Phase I

CHAPTER

I T WAS early morning. Inside the room everything was

hushed; the eerie, impermanent hfelessness of a room where
everyone is sleeping. On the four two-tier bunks ranged
round the walls the prisoners slept rolled like cocoons in
their blankets. Beside each bunk, sentinel-like, stood a
narrow wooden locker. On the table in the centre of the
room, softly illuminated by the light that crept in under
the closed blackout shutters, lay in disordered heaps the
clothes of the sleeping prisoners. Thinly, from the direction
of the Kommandantur, came the sound of a distant bugle
call.
In one of the upper bunks a figure stirred, grunted and
turned over on its back. It lay still for a while; then with a
convulsive jerk that shook the whole room it sat up, rubbed
its eyes and yawned. Peter Howard, lying in the bunk below,
opened his eyes. A few scraps of wood shavings dislodged
from the mattress above fell slowly down and rested on his
face. He brushed them off, turned over and pulled the thin
grey blanket tightly round his ears. It was too early to wake
yet. He closed his eyes. He knew it all so well. A pair of
legs covered with long sandy hair would appear over the
side of the bimk above. Legs that would wriggle their toes
disgustingly as their owner prepared to land like an avalanche
beside his head. He had seen it all too often before. He
tensed himself expectantly. Crash ! Bang ! Ger . . . doyng!
The whole h u t shook. One of the shrouded figures moved
impatiently and swore in an undertone. A stool slid noisily
across the floor. The man who had cursed pulled the blanket
up over his head. Heavy footsteps stamped across the room.
A short silence, then clang ! as the lid of the tea-jug was
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banged down. Another short silence and then the sound of

a spoon being stirred violently inside a pottery m u g .
Presently the whole room shook again as the door was
slammed.
Peter relaxed and slowly opened his eyes. He knew
exactly what had happened since the first convulsive
thrashing of limbs had jerked him from his sleep. First
Bennett had pulled on his socks, then his wooden clogs
which had spent the night resting beside his head. Next he
had leaped for the wooden stool, missed it and sent it
slithering across the floor. He had looked surprised and
stamped over to the tea j u g to see if the next door stooge
had fetched the water. Finding the j u g contained only a
handful of dried tea he had again forced an expression of
exaggerated surprise and had filled a m u g with cold water
from a large pottery j u g which stood near the stove. He
had added a spoonful of lemonade powder and stirred
violently. After drinking the mixture in three great gulps
he had gone out, slamming the door after him, to walk
rovmd the circuit until breakfast-time.
Every morning since they had arrived at Stalag-Luft III
Peter had awakened to the same abrupt reveille. At first he
had opened his eyes at the preliminary crash. Now he kept
them closed until after Bennett had left the room.
All was silent again. Not a sound from the other six
occupants of the two-tier bunks. Either they were asleep or
grimly hanging on to the last shreds of slumber until the
storm had passed. Bennett had gone now. He would be
walking round the compoundjust inside the wireleaving
the others to gather together the ragged edges of their
slumber. Peter often wondered what Bennett found in
prison life attractive enough to get him out of bed so early.
Most of them lay in bed as long as possible, reluctant to
begin another day. Bennett was a queer chap. Starting the
day half an hour before everyone else and then sleeping on
his; bunk all afternoon. Perhaps he was right. The camp
would be deserted at this hour of the morning. Bennett

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needed plenty of space all round him. He was too bull-like,

too virile to live cooped up with seven other people. He
needed wide open spaces and a job of work to do. Peter
wriggled himself more comfortably into his mattress of
wood shavings and tried to sleep again.
From the corner on his right hand came the mumbled
ends of Robbie's morning h y m n of hate . . . " Christ, what
a noisy mucker that fellow Bennett is." There was bitterness in it, and finality. They would quarrel soon, Peter could
see it coming. Starting over some small detail it would
flare up into a violent feud. One of them would move
into another room and life would go on. It was like that
in the prison camp. A man would stand the boredom for so
long and then, slightly at first, the personal habits of one
of his seven companions would begin to wear h i m down.
Little things such as the way the man ate, or possibly his
accent. Life with h i m would become unbearable.
Poor old Robbie, he had been a prisoner for nearly three
years; and a flimsy wooden h u t was not Bennett's ideal
background. He couldn't have been silent in a padded cell
with a thick cork floor. Peter sighed. The thought of a cork
floor made him think of bathrooms. He hadn't had a bath
for two yearsunless a length of hosepiping and a punctured
cocoa-tin could be called a bathand he lay thinking of
porcelain baths in all the colours of the rainbow. Green,
yellow, pink, black. . . . No, he didn't like black. He liked
a bath that lent its colour to the water. Green was the best.
A green bath, darker green tiles on the walls and a cork
floor. Or perhaps a sunken bath. Yes, a sunken bath,
large enough for two to bathe in together. He thought
about this for quite a while.
He forced his mind away. What about this tunnel ?
There must be a place to start one if you could only think
of it. David had nearly got away with it. David with his
blue seaman's eyes and halo of rosy red beard. David the
farmer. Good old dependable David. David who ran a fftijm
on paper. Over his bunk there was a rough bookshelf made

