The Great Escape (23 page)

The whole organization was buzzing with activity. They had several thousand marks in the kitty by this time, enough for about forty people to travel by train. The rest of them would have to “hardarse” across country by foot. Most of them planned to strike down to Czechoslovakia, where they would have a chance of contacting friendly people. The border was only sixty miles to the south, though there was a mountain range in between. Johnny Vesley, a Czech in the R.A.F. who knew the area, lectured the hardarsers in batches on how to go about it, and Johnny Stower, who had got to the Swiss border after the delousing break, lectured them on his experiences.

Roger himself checked all the train travelers’ stories and gave them all the information Valenta’s men had been able to collect on timetables and routes. He gave general lectures to everyone on German customs. Marshall and Crump spoke to them on how to get through the tunnel without coming to grief.

Travis’ engineers had switched to the production of metal water bottles. They cut old food tins into sheets according to patterns, and a team of solderers, drawing heavily on stocks of bully-beef-tin solder and resin, got to work with home-made blow lamps and turned out little flat flasks by the score.

Plunkett had his mimeograph going and rolled off something like four thousand maps, from local maps to strip maps of routes.

Stooges all over the camp were working overtime, and by the grace of God, no slips were made that week. Rubberneck was still prowling about as alert as ever, but nearly all the huts had been cleaned out and stuff was down “Dick.”

Al Hake shut down his compass production line. He had about 250 of them stored down “Dick.”

Guest’s tailors kept on working to the last day, and by that time they had hand-sewn nearly fifty complete suits; and most of them would have been a credit to some of the tailors I have met. They were mostly for the train travelers who had to look the part. A lot of the hardarsers were converting old uniforms. It didn’t matter so much if they looked as though they were wearing hand-me-downs. However smart they were when they left, they were going to look pretty scruffy after a few days’ trekking. Guest showed them how to shave the nap off the cloth and dye it, lent them his paper patterns and gave them civilian-type buttons.

For some months past “X” had been making a levy on the Red Cross food parcels, and in a room of 112 half a dozen cooks were mixing “fudge,” the concentrated escape food. It was the recipe of David Lubbock, a naval type, and was a compound of sugar, cocoa, Bemax, condensed milk, raisins, oats, glucose, margarine, chocolate, and ground biscuits. The beaten mixture looked like old glue, and it was taken across to the kithen block where Herrick baked it into cakes, or rather bricks, and packed it into flat cocoa tins. Lubbock had worked it out that one four-ounce tin held enough calories to last a man two days. The difficulty was to get it down past the ribs, where it tended to stick tenaciously. The train travelers were each allowed four tins, and the hardarsers could take up to six.

Massey gave a final warning to those who had drawn a place for the tunnel and told them he had been informed that the German population was becoming increasingly hostile, particularly toward the Allied Air Forces.

“If you are caught, some of you may not be treated very well,” he said. “I do not think the Germans would dare to take extreme measures, as you are protected by the Geneva Convention, but do please avoid any provocation.”

Roger spoke to a few of us who hadn’t drawn a place.

“I can promise you plenty of entertainment later,” he said. “Once they find there’s been a mass break under their noses, it’ll be a case of ‘
après nous, le déluge.
’”

In between his lectures and rehearsals, Roger drew up the scheme to get 220 people into 104 on the night of the break without exciting the ferrets. It was two and a half times more than the block was supposed to hold, and they had to be hidden when the Germans came around to lock up. Everyone in 104 who wasn’t escaping was allotted a bunk in some other hut on the night of the break.

Rudy’s contact moved out immediately to another hut and told Rudy he’d had a row with his roommates because they didn’t like the idea of associating with a German. Rudy cut them dead after that.

Roger knew well enough the ferrets had periodical checks on people moving between the blocks to see if any unusual activity was going on. He put traffic checkers around 104, and for two days they logged the numbers of people who normally moved in and out. From their figures Roger worked out a timetable and routes to control people moving to 104 on the night of the break.

Dean and Dawson had the hardest job of all because everyone’s papers had to fit his stories. The forgers were working full pressure filling in fake names and particulars, sticking on the photographs that Hull and Cornish had taken in their studio, and stamping them. All told they had about four hundred forged papers of various kinds. Everybody was to have at least one, and many were taking two. Men with elaborate identities like Bushell and some of the German speakers had up to half a dozen, including letters of credit and incidental forged personal letters just for effect. Tim had a folder for each man.

Meticulous as ever, he wouldn’t risk leaving them in the wall cupboards, but insisted on hiding them down “Dick.” It was damp down there now, so Travis made four large metal cans with sliding lids which were quite waterproof when smeared with margarine. The forgers were working on the papers morning and afternoon, and Tim wouldn’t even leave them out during lunch. The had to go back down “Dick.”

The stooges reported to “Dick” every morning after appell. Mike Casey lifted the iron grating in the middle of the washroom floor, baled out the well, scraped the soap off the edges of the slab, lifted the slab out. Tim went down, got the cans, and while he was carrying them to the workroom under a box of potatoes, Casey replaced the slab, sealed it again with soap, ran the water into the well, and put the grating back. At midday the forgers broke off for a spell because they found they couldn’t keep going all day without botching the work. Tim took the cans back to “Dick,” and Casey went through the complicated procedure of opening up and closing again. An hour later, after lunch, he did the same again while Tim collected the cans, and again about four-thirty, just before appell.

