Escape!

 

I can hear the footsteps of the night guard tapping down the corridor outside my cell.  I can tell by the sound of the footsteps that it is one of the female guards; I still have trouble accepting that they use women to guard us - but it's lucky for me that they do.  I guess most of the able-bodied men are off fighting the war.  Things must be going badly for Germany if they are so short of manpower.

 

I quickly return to my cot and lie still, feigning sleep.  I hear the inspection hatch in my door open and know that I am being watched.  I try to steady my breathing, make it seem that I am really asleep.  My act seems to satisfy the guard and, after a moment, I hear the hatch close and her footsteps recede.  I continue to lie still for a full 10 minutes after she has gone in case it is a trick, I don't trust these Nazi bastards for a second.  I know they would love to catch me trying to escape again.

 

 I am what's known as a ‘Problem Prisoner'.

 

I have been locked up for four years now, four long years when I should have been with my comrades continuing the fight against the Hun.  For a start I was kept in low security wings, more like holiday camps than real prisons.  Escape from them was easy.  We'd be taken out to work, herded into buses and driven to the worksite.  The Jerry guards tried to pretend that what we were doing was non-essential war work, hell they even tried to tell us it would be fun.  But I saw through their lies.  I was damned if I would do anything to assist the Nazi war machine, and so, the moment the guards turned their backs I would be off. 

 

Escape was easy but evasion was far harder.  We were kept deep in enemy territory and I couldn't rely on assistance from the civilian population.  The first couple of times I escaped I made the mistake of asking for aid from the locals.  Although they said they would help, in the end they betrayed me, and handed me back to the authorities.  I learnt my lesson from those early attempts and now I know that I can't rely on any outside help - if I am to escape I must do it alone.

 

After a few escapes and recaptures they moved me to a more secure compound where we weren't expected to work.  I found the enforced confinement hard to take and the days dragged by.  I tried to organise an escape committee but there was no interest amongst the other prisoners, they were all resigned to their fate, happy to sit out the remainder of the war behind the wire fences.  The hell with them I thought, I wasn't going to be beaten, and I redoubled my attempts to escape.

 

Due to the increased security my plans had to be more complex and I came up with, and eventually discarded, a dozen ideas before deciding on The Tunnel. 

 

I started by carefully prying the floorboards from under my cot; I was lucky that as an officer I had my own room, which allowed me access to the ground beneath the building.  Since I couldn't rely on my fellow prisoners it took me a long time to dig alone.  I stole a spoon from the canteen and every night I would lift the boards, slip under the building and dig for as many hours as I could stand.  I worked myself to exhaustion, often waking to find that I had nodded off mid-dig and having to scramble in order to get cleaned up and back into my room before the wake up call. 

It was one of the other prisoners that gave me away in the end.  I'd made the mistake of confiding in him and he had gone to the guards.  They ripped my room apart to find the tunnel and I had to laugh at the expressions on their faces when they saw how well my escape had been planned.  Once again they had underestimated the dedication of an English officer to his duty. 

 

They moved me again after that, not just because of my escape attempt but also because they knew that if I got the chance, I would kill the man who had betrayed me. 

 

I was moved pretty often for the next three years, from one prison to another, and I continued trying to escape from each one.  Sometimes I was quite successful, making it outside the wire and into the local countryside before being recaptured.  On my last attempt before being sent to the prison I'm in now I had managed to evade capture for almost three days.  It took a massive manhunt before they got me.  To be fair the Jerrys never mistreated me, never tortured me or threatened to shoot me.  They just warned me and then transferred me to another prison. 

 

Finally they sent me here, a maximum-security lock up for continual offenders.  I remember when they processed me, the Nazi officer had my paperwork on the desk and I could read upside down that I was classified as ‘High-Risk - Likely to Attempt Escape'.  I felt quite proud seeing that. 

 

I made a couple of attempts from this prison but it was very hard and the years in captivity are taking their toll on my body.  I'm not as fit or active as I was four years ago.  Nonetheless twice I made it out of the lockup, unfortunately each time I was recaptured, thwarted by the ten-foot high fence that circles the compound. 

 

The solution to the problem of the walls came to me one day when I was walking the compound.  The Jerrys keep the grounds nice in the prison; perhaps they think that if they make the prison as pleasant as possible we will be less inclined to try to escape.  They allow the prisoners to assist with the grounds work and even let us keep a small garden of our own.  It was the gardening that gave me my idea of how to get over the walls and I decided to act on it as soon as possible.

 

That is how I came to find myself once again preparing to risk my neck in an effort to escape from the prisons they keep me in. 

 

Once I am convinced that the guard has really left I slip off my cot and approach my cell door.  From it's hiding place in a small crack in the doorframe I pull out a women's hairclip.  This is why I'm so lucky that they have female guards here.  I managed to ‘accidentally' bump into one of the guards when I first got here and steal one of her hairclips.  It's this that has enabled me to open my cell door on my other escape attempts.  The guards still don't know how I'm doing it, sure they have searched my cell, but they've never found the hiding place.

 

I crouch in front of the lock and go to work with the hairclip.  My old commando training comes flooding back and in moments I have the door open and am standing in the corridor.  I take the time to lock the door behind me - I know it drives the Jerrys nuts when they can't figure out how I have got out. 

 

As silently as possible I creep down the corridor, past the other cells, until I reach the door to the compound.  The door is alarmed but again with the help of my hairclip, I'm able to disable the alarm by short-circuiting the trip switch.   Once I'm sure it's safe I open the door and slip outside. Even though time is of the essence I can't help but pause for a moment to enjoy the feeling of just being outside, at night, when I'm not supposed to be.  It's a welcome taste of freedom. 

 

I crouch by the door and listen.  When I'm certain that there are no guards about I run as fast as possible to the compound wall.  I'd volunteered for garden duty as soon as my idea came to me so I'd have access to what I needed to get over the wall.  Earlier I'd stashed one of the wooden lattices; that they use here to help plants grow, behind a bush by the wall.  It's the work of moments to prop it against the wall and use it as a ladder.  Although it creaks alarmingly under my weight it's strong enough to support me and once I reach the top of the wall I pull the lattice up and lower it down the other side to provide me with a ladder again.

 

Within five minutes I'm safely over the wall and out of the compound.  I quickly hide the lattice and start to run as fast as possible down the road and away from the prison.  I feel exhilarated to be free under the pale light of the stars.  I breathe deeply of the fresh night air - the fresh air of freedom.  Even though I know I need to be quiet I can't help but laugh out loud from the sheer joy of being free.  This time I know, I just know, that I'm going to make it.  I am going to get a Home Run. Tally-ho, next stop dear old Blighty. 

 

 

 

Melissa was tired, the late shifts really wore her out, still, only one more round to do and then she could go home.  Her footsteps echoed on the wooden floor as she made her way down the corridor, pausing to check each room through the inspection hatches in the doors.  She had done this so many times over the years that it had become second nature and she was barely even thinking about what she was doing as she checked each sleeping figure.  She slid open the next inspection hatch and paused for a moment as her brain processed the empty bed, the empty room.  She slammed the hatch shut and the corridor rang loudly to the sound of her running feet as she hurried to raise the alarm.

 

Doctor Albert Bachmeier gave a resigned sigh when Melissa told him the news and reached for the phone on his desk, punching in the number for the local constable.  ‘Hello Frank', he said when the sleepy voice on the other end answered. ‘It's Albert up at The Sunnyvale Retirement Village here.  Bad news I'm afraid, Brigadier Jones has done a runner again.  Yeah I know.  I swear he still thinks he's fighting the war...'