Twenty-four hours later, in the evening of Saturday May 18th, they had removed an incredibly large mass of rubble and rock, but still the wall face was intact. They worked now by the light of the oil lamp which Barnes always carried inside the tank, and the reason for this was not only to save Bert’s headlights: Barnes foresaw that later, when morale was sagging, switching on the headlights again might just keep them going a while longer, but he kept the real reason for this decision to himself. In the middle of the afternoon there had almost been a fatal accident when part of the wall suddenly came away and slid forward of its own momentum. Only Reynolds’ speed and strength had saved Davis when he had grabbed the gunner’s arm and hauled him sideways out of the path of the tumbling boulders. It was a measure of their anxiety that even when Davis had just experienced this shock he was the first to recover, running away from Reynolds to gaze up at the centre of the wall in desperate hope, his voice hoarse and strained.
‘Maybe we’re through now.’
‘Keep back. I’ll see,’ snapped Barnes.
Gingerly, he had climbed up the rubble slope, expecting at any moment a fresh fall, but when he had reached the rock face and pushed it was like leaning against the side of a fortress. So they had started again, Barnes and Penn working furiously with their shovels to remove the fresh rubble so that the other two could reach the rock face with their crowbar. It was just after seven o’clock in the evening when Penn made his remark during their rest period. Barnes sat alongside him on the tank hull, watching Reynolds prising out a fresh boulder while Davis sought to give extra leverage by pulling with his bare hands.
‘It’s funny, but ever since we’ve been in here we haven’t heard any sound of the battle.’
‘We’ve probably driven them back a bit – besides, there wasn’t so much going on this side of Etreux.’
He left it at that, wondering why the obvious and macabre conclusion had not been drawn by the others long ago. The fact that they could not hear even faint sounds of the huge bombardment taking place in the outside world demonstrated more clearly than anything the immense thickness of the wall which barred their escape. The thought had occurred to Barnes twenty-four hours earlier and had so worried him that he had waited until the others were asleep before walking back down the tunnel. When he reached the far end he had listened carefully at the blocked entrance but no sound had penetrated from the outside world. They were well and truly sealed in at both ends. Taking a sip of water from his mug, he frowned.
Then, very carefully, he put the mug down on the hull and walked over to where Reynolds and Davis were working. He faced the wall and then turned sideways as though listening. It was a dramatic moment and Penn instantly guessed that something had happened because he got down off the tank and walked forward. Something in Barnes’ attitude had attracted the attention of Reynolds and Davis and they stopped working.
‘What is it?’ asked Penn.
Barnes shook his head and faced the wall again, his hands on his hips, his eyes searching the surface carefully. When he spoke his voice was quiet. ‘I think we’re nearly through.’ ‘Why?’ Penn asked quickly.
‘I can feel a faint current of air – come and stand here.’ ‘My God! You’re right! You’re right!’ They began to work feverishly at the point where Barnes had traced the air current’s entrance, a point about four feet above the level of the tunnel floor. A quarter of an hour later they experienced another heart-lifting moment when Barnes told them to stop working for a minute while he put out the lamp. For a short time there-was no sound in the darkness of the tunnel while four pairs of eyes strained to see any sign of daylight in the wall. It was Barnes who spotted it first – a narrow, paper-thin slit along the upper surface of one large boulder.
‘We’re through,’ shouted Davis. ‘We’re really through. Dear Mother of God, we’re through!’
‘Take it easy now,’ warned Barnes, ‘this could be tricky. There’s still a solid mass of rock up there.’
He relit the oil lamp and when he turned round Davis was already inserting the crowbar into a corner near the end of the slit they had seen, his hands gripping the iron with a ferocious intensity as he drove the end deeper into the wall and began to twist and turn for leverage. Barnes opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking. The poor devil must have gone through even greater agonies than the rest of them with his memories of the mine trap he had escaped from. Barnes had realized this when he had treated Davis roughly, but any display of sympathy at that time could have destroyed the morale of all of them, and Barnes never forgot the dictum of Napoleon – morale is to the material as three is to one. So now he let Davis break loose as he dug and rammed the bar into the remaining barrier, punishing his hands with the force of his efforts and never even noticing the punishment. Penn spoke as he shovelled debris to expose the base of the remaining rocks. ‘I’ll tell you now, I never thought we’d make it.’ ‘We’ll face tougher things than this before this war’s over.’ Within ten minutes Davis had prised the boulder loose and Reynolds was helping him to haul it back out of the wall, a boulder as large as the oil stove they carried inside Bert for emergency cooking arrangements. It came away suddenly. One moment Davis was leaning his full weight against the crowbar, sweat streaming down the sides of his face, and then the rock was shifting inwards, swaying gently before it toppled back into the tunnel, so unexpectedly that the two men had to jump sideways to avoid it. Picking up the oil lamp, Barnes held it behind his back and they all stared at the oblong of daylight. It was a memorable moment. Four-men, each of whom had secretly felt that they would never make it, knew now that they would live. There was a pause when no one spoke, no one moved. Then Davis went berserk.
Seizing the crowbar which had fallen with the boulder, he rammed it behind the rock above the opening and began heaving and twisting with all his strength. Barnes shouted a warning, but Davis either didn’t or wouldn’t hear him. He felt the rock moving easily and dropped the crowbar. Reaching up to his full height he pushed, both hands flat against the rock, which fell outwards, enlarging the window considerably, enlarging it enough for Davis to climb up into it, crouching inside the alcove on his knees as he pushed with his hands at the loosened rock above. Barnes was still shouting when disaster struck.
The upper rock was held in position over the opening by ledges on either side of the aperture, but it moved loosely on the ledges so that when Davis again pushed his full strength against it the rock wobbled and then fell outwards under the fierce pressure of Davis’ hands. As it fell away it unhinged the centre of gravity of the wall above. Davis was still crouched in the aperture when there was a low rumbling sound. The whole upper wall began to quiver and disintegrate. Barnes was running forward to grab Davis when Penn grasped his arm firmly and hauled him back against the side of the tunnel. A second later an avalanche of rock and rubble poured down over the floor where Barnes had been standing, spilling tons of debris along the centre of the rail track, filling the tunnel with a roaring sound which deafened them. Then they were bending over and choking and spluttering as the dust invaded their lungs and blinded their eyes.
It was only when the dust began to settle that Barnes saw what had happened. On the far side of the tunnel, his back against the wall, Reynolds was safe. Beside Barnes, Penn was wiping his eyes to try and clear bis vision. But it was the entrance to the tunnel which was the most awe-inspiring sight. The new landslide had completely cleared the upper part of the tunnel, leaving a great gap above the rubble slope which now stretched deep inside the tunnel, a gap through which they could see the blessed evening sky, a gap through which-Bert could be driven once he had mounted the slope.