The Closet

Chapter 13

            Sunday morning arrived with no talk of tunnels and adventure. The family dressed in their best clothes and went off to church a mile away. After services, they came home and had a delicious lasagna Lacy had prepared the day before and they spent the day together resting and enjoying being a family. They had not spent any downtime together for some time and it was a simple pleasure. The weather was overcast as was common in that part of Germany, and the temperature was in the 50’s, but wearing comfortable clothes and tennis shoes, they walked out the gate of the military housing area and strolled toward the Kafertal Wald. The Wald was a forested area preserved in a natural setting. It had been developed many years in the past with old roads spreading throughout the area, but now in most of the forest, only foot traffic or bicycles were allowed. 

            They walked along the Wasserwerkstrasse which ran along the fence that their back yard faced through some farmland and into the Wald. They had done enough walking in the past week to be tired of hiking, but this was a different world than that they had recently inhabited. The air had a vaguely chemical smell to it due to the proximity to the chemical plant a few miles away, but it was green and the spaces were wide open away from the trees. The vehicle road extended to the waterworks, and past that they entered the pedestrian area.  Their tacit agreement had been not to discuss their underground experiences, but John and Frank had looked at Google Earth together for a few minutes and unobtrusively guided their walk toward the Abandoned Ammunition Arsenal. The forest trail beyond the waterworks extended along a gently curving bank that led to an oblique 4-way intersection. They turned to the right and in a few hundred yards came to the corner of the fence that had enclosed the Ammunition Storage Arsenal. They turned left along the fence and after another few hundred yards, the fence ended and they walked into the area that had once been enclosed. They weren’t sure what they were looking for exactly, but they were drawn to what might have been the building site they had been beneath the day before. 

            They weren’t sure where to look since the fenced area was large, but the only barren spot on the satellite map where a building might have stood was just inside the fence at the corner they had first arrived at. They made their way to the rubble-strewn field to look for signs of the building. They found in places, the ruins of a block building. The few blocks that remained were only stacked one or two high and were completely absent in most places.  Ignoring the bushes that had grown up, they could imagine the outline of what, at one time, must have been a large structure. The rubble that littered the area was likely the remnant of the blocks from which the building had been constructed. There were still the tracks of an old road that edged the building site and only a short distance away in otherwise flat terrain stood a hill. They walked over to the hill which had many years of forest growth encroaching on it, but in where the vegetation had not taken hold, the core seemed to consist of broken rock. 

            Seeing nothing else they could identify as having come from a distant past, they walked back out on to the trail and began the trek back home. John said, surprised, “Look everyone.  We missed a sign.” The sign that was off the path and tacked to a tree read, ‘Achtung Verlassen der Wege Verboten.  Explosion und Gefahr’.’  None of them spoke German well enough to translate, but Frank typed the verbiage into his phone and asked for a translation. The sign translated to English read, ‘Stay on the Path. Explosion Hazard.’   Grateful that they hadn’t discovered what an Explosion Hazard really was, they continued down the path until they arrived at their home. 

            When they arrived home, Jarom retrieved his book on lock picking and sat down to study. He found a padlock on the tool chest downstairs and brought it to the kitchen table to practice with. When he carefully followed the steps that were listed in his book, he found that too much tension on the tension wrench locked up the cylinder so the pins wouldn’t push properly.  He couldn’t see into the lock, so he imagined that his senses were concentrated in his fingers and he tried to accustom himself to the feel of pushing each one of the pins independently. He also learned that the pins don’t always respond to being pushed in order and that he had to sense by the pressure which of the pins was the next to be pushed down.

            The rest of the family watched him for a time, and then finally went their separate ways.  They were preparing for the school day ahead, as well as for the activities they had planned for the following afternoon. Since Frank and Lacy were in on the secret, there was no longer any need to delay their exploration until late in the evening, so they planned a quick supper the next night after Frank arrived home from work and then would depart their home for the cool, quiet and dark world beneath their house.

