The Great Escape (9 page)

“Christ!” Roger got sharply to his feet. “They’re testing ‘Dick’s’ pump.”

“It’s all right,” said Valenta. “George got everyone in the block stamping around their rooms. There’ll be so much noise underneath the ferret won’t hear a thing. George signaled the boys to pack up just in case. They’re coming across.”

“We’ll have to watch that,” Roger said frowning. “You can hear the pumps under the hut sometimes through the inlet pipes. This new ferret’s a pretty keen type. What’s his name?”

“Don’t know yet. Haven’t made contact.”

“He’d better go on the danger list with Glemnitz and Rubberneck,” Roger said. “I’ll spread the word. We might as well christen him ‘Keen Type.’”

Floody and the others drifted in in twos and threes, and after a while Block “X” stuck his head around the door, gave the all clear, and the committee was in session. Floody reported that all the pumps were working.

“All set to go,” he said. “We’ve got over thirty good underground men in three teams for each hole. Marshall’s taking ‘Tom,’ Johnny Bull’ll be on ‘Dick,’ and Crump and Muckle Muir will have ‘Harry.’”

“How much can you do a day?” Roger asked.

Floody said he thought they could dig ten feet in each tunnel, and Roger turned to Fanshawe.

“What can you disperse, Hornblower?” he asked.

“Not that much,” Fanshawe said bluntly. “For all three we might manage six feet a day each…that’s without too many risks.”

“We don’t want
any
risks,” Roger said.

“I don’t think we have to be rigid about it just yet,” said Floody. “We can dig what we can and store it in the dispersal chambers. The penguins can get rid of what they can, and then we’ll know how much we can dig next time.”

The first shifts were down that afternoon. The traps were closed on top, and in the sooty glow of fat lamps they were gently scraping away the sand that started the tunnels themselves. A man was sitting in front of each air pump pushing and pulling rhythmically on the bellows so that cool air from under the hut panted out into the base of the shafts and the lamps flickered now and then as the draft from a powerful thrust caught them. Black fumes from the lamps rose wisply into the gloom at the top of the shaft and were sucked into the outlet pipes and out the tops of the chimneys.

Every half hour the pumper changed place with the digger so that one set of tired muscles could take a rest and another set could be brought into play on a different task.

The digger excavated a space a little larger than the tunnel was going to be, and after about nine inches of forward progress he selected four matched bedboards with tongues and slotted ends from the workshop chamber. First he laid the baseboard, about two feet long, then an upright side board leaning slightly inward. On top he held the roof board which was only about twenty-two inches long, then fitted the other side board in and packed sand tightly behind each board. As the tunnel section tapered slightly toward the roof, the weight of the earth above held the whole frame rigidly, and there was no need for nails or screws.

Under the baseboard he dug a little channel about nine inches deep, and into this he fitted the air pipe line, wrapped more tarred paper around the joint, and packed the sand in tightly around it so the pipe line was airtight and safely out of harm’s way under the floor of the tunnel.

They worked steadily for several hours packing the sand they excavated into the dispersal chambers and taking things very carefully this first day so there would be no blunders. They did roughly three feet in each tunnel. The stooges reported to the trapfuehrers about half-past four, and when they had given the “all clear” the trapfuehrers opened up and the diggers scuttled up the ladders. A few minutes later, after a scrub under the tap, another brushdown and combing the sand out of their hair, they were on appell.

The next shift reported as soon as appell was over. This was the dispersing shift, and it meant that the traps had to stay open while the sand was being hauled out. It came up in metal jugs hauled on a rope, and as the first jugs came up in each shaft the controllers signaled the first of the penguins. A penguin reported to each trap, his trouser bags already in place inside his pants. He stood on the blankets on the floor so no sand would be spilled, his bags were filled, and he strolled out into the compound where Jerry Sage and the diversionists gave him cover.

One by one the penguins reported, collected their sand, and disposed of it. Then they strolled back for their next turn. The controllers sent them in by several different routes to every trap door so no ferret would notice the same men doing the same things several times in one night.

By nine o’clock nearly half a ton of yellow sand had vanished into the grey dust of the compound, the tunnelers came up from below, and the traps were shut till the morning.

Morning appell was at nine-thirty. It lasted about twenty minutes as usual, and by ten o’clock all the traps were open again and the duty shift was slipping underground. Johnny Marshall was first down “Tom” and knew there was trouble as soon as he put his foot on the bottom of the shaft and felt it squash into soft sand. He lit the fat lamp and saw the mouth of the infant tunnel nearly blocked with sand that had cascaded out into the base of the shaft.

The top boards of a couple of the first box frames had collapsed in the mouth of the tunnel, and several hundredweight of sand had crashed down. Just as well no one had been under it. Marshall felt a little dread as he realized that directly above the spot of the fall stood the chimney of the block beside the trap, a dead weight of about five tons. The crumbly sand below was so undermined that the whole thing was liable to come crashing down and wreck everything, including anyone who happened to be down there.

His number two digger joined him at the bottom of the shaft, saw the damage, and had the same thought.

“I should think,” said Marshall, “that the chimney is held up just now purely by sky-hooks and the grace of God. You’d better go up on top again and give me plenty of room to clear this up.”