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from bed-boards, the narrow cross planks of the two-tier

bunks. All the books were about farming. At the right
time of the year David would sow his crops and in due
course he would harvest them. He kept a profit and loss
account. Funny how seriously he took it. If it rained on
the day when he had decided to reap he would walk about
w i t h a face like thunder. If during a heatwave one of the
others remarked on the fine weather he would mutter something about the crops needing rain. Good old farmer David,
he was compensating for his imprisonment. But he still
tried to escape. He was the room's representative on the
Escape Committee. And yet his farm was very real to him.
Peter grinned as he remembered the occasion when his lower
meadows were in danger from floods and he drove a flock
of sheep from the lower meadow to the safety of the hilly
slopes above the farm. The guards had been alarmed when
the whole barrack block turned out to help h i m drive the
sheep across the compound. They had reached for their
tommy-guns when they saw a throng of hissing, whistling
shouting men driving nothing towards the barbed wire.
But the new meadow was inside the wire and no h a r m was
done.
The only man who knew more about farming than did
David was Bennett. But Bennett knew more about everything than anyone else. Bennett the authority. Bennett
the bull. Full of " bull." You couldn't discuss anything with
Bennett in the room. No matter what the discussion
Bennett would finally deliver himself of a categorical,
authoritative pronouncement which would kill the topic
dead. Abortive attempts would be made to revive it but
under the weight of authority behind the pronouncement
the opposition would languish and finally relapse into a
bafiied and disgruntled silence.
They were always arguing. Paul caused a lot of the
trouble. Tall and thin, so tall that you wondered how he
had managed to fit into the Hurricane in which he had been
shot dovra early in the war, he had gone straight from

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school into the R.A.F. His whole world was flying and the
wide freedom of the sky. Paul found prison life more irksome than did most of his fellow prisoners. It tried his
patience beyond endurance and it was in these times that
he turned to Robbie for consolation.
Robbie was the peacemaker.
Peter forced himself into wakefulness. It was his turn
to be cook. Of all the chores of prison life cooking was the
one he hated most. It had been harder for the early prisoners.
They had had to cook on wood fires in the open air. He had
a stove. At least, he had a hundred-and-twelfth share in a
stove. There were fourteen rooms in the hut. Each room
had eight prisoners and for every eight men there was one
cook. At the end of the hut stood a cast-iron stove with
one cooking ring and a small oven. Fourteen dinners for
eight had to be cooked on that stove every evening. He
began to think about the evening meal. If he peeled the
potatoes and put them on about ten o'clock . . . His
thoughts were interrupted by Robbie.
" What about a spot of tea, Pete ?"
"O.K., Robbie. Just going. Bags of time yet." He
stretched and rolled out of his bunk. "'Morning, Nig!"
" 'Morning, Pete." Nigel Wilde and John Clinton slept in
the bunks nearest the stove. Like most advantages in prison
life, this had its compensating disadvantages. Although
warmer in winter it meant that the bunks were used as seats
during the daytime. Peter preferred the colder privacy of
the wall farthest from the stove.
Nigel lay on his back in the upper bunk, his right arm
curled round the top of his head. His right hand was gently
stroking the left-hand side of his moustache. His expression
was blissful.
Peter stood watching him. Nigel winked.
"Why the hell do you keep doing that?" Peter asked.
"I like it, old boy. Feels as though someone else is
doing it."

