The inconveniences of such a state of affairs were lightly borne, and even relished, by the large majority. The Tunnellers had scored too heavily for us to mind doing scapegoat for them. It was a pleasant thought that all twenty-nine were still abroad, and that there was a reasonable certainty of a fair proportion of them getting over and putting a stop to Niemeyer’s run of atrocious good luck in the matter of escapes. Apart from the hue and cry which had already been raised through the North German press, the fugitives had everything in their favour. They had had months to deliberate on their route and travelling tactics; their packs had been stocked at leisure so as to combine the maximum of nutrition with the minimum of weight; their civilian disguises were adequate for their purpose. Most of them were going to trust to their legs to carry them over the border and would be only night birds of passage, lying up during the day. But Colonel Rathborne possessed a knowledge of German and a superb civilian suit, over which he had put pyjamas in going through the tunnel, and which would be able to set casual interference blandly at defiance. He was walking due south to Göttingen and was there going to entrain for Aachen viâ Cassel and Frankfurt. If all went well with him and his forged passport passed muster, he would be over the frontier in under three days. And later, when six days had gone by and he had not returned, the camp knew that the spell had been broken and that an Englishman was over from Holzminden. But we said nothing to the Germans.
However, before six days had passed a good number of the twenty-nine had already been rounded up and brought back to camp. As they were kept in the strictest isolation, it was only possible to hear their stories by bribing the cell attendants to bring written messages from them. If bribes failed, the message was concealed somehow in their trays of food. Every officer in detention cell had to have a friend to feed him—i.e. cook his food and see that it was delivered to him; otherwise he existed in semi-starvation on the German ration. It was the usual thing, preparatory to an attempt to escape, to arrange for your feeding arrangements in “jug”; and the penalty of recapture was shared to the full by the luckless partner, who thus had double work.
Sharp and Luscombe were the first pair back, as they had been the last pair away. They had had two days and a night out and had been caught passing through a village at night about 15 miles down the Weser. Sharp reported that at his search on being brought back to the camp, Niemeyer had vented his spleen on him by picking a valuable gold watch to pieces with his pocket knife, and by giving instructions for his civilian clothes (which included a brand new coat from England) to be ripped to ribbons. Every day brought in some fresh recapture, and, the cell accommodation being completely inadequate to cope with the numerous criminals, the town gaol was drawn upon to afford relief.
It was a sad blow to the camp when some of the foremost spirits in the adventure—Mardock, Lawrence, Butler, and Langren—were brought back after being out about ten days. Butler had stolen a bicycle and was caught on it while passing through a village. The others had been taken in the vicinity of the Ems. All these separate captures used to be described at length and with appropriate embellishments in the Hanoverian press. Thus in one organ it was stated that the refugees were all wearing British uniform; another had it that British naval uniform was the mode, with the buttons altered; yet another explained that the prisoners had escaped in civilian disguise procured from British friends outside the camp. To be sure, we had British friends outside the camp—what prisoner-of-war did not? But one could imagine the burghers of Hanover reading this sort of stuff and commenting on the lax policy of the Government towards enemy aliens!
A detective from Berlin had arrived shortly after the escape and displayed the usual aptitude of his species in examining the tunnel. Several hours elapsed before he found the door in the partition. This was all in Niemeyer’s favour, since a mere Commandant, a layman in the science of crime, could not reasonably have been expected to guess the secret which had temporarily baffled the expert. Such acuteness would have been unseemly and unprofessional. The detective took a large number of photographs[[11]] and made a large number of notes, and the two parted on the best of terms. When Niemeyer had bowed the important visitor off the premises, he turned his attention once more to the safe keeping of the British officers still remaining under his wing.
[11]. Three of these are reproduced in this book.
For several days he achieved a crescendo of fury and malevolence and maintained all the outward characteristics of a mad bull. Unfortunately he had not in any way fallen from grace. A staff officer from Hanover specially sent down to examine the affair was, to our disappointment, an apparently appreciative witness of his behaviour. We had calculated that von Hänisch would by now have discovered a flaw in his chosen instrument, and that the attitude of the chief might be seen to be reflected in his subordinates. But we were out of our reckoning. The captain from Hanover used even to accompany Niemeyer in his periodical incursions into the camp precincts and stand stolidly by while the latter blackguarded every Englishman within reach or hearing.
Possibly Niemeyer had got ideas from reading Don Quixote on his dull evenings. One of his favourite amusements during this period was to make fierce onslaughts with his stick on the washing hanging out to dry on the wire fence between the two main buildings. He would lunge at some unoffending under-garment, spit it, brandish it violently in the air, and then trample on it. It was against the regulations for washing to be hung on the wire, and the Commandant sacrificed his personal dignity to see that these regulations were unflinchingly obeyed.