The Great Escape (24 page)

The stooges were on duty that day in scores. Tommy Guest raided his secret clothing stores and passed the suits out to the lucky ones.

Dean and Dawson, as usual, had the most hectic time. Tim had asked Al Hake the previous night to start cutting the datestamp out of a rubber heel, and it was ready by the time the decision was made. The forgers went to work stamping all the papers and then they sorted them all and distributed them.

Crump had to come up from below for five o’clock appell.

“Still got a hell of a lot to do,” he told Roger.

“Can you make it by eight-thirty?” Roger asked.

“I think we might just,” said Crump. “Have a bloody good try anyway.”

He and Langford were back in 104 as soon as appell was over. The stooges searched the block as usual in case any ferrets had hidden there and gave the signal. Langford swung the trap up.

“The last all clear,” Crump said and scuttled below. He seemed a little sad about it. Crump and Canton were barred from the escape this time because Massey wanted a nucleus of experienced tunnelers left in the camp for the future.

Carrying a little box of electric-light globes (filched from the huts), Crump made his way slowly along the tunnel, tapping the cable in the roof about every forty feet and fitting extra globes. He trolleyed back to the base, praying that they’d all work, and clicked on the switch. The tunnel lit up like Blackpool illuminations. It was rather a thrill to see the blaze of light stretching into the distance.

He trolleyed slowly back along the tunnel looking for damaged frames, found four side boards twisted out of line, and carefully started replacing them. Darkness had settled over the compound, and people were sitting restlessly in every room trying to talk of innocent things and thinking only of the tunnel.

At six o’clock there was a early dinner party in Travis’ room. Half a dozen people present were hoping it would be their last meal in prison camp — Bushell, Lamond, Van Der Stok, Armstrong, McIntosh, and Osborne. Travis had made an enormous pile of bully-beef fritters mixed with flour he’d milled by grinding barley under a bottle and seasoned with garlic. To follow he had a great bowl of “barley glop” — barley boiled like rice with milk powder, sugar, and raisins. He pushed a massive plate of fritters over to Roger.

“If you can get outside that,” he said, “it’ll keep you going for a week.”

There wasn’t much conversation. Roger ate methodically, trying to relax. He’d been working like a machine all day on last-minute details. Someone broke the silence and asked him how he felt about it.

“O.K.,” he said laconically. “I’ll make it this time.” He must have felt the silence and known what they were thinking because he pushed the plate away and grinned easily.

“You don’t have to worry,” he said. “They won’t be getting me this time. I think I know the score pretty well now.”

At five to seven a man in a rough black suit got up from his bunk in a room in 107 and pulled on a greatcoat that seemed to bulge in a few directions. Richards was one of the hardarsers, and with a grin that was a shade too tight and on one side to be natural he shook hands around the room.

“Good-by, you bastards,” he said. “Sorry I can’t stay. See you in London after the war.”

“See you looking out of the bloody cooler window in a couple of days, you mean,” said the roomfeuhrer. “Good luck, old boy. Don’t get your feet wet.”

Richards picked up a folded and tied blanket, and at seven o’clock sharp he walked out of the south end of the block and down the path into the end of 109 away from 104. He went into room 17. A stooge was standing at the window, and Wings Norman was sitting at a table with a list.

“On time,” said Norman. “You’re first. You can go right away.”

Richards turned and walked down to the north end of the block. Another stooge was standing there and ten yards away across the path was the door of 104.

“O.K.,” said the stooge. “All clear. On your way.”

Richards walked straight out across the path and into 104.

Torrens, block commander for the night, was standing in the doorway of the hut kitchen with a list in his hand.

“Richards?” He ticked the name off with a pencil and pointed to a door. “Room six. Get into a bunk and stay there. Keep fairly quiet and talk about the weather…if you have to talk.”

Richards went in and lay down. He tried to relax but couldn’t. He was fairly tingling with wakefulness.

At thirty-second intervals all over the compound, farewells were being said, doors were opening, and men in bulky greatcoats walked out and went by a dozen circuitous routes to 109 where they reported to Norman. In ones and twos he sent them at intervals across to 104 where Torrens ticked them off on his list and sent them to the rooms allotted to them.