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"You're crazy."
" I know, it's nice."
In the bunk below, John Clinton lay dreaming, his dark
head resting on a folded pair of trousers, a seraphic expression
on his face.
"What's the weather like?" Nigel asked.
Peter padded over to the window. It was late spring and
across the wire he could see the pale fronds of a silver birch
graceful against the dark olive background of the pine
forest. Peter was fond of that silver birch. He had tried to
paint it in all its moods. As a sharp but twisting and fragile
silhouette against a winter sky. And as he saw it now, a
cascade of delicate green, almost yellow in the morning sun.
He had painted it often but had never been able to capture
its isolated beauty, its aloofness against the darkness of the
pines. Overhead the sky was clear and still, the hushed
expectancy that foretells a burning day. Under the window
the sand was moist with dew, and dew sparkled on the
barbed wire. The rows of long green-painted barrack huts
looked washed and cool.
"It's a lovely morning, Nig."
" Gut zeigen. What about a cup of tea?" Nigel specialised
in translating air force slang literally into German. " Gut
zeigen" was his way of saying "good show." In the same
Way " bad show" became " schlecht zeigen" and " fair enough"
''hlond genug." When he was particularly morose he considered himself to be '' gehraunt weg" or "browned-off." He
sometimes used this queer German on the guards and was
genuinely surprised when they didn't understand.
Peter, still looking out of the window, saw Bennett come
striding furiously round the circuit. Wearing heavy army
issue boots, a woollen skull-cap and R.A.F. battledress, he
came past the window at full speed.
"Come on, Pete," Nigel called. "What about that
tea?"
Peter crossed to a wooden shelf over the stove and took
down seven mugs. The tea j u g had been left just inside the

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door the night before with a handful of tea leaves in the

bottom. It was the turn of the cook in the next mess to
take both jugs across to the kitchen and have them filled
with boiling water. It would be Peter's turn to-morrow.
He poured three mugs, one for Nigel, one for Robbie and
one for himself. He would not waken the others yet. There
was still plenty of time.
Crossing again to the shelf, he took from a cardboard
box a heavy German loaf; ninety per cent potato meal and
a liberal sprinkling of sawdust. A loaf that, if allowed to
dry, would split into great fissures and become as hard as
stone. The cardboard box had once contained a Red Cross
parcel from England. There were dozens of similar boxes
littered round the room, holding all the personal possessions
of the eight prisoners. Boxes piled on top of the cupboards.
Boxes under the beds. Boxes round the stove, filled with
brown coal, old potatoes and waste paper. Eight such boxes
were delivered to the room each week and yet they never
seemed to have enough of them.
He cut twenty-four thin slices. A seventh of a loaf a day
was each man's ration. By cutting very thin slices he could
make three for breakfast, one for lunch and three for tea.
He spread them thinly with margarine from a Red Cross
parcel, opened a tin of jam, and breakfast was prepared.
He was still in pyjamas.
" What about a cold shower before breakfast. Nig ?"
" Blond genug, old boy." Nigel unwound himself from
his blankets.
"O.K. Let's wake John."
"What? Wake the child? Have a heart, old boy!" Nigel
treated John with a teasing respect. Respecting him for his
fine intelligence and ready courage; teasing him because of
his youth and absent-mindedness. John's mind was always
on his books or schemes of escape. So far removed from his
environment that Nigel often had to go and find him and
bring him to his meals. Nigel loved John and masked his
affection under a veil of chafiing and elaborate practical

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jokes. He called h i m " t h e child" and respected him above

everyone.
"Yes, go on! Wake him up, it'll do h i m good."
"Shall I?"
"Yes, go on!" Peter waited for the joke that had amused
h i m every m o r n i n g for days.
Nigel reached for his latest invention, his latest method
of teasing John. This time it was an elaborate waking
device. A cocoa tin suspended by a harness of string h u n g
just above John's head. Through a hole in the top of the tin
ran another string suspended on the end of which was a
bunch of bent and rusty nails. By pulling rapidly on the
centre string Nigel could conjure forth a most satisfactory
noise. He pulled the string.
John did not wake.
" I think the loose bed-boards were a better idea," Peter
said.
"Yes, but a bit dangerous." Nigel grinned as he remembered the last waking device he had invented. A
device which had effectively removed the one remaining
board which had held John's shaking bed together
and had deposited him, complete with mattress, on the
floor.
" Come on," Peter said. " Once round the compound and
then a shower."
Leaving John asleep they clambered out of the window.
It was quicker than the door and quieter.
Once more the room was silent. Robbie lay lazily flapping at the flies that were doing circuits and bumps inside
his bed space. There was the whole room for them to fly in
and they had to come and buzz round him. He gave it up
and pulled the blanket over his head. Presently a figure in
one of the upper bunks began to curse.
. "What's the matter, Pomfret?" Robbie lowered his
blanket.
" Oh, it's those two noisy blighters. They're too damned
hearty. What do they want to take a cold shower at this

