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was a wonderful lot of space, almost enough to swing a stunted cat. That day and the next three days were chaos — on the German side too — while everyone was getting organized, and the X organization took advantage of it. Escape fever hit the camp.
The North Compound of Stalag Luft III



Chapter 2

    Roger first settled the question of the drainage pipes. Within an hour a willing bunch of prisoners gathered for an open-air meeting as a diversion, and in the middle of them someone whipped off a manhole noted on the stolen drainage chart and Shag Rees, a nuggety little Welshman, slipped into it. He was up again in a minute with a dirt-streaked face.
    “The bastards,” he said. “You couldn’t pull a greasy piglet through them.” He indicated with his hands a circumference of about six inches, and there was a low moan. Roger cut it short.
    “Can’t expect the Goons to be stupid all the time,” he said. “Let’s get on with the other things.”
    There were a few hungry Russian prisoners still in the compound under guard clearing away the last of the spindly pine trees they’d cut down, and trucks loaded high over the cab were taking the branches and foliage away. The road out went past three of the huts, and before you could say “Hitler is a
Schweinhund
,” furtive shapes were crawling up on the roofs of those huts under cover of the near-by trees. As the trucks rolled past, shapes hurtled through the air and crashed down out of sight into the loaded branches. There were so many trying it that a man about to jump had to look carefully to see there wasn’t already a man who had jumped from the previous hut looking up from the branches, making frantic signs for him to wait for the next truck and not brain him with his boots as he came down.
    But every truck was searched at the gates, and one by one the prisoners were winkled out, and with much show of jovial regret from the Germans locked in the cooler for the traditional two weeks’ solitary. A couple, however, burrowed deep into the branches and got away (to be caught soon after). The Goons took to probing the branches with pitchforks, and when a would be escaper caught a couple of prongs in the bottom, the rest turned to other methods.
    Ian Cross climbed
under
one of the trucks and hung on to the chassis. A few moments later, the chief German ferret,
Oberfeldwebel
(staff sergeant) Glemnitz, had a word with the driver, and the truck shot off like a rocket across a patch of the compound studded with tree stumps. We held our breath waiting for Cross to be mashed to pulp, and then the truck stopped and Glemnitz walked up and leaned under.
    “You can come out now, Mr. Cross,” he called. “We have your room ready in the cooler.”
    “You see,” said Roger, watching Cross marching lugubriously off, “how bloody careful we’ve got to be. Secrecy is the key.”
    Glemnitz was the archenemy. We didn’t exactly like him, but we certainly respected him. He was a droll fellow in a sardonic way, with a leathery face you could crack rocks on. He didn’t wear overalls like the other ferrets but was always in uniform complete with peaked cap and the dignity of rank. A good soldier, Glemnitz, efficient and incorruptible, too good for our liking.
    Griese, his second in charge, was the other dangerous ferret, a lean
Unteroffizier
(corporal), with a long thin neck and known, naturally, as “Rubberneck.” He was smart but he didn’t have Glemnitz’s sense of humor.
    “Cherub” Cornish, an angelic little Australian, didn’t shave for two days, borrowed an old Polish greatcoat that reached to the ground, rubbed dirt into his face, and slipped among the last group of Russian prisoners leaving the camp. At the gate a bovine guard counted them and scratched his head. Fifteen had come in and sixteen were going out. He reported this phenomenon to the Herr
Hauptmann
(captain), and Pieber, more in sorrow than in anger, plucked Cherub from the tattered ranks despite the