             Monday morning arrived and the day began normally for the James family. The children gathered their homework and backpacks, added the lunches that they had made earlier that morning, and were soon walking to school.  Frank had already left for work by the time the children departed, and on arriving, he busied himself with plans for the return of the American military bases to the Germans. The American occupation had continued since the end of World War II.  Most German military bases had been taken over by the Allies and had remained active through the Cold War. Since the disintegration of the USSR and the threat of the invasion of Europe from the Russia and its satellites, the Americans had slowly been repatriating the bases under its control. Much of Frank’s job was involved with preparing bases around Germany for closure. Colonel Taylor had asked Frank to keep him informed of the children’s intrusion into the airfield, but having nothing new to report yet and not wanting to tell him anything he would afterward have to admit was untrue, he was grateful to find that the Colonel would be away for a few days. He worked half-heartedly at the plans all day, but truth-to-tell, he was eager to be solving the mystery of the tunnel system. The Engineer Battalion had a small library and he browsed the titles looking for a historical account of the area from an engineering perspective. Most of what was available there had been written since the Allied occupation of Germany and detailed the reconstruction. What he needed was a German history of the construction that had gone on before and during the war. 

            The Colonel’s secretary, Frieda, was an older German national that had been employed by the Army since she was a teenager. Frank stopped to talk with her to see if she knew anything of the wartime history of the area. 

            “Frieda,” he began, “My family and I were out walking in the Wald last evening past the Wasserwerks on Wasserwerkstrasse and we came to a partly fenced off area with a sign that said ‘Danger, Explosion Hazard’ with a picture of a bomb exploding. Do you know what that was? 

            “I was born in 1946 after the war and by the time I was old enough to be aware of the world outside my home, everything there was long gone.  As a child I remember this whole area was devastated.  All of the buildings had received heavy bombing and most had to be torn down and hauled off. That was still going on even at the time I could remember, probably in 1950 or 51. Our family used to walk in the Wald, and there was a building that must have existed there, but I only remember it as a pile of rubble. I suppose there may be unexploded bombs that are still buried in the earth around the remains. The trees you see in the Wald have grown up since then, but at that time there were only a few living trees there. It is hard to imagine the destruction when you look at it now, but even here on this kaserne, all the buildings have been built or rebuilt since that time because the British bombed the airfield so steadily and completely.”

            Thanking her for her time and remembrances, Frank excused himself and when the end of the workday arrived, left for home.  The children were awaiting his arrival and excitedly sat down to the meatloaf and salad that Lacy had prepared for dinner. They ate their fill, cleared the table, and then set about dressing for the trip underground.

After dinner, Allie wasn’t feeling so ready. Her stomach had been upset and though she was trying to hide it, her face had turned a slight shade of green. Lacy asked, “What’s the matter, honey?  Aren’t you feeling well?”

Instead of answering, Allie bolted for the bathroom, pulled open the door, and threw up into the toilet. Lacy followed her, but could only pat her on the back and sympathize. After a few moments, having already lost the contents of her stomach, Allie was feeling a little better.

“I’ve got to go get ready, Mom!” she said.

“Allie, you’re sick. You’ve just thrown up your dinner. You’re not running around in underground tunnels when you can’t keep your dinner down. Rinse out your mouth and then go get in bed. I’ll bring you a thermometer to check your temperature and some crushed ice to sip on. We can spend the evening together while the men explore.”

 By 6 they were ready to go and Jarom opened the trap door. With lockpicks, a can of WD-40 and graphite in his backpack, he started down the ladder. The chain ladder was still attached at the bottom so no one had apparently tampered with it, and soon they were all gathered in the round room. 

            They began walking west toward the locked chambers. In a few minutes, they had arrived and turned into the accessory tunnel on their left. Coming to the steel door, Jarom began assembling his equipment for the assault. His practice from the night before had improved his skills and he was eager to put them to use. He first inserted the nozzle of the tube of powdered graphite into the keyway of the lock and squeezed the tube. The black powder infiltrated the inner mechanism and a small cloud of graphite was expressed with each squeeze.  Then he took the spray can of liquid lubricant and attached the small plastic hose to the nozzle of the can.  Inserting the hose into the lock, he gave it a few short bursts.  He didn’t want to displace the graphite, but to disperse it in the medium of the liquid lubricant. Then he selected a thin, flat pick with a hook at the end and began to feel each pin in the lock, working it up and down to spread the lubricant through the springs under them. When he felt that each pin was working smoothly, he inserted the tension tool and with very light pressure, began to turn the cylinder. Then he began the work in earnest. With a flat, diamond shaped pick, he once again pushed each pin down and then let it spring up again. If it didn’t catch on the shear line where the edge of the cylinder met the edge of the hole the cylinder fit in, he reached in to the next pin and pushed it down. He continued the process until one pin finally stayed down on its own, caught on the edge of the slightly turned cylinder. 