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hour for ? And that damned tin can thing. It's too bloody
silly."
"Keeps them happy, I suppose."
"Well, it shouldn't. They shouldn't be happy in a prison
camp. Nobody should be happy in a prison camp. It's not
decent. And talking of decency, I suppose they're going to
sunbathe in the nude again. The S.B.O. ought to stop it.
It shouldn't be allowed."
"Why in heaven not?" Robbie asked. "There are no
women for miles around and even if there were they couldn't
see inside the camp. If they want t o get brown all over, why
shouldn't they? It's a free world and it does them good."
"It's not decent," Pomfret said.
"Oh, don't be so bloody lily-livered. I shall sunbathe
myself when the weather gets a bit warmer." Robbie pulled
the blanket over his head and lay thinking of the play he
was producing. The feminine lead was the trouble. Young
Matthews had played it in the last four shows and the
audience were getting used to him. He m i g h t ask Black;
but he'd just taught young Matthews to walk properly and
to sit without opening his knees. It was the very devil, this
feminine lead. So many chaps were shy of taking it on. It
wasn't so bad until you came to the love passagesthen they
balkedwanted to burlesque it. He'd go round and see
young Black later on and try to persuade him to do it. He'd
have Latimer for the male lead. He was developing into a
damned good actor.
" Come on, show a leg!" It was Peter and Nigel returned
from their cold shower. " Breakfast up, appel u p ! Appel in
ten minutes. Who wants breakfast in bed ?"
Pomfret rolled out of his bunk, rubbing his eyes and
growling under his breath. Putting on a Polish army
greatcoat over his pyjamas he took a cardboard Red Cross
box containing his washing materials from a shelf above
his head and shuffled off to the washroom.
"What's the matter with her this m o r n i n g ? " Nigel
asked.

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" Oh, she's a bit touchy this morning," Robbie told him.
"You woke her with your infernal machine."
"That's more than I did to the child. Hey, John, wake
up! On appel bitty, mein Herr!"
" He's all right," Robbie said. " He'll have breakfast after
appel."
In the far corner David Bruce lay thinking. He was
planning his day. He was going to drench his new calf. It
was not doing so well. To lose a calf now would be a serious
thing. Make a hole in the little reserve of capital that he
had accumulated.
The door was flung open and a German guard entered
the room. " Raus! Raus! Ausgehen! Alle rausgehen!"
"Goon in the block!" Paul stood by his bunk, trousers
in his hands, hair on end, still in the lower school. " Deutschland kaput!"
The guard shouted at him in German. .
"Muck off!" Paul said. "We don't understand German
here."
The guard shouted again in German; a long sentence
that ended with the English word "cooler."
"You're for it," Robbie said. "It's the cooler for you."
The guard shouted again. He was nearly screaming now.
"Muck off!" Paul made his stock retort.
The guard began to unsling his rifle. The bayonet was
fixed.
"Better be careful," Robbie said.
A Feldwebel came walking down the centre corridor of
the barrack hut. The guard sprang to attention and made a
long, involved complaint in German. The Feldwebel turned
to Paul.
"You have been impertinent again, eh?" He spoke in
English.
"I object to being shouted at."
"Come!" The Feldwebel was used to this sort of thing.
Paul finished pulling on his trotisers. He was no stranger
to the cooler. He was almost happy there. He felt that he

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was carrying on the fight. He gathered up his blankets and

