The Tunnellers of Holzminden (with a side-issue)

by H. G. Durnford

So well, however, was the entrance to the tunnel concealed, and so inconclusive was the evidence supplied by the sentry, that Niemeyer failed badly to take advantage of the one real clue ever presented to him in the history of the tunnel. He knew the English too well to think for a moment of parading the whole camp before the miserable sentry on the chance of an identification; such an attempt would have meant a crowded hour or so of sheer delight for the British and of baffled exasperation for himself. He ultimately came to the conclusion that if there was anything in the sentry’s statement there was probably some embryo stunt afoot (in this he was not far wrong); and contented himself with the precaution of placing an additional sentry at the orderlies’ door. The conspirators breathed again. All was not yet lost.

When nothing further at all suspicious was reported, the mood of the versatile Niemeyer again reacted, and the informing sentry was given eight days in cells for making a false report. This act, besides being typically unjust, was also one of questionable policy, since it naturally tended to make other sentries uncommunicative of anything suspicious that they might see or hear. Punishment in cells with them was an infinitely more serious affair than it was with us. They had only their own miserable ration and were cut off even from the slender assistance of the home parcels on which most, if not all of them, relied to keep their bodies and souls together.

The immediate upshot, so far as the tunnel and the additional sentry were concerned, was that so long as the sentry remained posted over the orderlies’ entrance the tunnel could not possibly be got at by the previous method. A new entrance to the chamber had to be made, and this was set about at once. A hole was begun through the wall of the last of the big living rooms on the ground floor which adjoined directly on to the chamber. This hole would give entry to the chamber somewhere underneath the staircase flight. It should be explained here that the only reason which had prevented this hole being attempted at a much earlier stage in the proceedings was the obvious and almost certain risk of any such hole being discovered in a search and thereby ruining the whole scheme. Only the present desperate state of affairs justified the risk being taken at all.

The inhabitants of Room 34 (the big room in question) had, of course, to be let into the secret, if secret it could any longer be called. One member of the patrol now sat in a deck-chair at the end of the corridor just opposite the door of the room, whence he could command the whole length of the passage and dart in at once to warn the workers inside if any German hove in sight. A different officer every hour sitting at this particular spot in the corridor, reading a book and apparently perfectly resigned to the discomfort of the site and the disturbance to his reading caused by the perpetual traffic—if the Germans who did occasionally come along had stopped for a moment to think....

But the fact is that the reprisals were militating for us as well as against us. The German personnel were not enjoying the counter-reprisals any more than we were; counting 250 officers five times a day, even in the most superficial manner, was a task that was obviously trying the patience of both the Feldwebels and the Lager officers very severely, and it is not surprising that during this period they left us well alone when they were given the opportunity. On the argument that both sides had a grievance, personal relations between the British and Germans (with the exception, of course, of Niemeyer) improved by leaps and bounds; and the supervision was more cursory and the letter of the law more loosely interpreted than at any previous time in the camp’s history.

The then senior British officer, Colonel Rathborne, D.S.O., was himself deeply interested in the success of the scheme, and had, in fact, been offered a place immediately after the original working-party. It was his obvious policy to foster as much as possible the existing state of good relationship and to avoid serious collision with the authorities. Consequently the reprisals were left to work out their own sweet course; Niemeyer was ignored; when a hammer disappeared from the tool-bag of a civilian carpenter working in the camp and the Feldwebel-Lieutenant Welman demanded its instant restoration on pain of a general search, the hammer was immediately produced. A German tin room attendant had his cap whisked off his head by some adventurous and unidentified spirit. The threats of a general search were repeated, and the cap as promptly restored. The Jewboy and the Germans generally were welcome to draw any conclusions they wished as to our impaired morale. Their conclusions were of secondary importance. But a general search at such a time would have been a disaster of the first magnitude, and Room 34 could hardly have got through with its secret unnoticed.

However, the attempt to make an entry into the chamber from Room 34 proved abortive, owing to the difficulty of digging through the solid concrete of the wall with the available tools. So after desperate efforts for about a week the deck-chair habit ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the working-party turned their attention to the attic, which was now the one remaining available avenue of approach.

Leading to the attic floor from the officers’ staircase were two swing doors. As the attic floor had now been placed altogether out of bounds for officers, these doors were padlocked and secured by a chain which passed through the two large loop-handles of the doors. The doors were forced by unscrewing one of these handles, which were fastened by six screws through their bed-plates. The screws had to be replaced every time the conspirators went in or out. Entry was then possible into one of the now disused officers’ small rooms. A hole was knocked through the wall of this room into a space between the wall of the attic, the roof, and the eaves, thus:

This space communicated with the orderlies’ quarters by means of a small door which had been built into the house to permit of access to the eaves. The hole in the vacant room was camouflaged with a bit of board, cut to size and covered with glue on which was sprinkled mortar and distemper to tone with the wall of the room.