Bascomb - The grand escape: the greatest prison breakout of the 20th century

Contents

Text copyright 2018 by Neal Bascomb

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bascomb, Neal, author.

Title: The grand escape : the greatest prison breakout of the 20th century / by Neal Bascomb.

Other titles: Greatest prison breakout of the 20th century

Description: First edition. | New York : Arthur A. Levine Books, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Grades 9-12. | Audience: Ages 12-18.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018016857| ISBN 9781338140347 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 1338140345 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781338140354 (ebook) | ISBN 1338140353 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914-1918Prisoners and prisons, GermanJuvenile literature. | Prisoner-of-war escapesGermanyHolzmindenJuvenile literature. | Prisoners of warGermanyHolzmindenBiographyJuvenile literature. | Prisoners of warGreat BritainBiographyJuvenile literature.

Classification: LCC D627.G3 B29 2018 | DDC 940.4/72430943597dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018016857

First edition, October 2018

Cover design by Maeve Norton / Author photo by Jillian McAlley

Cover photos Shutterstock: soldier (Kozlik), fence (lafoto)

e-ISBN 978-1-338-14035-4

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

To Liz, these pages would not sing without you.

BREAKOUT ARTISTS:

Cecil Blain , Royal Flying Corps (RFC) pilot

David Munshi Gray , RFC captain

Caspar Kennard , RFC lieutenant

William Shorty Colquhoun , Canadian lieutenant

Charles Rathborne , senior British officer at Holzminden after Wyndham

Dick Cash , private in the Australian Imperial Force

William Baxter Ellis , RFC pilot

Joseph Rogers , infantry captain, member of the Pink Toes

Frank Moysey , infantry captain, member of the Pink Toes

Harold Medlicott , Royal Air Force (RAF) lieutenant

Captain Joseph Walter , 7/Royal West Surrey Regiment

Peter Lyon , Australian infantry officer

Captain William Leefe Robinson , RFC pilot

Captain Hugh Durnford , Royal Field Artillery officer

Jim Bennett , RNAS observer

Peter Campbell-Martin , RNAS pilot

Walter Basil Butler , infantry lieutenant

Livewire, unnamed ringleader of the Block A escape plot

Jack Morrogh , Royal Irish Regiment major

Lieutenant Edgar Garland , pilot from New Zealand

OTHER ALLIES:

Captain Allouche , French pilot

Major John Wyndham , senior British officer at Holzminden

Lord Newton , head of the British Prisoner of War Department

GERMANS AT HOLZMINDEN:

Captain Karl Niemeyer , commandant of Holzminden after Habrecht

General von Hnisch , head of the 10th Army Corp Division, including Holzminden

Colonel Habrecht , commandant of Holzminden

Kurt Grau , camp interpreter

Mandelbrat , lieutenant to Niemeyer

OTHER GERMANS:

Kaiser Wilhelm II , German Emperor and King of Prussia

Oswald Belcke , German ace

Baron Manfred von Richthofen , German ace, aka the Red Baron

Commandant Blankenstein , commandant of Osnabrck

Commandant Courth , commandant of Crefeld

Commandant Wolfe , commandant of Clausthal

Commandant Krner , commandant of Bad Colberg

Dr. Rudolf Rmer , Dutch attach assigned to inspect German POW camps for compliance with the Hague Convention

Stone walls do not a prison make, / nor iron bars a cage.

To Althea, from Prison
Richard Lovelace, inscribed on a Holzminden cell wall

It seems to me that we owed it to our self-respect and to our position as British officers to attempt to escape, and to go on attempting to escape, in spite of all the hardships.

A. J. Evans

Trench warfare in World War I.

H OLZMINDEN, 1918.

Twenty-seven-year-old Lieutenant Caspar Kennard was the number-one man, the digger, this afternoon. He wriggled through the eighteen-inch-diameter tunnel, a hundred feet from its entrance. In one hand he held a flickering candle, its light casting a devilish dance of shadows about him. With the other hand, he clawed at the dirt to drag himself forward. Roped to his leg was a shallow bin to bring out the excavated earth. Finally, after almost thirty minutes of crawling, he reached the end of the burrow. He scooped out a shelf in the mud wall, set down the candle, and briefly watched the flame struggle to survive in the oxygen-starved air. He took a breath, calmed himself best as he could, then started digging into the firm mix of stone and yellow clay.

Far behind him, at the mouth of the tunnel underneath a narrow paneled staircase, David Gray, the number-two man, muscled the bellows and pumped air down to Kennard. Behind Gray, the number-three man, Cecil Blain, waited to haul out the bin and pack the earth into the steadily shrinking space under the stairs. Each shift they rotated the jobs. Nobody liked to be the digger.

Tunneling was a nasty business. Kennard barely had space to shift his body. The burrow reeked of stale air, mildew, sweat, and rot. There were rats, worms, and other creepy-crawlies, and never enough air to breathe. He was always banging his head against stones, and earth pressed on him in every direction, threatening to collapse and snuff out his life. Given his lifelong fear of confined spaces, Kennard had to force himself not to panic.

Inch by inch, he carved out a small stretch of tunnel, then he contorted his body to fill the bin with dirt and rocks. There was months more of this mole work ahead, months more of digging what was either a very long tomb or a path to freedom from Holzminden, the notorious German prison camp in which they were all incarcerated. Once beyond the walls of this landlocked Alcatrazif they made it that farhe and his fellow prisoners would have to make a 150-mile journey by foot through enemy territory to the border. The Germans would assuredly launch a manhunt, and they could face recaptureor a bulletat any turn.