The Great Escape (27 page)

Langlois’ heart was choking him in his throat. The German kept coming straight at him in the gloom. He was right on top of the hole, and then he casually turned away as though he wasn’t worried about it. A bare four feet from the black opening in the snow he squatted down, busying himself with one of the less dignified functions of man. The exit was just to his side and he took absolutely no notice of it. Lang, a bare ten feet away, burrowed face down in the snow wishing to God his heart wouldn’t thunder so loudly, couldn’t believe it was real.

The German must have been blind — what actually happened, of course, was that he’d been looking through a searchlight beam for hours and couldn’t see a thing in the darkness after the dazzle. A broad black trail of slush led away from the hole showing where the prisoners — the ex-prisoners — had crawled away, and out of the hole itself Lang could see, against the glare of the searchlight, a thick column of steam rising, a peculiarity of all newly opened tunnels.

For five minutes the guard crouched there communing with Mother Nature, and then he hitched up his pants, strolled casually back to the goon-box, and clumped up the steps. The patroller who had taken his place clumped down and resumed his monotonous walk, and Lang breathed again for the first time in five minutes.

Back in 104, Torrens had ticked off Number 83 down the shaft. They were going through farily smoothly now, and there were few hitches. Crump looked at his watch and climbed up the shaft to check on the light outside. It was still dark, but he knew it couldn’t last much longer and he lingered by the window, trying to keep his eyes away from the searchlights and fix them on the wood to see if the trees were becoming clearer.

About five minutes to five he thought there was a shade more light coming off the snow and imagined he could see the trees across the wire in a little more detail. He called Davison over.

“I think it is getting a bit clearer,” Davison said.

“Right. About time to pack up,” Crump said. “Get the next three down and that’s the lot. If we can get ‘em all out of the way without being seen, the Huns won’t know a thing till appell, and the boys’ll have an extra four hours before the hunt’s on.”

Davison hurried the next three down — Michael Ormond, a tough New Zealander who used to play glamorous girl parts in the camp theater, Muckle Muir, and Tim Newman. Newman was just vanishing up the tunnel on the trolley when a rifle shot cracked across the snow. It came from outside the wire in the direction of the tunnel.

Just before ten to five, a big burly air gunner called Reavell Carter climbed out of the hole, went crawling past Lang, and followed the rope into the wood to the rendezvous tree. He was to lead the next party of ten through the trees to the road running south from the camp.

A couple of minutes later Oggy Ogilvy, a Canadian, emerged and snaked past Lang toward the tree. Next was Mick Shand, New Zealand Spitfire pilot. Len Trent (Squadron Leader, Trent, V.C., D.F.C.), who followed him, had just crawled clear of the hole when the sentry who’d been patrolling the east beat along the wire came into sight again. For some unknown reason, he was walking on the near side of the road, along the edge of the wood. No sentry had done that yet. If he kept on going he must walk across the hole.

Lang could make out the buttons and cross belts over his greatcoat and went even colder than his long vigil in the snow had made him. He tugged sharply twice on each rope and Shand, halfway to the tree behind him, and Trent, just outside the hole, froze where they lay. The German kept steadily on. He was ten yards away, and Lang felt his eyes were sticking out like organstops. The German was seven…six…five yards away, and still he came on and still he hadn’t seen anything. He seemed to be looking dead ahead and not at the ground at all.

His boots were crushing methodically through the snow, left, right, left, and then he put a boot down within a foot of the edge of the hole
and still didn’t see it
, and his next foot missed by a couple of inches treading on Trent, lying doggo and quaking by the hole.
Still the guard didn’t see him.
It was unbelievable.

He took another pace — and then he came out of his coma. He must have noticed the slushy track the bodies had made through the snow. A little muttering came out of him as he swung toward it, and in the same movement he shrugged the rifle off his shoulder and into his hands. Then he must have seen Shand lying on the track. He lifted his rifle and was about to fire when Reavell Carter, who could dimly see the drama from the tree, jumped into sight waving his arms.

“
Nicht schiessen, Posten!
” he yelled. “
Nicht schiessen.
” (“Don’t shoot, sentry! Don’t shoot!”)

His sudden appearance gave the German the shock of his life, and his rifle jerked upward as he fired. The bullet went wild. So did the quiet woodland scene. Shand bounced up from where he lay on the track and made a crouching dash for freedom, dodging in and out of the pine trees. Ogilvy jumped up from behind the far tree where he had been burrowing into the snow and did the same thing, tossing away excess kit as he ran.

As they vanished among the dark trees, Reavell Carter came forward — there was nothing else he could do — and then, right beside the paralyzed guard and still unseen, Trent slowly rose to his feet. The guard saw him, jumped about a foot in the air, and stood rooted again, staggered with shock. He was a simple peasant type and quite speechless.

