The Great Escape (25 page)

Marshall eased himself sweatily down the ladder again, wiped his face on his shirt-tail, and started to dress while Bull went aloft and gently scraped away the last few inches of soil covering the top. Cramped in the halfway house the others heard the music of the sand as it pattered down to the floor of the shaft.

Bull felt his little shovel suddenly move unresistingly and knew he was through, and then the cool air was caressing his upturned, sweating face. He scraped a widening hole and in a minute he could see stars above — a glorious sight and an epic moment — and he hoisted himself up the last two rungs and stuck his head up into the open.

He got the shock of his life. The surveyors had blundered. “Harry” was too short! Instead of being a few yards inside the wood, he saw that he was out in the open, ten feet short of the dim line of trees. He looked back at the compound, and the full tragedy of the situation hit him. The goon-box was only fifteen yards away, a stilt-legged monster outlined against the glow of the searchlight. He could see the German guard’s shoulders and his ugly square helmet as he peered over the rail into the compound, swiveling the beam of light.

Bull felt naked out there. He ducked his head and softly felt his way back down the shaft. Crawling behind the blankets, he broke the news. There was a stunned silence.

“God, we can’t be short. We can’t be,” Marshall said. “Right out in the open?”

“Go and look,” Bull said tiredly. “You’ll see.”

All of them felt the sick dismay. It looked as though everything was a flop…six hundred men working every day for a year…the escape fever of those who had been behind the wire for up to five years. They couldn’t quite grasp the reality of it.

Bushell recovered first.

“Could you be seen from the goon-box?” he asked.

“Couldn’t be certain,” Bull said, “but I think you would sooner or later. It’s dark all right but a man couldn’t lie on the snow for long. He’s show up against it so bloody plainly.”

“Well, we can do two things,” Roger said. “Either go ahead now and get as many out as we can before we’re caught or put a couple out and let ‘em close up the outside. Then we can dig on a few more feet, put up another shaft and break next no-moon period…if we get away with it that long.”

They talked it over in whispers for a few minutes, shying away from the idea of postponing everything. Worse than the anticlimax was the probability that Rubberneck would find the tunnel. They all knew about the wobbly trap.

It was Roger who thought of the vital factor.

“We can’t put it off now,” he said. “All the papers are date-stamped. They won’t be any good next month, and we won’t get far without them. We’ve got to go tonight.” He paused and then went on slowly, thinking as he talked.

“We’ve got to have a new way of getting people out without a man lying by the hole in the snow. Someone’s got to control it from outside somehow.”

And funnily enough it was the ferrets who gave the answer.

“Just a minute,” said Johnny Bull, with dawning inspiration. “About ten feet from the hole right by the edge of the wood, I saw one of those spy nests the ferrets put up while we were digging ‘Tom.’ Put the controller behind that.”

“Pretty remote control,” Roger commented.

“Tie a rope to the ladder,” Bull said, his voice rising in excitement. “The controller holds the other end. When it’s all clear, he gives a couple of tugs and the bloke crawls out.”

It was so obviously the solution that Roger agreed on the spot.

Cramped against the side of the halfway house, he fumbled through the buttons of his greatcoat to a pocket and brought out a pencil. Inching over onto his back, he began to write the new procedure in scrawling print in the wall:

“Pause at the top of shaft. Hold signal rope tied to top rung. On receiving two tugs, crawl out. Follow rope to shelter.”

He spoke to Dowse.

“Warn everyone coming through of the new procedure. Make sure they understand. Tell your relief hauler to do the same when he comes through and make sure he tells the man who relieves him.” He spoke generally, “Everything clear?” and there were quiet grunts of satisfaction.

“Well, here we go,” said Bull, and crawled out through the blankets and up the shaft, carrying a long coil of plaited rope. He tied one end to the top rung and cautiously stuck his head out of the hole to get the lay of the land. It seemed to be clear, and he gently eased himself onto the snow and crawled noiselessly till he was behind the shelter of the ferret fence, paying out the rope as he went. The snow felt wet and the crust broke through easily.

The sentry in the goon-box was still looking into the compound. He did not seem to be worrying about the woods behind. Probably he never thought to look there. His search-lights roamed over the vorlager, up and down the fences, and then joined the beams from the other goon-boxes playing over the huts and the churned-up snow in the compound.

Bull heard a man approaching from the west and then saw him dimly, a German soldier walking along the wire, the barrel of his slung rifle sticking up behind his shoulder. He walked to the sentry tower, stamped his feet once or twice and walked back. A few moments later the other sentry came into sight in the other direction, reached the goon-box, and turned back. Neither of them seemed to be glancing toward either the woods or the compound, but just tramping in frigid unhappiness up and down, up and down.