            This was a complex lock, finely made, and with 8 pins. The fit of the pieces was very nearly perfect and getting one pin to catch before the others required extreme sensitivity and skill. Jarom was an amateur, but a devoted one. His practice had tuned up his ability and soon he had four pins catching on the shear line, and then five before the 3^rd one popped up again and he had to start over. Just sensing 8 different pins was a challenge, and manipulating each one independently was especially difficult. Patience and a light touch were the keys, and when it came to that, he had both. The others looked on with keen interest that flagged after a time. Soon they were inspecting the tunnel again, looking for other things they might have missed. 

John and Jason had wandered back as far as the entrance into the round room. Feeling along the wall with his hand, Jason shouted for John to come and look. There, in the last few feet of the tunnel, was a naturally camouflaged step in the rock face. He reached behind the outcropping and could feel a metal tube. Drawing it out into the tunnel, he could see it was an aluminum ladder made from tubing, with hooks on the end.  Jason lifted the ladder and knowing instantly what it was for, both boys raced to the center of the round room. Lifting the ladder as high as he could reach, Jason hooked the end over the bottom rung of the ladder in the shaft and stepping as high as he could, stepped on to the bottom rung. The short section swung like a pendulum, but in a moment he was on the fixed ladder in the shaft. He came back down and he and John talked excitedly.

“Jason, this is how he did it!” cried John. “Remember how he stole our ladder?  Remember how the closet door was stuck and then broke free when Jarom got knocked silly on the wall?  This is how he climbs up our ladder. There really is someone else down here.”

“I know,” fired Jason right back. “I bet he has a ladder like this stashed by all the other ladder-shafts. We just never looked close enough to find one.” 

Jason stowed the ladder back from where it had come and then he and John ran back down the tunnel to share the news. 

“Dad, Jarom!” shouted Jason as they got nearer. “Guess what we found!”

His father smiled when he saw his excitable son coming closer. “What did you find?” he asked.

“I was dragging my hand along the wall just before the tunnel goes into the big room, and my hand fell into a space in the wall. I reached behind the rock in front and I felt something, and when I pulled it out, it was a ladder!”

John added, “It has hooks on the end and we reached up and hooked it on the steel ladder in our shaft and then climbed up it into the shaft. That must be how the guy took our rope ladder. We think he has a ladder like this hidden by all of the shafts so he can check on them. Maybe he’s a guard.”

Frank thought for a minute, “I suppose it’s possible that there is a guard down here, but this place has been deserted for a long time. I can’t imagine posting a guard down here for all these years, and we have no way of knowing how recently that ladder had been used. It may have been there for the past 50 years for all we know. You still may not have found all the entrances to this tunnel system, and it’s possible that someone wandered in down here through another entrance, climbed up and untied your ladder, and then dropped down from a hanging position. Without proper lighting, it’s unlikely anyone would go far or stay long in here.

“What about when someone unlocked the closet door and sent Jarom into the wall?” argued Jason.

“It could have been just a stuck door. We just don’t know,” said Frank. “It is a great find, though and I bet it will come in handy. We do need to check the other tunnels at the kasernes to see if there are ladders hidden in them too.”   

            Just then, they heard a cry of elation. They ran back into the side detour from the main passage where Jarom had been working to find him standing there with an exultant grin on his face and an open padlock in his hand. It had taken him more than an hour of patient attempt after attempt, but his efforts had finally paid off.  Part of his reward was the incredulity on the faces of his brothers, and especially, his father. But the real reward was behind him. He turned and grabbed the handle of the steel bolt and strained to turn it perpendicular to the door. Then he began to wiggle it up and down while pushing it out of its seat in the rock wall.  Unfortunately, it was stuck. Even with Frank putting his muscle into the slide, it wouldn’t move. 

John finally said as he picked up Jarom’s backpack, “I think it needs some lubricant.  I wonder where we could get some?” and reaching into the pack he came out with the can of WD-40. He sprayed it on the unmoving parts of the bolt and then, once again, Frank and Jarom forced the handle up and down working the lubricant into the slide. Finally, they began pushing and pulling and the slide started to move out of the pocket in the rock wall sculpted to accommodate it. The bolt broke free of its seat and with all of them pulling, the door began to creak open.  When it was open far enough to get a shoulder in, Frank stepped half in and, pushing the door with his lower body wedged against the door frame, opened it far enough to allow them all to enter.

