June 22, 1941 – Stalag 13

LeBeau awoke with a start as a heavy hand pressed securely down over his mouth, stopping him from crying out. He instantly readied himself for a fight, his hands balling up into fists and his muscles tightening.

"Barracks Seven," came the whisper a moment later. LeBeau instantly relaxed. "Patterns at the window," he added quietly. LeBeau nodded his understanding. It was impossible to whisper an answer with the man's hand still held over his mouth. The silent figure nodded back, then removed his hand, slipping quietly down the lines of sleeping men off to wake another prisoner.

Sitting up, LeBeau quickly fumbled into his uniform, wordlessly praising his bottom bunk. He had spent the first few months of his stay cursing it, but it was invaluable when he had to slip out for midnight rendezvous like this. It meant that he could slip out of bed without waking the person sleeping beneath him.

Swinging his feet slowly over the edge of the bunk, LeBeau reached for his boots. He didn't want to be trekking around the camp in only his stocking feet, but he didn't dare put them on until he was out in the compound. The boots would only make too much noise on the wooden floors of the barracks.

Carrying the boots in his hands, LeBeau went to join another shadowy figure at the window. Once he got close enough, LeBeau could tell that it was LeClerc. The lanky Frenchman's signature curly hair was easy to pick out, even in the dark.

"Steiner's in tower one, Meiraum's four, Gietz's three, and Brekke's on patrol," LeClerc whispered. He was watching in the darkness for his signal that it was time to move. He didn't even bother to turn enough to see who had come to join him; if he missed the signal then everything would be thrown off.

LeBeau didn't take the time to think about anything other than solidifying everything in his head. Each of the guards had their own distinctive patterns, both on patrol and manning the searchlights. The old hands had noticed that early on in their escape planning and countless sleepless nights had been spent familiarizing themselves with the patterns of each guard. Those patterns were now as familiar to the old hands as their own names, maybe more familiar since they kept switching names to confuse the guards.

Not only could the old hands dodge the searchlights and evade the patrolling guards, but they could also dig and camouflage a tunnel, and help a dozen men escape with full kits while hiding another ten as ghosts. Their favourite sport was confusing the German guards. They were exactly the sort of men that you would want if you were forming an escape committee. And those were the reasons that Captain Scott had asked the old hands to be the formative members of the X Committee.

Scott was a relatively recent arrival, having been transferred in from another camp. The kommandant had hoped that having another officer in the camp, providing some sort of leadership, would help reduce the numbers of escapes. But Scott was the wrong officer to achieve that end. He was the most committed to escape of any of the prisoners, even though he was the Senior British Officer. However, his sense of duty would not allow him to escape until all of the men beneath his command were gone. It made him a perfect escape officer.

"What do you think X has planned now?" LeBeau questioned quietly. This was the second escape committee meeting in less than a month.

"Your guess is as good as mine," LeClerc whispered back. "There's my signal. See you there." And the next instant, he was jumping out the window and vanishing away into the night, lean body pressed close to the barrack's wall.

As LeBeau waited in the darkness, watching for his own signal, one of the other men sleeping in the barracks turned over, the boards of his bunk creaking loudly. LeBeau froze in place, a dark silhouette against the open square of cloudy sky. Someone else coughed in response, triggering another person to stir. As usual, the ripple traveled around the barracks, but the men were used to it and no one woke. However, the guards sometimes decided to investigate the strange noises.

"Please let the guards not notice," LeBeau muttered softly, seriously contemplating a quick dash back to the safety of his bunk. But as the tense seconds ticked past and there was no harsh shouts from the guards, LeBeau reflected that it was probably too late to get back to his bunk.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the white flash that signified the all clear. He had almost missed the sign in his worries about what was going on inside the barracks.

When he saw the flash of white, it was too late for thought. He had to act with the split-second timing that they had all practiced so carefully. Out the window and roll to the right behind the shelter of the water barrel, and count to seven and dart to the doorway of Barracks Three. The white rag was still lying where LeClerc had abandoned it, but LeBeau knew he was the last one out of Barracks Two; his bunk was the farthest from the window. LeBeau reached down to pick up the rag, shoving it into his pocket. They couldn't leave it there; the guards would see it and get suspicious.

