The use of this room as the means of access to the orderlies’ quarters, and so viâ the staircase and the same old secret door to the tunnel, made up in full for the previous week’s delay and immensely accelerated the rate of progress. It was no longer necessary to work by means of carefully timed and well-reconnoitred reliefs; the work could now go on all day and all night, with interruptions only to admit of attendance on appels. When the reprisal restrictions were removed, things would go on even more swimmingly; as it was—and in spite of continued trouble with the stones—the tunnel was already estimated to be nosing its way to within measurable distance of the coveted rye.
When the Commandant’s suspicion at length subsided and the extra sentry was removed from the orderlies’ entrance, the decision had to be made whether to revert to the old method of getting to the tunnel or to stay with the quicker method and risk a search. It goes almost without saying that the latter counsel prevailed. It was now mid-June, and with any luck it was hoped that the tunnel would have been taken far enough by the first week in July. If they went back to the old method, it might not be ready before August. At the worst the Letter Boy, or some other agent, might be safely relied upon to give 24 hours’ notice of a search, during which time much might be done still further to conceal the traces of the attempted hole in Room 34—though this had already been fairly effectually done—and the actual hole in the attic. But it was unlikely, since these attic rooms were now out of bounds and the swing doors apparently securely padlocked, that a search would extend so far.
It might be asked why had not this decision been taken before, and why in the early stages the cumbrous method of approaching the tunnel in orderlies’ clothes under the very nose of a sentry had been preferred. The answer to this very reasonable question is that three weeks is not eight months. At this juncture it was reasonable odds against a search being held before the tunnel was completed. In November it was all the odds on. Actually, since operations had been begun, there had been two searches, both of them—as regards the ground floor at any rate—extremely thorough. No hole in a wall could have hoped to escape the sleuth hounds specially sent down from Berlin for these occasions. They may have got the worst of it in some of the personal encounters—indeed, they very rarely did discover any articles of a contraband nature; the British officers who owned any as a rule took care not to be collared in possession, and very often the war was carried into the enemies’ country and the civilian detectives found, on leaving a room, that they had somehow managed to mislay an umbrella, or a hat, or some other object of civilian attire useful for escapes—all of which, it need hardly be said, provided scope for a most exhilarating exchange of amenities, and sometimes for grave allegations against the moral proclivities of the British prisoners. But with bricks and mortar our black-coated friends were on surer ground, and they would not have needed very high qualifications to have spotted a gaping hole in a wall camouflaged behind a bed. So our Tunnellers had had to go outside to get to their work, and the plank door had been decided upon.
Searches, though they meant confinement to the buildings for the best part of the day and made cooking a decent meal at the stoves impossible, were nevertheless welcomed by all except those who had much to lose and no time to hide it in as a pleasant variation to the monotonous round. For one thing, they introduced for a brief space a foreign element into the camp. Quaint little spectacled civilians from Berlin, full of zeal for their duties for an hour or so, but tiring rapidly as the same ritual was gone through in room after room of polite but mildly amused prisoners, could be induced, with a little persuasion, to talk of food conditions in the capital, their opinion on the war, and other interesting subjects. The full dress uniform of a police officer provided a pleasing variation to the eternal field grey; or some Captain from Hanover, in charge of the company specially detailed for the search, interested simply because his face was new to us.
For any material result, both the searches held at Holzminden were an absolute farce. Of one of them we had full warning. An enormous quantity of books were temporarily confiscated for examination and removed to the parcel room. One or two maps which had been carelessly left uncovered were duly netted; but anything of real importance, such as civilian hats, clothes, compasses, and the overwhelming majority of the maps, were securely hidden before the search ever began, and all that happened was that every officer in the camp was invited to undress and then to dress again. These ordeals were great fun. When it got to the final stages and the victim was in his undergarments, he was invited to give his parole that he had nothing actually concealed about his person. With some of us delicacy conquered. Others were less fastidious and requested the German to continue his ungrateful task to the bitter end. Long before the attic floor—in both houses the richest in contraband stores—was reached, the searching-parties had tired of the beauty of the human form and proceedings had become entirely formal.
One officer prominent in this story was taken by surprise at one of these searches with a whole escape kit under his bed. But he had also at the foot of his bed a large black wooden box which had a double bottom. Luckily, when the sleuths entered his room, the first thing that caught their eye was the big black box. They turned everything out of it and tapped the bottom. After a frenzied argument, lasting quite half an hour, between a detective from Berlin who said there was a double bottom, and the double bottom expert, who, being called over to examine it, said there was not, the former triumphantly put his foot through the false bottom. It hid one or two books (prayer books, etc.) and some private papers of no particular interest. These articles were carried off in triumph, and every Hun present shook the detective’s hand as if he had scored a goal for Blackburn Rovers. They were so pleased that they forgot to look under the bed.
It should be added that on these occasions the camp personnel could be relied upon to do their utmost in helping to baffle the search. Thus, for instance, a sentry could—for a cake of soap, or a stick of chocolate—be easily induced to act as temporary banker for a large number of German notes of the realm. Feldwebels could be persuaded to give permission for an officer to visit the latrine under guard, well knowing that he had only gone to put something out on short deposit in a reliable quarter. In some cases the Feldwebel was even known to take the risk of the market himself. It was a curious phenomenon, in fact, that on such gala days the camp personnel became infinitely more indulgent than on ordinary working days. It was as if they were disposed to make common cause with us against Niemeyer and his imported mercenaries. In doing so the camp sentries did not forget to help themselves unasked whenever they had an opportunity. Whilst we were shut up in our rooms, they had ample access to the dining rooms; and it was an amusing climax to the day’s sport to see the whole of the guard marched off to the parcel room after the search to be themselves searched in their turn, their pockets simply bulging with stolen tins or eatables, and in many cases the delinquents making frantic efforts to eat a two days’ supply in two minutes and incur the penalty of indigestion rather than that of nine days’ cells for being found in possession of stolen goods. The whole business was rather Gilbertian. I do not think it could have happened in England, even if there had been a famine there.
Niemeyer must have realised the futility of these field-days, for there were no searches held between a date in March and the time of the tunnel escape. On one occasion all the preparations for one had been made, and the information duly passed on through the usual channels to us. But Niemeyer, in his turn, came to know that we knew, and not only cancelled the operations but told us frankly that he had done so. We had sometimes to give the devil his due for a sense of humour.