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Escaping Club

<hr style="width: 65%;" />[172] <h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2> <h3>THE LAST OF FORT 9</h3> One day at the beginning of May 1917 an incident occurred in the fort which ultimately led to the removal of the English and Russian prisoners to other camps and to our escape en route. I never saw or knew exactly how it started, as I was playing tennis in the court below. But it appears that some thirty or forty men of mixed nationalities were walking on the pathway which ran round the rampart above us, and everything seemed quite normal and peaceful, when a shot was heard from outside the fort. This was not such an unusual occurrence as to cause us to stop our tennis; but when a few seconds later we heard another shot, and there seemed to be considerable excitement among the other prisoners on the rampart, we left the tennis with one accord and ran up the steep stairway on to the rampart. The first thing I saw was a group of excited Frenchmen, some apparently furiously angry, but all laughing, gesticulating, and cursing in French and German in the direction of the outer courtyard of the fort, which was 30 or 40 feet below them and perhaps 70 yards away. Just as we arrived on the scene, they ducked behind the parapet and a bullet whistled over our heads. They jumped up like Jack-in-the-boxes, and the cursing broke out anew. I had[173] a cautious look over the parapet, and saw the German guard with the Feldwebel drawn up in the outer court. There seemed to be a good deal of excitement and shouting going on, but as they did not appear to be going to shoot again, the Frenchmen and I and several others who had crowded to the parapet, after shouting out to the Germans what we thought of them, moved away. Just at that moment Dessaux, a French artillery lieutenant, strolled up with his hands in his pockets and walked towards the parapet. At the same moment I caught sight of the sentry on the center "caponnière," who was less than 30 yards off and standing on the mound above us, making preparations to shoot. He had his hand on the bolt of his rifle, and glanced towards the courtyard below, whence it seemed he was being urged to fire. Then he came forward a few steps in a sort of crouching attitude and snapped a cartridge into his rifle. I was about 5 yards from Dessaux at the moment, and yelled at him to look out as the fellow ran forward. Dessaux looked up and, seeing the sentry putting up his rifle, crouched behind a traverse of the parapet as the fellow fired. The bullet crashed into a chimney-pot just behind. Dessaux sat there laughing. The sentry reloaded his rifle and glanced about him at a crowd of angry men, who were threatening and cursing him in four languages from every side. For a moment it looked as though the sentry would be rushed, when a German N.C.O. came running up the stairway, amid a hail of curses, and stopped the man from firing again. I remember one Russian pointing his finger and shrieking "Schwein!" "Schwein!" at the N.C.O. as he went by. At[174] that moment a Frenchman, Commandant Collet, rushed up to me and said, "Did you see what happened?" I gave a brief account of it. "Come to the bureau," he said, "and we will tell them what we think of them;" and we ran down to the bureau together. In the bureau there was already a small crowd of excited Frenchmen in front of the barrier. The bureau was a small, narrow room with a barrier like a shop counter about one-half of the way down it. There was only one door to the room, and at the far end, on the clerks' and office side of the barrier, was a huge, heavily barred window, typical of all the windows in the fort. Collet pushed his way to the barrier through the other Frenchmen, and addressed the sergeant-clerk (a Saxon, and the only decent German in the place). At that moment the Feldwebel pushed his way in, white in the face and fingering his revolver; it was no place for him outside, and he was met by a storm of curses and threats. "If one of our officers is touched," said Collet, "if one is wounded, I swear to you that we will come immediately and kill every man in this bureau." Both the sergeant-clerk and the Feldwebel understood him, and he repeated it several times to make sure that they did. The sergeant-clerk tried to pacify him, but we pushed our way out of the bureau. One result of this row was that the bars were taken out of the big window at the back of the bureau to provide a back means of escape for the bureau staff. A second important result was that, when we came to compare notes, we found we had a very good case against the Feldwebel, the charge being, "Instigating his men to murder."