Peering cautiously around the corner, looking for the guard, LeBeau reached up to rap softly on the shuttered window of Barracks Three. Keegan and the other members of the escape committee in that barracks would be waiting. The searchlights moved into the interior of the camp, scanning the grounds of anything out of the ordinary. They passed near the barracks, bathing the doorways in light, but LeBeau was already long gone, darting around the corner off into the shadow of the building. And then it was seventeen steps across the lane to the open window of Barracks Five.

As a safeguard incase a ferret happened to overhear, the messages passed on by the messenger were always in code. Tonight, because it was just past midnight on June twenty-second, a Sunday, a two had to be subtracted from the number they had been told. That way, if the guards searched Barracks Seven, they would find nothing wrong. Extra prisoners were even shuffled into the barracks to fill the empty bunks.

Barracks Five had most of the windows standing open and members of the X Committee were being hauled up into the barracks at regular intervals. The barracks was completely dark, because of the open windows, but the table was ringed completely with silent, shadowy figures. The meeting would be held in the main tunnel, to avoid having the other prisoners in the barracks overhear. But the tunnel couldn't be opened until everyone was there and the windows had been closed.

LeBeau slipped into an empty seat beside the dark figure he recognized as LeClerc, ready to wait for an untold amount of time until everyone had managed to get there. But thankfully, he was one of the last to arrive and only had to wait as the final stragglers had come in and the windows were closed again. Then, and only then, was a single candle lit and the tunnel entrance cautiously opened.

The waiting men filed silently into the darkness of the tunnel and assembled quickly on the benches of the man subterranean room. Then, the tunnel entrance was shut and Scott made his way forward through the rows of waiting men to address his X Committee. The only light in the room came from a lantern that had been suspended from the centre roof support. The only sounds were a few hushed voices and the men's expectant breathing.

"Gentlemen," Scott began, "this meeting of the X Committee is officially convened. The issue at hand, Operation Swift Rider." He paused, hoping to build the tension, even though the attention of each and every man was already riveted to him.

"For the next six months," he explained, "we're going to dig. There'll be three new tunnels, joined with a complete connecting system. We're going to use the feeler tunnels that the first group built and the unfinished sections that you've all started. Sergeant Brown has taken a survey and plotted the exact location of each of the tunnels that we've already constructed, the incomplete tunnels, and the ones we still have yet to shore up. But, of course, those are only the ones that haven't been compromised by the goons."

Scott paused again, this time muttering flared up almost instantly. They had just finished digging and shoring up some nine hundred feet of tunnels. And here they had to start all over again! Their system was perfectly fine as it was; after all, it hadn't been found out by the Germans in the three months that it had been in operation. Did they or did they not have by the minute train and bus schedules and an intricate system of safe houses set up? Wasn't theirs the highest percentage of home runs of all the POW camps anywhere?

Instead of joining in with the complaining, LeBeau kept his attention glued to the fiery English captain. All of his other escape schemes had seemed crazy, some even suicidal, but all of them had worked well. If nothing else, the experiences had taught LeBeau that nothing was impossible, if you could get the right people to do it. And assembled in that tunnel beneath Stalag 13 were all of the right people.

They had a four-man engineering and expert construction team, a duo of forgers that could copy any paper on sight, an outstanding six scroungers, a five-man odd-job team, a professional tailor, an electrician, and a German language coach. If the escape committee decided that a man was ready to escape, that man had better than an eighty percent chance of being home in two weeks.

"I know it's a lot of work," Scott called above the rising din. "But I propose that three-quarters of this camp escapes all at once." The room fell instantly silent for a full minute as the full scope of the scheme Scott was proposing began to sink in. Then the comments began again, this time called out to Scott.

"It's bloody impossible."

"You'll never get it done."

"There's no way."

LeBeau jumped to his feet in defense of the captain. "Irving, isn't that what you said when we stole all of the uniforms coming back from the laundry? And you, Bryant, you were the one who nominated Captain Scott as X in the first place. Where's your show of support now?"

Again, the muttering resumed, but this time there were no outspoken words of dissent. Each one of them could easily remember a time when they swore something would never work. But it had always seemed to.

"I say we do it," LeBeau declared. "If we're all going to get home, why not all go at once? Instead of meeting at Nelson's statue in London, we all go together. We said we wouldn't leave this camp until we had given it our best shot. And I think this is it." His face aflame with passion, LeBeau took his seat again, nodding his agreement at Scott.

"Now, who thinks that we can't do it?" Scott asked. There was no answer.