Great Escapes (14 page)
Chipping out a 2ft square from the concrete close to a dark area by the chimney, Minskewitz slotted his trapdoor in perfectly with the delicate precision of a watchmaker. The result was perfection, and so good that Bushell took Group Captain Massey, the senior officer in the camp, to see it. After showing Massey where it was proposed to start digging ‘Tom’, Massey enquired how they were going to camouflage the trapdoor once they started. At which point a smiling Bushell pointed out that the trapdoor was already there, delighted that Minskewitz’s handiwork had fooled the ‘old man’.
For the second of the tunnels, ‘Dick’, Minskewitz devised and built one of the most cunning trapdoors ever devised. In the middle of Hut 122’s washroom was an 18in square iron grating that was used to take away the overflow of water. With ‘stooges’ (lookout men) by the door, Minskewitz lifted the grill and mopped up the water in the well of the hole. This done, he chipped away one side of the well until it exposed the earth beyond. He then made a separate piece of concrete to replace it and filled the joint with a mixture of soap and sand. The grill was then replaced, refilling the well with water.
When digging started in earnest, it took only minutes to bale out the well, remove the slab and start digging. Later when they were digging away from the tunnel entrance, the slab and grill could be replaced and the well section filled with water, whilst they were underneath. There was no way that any ‘ferret’ would ever find that entrance.
The entrance to ‘Harry’ was also an example of sheer cunning. In Room 23 of Hut 104, the stove in the centre of the room was lifted to reveal some square tiles. Carefully removing these, Minskewitz transferred them onto a wooden frame made by the carpentry section, the whole process taking ten days. Exploratory digging beneath found a layer of brick followed by concrete, before earth was finally found. The shaft down was going to have to be at least 30ft before tunnelling started, because of the microphones the ‘ferrets’ had planted in the ground around the compound.
The escape committee pinned up a notice inviting volunteers to form a cricket team. This was, in fact, to interview skilled tradesmen that could be used in the escape organisation. Those who had no skills that were needed became either ‘stooges’ or ‘penguins’. ‘Penguins’ were the men whose job it was to disperse the sand recovered from the tunnels. This was a particularly important job, because if they were to be discovered disposing of it, it might ultimately reveal the location of the tunnel. The locations of the trapdoors were known only to a handful of people.
Almost all the camp was involved in one way or another. Some of the jobs were quite onerous and boring; one in particular was the ‘duty pilot’, who sat beside the main gate watching and recording every person who came in and out of the camp. Whilst he was there, other ‘stooges’ watched him for any signal that ‘ferrets’ were coming into the compound. Over 300 ‘stooges’ were rostered in shifts to maintain a complete watch on German activities.
In the New Year the digging started in earnest and in ‘Tom’ they discovered bright yellow sand just 6in below the grey dirt of the topsoil. This immediately caused a problem because if any of the ‘ferrets’ saw the yellow sand in the compound, they would know that a tunnel was being dug. Lt. Cmdr Fanshawe came up with the solution that if every hut had a garden, then the appearance of yellow sand would be considered normal. If the grey topsoil from each garden was saved and mixed with the sand from the tunnels, it could be dispersed around the compound.
The method of dispersing the sand around the compound was solved with the idea of cutting off the legs of long johns, tying off the tops after filling them with sand and hanging them around the neck of a ‘penguin’. The sausage-like bags would then be pushed down each trouser leg. At the bottom of the bag would be a pin attached to a piece of string that was fed up inside the trouser leg into the pocket and as the ‘penguin’ walked around the compound, he would pull the pin and allow the sand to come out of the bottom of his pants. Then as he walked he would scuff the sand over the surface, mixing it with the grey dust covering the compound.
An American, Major Jerry Sage, created one of the diversions used to cover the ‘penguin’ as he walked about. He would give unarmed combat classes, which resulted in men milling about throwing each other around, and in the middle of all this were the ‘penguins’. Another was to have volleyball games with a crowd of spectators moving about and once again in the middle of these shuffling spectators were the ‘penguins’ depositing their sand.
