Colditz (20 page)

The masonry defied all the earlier tools. It was clear that probes, levers and drills were essential. These were made from the steel axles of the clock mechanism. They were tempered, then the tips hardened. A crowbar was needed to shift large blocks and slabs of stone weighing as much as two hundredweight. The British managed to steal one and lent it willingly to the French for a few hours every day.

On 15 August 1941, the three strongest of the team managed to shift one of the massive marble slabs which were part of the foundations' ventilating system. They were exhausted, but the cellar had been reached!

Once in the cellar, which, of course, was subject to examination by German patrols, the Frenchmen had the choice of digging in any direction they wished. They started breaking out a hole, four feet from the ground, in the wall facing the chapel. They had been given an indication from a British plan of the Castle (which had come from England) that there was probably a vault under the chapel.

Having made an entrance door on pivots out of the original stones from the wall, they continued, digging a horizontal tunnel behind it, through the heavy foundation which supported the dividing wall between the chapel and the spiral staircase to the French quarters. This continued for a distance of fifteen feet.

Once under the chapel, they dug a vertical shaft upwards for a distance of nine feet, removing some massive masonry, until they met the beams of the chapel floor. With no means of getting round them, lengths were cut from each beam with saws made from kitchen knives. Seven beams in all were breached over a distance of twenty yards, until finally they were under the sacristy. But still no sign of a crypt. They were getting nowhere. And the foundations resisted every effort to tunnel through.

The team realized, at last, that there was no short cut and that they would have to continue the tunnel until they were outside the wire. They decided to increase the number of tunnellers. They had been working by day and night for two months and were ready to welcome new blood. So the numbers rose from nine to thirty. Tunnelling would continue in three shifts throughout the twenty-four hours.

They decided to go under the foundations, and commenced digging a shaft. For six yards the masonry continued downwards. They kept on digging. The fat lamps were changed for electric light connected to lighting switches in the sacristy. An electric signaling system was installed. Then the Germans closed the chapel, destroying the stooging arrangements. Abbé Jean-Jean, the French chaplain, protested vigorously. It was impossible, he said, to initiate novices into the mysteries of the faith they wished to embrace! They knew very little of the Catholic faith. They had to be taught the catechism, the prayers, the gospel. The chapel was the only appropriate place in which to do so. As a result he was allowed to use the chapel for two hours a day.

Seated inside, near the half-open door, he was able to keep watch. If a Goon looked like entering, the tunnel electrician and others engaged on illicit work were quickly kneeling and praying near Abbé Jean-Jean. Faced with such an edifying picture, far removed from escape activities, the Goon usually tiptoed out. As soon as he had disappeared the “novices” resumed their work.

One day Gephard (“Mussolini”) himself entered the chapel. The electrician abandoned the wires which were hanging loose and rushed to a
prie-dieu
. Mussolini indicated that he wished to talk to Jean-Jean and walked towards the sacristy. All seemed lost. But the curé gave more signs of the cross, more blessings, more prayers. He and the “novices” were so taken with the Holy Spirit that Mussolini, much impressed, turned and tiptoed out of the chapel.

The chapel was Abbé Jean-Jean's domain. He organized its use by each of the various “cults,” to the satisfaction of all except perhaps the Polish curé. But it was not entirely a question of religious services! Far from it!

The chapel did not escape searches, although usually there was sufficient warning to cover up. On one occasion, with only seconds to spare, important items of civilian clothing were pushed into three of the organ tubes and got through the search. The Germans' suspicions were aroused so for the time being the clothing had to stay where it was. Hymns had to be chosen carefully, avoiding notes corresponding to the “hidey-hole” tubes. A couple of the guards attended services regularly.

One search produced a tricky situation. It was normal after a search for things to be taken away for closer examination. On this occasion the monstrance, in which were already consecrated Hosts, was removed. Abbé Jean-Jean demanded its immediate return, accusing the Germans of sacrilege and profaning the Holy Sacrament. Such was his anger that the
Hauptmann
, abashed, went off to find it. When he returned with the monstrance the Polish and French contingent were in the courtyard, prostrated on the cobbles in quiet, pious adoration, leaving only a narrow passage which led to the chapel door.