his toilet things and accompanied the Feldwebel down the
corridor.
^^ Ausgehen, alle rausgehen!"" the guard shouted, unmoved
by his victory.
^^Gutzeigen, Joe. Just coming." Nigel said it quietly.
"Hi John! On appel bitty! Come on, you'll be late for
appel."
John opened his eyes. He looked blank. Suddenly he
realised what it was all about. " For Christ's sake, give me
a cup of tea somebody!"
Peter handed him a cup of tea. John swallowed once and
handed it back. He rolled out of his bunk and stood putting
on his clogs, a lean brown figure with a mop of black hair
like an Abyssinian warrior. His pyjama trousers which had
been cut short above the knee were of a different pattern
from the jacket, which had no sleeves. The jacket had blue
stripes and the trousers had once been pink. He took another
gulp of tea, hurled a blanket round his shoulders, snatched
up a book and shuffled off to roll call, a slice of bread-andjam in one hand and his book in the other. Once on appel
he stood reading his book, taking occasional bites at the slice
of bread-and-jam.
Outside the barrack the prisoners stood in fives. Peter
stood next to David who, pipe jutting from the depths of
his red beard, puffed clouds of smoke into the cool morning
air.
"Why do we always stand in fives?" Peter complained.
"It used to be threes in the last camp."
"These are army goons," David said. "The others were
air force goons. Army goons can only count in fives."
The guards walked down the rows counting them; the
guards in uniform, the prisoners huddled under blankets or
defying the morning air in pyjanaas or shorts. Slowly the
guards walked down the ragged lines, counting as they
walked. Ein-und-fiinfzig . . . zwei-und-Jiinfzig . . . drei-undfunfzig . . . vier-und-funfzig . . . funf-und-funfzig . . . sech-und-

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Junfzig . . . siehen-und-Junfzig. . . . What a mucking sillylanguage, Peter thought. Typical of the whole nation.
The British adjutant called them to attention. The Lager
Offizier, tall and immaculately uniformed, was mincing
across the square to where the Senior British Ofiicer was
standing. After saluting the S.B.O. he turned to the
assembled prisoners and bowing from the waist saluted
and shouted " Guten Morgen, meine Herrenr The kriegies
replied with an incoherent roar. While the more prudent
replied " Gutm Morgen, mein Herr,'" the wilder spirits chanted
their single-syllabled reply of derision; the two^ replies
combating one another and resulting in an enthusiastic
greeting which made the Lager Offizier beam with pleasure.
He was popular with these wild-looking British, was he not ?
After appel Nigel returned to his bunk. He was plotting
his post-war career. He had already decided to be a doctor,
a game warden, a gold prospector, a holiday camp proprietor, a farmer (he dropped this almost immediately under
the scorn of David Bruce), a big game hunter and a bookmaker. He took one course of study after another, dropping
each one as another more attractive career caught his fancy.
He lived in a frenzy of enthusiasmbut nothing lasted for
long with him.
Peter lay on his bunk waiting for John to finish his
breakfast. "Parcels to-morrow," he said.
"Good show!" John spoke through a mouthful of bread
and butter. " We'll have the last tin of salmon for dinner
to-night."
" Don't burn it this time," Bennett said. " If you'd only
do it the way I told you. You want to cover the top with
greased paper."
John said nothing. It was too early in the day to start
an argument.
"If we get any raisins we'll swop them for biscuits,"
Peter said. "Then we can make a cake."
"We'll bake it in the afternoon," John said, "and then
if it turns out to be a pudding we can have it for dinner."

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"And if it turns out to be porridge we'll have it for

breakfast," Robbie added.
" I wouldn't mind running a restaurant after the war,"
Nigel said. " Run it for a bit and then leave a manager to
look after it. Then I could start a small farm and supply
the restaurant from the farm. The waste food from the
restaurant would do to feed the pigs and . . ."
" Sort of perpetual motion," John said.
"And then when I'd got the farm running I could put
a bailiff in that and start on something else."*
"You have to know something about cooking to r u n a
restaurant," Bennett said. "Judging by your last effort you
wouldn't last long."
" Farming's a job for the expert," David said from out
of his misery. "You can lose a lot of money. I've got a
calf now that's doing very badly. It's a Friesian. The book
says they're difficult to rear. I wish I'd decided on Herefords."
"Friesians look nicer," Peter said,
David snorted.
When the others had finished their breakfast Peter
collected the eight knives and mugsthey had no plates
and took them over to the washhouse to clean them.
Outside the washhouse was a long queue of prisoners
waiting for their m o r n i n g shower. The camp, which
housed nearly a thousand men, possessed six cold water
taps. Two of them had been converted by the prisoners into
rough shower baths. The remaining four supplied all the
water for washing clothes and crockery and for cooking.
Under pressure from the Protecting Power the Germans had
agreed to build shower baths. They had been building them
for nearly a year. The unfinished structure stood insjde the
camp surrounded by its own wire barrier to preven'l|the
prisoners from stealing nails and odd pieces of timber, u h e y
had long since given up any hope of using the showers.
Squeezing his way past the crowd of bathers, Peter
entered the washhouse. It was full of men washing dirty

