The Great Escape (28 page)

“We’re spotted,” he said superfluously. “I think the ferrets are coming down. There’s someone just behind me.”

There were more sounds in the tunnel, and Crump saw another body crawling down. In a few seconds Muckle Muir’s head stuck out.

“It’s all up,” he gasped. “They’ve found the hole, and I think ferrets are coming down. There’s someone just behind me.”

More sounds in the tunnel. Mike Ormond appeared and breathlessly hauled himself out. “They’ve found us,” he said. “Ferrets are coming along.”

One by one they came crawling down the tunnel, panting and sweating, and as each one emerged he burst out excitedly, “Look out! There’s a ferret just behind me.”

Each time it was only another prisoner, but Crump felt his scalp prickling. The last three back were Red Noble, Denys Maw, and Shag Rees. Shag had been hauling in Leicester Square and had had a nasty moment. When he heard Maw returning from the far end, Shag didn’t know whether it was a prisoner or a ferret. He took the light bulb out of its socket in the halfway house and squeezed himself against the wall in the darkness to get out of the way of any bullet that came whistling down. Unable to stand the tension any longer, he called, “Who’s that?”

Maw answered reassuringly and said he was the last man. Back they scuttled toward 104, Shag expecting a bullet at any moment. When they emerged at the top Crump closed the trap door and moved the heavy stove back over it. He and Davison picked up all the blankets off the floor and tossed them on the bunks, then slid the lockers that had shielded the trap back against the wall.

Crump went out into the corridor and thought for one frightened moment the block was on fire. There were a dozen fires in the corridor and more in the rooms as people burned their papers and maps, and the hut was full of smoke and lit palely by little flames. They crushed some of their compasses and tried to hide others and their German money in paillasses. They tore civilian buttons off their converted clothes and either hid or burned them.

A few leapt out of windows — strictly against orders — into the lightening compound and dashed back to their huts. The guard in the goon-box by the cooler sent a couple of bullets whistling after one of them, and the practice stopped.

Everyone was suddenly still, looking at the door of the hut. They heard the bar withdrawn, and the door opened and in walked the hundfuehrer and his dog. The dog looked unconcerned but the hundfuehrer stood there a moment uncertainly, eyeing everyone warily. He was a simple soul and didn’t quite know what to do. Rather halfheartedly he told a few people to go into the rooms, and they largely ignored him. Wandering up and down the corridor, he collected greatcoats off the hooks and piled them in a heap by the hut door. The Alsatian knew what to do. He lay on the coats and went to sleep.

The hundfuehrer could think of nothing more. He sat down near the coats and contemplated his toes.

Now that the show was over the tension had relaxed and about 140 prisoners sat around in the rooms, talking, laughing, and letting off steam. They knew they would be searched soon and probably sent to the cells on bread and water, and after a while the main occupation was eating escape rations. The stuff was too concentrated to get much down and before long no one could swallow another mouthful. In Room 23 Crump heard a faint scratching and scuffling under the trap door. The ferrets had arrived. As they had found their own way there, Crump decided to let them find their own way out again.

In the guardroom by the gate, Von Lindeiner was standing in front of the four men caught at the tunnel mouth. He was red-faced, shouting at them, and little flecks were flying off his lips. They stood up straight at attention and kept quiet, unable to make out much of what he was saying. He was nearly incoherent. Lang caught one part.

“So, you do not want to stay in this camp” — Von Lindeiner’s voice was high and shaky. “You wish to be out so the Gestapo will get you. They will shoot you — get rid of the lot of you.”

He went on in that strain. No Kommandant, to a prisoner, is a good man, but I think Von Lindeiner was. At least as good as a Kommandant could be in Hitler’s Germany. It was not his fault if he could not give us enough food, or if someone went wire-happy and was shot by a trigger-happy guard. And he knew the tunnel was going to break him and that his own arrest could not be far off.

About six o’clock the first helmeted German column came tramping through the trees from the kommandantur into the compound, roughly seventy of them, in full riot squad kit. This time they were carrying mounted machine guns as well as tommyguns. They fanned out through the compound, closing the shutters around every window, and then formed a silent ring around 104. Four squads set up machine guns on tripods covering the hut doors.

Von Lindeiner walked into the compound, very upright and moving fast, staring straight ahead, still red in the face. Broili was just behind him, pale in contrast and almost running to keep up. And then the Kommandant’s adjutant, Major Simoleit, and Pieber, who was looking owlishly solemn. Rubberneck came running up, and behind him marched another squad. As Von Lindeiner stalked up to the hut, the guards all stiffened to attention. There was a succession of salutes, a rattle of boot-clicking, and all the ferrets drew their revolvers. Several guards threw the doors open and clumped inside yelling the old familiar “
Raus! Raus!
”

One by one the prisoners started to emerge, half expecting the chatter guns to open up on them. Snow was just starting to fall, and about a dozen ferrets were waiting for them. As each man came out a ferret grapped him and made him strip naked in the snow, even to his boots. The ferrets closely examined every garment, and anything that looked as though it had been modified to look like civilian wear or could remotely be an aid to escape they tossed on a pile to one side. A lot of the boys lost their pants and were left standing up in their woolen long johns. It began to have a faintly funny side but not so that you’d burst out laughing.

