'Exploits of the Escaping Club'

by A. J. EVANS

 

Giving the Enemy the Slip

 

 

IN the early days of the War Fort 9, Ingolstadt, had been a quiet, well-behaved sort of place, according to its oldest inmates. But for the six months previous to my arrival before its forbidding gates at the end of 1916, the Germans had collected into it all the naughty boys who had tried to escape from other camps. There were about 150 officer prisoners of different nationalities in the place, and at least 130 of these had successfully broken out of other camps, and had only been recaught after from three days' to three weeks' temporary freedom. I myself had escaped from Clausthal in the Harz Mountains - but had been recaptured on the Dutch frontier after I'd been at large for a few days.

When I arrived at Fort 9, Ingolstadt, seventy-five per cent. of the prisoners were scheming and working continually to escape again. Escaping, and how it should be done, was the most frequent subject of conversation. In fact, the camp was nothing less than an escaping club. We pooled our knowledge and each man was ready to help any one who wished to escape, quite regardless of his own risk or the punishment he might bring upon himself. No one cared twopence for court-martials, and nearly every one in the fort had done considerable spells of solitary confinement.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the Germans, having herded some 150 officers with the blackest characters into one camp, took considerable precautions to keep them there. But there were some of the most ingenious people in Fort 9 that I've ever met-particularly among the French-and attempts to escape took place at least once a week.

Fort 9 had been built in 1866 after the Austrian wars. There was a wide moat, about fifteen yards broad and five feet deep, round the whole fort and inside the moat the ramparts rose to a height of forty feet. Our living rooms were actually in the ramparts and the barred windows looked down upon the moat, across a grass path along which a number of sentries were posted. It looked as though there were only two possible ways of getting out: to go out the way we'd come in, past three sentries, three gates and a guardhouse; or to swim the moat. It was impossible to tunnel under the moat. It had been tried, and the water came into the tunnel as soon as it got below the water level. An aeroplane seemed the only - other solution. That was the problem we were up against, and however you look at it, it always boiled down to a nasty cold swim or a colossal piece of bluff. We came to the conclusion that we must have more accurate knowledge of the numbers, positions and movements of the sentries on the ramparts and round the moat at night, so we decided that one of us must spend the night out. It would be a rotten job; fifteen hours' wait on a freezing night, for it was now winter. For the first three and last three hours of this time it would be almost impossible to move a muscle without discovery, and discovery pro ably meant getting bayoneted. We cast lots for this job-and it fell to a man named Oliphant. I owned I breathed a sigh of relief. There would be two roll-calls to be faked, the roll-call just before sunset and the early morning one.

How was this to be done? Our room was separated from the one next door, which was occupied by Frenchmen, by a three foot thick wall, and in the wall was an archway. This archway was boarded up and formed a recess which was used as a hanging cupboard for clothes. Under cover of these clothes we cut a hole in the boarding big enough for a man to slip quickly through from one room to the other. The planks which we took out could be put back easily and we pasted pictures over the cracks to conceal them. It was rather difficult work. We had only a heated table knife to cut the -first plank with, but later on we managed to steal a saw from a German carpenter, who was doing some work in one of the rooms, and return it before he missed it. You must remember that there was absolutely no privacy in the fort, and a sentry passed the window and probably stared into the room every minute or two. We then rehearsed the faking of the roll-calls. One of us pretended to be the German N.C.O. taking the roll. first he tapped at the Frenchman's door and counted the men the room, shut the door and walked about 5 even paces to our door, tapped and entered. Between the time he shut the first door till he opened ours only six or eight seconds elapsed, but during these seconds one of the Frenchmen had to slip through the hole, put on a British warm, and pretend to be Oliphant; the German N.C.O.'s knew every man by sight in every room, but so long as the numbers were correct they often didn't bother to examine our faces. That accounted for the evening roll-call. The early morning one was really easier. For several mornings the fellow in bed nearest the hole in our room made a habit of covering his face with the bedclothes. The German N.C.O. soon got used to seeing him like that, and if he saw him breathing or moving didn't bother to pull the clothes off his face. So the Frenchman next door had simply to jump out of bed as soon as he had been counted, slip through the hole, and into the bed in our room, and cover up his face. We practised this until we got it perfect, and the rehearsals were great fun.

