The date was April 7, 1916. The fat German warder backed out of my cell, a satisfied smile on his face; the door swung to, the great key clicked in the lock, and I was alone.
Prison once more! And only a bare three miles away was the frontier for which I had striven so hard—the ditch and the barbed wire that separated Germany, and all that that word means, from Holland, the Hook, the London boat, and freedom.
The game was lost. That was the kernel of the situation as it presented itself to me, sitting on my bed in the narrow, dark cell.
Vreden, where I thus found myself in prison, is a little town hardly three miles from the Dutch frontier, in the Prussian province of Westphalia. So near—and indeed a good deal nearer—had I got to liberty!
Twenty-four hours before, my first attempt to escape from Germany—which might be described with some justification as my third—had failed, and instead of being a free man in a neutral country, I was still a British civilian prisoner of war.
Apart from the overwhelming sense of failure which oppressed me, I was not exactly physically comfortable. To start with, I wanted a change of clothing and a real bath. I had not had my boots off—except during several hours when I was walking in bare feet for the sake of silence—for over eight days, and for almost the same length of time I had not even washed my hands. The change of clothing was out of the question. The bath—One does not feel as if one has had a bath after an ablution in a tin basin holding a pint of water, with a cake of chalky soap the size of a penny-piece, and a towel which, but for texture, would have made a tolerable handkerchief. And no water to be spilled on the floor of the cell, mind you!
My prison bed was an old, wooden “civilian” one with a pile of paillasses on it, and the usual two blankets. It was fairly comfortable to lie on, as long as the numerous indigenous population left you alone, which they rarely did.
The warder—the only one, I believe, in the prison—had asked me immediately after my arrival whether or not I had any money on me. When he heard I had not, his face fell. Since he could not make me profitable he made me useful, and put me to peeling potatoes in the morning, a job I liked very much under the circumstances.
The food in Vreden prison was scanty, barely sufficient. I was always moderately hungry, and ravenous when meal-time was still two or three hours off. Twice in four days I had an opportunity of walking for twenty minutes round the tiny prison yard, sunless and damp, where green moss spread itself in three untrodden corners, while the fourth was occupied by a large cesspool. The rest of my time I spent alone in my cell, now and again reading a few pages of Jules Verne’s “Five Weeks in a Balloon,” execrably translated into German and lent me by the warder. But mostly I was busy speculating about my immediate future, or thinking of the eighteen months of my captivity in Germany.
Technically, I was not being punished as yet for my escape. I was merely being kept under lock and key pending my removal back to Ruhleben camp or to a prison in Berlin, I did not know which. But if it was not punishment I was undergoing in the little frontier town, it was an excellent imitation of it.
Some experiences, exciting when compared with the dull routine of camp life, were still ahead of me; the journey to Berlin was something to look forward to, at any rate. But what would happen afterward? I did not know, for I flatly refused to believe in solitary confinement to the end of the war—the punishment which had been suggested as in store for unsuccessful escapers.
I had not escaped from Ruhleben, as my predecessors had. I had walked out of a virtually unguarded sanatorium in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, where British civilian prisoners of war, suffering from diseases and ailments which could not be properly combated in camp, were treated. Might not this give an earnest to a plea which was shaping in my mind? Could the Germans be persuaded to believe that I had acted under the influence of an attack of temporary insanity, caused by overwhelming homesickness? True, I had “gone away” well prepared; I had shown a certain amount of determination and tenacity of purpose. On the other hand, I had not destroyed any military property. Of course, I had damaged a good deal of property, but it wasn’t military property! A fine point, but an important one, especially in Germany.
These were the sort of reflections which mostly occupied my four days in Vreden prison, unreasoning optimism struggling desperately against rather gloomy common sense.
What I looked forward to most in the solitude of my cell was a meeting with my old friends in Ruhleben camp in the near future. The other escapers had all been returned to camp for a short time before they were taken to prison, to demonstrate to us ocularly the hopelessness of further attempts. Surely the Germans would do the same with me; and then I should get speech with one or two of my particular chums. For this I longed with a great longing, although I did not look forward to telling them that I had failed.
Only one of them knew the first links in the chain of events which connected my sensations of the first day of the war with the present, when I was restlessly measuring the length of my cell, or sitting motionless on the edge of the bed, staring with dull eyes upon the dirty floor. Under the pressure of my disappointment, and without the natural safety-valve of talk to a friendly soul, I naturally began to examine my experiences during the war, opening the pigeon-holes of my memory one by one, reliving an incident here, revisualizing a picture there, and retracing the whole length of the—to me—most important developments leading up to my attempted escape.
When the storm clouds of the European war were gathering I was living in Neuss, a town on the left bank of the Rhine, between DÜsseldorf, a few miles to the north, and Cologne, twenty miles to the south. I had been there a little over a year. Immersed though I was in business, I was by no means happy. I was distinctly tired of Germany, and was on the point of cutting short my engagements and leaving the “Fatherland.”
I had turned thirty some time before, and hitherto my life, although it had led me into many places, had been that of an ordinary business man. In spite of unmistakable roaming proclivities, it was likely to continue placidly enough. Then suddenly everything was changed.
One afternoon, about the 20th of July, I was standing in the enclosure of the Neuss Tennis Club, waiting for a game. The courts were close to a point where a number of important railway lines branched off toward Belgium and France. I was watching and wondering about the incessant traffic of freight-trains which for days past had been rolling in that direction at about fifteen-minute intervals. They consisted almost exclusively of closed trucks.
Another member of the club pointed his racket toward one. “War material. Soldiers!” he said succinctly. With a sinking heart I gazed after the train as it disappeared from view. The political horizon was clouded, but surely it wouldn’t come to this! It couldn’t come to this. It was impossible that it should happen.
The police, always troublesome and inquisitive in Germany, seemed to be taking some unaccountable interest in me. Nothing was further from my mind than to connect this lively interest in an obscure individual like myself with anything so stupendous as a war.
And then it happened. War was declared.
I was warned not to leave the town without permission. I was eating my head off in idleness and anxiety. I hoped to be sent out of the country at short notice, but the order to pack up and be gone did not come. Instead, I was invited to call upon the inspector of police at 9 A.M. on the 27th of August. I obeyed. An hour later I was locked up in a cell of an old, evil-smelling, small prison. I did not know for what reason, beyond the somewhat incomprehensible one of being a British subject. Nor did I know for how long. The inspector of police had answered my questions with an Oriental phrase: It was an order!
It appeared that the order referred to Britishers of military age only, which, according to it, began with the seventeenth and ended with the thirty-ninth year. Thus it came about that I made the acquaintance of three out of the six Englishmen then temporarily living in Neuss, but hitherto beyond my ken. They were all fitters of a big Manchester firm, Messrs. Mather & Platt Ltd., employed in putting up a sprinkler installation in the works of the International Harvester Co., an American concern in Neuss.
We were treated comparatively well in prison. Nevertheless, the days we had to pass in that old, evil-smelling house of sorrows were interminable. Most of our time we spent together, in a locked-up part of the corridor on the second floor. Outside it was glorious summer weather. All our windows were open to the breeze, which never succeeded in dispersing the stench pervading the whole building. Sitting on the uncomfortable wooden stools, or walking idly about, we smoked incessantly, read desultorily in magazines and books, and talked spasmodically. And always the air vibrated with the faint, far-away, half-heard, half-sensed muttering of distant guns. The news in the German newspapers was never cheering to us.
As suddenly as we had been arrested we were released from prison after eleven days, and confined to the town.
There followed nine weeks of inactivity and endless waiting. For the first time I gave a fleeting thought to an attempt of making my way out of Germany by stealth. It hardly seemed worth while, as we were “sure of being exchanged sooner or later”! Twice I left the town for a few hours. On my return I always found the police fully conversant with every one of my moves, which showed how carefully they were watching me. Having always provided excellent explanations for my actions, I escaped trouble over these escapades.
As announced beforehand in the German press, we were arrested again on November 6, 1914. We passed four cheery days in the old familiar prison, and then came the excitement of our departure for Ruhleben camp, via Cologne, where we and a hundred and fifty other civilian prisoners, collected from the Rhine provinces, spent a night in a large penal prison.
Under a strong escort we were marched to the station at seven the following morning. Before starting we had been told that there was only one punishment for misbehavior on transport—death! Misbehavior included leaving the ranks in the streets or leaning out of the windows when in the railway carriages.
Entraining at eight o’clock, we did not reach our final destination until twenty-three hours later. The first hour or so of our journey was tolerable. We were in third-class carriages. Having had hardly any breakfast, and no tea or supper the previous day, we soon became hungry and thirsty. But we were not even allowed to get a drink of water. Whenever the train drew into a station, the Red Cross women rushed toward our carriages with pots of coffee and trays of food, under the impression that we were Germans on the way to join our regiments. But they were always warned off by uniformed officials: “Nothing for those English swine.” We were evidently beyond the pale of humanity.
At 2 A.M. we disembarked at Hanover station, to wait two hours for another train. Here a bowl of very good soup was served out to us.
At 7 A.M. on the 12th of November our train drew up at a siding. We were ordered roughly to get out and form fours. It was dark and cold. A thin drizzling rain was falling. Hardly as cheerful as when we left Neuss, we entered Ruhleben camp.
CHAPTER II
RUHLEBEN: THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS
Ruhleben! A ride in a trolley car of fifty minutes to the east, and one would have been in the center of Berlin. Toward the west the town of Spandau was plainly visible. Shall we ever forget its sky-line—the forest of chimneys, the tall, ugly outlines of the tower of the town hall, the squat “Julius” tower, the supposed “war treasury” of the Germans where untold millions of marks of gold were alleged to be lying!
Before the war the camp had been a trotting race-course, a model of its kind in the way of appointments. Altogether, six grand stands, a restaurant for the public, a club-house for the members of the Turf Club, administrative buildings, and eleven large stables, all solidly built of brick and concrete, illustrated German thoroughness.
These buildings, except the three smaller grand stands, clustered along the west and south sides of an oval track, which was not at first included in the camp area.
Since the beginning of the war the restaurant, the “Tea House” as it was called, at the extreme western end, and the large halls underneath the three grand stands next to it had been used to house refugees from eastern Prussia. Then, an assorted lot of prisoners of war and civilians interned, preponderantly Russian but with a sprinkling of British and French subjects, had taken their place. A few Russians were still there when we arrived but evacuated very soon after. Their departure made the camp exclusively British.
We were given breakfast. It consisted of a bowl of so-called coffee and a loaf of black bread. The bread was to last us two days. Then we were marched to our palatial residence, Stable No. 5. We set to work to remove the plentiful reminders of the former four-legged inhabitants and installed ourselves as best we might.
The stables contained twenty-four box-stalls and two tiny rooms for stable personnel on the ground floor, and two large hay-lofts above. Six men to a box-stall was the rule, and as many as could be packed into the lofts. I had experience in both quarters, for I slept in the loft for more than a week, and then moved into “Box No. 6,” where a space on the floor had become empty. My new quarters were, at first, much less attractive than the loft. They offered, however greater possibilities for improvement.
For six weeks we slept on a stone floor covered by an inch or so of wet straw. We had just room enough to lie side by side. We could turn over, if we did so together. The “loftites” slept on boards with straw on top of them. Later we all got ticks into which we could pack the wet and fouling straw. To start with, there was no heating. Then steam-radiators were installed, and during this winter and the three following, the stone barracks were heated in a fitful kind of way. The locomobile boilers which furnished the steam, one for each three or four barracks, delivered it into the radiators from 10 A.M. to 12 noon and from 3 to 5 P.M.
At last the “boxites” received bedsteads. They consisted of a simple iron framework with three-quarter-inch boards as mattresses. On these we placed our ticks. The bed uprights had male and female ends which permitted the building of as many superimposed bunks as seemed practicable. Two sleeping-structures of three bunks each was the rule in the boxes.
The food we received from the Germans was insufficient at any time. The allowance per man for rations was sixty-five pfennigs per day—sixteen cents at the pre-war rate of exchange. It was contracted for at this price by a caterer.
While food in Germany was plentiful we could buy additions to our rations at the canteen. This became gradually impossible. We didn’t mind that much, as parcels containing food and other necessities, but mainly food, began to arrive from England in ever-increasing number. Relatives of prisoners, the firms they had been working for, and trade-unions or other organizations to which they belonged started the ball rolling. But when the real need of the prisoners became known in Blighty, special organizations for the purpose of assisting them sprang up everywhere. As they were independent of one another their work to a great extent overlapped. The majority of the civilians interned received too much; here and there a man received nothing at all. Through the action of the British Government the work of the individual societies was coÖrdinated in November, 1916. From that date, the Order of the Red Cross and St. John was in charge of all of the relief work for prisoners of war, and each prisoner received six parcels of food per lunar month, not counting two loaves of white bread per week.
As far as my experience goes, the German authorities made an effort to have these parcels reach their destination. During the latter part of my imprisonment deliveries became somewhat irregular. Food was scarce at that time in some parts of Germany and commanded very high prices, and the theft of parcels naturally increased.
Ruhleben camp was administered, at first, by the German officers in charge, with the help of the interned. In the spring of 1916, all of the internal affairs of the camp were placed in the hands of the interned themselves, the Germans confining themselves to guard duties and general supervision.
Much has been published about prisoners’ camps in Germany. Horrible stories have been told about them, and these are in the main quite true. But camps differed from one another; nor were the conditions in a given camp always the same. I’m not suggesting gradual or steady improvement. But, just as camp commanders and regional military commanders differed, so did the treatment of their charges differ. As prisoners of war the men in Ruhleben camp were a pretty lucky lot. The choice flowers of Kultur bloomed elsewhere.
In the beginning of our internment hopes of a speedy exchange to England ran high, and so did rumors concerning it. They helped us to endure the hardships of the first few months, hardships which might have proved even less tolerable than they did without some such sheet-anchor of faith.
In spite of the misery of the first winter, however, the majority of the pro-English portion of the camp would at any time have refused a chance of living “free” in Germany under the conditions we experienced previous to our internment. This certainly was the prevailing opinion among my friends, as it was mine. In camp, at any rate, we could wag our tongues, and speak as we listed, if we took only ordinary precautions. We had congenial companions, and shared our joys and discomforts. As long as our health remained tolerable, who would not have preferred this to liberty among German surroundings? But when illness came upon us—and few escaped it altogether—it was rather a tough proposition.
The colonial Britishers were not at first considered to come under the heading “Englander.” Probably the Germans were waiting for the disruption of the British Empire and intended to further it by partial treatment of men from our colonies, for they let them remain at liberty until the end of January, 1915. It was then that the colonials arrived in Ruhleben.
Later came the separation of the sheep from the goats! There was trouble in camp. It had started in a ridiculous manner. A young lad had been overheard saying something about “bloody Germans,” and this had been reported to the authorities by one of their spies. German self-esteem was horribly hurt, the more so as they misunderstood the epithet and interpreted it as “bloodthirsty.” Whispers of impending trouble had reached us, and we were not astonished when, one morning—I believe in February or March, 1915—the alarm bell sounded the “line up.” Each barracks separately formed up in a hollow square in front of its dwelling-place. And each barracks was addressed separately by the camp commander, Baron von Taube. He was in a perfect frenzy of rage when our turn came. Our barracks was one of the last spoken to, and how he managed to keep up the performance after so many repetitions is a thing I cannot easily understand.
“We shall be the victors in this war thrust upon us by your country!” he shouted at us. “And here and now I fling your own expression back into your faces. Bloody Englishmen I call you! Bloody Englishmen!” He thumped his chest like a gorilla about to charge. He came near to foaming at the mouth. So far it was merely amusing. Then came the order: “All those who entertain friendly feelings toward Germany fall out and hand in your names.”
Our barracks was rather a mixed one, many of its inhabitants being pro-German in sentiment. In addition, good and loyal men all over the camp, whose financial interests were entirely in Germany, became panicky and went over to the other side in the futile hope of saving their property. When they had gone to the office, we others were dismissed. Excitedly we discussed what had happened. Many of us were deeply disturbed. They were those who thought they had flung their all into a well, as it were, by standing still when the pro-Germans fell out. But we all hoped that the others would be quartered apart from us.
Unfortunately that was not the case. They came back and lived among us for some time, their presence giving rise to many a quarrel.
Some months afterward another separation of the sheep from the goats took place, much less dramatically, and this time the pro-Germans were quartered all by their sweet selves at one end of the camp.
In April, 1915, two men escaped from the hospital barracks, situated outside the barbed-wire enclosure, and but carelessly guarded. One of them became a great friend of mine later on.
When these two men escaped, I was playing with the idea myself. It was a very fine spring. In the afternoons I used to sit on the uppermost tier of the big grand stand. High up as I was, the factory buildings and chimneys toward the west, where Spandau lay, appeared dwarfed; and gazing across with my book on my knees, I had a sense of freedom. I used to dream extravagant dreams of flights in aËroplanes with Germany gliding backward beneath my feet, with the fat pastures of Holland unrolling from the horizon, with the gray glint of the sea appearing, and the shores of England lying rosy under a westering sun. And then, coming down to realities, I began seriously to speculate upon the chances of “getting through.”
I soon came to the conclusion that a companion was desirable, a good man who spoke German well, as I did; a man with plenty of common sense about him. I found one in April, T——, a native of the state of Kansas. Lack of money made an early attempt impossible. I had enough for myself, but my friend was dependent upon the five shillings per week relief money paid by the British Government to those who had no resources of their own. I could not get hold of sufficient money for the two of us at once, so I set myself to accumulate gradually the necessary amount.
But the summer passed, the leaves began to turn yellow, and my pocket-book still contained less than I thought necessary.
In June of that year a successful escape from camp and from Germany by Messrs. Pyke and Falk set us all talking and wondering. Then, in quick succession, two serious attempts by a couple of men each failed. News was allowed to reach us that they would be kept in solitary confinement until the end of the war. This inhuman punishment was not actually put into effect, but the unfortunates got five months’ and four and a half months’ solitary confinement respectively, and after that indefinite detention in prison.
My companion and I heard only about the first sentence. It somewhat staggered us; but we decided that, as we did not intend to be caught, the punishment ought not to deter us, and that if we were caught we could stick it out as well as the next man.
The days were growing shorter, the nights colder, the boughs of the trees barer, and conditions generally more unfavorable, and still we hung on. Then the military authorities began doubling the number of wire fences around the camp and erecting plenty of extra light-standards in the space between them. Also, the number of sentries was increased. All this decided us to have “a shot at it” there and then, before the additional fences were completed.
We had hoped for an overcast sky. Instead, the full moon was bathing the camp in light. Feeling anything but comfortable, we walked up to that part of the wire fence where we intended to scramble over. We were just getting ready, when a sentry came around the corner of the barracks outside the wire. We had never observed the man on that beat before. He stopped short, and his rifle came to the ready. “We’re camp policemen, if he asks,” I whispered to my companion. Lingering a moment as if in conversation, we then walked slowly away. We decided not to try again that night.
The next morning I was disgusted with myself and all the world. I talked it over with my companion, and he agreed with me that it was “no go” that year. Another week of light nights would see the wire fences completed and the season so far advanced that the odds would be too heavy against us.
For some days I chewed the bitter cud of disappointment. Then I told my friend that I should be glad to go with him, if he had an opportunity, but that in the meantime I should take any chance, if one came to me, alone. He expressed approval.
CHAPTER III
THE SANATORIUM
Toward the end of November an old Scotsman, a member of my barracks (No. 5), was returned to camp from the sanatorium in Charlottenburg. I questioned him about the place. It appeared that no desperate illness was necessary to get there, as long as one was willing to pay for oneself instead of coming down upon the British Government funds ordinarily provided for that purpose.
This institution was a private medical establishment known as Weiler’s Sanatorium. The camp administration, by now in our own hands, had made arrangements with the proprietors to receive and treat such cases of illness or ill-health as could not be treated adequately in camp, where the accommodation in the infirmary, measured on civilized standards, was of the roughest.
Having a big scar on my left thigh, the only reminder of a perfectly healed compound fracture many years old, I believed sciatica a likely complaint to acquire. Except in extreme cases no observable changes take place in the affected limb, and the statement of the patient is the only means of diagnosis. Forthwith I developed a gradually increasing limp. With it I got grumpy and ill-tempered, the limp preventing me from taking my usual exercise, and this soon had its effect.
At regular and short intervals I went to see the doctor. To start with, I got sympathy from him, and aspirin. But nothing did me any good, though I admitted to an occasional improvement when the weather was fine and dry. At last I was taken into the Schonungsbaracke and put under a severe course of sweating. I stuck it out, but came dangerously near throwing up the sponge before I was released at the end of a week of it. By that time I had made up my mind that my sciatica ought to be cured, at least temporarily.
I kept away from the doctor for some time, but after a fortnight, during which my limp had gradually increased again, I was back in the surgery. He admitted that under camp conditions a lasting cure, even of a mild case like mine, was hardly to be thought of; but since the Schonungsbaracke was full, there was nothing for me “but to stay in bed as much as possible” and to swallow aspirin. This treatment suited me excellently well.
I kept hanging about the surgery complaining mildly until the first days of February, when the weather was rotten. I had a serious attack then. I knew the Schonungsbaracke to be still full, and this gave me the opportunity of asking to be transferred for treatment to the sanatorium.
My case being considered urgent, I left the camp the same afternoon, accompanied by a soldier and a box-mate of mine who had volunteered to carry my luggage—for I was unable, of course, even to lift it. With somewhat mingled feelings I looked my last upon Ruhleben for many a long day.
My new home had originally been intended for nervous cases only—a private lunatic asylum, to put it bluntly. The arrangement with the camp authorities for the treatment of all kinds of ailments among a population of over four thousand was taxing its capacity to the utmost. So many of our men were there at this time that they not only filled the original institution but were housed and treated in several dwellings leased by the proprietors in addition to the asylum.
This was a large building with an extensive garden at 38 Nussbaum Allee, Charlottenburg. The appellation “Nussbaum Allee” distinguished it from the other houses, of which there were four, if I am not mistaken. I forget their names, however, with the exception of “Linden Allee.”
There were two classes of patients, whose food and accommodation differed according to the amount they paid, or which was paid for them by the British Government through the American Embassy. First-class treatment cost at that time twelve marks per day exclusive of medicines and special treatment. Without exception the expense had to be defrayed by the patient himself. In the second-class eight marks per day was charged. Neither class could expect private bedrooms for this, except where infectious ailments or other medical reasons made separate rooms imperative.
I had offered to pay my own expenses, to avoid delay by having my case referred to the American Embassy. It was a matter of indifference to me what class I was put into. The points of comfort I was looking for were easily opened windows, etc. I liked fresh air at any time, but now was particularly impressed by a theory of mine, that fresh air could be admitted in sufficient quantities only by windows not too high from the ground and large enough to admit, or rather to give exit to, a fairly bulky man.
The windows looked all right, but, from my point of view, they were not. They had diamond panes set in cast-iron frames; and even if they opened, a dog could not have got out of the aperture. All the corridor doors were kept constantly locked. There was no passing from one part of the building to another without the help of a warder or a nurse. The idea of having to sleep in the same room with six or eight people, one or two of them seriously ill, did not appeal to me. One of them was always sure to be awake at night. Straightway I applied for first-class treatment, for this would get me sent to the “Linden Allee Villa,” where these lunatic-asylum precautions would probably be absent.
I was taken there in the course of the following morning. My assumption proved correct, for things were different. Twelve patients nearly occupied the available accommodation. The staff consisted of only a nurse and three servant girls, and no military guard was about the place. The biggest bedrooms contained three beds. A garden surrounded the house, accessible through at least three doors and a number of windows of the ordinary French pattern. A low iron railing separated the garden from the streets, which in this part of the town were very wide, and which frequently had two causeways, lined with trees, and divided by stretches of lawn and thick shrubbery.
Not far from “Linden Allee” a big artery ran right into Berlin.
CHAPTER IV
PLANNING THE DETAILS
The outlines of my plan of escape had been conceived almost a year before in Ruhleben, and had remained unaltered.
Generally speaking, the chances of success were so small that I was convinced it could be achieved only by the elimination of every unnecessary risk, and with a considerable amount of good fortune thrown in to make up for the unavoidable balance on the wrong side.
It must be remembered that we civilians were interned right in the center of Germany. There were three neutral countries to make for: Denmark, Holland, and Switzerland, distant from Ruhleben in that order. My choice fell upon Holland, which, from information I had obtained, seemed to offer the best opportunities.
Denmark, being only about a hundred and fifty miles away, had at first appeared very tempting. But the difficulty of crossing the Kiel Canal, the extraordinarily close watch kept all over Schleswig-Holstein and the frontier, lack of information about the state of affairs along the Baltic coast, and the obvious difficulty of making a passage in a stolen boat to the nearest point on the Danish coast, twenty-five miles away, decided me against this plan. Switzerland was about six hundred miles distant, and the railway journey, with its attendant dangers, correspondingly long. Also, we had heard that part of the Swiss frontier, at least, was impregnably guarded. There remained Holland, about four hundred miles away.
In view of my thorough knowledge of German, I did not believe the railway journey an impossible undertaking. It appeared more feasible, at any rate, than the four-weeks’ tramp to the frontier with what scant food one could carry. Up to the last moment I tried to get information as to whether special passports were necessary for traveling on a train, and whether they would be inspected on taking the ticket, or during the journey. I had contradictory accounts about this.
Having arrived at the sanatorium, I very soon made up my mind to the following mode of procedure: A stay at the “Linden Allee” until the 30th of March would give me about four weeks in which to recruit my health, which was none of the best after a grueling winter in camp. Then, with a new moon on the 1st of April, a succession of dark nights would be favorable for my purpose. On account of the weather, it might become advisable to delay the start a day or two; but if exceptionally wintry conditions should be prevailing then, a postponement until the moon had again changed through all her phases would become necessary. Trying to imagine conditions near the frontier, I had come to the conclusion that with snow on the ground, giving a considerable range of vision even during the darkest hours of the night, a successful passage through the sentry lines would be out of the question. On the other hand, the nights would be much shorter at the end of April, and this made me nervous lest such a postponement should be forced upon me. The task of getting out of the sanatorium and making my way into Berlin did not trouble me at all. It was as easy as falling off a log. Such of my things as I should deem necessary or very desirable for the exploit, I was going to take with me in a small leather Gladstone bag.
From newspapers I had learned that a train left Berlin for Leipzig at 7 A.M. My absence would probably not be discovered before the first breakfast, served in bed at 7:45 A.M. Thus I could be a good many miles away when the alarm reached headquarters.
Leipzig was not on my direct route toward the Dutch frontier, but it appeared very attractive as my first objective, partly for that reason. It is a big place, and a man could easily pass in the crowd there for a day, while the shops would allow me to complete my equipment with a compass and maps.
In Berlin the sale of the latter was prohibited except with a permit from the army corps commander. This ordinance was savagely enforced and probably strictly observed. Leipzig—the center of the German printing-trade, and, in the Kingdom of Saxony, not in Prussia—was the place where one could hope to obtain them, if anywhere.
In another way the fact of Leipzig being in a different state was in my favor. Any efforts of the Berlin police to recapture me would very likely be retarded if the case had to be handed over to a distinct and independent police organization.
I hoped that when I arrived in Dortmund, some time during the morning following my escape from the sanatorium, I could make my way by slow trains to the small town of Haltern.
This is situated in the northwestern corner of the province of Westphalia on the northern bank of the river Lippe. The nearest part of Holland from there is only twenty-five miles distant as the crow flies, and no river of any size intervenes, an important consideration for the time of year I had fixed upon. Moreover, it is nowhere near the Rhine. As I had lived in the northern part of the Rhine province, the danger of being accidentally seen by a former acquaintance bade me keep away from that district.
There remained the smaller details of my plan to work out, file, and put together. Some of them were planned and executed before I left camp. For example, I had grown a beard during the winter 1915-16. This altered my appearance and lent itself to another alteration, back to the original. I bethought myself in the “Linden Allee” that the Germans would probably expect me to shave it off. A good reason for not doing so.
The universal practice of the Boches in both civil and military camps was to mark all the clothing of prisoners of war so distinctively that the status of the wearer could be recognized at a glance, if ever he got away. These marks consisted at first of stripes of vivid color painted down the seams of their trousers and around their arms, and fancy figures, circles, triangles, etc., on their backs. Later, stripes of brown material were sewn into the trousers and sleeves, the original material having first been cut away.
This practice never obtained in Ruhleben, where we were allowed to wear what we liked. During two winters in camp I had made use of a very strong and warm suit of Manchester cord. It was now considerably the worse for wear, bleached by sun and rain and darkened again by mud and grease, rather conspicuous in its state of dilapidation, and, in camp, very distinctly connected with me. For months I had kept hidden in my trunk an inconspicuous gray jacket suit. When I went to the sanatorium it was packed away under other things at the bottom of my hand-bag. All the time at the villa I wore my cord suit, explaining that I had no other clothes, but was waiting for some on the way from England. I must have cut a very queer figure among my companions, but any one among them could conscientiously swear, after my departure, that I must have left in a brown cord suit, for, obviously, I had no other. The good ulster overcoat I intended to make use of could hardly give me away. Probably half a million similar ones were being worn in Germany at that time.
After the first week in March, winter set in again and held the land for a fortnight. Then, abruptly, spring burst upon us—that glorious early spring of 1916 with its long succession of sunny, warm days and crisp, starlit nights.
A change in the number and distribution of the inmates had left me with only one companion in our bedroom. He was confined to bed with heart disease. I became rather nervous lest my unexpected disappearance and the following inevitable investigation should upset him. To minimize this possible shock I took him into my confidence.
As “the day” approached I got my things ready as unobtrusively as I could, gradually packing my small grip and finally destroying letters and private papers. It was then that my room-mate showed the first signs of unfeigned interest.
“Why,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “so you meant it, after all! Pardon my having been incredulous so far, but I’ve heard so many fellows talk about what they intended to do, without ever seeing anybody doing it that I didn’t quite realize you were the exception that proves the rule. Don’t worry about me, and the best of luck to you.”
The limp with which I had arrived at the sanatorium I had gradually relinquished as I announced improvements in my condition. It was to be resumed on the journey as a sort of disguise, an unasked-for explanation for my not being in the army.
I had put aside some food, namely, a big German smoked sausage, still obtainable though very expensive, and containing a considerable amount of nourishment, a tin of baked beans, some biscuits, some chocolate, and a special anti-fatigue preparation. A green woolen shirt, a thick sweater, two pairs of socks, an extra set of underclothing, a stout belt, and a naval oilskin, filled the bag almost to the bursting-point. Watch, electric torch, knife, and money were to be carried on my person.
About this time my first monthly account was due from the sanatorium. I dared not ask for it, neither could I leave without paying. Apart from the moral aspect of vanishing and leaving an unsettled bill behind, such an act would certainly have resulted in criminal proceedings against me for theft or larceny, in the event of my being captured, and, according to the German application of the law where Englishmen were concerned, as certainly in conviction with a maximum sentence. So I decided to leave enough money in a drawer of my dressing-table to cover my bill.
CHAPTER V
A GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM
Contrary to my expectations, I hardly felt any excitement during my last day at the “Linden Allee.” My mental attitude was rather a disinterested one, as if I were watching somebody else’s escape.
When I got into bed at the usual time, I immediately fell asleep, having first made up my mind to wake at 3:30 A.M. I awoke an hour sooner, and went to sleep again. It was close on four o’clock when I opened my eyes for the second time. Getting up noiselessly, I carried the Gladstone and a big hand-bag containing my clothes, boots, etc., into the bath-room on the first floor. There I lathered my shaving brush and shaved a few hairs off my left forearm, leaving the safety-razor on the washstand, uncleaned, to create the impression that I had shaved off my beard. I dressed as rapidly as I could, throwing my pajamas on the floor and leaving generally a fair amount of disorder behind me. A breathless trip to the loft of the house to conceal my cord suit behind some beams was executed with as much speed and caution as I could manage. With my bag in one hand and my boots round my neck, I descended again by the light of the electric torch, slipped into my overcoat in the hall, and, snatching my hat from the rack, entered the dining-room. From there a French window gave upon a porch to which a few steps led up from the garden. The window offered no resistance and, fortunately, the protecting roller-blind was not down. A few women, probably ammunition workers, passed the house, and when they were out of hearing I stepped out.
It was still dark, though the dawn was heralded in the east. In a spot previously selected for the reason that it was screened by bushes, and from which I could survey the street without being seen, I got over the fence. I had barely done so when a cough sounded some distance behind me. With a chill racing up and down my spine, I walked on. Turning the near corner, I threw a hasty glance over my shoulder, but could see no one. Nevertheless, I thought it wise to walk back on my tracks around several blocks, before I made for the big thoroughfare which led toward Berlin.
A number of people were about, men and women, going to work. Keeping on, I came after a lapse of about fifteen minutes to a station of the Elevated. It was now five o’clock.
When I went up the steps to the booking-hall, night was slowly withdrawing before the vanguard of the approaching day. The electric lights in the streets flashed once and were dead. In the station they were beginning to show pale and ineffective.
To my relief, people were entering the station with me. Obviously, there was a service of trains this early, though I had been in doubt about it till then. The taking of a ticket to Friedrich Strasse Station, one of the chief stations in Berlin, cost me some agitation. It meant the first test of my ability to “carry on.”
“Friedrich Strasse! Ten minutes to six! I must find the restaurant and have breakfast.” There is no sense in neglecting the inner man; no experienced campaigner will voluntarily risk it.
Friedrich Strasse was a most uncomfortable place to be in. It swarmed with soldiers, and its intricate passages and stairs were plastered with placards: “Station Provost Marshal,” “Military Passport Office,” “Passports to be shown here,” “For Military only.”
At last I found a snug little waiting-room and restaurant, where I got a fairly decent meal, including eggs, which at the time were still obtainable without ration-cards, and rolls, for which I ought to have delivered up some bread-tickets, but didn’t. As soon as I had a chance, I bought a newspaper and some cigarettes. Either might help one over an awkward moment.
The train for Leipzig left from a station I knew nothing about except the name. The easiest way for me to get there was by cab. A number of these were standing in front of Bahnhof Friedrich Strasse.
“Anhalter Bahnhof,” I said curtly to the driver of the first four-wheeler on the rank. Cabby mumbled something about Marke through a beard of truly amazing wildness. Then only did I recollect that it is necessary before taking a cab from a station rank in Berlin to obtain a brass shield, with its number, from a policeman stationed inside the booking-hall. Back I went, overcoming as best I might the terrifying aspect of the blue uniform close to me. Fortunately, the man was extraordinarily polite for a Prussian officer of the law, and inquired solicitously what particular kind of cab I should like, and whether it was to be closed or open. It was to be closed.
I had twenty minutes to spare after I alighted from the cab in front of my destination. This station appeared less crowded than the former one, although a considerable number of soldiers were in, or passing through, the big hall. The moment had come when one of the main points of my plan was to be put to the test. Could I obtain a long-distance ticket without a passport? I waited until several people approached the booking-office, then lined up behind them. One of them asked for a second-class ticket to Leipzig, and got it without any formality. I considered myself quite safe when I repeated his demand.
The train, a corridor-express, was crowded. The hour was early for ordinary people, and nobody seemed in the least talkative. To guard against being addressed, I had bought enough German literature of the bloodthirsty type to convince anybody of my patriotic feelings, but I hardly looked at it. I was too much interested in watching the country flashing past the window and in speculating upon what it would be like near the Dutch frontier.
At Leipzig, where we arrived at 9:30 A.M., I had my little Gladstone taken to the cloak-room by a porter, to give more verisimilitude to my limp. For the same reason I made it my first business to buy a stout walking-stick at the nearest shop. After that I got a good luminous compass, whose purchase was another test case. When it was treated as an everyday transaction by the man behind the counter my spirits rose, and the acquisition of maps appeared a less formidable undertaking. Nevertheless, I resolved to leave their purchase to the afternoon. Should I find that suspicion was aroused by my request for “a good map of the province of Westphalia,” I intended to nip away on the earliest train, if I could reach the station unarrested.
The rest of the morning I spent limping through the town, keeping very much on the alert all the time. The tortuous, narrow streets of the inner town, with their old high-gabled houses in curious contrast with the modern buildings and clanging tram-cars, were a delight to me as well as a difficulty; the latter in so far as I had to keep account of my whereabouts, the better to be able to act swiftly in an emergency. Gradually I got into more modern streets, wide and straight. In passing I had made a mental note of a likely-looking restaurant to have lunch in later on.
At last I found myself in a public park, where I rested on a seat for some time. A shrewd wind, which whistled through the bare branches of the trees, made me wrap myself tighter in my greatcoat.
I started to walk back to the restaurant at midday, following for the greater part of the way in the wake of three fat and comfortable-looking burghers, who were deciding the war and the fate of nations in voices loud enough for me to follow their conversation, although thirty paces behind. In the restaurant I had a meal, somewhat reduced in quality and quantity, for a little more than I should have paid in peace times. Over a cigarette I then started to look up my evening train in the time-table I had bought at the station. Unable to find what I wanted, I grew hot and cold all over. I had by no means speculated upon having to stay in any town overnight, and should not have known how to act had I been forced to do so. This question had to be settled there and then, so I went to the station and the inquiry office. I was told that I could get a train at 7:50 or 8 P.M.—I forget which—to Magdeburg, and from there catch the express for the west to Dortmund.
The first part of the afternoon I spent in several cafÉs, unhappy to be within four walls, yet wanting to rest as much as possible. Toward five o’clock I nervously set forth to buy the maps and some other less important things. I passed several booksellers’ shops with huge war-maps displayed in the windows, but my feet, seemingly of their own volition, carried me past them. When I finally plucked up enough courage to enter a shop, my apprehension proved quite unnecessary. I came away with a fine motor-map and another one, less useful generally but giving some additional information. After that the rest of my equipment was rapidly acquired: a pair of night binoculars, wire-clippers, a knapsack, a very light oilskin, and a cheap portmanteau to carry these things in. By a fortunate chance I saw some military water-bottles in a shop window, which reminded me that I had nearly overlooked this very important part of a fugitive’s rig-out. I got a fine aluminum one.
By this time it was getting dark. The best way of spending what remained of my time in Leipzig was to have a leisurely meal in the station restaurant.
While I was waiting to be served, a well-dressed man at a table opposite attracted my attention. He came into the room soon after me, and seemed to take a suspicious interest in my person. He stared at me, openly and otherwise. When he did the former, I tried to outstare him. After he had twice been worsted in this contest he kept a careful but unobtrusive watch over the rest of the people in the restaurant, but took no further notice of me, not even when I crossed the room later on to buy at the counter as many sweet biscuits and as much chocolate as I dared. After that I sat reading a book with a lurid cover whereon a German submarine was torpedoing a British man-of-war among hectic waves. Taking advantage of the short-sightedness implied by my glasses, I held it close to my eyes, so that onlookers might have the benefit of the soul-inspiring cover, and look at that instead of my face.
A porter, whom I had tipped sufficiently to make it worth his while, came to fetch my luggage and see me into the train, where I had a compartment to myself. As soon as we were moving, I executed a wild but noiseless war-dance to relieve my overcharged feelings, and then had my first good look at the maps.
At Magdeburg I had only a few minutes to wait for the express to Belgium, which was to arrive at midnight. It turned out to be split into three sections, following each other at ten-minute intervals. I took the first of the trains. The second-class compartment I entered was occupied by an officer of the A. M. C. and two non-commissioned officers. The latter soon left us, having bribed the guard, so it seemed, to let them go into the first-class. In this way the medical officer and I had the whole compartment to ourselves. We lay down at full length, and I slept with hardly an interruption until 4:30, half an hour before the train was due at Dortmund.
At Dortmund the waiting-room I went to was almost empty. I left my luggage in the care of a waiter, and went out to have a wash and brush-up. This expedition gave me an opportunity to learn something about the station before I got a fresh ticket. I saw that to do this I should have to pass ticket-gates which were in charge of an extraordinarily strong guard with fixed bayonets. The importance of Dortmund as a manufacturing town, coupled with its situation in the industrial district of the West, the vulnerable point of Germany, explained these precautions.
Back in the waiting-room, a liquid called coffee and a most unsatisfactory kind of war bread had to take the place of a Christian breakfast. From the time-table I learned that there was a local train to Wanne at about 6:30. It just missed connection with another one from Wanne to Haltern, if I recollect rightly. The prospect of having to wait over two hours in a small town on the edge of the industrial district, before I could get a train, was not particularly inviting, but there was no alternative. My ticket was taken only at the last minute; then Dortmund was left behind.
For most of the way to Wanne I traveled in the company of two young civilians, massively built and pictures of health. When they had left I hastily packed my impedimenta in the new portmanteau, leaving the Gladstone empty, with the intention of depositing it in a cloak-room as the best means of getting rid of it without leaving a clue.
Having arrived at Wanne at eight o’clock, I handed my two pieces of luggage in at the cloak-room window, asking for a separate ticket for each.
The man behind the counter, to whom I took a great dislike from that moment, stared at me in silence for some seconds, until I could no longer stand it, and started a lame explanation: I wanted to leave the small bag for a friend of mine to fetch later on from whom I had borrowed it in the town about a week ago, name of Hugo Schmidt. The other I would take away with me as soon as my business in Wanne was finished. The fib sounded unconvincing enough to my own ears. The wooden face of my antagonist on the other side of the window gave no indication of thoughts or emotions. All that mattered really was that he gave me two tickets, and that I found myself in the street still unarrested but feeling unaccountably hot.
Walking as briskly as my limp would permit, I wandered about the streets, diving into a factory yard here and the hall of an office building there, as if I were a commercial traveler, taking good care not to linger long enough for other people to become interested in me.
All the time I felt uncomfortable and dissatisfied with my performance at the station and the pretense I was putting up, and thus it came about that the photograph of a friend of mine in Ruhleben disintegrated under my fingers in my pocket, to be dropped bit by bit into the road, lest, if I were arrested, the original should get into trouble.
It was a relief when ten o’clock was past and train-time approached. I got my portmanteau from my friend in the cloak-room, who was fortunately busy with other people, and got into an empty compartment. Between stations, during the twenty-minute run, I looked at my maps, to form an idea of how best to get out of Haltern in the right direction.
This small town is about half a mile from the station, which is an important railway junction. I was quite unacquainted with this part of the province of Westphalia. The maps showed it as not too thickly populated, with plenty of woods dotted all over it, and plenty of water.
The train thundered over the big railway bridge crossing the river Lippe and drew into the station, and I, feeling pretty good, landed on the platform with something like a skip and a jump, until I recollected my leg. Then slowly I limped after the other people the train had disgorged. In front of me I could see the church steeple rising above the roofs of the compact little town in the middle distance. Half-way toward it I passed a detachment of English Tommies sitting on top of a fence, smoking pipes and cigarettes. About an equal number of Poilus were standing close to them, laughing and criticizing the appearance of the passing women. The only guard I could discover was leaning sleepily against a tree on the opposite side of the road. I suppressed an almost overwhelming desire to exchange greetings, and passed them instead with a stony stare.
CHAPTER VI
IN HIDING
It was a sunny, warm day, and there was no difficulty about finding one’s bearings. In the market-place a sign “To Wesel” directed me up a narrow street of humble dwellings on my left. Just outside the town a number of roads met. Without looking at the directions on a mile-stone, I surveyed the country before me for suggestions as to my next move. The most important thing was to get to cover as quickly as possible, and to withdraw from the sight of man. Never mind about striking the right route now. That could wait until a thorough study of the maps gave me a better grasp of the situation. The most favorable-looking road led past a number of cottages and then ran in a northwesterly direction between a low range of hills. A footpath branching off toward a copse on my left seemed to offer the double attraction of a solitary walk and a short cut to a hiding-place. It took me about a hundred yards along the rear of the cottages, and then rejoined the parent road at a point where the woods came down to it.
As soon as a corner of the copse sheltered me, I gave a last look up and down the deserted road, and a moment later the branches of the half-grown firs closed crackling behind me.
Loaded as I was with a thick overcoat and a heavy bag, I was fairly bathed in perspiration before I had penetrated sufficiently far into the thicket to feel safe. The branches were so interlaced that only the most realistic wormlike wriggle was effective as a means of propulsion, and even then progress was accompanied by a crackling noise which I was anxious to avoid.
Satisfied at last, I stood up and looked about me. From the pin-pricks of light toward the east, I concluded that the spot I stood on was not far from the margin of the copse where it bordered upon a plowed field. On all other sides was a dead wall of brown and green. Underfoot the ground was sopping wet, for the spring sun had no power as yet to penetrate down to where the brown needles and a tangle of black and moldering grass of last year’s growth would soon be covered by the shoots of the new spring. Wet and black, the lower branches of the young trees were things of the past, but higher up they stretched their arms heavenward clothed in their dark green needles. The tops of the firs were glistening like green amber where they swayed slightly in the clear sunlight, forming delicate interlacing patterns beneath the pale spring sky.
Resting and preparing for my night’s walk, or poring over my maps, I spent the day there. A mouthful of food now and again was all I could swallow, for I was parched with thirst. The fast walk in the warm sun had started it, and the knowledge that there was no chance of assuaging it before the small hours of the next morning made it worse. I had not dared to fill my water-bottle at any of the stations for fear of being seen and arousing suspicion.
Most of the day my ears were continually on the alert, not so much from fear of discovery as for sounds which might convey useful information. The road leading past my hiding-place seemed little used; the rumble of a cart reached me only very occasionally. From the shrill cries of playing children, and the cackling of hens, I surmised the existence of several farmhouses farther along.
Before lying down I had put on my second set of underwear and discarded my white shirt, collar, and tie, for a green woolen shirt and a dark muffler, which did away with any but neutral colors on my person. Oilskins, oilsilks, overcoat, food, etc., were to be packed in the knapsack on breaking camp. Whatever would be wanted during the march, such as compass, maps, electric torch, and a small quantity of biscuits and chocolate, I stowed away in convenient pockets. The maps I cut into easily handled squares, discarding all the superfluous parts. When the sun had disappeared and gloom was gathering under the trees, I slung the water-bottle from my belt, the binoculars from my neck, and then crept to the edge of the copse, there to wait for the night.