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clothes on long wooden benches; dipping them in water,

laying them on the benches, soaping them, and scrubbing
them with nail brushes. In one corner several men were
trying to wet themselves under the meagre trickle of water
falling from the cocoa-tin shower. In the opposite corner
a prisoner stood on the wash-bench, his face pressed to the
window. All over the camp there were similar figures,
watching through holes cut in the walls of the huts, hiding
under the huts, peering through half-open doors; spying
on the German guards. Every subversive activity in the
camp had its nimbus of stooges. Every ferret who came into
the camp was shadowed by a stooge, his every movement was
reported to the duty pilot who sat at the main gates of the
camp.
. In the middle of the floor was a dark, gaping hole about
two feet square, cut through the six inches of solid concrete
on which the brick floor was laid. Next to the hole lay the
trap. Built of solid brick on a wooden frame, it could be
lowered into position by means of hooks fitting into slots
in the sides of the frame. Once the trap was in position and
the joints made good with soap mixed with cement dust
it was impossible to tell that the floor had been disturbed.
Head and shoulders out of the trap stood a man named
White.
"Hallo, Bill," Peter said.
"'Morning, Pete."
" How's it going ?" ,
"Piece of cake!" White lifted his hand, palm open, forefinger touching the t i ^ of his thumb, and made a clicking
noise with his tongue. "She's doing fine."
" How far have you got ?"
"About forty feet."
" Ferret approaching!" It was the stooge calling urgently
from the window.
White was down the hole in a flash and the trap was
lowered on top of him. A crowd of bathers and washers of
dirty linen surged over the trap, swamping the floor,

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camouflaging the trap. Peter set to and washed his crockery

while a running commentary on the guard's progress came
from the watcher at the window. The German passed
without entering the washhouse and work on the tunnel
was resumed.
When Peter returned to the hut he found Bennett " tinbashing." The prisoners were forced to cook in utensils of
their own making. Nothing at all was provided by the
Germans. Tlie^ usual thing was a flat dish about twelve
inches long b r i g h t inches wide and two and a half inches
deep. It was made by taking both ends ofi^ a Klim tin and
rolling the cylinder into a flat sheet. When a number of
these sheets had been collected they were joined together by
folding the e4ges one over the other and filling the joints
with silver paper salvaged from cigarette packets. A blunt
nail was used as a punch and a narrow groave punched along
the double thickness of metal. The edge^ofithe flat sheet
thus formed were turned up and the fourJior:^s folded to
form a dish.
'
Bennett, surrounded by pieces of rolled-out tin, was
bashing furiously, bashing the tin with a personal vindictiveness that made the hut shake and the tins rattle on the
shelves.
" It's a lovely day," Peter ofi'ered.
Bennett grunted.
"Wouldn't you rather do that outside in the sun, old
boy ? Besides, the hut wouldn't shake so much if you bashed
on the sand."
Bennett grunted again.
Peter sighed. He put the crockery and breakfast cutlery
on the shelves and went out to walk round the circuit until
lunchtime.
Outside the hut he met Robbie mooching round clad in
an old pullover and army slacks cut down to make shorts.
The ragged ends of his shorts flapped round his lean brown
legs. He was wearing home-made sandals.
"Hallo, Pete. Mail come in yet?"

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" N o t yet, Robbieit's late this morning."

"Is that bastard Bennett still bashing?"
"Yes."
" God! I wish that chap would move into another mess.
Y'know, he's not like an ordinary man. If he wants to open
a door he doesn't just turn the handle. He throws himself
at it with all his strength and then when he finds the lock
won't break he turns the handle."
" Yes," Peter said. " Pity his wife on their Avedding night."
They walked several circuits in silence. '
"This is a helluva life, y'know, Pete."
"Yes. Pretty foul. Makes you appreciate life at home
though. What wouldn't I give to walk on grass again!"
He savagely kicked the sand at his feet. " There's a place in
Warwickshire I'd like to be now, on the Avon. There's a
place where I used to bathe, a steep bank where you can dive
into a deep pool." He thought of the sun dappling t h r o u g h
the trees on to the river bank and the earthy smell of the
brown river, the w a r m grass under his naked feet. " I ' m
going there as soon as I get back to England."
" I shall go back to my wife and kids," Robbie said.
Peter kicked a stone that lay on the path in front of him.
His feet were bare but hardened. His life before the w a r
seemed long ago, a different life. Softer and less real than
the life he was living now. " I often wonder whether it's
better or worse for you married menimprisonment, I
mean. At least you've got something waiting for you and
the old shekels piling up in the bank. You've got your life
fixed. This is just an interlude for you. I sometimes feel
that life is r u n n i n g past me and when I get back it will be
too late."
"Too late for w h a t ? " Robbie asked, smiling.
Peter kicked another stone. " Oh, too late to begin life
again. . . . It's this awful feeling of time passing. I'm not
getting anywherenot even fighting. . . . It's such a
bloody waste of time."
" I ' m wasting time too, you know," Robbie said gently.