The next thing to do was to hide Oliphant on the ramparts. Two of us dug a grave for him there while the others kept watch. Then just before the roll-call went we buried him and covered him with sods of grass. It was freezing at the time. It was about 4.30 p.m. when we buried him, and he wouldn't be able to return to our room till 8.15 the next morning, when the doors were open. The faking of the evening roll-call went of splendidly, but the morning one was a little ticklish, as we couldn't be quite sure which room the N.C.O. would enter first. However, we listened carefully, and fixed it all right, and when he poked our substitute, who groaned and moved in the rehearsed manner, we nearly died with suppressed laughter. About an hour later Oliphant walked in very cold and hungry but otherwise cheerful. He had had quite a successful night. A bright moon had prevented him from crawling about much, but he had seen enough to show that it would be a pretty difficult job to get through the sentries and swim the moat on a dark night. However, Providence came to our help.

The winter of 1916 was a hard one, and the moat froze over, and although the Germans went round in a boat every day and tried to keep the ice broken, they eventually had to give it up. It was difficult to know whether the ice would bear or not, but I tested it as well as I could by throwing stones on to it, and decided one morning that I would risk it and make a dash across the moat that evening. A man named Wilkin, and Kicq, a little Belgian officer, who had accompanied me on my previous attempt to escape, agreed to come with me.

Our plan was to start when the "appell" or roll-call bell went at 5 p.m., for it got dark soon afterwards, and I trusted that this would cover our flight. We had to run down a steep bank on to the ice, about forty yards across the ice, and then another two hundred yards or so before we could put a cottage between ourselves and the sentries. There was sure to be some shooting, but we reckoned the men's hands would be very cold, for they would already have been two hours at their posts. Moreover they were only armed with old French rifles, which they handled badly. We arranged with some of the other officers to create a diversion when the roll-call bell went by yelling and throwing stones on to the ice to distract the attention of the two nearest sentries. Our main anxiety was: would the ice bear? I felt confident it would. Wilkin said he was awfully frightened, but would go on with it. Kicq said that if I was confident, so was he. It would be extremely unpleasant if the ice broke, for we would be wearing a lot of very heavy Clothes. Still, any one who thinks too much of what may happen will never escape from prison. We filled our rucksacks with rations for a ten days' march and enough solidified alcohol for at least one hot drink a day. We then concealed them and our coats at the jumping- off place.

A few minutes before the bell went we were all three dressed and in our places. It was a bad few minutes. At last it rang and almost immediately I heard laughter and shouting and the sound of stones falling on the ice. We jumped up and bolted over the path and down the slope. I was slightly ahead of the others, and when I got to the moat I gave a little jump on to the ice, thinking that if it was going to break at all it would break at the edge instead of in the middle. It didn't break, and I shuffled across at good speed. When I was about half-way over I heard furious yells of" Halt!" behind me, followed by a fair amount of shooting; but I was soon up the bank on the far side and through a few scattered trees. Then I looked back.

The others were only just clambering up the bank from the moat, and were a good hundred yards behind me. It turned out that instead of taking a little jump on to the ice as I had done they'd stepped carefully on to the edge, which had broken under their weight, and they had fallen flat on their faces. Wilkin had somehow got upside down, his heavy rucksack falling over his head, so that he couldn't move, but Kicq had freed himself and pulled Wilkin out.

The covering parties had done their job well. They'd managed to divert the attention of the most formidable sentry until I was well on the ice. He had then noticed me, yelled "Halt!" loaded his rifle as fast as possible, dropped on one knee, fired and missed. Cold fingers, abuse and some stones hurled at him by the party on the ramparts above had not helped to steady his aim. After one or two shots his rifle jammed. Yells and cheers from the spectators. He tore at the bolt, cursing and swearing, and then put up his rifle at the crowd of jeering prisoners above him, but they could see that the bolt hadn't gone home, and only yelled louder.

Meanwhile, I'd nearly reached the cottage, when I saw a large, four-horse wagon on the main road on my right with a number of civilians by it. They were only about iso yards away, and they started after us, led by a strong, healthy-looking fellow with a cart-whip. The going through the snow was heavy, especially with the weight we were carrying; so the carter quickly overtook me and slashed me across the shoulders with his whip. I turned and rushed at him, but he jumped out of my reach. His companions then arrived, and I saw, too, some armed soldiers coming on bicycles along the road from the fort. The game was up, and the next thing to do was to avoid being shot in the excitement of re-capture. So I beckoned the smallest man and said in German: " Come here, and I'll give myself up to you." The chap with the whip immediately came forward. " No, not to you," I said, " you hit me with that whip." The little fellow was very pleased, for there was a hundred marks reward for the capture of an officer, so he hung on to my coat-tails as we started back to the fort. I tore up my map and dropped it into a stream as we went.

