easily have put the lid on the whole scheme, but which did, in fact, probably prove to be its salvation. An officer returning from his shift to the officers’ entrance was recognised by a sentry. The sentry reported the episode but could not give the officer’s name. Niemeyer quickly appeared on the scene, attended by the camp officers, and conducted a cross-examination and thorough investigation on the spot; and the British were kept standing on appel—those of them concerned in an agony of apprehension—until the conclusion of the enquiry.