It was unfortunate that while the Holzminden tunnel was under construction another tunnel was in progress at Clausthal, where the twin brother Niemeyer was Commandant. It is now known that the tunnel there would have been completed in about a week from the date on which the Holzminden escape took place. The “Poldhu” had been busy between the camps, but, no exact synchronisation being possible, it remained simply to go full steam ahead in each camp and trust to luck. As was anticipated, the Holzminden escape led to a very serious search at Clausthal, and the tunnel was discovered just as it was approaching completion. The tunnel of Holzminden was, however, so much the bigger affair that there was a rough justice in this award of Fortune. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI MAKING GOOD The officers’ Lager at Stralsund lay on an island, or rather on a twin pair of islands, called Greater and Smaller Danholm, separated from the mainland by a narrow strip of water over which a permanent ferry plies to and fro. On the further side of these islands and separated from them again by a wider channel, perhaps two-thirds of the width of the Solent at its narrowest point, lay the pleasant shores of Rügen. The blue sea and the wooded slopes of this fair island recalled to the home-sick prisoner the beauties of her smaller sister of the Wight. Hither in the summer of 1918 came 500 odd hungry British officers, the unwilling guests of his then Imperial Majesty Wilhelm II. They were a not inconsiderable part of the many taken in the three gigantic German offensives between March 21st and May 27th. They came in big batches from the sorting-out camps of Rastatt and Karlsruhe—the former place a memory that will endure for their lives with those who were there—or in little driblets from the hospitals whence they had been discharged. Hither came also in September 200 officers from Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), the last of their illusions gone. They had been sent from various camps to that place, the stepping-stone for internment and happier things. They had stayed there two months. Their parcels, which should have been forwarded to them, went persistently “west.” In many cases even their luggage had gone to Holland. They had been taken for walks and had viewed the promised land. And now, at the eleventh hour, the congestion of sick at Aachen had necessitated their removal and they had been side-tracked to the Baltic—to wait and wait, and begin the dreary round again. They moved our sympathy. They had had two and a half years of it, and now they had as little to eat as, and not much more to wear than, the new arrivals. But one of them had a typewriter.