Several attempts at escape were made at Schwarmstedt, three being successful ones.
One of the most daring was that of Morton, an Irishman, and another officer. Out of various materials gathered together, Morton had made a complete German officer’s uniform. He had then obtained a wax impression of the lock of one of the gates by some means, from which he had filed a key. The other man – I forget his name, obtained an orderly’s uniform, which consisted of a dark blue jacket and trousers with a broad band down each leg. Putting their gear into a rubbish sack, they sallied forth one morning, walked boldly to the gate, and Morton, saying something guttural to the “orderly,” unlocked it, and both stalked out almost under the eyes of the sentry. They got away without arousing any suspicion, but were, unfortunately, caught three days later.
A very ingenious escape was that of another officer, who was successful in getting into Holland. The baths were outside the camp, in a large shed, and the interior of the bath room, where several showers were installed, was painted white. This man had noticed that along the wall were small niches, perhaps eighteen inches wide and a foot or so in depth. It was the custom of the sentry in charge of the bathing party to escort them to the door of the shed, and having marshalled them all in, to lock the door. After fifteen minutes he would unlock the door, allow the party to pass out, and would just glance into the room to satisfy himself that no one was left, after which he would take the party back to the gate, leaving the door unlocked for the next party. The officer obtained a sheet of pasteboard, which he cut into small sections, and put together so as to make a sort of small folding screen, which when folded was small enough to hide under his raincoat, but which when extended formed a flat sheet two feet wide by seven feet long. This he painted white. With a very small kit, and this contrivance under his coat, he went to the bath room with the last party in the ordinary way. He then stood inside one of these niches, and a confederate pinned the sheet in front of him, entirely closing the niche. At a casual glance, the sheet appeared to be part of the wall. The sentry failed to notice the slight change in the geography of that wall when he looked in, and in the evening, this officer simply walked out of the shed and disappeared.
During a dust storm, an officer named Fox jumped the wire and got away. The air was so thick with dust that the sentries closed their eyes, and the wire was almost hidden. Fox saw the opportunity, seized his kit and climbed over the wire.
Three days later, another dust storm enabled two more men to get away – Caunter, who wrote a book later on his escape and subsequent trek across Germany, and a naval officer.
A very curious thing happened to these three men. After having travelled about a hundred and fifty miles, the last two were one day hiding in a wood. They became aware of someone dogging their footsteps. Thinking it was some German trying to catch them, they moved deeper into the wood, but this mysterious person appeared to be following them wherever they went. Deciding that the best way to avoid capture was to catch the other fellow, they turned to meet him, when to their surprise, they found it was Fox! It seems an extraordinary coincidence that in all that large territory, these men had chosen the same wood in which to hide. They joined forces, but the naval man had to give up on account of his feet getting into terrible condition. The other two managed to get across the frontier into Holland.
Fox was the victim of an unfortunate experience in a previous attempt from another camp. Having successfully got away, he walked for days and days until he reached the vicinity of the frontier. He spent the last day in a wood which he took to be about ten miles from the border. That night he sallied forth for his last trek, but the country in front of him appeared to be devoid of any cover. After walking about three miles, he saw several men in the distance, and in order to avoid capture, returned to the wood he had vacated, with the idea of trying another way the following night. Poor fellow – he was captured the next day by a German patrol, and learned then that this wood was actually on the frontier line, and that he had been three miles into Holland without knowing it, and that the men he had so carefully avoided were Dutchmen!
Another escape was made by a man who got out on the tail end of a parole walk. How he evaded the officer to whom we had to hand in our parole cards was never known, for this officer stood at the gate, and each of us as we walked through had to give him the parole-card. Anyway, he got out somehow, without handing in his parole-card, for to break his parole would be unthinkable, and spent the rest of the day hiding in the parcel room, where had had ample time to collect what he required in the way of nourishment for his journey, and got away under cover of darkness. He was captured again the following day, having got stuck in a bog!
The method of preventing the Germans from missing those who had got out during the day, while our roll call was taking place in the evening was brought to a fine art. As our names were called out, we were obliged to walk a few paces to the right, as we replied. It is obvious that any absentee was thus noticed at once. When the name of the absentee was called, two officers would step over to the right, joining the line of those whose names had already been called – there being a gap between them and the line of men not yet called. Immediately, the Germans would call out that one of the two had made a mistake, and an argument would follow. The officer in charge would walk up to the two, and this was the sign for a disturbance at the far end of the line. Someone would shout, or faint, or do something to attract the attention of the Germans, who would naturally turn in that direction to see what the matter was. As the line was in the form of the letter L, the Germans would turn their heads round – and in a flash, one of those whose name had already been called would get back to the other line, a matter of three paces. The argument would be straightened out, names called and answered, and everything would then carry on correctly. This performance was of course varied slightly on each occasion to avoid suspicion, but it worked very well.