The forgers worked till their heads were splitting and the points of their nibs and brushes and the letters they were forming seemed to jump and wriggle and blur under their eyes.

Most of the escapees were going as foreign workers coming from nearly every country in Europe. Tim was going as a Lithuanian.

“And what happens, please,” asked Marcinkus, who really
was
a Lithuanian (in the R.A.F.), “if the Gestapo get hold of you. How much Lithuanian do you know?”

“None,” said Tim, “but then I don’t suppose the Gestapo bloke would know any either.”

The snow still lay six inches deep on March 23, but there was a hint of mildness in the air and the white carpet was wet on top and a little squashy underfoot. The bush telegraph had sent a whisper around the compound that the break might be in a couple of days, but most people didn’t believe it. It was too tough for the hardarsers.

There was a committee meeting in the morning at which Chaz Hall said he thought the weather would hold fine.

“Looks like the thaw’s starting just in time,” Roger said. “We’ll wait and see how it is tomorrow. If the weather keeps like this, I’m all for getting cracking, but we won’t decide until we have to.”

“I’ll have to know as soon as possible,” Tim cut in. “We’ve got to cut a date stamp and stamp all the papers.”

“I’ve got to know too,” Crump said. “I must know by lunchtime on the day of the break. I’ve a lot to do to get ‘Harry’ ready.”

Marshall was concerned again about the cross-country men.

“Some of the poor devils’ll freeze,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Johnny, but it just can’t be helped,” Roger said. “I wish to God we would do something about it, but if we wait till next no-moon period, we’re about certain to lose everything.”

“What about putting out a few of the train travelers and then closing up again?” Marshall asked.

“No,” said Roger. “We’d lose the tunnel, and a few people getting out won’t upset the Goons as much as a mass job.”

He thought about it all day, and after afternoon appell he went to Wings Day and they walked round the circuit in the gathering dusk.

“We’ve got to go tomorrow,” said Roger. “but I hate having to make the decision. Bloody few of the hardarsers’ll have any chance.”

“They wouldn’t have much chance even if there wasn’t any snow,” Wings said. “You know yourself what their chances are…a hundred to one. If things get too tough out there they don’t have to freeze to death. Once they know they can’t make it, they’ll have to give themselves up.”

“You think I’m right then?”

“Look,” Wings said, “it’s an operational war. Don’t forget that. It isn’t just a question of getting a few people home. It’s just as important to mess the Goons about. Most of the boys will be caught anyway, but if we get a good team out there’ll be a flap all over Germany, and we’ll have done something useful…more useful than getting a few back home.”

“All right,” said Roger. “Thanks.”

After dinner he went across to the theater for the dress rehearsal.
Pygmalion
was to open in two days for a four-day season. Roger stood and watched them. McIntosh was playing Professor Higgins. He’d understudied Roger for the past three weeks just in case.

The twenty-fourth dawned fair, and by appell the sun was well over the pine trees, unchallenged in a clear sky. The surface of the snow was glistening, and it was quite mild.

They met at eleven-thirty in Roger’s room. It was one of the shortest meetings on record, certainly the tensest. There were only a few words spoken. After the last man came in there was a dragging silence. People were looking up at the ceiling or sitting with their arms folded on the bunk, staring at the floor. Roger looked at Langford.

“How do you feel about it?”

“I won’t guarantee the trap for another month. I can’t…not with that wobble.”

“Crump?”

“I think I can speak for all the tunnel men,” Crump said, “including those who are hardarsing. I don’t think we could take it if we lost everything now. Morale’d go for a burton.”

“Right. Tonight’s the night.” Roger jumped energetically to his feet. “Get cracking.”

The entire camp must have known about it within five minutes. You could feel the tension. It was absolutely electric.

Langford and Crump made a beeline for “Harry.” Langford chipped the cement away, and Crump and one other tunneler went below and trolleyed up to the far end with a load of blankets. Crump nailed one blanket as a curtain across the end of the last halfway house at the foot of the exit shaft, and nailed another about three feet back in the halfway house. They were to act as light traps and silencers when the shaft was broken through. They nailed blankets to the floors of all the halfway houses so that people could crawl over them without getting their escape clothes dirty.

Crump tore more blankets into strips about six inches wide, doubled them over, and nailed them on the railway lines over the first and last fifty feet of the tunnel so the trolleys would run silently. Travis came down with the board platforms he’d made for the trolleys and nailed them on so the escapers could lie comfortably on them with all their kit.

Up in the compound, there was a sort of ordered chaos as the 220 made their final preparations. So many things had to wait till the last day in case the ferrets stumbled across them. “Little X” in every hut called together the men in his block who were going out and handed them their water bottles, fudge, compasses, maps, and money. He also told each one the exact minute he was to leave his room and where he was to report to the controller. They went back to their own rooms and started sewing all their special kit into extra pockets inside their clothes. A lot of them had made little fat-lamp heaters for brewing cocoa in the trek across the snow-clad country. They kept inside the huts as much as they could so the Germans wouldn’t notice too much rushing about.