The Grand Escape: Chapters 11–16

He promised the new senior British officer that he would reopen negotiations around parole walks only to rescind the promise soon afterward.

They crafted an effigy and dangled it from an attic-floor window, a noose around its neck.

Colquhoun, who was loitering outside the officer entrance, ostensibly reading a book, received the signal.

For Gray, these damp, streaked clothes used by all the tunnelers were anathema, as even in captivity he kept himself spotless and his shirt and pants pressed to sharp creases.

Despite Niemeyer’s ban on the sale of wine, Douglas Lyall Grant, of the London Scottish Regiment, supplied a cellar’s-worth of bottles that he joked cost more than a night out at London’s swanky Carlton Hotel.

There was no better way out, no better way to get a head start before a manhunt was launched than a tunnel like this. His own impetuous run through the escape hatch had proved this fact.

One captive described “a motley crew”: “Australians—South Africans—Canadians—New Zealanders—Irish—Scotch—English and Welsh.”

The intellectuals regard with disdain the flighty scandalmongers.

The intellectuals regard with disdain the flighty scandalmongers.

Then there are the drunks and the blue ribald army—the studious and the do-noughts—the night birds and the gamesters.

At 3:30 p.m., wearing old Burberry jackets, rucksacks looped over their shoulders, they emerged from Block B. All was normal in the camp.

One indiscreet move in an unlucky spot, and the walls or roof might give in under the weight of the earth above.

To pipe the air to the tunnel face, they collected round shaving tins, knocked out the ends, strung them together, and covered them with canvas. Links were added as needed. Being the pumper was monotonous, arduous work.

The three men shed their grungy work outfits, wiped their skin clear of dirt with a cloth, and dressed in their orderly uniforms.

Since first arriving at Holzminden, officers had bribed and inveigled some of the guards and other staff, turning them into willing accomplices who provided information or special items.

Niemeyer’s poor treatment of his men made them easy turncoats.

As one British officer described, when the commandant tired of abusing his prisoners, he vented his “black gusts of bilious passion” on his staff, often leaving them “literally trembling as he flayed them with his tongue.”

“The Typist,” a young secretary in the Kommandantur, helped them for less mercenary reasons. She had fallen in love with Peter Lyon, a 6-foot-3-inch Australian infantry officer who was a member of the tunnel conspiracy.

“That’s it!” Gray exclaimed. Blain and Kennard looked at their usually taciturn friend as if he had suddenly lost the run of himself. “Mad!” Gray chuckled. “Mad! That’s the answer. It simply couldn’t miss!”

With that, he crawled into the tunnel, the first digger of the day.
Then a run of bad luck and imprudence put everything in jeopardy.

The tunnelers waited for the fateful moment when their secret door would be found.

It was evident that they had been murdered; Kroner’s story was a patent lie.

Niemeyer had proven himself time and again to use force—either by bayonet or bullet—to make a statement. But the prisoners were undaunted.

They would no longer need to risk masquerading as orderlies to get past the guards.

He could rant and blubber, tear his hair out, convulse on the ground, talk in tongues or stay mute and wild-eyed, whatever he pleased—never would he need to speak intelligible German, nor would he be expected to answer questions.

It was north of the most direct route to the Netherlands, but the extra miles were worthy of the ruse.

He had grown his hair past his shoulders, ostensibly to better play the parts, but he had ulterior reasons.

As they headed out the barrack entrance, Brean acted like he was dictating notes to his typist, and Sutcliffe sashayed out the gate, attracting nothing more than the admiring gazes of the guards.

Compounding this anxiety, Niemeyer had the whole camp riled up over his treatment of Captain William Leefe Robinson—an RFC pilot who had destroyed a German Zeppelin on a bombing raid over England, killing its 16 German crew members but undoubtedly saving many British lives.

Through Captain Hugh Durnford, a fellow Anglo-Indian officer who spoke Hindi and who occupied a room in Block B right above his cell window, Gray was kept apprised on the tunnel’s progress and relayed messages to the team.

On one of the walls in Gray’s cell was scribbled with the line, “Stone walls do not a prison make. Nor iron bars a cage.” As he languished in the cellar, looking at those words, the tunnel approached its most critical hour.

He had been hunting for U-boats in the North Sea when his plane had mechanical trouble and crash-landed on the roiling waters.

After a long stint prying these stones loose from the hard clay, Bennett shimmied his way backward down to the start of the tunnel, to change places with one of his shift mates.

He scrabbled through the hole while some others from the team watched from a fourth-floor window in Block B. For most of its distance, the tunnel ran nine feet underground, but the incline at the end brought it to within five feet of the surface.

In mid-July, as the sappers approached the bean rows, Niemeyer unwittingly helped them with their preparations by lifting the ban on parole walks.

The other restrictions were also lifted, and, after a month of not being allowed any theater, the prisoners were permitted to stage a revue, Home John, in the Block B dining hall.

The next night, the tunnelers ate the heartiest meals they could assemble, got dressed for their journey, and inspected their rucksacks one last time before cinching them closed.

“Tonight!” The evening roll call, a final harangue from Niemeyer, murky brown soup for dinner. “Yes: Tonight.”

The halls and rooms were to be swept of any officers who did not belong in Block B. Lookouts would be posted at the entrance to ensure that neither Livewire nor any other interlopers tried to come inside.

Some tried to cajole and bribe him to know their place on the list, but Durnford was incorruptible.