He got a blunt refusal and the two of them set to work to patch up the damage, making nervous jokes about the glories of a martyr’s death. They cleared away the mess, fitted new double-strength shoring, and through a small gap in the side of the shaft packed sand for hour after hour into the great domelike cavity left by the fall above the roof of the tunnel. When it was done, they carried on where they’d left off the previous day, burrowing into the blind face of the tunnel to win a few more feet.

After evening appell, the penguins got rid of most of the sand dug during the day, but not quite all. The Keen Type was in the compound again. He was a short man with blond hair, a long sharp nose, and a tight little mouth, and he tramped tirelessly up and down and around the huts, in one and out the other end, and then darted to the next. He had a sharp, suspicious eye, and every trap had to be closed a couple of times as he entered the area. Once he came almost at a trot out of Block 109, turned straight for 123, and walked in the door. The trapfuehrer had had about seven seconds’ warning.

The penguin controller had been sitting on the ground a few yards away directing his penguins by signs. He half got to his feet as the Keen Type bowled into the hut and then he sank back, his palms sweating a little. There was nothing he could do.

Keen Type just missed his promotion. He was three paces from the alcove where the trapfuehrer was lowering the heavy concrete slab over the mouth of the shaft when a door burst open, a body came hurtling out pursued by shouts of wrath from behind and crashed headlong into him. They both went down on the floor, the Keen Type underneath. He tried to get up, but the body was lying heavily on him, groaning.

Several people came out of the room and gathered about, helping both to their feet and brushing them down. George Harsh was holding his knee, his face twisted in pain, and trying to apologize. The ferret didn’t understand English, and Harsh made signs that he didn’t understand German. Someone offered to translate, and in a prolonged three-sided conversation George reviled himself for his clumsiness. The ferret was too winded to be impressively angry, and eventually, with a rather icy smile, he walked on.

The trapfuehrer had had time to replace the trap, camouflage it, and smoke a cigarette.

“Thanks, George,” he said, “it was nicely timed.”

Harsh was swearing too much to listen. He really had hurt his knee.

Valenta had put Axel Zillessen on to the Keen Type. Axel wasn’t his real name, but the one he’d chosen to use if he ever escaped from the compound so that he could travel as a Swede. He got everyone to call him Axel so he’d get used to answering to it. Actually he was a wool buyer from Bradford, a tall young man with a slightly hooked nose and kinky hair; and with a charming and infectious enthusiasm, Axel could talk the leg off an iron pot almost as fluently in German as in English.

The next time Keen Type came in the duty pilot’s runner went and told Axel, and Axel strolled into the dusty compound where Keen Type was patrolling. He passed him a couple of times without speaking and on the third time gave him a casual greeting and they exchanged a few words about the weather. The same thing happened the next day. The third day they spoke for about five minutes.

Keen Type came in every day, and as soon as he did, the runner warned Axel. By the end of the week, Axel and the ferret were walking up and down together chatting for an hour. Gradually they got on to the war, Axel staying always on neutral ground, regretting the bombing and the suffering on both sides.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Here are we, two ordinary people talking as civilized people, and if I put a foot over the warning wire you have to shoot me.”

The Keen Type laughed.

“I have shot no one yet,” he said mildly.

“But you would!”

“Only in the leg,” said the Keen Type, “and with regret.”

“That doesn’t make it any more civilized.”

“The bombing is not very civilized either” — this rather resentfully.

“We didn’t start it,” said Axel, and veered off what could only be a bitter subject. “What are you going to do after the war?”

The ferret laughed without humor. “Why worry now? I don’t think it’s ever going to end, and if it does I probably won’t see it.”

“Look,” said Axel, “when it’s over we’re going to need the co-operation of Germans who weren’t mad Nazis. You won’t be an enemy then.”

The ferret considered the delicate implication but did not answer. Neither did he think to deny, as normally he automatically would, the clear inference that Germany was going to lose.

Axel took him to his room for the first time next day for a cup of coffee. “X” gave the room a little extra ration for this, and whenever they wanted hot water for a brew they could claim time on the stove, no matter how many other pots were on it.

The others in the room, Dave, Laurie, Nellie, and Keith gave Keen Type a casual welcome. He sat among them with a hot brew, a biscuit, and a cigarette. It was more comfortable than padding around the dust of the compound, and it was interesting to hear the British and American point of view. It was a soldier’s privilege — his only one — to grumble, but you couldn’t grumble in the German Army unless you were tired of life and wanted to go to the Russian Front. Keen Type had a lot that he hadn’t been able to get off his chest, and now he had a sympathetic and safe audience, and he spoke with more and more freedom.

“What can we Germans do?” he said, after a week, sitting with his coffee and nibbling a piece of chocolate from a food parcel. “Against Hitler and the Gestapo — nothing.”

“I’ll tell you what you can do,” Axel got up and sat down on the bunk beside him. “You can realize that the war is lost, and nothing you do can help that. The sooner it’s over the better. We’re not going to be enemies forever. Start regarding us as friends now.” He added quietly, “We won’t be forgetting our friends.”