[175] There was a prisoner in the fort, an Alsatian, Stoll by name, who spoke German perfectly, German being his native language, though I doubt if he would allow that. At the time when the guard was being changed and the row started, he was sitting in our reading-room, of which the window was not more than 40 yards away from where the Feldwebel was making a speech to the guard. The Alsatian overheard and was able to take down nearly every word of the speech, which was something as follows: "The prisoners you have to guard are criminals—you are to lose no opportunity of using your arms against them—be suspicious of everything they do—everything is an attempt to escape; therefore you must shoot to kill whenever possible." At that moment the Feldwebel caught sight of a group of Frenchmen standing on the parapet above, who were laughing among themselves (they swore afterwards that they were offering no provocation whatever). The Feldwebel thought they were mocking the guard, and gave orders to the sentry in the courtyard to fire. The first shot the man fired over their heads without taking careful aim. After that, when the Frenchmen bobbed up again from behind the parapet, both sides cursed and shouted. Two more well-aimed shots followed; then the Feldwebel, seeing, I think, that there was small chance of hitting any one when there was a parapet to duck behind, shouted repeatedly to the man on the center "caponnière" to fire, with the result I have already described. Fourteen of us made out accurate affidavits in German of what we had seen, and sent them in to the general in[176] charge of the camp, demanding an inquiry, if there was such a thing as justice in Germany. About a fortnight later, a rumor went round, which was confirmed after a few days, that all the Russian and English prisoners were to be moved to other camps. The news caused a great sensation, as most of us had considered that we were fixtures in Fort 9 till the end of the war, or till we could escape. Some of the Russians and all the English were most suspicious characters, and we could scarcely expect to be insufficiently guarded on our railway journey. Nevertheless, we all went into strict training. Two days before we went, we were informed that we were being sent to Zorndorf. Buckley had been a prisoner there before coming to Fort 9, and said that it was a most intolerable place, and that the change we were making was distinctly for the worse. Nothing would induce him to go back there, he said, without making an effort, however hopeless, to escape en route. He and I joined forces, having no very definite plans. The train would take us directly away from the Swiss frontier. It was to our advantage, then, to get off the train as soon as possible; for, besides the extra distance every moment in the train put between us and the frontier, we had no maps of the country north of Ingolstadt. From Ingolstadt to the frontier was about 130 miles, or rather more, and for all that part I not only had excellent maps which had been sent out to me from home, but from other prisoners who had attempted to escape in that direction we had accurate and detailed knowledge of the whole route from Fort 9 to the frontier.[177] Buckley and I decided to get off the train at the first opportunity, and then, if the distance were not too great, to walk. If it was too far to walk, we should have to risk jumping or taking a train. All the details we had to leave to circumstances. We had this in our favor, that we both talked German fairly fluently and well enough, with luck, to pass for Germans if only a few words were needed. Against us was the fact that, as we were going officially by train, we had to be in almost full uniform. By dint of continually wearing grey flannels, the English had induced the Germans to believe that gray flannels was part of the English uniform. I struck a bargain with a Frenchman for a Tyrolese hat, and Buckley very ingeniously made himself a very German-looking hat out of an old straw hat and some cloth. For food, we both stuffed the pockets of our tunics full of chocolate and condensed foods. Besides this I carried a home-made haversack full of biscuits and raw bacon, and Buckley had a small dispatch-case in which he had mainly condensed food—oxo cubes, Horlick's malted milk, meat lozenges, etc. Thus equipped, and with Burberrys to cover our uniforms, we thought we should pass as Germans in the dark. Our outfit was far from being all that could be desired; but it is hard to see how we could have carried more food, or more suitable clothes, even if we had possessed them, without raising suspicion as we left the fort. We were not the only party which was making preparations to escape. Medlicott and Wilkin certainly had something on—I don't know what the scheme was, though I have a sort of idea they intended to try and get off near an aerodrome in the neighborhood of[178] Berlin. Gaskell and May had some ideas of a bolt on the way up from the station at the other end. Buckley and I also intended to bolt there, if we could not get off before. Then there were the Russians. There were several parties