As the shaft got deeper, bed boards were stripped from beds around the camp to be used as shoring-up timbers. As the shafts progressed, every yard had to be shored up because the looseness of the sand made it unstable. This was highlighted when the shaft of ‘Dick’ started to collapse when three of the tunnellers were at the bottom. The three men barely got out before the shaft was filled. This was a huge setback for the escape committee, because they now had to dig out and re-shore up the shaft before work could start again. What would have happened to the men had they been inside the tunnel itself does not bear thinking about.
The other two, ‘Tom’ and ‘Harry’, were progressing well and lessons had been learned from the accident in ‘Dick’. Such was the ingenuity of the men that by obtaining innocuous scraps of metal from the guards, they managed to make a couple of cold chisels, wood chisels, screwdrivers and even a drill. One German guard brought them an old gramophone spring, which they turned into a saw by filing teeth on it and fitting it on to a wooden frame. The guards were told they wanted the materials for making cooking utensils.
Hiding the tools was one of the most difficult problems they had. Various methods were used, such as fitting the smaller items inside books. Then one of the carpenters realised that the buildings were constructed of double wooden walls. By moving one of the inside walls out by 9in, and building a concealed trapdoor in it, they were able to hide almost all the tools inside the newly created cavity. Consequently all the huts were altered in this way, giving the escape committee a large number of places in which to hide their escape equipment.
The acquisition of tools was a real problem and it was galling for the men to see the abundance of tools that the Germans had lent them to build a theatre. They had the tools on parole and no one was going to break that parole; in any case all the tools were counted in and counted out.
Whilst some of the bigger engineering projects were going on that created noise, Jerry Sage organised choir practice outside the hut in which the work was being carried out. One of these projects was the creating of air pumps for each of the tunnels. The pumps’ bellows were created out of kitbags with wooden frames inside them, giving them a concertina effect. The top of the kitbag was sealed with a round wooden disc fitted with a handle. An outlet and inlet valve was created out of leather-lined blades of wood, which worked off a coiled spring that had been acquired from a chest expander.
The fresh air was drawn through tin pipes (made from powdered milk tins from Red Cross parcels) via the airbricks in the foundations under each hut and attached to the pump’s inlet valve. Connected to the pump’s outlet valve were yards of piping constructed from the powdered milk tins, and when the pump man activated the bellows by pulling and then pushing the kitbags in and out, air was forced down through the milk tin pipes to where the diggers were working. This gave them a constant supply of fresh air.
With all three tunnels well under way, Roger Bushell called a meeting to discuss future plans. One thing he wanted to know was how much sand the ‘penguins’ could disperse in a day. The answer was about 6ft worth a day from each of the three tunnels. The reasoning behind this was that he and the escape committee wanted a time frame estimated for when the tunnels would be complete. Then, depending on the time of year, preparations could be made to get men out of the camp.
As the tunnels lengthened, lamps made from fat were created with string wicks and were placed every few yards. There was also the increasing problem of getting diggers to the tunnel face and so an ingenious idea was devised. It consisted of making a rail track from the beading battens that were on the walls and ceilings of every hut. These were laid on the floor of the tunnel and nailed down. The wheels were made in two parts, with the inside disc being slightly larger the outer one in order to guide the wheel on the rail.
The trolley was pulled along by means of a plaited cord at either end. The trolleys also carried two detachable wooden boxes in which the sand was placed. At the tunnel face the digger would cut away the sand in front of him and push it behind him, where the second digger would scoop it up and place it in the boxes on the trolley. He would then signal to the man at the bottom of the shaft by tapping the rail, who in turn would pull the trolley back and empty the boxes into kitbags that were stored in the dispersal chamber that had been cut out at the bottom of the shaft. Then the procedure would be reversed and the trolley pulled back to the face.
The two men at the face would take it in turns to dig in an effort to rest their aching muscles. It was an arduous task because all three men spent most of the day below ground, conscious of the fact that they could have a cave-in at any time. In case any of the ‘ferrets’ came sniffing around in the huts, an alarm system, consisting of a couple of pebbles in a tin with a piece of string attached, was hung in the shaft. In the event of a nosy ‘Ferret’ making an appearance, a tug on the piece of string would warn the tunnellers below. They would stop what ever they were doing until the tin rattled again giving them the all-clear.