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" My youngest will be two and a half next week and I haven't
seen her yet."
"That's just what I mean, you've got something concrete ahead of you. Something behind you too, to look
back on."
"Well, you can build for the future. Lots of chaps are
taking degrees in all sorts of subjects."
"Yes, I know," said Peter moodily. "But I can't settle
down to that sort of thing. I'm browned oF this morning.
Gebrailnt weg, as Nig would say. I want to escape and get
back to England."
" Bah, escape! How many people have got back from this
camp so far? None!"
"But there's no h a r m in trying," Peter said. " I t gives
you something to do. You're not just sitting down waiting
for the end of the war."
" H o w long has Bill White's crowd been on the washhouse dienst?"
"Just over two months."
" And how far have they got ?"
"About forty feet."
"There you are. They've another three or four months'
work yet before they're even under the wire. They haven't
an earthly, Pete. Not an earthly. The goons are bound to
tumble to it before then."
" Oh, I don't know. People have got out before now."
" Yes, but what percentage ? Out of every thirty tunnels
started I suppose one gets through. Once you're outside the
camp your difficulties have only just begun. It's no good,
Pete. They'll never make it. It's just a waste of time."
Robbie walked on, hands in pockets, head lowered, kicking
up the sand of the circuit as he walked. A sharp wind
ruffled his soft grey hair and carried the dust from the
circuit across the trip-wire. It brought with it the sound
of gramophone music from one of the wooden barracks and
the smell of burning brown coal blocks.
"What's the time?" Peter asked.

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Robbie looked at his watch. "Just after twelve."

"Hell. It's time I went for the tea water."
"You've time for another circuit," Robbie said. "You
can get hot water until twelve-thirtj'."
"O.K. I'll avoid the queue then."
They walked on in the warm sunshine.
"I'd like to get out," Peter said. "I'd like to get out even
if it's only for a few days. You feel so cut off here. I often
wonder if the world's going on just the same outside. I'd
like to see a cinema show and use a telephoneGod, how
I'd like to use a telephone! And I'd like to go up and down
in a liftand walk on carpetsand climb stairs. I'd like
to spend money and have to make a decision."
"You can make a decision now," Robbie said. "What to
have for dinner."
Peter laughed. " Not even that. Parcels come to-morrow.
We've only got a tin of salmon left."
" Well, you can decide what book to take out of the
libraryor what socks to wear to-morrow."
"I can'tI haven't any clean."
"I wonder you don't cut your feet to blazes." He looked
down at Peter's bare feet.
"Oh, I haven't worn shoes since the winter." He lifted
one of his feet. Its sole was brown and hard as leather.
"Have to get this hard skin off before next winterI don't
think I could wear shoes for long now."
"There you are," Robbie said. "That's a decision."
"Yesand here's another. I'm going for the tea water."
"See if there's a letter for me as you go by, will you?"
Robbie said. "I'll wait here and you can chuck it out of the
window."
"Right."
He found that Bennett had finished his tin bashing. The
room was empty. Lying on the table were several Kriegsgefangener letter forms. He sorted them out. One for John,
two for Nigel, three for Pomfret, one for himself. He
crossed over to the window and called out to Robbie. He