Stooges were bringing Norman reports every couple of minutes as to the position of every German in the camp. Luckily it was a quiet night, and after a time only Rudy was in, firmly ensconced in his contact’s new room in 112. He was enjoying himself. Everyone in the new room seemed terribly friendly, and that very decent fellow, his contact, had given him half a bar of chocolate. They sat there a long time, smoking cigarettes and talking.

Outside in the corridor three men were loafing by the stove, a German speaker and two stooges. If Rudy had come out, the German speaker would have started a conversation. One of the stooges would have gone to warn Norman, and the other would have tailed Rudy.

So far it was going like clockwork and 104 was filling fast. There were ten stooges standing beside the windows, watching into the darkness and edging back out of sight as the fingers of the searchlights came probing past. The stooge at the north window could see the goon-box over the roof of the cooler. “Harry” would break somewhere among the dark trees almost directly behind. Outside the fence he watched two greatcoated sentries pacing their beats. One patrolled slowly from the goon-box down to the guardroom by the gate and back again, and the other paced in the other direction from the goon-box to the west fence. They would be more of a danger than the man up in the goon-box swinging his searchlight with his back to the exit.

About a quarter to eight, Torrens had his bad moment. The door of 104 opened and he saw a German unteroffizier walk in and stride down toward him, jackboots clumping heavily on the boards.

There were three escapers in their civilian clothes in the corridor, and they scuttled in panic into the nearest room. Torrens, petrified for a moment, recovered and headed down the corridor toward him to try to stop him, head him off, do anything to get him out of the block. He had a shattering, sick feeling that everything was lost, and then he saw it was Tobolski, the Pole.

A controller had forgotten to warn him that Tobolski was going as a German, in one of Tommy Guest’s home-made uniforms. The uniform was a terrifyingly good imitation, with all the right swastikas and eagles and badges on it. If you compared it with a German uniform by daylight, you could see that the color was a shade bluer than the German gray.

Tobolski apologized, and Torrens, weak with relief, waved him into his allotted room. The people in that room nearly died when Tobolski opened the door and walked in. Tobolski was traveling with Wings Day, who had converted a Fleet Air Arm tunic into a double-breasted civilian coat and had a pair of gray trousers and a cloth cap. They planned to make for Stettin and stow away on a Swedish ship.

In room 23, Roger, Marshall, and Johnny Bull were standing with Langford by the trap waiting for Crump to finish up below. Langford had pulled a couple of lockers out from the wall, blanking off the trap area from the window, and he had the blackout shutters closed.

Massey limped in to wish them au revoir and Godspeed. He didn’t say much. The atmosphere was too tense. A week earlier a board of doctors had told him he was going to be repatriated soon because of his injured foot.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of you,” he said quietly. “I’m hoping you will get to London before me, and you know how much I’ll be looking forward to meeting you there.”

He shook hands. “Now I’ll get out of your way and give you a clear run,” and he limped off down the corridor and into the snow.

At eight-thirty Crump was still somewhere in the tunnel. Marshall and Langford were fidgeting restlessly, but Bushell, vivacious and bright-eyed, was talking gaily. A little too gaily. He looked very smart in the gray lounge suit that he’d saved from Prague, a black overcoat (an R.A.F. coat dyed with boot polish), and a dark felt hat he had somehow scrounged through a contact. His papers described him as a French businessman, and, carrying a little attaché case filled with his kit, he really looked the part. His traveling companion was the Frenchman, Scheidhauer, a lieutenant in L’Armée de l’Air attached to the R.A.F. Scheidhauer knew people in Alsace and Paris, and they planned to link up with an escape chain in France.

Up by the trap the minutes dragged like hours, and even Roger was getting restive. They were behind schedule already. Langford climbed down the shaft and met Crump as he trolleyed back to the base.

“For God’s sake, how much longer?” he asked.

“Al O.K. except the new rope on the end trolleys,” Crump said. “Bull and Marshall can fix them on when they go up. Save time.”