The scene in the Commandant's office was quite amusing. We were stripped and searched. I had nothing more to hide, but both Kicq and Wilkin had compasses, which they smuggled through with great skill. Kicq's was hidden in the lining of his greatcoat, and Wilkin had his in his handkerchief, which he pulled out of his pocket and waved to show that there was nothing in it. All our foodstuffs and clothes were returned to us, except my tin of solidified alcohol. I protested, but in vain. I was given a receipt for it and told I could have it back at the end of the war. As we left the office I saw it standing almost within my reach, and nearly managed to pocket it as I went out. However, I found a friend of mine - a French officer-outside and explained to him the position of the tin and suggested that he should go in with a few pals and steal it back for me under the cover of a row. This was the kind of joke that the Frenchmen loved, and they were past-masters at it. They were always rushing off to the Commandant's office with frivolous complaints about one thing and another, just for a rag, which never failed to reduce the Commandant and his officers to a state of dithering rage. Within ten minutes I had my solid alcohol back all right, and kept my receipt for it as well.

Compasses and maps were, of course, forbidden, but we managed to get them smuggled out in parcels all the same and watching a German open a parcel in which you knew there was a concealed compass was one of the most exciting things I've ever done.

For the next six weeks life was rather hard. It froze continuously, even in the daytime, and at night the thermometer registered more than 270 of frost. Fuel and light shortage became very serious. We stole wood and coal freely from the Germans, and although the sentries had strict orders to shoot at sight anyone seen taking wood, nearly all the wood work in the fort was eventually torn down and burnt.

The Germans didn't allow us much oil for our lamps, so we used to steal the oil out of the lamps in the passage, until the Germans realised that they were being robbed and substituted acetylene for oil. However, this didn't deter us, for now, instead of taking the oil out of the lamps, we took the lamps themselves, and lamp-stealing became one of the recognised sp6rts of the camp. How it was done has nothing to do with escaping, but was amusing. Outside our living rooms there was a passage seventy yards long, in which were two acetylene lamps. The sentry in the passage had special orders, a loaded rifle and fixed bayonet, to see that these lamps weren't stolen, and since the feldwebel, or sergeant- major, had stuffed up the sentries with horrible stories about our murderous characters, it isn't surprising that each sentry was very keen to prevent us stealing the lamps and leaving him-an isolated German-in total darkness and at 6ur mercy. So whenever a prisoner came out of his room and passed one of the lamps, the sentry would eye him anxiously and get ready to charge at him. The lamps were about thirty yards apart, and this is how we got them. One of us would come out, walk to a lamp and stop beneath it. This would unnerve the sentry, who would advance upon him. The prisoner would then take out his watch and look at it by the light of the lamp, as if that were all he had stopped for. Meanwhile a second officer would come quickly out of a room further down the passage and take down the other lamp behind the sentry's back. The sentry would immediately turn and charge with loud yells of: "Halt I Halt I" whereupon the first lamp would also be grabbed, both would be blown out simultaneously, and the prisoners would disappear into their respective rooms leaving the passage in total darkness. The amusing part was that this used to happen every night, and the sentries knew it was going to happen, but they were quite powerless against tactics of this kind.

At about this time an officer named Medlicott and I learnt that some Frenchmen were trying to escape across the frozen moat by cutting a window-bar in the latrines which overlooked it. The Germans, however, smelt a rat, but though they inspected the bars carefully they couldn't find the cuts which had been artfully sealed up wit a mixture of flour and ashes. Then the feldwebel went round and shook each bar violently in turn until the fourth one came off in his hands and he fell down flat on his back. They then wired up the hole, but Medlicott and I saw a chance of cutting the wire and making another bolt for it about a week later, and we took it. We were only at large however for about two hours. The snow on the ground gave our tracks away; we were pursued, surrounded, and eventually had to surrender again. This time we had a somewhat hostile reception when we got back to the fort.

They searched us and took away my tin of solidified alcohol again. They recognised it. "I know how you stole this back," said the senior clerk as he gave me another receipt for it, "but you shan't have it any more." We both laughed over it. I laughed last, however, as I stole it back again in about a week's time, and kept my two receipts for it as well.

It may seem extraordinary that we weren't punished severely for these attempts to escape, but there were no convenient cells in which to punish us. All the cells at Fort 9 were always full and there was a very long waiting list besides.

