The First Great Escape

Camp Commandant Karl Niemeyer, a vindictive and arrogant man who had an appalling reputation for mistreatment, boasted from the outset that Holzminden was impossible to escape from. This is the story of the twenty-nine British officers who proved him wrong in July 1918. Together, they spent ten months constructing a tunnel right under the noses of their German captors. Ten of them were able to complete the journey to neutral Holland, and they returned to England as heroes.