Over the top of the sheltering brushwood, Bull could see the black outline of the hole in the snow. When he lowered his head it narrowed, and he thought that from the eye level of the sentries it would not be very obvious. He waited a while to see what would happen, and shortly the two sentries appeared again, one shortly after the other, and then turned and tramped away.

As soon as they were out of sight, he tugged sharply twice on the rope and a moment later Marshall snaked over the edge of the hole, keeping low, and crawled on his belly, keeping one hand on the rope till he was beside Bull. Marshall stayed with him a while, his eyes getting accustomed to the dark. He put his lips close to Bull’s ear and whispered, “Doesn’t seem too bad.”

“No,” Bull answered. “I think we might get away with it.”

The wire patrollers came into sight again.

“I have to wait till they’re both out of sight before I can get anyone out,” Bull said. “It’s going to make it a bit slow.”

“No help for it,” Marshall whispered. He waited till the sentries were out of sight again. “Well, see you in London.” He felt for Bull’s hand. “Good luck, Johnny.” Then, picking up the rest of the coil of rope, he crawled off into the darkness of the wood, paying out the rope behind. About sixty yards inside the trees, he came to the end of the rope and tied it to the trunk of a tree, pulling in the slack. He gave it a couple of tugs to let Bull know he was in position and waited.

Back at the ferret fence, Bull tugged on the shaft line, and Valenta crawled out and joined him behind the brushwood.

“Marshall’s up there,” Bull said, and Valenta crawled off, keeping the rope running loosely through one hand so he could receive signals if Germans came close. If he felt a tug he was to freeze on his belly in the snow, and wait till he got two tugs, the all clear.

He joined Marshall at the end. A couple of minutes later, Bushell arrived.

“Doesn’t look too bad,” Roger whispered. “I think it’ll be all right. Off you go. See you back home. Good luck.”

Marshall and Valenta crawled another hundred yards deeper into the woods before they stood upright and walked swiftly away. Marshall had his compass cupped in his hand, and they followed the luminous needle, heading north. Less than half a mile through the woods lay Sagan Station. They were catching a train down through Hirschberg to Czechoslovakia, where Valenta had friends.

Bushell was joined by Scheidhauer and they waited, sheltering behind two trees by the end of the rope, till Stevens, the South African, reached them. Then they headed north after Marshall and Valenta while Stevens waited for his partner.

So it went on.

Back in 104 the tension had been nearly intolerable. The first men had been up at the far end for over an hour and there wasn’t a sign of anything happening. People kept calling down the shaft to Crump, asking what was wrong, and Crump, harried and fearing the worst, called back in a strained whisper, “For Christ’s sake wait, will you. How the hell do I know what’s happening?”

Shortly after ten o’clock the lock-up guard went around the camp as usual, shutting and barring all the hut doors. He never bothered to look into the huts as a rule. He walked up to 104, and the stooges held their breath while he slammed the doors shut, slipped the bar in position, and walked off. It helped relieve the tension a little.

Torrens set up a table outside the trap room and stationed himself there for the night. Now that the huts were locked and only the hundfuehrer would be left in the compound, the overflow of bodies in the rooms moved into the corridor. First of all Torrens ordered a dozen of them to lay blankets all over the corridor floor to muffle the sound of anyone moving about. Everyone took his boots off.

The corridor was an amazing sight; bodies lying all over the floor, Tobolski in his unteroffizier’s uniform stepping daintily in his socks over people in rough suits, and plus fours; odd types in berets and cloth caps, sitting up beside blanket rolls and makeshift suitcases, smoking and trying to look natural — and looking, in fact, like refugees from the underworld.

At quarter-past ten Crump felt cold air on his cheek. He turned and peered up the tunnel, and there was no mistaking the cool draft sweeping past his face. A great exhilaration swept over him, and he lifted his head and whispered up the shaft, “They’re through. They’ve broken through. Tell Torrens.”

Torrens came and leaned over the trap.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes,” Crump called throatily. “You ought to feel the draft down here. They should start moving soon. Warn the next man, but don’t send him down till I tell you.”

They waited nearly a quarter of an hour, and it wasn’t till half-past ten that the man on the trolley at the base felt the rope tug as the hauler in Piccadilly signaled. He tugged back and went rolling softly up to the halfway house over the blanket-deadened rails.

Crump called up, “Next please,” and a few seconds later a bulky shape was moving down the ladder.

The trolley was back in a minute, and another man lay on his belly on it and waited.

Gradually the movement got under way.

Torrens had two runners by his desk to carry instructions. As one escaper crawled down the shaft Torrens sent a runner to warn the next man on the list to be ready in five minutes. The man struggled into his kit, whispered farewells around the room, and was ready to go when the runner came back for him.