After this failure I joined some Frenchmen who were making a tunnel. The shaft was sunk in the corner of one of their rooms close to the window, and the idea was to come out in the steep bank of the moat on a level with the ice and crawl over on a dark night. It was all very unpleasant. Most of the time one lay in a pool of water and in an extremely confined space and worked in pitch darkness, as the air was so bad that no candle would keep alight. Moreover, when we got close to the frozen surface of the ground it was always a question whether the sentry outside wouldn't put his foot through the tunnel, and if he did so whether one would be suffocated or stuck with a bayonet. It was most unpleasant lying there and waiting for him to pass within six inches of your head. All the earth had to be carried in bags along the passage and emptied down the latrines.

Unfortunately, just before the work was finished the thaw set in, and it was generally agreed that we couldn't afford to get our clothes wet swimming the moat. However, the Frenchmen were undaunted and determined to wade through the moat naked, carrying two bundles of kit sewn in waterproof cloths. The rest of us disliked the idea of being chased naked in the middle of winter carrying two twenty-pound bundles, so we decided to make ourselves diving suits out of mackintoshes. We waterproofed the worn patches of these with candle grease, and sewed them up in various places. The Frenchmen would have to fake roll-call, so they made most life-like dummies, which breathed when you pulled a string, to put in their beds. Whether this attempt to escape would have been successful I can't say, for, thank Heaven, we never tried it. When we were all ready and the French colonel, who was going first, had stripped naked and greased himself from head to foot, we learnt that the trap-door which we had made at the exit of the tunnel couldn't be opened under two hours owing to unexpected roots and stones. We had to put off the attempt for that night, and we were unable to make another as the end of the tunnel suddenly fell in, and the cavity was noticed by the sentry.

This was practically the end of my residence in Fort 9, for soon after the Germans decided to send the more unruly of us to other camps. We learnt that we were to be transferred to Zorndorf, in East Prussia, an intolerable spot from all accounts, and a man named Buckley and myself decided to get off the train at the first opportunity and make another bid for freedom. The train would be taking us directly away from the Swiss frontier, so it behoved us to leave it as soon as possible. We equip p ed ourselves as well as we could with condensed foods be fore starting, and wore Burberrys to cover our uniforms. Although there were only thirty of us going we had a guard of an officer and fifteen men, which we thought a little excessive. We had two hours' wait at the station and amused ourselves by taking as little notice as possible of the officer's orders, which annoyed him and made him shout. Six of us and a sentry were then packed rather tightly into a second-class carriage. We gave him the corner seat next to the corridor, and another sentry marched up and down the corridor outside. Buckley and I took the seats by the window, which we were compelled to keep closed, and there was no door in that side of the carriage. The position didn't look very hopeful) for there wasn't much chance of our sentry going to sleep with the other one outside continually looking in. Just before we started the officer came fussing in: he was obviously very anxious and nervous, and said he hoped that we would have a comfortable, quiet journey and no more trouble. The train started, night fell, and the frontier was left further and further behind. We shut our eyes for an hour to try to induce the sentry to go to sleep, but this didn't work.

The carriage was crowded, and both racks were full of small luggage, and, noticing this, I had an idea. I arranged with the others to act in a certain way when the train next went slowly, and I gave the word by saying to the sentry, in German:

"Will you have some food? We are going to eat." Five or ten minutes of tense excitement followed. Suddenly the train began to slow up. I leant across and said to the sentry, "Will you have some food ? We are going to eat."

Immediately everyone in the carriage stood up with one accord and pulled their stuff off the racks. The sentry also stood up, but was almost completely hidden from the window by a confused mass of men and bags. Under cover of this confusion, Buckley and I stood up on our seats. I slipped the strap of my haversack over my shoulder, pushed down the window, put my leg over and jumped into the night. I fell- not very heavily-on the wires at the side of the track, and lay still in the dark shadow. Three seconds later Buckley came flying out after me, and seemed to take rather a heavy toss. The end of the train wasn't yet past me, and we knew there was a man with a rifle in the last carriage; so when Buckley came running along the track calling out to me, I caught him and pulled him into the ditch at the side. The train went by, and its tail lights vanished round a corner and apparently no one saw or heard us.

I have not space to say much about our walk to the German-Swiss frontier, about 200 miles away. We only walked by night, and lay up in hiding all through the hours of daylight which was, I think, the worst part of the business and wore out our nerves and physical strength far more than the six or seven hours marching at night, for the day seemed intolerably long from 4.30 a.m. to 9.30 p.m.-seventeen hours-the sun was very hot, and there was little shade, and we were consumed with impatience to get on. Moreover, we could never be free from anxiety at any moment of those seventeen hours. The strain at night of passing through a village when a few lights still burnt and dogs seemed to wake and bark at us in every house.

