Read The Great Escape for Free Online Page A

truthless but virtuous vows of a gaunt Russian who claimed that Cornish was an old pal from Smolensk.
    As the cooler door closed on Cornish, the escape fever was over and the organization settled down to the real stuff.
    Roger appointed a “Little X” and “Little S” in every block to co-ordinate the work in their blocks. Conk Canton, built like a pocket battleship with a great aggressive jaw, became Roger’s adjutant; Crump, Johnny Marshall, and Johnny Bull were the tunnel committee under Floody. Fanshawe was sand dispersal chief. George Harsh had charge of tunnel security. They all met in conference nearly every day.
    One tunnel, Roger had decided, was to go from Block 123 out under the western wire to the woods beyond — and obvious choice as it was as near the wire as any hut. It was also on the far side of the compound to the German camp and the farthest hut from the gate, which meant more seclusion and more warning of any snap search. It also meant it was going to be a hut the German would suspect, but you can’t have everything.
    “We’re going to call this one ‘Tom,’” Roger told the attentive committee. “They’re all to be known by their names, and by their names only. If any bastard in this camp ever utters the word tunnel carelessly I’ll have him court-martialed.”
    The second tunnel was to go from 122 because it was an inside hut and not likely to be so much suspected. It was to be known as “Dick.” The third one was to go from Hut 104 by the northern wire. This meant an extra hundred feet to go under the second boundary wire, but that also meant the Germans wouldn’t regard it as a likely site. Roger named it “Harry.”
    Roger, Floody, and the other tunnel kings surveyed the three huts to find sites for the trap doors, a most important part of the business because it was usually the traps that gave tunnels away. So the traps had to be perfect, and this was a headache because the Germans had built the hut floors about two feet above the ground so they could crawl underneath to see if anyone was tampering with the soil of the Fatherland. They made one mistake, though, because they made solid brick and concrete foundation walls right around under the washrooms in the huts and also under a little square of each living room where the stove stood. The ferrets couldn’t crawl into these areas, so they were the logical spots for the traps.
    By April 11, Roger and Floody had picked all trap sites. “Tom” was to be in a dark corner of the concrete floor by a chimney of 123. “Dick” was to start from the washroom of 122, and “Harry” was to drop under a stove in one of the end big rooms of 104.
    Minskewitz, who was the trap expert, was a short, wiry little Polish officer in the R.A.F., with a little gray goatee beard which he was always tugging lovingly. The German workmen had left some cement in the compound, and Minskewitz used some to cast a concrete slab about two feet square in a wooden mold. He reinforced it with bits of barbed wire left lying around and sank a couple of lugs in the sides, almost flush but protruding just enough for a couple of pieces of fine wire to be looped around them. He hid it under a paillasse to dry while he chipped a slab out of the concrete floor of 123, exactly the same size as the slab he’d made.
    Stooges kept watch for ferrets outside while he handled his chisel like a surgeon and, when he’d finished, his home-made slab fitted the hole perfectly and could be lifted on and off with the wires on the lugs. The wires themselves folded down into the cracks when the trap was in position, but you could fish them up in a moment with a knife blade. In position, the slab rested on a padded frame beneath, and the cracks all around were lined with cement paste and dusted with dirt.
    It was such an extraordinary precision job that Roger and Floody took Massey over to see the site for “Tom” and Massey examined the corner and said, “Seems a good spot,