13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison

by John Alan Lyde Caunter

These German soldiers were far from being on the best of terms with our old Landsturm men, who continued to carry out the usual guard duties as they had done previously.

Nothing else happened beyond the arrest of five civilian Germans who were hanging about the entrance to the prison. Why they were suddenly seized and flung into cells no one rightly knew, but we concluded that it had to do with these same May 1st demonstrations.

The preparations for the great exodus from the camp were full of comic and sometimes almost tragic incidents.

Some prisoners, who had taken the trouble to try to make their rooms comfortable when the camp became all English, were particularly savage over the move, and took care that nothing which they were unable to take away should be left to be sold again to another batch of prisoners at a later date. There was a considerable quantity of live stock of various kinds in the camp, and measures for the transportation of these furred and feathered belongings had to be undertaken. The rabbits had to have special boxes made for them so that they could be carried by hand.

These rabbits had been in existence some six months at Crefeld and were very prolific breeders. They provided many an excellent meal for their owners and were objects of great interest, being watched by a small crowd of the prison inhabitants every day.

Quite a number of canaries, a dog or two and a cat, were also in the camp, and would have to be taken away by their owners.

We were told that our heavy baggage might in due course follow us to the new prison camps and that we could take one box each, which was to accompany us. Of course we all had accumulated much more stuff than would go into one box, and much grousing and desperate thinking was the result of this order.

The commandant promised to have our special boxes of tinned food sent on to us as soon as possible after our departure. Although many of us never expected to see the things again, he kept his promise, greatly to the delight of everyone. These food boxes arrived some three weeks after we had got to the new camp.

On the last evening at Crefeld, definite "move" orders were issued and our names were called by parties. I was detailed for No. 2 camp, which was to have over half the 750 officers at that time at Crefeld. Another party consisted approximately of three hundred officers, and the remaining fifty or so were distributed among two or three other new camps.

Owing to finding out that five or six officers were missing at the final roll-call, another nominal roll-call was ordered that evening in order to ascertain the names of those who were missing. The Crab was in charge of this roll-call, and he stood at the opening of a wire netting fence dividing two tennis courts, while the English officers answered their names and filed past him. Muddles very soon occurred, and what with officers who had already answered their names wandering back among the uncounted ones, so as to answer to the names of those missing, and the mistakes which naturally occur in calling over the names of 750 officers of another nationality, the Germans were bamboozled, and had no idea what they were doing. This roll-call was a fearfully slow one, and it became dark before two thirds of the officers had passed through the opening.