Death In Captivity Read online

  ‘Has something else happened, sir?’

  ‘Yes. Something I haven’t quite worked out yet. Coutoules came to me this afternoon and practically begged me to put him back in one of the main huts.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘Yes, I know. It didn’t seem quite natural to me. After all, he’s got a room to himself in our hut here. Almost anyone in the camp would give a year’s pay for a private room.’

  ‘Besides,’ said the Adjutant, ‘he must know he’s not popular. So why does he want to go and put himself back into the lion’s den?’

  ‘Exactly. There’s no doubt he did want to, though. No doubt at all. I’ve never seen anyone more anxious in my life. Practically went down on his knees.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  ‘Not really – just a lot of talk. He didn’t like being alone.’

  ‘Do you think he was play-acting?’

  ‘I didn’t get that impression,’ said the Colonel. ‘If you want my real opinion, I think he was scared stiff.’

  4

  The Punishment Block lay in the north-west corner of the camp, alongside the Carabinieri Office. With the Camp Guard Quarters and other Italian administrative huts, it lay outside the inner line of defences that guarded the camp proper. This was one of its advantages, and it was not entirely by chance that three such hardened escapers as Tony Long, Hugo Baierlein and ‘Hefty’ Grimsdale should have been guilty of the simultaneous offences which had landed them into the cooler together.

  As nine o’clock struck, Tony Long was standing on his bed looking out of the single barred window of his cell. He was reflecting, in a detached way, on the problem of escape from a prison camp. Camp 127 was not an easy place to escape from. It had been designed, as Captain Benucci had pointed out to Colonel Lavery, with a good deal of forethought. Miracles apart, there only were three ways of getting out of any camp. You could tunnel under the walls, you could climb over the walls, or you could walk out of the gate.

  All these methods had their own drawbacks. The real disadvantage of tunnelling was the length of time it involved. What with the constant watchfulness of the Italians, their security checks and their sudden searches, any tunnel was almost certain to be spotted in the end. To suppose that you could keep it entirely hidden for the six or eight months necessary to reach the open was like gambling on the same number coming up six or eight times running at the roulette table. It could happen, but it didn’t very often.

  To get over the walls was a proposition of much greater risk, but carrying with it that fundamental chance of success which must attend any bold and unexpected manoeuvre. Three months before, a particularly well-organised effort of this sort had been completely successful. The camp lights had been fused and, in the few seconds that the darkness had lasted, four officers armed with hooked ladders had crossed the wall midway between sentry and sentry and had disappeared. (It is true that all of them had eventually been recaptured and were now in the fortress prison of Gavi for their pains.)

  Lastly there was the gate. To crash the gate was a project which needed expert disguise, nerve and plenty of luck. At 127 you needed a double portion of luck, for there were, in fact, two gates, an inner gate and an outer gate, and a very elaborate security system of passes and checks existed between the two, which no one had yet entirely succeeded in defeating.

  Standing at his window, that evening, Tony watched the system at work. A small open laundry van came across the prisoners’ compound and approached the inner gate. Despite the fact that it was driven by one carabinier and had another seated on the back, the sentry abated nothing of his caution. He checked both passes and then went round and thrust his long needle bayonet through one or two of the larger bundles. The carib in the back said something and the driver laughed. The sentry walked across to the telephone, and spoke to the Guard House. Not till he had had a reply would he even open the inner gate. At the outer gate, although it was in full view of the inner one, and not more than thirty yards away, the whole performance was repeated.

  Tony sighed, shifted his weight on to his other foot, and wondered how long it would be before it was dark. He had blond hair and a Nordic, rather serious face, which looked deceptively youthful. Only his mouth and chin had the hard lines of a generation which had been brought up to war.

  By half-past ten, most of the light was out of the sky, but it was eleven o’clock before he moved.

  The first thing he did was to take out a short piece of wire which appeared to form part of his bed and thrust it through the ventilation between his cell and the next. He jerked it once or twice and then pulled it out, and put his ear to the ventilator.