What they saw at first was another room just like the 13 empty ones they had visited further down the passageway. This one, however, was not empty. Along the walls were stacks of crates piled floor to ceiling. Arranged in rows throughout the rest of the room were more wooden crates and disintegrating cardboard boxes piled high. With open mouths they began to wander through the room. The crates were nailed shut and the labeling was in German, so they didn’t understand the writing. The cardboard boxes that once had stood in stacks had deteriorated and fallen over as the weight of the upper boxes crushed the lower. Spilling out of the boxes were thousands, and tens-of-thousands, of rounds of ammunition.

Frank said, “These cartridges are for rifles and pistols. They are usually packed in ammunition cans or crates, but nearing the end of the war, they may not have had the supplies to make cans and crates, so they must have used cardboard instead.”

“Dad, look here,” John interrupted.

Frank looked at the crate John was examining. They couldn’t read the text, but the numbers were surprising. One line read 10.5cm.  “That is a big round,” thought Frank, “like for a Howitzer.” But that was not what was surprising. Inked on the wood was the date of manufacture, Juli 1915. 

Talking to himself, Frank said, “1915. That was World War I.” To the boys he said, “See if you can find some more manufacturing dates.”

In a moment, Jarom had found dates on 3 crates and he read, “1914, 1916, 1917.” 

John found others with dates in the same date range.

“If this ammunition has been here since World War I, it’s no wonder it was never used. The weapons changed dramatically in the years between the wars and this would have been mostly useless, so maybe they just left it here in storage as opposed to hauling it to the surface and disarming it.” 

“That’s a good theory,” said John, “but the question it raises is, When were these tunnels built?”

“Yes, John. That is the question,” observed his Dad. “They certainly had the technology to dig these tunnels during World War I, but that would make them 25 or 30 years older than we had originally assumed. I had thought that if they were built in the 1940’s, that we might find someone around who had worked on them, but if they were built during the first war, then the engineers and laborers are long since dead.”

“Well, that partly solves two of our questions,” said Jarom.  “When were they built and why were they built?”   

“Boys, this is fascinating,” said their father, “But we left Mom alone taking care of a sick girl and we didn’t even discuss when we might be home.  We’ve gotten a lot accomplished, thanks to Jarom, but you have school tomorrow.  I don’t suppose there will be much traffic down here, so let’s close the door and leave it unlocked.  We’ll come back tomorrow. It looks like Jarom has more work to do.”

They all stepped into the corridor and put their backs into the door and the joints creaked as it slipped back into place.  Jarom ran the bolt home and was surprised to find that the lubrication and movement had loosened it enough that it slid in fairly easily.  Then they turned back toward the main tunnel. At the junction with the main tunnel, they noticed the air was fresher and that there was some movement, as if a door had been opened. John had speculated as to the purpose of the tall room where they had heard the traffic sounds was. The moving air had made him remember the room now and he turned to ask his father if he knew what its purpose might be.

“Dad,” asked John, “When we were walking down the southeast tunnel the other day, we came to a tall room that we couldn’t see the top of, even with all the lights aimed together. It was weird, but we could hear traffic noise. We were about half way to Taylor Barracks when we heard the noise. What do you think it might have been?”

Frank looked at his watch. The time was 8:30. While he had not told Lacy when they would be back, he thought he had better have them safely home by 10, and before if he wanted to maintain peace. “The high room is about ½ mile down that corridor?” he asked, pointing to the southeast. 

“Yes,” the boys spoke together, the sound echoing down the several tunnels.

“Then let’s move quickly and we’ll see that room before we head home,” and they started off at as fast a clip as they could manage in the semi-lighted passageway. In about 15 minutes, they could feel the walls falling away around them and, far in the distance and high above, they could hear the sound of the traffic.  The explorers listened carefully and could hear individual vehicles.  They were not roaring by, but maintained a level sound for several seconds before each was lost in the distance. 

Jason observed, “it almost sounds like the cars are going around in circles, but why would they do that?”

Frank had the answer. “Because they are going around in a circle!  The distance and direction are right for the high room to be located under the traffic circle that all the cars entering BFV must pass through. If there is an opening into the high room from the monument in the middle of the traffic circle, each car would maintain its distance from the monument until it left the traffic circle. As there are no stairs or even a way to use a ladder in here, my guess is that the opening was for ventilation. To maintain breathable air in a tunnel system, there must be at least 2 and maybe more ventilation shafts. They often have fans to blow air in or to extract from a tunnel system, but with the volume of air that we are using, passive ventilation is working just fine.”

