The building that Libby Prison occupies was never intended to be a prison at all and it is not well suited to this purpose. The building was built as a tenement building but was then converted for use as a tobacco warehouse. It consists of three large rooms on each floor. Doors have been cut to connect the three rooms on the second and third floors where the prisoners are housed but the rooms on the first and lower floors remain separate. Guards occupy the first floor while the basement floor is used as a storage cellar, a carpenter shop, and an abandoned kitchen. This kitchen is covered by two feet of straw and known by all as “Rat Hell.”
Colonel Rose has briefed you on the bold mission to create a passageway through a chimney down to Rat Hell. They have already chiseled an access to the chimney flue by prying out a few bricks with a penknife in short shifts overnight. The plan is to tunnel from Rat Hell to the basement of Kerr’s Warehouse, the adjacent building to the east. You agree to join the digging crew and follow Colonel Rose as he crawls into the chimney and down a makeshift ladder that has been crafted from the ropes securing bales of blankets that recently. You draw in a sharp breath and squeeze yourself into the filthy chimney.
The rope ladder terminates in the basement kitchen, a room that became so infested with rats that the prison administrators simply shut it down and locked it off. Rat Hell is filthy and infested with pests. Rats scurry everywhere and the stench is overwhelming at first. The straw covering the floor is rotting and provides the rats shelter and ample camouflage should anyone enter the room. The guards, however, are loath to enter which leaves you and the digging crew ample privacy as long as they don’t notice anyone missing from the prisoner floors.
Colonel Rose explains the project to you: “Teamster Ford has access to the outside of the prison and he has measured the distance from the prison wall to the warehouse next door. By his estimation, the tunnel must be 50 feet long. We have three teams of five that will take shifts throughout the night. When your shift is over, you must climb back up the chimney without being spotted and rest until your next shift. When we have successfully escaped use the grid Miss Van Lew gave you. It will give you the location of a safe house.”
You discover that your fellow prisoners, equipped only with a broken shovel and a couple of pocket knives are nearing completion the 50ft tunnel to freedom. You join the squad, scraping the dirt off the tunnel walls. The earth is soft, and often the simplest method of digging is with your bare hands. The earth is packed into a spittoon which is fastened with two ropes. The team member at the entrance of the tunnel pulls the spittoon out to empty it and then it is pulled back to the dig site. The dirt is hidden under the straw on the floor in the kitchen. You are grateful you are digging and not fighting the rats for camouflage.
The air is disgusting, the rats’ squealing relentless but the lure of freedom keeps spirits high. Seventeen long days of digging later, the tunnel breaks through into a storage room in Kerr’s Warehouse.
Tomorrow will be a great day for you and your fellow prisoners. But first you must determine where you must go next on your journey to freedom. Now you can turn your attention to the grid paper given you by Miss Van Lew.
