After an hour's walking I left the marshy country behind and struck woods and clumps of young pine trees. At last at about 4.30 a.m. I approached a metalled road which ran across my front. I advanced cautiously to the edge of it and then heard German voices. Some boys and women were milking and tending cattle not far away.

Thinking that to move forward at this hour, which is always one of the most active in the day with the hard-working farmers of Germany, would be to risk detection, I decided to rest where I was in hiding. I found a thick clump of young firs within sixty yards of the road and deposited my lumpy bag down in a place where the moss was thick and soft. A drink of water followed by a few biscuits and a piece of chocolate, sufficed for a meal, and then I lay down and tried to sleep, which I found impossible to do, although I was tired enough.

It was bitterly cold lying still, and my clothes, wringing wet with perspiration as they were, clung to me and took away all natural warmth.

I suppose I got an hour's sleep before 11 o'clock, when it got so hot that it became quite unpleasant in my hiding-place. These hours pa.s.sed very slowly and I felt the need of someone with whom to talk. At 3 o'clock I thought I would move forward and try to get up to the bank of the river without being seen. After crossing the road I proceeded for half a mile or so before leaving the thick cover which was plentiful hereabouts and got into a grove of large trees at the side of a field. Now I discovered that any further advance was out of the question at that time, as all the fields in front of me were hay-fields in the process of being cut, and I could see fourteen or fifteen Germans working at the cutting. I stayed where I was until about eight o'clock, when I saw that most of the workers had left the fields and gone home. I pushed on a bit now, making a detour to the north, and soon saw the main road bridge over the river.

By watching this I came to the conclusion that it had no guard posted on it, at any rate by day, but many civilians were walking across, and a hay cart pa.s.sed every minute or so.

Pushing on again I crossed the main road and got into the thick cover to the north of it and close to the river. As I was filthily dirty from the dust storm I thought I would bathe at a safe spot well away from the bridge, deciding to post myself in the bushes close up to it as soon as it became dusk. The bathe pa.s.sed off without incident, and after all, as it struck me while I was swimming about, what better disguise could I have than nakedness. If anyone came along I could act the German very thoroughly, knowing enough of the language to answer any question while swimming. The bathe was delightful and refreshed me exceedingly. After dressing I found that it was practically dark, so set off for my hiding-place close to the bridge. I got safely to it and lay down in a ditch running through some bushes within ten yards of the beginning of the wooden structure.

My plan was to cross as soon as it became quite dark.

I had been there scarcely ten minutes when I saw two German women come out of the house at the other end of the bridge and cross over towards me, followed at some thirty yards by a German soldier. He caught them up just opposite me and all three, talking hard, went some forty yards along the road, and then sat down in the bushes on my side of it.

Here they were soon joined by another soldier who came from the direction of the camp, as I discovered on hearing his voice. I was now so placed that I was actually between them and the bridge, but dared not move, as I was certain to make the bushes surrounding my hiding-place rustle and the dead sticks lying about crack. I waited in hopes that they would go away, but it got quite dark and still the giggles of the women and the low tones of the men continued.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AT LAST THE TWO WOMEN GOT UP" (_page 113_).]

At last, at about 11 o'clock, the two women got up, and after standing talking for a few minutes I heard one of them say to the men, "You must now remain quite quiet! Nicht?" And they answered yes, and I heard them all say good-night and the women walked back along the road across the bridge and went into their own house, leaving the two men still in the bushes. I waited for them to go also, but they did not budge. A silence as of the dead came over everything, and I knew then that they were an ambush, and a very cunningly placed one too.

Naturally, anyone looking to see if a bridge was guarded or not would expect to find the sentries on the middle or at either end of the bridge itself and could then clear away from the place if it proved to be unhealthy. However, this ambush was placed so as to catch any wretch moving cautiously along the side of the road, straining his eyes eagerly forward to see if the near end of the bridge was or was not guarded, little thinking as he did so of any cunning ambush fifty to sixty yards away from the bridge itself.

_Thursday, 21st June._ I now set myself to tire the Germans out by waiting, and hoped that in the early hours of the morning they would be less alert than usual.

I lay there, bitten all over by mosquitos, and having a very uncomfortable time of it. I heard one of them cough, and then, after an hour or two of silence, another cough. Altogether I waited about four hours, and it was not till roughly three o'clock that I thought I could risk a move.

Very cautiously I now began to crawl on all-fours towards the road, carefully feeling all the ground as I did so in order to be able to remove the dead sticks lying across my track. By pushing through the bushes very slowly I avoided making much of a noise and gained the embankment along the top of which ran the road, without causing any suspicion. Here I had a breather and then continued my crawl upwards.

I reached the top of the bank which was the edge of the road, and, knowing that I was well against the sky-line to the eyes of watchers below, did not waste much time before turning towards the bridge, and keeping well down, crawled steadily onwards, reducing the s.p.a.ce of time in which I risked being seen very rapidly. Another fifty yards on all fours and I ventured to get on to my feet and walk, in my rubber-soled shoes. Fifty yards more and I was safely off the planking of the bridge and on to the road proper with plenty of cover all round me.

As my clothes were of a light coffee tint they a.s.similated very well with the colours of the dusty road and the white painted woodwork of the bridge.

I felt inclined to roar with laughter at the ambush after gaining the far side of the river, and would dearly have loved to have shouted insults and gibes back at them, instead of which I continued my walk quietly along the road, keeping well to one side under the trees which so often border country roads in Germany. I soon came to a village, and feeling that this one was too close to the bridge, which had been guarded, to require anything for itself in this line, walked through it without even causing a dog to bark. I continued for an hour before anything else happened, and then I very nearly made a bad error. I was sleepy I suppose and was not so sharp on the look-out as I ought to have been, and I suddenly got an awful shock on distinctly seeing in front of me in the first light of the dawn two men in dark clothes approaching. I immediately turned about and walked away from them as hard as I could go. Gaining on them rapidly I continued till they were too far behind to be seen and then jumped into the corn on the right of the road, and after running fifty yards into it, lay still. Sure enough these two men had slowly continued their walk and now pa.s.sed me, carrying on for a hundred yards before they also stopped. Thinking that it was time to be off, especially as it was getting lighter every moment, I took a detour through the corn-fields and striking the road about half a mile further on crossed it and took a turn in the corn on the other side. Then after about a mile of making winding tracks through their precious wheat, rye and barley crops, I again struck the road and hurried along it to make up for lost time.

This wandering about I considered necessary in order to delay and perhaps bamboozle any police dog put on my track. I had no doubt that these two men were policemen and that they had only just caught a glimpse of me which had made them curious. I am certain I again had to thank my whitish suit for my immunity from determined pursuit.

After this little excitement I had to move very rapidly as it was already nearly daylight, and I wished to get to the banks of the next river before hiding.

Pushing along the road I struck a small town, and crossed the end of it, taking a level crossing on the way. Seeing n.o.body at the station near-by I gained more confidence again, and was not so upset as I might have been when I found that I had to walk for a mile or more along a road flanked on both sides with houses.

At last and by no means too soon I got to the river bank, had a drink, refilled my water-bottle and set about looking for a hiding-place in which to sleep during the day. This river, the Leine, is about seventy yards broad and is deep and fairly sluggish. There was a bridge crossing it about a mile downstream from the place at which I drank.

I found a hiding-place not far from the river, but after a short while I began to think that it was a bad one, as although in this district most of the hay had been cut, one field quite near had still to be done. So off I went to look for a better place. I found a thick hedge which looked likely, and then suddenly saw a girl bathing eighty yards away. However, I quickly decided that she could never have seen me, and began to pull aside some brambles with a view to getting in.

Suddenly without any warning I heard just behind me "Guten Morgen." I turned in a second and found myself face to face with a flapper dressed all in white, on her way to bathe.

I growled back "Good Morning" and she pa.s.sed on. I expect she also got a shock, for I must have been a wild-looking object. I decided now that this was no place for me and began to make tracks as soon as she had moved away. I hadn't gone a hundred yards when I heard a man's voice and the yapping of a dog come from where I had spoken to the flapper. He was speaking to the girls, so fearing that my girl might have mentioned seeing an extraordinary apparition on her way, and so arouse suspicions in the mind of the man, I cleared out and went through the woods, which were fairly thick here for about a mile.

I was lucky now to find a deserted factory quite close to the bridge which I had seen previously. By this factory was a thick patch of small fir trees, into which I forced my way and found excellent cover among the dense undergrowth and lower branches of the trees. I tried to sleep, but had little success, and was again worried by flies and heat at about midday. My watch had stopped, so I arranged some sticks so that when their shadow pointed north by my compa.s.s I should know it was roughly noon, and be able to set my watch.

I was keeping a collection of hieroglyphics which I cannot honour with the t.i.tle of "Diary." I purposely made it unreadable, and abbreviated all the words so that it would convey nothing to the Boche if they caught me.

Unless one keeps some sort of record it is very easy to forget the day of the week, etc., and that is necessary knowledge, as Sunday is a special day in Germany and must be treated differently by an escapee.

It had become very uncomfortable in my hiding-place and sleep was out of the question for some reason, so I thought that as I had lost time already by being delayed both nights, I must try to make up for the delay, and what would help to do so more than anything else would be the crossing of the Leine by daylight. The more I thought of it the more I wished to get that river behind me as soon as possible. I decided that at any rate I would scout the bridge and then make up my mind.

This proved easier than I had hoped, because I found that the bridge had no cover anywhere near it, so that I was able to see without any trouble from quite a distance away that there was no sentry on the bridge or in the neighbourhood. There being no cover, ambushes were out of the question. I thought then that I might easily cross at once, as at night there was always the possibility of finding that a sentry had been posted simply for the hours of darkness, those being the hours during which prisoners generally move, a fact that the Germans know well.

Accordingly I got on to the road and walked boldly along it, reading a German newspaper which I had found and kept the day before.

Just before reaching the bridge I met a very nice-looking German girl carrying two pails of milk. She deigned to honour me, tramp though I looked, with a sweet smile and a most encouraging "good-day." I suppose the shortage of young men in the Fatherland was accountable for this; it would hardly have been due to my personal beauty.

However, she didn't meet with much response beyond a surly "good-day"

from behind my newspaper. On the bridge itself I met an older woman who just looked at me and didn't answer my good-day. That made me hurry on somewhat. I got across without any trouble and didn't see a sign of a sentry, and I was not surprised at that, seeing how near the Aller and Leine are to each other.

It would mean many more men called away from farm work to arrange for the guarding of the crossings of the Leine as well; a fact which hardly recommends itself to the Boche authorities just at present.

CHAPTER VI

I MEET FOX AND BLANK

The fact that this bridge was left behind made me feel quite elated, and I continued along a lane in a westerly direction with full confidence in my disguise and my evidently unsuspicious appearance generally.

The lane ending in a field made me take to working across country.

There were quite a number of Germans scattered about making hay. I had to go very cautiously so as to avoid meeting anyone face to face, as they might have asked me awkward questions relating to my work, etc. I also could not walk across fields with long gra.s.s in them by day without risking causing suspicions in the minds of any farmer who might see me, as the Germans themselves are very careful not to damage any crops in these times.

And now happened the most remarkable thing that could well have fallen to the experience of anyone outside a novel.

I was walking along a hedge very slowly, watching a German in the distance, when suddenly I thought I heard my name being spoken very clearly and distinctly. Again I heard it and this time I was certain, and immediately thought that I was imagining it and that I was really going mad. I was told afterwards that I clutched my head with both hands. It was an awful shock to hear this, after not having seen anyone or been with anyone who knew me for two and a half days, and having crossed two rivers and got miles from the camp in which my only acquaintances and friends in Germany were locked up. I turned round and then I heard it again coming out of the hedge, and not only my name this time but an exceedingly English sentence which told me that I was a something fool, and that I was to come back. I promptly did so and found Major C.V. Fox, D.S.O., and Lieut. Blank lying at the bottom of the hedge. I at once joined them, and I naturally thought that all the officers from the camp had escaped and were spread far and wide over Germany, and that I had found a couple of them without being unduly lucky. However, that was not the case. Fox and Blank had escaped sixteen hours after I did, but while I had been hung up between the ambush and the first bridge for four hours, they had pushed ahead and crossed both rivers and got to their present hiding-place at daybreak.

It was a great relief to have somebody with whom to talk, and we set to and discussed details in low whispers.

I then found out that I had not been missed at roll-call the night I had hidden in the tin office.

Fox told me his adventures and I gave him an account of mine in exchange.

Again our luck was well to the fore. On examining our supplies of food, etc., I found that Fox had lost nearly all his biscuits and chocolate in the crossing of the Aller, which they had had to negotiate by swimming a raft across. This had got swamped, as its buoyancy was poor, naturally with disastrous consequences to much of the perishable food they had taken with them.

I had got a good number, and so would be able to supply them and in exchange they gave me other things.

My compa.s.s was a good one, theirs poor; whereas my map was exceedingly bad and theirs quite good.

We found that we had both the same ideas of the route to be taken towards the frontier. The Germans had captured three other lots of escapers in the district around Osnabruck.

Forest guards were active in the woods in this district, and this had decided both of us on our line before we met.

Another fact which made us the more sure which route we should follow was the nature of the ground as shown by the maps. The country which we eventually traversed is shown as marshy, and we had both decided that the great drought in Germany this summer would have dried this up to a very large extent, and we hoped that the Germans might not have taken this fact into consideration in allocating guards, so that this district would be more lightly watched than others. As a matter of fact the maps exaggerate the marshes, and I should think that even after really wet weather it would be possible to follow the same line.