  He could hear Baierlein’s voice quite distinctly.

  ‘Not yet. The outer gate guard is the other side, looking this way. I’ll knock when he changes over.’

  Ten minutes later a quiet knock sounded.

  Tony put his hand up and appeared to be fumbling with one of the bricks which formed the sill of the window. Then he put his other hand up, and twisted one of the bars. Then bar and brick came clean out of the window. The whole operation took less than thirty seconds.

  The gap left by the removal of the bar was not much more than twelve inches, but it was enough.

  Tony climbed from the bed on to the sill, put a long arm through, caught the gutter above the window, and pulled.

  A minute later he was on the roof of the Punishment Block, hidden in the deep shadow behind a buttress.

  Baierlein, in Cell 2, turned to Grimsdale with a smile and said:

  ‘He’s up.’

  ‘Should be all right now,’ said Grimsdale. ‘They won’t see him so long as he keeps still.’

  ‘They certainly won’t hear him,’ said Baierlein. ‘Not with that filthy row going on.’

  In the Carabiniere Office next door a loudspeaker, full on, was relaying a dance band from Radio Romã.

  The two men lay in silence in the dark cell. Each was deep in his own thoughts. There was an occasional rustle as Baierlein turned on his bed to look at the illuminated face of his watch.

  Outside, the saxophones laughed and sobbed, and the high trumpets screamed.

  5

  ‘Three hearts gives us game, you know.’

  ‘Pass,’ said Billy Moxhay.

  ‘Four hearts.’

  ‘Three hearts,’ said Tag Burchnall.

  ‘Oh, so it does. Sorry, I’m sure,’ said Rollo Betts-Hanger. ‘Pass then.’

  ‘Pass,’ said Gerry Parsons. ‘Good fun this afternoon, wasn’t it?’

  ‘First class,’ said Rollo. ‘I thought we were a bit weak in the scrum.’

  ‘Definitely weak.’

  ‘We want a bit more weight.’

  ‘A lot more weight. Aubrey and Peter don’t push their weight at all.’

  ‘We really need a first-class man behind them. Someone who can lock the back row.’

  ‘What about – oh, sorry. I didn’t know you were waiting for me. I thought you were pondering. I’m playing the queen. I was going to say, what about Grimsdale? He’s a Hirburnian, isn’t he?’

  ‘I tried him – of course. He won’t do it.’

  ‘Won’t play rugger?’

  ‘That’s what he told me. He said he’d always been made to play at school and in the army. In a prisoner-of-war camp he was going to please himself.’

  ‘Must have been pulling your leg. Why, he played for Middlesex, didn’t he?’

  “The truth of the matter is,’ said Rollo, ‘that he spends so much time over this escaping stuff that he hasn’t got time for anything else.’

  ‘Of course, in theory, I’m all for escaping,’ said Gerry Parsons. ‘It’s one’s duty, and so forth. But the fact of the matter is – oh, it’s me again is it? – the fact of the matter is that no one ever really gets anywhere. It isn’t as if there was any chance even of getting out of this camp – to say nothing of getting out of the country – and when anyone does try, what happens—?’

  “They cut of
f the showers,’ said Tag Burchnall. ‘You can’t trump that, Billy. Hearts are trumps.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. They just make everyone uncomfortable.’

  ‘Still,’ said Tag, ‘one doesn’t exactly want to stand in their way.

  ‘One wouldn’t want to do a Coutoules,’ he added.

  ‘I can’t think why someone hasn’t taken the little beast right apart,’ said Billy Moxhay. ‘I should have thought the S.B.O. ought to take it up. All that’s happened to the little blot is that he’s got a room of his own. I’m trumping that.’

  ‘You can’t trump with that card,’ said Tag. ‘I know it looks like the knave of hearts but it isn’t really. It’s been crossed out. It’s the three of clubs.’

  ‘I thought the other knave of hearts was the three of clubs.’

