The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill

profitable, he did it fairly readily the next time until it became a habit.
    There was a very young
Obergefreiter
(private) who was persuaded to bring in a pair of pliers and was paid very generously in chocolate. His contact explained apologetically that he had to draw the chocolate from his room mess and had to accound for it. Would the obergefreiter mind signing a receipt for it. Just a formality. Why no, the obergefreiter wouldn’t really mind at all, pocketed the chocolate, and signed on the dotted line.
    He came to regret it. Later he brought in passes, money, files, maps, tools, and even some German uniform buttons and badges. It was much better than having his receipt handed over to the
Lageroffizer
and getting a bullet for trading with the enemy.
    Bit by bit the stuff came in through all the contacts — pliers and hacksaw blades for Travis, inks and nibs and pens for the forgers, a magnet for Al Hake and his compass factory, bits of cloth and thread and buttons for the tailors, two prismatic compasses so the tunnels would go straight, German marks in dribs and drabs till “X” had quite a bank roll socked away. Also radio parts.
    German news was a wee bit angled in their favor, and it was nice to hear from home. A couple of radio operator-air gunners assembled a compact and very powerful receiver. Travis made a hide-hole for it in Hut 101 by ripping a lavatory off its base and sinking the set in the floor below. The lavatory was set back on its base and looked as respectable as any lavatory can look, but the bolt heads holding it down were dummies. A couple of shorthand writers listened to the B.B.C. every day and took it all down. With stooges posted, it was read in all huts. The B.B.C. has never had a more appreciative audience. Nor, I imagine, will they ever have again.
    But you couldn’t bribe all Germans. Glemnitz and Rubberneck were so obviously incorruptible that I don’t think anyone ever tried them. I don’t think I ever heard anyone ever refer to Glemnitz without saying “That bastard Glemnitz,” but there was no hatred in the term; it was almost an expression of respect because he was a good soldier, even if he was a German. Rubberneck was always called a bastard too, but with Rubberneck we meant it. For all the sinuous length between his head and his shoulders, he was a stiffneck, rank-conscious and with a dangerous temper.
    There were a lot of good Germans in the camp. They were all Luftwaffe, just ordinary
Soldaten
, with wives and families and homes, and when you take the nationality tag off ordinary people they’re pretty much the same all over the world. It wasn’t till later that the Gestapo and S.S. came into the picture.
    The Kommandant had been wounded seven times in the 1914 war, and now he was just over sixty, still as straight as a young lad. He was an
Oberst
(colonel), and his name was Von Lindeiner. He was a lean, good-looking man with composure in his face, always immaculate in the Prussian tradition, the Iron Cross on his left pocket, tailored tunic, extravagantly cut riding breeches and black riding boots.
    Within the limitations of war, he and Massey were friends. Even if Von Lindeiner had been a petty tyrant, Massey would have tried to keep on reasonable terms for the concessions he could worm out of him for the camp; but as it was, it was an association based on mutual respect.
    Von Lindeiner had once been a personal assistant to Goering, and Goering had put him in command of the camp because he knew him to be firm but humane. There wasn’t much that was humane about Goering, but he had been a brilliant operational pilot in the 1914 war, and we gathered he had a soft spot in his heart for Air Force prisoners. I can’t say any of us returned the feeling, and in any case Goering himself lost it when the bombing got under way.
    Von Lindeiner was very correct. It is military etiquette in a prison camp for a captive officer to salute a captor officer and be saluted in return.