The Tunnellers of Holzminden (with a side-issue)

by H. G. Durnford

Hither in the summer of 1918 came 500 odd hungry British officers, the unwilling guests of his then Imperial Majesty Wilhelm II. They were a not inconsiderable part of the many taken in the three gigantic German offensives between March 21st and May 27th. They came in big batches from the sorting-out camps of Rastatt and Karlsruhe—the former place a memory that will endure for their lives with those who were there—or in little driblets from the hospitals whence they had been discharged.

Hither came also in September 200 officers from Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), the last of their illusions gone. They had been sent from various camps to that place, the stepping-stone for internment and happier things. They had stayed there two months. Their parcels, which should have been forwarded to them, went persistently “west.” In many cases even their luggage had gone to Holland. They had been taken for walks and had viewed the promised land. And now, at the eleventh hour, the congestion of sick at Aachen had necessitated their removal and they had been side-tracked to the Baltic—to wait and wait, and begin the dreary round again. They moved our sympathy. They had had two and a half years of it, and now they had as little to eat as, and not much more to wear than, the new arrivals. But one of them had a typewriter.

And hither came also a little party of three from Holzminden Camp in Brunswick, transferred, as I have previously explained, as suspected persons to a camp of really reliable security. Major Gilbert, Lieutenant Ortweiler, and myself had been told one morning that we had an hour and a half in which to pack. We packed and went. Stralsund was like a rest cure.

It is indeed a pleasant spot. A channel, narrow at the entrances, broadening to ninety yards in the middle, divides the islands. Standing on the bridge which spans the channel at its narrowest, one looks west to Stralsund town. Whether with the setting sun behind it or with the morning sun full on it, it is beautiful. Venice viewed from the sea could hardly be prettier. The dome of the Marianne Kirche dominates the town, and the bat-coloured sails of the fishing vessels could be just seen, with an occasional motor-boat, moving in the blue Sound. In Greater Danholm the chestnuts are magnificent. There is one avenue of trees which meet each other overhead as in a cathedral nave. And there was one little segregated, fenced-off spot which for no particular reason we called King Henry VIIIth’s Garden—the name seemed to suit. One could take half an hour walking round the camp.

But it is not my intention by painting too glowing a picture to alienate my reader’s sympathy. The place was good, but German. The buildings were good, but had held Russians. The air was good, but there were smells. We had been long-time prisoners—veterans, we considered ourselves, in this horde of “eighteeners.” And it would be cold, very cold in winter.

We had a fortnight’s holiday, revelling in the unexpected beauty, the much less uncomfortable beds with their extra sheet, the open-air sea bath in the mornings, the freedom and scope of movement, the almost latent wire, the inoffensiveness of the German personnel, the unobtrusiveness of the Commandant, the beer (liquorice, but still beer of a sort), the exchange of news with the new prisoners and the picking up of old threads, the sight of the sea from our landing window, the games on real grass....

And then, in quite a different sense, we began looking round.

We learned that the authorities were quietly and politely confident that the place was escape-proof. They expected attempts. Oh! yes. “We know it is your duty. We should do it ourselves.” And conventionalities of the sort that are common when German officers of a decent type—and there were such on this island—find themselves in conversation with Englishmen. “But it cannot be done—no one has ever escaped from here. True, it might be easy to cut the wire and get on to the main part of the island, but we have our dogs. If you swim to the mainland you will be recognised and brought back. Even if you get across to Rügen you have to get off it and you would be missed. We have our seaplane to scour the sea. The ferry is guarded....” and so on.

Subsequent events appeared to justify this view. Attempts were made, and failed in quick succession. In each case the objective was the same, though aimed at by different methods—the open sea and the Danish island of Bornholm or Danish territory elsewhere. Two officers, yachtsmen born, cut the wire one night, swam out towards Rügen, boarded an empty fishing vessel about 200 yards out and got clean away. They stranded off the north-west corner of Rügen and were recaptured. Three others commandeered a boat which had been left unpadlocked in the channel, rowed to the mainland, and separated. Two were recaptured immediately, the third was at large some days and was eventually arrested some way down the coast. I did not learn his story. Another party of three attempted to paddle over to Rügen on a cattle trough. They selected a stormy night, were upset fifty yards out of the channel, and got back, unobserved, with difficulty, and, as one of them could not swim, rather luckily.

So far as the German precautions went, the net upshot of these attempts was that stringent orders were issued about leaving boats in the channel or on the shores of the island unpadlocked. For the rest, the Commandant was satisfied with his second line of defence, the water, which was moreover (it was now mid-September) growing daily colder and more unattractive.