The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill Page A

carefully checked the levels of the tunnel floors to see that they really were on the level. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they’d risen slightly (though not too much). They certainly didn’t want them to go any deeper. The evening shift also checked for direction. Through the tame Germans the organization had two little prismatic compasses of the Wehrmacht infantry type. They only gave rough checks. The close checks were done by holding a fat lamp by the wall of the tunnel at the face and sighting along the same wall from the base of the shaft.
    Then the tricky part started. If everything was clear, the traps were kept open and the kit bags of sand excavated during the day were hauled to the top by a rope sling. One by one the penguins stopped by, collected their sand, and wandered off. As soon as the last bag of sand had been emptied the underground men came up and the traps were shut for the night.
    In the morning the third shift took over for the day’s tunneling, and so they went in rotation, each shift working two days out of every three.
    You needed stamina and steady nerves to be a digger. It was a heavy strain to lie for hours on one elbow carving away at the sand face with an outstretched arm, and you had to carve carefully if you didn’t want a hundredweight of sand collapsing in your face. There were minor falls every day and sometimes bigger ones.
    A mixed lot, the diggers. They came from nearly every British country, from America and France, Poland, Norway, the Argentine, and Czechoslovakia.
    From Wales, there was Shag Rees, the little man with thick black hair and a nose that had been broken so often it was getting to be a habit. His friend, “Red” Noble, was a redheaded Canadian, built like a navvy with a slow, gentle drawl and nearly always a half-grin on his face. He and Shag used to like baiting Rubberneck, and so they weren’t always available because they spent a lot of time in the cooler.
    Major Davy Jones was American, mostly known as “Tokyo” because he flew on the famous American raid in 1942, when General Doolittle led them off from a carrier and they bombed Tokyo and prayed they had enough fuel left to fly on to China. A few of them made it, and Davy finished up among the Chinese guerrillas. He got to the Middle East after that and was shot down on his first trip. A short but singularly violent operational career! He came from Oklahoma, a wild and lanky creature with jet-black hair, who looked like a hawk-eyed Indian.
    Piglet Lamond was the little New Zealander who had dug his way out in the spectacular “mole” tunnel from East Camp. Danny Krol, a little Pole about five feet tall, used to be a saber champion. He had a clean-cut face, straight hair brushed back, and the most perfect physique in miniature I ever saw.
     
How the Tunnelers Worked
    Jean Regis, a Frenchman in the R.A.F., was dark and hairy and built like a gorilla. Regis was tireless. He used to sit pumping for four hours at a stretch and break into a tirade of French curses if you tried to give him a relief.
    “Muckle” Muir, a tall, fair-headed Scot, had a huge handlebar mustache that he grew to keep sand out of his nose.
    Ed Tovrea’s father was a big meat magnate in Arizona, and Tovrea, a good-looking youngster of about twenty-one, had been shot down on one of the first American Spitfire squadrons in England.
    Buck Ingram was a big, tough Yank from Idaho with thick black hair and glinting eyes.
    Johnny Staubo, the Norwegian, should have been in Hollywood. He was really a good-looking man, over six feet tall, with beautifully chiseled features and Nordic blond hair. He used to play Davis Cup tennis.
    “Scruffy” Weir, another Canadian, had been flying without goggles the night he was shot down, and the plane caught fire. His helmet and oxygen mask saved most of his face but the fire caught him around the eyes, and the skin had healed thick and smooth like parchment, but was scarred purple and red.
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