A second later, Lang — with no option — also stood up behind the ferret fence about ten feet away. The guard, seeing him, could only shake his head unbelievingly, and then he saw the hole in the ground right at his feet, and his mouth opened and shut like a fish.

For about three comical seconds he stayed paralyzed, and then he recovered, whipped out a torch and shone it down the hole. Just below the surface, hanging on to the ladder, was Bob McBride, who was to have been next man out, the eightieth.

The sentry fished up his whistle and blew it shrilly, then found enough presence of mind to point his rifle at McBride and beckon him out. McBride crawled sheepishly out, and the sentry covered the four of them with his rifle. He was making hoarse speaking sounds, but no one knew what he was saying, least of all, probably, the sentry.

Lang heard the guard up in the goon-box frenziedly telephoning the German guardroom, and along the road from the guardroom by the gate a couple of hundred yards away a horde of German soldiers came running. The man in the goon-box yelled to them, and they fanned out into the woods. The sentry prodded his rifle at the four and nodded meaningfully down the road. They turned, hands in the air, and trudged off.

Back in 104 a hush had followed the shot. Around the trap the silence lasted perhaps three seconds as the people in the room, frozen into the attitudes they had been in, looked at each other. Crump said quietly, with magnificent understatement, “That appears to be a shot.”

“That was indeed a bloody shot,” someone else said, his voice sharpening as he spoke.

“Christ!” Crump was the first to move. “Someone’s got it. Davison, get the blokes back from down the tunnel.” And as Davison slipped down the ladder Crump spoke to Torrens in the doorway.

“Get everyone in the hut to start destroying their papers and all their incriminating kit.”

He darted over to the window but could see nothing. The cooler was in the way of the tunnel exit. He crossed back to the trap, knowing that most people in the tunnel wouldn’t have heard the shot and would still be traveling through. As he was vanishing into it a stooge from the front room called out that a mob of Germans had come out of the guardroom and were running along the wire toward the exit of the tunnel.

As it happened, the people in the end halfway house
had
heard the shot. Denys Maw, Number 81, had been just about to crawl into the exit shaft when right above his head, and echoing down the shaft came the shattering crack of the rifle. One awful thought flashed through his mind. “The bastards! They’ve known all along and they’re plugging each bloke as he crawls out.”

He realized immediately that couldn’t be or they’d have heard it before. The guards must have just found the hole. Maw turned back into the halfway house where two other people, the hauler and the next man out, had reached the same conclusion.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, and the other two needed no persuading. One man lay on the trolley and propelled himself back to Leicester Square, and then the trolley was hauled back and the next man paddled himself down. Maw hauled the trolley back and set off on the return journey himself.

So the shuttle service was reversed as the men started to scurry like moles back toward the compound. For a few minutes, however, the people in the first section of the tunnel still didn’t know the flap was on, and they did not find out till people started to scuttle back from the far end. Meanwhile Crump and Davison, at the base of the shaft, were trying to inform them.

Peering up the tunnel, Crump could just see the trolley up by Piccadilly with Newman’s bulky shape lying on it. He howled: “Come back! We’ve been spotted. Pass the word along.”

His voice was muffled in the long, narrow space, and the man on the trolley could just hear a faint voice but didn’t know what it was saying. A vague, muffled shout came back to Crump in reply.

“Come back! Come back!” Crump howled again. “It’s all up. The tunnel’s been found.”

Again the muffled answer. It developed into a shouting match, and neither man could make out what the other was saying. Crump grabbed the trolley rope and tried to haul it back with Newman still on it, but Newman would have none of it. He was on his way out, and he wasn’t coming back for anyone. He grabbed hold of the rails and held the trolley firmly. Crump shouted again and hauled back more strongly. He heaved and heaved, and then the rope snapped.

Crump realized there was no point crawling up the tunnel after him. People at the far end would soon find out the game was up and come pouring back, and he would only block the exodus if he crawled up. Newman sensed that the rope had broken and began to realize something was seriously wrong. He was just able to twist his head over his shoulder to look back and saw Crump beckoning frantically in the mouth of the tunnel. Crump, with enormous relief, saw him begin to paddle the trolly backward, and in a few seconds Newman emerged feet first into the shaft.

“What the hell…” he started, red-faced and sweating.

“Tunnel’s spotted,” Crump snapped. “Someone’s been shot out there. Duck up to the block.”

As Newman went up the ladder Crump tossed the trolley into the dispersal chamber. With the rope gone, it was better out of the way. He looked up the tunnel again and saw a body crawling down. Soon a face stuck out into the shaft and the man scrambled out, perspiration pouring off him. He’d come all the way from the end halfway house.