There were two or three other escapes attempted from this camp, the last one ending in tragedy.
A party of four or five had dug a tunnel from one of the sheds, which, owing to the swampy nature of the ground, was necessarily only a foot or two below the surface. When it was successfully completed, the exit being some distance from the wire – I think it opened into a ditch as far as I can remember – the men attempted to get away. But the Bosches had discovered its existence, and a sentry had been posted at the exit, who, as soon as the first man appeared, poked his rifle into the tunnel and shot the unfortunate officer through the head, killing him instantly. The second man managed to dash past the sentry, but he too was shot, being wounded in the arm. The others managed to get back into camp without detection.
It is characteristic of the Germans that, instead of preventing the escape by giving warning, they should wait until the actual attempt was made, and then shoot the men in cold blood.
We immediately demanded an enquiry, and had it not been for the Commandant’s promise that the soldier would be punished, we should probably have burned the whole camp down. It is a fact, however, that nothing was done by the Germans, and instead of being punished, he was actually promoted for his “bravery!”
The threat of burning down the camp was one of the effective weapons we had when our treatment was at any time unpleasant, although at Schwarmstedt the Germans treated us pretty well on the whole. It was the conditions under which we were forced to live that made our lives miserable – unsanitary conditions, inadequate shelter, lack of proper food, etc. Considering all things, it was remarkable how we managed to keep ourselves healthy. Illness was practically unknown. Living almost entirely on canned food, without any fresh vegetables, and drinking water that was none too pure, it is a wonder that we kept free from disease. Some of the men complained of vermin, and one bright individual made a collection of live stock with a view to showing it to a representative of one of the neutral countries whose visit we were expecting. He caught several small animals which he pinned on to a board, but when the neutral gentlemen appeared, and the collection was proudly exhibited for his edification, it was pointed out to the “zoologist” that he had only managed to catch a few specimens of winged creatures of a very harmless nature, much to his sorrow and disgust.
Nothing very exciting happened during our stay at Schwarmstedt. No new prisoners came with news of the front. We simply vegetated. An epidemic of beard-growing was followed by a craze for tattooing, and I was kept busy making various designs – mostly of an absurd nature – for the tattooist’s many clients. The tattooist was one of our orderlies, quite an expert at the game, though personally I never fancied being punctured by the crude implements he used – consisting of ordinary needles stuck in rows in a piece of wood, but quite a large number of men submitted to the slow torture.
For the sake of hygiene, most of us had our hair cropped close to the scalp – and we looked a weird lot! Living outdoors in the boiling sun all the time, we gradually tanned to a dark brown, with the result that the camp assumed the aspect, in course of time, of a Bashi-Bazouk village – the illusion being helped by the scanty clothing worn by the prisoners. In the evenings, with dark skinned men bending over their cooking, the smoke curling upwards from innumerable “stoves” scattered about the camp, and weird music floating out from the dilapidated sheds as some embryo musicians practised jazz on their home-made banjos – we might have been in Central Africa instead of civilized Germany.
As the result, possibly, of our insistent demands for removal to a better camp, we were gladdened at last by the news that we were to be moved elsewhere. As we felt that we could not possibly go to a worse place, and any break in the monotony of our existence would be welcome, we hailed the move with joy. Little did we know what was in store for us! Had we known, we probably would have given anything to be left at Schwarmstedt, much as we hated the place, though the prospect of spending a winter there was horrible in the extreme. We knew that the camp had been the prison of Roumanian officers previous to our arrival, many of whom had died – by what cause we could only guess – and whose decomposed bodies had been seen, so it was alleged, lying in the pools surrounding the camp. These wretched prisoners must have had a perfectly ghastly existence without proper food, for they, like the Russians, were unable to get provisions from home; insufficient clothing, and no means of heating the sheds – they must have suffered intensely. Many were the gruesome rumours going round the camp, and we often wondered what had happened to those who had survived, and where they had been sent to.
We were favoured during our last parade prior to our departure, by a speech of farewell from the Commandant. Although he was able to speak English passably well, he gave his speech in German, which was translated by the German interpreter. During a long sentence, the interpreter halted, searching for some word to express his meaning. The obvious word was “expectation,” but after a few attempts he gave it up, turning to the Commandant for assistance. The latter, standing stiffly to attention and looking straight in front of him, tugged at the interpreter’s sleeve and muttered: “Expectoration, expectoration.” He is probably wondering still why his prompting caused such a yell of laughter!
Still, he was an excellent gentleman, and had it been any other commandant in charge of the Schwarmstedt camp, we should have had a far worse time during our stay there than we experienced.
Reported Missing 