Free Not I by Joachim Fest Page A

said the prisoners should not be treated with undue harshness. They had already had more than enough of that. He saw it rather as his task to make their lives easier, he once remarked to me with his amused, gentleman’s smile. But he was powerless in the face of the order that shortly before departure each train should be searched by a special unit from Rheims.
    It had become usual for prisoners to make escape attempts in pairs to be better prepared to meet the unforeseeable, so I first of all turned to Walter Heuser, who was supposed to have a taste for adventure and to be both daring and helpful. Surprisingly, he turned me down on the grounds that he didn’t know where he should escape to. His whole family had died in the air raids. “Well, away from the barbed wire,” I objected, “away from the French! Is that not enough?” But I couldn’t change Walter’s mind. It seemed to me that despite his reputation, he considered the risk of a breakout to be too great. After that I asked Wolfgang Münkel, who appeared both determined and levelheaded. He came from Mannheim, which was in the American Zone, and not only agreed without hesitation but immediately began to give thought to what one had to take into account in an escape, so as not to fail pitifully like most of the previous undertakings, particularly the recent ones.
    First of all we drew up a list of things we would need. It began with a box of provisions, which would contain eight cans of corned beef and four cans of meat and beans for each of us, a few packets of Zwieback, three cans of beer, and a carton of cigarettes each. In addition, two canisters of drinking water, two woolen blankets, and, thanks to contact with a friendly but discreet French officer up in the fortress, authentic discharge papers made out in our names. We assembled these objects in the space of three weeks. And, of course, I stowed away my diary and the two Renaissance texts in my little leather bag, which so far I had got through all checks. At the endof April the rumors in the camp suggested that July 1 was planned as the day of the handover, so time was running out. A few days later we got hold of one of the confidential timetables, according to which a goods train was heading for the Stuttgart area on May 16. The description of the load listed uniform parts and rubber tires, and included the information that the eight rear wagons would be carrying asbestos pipe casing, which would be packed in long wooden containers. We decided on one of these asbestos wagons, because they seemed to us to offer the best shelter.
    As camouflage, we ordered a container made of the same wood from the camp joiner’s shop, but the box made for us, since it had to provide space for two people, was necessarily about twenty-five inches longer and almost twelve and a half inches wider than the ones for the asbestos. At the last moment we learned from an unwitting remark by First Sergeant Driffel that from mid-May departing trains would not only be searched but that tear gas would be used to flush out any escapees. After a few days we even managed to track down a gas mask, although such pieces of equipment were not part of the depot stocks. Unfortunately, we could get hold of only one.
    When everything had been brought together and packed away in as space-saving a way as possible, we told the loaders in which wagon they should put the escape box. Then we informed the two crane operators that we wanted to get into the box in Warehouse 7 and be brought to the crane outside at the tracks by a forklift truck; therewe were to be the first item to be put on the wagon bed: TOP and BOTTOM, LEFT and RIGHT were marked on the box. After that the asbestos containers were to be placed around us and finally on top of us, until there was nothing to be seen of our hiding place. A twenty-five-inch-wide escape path had to remain open, however, in case of emergencies. The crane operators promised to arrange everything as we wanted