Simoleit came running agitatedly out of 104, streaked past the prisoners in the snow, and headed toward 101. He was a dapper little man shaped like an undernourished gorilla, and his back view, running in breeches and boots, looked absurdly bandy-legged. He burst into Bill Jennen’s room and breathlessly announced that Unteroffizier Pfelz had gone down the far end of the tunnel an hour before and they couldn’t find the entrance trap to let him out. He would suffocate — die. Herr Major Jennens was to come at once and get him out.

Big rough Jennens was still in his bunk. Slowly, stretching and yawning, he roused himself and demanded what the hell Pfelz was doing down the tunnel. (It was amazing what Jennens got away with by shouting and banging his fist. He was always doing it, and the Germans always respected him.)

Simoleit explained that Unteroffizier Pfelz had gone down to see if any more prisoners were left there. Would Herr Jennens be good enough to hurry. The Unteroffizier would be suffocating. Simoleit was hopping up and down in his distress.

Jennens leisurely dressed and leisurely followed Simoleit down to 104, when he found that Red Noble had taken pity on his old friend Charlie Pfelz and was lifting the trap door. Down at the bottom of the shaft a relieved Charlie blinked up at them and scrambled up the ladder. He went out, saluted smartly and told the Kommandant what he had seen. Then he grinned at Rubberneck. A big moment for Charlie. He loathed Rubberneck.

Von Lindeiner had his pistol in his hand now and so did the other officers as well as the ferrets. Broili’s hand was shaking so much he probably couldn’t have hit a barn door, but Rubberneck’s hand looked remarkably steady, and the knuckles were quite white showing that he had already taken up the initial pull on the trigger. He was in a shocking temper, and his face was mottled red. Rubberneck, like the Kommandant, knew he was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Shag Rees and Red Noble came out of the hut together, and when Rubberneck noticed them you could practically see his hackles rise. Red and Shag were his personal enemies. They had always given him trouble, and he’d sent them both to the cooler a couple of times. He rushed over as they were being searched, grabbed the shoulders of their coats, and pushed them around as he tried to tear the coats off.

Red and Shag both wrenched themselves away and swung defiantly out of his reach. A guard raised his rifle and squinted down the sights at Shag, and Rubberneck drew a bead on Red with his pistol. There was one of those long, deadly silences while the incident was on the verge of ending with a couple of shots, and then the barrels lowered slowly as the tension relaxed, and Red and Shag stripped in peace. The guard took their trousers and slung them aside, leaving them in their underpants.

Von Lindeiner had watched the incident, and his face went a shade richer in color.

“Cooler,” he said curtly (funny how even the Kommandant used that word). Four guards marched Red and Shag off to the cells.

When the search was over, the prisoners stayed standing in the snow in three ranks, surrounded by guards. Some of them without coat or trousers were shivering. No one knew what was coming next, and there wasn’t much humor left in the situation until Johnny Hutson, a fair-haired little Spitfire pilot from Kenya, relieved the atmosphere by making little mocking noises in his throat. Von Lindeiner saw and heard him.

“Cooler,” he said tersely, with a face like thunder, and the guards marched Johnny off.

There was a friendly feud between Hutson and a young London bombardier, a tousle-headed kid of about nineteen, not long out of school. He couldn’t hide a grin as Hutson was marched off, and Von Lindeiner saw him too.

“Cooler,” he said again with the same black look, and two more guards marched Horace off; the grin now transferred to Hutson’s face.

Von Lindeiner spoke to the prisoners near him. “If there are any more disturbances here,” he said, “I will personally shoot two of you.”

There were no more disturbances. Von Lindeiner meant it.

After a while, Eichacher brought out the identification photographs and checked all the men standing in the snow. Von Lindeiner left them standing there another two hours while they made a photographic check of everyone else in the compound to find out who was missing.

When they reported to Von Lindeiner that seventy-six people had escaped, he walked, frozen-faced, out of the compound. Shortly after, the 140 were marched down to the gate, and there they stopped again. Pieber remained with them, in charge, and looked reproachfully through his glasses at them.

“Ah, shentlemen, shentlemen!” he said. “You should not do this thing. It makes only trouble. The Kommandant is very cross; very angry indeed. I do not know yet what he will do with you. Ah, I would not like to be in the Kommandant’s shoes.”

Shaking a disapproving head, Pieber turned sorrowfully away.

The Kommandant didn’t know what he was going to do with them either. They waited there another half-hour in the snow, and then a runner came in and spoke briefly to Pieber. The little Austrian turned to the shivering men.

“You can dismiss,” he said briefly, and they turned and ran off to their huts where the rest of the camp was waiting impatiently to hear all about the night’s doings.

Von Lindeiner had wanted to send them to the cooler, but there wasn’t enough room.