  ‘No, that is the knave of hearts. It’s turned down in one corner. That makes ten tricks. Game with one overtrick. Eight hundred on the rubber.’

  Scores were carefully checked and eight small figs were pushed across the table.

  The president of the Old Hirburnian Rugby Football Club cut, and the cards were dealt again.

  6

  At two o’clock Hugo Baierlein turned over on his bunk and sat up. He had many of the talents of a true escaper. One was the ability to sleep anywhere and wake on demand.

  He got out of bed, picked up a chair, put it on the table which was under the high, barred window and climbed on to it. He manoeuvred the bars in much the same way that Tony Long had done in his cell and after a few minutes he also had the middle one loose. He then put his arm and shoulder out, reached up and scratched very gently on the iron gutter.

  He waited, and scratched again, until he heard the muffled sounds which indicated that Tony Long was on his way down. He gave him a few minutes and then crossed to the ventilator.

  He heard Tony’s voice, still puffed from his descent.

  ‘Went very well. The chap on the corner turned his searchlight at me twice. He couldn’t see me, of course; I was behind the parapet. Don’t think he was suspicious. Just jumpy. I think I’ve spotted how the gate sentry works, too. He spends most of his time in the box with his back to us, but he comes out every half-hour, just before the Sergeant arrives on his rounds. I’ve written down the time.’

  ‘Good,’ said Baierlein. ‘I’ll make a note of that myself.’

  ‘You’ll have to be damned quiet getting up,’ said Tony. ‘You haven’t got a ruddy great dance band to cover you like I had. I’ll give you the word when to start.’

  Five minutes later Baierlein was on the roof. It was cold enough to make him feel glad of his double layer of underclothes. He was lying alongside the low parapet which divided the flat roof. His wrist-watch was strapped with its luminous face on the inside of his left wrist. In his right hand he had a tiny black notebook and pencil. His job was to note down every movement of the sentry on the main gate and of the pair on the north-west guard platform.

  He faced the prospect of approximately two and a half hours of immobility.

  Under the full Italian moon, which paled even the arc-lamps round the perimeter, the camp lay black and sharp. Every few minutes a searchlight from one of the guard platforms blinked its frosty carbon-blue eye and swept across the enclosure.

  Baierlein lay safely in the long black shadow of the parapet. His eyes were on the gate sentry. He saw exactly what Tony had meant. The chap was too slack to stand his post properly. He preferred to lounge in the comparative comfort of the box. Only, every half-hour, just before the Sergeant of the Guard announced to the world the start of his rounds by throwing open the guard-room door, the sentry left the box, crossed the gateway, and stood facing the Punishment Block.

  In that position alone was he a danger.

  Baierlein glanced at the watch face, and made a meticulous note in his book. It was for moments like this that he lived – and was nearly to die, once or twice, before he finally hobbled across the Swiss frontier at Gottmadingen eighteen months later.

  7

  On the guard platform on the north-east corner Ordinary Soldier Biancelli stamped his feet and prayed for his relief. He hated guard duty at the best of times but he hated it still more now that, in place of his friend, Moderno, he had this unspeakable, unsociable, Marzotto beside him. His dislike was not personal. It was the dislike of a member of the ordinary corps for the member of a privileged corps. He, Biancelli, was a soldier. A soldier of the king. Marzotto, although he styled himself ‘of the Regiment of Carabinieri Reali’ was a policeman. He took his orders from Captain Benucci, who took them from some Colonel of Carabinieri at District Headquarters, who took them, in the long run, from II Duce.

  Biancelli was distressed both by his discomforts and his responsibilities.

  In the old days it had been simple. If you saw an English prisoner escaping you shot at him. Now things were more complicated.

  He looked sideways at Marzotto, who avoided his gaze.

  As an ordinary soldier he was not told much about how the war was going, or what was happening in the camp he was guarding. But he could not help being aware of certain undercurrents of feeling, certain possibilities.