among them, good fellows too and reliable, but perfectly certain to make a mess of any scheme they went for. It was most important to see that they did not spoil any good chance that might come along by prematurely doing something absolutely mad. As a general rule, however, they placed great reliance on our superior judgment, and we thought we could keep them in hand. The general opinion was that we should never have the ghost of an opportunity, and when we saw our guard on the morning of May 22nd we almost gave up hope. Our heavy luggage had been sent on early. Wilkin, by the way, had an enormous wooden box with secret hiding-places all over it which were stuffed full of maps and tools for cutting iron bars, etc., all of which latter he had made and tempered himself. He was also an expert locksmith and had a large assortment of skeleton keys. As our names were called, we passed through the iron gate over the moat and stood in the outer courtyard, surrounded by a guard of fifteen efficient-looking Huns who were to escort us. There were only thirty of us going, so we considered fifteen guards and an officer rather excessive. One amusing incident happened before we marched off. One of the Frenchmen took a Russian's place, dressed in Russian uniform, and came out when the Russian's name was called. He was recognized, however, by the sergeant, who was no fool, and pushed back into the fort amid shouts[179] of laughter. After some delay the Russian was found and brought out. We had a 7-mile walk to the station and, as always in Germany, a two hours' wait there. We spent those two hours infuriating the officer in charge of us by taking as little notice as possible of any orders that he gave us, and by talking or shouting to all the French, Russian, or English Tommies who passed us in working parties from the large soldier prisoner-of-war camp at Ingolstadt. At last we were rather tightly packed into quite decent second-class carriages. Six of the English got together in one carriage, and a sentry was put in with us. We edged up and gave him the corner seat next the corridor, and another sentry marched up and down the corridor outside. At the first review the situation seemed rather hopeless. The only chance was a large plate-glass window of the normal type, which we were compelled to keep closed. There was not much chance of our fellow going to sleep, with the sentry in the corridor continually looking in. German sentries always work in pairs like that, and usually one would report the other without hesitation. There was no door in the side of the carriage opposite to the corridor. Just before we started, the officer came in; he had been fussing round a great deal, and was obviously very anxious and nervous. Prisoners from Fort 9 had a bad reputation. He asked if we were comfortable. I answered yes for the party, and told him that we strongly objected to being shouted at, as he had shouted at us in the station. He apologized. It was only his way he said. We had disobeyed orders and he had got angry and then he always[180] shouted. He hoped that now we would have a comfortable quiet journey and no more trouble. I said he would not help matters anyhow by shouting—as it only made us laugh. He took this rebuke quite well and went off. I am afraid he had a good deal of trouble ahead of him, and I have no doubt he shouted at frequent intervals most of that journey. As we got into Nüremberg, the first large town, about 70 miles north of Ingolstadt, it was beginning to get dark. There we waited for two hours or more. Up to that time no incident of any interest had occurred, and the chance of escape had been very small. It was hardly worth it in the daylight, and we were now a devilish long way from the frontier. However, Buckley and I decided that if we got an opportunity any time during the night we would take it. After leaving Nüremberg we went slowly through a fairly dark night. It was not too dark to see that we were traveling through a well-wooded and rather hilly country, and our hopes began to rise. On leaving Nüremberg, Buckley and I took the two corner seats near the window. It had been decided in the carriage that as Buckley and I were best prepared, both in the matter of food and by the fact that we alone talked German, the others should give every assistance in their power to get us away. They were a good lot of fellows in that carriage, and the spirit of self-sacrifice which existed in Fort 9, where three nationalities were crowded together, was beyond anything which one could possibly have anticipated. Escaping came before everything, and was an excuse for any discomforts which one or two members might bring[181] on the rest of the community. If you wished for help, almost any man in the fort would have helped you blindly, regardless of consequences. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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