Crossing a bridge when one expected to be challenged at any moment never worried me so much as a cart passing or men talking near our daytime hiding-places.

We went into hiding at dawn or soon after, and when we'd taken off our boots and put on clean socks we would both drop asleep at once. It was a bit of a risk-perhaps one of us ought to have stayed awake, but we took it deliberately since we got great benefit from a sound sleep while we were still warm from walking. And it was only about an hour before we woke again shivering, for the mornings were very cold and we were usually soaked with dew up to our waists. Then we had breakfast-the great moment of the day-and rations were pretty good at first, as we underestimated the time we would take by about four days. But later on we had to help things out with raw potatoes from the fields, which eventually became our mainstay. All day long we were pestered with stinging insects. Our hands and faces became swollen all over, and the bites on my feet came up in blisters which broke and left raw places when I put on my boots again.

On the fifteenth day our impatience got the better of us, and we started out before it was properly dark, and suddenly came upon a man in soldier's uniform scything grass at the side of the road. We were filthily dirty and unshaven and must have looked the most villainous tramps; it was stupid of us to have risked being seen; but it would have aroused his suspicion if we'd turned back, so we walked on past him. He looked up and said something we didn't catch. We answered: "Good evening" as usual. But he called after us, and then when we took no notice, shouted: "Halt! Halt ! " and ran after us with his scythe.

We were both too weak to run fast or far, and moreover we saw at that moment a man with a gun about fifty yards to our right. There was only one thing to be done, and we did it.

We turned haughtily and waited for our pursuer, and when he was a few yards away Buckley demanded in a voice quivering with indignant German what the devil he meant by shouting at us. He almost dropped his scythe with astonishment then turned round and went slowly back to his work. Buckley had saved the day.

The end of our march on the following night brought us within fifteen kilometres of the Swiss frontier; and we decided to eat the rest of our food and cross the next night. However, I kept back a few small meat lozenges. We learnt the map by heart so as to avoid having to strike matches later on, and left all our spare kit behind us in order to travel light for this last lap. But it wasn't to be our last lap.

We were awfully weak by now and made slow progress through the heavy going, and about two hours after we'd started a full bright moon rose which made us feel frightfully conspicuous. Moreover, we began to doubt our actual position, for a road we'd expected to find wasn't there. However, we tramped on by compass and reached a village which we hoped was a place named Riedheim, within half a mile of the frontier. But here we suddenly came on a single line railway which wasn't on our map. We were aghast- we were lost-and moreover Buckley was fearfully exhausted for want of food, so we decided to lie up for another night in a thick wood on a hill. The meat lozenges I'd saved now came in very handy and we also managed to find water and some more raw potatoes. Then we slept, and when daylight came studied our small scale map and tried to make head or tail of our situation.

We had a good view of the countryside from our position but could make nothing of it. Perhaps we were already in Switzerland? It was essential to know and it was no good looking for signposts since they'd all been removed within a radius of ten miles of the frontier. I think we were both slightly insane by now from hunger and fatigue; anyhow I decided to take a great risk. I took off my tunic and walking down into the fields asked a girl who was making hay what the name of the village was. It was Riedheim - as I'd originally thought. The railway of course had been made after the map was printed. I don't know what the girl thought of my question and appearance; she gave measly look, but went on with her work. I returned to Buckley, and when it was quite dark we left our hiding-place. We had three-quarters of an hour to cross the frontier before the moon rose - and we had to go with the greatest care. For a time we walked bent double, and then we went down on our hands and knees, pushing our way through the thick long grass of water meadows. The night was so still - surely the swishing of the grass as we moved through it must be audible for hundreds of yards. On and on we went endlessly it seemed-making for a stream which we had seen from our hill and now knew must be the boundary line. Then the edge of the moon peered at us over the hills. We crawled at top speed now, until Buckley's hand on my heel suddenly brought me to a halt. About fifteen yards ahead was a sentry. He was walking along a footpath on the bank of a stream. The stream. He had no rifle, and had probably just been relieved. He passed without seeing us. One last spurt and we were in the stream and up the other bank. " Crawl," said Buckley.

"Run," said I, and we ran.

It was just after midnight when we crossed into Switzerland and freedom on our eighteenth night out.