During the last few days, when it was generally known that at any moment the cat might jump and it became a question of concealing “zero” day from your own side, the tension was positively painful. With the best will in the world, the injunctions of the senior British officer came to be overlooked. Even the senior British officer himself was not innocent in this respect. Small parties clustered at the ends of corridors or roamed disconsolately round and round the camp, discussing the eternal question, When? Civilian disguises, maps, and packs were brought out from their hiding-places and set ready for the road. More risks of detection were run during this period in a day than had been run before in a whole month. Maps were studied. An unwise and rather insubordinate eleventh-hour attempt on the part of one or two of the more desperate characters in Kaserne A to effect a transfer of rooms to Kaserne B was fortunately quashed. The senior British officer, who was somewhat square-rigged in shape, was given a trial run down the tunnel to see if he could manage it. It took him an hour to get back!
Walks had been allowed again as a consequence of the “lifting” of the reprisals, and most of the intending starters availed themselves of this opportunity to get into good marching trim. Fit as they were in consequence of the strenuous work down below, they felt the need of using every available opportunity for a good heel-and-toe movement over a stretch of unconfined ground. The Holland border was 120 kilometres away and would not easily be reached by those who had let their walking muscles lie too long dormant. In addition, it was pleasant to get away for a space from the strained atmosphere of the enclosure and the tremendous secret of the camp, and without constraint to think and talk for a little of other things. In high midsummer the plain in which we walked was only less lovely than it had been in the spring. As then the trees, so now the young crops invited us to build up a new calendar in terms of growing things. We may not have felt the need perhaps, in the years gone by, to pay due note to the wonderful kaleidoscope. Now the very circumscription of her lecturing hours made Nature’s lessons the more highly prized.
Sometimes, when the weather was warm and the Feldwebel in charge sufficiently lazy and complacent, we bathed in the Weser—clandestinely, for river bathing was not allowed by the municipal authorities. Then for a glorious half-hour the river would be alive with the nude bodies of a hundred happy men. It was established at these bathes that the river was easily fordable at one point. In our parole cards there was nothing down to tell us not to notice things. And the river lay between the camp and Holland.
At the last moment another painful incident occurred. It became known that a certain desperate party in A Kaserne were proposing to anticipate the tunnel, and the increased restrictions which its discovery would be bound to create, by some wild-cat scheme of their own. It appeared to be their intention to fuse the lights all over the building and make a bid to get over the wire in the darkness and confusion thus created. There was also going to be employed a “blind” in the shape of a large dummy figure dropped from a window at the opposite end of the building to that at which the actual attempt was to be made. The scheme in ordinary circumstances would have been worth trying and was a courageous one. But at this juncture of affairs, when the work of nine months was on the verge of bearing fruit, and when the one thing needed was to lull the suspicions of the authorities, it was foolish and selfish. To make matters worse, the participants had received the unofficial support of the senior officer in the building.
The senior British officer in the camp, however, took a very different line. He had the ringleader up and put the argument fairly and forcibly before him. He sympathised, of course, but—there was a train already in the tunnel. The line was not quite clear for it yet, but would be shortly, and it must be let through first. It was very important not to have a collision at this moment, and the advent of another train might spell disaster. He must definitely forbid any prior attempt.
But for the above-mentioned ringleader, the tunnel would have been essayed a night earlier than it actually was. On the doors of the houses being locked at nightfall on the 23rd July, it was found that the fellow was in B Kaserne. He had got wind of it somehow and was determined to be in at the death. The only course was to cancel the operation for the night and induce this officer to realise that he had made a mistake and explain his appearance in the wrong house to the Feldwebel as best he could. Elaborate measures were also taken to put him off the scent for the ensuing night. Disciplinary methods were really useless with this type; besides, the senior officer was too closely occupied in the final arrangements of his own intricate disguise—he was intending to travel by train in broad daylight and not as a thief in the night—to feel any inclination for taking any further steps with this refractory individual.
Such difficulties may sound petty, perhaps, and inconsistent with the spirit of comradeship. But it was not in human nature to risk the fruits of eight months’ incessant labour to benefit the crowd. Nerves were badly on edge, and the wonder really is that this particular intruder was let off as lightly as he was.
CHAPTER IX
THE ESCAPE AND THE SEQUEL
The reader will excuse if at this point in the story the first person pronoun figures rather prominently. I was myself at this time the Adjutant of the camp, and, as such, had been fairly thoroughly coached how things were to be done. I was very glad to have the opportunity of contributing, in however modest a degree, to the success of the plot. The glorious nature of the adventure came home to me at last, and I experienced some rather severe eleventh-hour twinges of regret that I had not availed myself more fully of any chances that I might have had of actually participating. There had been times of late when I had almost given up the tunnel. There had seemed to be no end to the difficulties and obstacles in completing it. Added to which, the ordinary routine duties of Adjutant had kept me too fully occupied to acquire the proper escaper’s atmosphere and spend long hours over preparing maps and packs and securing the necessary money and disguise. Frankly, I had been a little sceptical.