  He stamped his feet again and watched the sky lightening imperceptibly towards morning.

  Chapter 2

  The Camp – Morning

  1

  The camp came to life slowly. In Hut C the first sound was usually the clatter of the orderly cook as he hurried along the passage to light the kitchen stove and heat the coffee which, with a slice of Red Cross biscuit, made up the normal prisoner-of-war breakfast.

  At eight-thirty the Italians were due to open the huts and conduct their morning roll-call. It was an operation which might take anything from fifteen minutes to an hour according to the temper and efficiency of the Italian officer conducting it and the degree of co-operation which he succeeded in obtaining from his charges. During roll-call no one was allowed to leave his room.

  Opinion varied from hut to hut as to whether it was better to heat the breakfast coffee before or after roll-call. There were advantages either way. In Hut C, at that time, for reasons which will appear, the cooking was done as early as possible.

  Immediately roll-call had been concluded and the last Italian had left the hut, quite a lot of things happened. None of them, in themselves, was significant or suspicious; but the total would have added up to the same answer in the mind of any experienced prisoner.

  Certain officers, lying on their beds beside windows, hung out towels to dry. One prisoner fixed his shaving mirror to a nail beside the window and seemed to be experiencing some difficulty in tilting it to the exact angle he required for the mirror could be seen, for some minutes, winking like a semaphore in the morning sun. In a room in Hut C a tall Major, wearing the green flashes of the ‘I’ Corps, sat at a table filling in what appeared to be a chart of the inter-related Royal dynasties of England and Hanover, and a stream of visitors came and went with items of information which he found helpful in his strange, self-imposed task.

  All over the camp, from each of the five big living huts, from the Senior Officers’ quarters, from the Orderlies’ Billet, from the barber’s shop, from the canteen, and the shower baths, the quiet, invisible, network floated out, like a thousand spiders’ webs of gossamer over an early morning field. A subaltern in the Royal Corps of Signals – in peace time a professor of history at Oxford – who was sitting in a deck-chair against the wall of the camp theatre, found himself reminded of Oman’s description of Craufurd and the Light Brigade at their watch on the Portuguese frontier. ‘The whole web of communication quivered at the slightest touch.’ He himself had a tiny part to play: the outer main gate was under his observation. If it opened he would drop his book. If anyone dangerous came through he would stand up.

  The gate remaining shut he was able to continue his reading in peace.

  The object of all this organisation, the heart of the labyrinth around which this watchful maze of attention had
been constructed, lay in the kitchen of Hut C.

  In the middle of the kitchen, set in a six-foot square slab of concrete let into the tiled floor, stood the stove. It was a huge cauldron, shaped like a laundry copper, and it still hissed and bubbled from its morning coffee-making. Apart from a few shelves, almost the only other fitting in the room was a pair of hanging clothes-driers of a sort not uncommon in old-fashioned kitchens, made of slats of wood, and suspended, on two pulleys each, from the ceiling. They were covered, as usual, with prisoners’ private laundry, underclothes, stockings and sports kit. The only odd thing about them – and no doubt the matter was so obvious that it never occurred to the Italians as being odd at all – was that the racks appeared to be a trifle too well made for their function. However great the weight of damp laundry to be hung on them, it seemed an unnecessary precaution to have bolted the pulleys right through, at both ends, to the solid beams of the roof. Nor did it seem really necessary that the racks, instead of being raised by a single pulley, should be operated at each end by a small double block and tackle. The obvious is rarely apparent.

  At five minutes past nine, four officers entered the kitchen. Two of them went to the clothes rack and lowered them to their fullest extent so that they hung just above the stove. They then took out, each of them, a short length of wire rope with a hook at both ends. One hook went over the pulley, the other round one of the four legs of the stove. No word was spoken; nor was any word necessary since they had been performing this particular operation twice every day for several months.

  Each man took up the slack on his pulley. There was a moment’s pause. Then, in tug-of-war parlance, they ‘took the strain’.