By early June, ‘Tom’ was 60ft long, with ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ not too far behind. Then later that month a problem arose when about 100 Russian prisoners arrived and started chopping down trees on the south side. Group Captain Massey found an excuse to see the Kommandant and asked him what was going on. He was told that an order from the Oberkommando’s (Supreme Command) office was to build another compound for the Americans. Realising that the Kommandant could do nothing about it, Massey called an urgent meeting of the escape committee.
If the compound were built before ‘Tom’ was completed, it would mean that ‘Tom’ would be useless. Massey had asked the Kommandant for a date when the Americans would be moved out, but he said he did not know, although he thought it would be around two months. The committee decided that it would be better if they concentrated on finishing ‘Tom’ and put the others on hold. The trapdoors of ‘Dick’ and ‘Harry’ were sealed shut and all manpower moved to concentrate on getting ‘Tom’ finished before the Russians had completely cleared the site.
It was decided to run three shifts and fifteen diggers were selected and split into three groups. The next day the first group moved the tunnel forward 10ft, the second day, despite a cave-in, they moved forward another 8ft. By the end of the week ‘Tom’ was 105ft long and time was of the essence.
In a break from the rigours of preparing for a mass escape, the American section of the camp had been busily concocting alcohol from raisins and sugar for a Fourth of July party. This was, in effect, raisin wine but after distilling it again they produced raw spirit. Then out of the blue, one of the Polish contingent, who had heard of the existence of the ‘still’, came forward with some additional ingredients that would make the raw spirit taste like rye whisky. The Polish officer had been a chemistry lecturer at Krakow University before the war, and offered his ‘special ingredients’ in exchange for an invite to the Fourth of July party. No one ever did find out what the ‘special ingredients’ were or maybe they didn’t want to know.
The party that followed was a memorable one, and for a few hours those who imbibed forgot where they were, but beneath the revellers’ feet the tunnellers were still hard at work. Then one of the ‘penguins’ got careless and dropped too much yellow sand close to a hut. One of the ‘stooges’ watched as a ‘ferret’ walked up and picked up some of the sand. He stared at it for some time, a quizzical look on his face, before marching off to the camp security offices. The ‘stooge’ immediately warned a member of the escape committee that the ‘ferrets’ might have cottoned on to what was going on. ‘Tom’ was immediately closed down and the trapdoor sealed.
The following morning every ‘ferret’ entered the compound and started systematically searching in and underneath the huts, beginning with Hut 106. This was followed by Huts 107 and 123. Later that afternoon, the gates swung open and three large, heavy lorries drove in and started to move randomly around the compound, going over the gardens and as close to the huts themselves as they could. But all the ‘ferrets’ could find were a few nails and some pieces of wire.
It was quite obvious that the Germans knew that something was going on and that in all probability, it was a tunnel. All the time, the building in the new American compound continued. It was decided to open up ‘Tom’ and digging re-commenced, but the ‘penguins’ could only get rid of half of what had been taken out because of the close scrutiny of the guards.
The next day one of the ‘ferrets’ saw some fresh yellow sand in a flowerbed and immediately called out Oberfeldwebel Glemnitz. One hour later more than 100 fully-armed troops entered the camp and ordered everyone out of Huts 106, 107 and 123. The Kommandant arrived with a civilian, who was later identified as the second in command of the
Kriminalpolizei
in Breslau. Then a second lorry arrived with German soldiers carrying shovels and picks. They started digging a trench from Hut 123 to the barbed wire. When they were down about 4ft one of the ‘ferrets’ took a long probe and started pushing down as far as it would go, all along the trench. By the time he had reached the barbed wire it was quite obvious that they had found nothing. Just before roll call, they gave up and filled in the trench to the cheers of the prisoners.
Despite the cheers, the escape committee knew that this was serious. The guards knew that something was going on and the visit by a member of the local
Kriminalpoizei
could only mean one thing: the Gestapo could be the next visitors. One suggestion was that all the tunnels were closed down until the heat was off, but Roger Bushell pointed out that the ‘Ferrets’ would not rest until they found something. In any case, if they stopped digging now ‘Tom’ would have to be extended to go underneath the American compound and that would take another couple of months.