The religious choirs were international; organized and directed by Jean-Jean. The Poles, always eager to take part in Catholic services, contributed not only their deep faith but also their splendid singing voices. They were most moving. Their country had been wiped off the map. They were not even allowed to write the name “Poland” on their letters. Should they rejoice or should they not over Russian victories? Refusing to be discouraged, their faith in their fatherland inspired admiration. Their fervor was impressive. Their splendid songs, in which the whole choir joined, affirmed their faith in the resurrection of Poland.

The irrepressible Padre Jean-Jean had his own ideas about the French tunnel. He was not going to be left behind. On 10 January he and the French doctor, Le Guet, made a break for it while out in the Colditz woods for a walk. Medical and religious personnel were to some extent privileged under the Geneva Convention. Doctors and ministers, as well as Red Cross orderlies, were allowed to go outside the limits of the park for exercise. They went out on walks “escorted” by one
guard. The Germans certainly did not think that these two would try to get away. There was only one guard to the group of five, and he could not, of course, stop them. They got as far as Saarbrücken before recapture, in civilian clothes, with the usual false papers on them and German money. Eggers felt this escape to be a breach of trust. In any case, privileged or not privileged, the two took their twenty-one days' cells without protest!

Dick Howe once told “Fredo” Guigues: “We've heard you digging away for months, and of course your own people have, too. Haven't you been running a tremendous risk all this time? The Germans must know well enough that a tunnel's in progress.” It was a fact that at all hours of the day, but more especially at night when the Castle was wrapped in silence, tunnelling could be heard.

“The Jerries may know it well enough,” said Guigues in French, “but as long as they can find no entrance we are safe.”

“But the Germans will persevere….”

It wasn't until the end of December that the diggers finally reached the foot of the chapel wall foundations. Hope was reborn! Levels and direction were assessed. A tunnel, about thirty yards long, would emerge beyond the cat-walk, out of sight of the sentries. They would be on the slope into the moat on the north-east of the Castle, at the bottom of which was a fast-flowing, noisy stream. The work continued with renewed vigor.

Digging this final section of tunnel required great care. There were loose rocks and stones. Protective headgear was worn and the roof supported by timbers. The tunnel jinked and turned to avoid unmovable obstacles. The disposal of earth and rocks was particularly arduous. Readily available spaces were quickly filled. Soon, bags of soil and rock filled the tower-chambers right up to the fourth floor. After that the only solution was to go even higher. Above the chapel was a large attic with spacious cavities under the eaves. There the rubble could be hidden from the “ferrets,” who rarely went there as it was believed to be inaccessible to the prisoners. Access was through a camouflaged hole in the celling of the fourth floor.

Transporting sacks of rubble weighing forty to fifty pounds from the depths of the foundations and from the end of a narrow tunnel to the attic, involving nearly forty yards of horizontal travel and twenty yards of vertical shafting, was far from easy. Apart from manpower, a lot of equipment and efficient organization were necessary. A workshop in the clock-tower was used for making sacks, ropes of various sizes, string for tying them, hooks, pulleys, “rolling carpet” for maneuvering the sacks under the chapel floor, track and trolley repair parts. All equipment wore out rapidly and had to be made good repeatedly with whatever materials the team could lay their hands on.

The disposal of rubble required twenty-two men, spread out along the route, each with a clearly defined role. Their actions became mechanical. Pull or lift a sack; hook it on, or unhook it; signal “ready” to the next chap. Then the same again. At peak periods over a ton of rubble per shift was safely transferred from the tunnel to the fifth-floor attic.