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held out his fist with t h u m b extended downwards. Robbie

shrugged his shoulders and mooched on, hands in pockets.
While Peter and Robbie walk round the circuit Paul is
in the cooler. It is a narrow cell high up in the German
barrack. It has one small window at the level of the ceiling.
The window is covered from the outside by a metal plate
which stands a foot away from the wall. A certain amount
of air finds its way round the edges of the plate but the
prisoner cannot see the sky.
He has had no breakfast. His shoes have been taken from
him and even if he had a book he could not read in the dim
light of the cell. He knows the cell. He has been here before.
He knows that shortly after two o'clock, if the sun is shining,
a stray beam of light will enter the cell, creeping in through
the small space between the metal plate and the windowframe. He will watch this beam of light. In it specks of
dust will be floating, beautiful faerie specks that will
dance and swirl in the sunlight as he fans the air with his
hand. He will sit looking at them until, with the movement
of the sun, the beam of light is there no more.
Presently he hears footsteps in the corridor and the sound
of a key in the lock. The door opens and a guard is there
with his midday meal. He knows this too. He will have the
same meal every day he is in the cooler. A small bowl of
cabbage water and two potatoes cooked in their jackets. He
sits on the bed while the guard places the food on the table. He likes to treat the guard as a waiter. Physically he suffers
the hardships of solitary confinement; mentally he wins a
battle in the constant war against the enemy.
He spends the long afternoon lying on his bunk and
thinking of home. He thinks too of the barrack roona he has
just left. In a way it is good to be in the cooler again, away
from the insistent company of his fellow prisoners. He is
an individualist, a natural fighter pilot. Not for h i m the
dependence of the bomber crew. He is the lone wolf, alone
in the cockpit of his Hurricane, far above the clouds in the

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blue sky, with the sun above h i m gilding his wings and
tvirning the fleecy clouds below h i m into a carpet of snow.
His is the lone encounter above the clouds, his prey the fullbellied bombers escorted by the waspish vicious fighters.
Two three-hundred-miles-an-hour fighters twisting and
turning in the sky. The rattle of machine-guns, and the
loser plunging burning into the clouds that wait below.
He imagines himself in the cockpit of his Hurricane (the
kick of the controls as you go into a flick roll, the matchless
r h y t h m of a perfectly timed roll off the top, and the way
the patchwork quilt of the earth slides over you and the
sudden smell of petrol as you pull out of a loop). He remembers the smell of glycol and the way the parachute bumps
against the back of your legs as you run out to the waiting
aircraft, the bounding over the rough turf, the smoothness
as you become airborne, the quick climb through the clouds
and the thrill of sighting the enemy below you, silhouetted
against the clouds. He remembers the attacking dive when
you clench your teeth and press the firing button and the
aircraft judders with the firing of the eight Browning
guns, the sudden blackout as you pull out of a dive and
the quick look round for the enemy as you recover. The
slow roll over the airfield before you come in to land, the
peace and quiet as you switch off the engine, the smell of
the grass as you climb down from the aircraft and the small
friendly sounds of the countryside as you stand there
smoking a cigarette, waiting for the truck to take you back
to the dispersal hut.
He lies thinking of this as the cell grows dark. He falls
asleep lying on his bunk, the shoddy blanket across his chest,
his face young in sleep, untroubled, free.

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CHAPTER

II

A FEW WEEKS later the ferrets pounced and Bill White's

tunnel was discovered. These ferrets were ubiquitous in the
camp. Clad in blue boiler-suits and three-quarter boots, they
would be found lying underneath the huts or hidden in the
roofs listening for incriminating evidence. They came in
and out hidden in the rubbish carts and even climbed in
over the wire during the night so that the duty pilot who
sat patiently at the main gates could not book them into
the camp. Some of the ferrets with a sense of humour
would report to the duty pilot as they came and went.
There was politeness between them, and mutual respect. It
was a constant game of coimter-espionage.
The compound was deserted. It was afternoon. Most of
the prisoners were sleeping on their beds. Outside the barbed
wire fence the postens paced their beat, their rifles slung
high across their backs. Beyond the wire the forest, remote
and unreal from inside the camp where no trees grew and
the ground was arid and beaten hard by the feet of the
prisoners, lay dark and cool beneath a cloud of pale green
leaves.
Peter and John walked slowly, hands in pockets, round
the circuit of the wire, idly watched by the sentries in the
boxes. As they walked they were speaking in low tones.
"Pity about Bill's scheme," Peter said. "I thought they
stood a chance with that."
" It was too far from the wire," John told him. " Thinlc
of all the sand you've got to hide to dig a tunnel three
hundred feet long. The only way to get out is to make the
tunnel as short as possiblestart somewhere out here, near
the trip-wire."
"You couldn't do it. There's nowhere near the wire to
33

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