Langford went back up and reported, and at eight-forty-five Bull and Marshall clambered down the ladder. Crump handed Bull the new trolley ropes and quietly shook his hand.

“Good luck,” he said. “Wish to God I was going with you.”

Bull lay flat on his belly on the trolley and paddled himself up to Piccadilly. He tugged on the rope, and Marshall hauled the trolley back, climbed on himself, and Bull hauled him up the tunnel. Bull went ahead to Leicester Square to fix the trolley rope.

Roger was next down the shaft, shaking hands with Crump. He hauled the trolley back, climbed on, holding his case out in front of him, tugged the rope, and Marshall hauled him along.

One by one, in strict order, men were clambering down the shaft and shooting up the tunnel on the shuttle service. There is a terrific sensation of speed rumbling up a tunnel on a trolley with your nose about three inches from the floor.

Eventually seventeen men were in position underground and everything was ready to open up. In the end halfway house lay Johnny Bull and Marshall, side by side. Just behind, overlapping their feet, lay Bushell and Scheidhauer, then Valenta and Stevens, who were to follow them out, and Dowse who was to haul the next bodies up. In the tiny space they were packed like sardines. In Leicester Square a man was lying on the trolley, another man waiting to go next and a hauler. In Piccadilly, the same. At the base of the shaft there was a man on the trolley, Langford waiting to go next, the pumper, and Crump, in charge of operations.

It was about half-past nine when Roger set the ball rolling, speaking quietly as though it were an everyday occurrence, “I think you can have a shot at it now, Johnny. Everyone ought to be in position.”

Bull grunted and crawled carefully through the blackout blankets. A couple of seconds later they heard him clambering up the shaft in the darkness. After he had opened up, Bull was to lie outside the hole in the trees to control the first people out. They were to climb up the ladder and stop just below the top so he could feel their heads in the darkness. When it was all clear, he would give them a gentle tap on the head, and out they would go. He had landed that job partly because he was traveling third class by train as a workman, and it didn’t matter if he got his clothes dirty opening up and lying in the snow.

Down below the remaining six lay quietly, breathing slowly and deliberately because the air was thick and heavy. In the heat and the crush they were all running with sweat. They could hear Bull scraping at the roof boards at the top of the shaft with the special trowel that Crump had left there earlier in the day. Travis had carved it out of wood because it would be quieter than the metal ones.

He seemed to be scraping away up there for hours and the minutes dragged endlessly. They could hear him grunting a little now and then. Johnny Marshall crawled through the blankets and called softly up the shaft:

“How long?”

“Can’t loosen the damn top boards,” Bull whispered down. “They’re wet and they’ve jammed. Must be swollen with water.”

He worked on in the darkness, standing precariously on the ladder and trying to lever out the unseen, tightly packed boards that roofed the shaft, the sweat running off him.

Time dragged, and down through the tunnel and up in the hut nerves were stretching tight. Everyone was thinking that something must be wrong but had no idea what it could be, and imaginations were running away with some of them. Crump was looking vainly up the tunnel trying to see what the matter was. He noticed the air by the tunnel roof getting thick and hazy and told the pumper to give it all he had.

People kept on calling down from the trap asking what the hell was wrong. They should have opened up at nine o’clock. It was now ten o’clock.

Marshall, up at the end, looked at his watch and saw that Bull had been up there half an hour.

“For God’s sake go and see how he’s getting on,” Roger said, his voice a little strained.

Marshall went through the blankets again and, as he did so, he heard Bull coming down the ladder, and a moment later he stood beside Marshall at the bottom, breathing heavily.

“You have a go,” he gasped. “I’m done in.”

With hardly an inch of space to move in, Marshall laboriously stripped off his smart suit and climbed up the ladder in his long woolen underpants. He couldn’t risk getting into a first-class train compartment with his clothes streaked with dirt. At the top he hooked an arm around the ladder and tugged at the roof boards. He kept at it for ten minutes before he felt one shift just a fraction, and then he worked at it madly and felt it loosen bit by bit. In another five minutes it came away and then the others came easily.