His behaviour towards the orderlies was a delightful contrast. Usually domineering and foul-mouthed towards them beyond the ordinary, he was now honey-tongued good fellowship itself. The orderlies were all employed digging up the tunnel; and Niemeyer used to stand by them for hours at a time, asking the men questions about their homes in England, their wives and children, and generally trying to put himself on the best possible terms with them.
Niemeyer was looking desperately hard for a scapegoat. It is to be remembered that no one had been caught actually in the tunnel, and every officer recaptured stoutly refused to say how he had got out. There was no tangible evidence of any conspiracy. Consequently unless an admission of complicity was wrung from one of the orderlies, the charge of doing damage to German property, levelled against a number of unconvicted and unconvictable persons, would lose weight, however circumstantial the evidence; and it was punishment to the hilt which the Commandant, in his wounded pride, yearned after. But his clumsy overtures took in nobody. The men knew that he was trying his hardest to pump them and gave nothing away.
CHAPTER X
CLOSING INCIDENTS
Niemeyer had often, in more peaceful days, jocularly remarked that the conduct of the British officers was making him an old man before his time. Such of us as in these days were brought face to face with him began to get a comfortable feeling that this indeed was the case. He was reported to be 62; and by this time he was looking every day of it.
The actual casus belli on which the senior British officer decided to force the issue was the treatment, on the day after the escape, of an R.F.C. officer called Phelan. This officer had on his way down to the cells been brutally kicked by a sentry under the approving eye of a particularly odious Feldwebel of the best Prussian pattern surnamed Klausen, and known familiarly as “Dog Face.” The act had been witnessed by at least six British officers and the evidence duly taken down. The senior British officer therefore gave the Phelan incident pride of place in a summary sent to Niemeyer of various individual and collective injustices visited on the members of the camp since the discovery of the tunnel, and added a curt ultimatum that unless these grievances were promptly redressed he would be unable to be responsible for the further conduct of the British officers.
This was an extreme step and had never, even in this turbulent camp, been employed before. For the senior British officer to disclaim authority over his own brother-officers implied, legally speaking, that he regarded the conditions of imprisonment as too monstrous to be covered by the accepted rules of the Hague Convention, and that in fact he looked upon the Commandant not as his sentinel in an honourable captivity under the rules of war, but as his gaoler in a common gaol, where international conventions did not apply. Once this attitude was taken up, the ordinary courtesies of military etiquette would have to be abandoned, salutes not offered, passive resistance everywhere adopted. Uniformity of conduct would be an absolute essential, and elaborate precautions were taken to warn the camp by word of mouth—paper would have been too dangerous—exactly what procedure was to be followed if the order went forth that diplomatic relations had been broken off with the Huns.
The Adjutant’s position in those stormy days was an onerous one. It was the essence of the whole British policy that the senior officer’s orders should be carried out to the letter. Due allowance had also to be made for the incalculable perversity of the “half per cent” to whom reference has already been made. Both of these duties fell to the Adjutant of the camp working through the Adjutants of the houses. Written instructions were impossible on account of the risk. It was necessary to warn personally every one of the 500 odd officers in the camp and to explain when, and if necessary why, action was to be taken in accordance with “scheme of resistance A or B.”
No reply was received to the ultimatum, and it was decided therefore to put into execution a general scheme of passive resistance. On the morning after the expiry of the ultimatum the entire camp shuffled late and listlessly on to 9 o’clock appel, wearing, for the most part, cardigan jackets instead of tunics, and innocent of all headgear. When the German officers appeared, no one saluted or paid the slightest attention to them. Ulrich hesitated, grasped the situation, and went straight back to the Kommandantur to report. He returned with a message from the Commandant to the senior British officer that if he could arrange for an orderly appel in an hour’s time he (the Commandant) would be glad to discuss matters and examine the list of grievances submitted.
So far, so good. The word was circulated for a perfect appel at 10 a.m. But at 10 o’clock, after the conclusion of an appel which, for correctness of dress and demeanour, would have satisfied the soul even of the late lamented Lincke, Niemeyer strode on to the middle of the parade ground and disillusioned us: