A Story Of A Tunnel

by mileslacey

A suspicious Gestapo bureaucrat and a tunnel collapse at Stalag XIII threatens to destroy Colonel Hogan's operation. Will Hogan outsmart the Gestapo? Or has Hogan finally met his match?

A Story About a Tunnel

by mileslacey

SS Sturmbannfuhrer Grimm Wagner (no relation to the very famous composer) sat behind the huge, imposing mahogany desk upon which a large file marked "CLASSIFIED: STALAG XIII" lay open. The man was in his forties with a very short hair cut. Unlike most men of his rank he wore civilian clothing rather than his SS uniform unless it was for formal affairs or if he was intending to meet very highly ranked officers within the SS.

He had never met Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler but his portrait hung on the wall behind him. The Fuhrer's portrait was next to it. Wagner had met the Fuhrer three times. The last time had been on the Eastern Front in July 1941.

Wagner had spent the best part of a week reading through the mountain of paper work that had been sent over from the Hammelburg Gestapo office. SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Wolfgang Hochstetter had made particularly scathing comments about the general competence of the Camp Commandant of Stalag XIII, Oberst Wilhelm Klink, and exressed suspicions about the senior Prisoner of War officer Colonel Robert Hogan who seemed to treat the Commandant's office as if it was his personal quarters. Yet even Hochstetter conceded the camp's perfect record of no escapes meant Klink was fulfilling his duties as a Camp Commandant.

But Wagner was much too smart to be fooled by what appeared on the surface.

He picked up the telephone and barked, 'Heil Hitler, Margot! Please put me through to SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Hochstetter immediately.'

He was put through.

'Heil Hitler, SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Hochstetter. I am SS Sturmbannfuhrer Wagner from the Director Inspectorate of Prisoner of War Camps. I have been reading your file on Stalag XIII. Something bothers me about this Oberst Klink. How could a man regarded as one of the most incompetent officers ever to put on a German uniform run a prison camp so efficiently that no one, and I mean literally no one, has ever escaped? Heck, people even managed to escape from Auschwitz and that is one of the most heavily guarded camps in the Greater German Reich. Something is amiss here and I intend to find out what it is! Heil Hitler!'

He slammed the phone down and grabbed his coat. He put the file in his briefcase and stormed out of the office.

Fifty miles to the east of SS Sturmbannfuhrer Wagner's office Stalag XIII was in a state of uproar. It had been raining unseasonably almost continuously for a fortnight with the result the grounds of the camp were saturated. A few guards had been patrolling near the dog kennels when the sodden ground gave way and the men fell into a tunnel. One man was killed, the other two had been injured.

Oberst Klink was stomping up and down his office, ranting to Colonel Hogan. 'Hogan, this is an outrage! One of my best guards is dead and two are on the way to hospital thanks to that bloody tunnel! If word gets out that I had a tunnel right under my nose my perfect record will be ruined.'

Just then the door to the office swung open and his commanding officer General der Infantrie Albert Hans "Hansy" Burkhalter barged in, unannounced. 'Too late for that, Klink! I heard about that tunnel your men found. I was taking a look at it and it looks suspiciously too well constructed for it to have been built purely for escape purposes.'

'Whatever could you mean, General Burkhalter?' Klink stammered nervously, visions of the Eastern Front playing in his head. For once, Colonel Hogan kept his mouth shut.

'I mean, that tunnel was so well built you'd think it had been built by Operation Todt workers building an underground factory!' Burkhalter growled back.

'If that is the case then it means my camp might've had escapes I never knew about but that's impossible because the numbers add up and the prisoners have been here for so long I know them by name.'

'Doesn't that strike even a numbskull like you as slightly suspicious?'

Colonel Hogan spoke up. 'With all due respect, General Burkhalter, Oberst Klink runs such a tough but fair camp that escape is simply out of the question.'

'Shut up, Colonel Hogan!' Burkhalter yelled. 'You'll be having some explaining to do because the Gestapo are on the way.'

'I must protest, General! The Gestapo have no jurisdiction in this camp.'

'I am in agreement with you on that one, Hogan, but even my hands are tied. One of those men that was hurt was Obergefreiter Langenscheidt. While he was under morphine he began to babble about this camp being used as a base for underground operations and smuggling high profile enemies of the Reich to England. A Gestapo informant passed his ramblings onto Hochstetter, who has personally taken control of this matter.'

Hogan began to sweat nervously. Hochstetter wasn't the smartest Gestapo officer in the area but if he put two and two together the underground operations would be brought to a halt and the Gestapo would torture confessions out of his men before shooting them or, if they were lucky, sending them to a concentration camp. He realised he had to come up with a plan fast. It wasn't just his butt on the line but that of his men and possibly most of the senior German officers in the camp.

He made for the door when Hochstetter himself walked in.

'Where do you think you're going, Hogan?'

'We're expecting new Red Cross parcels today so I want to make sure my men get their full and correct rations,' Hogan lied effortlessly.

'You're under arrest.'

'Under what authority?'

'The Fuhrer's authority. You are suspected of being a spy and saboteur and not even the Geneva Convention can protect you this time, Colonel Hogan!'

'Hauptsturmfuhrer, I totally deny your allegations!'

But Hogan's protests were in vain. Two armed SS men walked in and grabbed him. They escorted him out of the Commandant's office to a waiting car. They unceremoniously threw him in the back seat of the car and waited for the driver to get in.

General Burkhalter glared at the Hauptsturmfuhrer. 'That was not a wise move, Hochstetter. I may find that American the most annoying man I have ever come across, apart from this nincompoop, but he is a senior American officer and a prisoner of war. I expect him to be brought back alive.'

'That's not my concern.'

'You're not the only one with contacts in high places. I can make life very awkward for you if you don't watch yourself.'

'Bah! The Fuhrer doesn't pay much attention to the Wehrmacht these days!' Hochstetter stated as he headed for the door. 'Heil Hitler!'

'Heil Hitler!' Burkhalter and Klink saluted back.

During the drive into Hammelburg no one spoke. Hogan felt this was one time when it was best to keep one's mouth shut. He'd always feared he might take this ride in the back seat of a black Mercedes but he never thought the day would come so soon. The car pulled up outside the police station. The SS men got out first and ordered Hogan to get out. He did so.

Everything else passed in a blur. He walked into the station to find it was in pandemonium. Everyone was huddled around the radio, listening to an announcer state something about an attempt on the life of the Fuhrer. They paid no attention to Hochstetter as he frogmarched the American Colonel past them and into his office where he pushed the man down in the chair in front of his desk. The first few questions were the usual ones: name, rank and serial number.

Then he asked, 'When did your men build the tunnel?'

Hogan didn't answer.

'How many people have passed through it?'

Again, no answer.

'Why did you build the tunnel?'

Hogan replied, 'It is the duty of every prisoner of war to try and escape.'

Hochstetter raised an eyebrow in response. 'That I do not disagree with, Colonel Hogan. What I do disagree with is your assertion that escape was the primary function of the tunnel.'

'Why do you say that?'

'I presume you are aware that Obergefreiter Langenscheidt was hurt thanks to the tunnel collapse and, while he was under the influence of the morphine, he revealed that you had been involved with organising acts of sabotage in the Hammelburg area. Considering how you always seem to be present whenever anything goes wrong in these parts I suspect his morphine-induced babbling might have some substance.'

Colonel Hogan laughed derisively, 'You guys in the Gestapo have a really active -.'

'SHUT UP, HOGAN!' Hochstetter yelled, banging on his desk.

'Come on, Hochstetter, you're an intelligent man. Where would me and my men be able to get stuff like explosives in a prisoner of war camp? Even the guards don't have access to grenades.'

Just then a chorus of Hitler salutes rang out as a very high-ranking SS officer walked in. Hogan quickly identified him as a Sturmbannfuhrer, which made him the equivalent of a General. He instinctively got up to salute the superior officer but was punched in the stomach by one of the SS guards and pushed back down into the chair.

Hochstetter snapped to attention and cried out, 'Heil Hitler, Sturmbannfuhrer!'

'Heil Hitler!' Wagner saluted. 'Who is this man and why is he here?'

'I beg to report, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer, that he is Colonel Robert Hogan, the highest ranking officer amongst the prisoners at Stalag XIII. He is being questioned in relation to the discovery of a tunnel in the camp.'

Wagner stared at Hochstetter. 'Are you telling me that Oberst Klink's perfect record of no escapes has been shattered?'

'No, Herr Sturmbann-.'

'Please just call me Wagner,' Wagner stated irritably. 'All this Herr Sturmbannfuhrer stuff is getting frightfully tedious.'

'I believe that Hogan and his men have been connected to acts of sabotage in the Hammelburg area.'

'And what makes you so sure of that?'

'The tunnel was constructed so well it looked as if the tunnel had been constructed for regular use.'

'Then let's go out and check this tunnel. Before I joined the Gestapo I was a mine foreman so I know my tunnels.'

So Hogan found himself nestled in the back seat between Hochstetter and Wagner as they drove back to Stalag XIII. They were waved through the main gate by Hauptfeldwebel Schultz who saluted them with the Wehrmacht salute. None of the men saluted back.

The car drove through the camp until they came to what, at first sight, appeared to be a wide trench. Wagner jumped out of the car and walked to the edge. He whistled appreciatively at the handiwork of the collapsed tunnel. Even from where he stood he could see it was well constructed. Carefully he jumped down and landed with a loud splash in the mud at the bottom. Carefully he walked through the tunnel towards Barracks Two.

Not all the tunnel had caved in with the result that the last sixty metres to the barracks was still underground. His trained eye told him that this place was definitely not built by amateurs and that it had taken whoever had built it quite some time. He also noticed the timber used in the construction had not been pieces of stray timber but had been custom made for this tunnel.

'Either Klink is the biggest imbecile ever or he must've been in cahoots with Hogan. No one could've got this timber inside this camp unless they had good connections,' he muttered to himself as he walked through the pitch black tunnel until he came across a table and chair. Something heavy had been sitting on this table but it was too dark to see but, as he stepped back, he tripped over something. Using his torch he was surprised to find he had tripped over some wires. 'Hello, what do we have here?'

He tugged on the wires.

Nothing happened.

He looked up and saw what looked like a staircase.

If his hunch was right the staircase would lead up to the barracks. He grabbed hold of the staircase and pulled it down.

He climbed up and found himself in the barracks where the assorted prisoners were standing around in shocked disbelief, unable to believe the Germans had finally stumbled onto their tunnel. Dryly, he remarked, 'It would seem you have been busted, my friends.'

Corporal Louis LeBeau hissed, 'You've only proven we have a tunnel, boche.'

'A very well made tunnel that contains furniture that one would not expect to find in a tunnel thus giving us grounds to search this camp more thoroughly,' Wagner stated.

He left the barracks and returned to the car where Hogan was still standing around with the SS guards and Hochstetter. The two officers were smoking a cigarette.

'It would appear we have grounds to search this camp.'

It was then that an unusually agitated Klink called out from across the camp. 'Hochstetter! Hochstetter! I have an urgent telegram from Berlin for you! It's dreadful news!'

Hochstetter cried out, 'BAH! What is it, you incompetent fool?' He watched, decidedly unimpressed, as Klink dashed across the grounds, waving a piece of paper in his hand.

'Some army officers tried to kill our Fuhrer with a bomb! You have to report to Berlin immediately!' Klink cried out.

Hochstetter snatched the telegram out of his hand. After reading it he screwed it up and discarded it. 'Utterly treasonable! I hope those stuck-up inbred Junkers scum hang for this unspeakable crime against our Fuhrer and the Fatherland.'

Wagner didn't need to be told where he had to go. He turned to Hogan and spat out, 'It's your lucky day, Colonel. But I will be back and I will finish my inquiry into what you have been up to.' He yelled to the SS guards, 'Everyone in the car. We need to get to Berlin.'

As the Mercedes drove out the main gate Klink asked him, 'Can you give me your word as an officer and a gentleman that no one has ever escaped from this camp?'

Hogan smiled patronisingly at the Commandant as he said, 'I give you my word there has been no escape from Stalag XIII. Your iron discipline is enough to keep us on our best behaviour.'

'And you and your men have never been involved in any sabotage or underground work?'

'I give you my word.'

'Then can you please explain this?'

Klink pulled out the Morse code key from the radio that Hogan's men had hidden in the tunnel from his pocket. His face was etched not with anger but a deep sadness that came from having been betrayed by someone he had trusted for so long...