Frank checked his watch again. “It’s 8:50.  Can we get to the end of the tunnel and back to the house in just over an hour?”

The boys assured him that they could, and instead of turning back to the round room and home, they turned toward what they assumed would be Taylor Barracks. The children had made this trip before and had not had a rope so they couldn’t reach the bottom of the steel ladder. This time, John was carrying his rope and they hoped they would be able to use it. 

They hurried along the passage, as fast as their lights would allow them to move. John was the first to reach the ladder-shaft and he took off his backpack and began to get the rope out.  Meanwhile, Jason was running his hand along the wall of the tunnel a few feet before he was at the shaft, and he sang out, “Another ladder!  I found another ladder hidden behind the wall.”

The others turned back to see what he had found and, just like in the west tunnel, there was a camouflaged alcove, just big enough for the storage of a 6 foot ladder. He had the ladder out from behind the rock ledge and began to walk toward the ladder-shaft. Reaching up, he hooked the ends of the aluminum ladder over the steel rung above, and then held it from swinging as if to say, “After you….”

Frank had not seen the bottom of one of the closed doors, so he went first with each of the boys following on behind. He ascended one step at a time until he came to the trap door that they had begun to expect. 

“Dad,” Jarom called. “Put your ear against the door and see if you can hear anything.”  The children had done this before and the advice was good. Opening a trap door in the floor of a room full of soldiers might be hard to explain. 

Frank did as he was instructed and whispered loudly back down the shaft, “It sounds perfectly still to me.” 

He looked up at the hinge and saw how it could be unlocked. He pushed the lock button and then gently lifted the front of the trap door.  It had obviously not been used in some time and he felt a rain of sand and dust spilling into his face and down his neck. The room was dark, but he saw flashes of light ahead. He climbed out into the building and saw windows in front of him. He walked over to the windows and could see the divided highway the building faced, with headlights flashing as the cars passed by. As the boys climbed up into the room, he turned to look down the length of the building. This appeared to be a headquarters building, but there was no furniture. He walked down the hall seeing only empty rooms and clean floors.  He had not been to Taylor Barracks, but he knew that the Army was slowly turning its long-held real estate back to the Germans and the quiet vacuity he saw there made him suspect that this was one of the kasernes that had already been returned. 

He said to the boys, “Guys, I think Taylor Barracks has already been returned to the Germans. The building is empty and there doesn’t seem to be any vehicles on the property.  There’s not much to see here and the clock is ticking, so let’s get back down the ladder and head for home.”

The boys looked around briefly and bewilderedly. They had gone to a lot of effort to identify where this tunnel had taken them, and it was anticlimactic to find that the destination had been abandoned. On the other hand, they were glad there didn’t appear to be any danger here, so they climbed back down the ladder, Frank closing and locking the trap door behind him.  Once on the floor of the tunnel, they stowed the short ladder again behind the ledge that concealed it and hurried back toward their home. They arrived at the chain ladder at 9:47 and then raced up to the 2^nd floor closet of their home. 

“Mom,” yelled Jason who was leading the pack up the ladder, “We’re home!” Lacy walked out of her bedroom with fire in her eyes.

“Frank,” she said with eerie intensity, “You said you would be back by 9 at the very latest.  I have picked up the phone half-a-dozen times to call the MPs, and then waited a few more minutes. If you hadn’t been back by 10, you would have had explaining to do to more than me.”

“Lace,” he said quietly. “We didn’t set a time tonight. That was Saturday night we said we’d be home by 9. We got a later start today so we were gone a little longer.”

“I expected we’d be playing by the same rules tonight,” she said frostily. I have been here alone with a sick girl and have been worried sick about you. This is just inconsiderate!”

The boys recognized a rare argument between their parents and faded into their room where they put on their pajamas and got ready for bed. 

“Honey, I’m so sorry we worried you. I wouldn’t do that on purpose for the world. It was just a misunderstanding.”

“Frank! You can be so infuriating. If I didn’t love you….” She let the unfinished statement hang in the air as she turned on her heel and walked back to their bedroom.  He followed her in, talking softly.

“How is Allie?” he asked, interested but also trying to change the subject.

“She has a fever and if she isn’t any better, she’ll be staying home from school tomorrow.  She’s asleep now.”

“Lacy, let me tell you what we found…”

“Not tonight, Frank. I don’t even want to hear about it,” and she climbed into bed, turned her back to him, and became silent as she pretended to go to sleep.