Over Christmas and New Year the French tunnellers were in good spirits. Less than twenty yards to go before reaching the exit! There was a fever of preparation. Tailors, hat-makers, forgers, map- and compass-makers, all worked long hours. German money was distributed; lots drawn for the order of leaving. Even the rope necessary for descending the ravine was ready. Emerging two by two they would walk in the stream some distance so as not to leave footprints. Half an hour after the last of the escape team had left the tunnel would be available for all. About 200 expressed their intention of using it…. And, as the final few yards of the tunnel were being dug, the tunnellers had the satisfaction of hearing over their heads the tread of the cat-walk sentries.

Then came the departure of the French officers early in January, including members of the tunnel team. The Germans, encouraged and goaded on by their discovery of the theater exit, were on the warpath for the tunnel. The French ceased all work.

Then there was peace for three days. Work started again—cautiously. But the Germans had not finished. On 14 January, searching of the upper floors began. Mussolini made a surprise attack on the 15th. He probed the long weight sleeves in the clock-tower; he could see nothing as he flashed his torch down into the darkness. He let one of the clock weights fall. It dislodged some camouflage. Then he saw a light below and heard movement. He sent a message out to the
Kommandantur
by the hand of the sentry who was with him.

Within ten minutes several Goons appeared with a small boy amongst them. A coil of rope was tied around his waist, and he was lowered slowly through one of the sleeves into the blackness below. In his hand he carried a torch which he aimed at the floor beneath him. As he landed he flashed the torch around him and screamed in terror. “
Hilfe! Hilfe! Hier sind Leute!
” (“Help! There are people here!”)

There were three Frenchmen in the chamber. Mussolini was occupying the only exit. The Frenchmen knew of a last desperate way out. At one corner of the chamber, a comparatively thin wall, nine inches thick, separated them from a bathroom used by patients from the sick ward.

As the terrified youth, sobbing with fright and shouting “
Hilfe!
,” was hauled up again through the sleeve, the Frenchmen attacked the dividing wall with crowbars like demons, and in five minutes had battered a hole through it. The
noise they made was deafening, yet the Germans above them were so occupied with the youth that, when they awoke to reality and sent search parties in frantic haste to locate the new hole being pierced with all the publicity of a battery of pneumatic drills, they were too late. The birds had flown.

A Belgian Army major, Baron de Liedekerke, was peacefully reading a book, lying in his bath, on the other side of the wall, when the earthquake started. A brick landed on his stomach. It was time, he thought, to evacuate. He rose and reached for his towel. A jagged hole suddenly appeared. Iron bars flayed the opening, enlarging it. As he stepped from the bath, a head and shoulders came through the opening. Then a half-naked body scrambled over the bath on to the floor, bespattered, sweat-stained and filthy. Another body followed and then a third, more bulky than the others. It had difficulty in squeezing through and fell into the bath.

Major de Liedekerke picked up his belongings and rushed from the room shouting: “
Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! C'est le comble!
” Which means, “My God! My God! This is the end!”

It was indeed the end of the French tunnel.

The French were certain that the tunnel had been given away through injudicious talk by some of the officers who had been transported to Elsterhorst. Eggers says that this was not true. He writes:

The circumstances of the start of our inspection of the clock-tower that morning showed that we had had absolutely no idea of what was waiting for us. We certainly never expected to find the entrance to a tunnel right up under the roof. If we had indeed had a tip-off about this, we certainly should at least have put sentries on each floor up against the bricked-up tower entrances. This find was one of those lucky chances that happen occasionally if one follows a sound principle long enough. In this case our rule was to close in slowly and methodically upon a suspected danger spot, ignoring lack of results until the job was finished, whether successfully or unsuccessfully. This was indeed a find—at least six months of work must have gone into this tunnel project. I crawled to the working face myself and could hear the sentry above me and they had only thirty feet to go! We were only just in time. We were all cock-a-hoop—especially the
Kommandant
. He gave our search party special leave as a reward.

The discovery of the tunnel coincided with the visit to the Castle of the
Gauleiter
(area commander) of Saxony, Herr Mutschmann. Not only was this
gentleman given a riotous reception by the resentful French in particular and the remainder of the camp in general, but Eggers' life was made unbearable with howls and catcalls whenever he entered the courtyard.