Concealed behind some bushes, I watched the road, which gradually grew more indistinct. The roofs of the town, huddled in the hollow, lost their definite outlines. One after another lights sprang up behind the windows. The children’s voices became fewer, then ceased. Sound began to carry a great distance; the rumble of a railway train, the far-away barking of a dog. Twinkling stars came out in the heavens. It was time to start.
At 8:30 I scrambled out of my hiding-place and gained the road, where I set my face toward the west after a last glance at Haltern with its points of light. Two farmhouses, perfectly dark even at this early hour of the night, soon lay behind me. Here the forest came down to the road on my left while fields bordered it on the right, and, perhaps eighty yards distant, the wooded hills arose. Whether it was a sort of sixth sense which gave me warning, I do not know, but a strong feeling that I was not safe on the road made me walk over the fields into the shadow of the trees, from where I could watch without being seen. My figure had hardly merged into this dark background, when silently a shadowy bicycle rider flitted along the road, going in my direction. He carried no lamp, and might have been a patrol.
The going on the plowed fields being rather difficult, I soon grew impatient of my slow progress and returned to the road, proceeding along it in perfect serenity henceforth. It rose gradually. Checking its direction by a glance at the stars now and again, I soon noticed a decided turn to the northwest. This proved beyond doubt that it could not be the turnpike to Wesel, which throughout its length ran due west.
After perhaps an hour of hard going, a sign-post loomed ghostly white through the darkness, to spring into sharp relief in the light from the torch. “Klein Recken 2½ hours,” it read. A consultation of the map then showed that I was on a far more favorable road than I had anticipated, and that a brook flowing close to the hither side of the village of Klein Recken might be reached at about midnight, if I kept my speed. I needed no further inducement.
I was now ascending the last spur of the hills which had fronted me on coming out of Haltern. My way lay mostly through woods, with occasional clearings where the dark outlines of houses and barns showed against the sky. Only occasionally was a window feebly lit as if by a night-light. Often dogs gave warning of my approach and spread the alarm far and wide.
It was a most glorious night, the sky a velvet black, the stars of a brilliancy seldom seen in western Europe. Their luster seemed increased when I found myself hedged in by a tall forest through which the road wound as through a caÑon. A bright planet hung fairly low just in front of me, and in the exuberance of my feelings I regarded it as my guiding star.
On the ascent the night air was deliciously cool, not cold, with occasional warmer puffs laden with the scent of pines, the unseen branches and sere leaves of which whispered softly. Seldom have I felt so great a sense of well-being as I had during the first hours of that night. Never again while I was in Germany—whether in camp, in prison, or on other ventures—did I feel quite so happy, so free from all stress, so safe.
Just before coming to the top of the ridge I found another sign-post pointing one arm into the forest as the shortest route to Klein Recken. The light of the torch revealed a narrow footpath disappearing into impenetrable blackness. I eased myself of my knapsack and rested for ten minutes, eating some biscuits and chocolate, which made me more thirsty than ever. It must have been colder than I thought, for on resuming my burden I found it covered with a thin sheet of ice.
Striking into the footpath, I found a rather liberal use of the torch necessary. The path descended steeply at first, then more gradually. The tall timber changed to smaller trees and thickets. An occasional railway train rumbled in the distance; yet for over an hour the country was empty of human dwellings. Then several houses, widely apart, announced the neighborhood of a village. A tinkling sound made me lengthen my already swinging stride until I stood on a stone bridge. The low murmur of water below was very pleasant in my ears. But that was not the only sound. Something was stirring somewhere, but my dry tongue and throat would not be denied any longer. Clambering over a barbed-wire fence into a meadow, I looked for a place from which I could reach the stream, which had steep banks. Engaged in tying my water-bottle to my walking-stick to lower it into the water, I heard footsteps approaching. The darkness was sufficient concealment, and I merely kept motionless as two men crossed the bridge, one of whom, from the scraps of talk I could distinguish, appeared to be the village doctor, who was being fetched to a patient.
When they had gone, I lowered my water-bottle. It seemed a very long time filling, the bubbles breaking the surface with a wonderfully melodious sound. And then I drank and drank, filled it again, and almost emptied it a second time. When I turned away, it was hanging unwontedly heavy against my hip.
In front of me was Klein Recken. The road I had been following up to now terminated here. It was miles to the north of where I expected to be at this time, when I started out, but that much nearer to the frontier. My plans for the night had been upset by my getting on this favorable road, nor could I look at my maps. The use of the torch so near to habitations was out of the question. I had a pretty good idea, however, of what I should have seen, had I dared.
A railway line ran through the village. After crossing this, I should have to trust to my guiding star and to my ability to work across-country.
Instead of the level crossing I was looking for, I came unexpectedly upon a tunnel in a very high embankment. With bated breath I tiptoed through, more than half expecting to meet a sentry on the other side. The footpath which emerged from it proved an unreliable guide. It soon petered out and left me stranded in front of a barbed-wire fence and a ditch. The cross-country stretch was on.
The going over plowed fields was easy in comparison, but they formed only a part of the country I was traveling over. Frequent patches of forest forced me to skirt them, with time lost on the other side to make the necessary corrections. Repeatedly I sank half-way to my knees into slough and water. Several casts were often necessary to get round these places, for, overgrown with weeds, and in the darkness, the swampy pieces looked like firm meadows. For a time, a sort of wall formed of rough stones accompanied me, with marshy ground on one side and forest on the other. It seemed to run in all directions. As soon as I lost it, I came upon it again. I kept going as fast as possible all the time; yet hour after hour passed, and still the bewildering procession of woods and fields, swamps and meadows continued.
A phenomenon of which I was ignorant at the time, but which is well known to sailors, kept me busy conjecturing. It is an impression one gets at night, on level ground, or at sea, that one is going decidedly up-hill. In my case this introduced a disturbing factor into my calculations as to my position.
After tacking through a forest over checker-board clearings the meaning of which was hidden from me, for they were hardly paths or roads, I came out upon a path, and heard water bubbling out of the bank on my right. “More haste less speed. Take it easy,” I murmured to myself, dropping the haversack. Then I bent down to the spring and, having drunk as much as I needed, and eaten a mouthful of food, I did some of the hardest thinking of my life.
So far as I recollect, my watch showed just 3:20 A.M. I went minutely over all my movements since leaving Klein Recken. Although the road, which I expected would lie across my course, had not yet materialized, I was confident that I had kept my direction fairly well. It was the impossibility of calculating one’s speed across-country which caused the uncertainty as to my whereabouts.
Fortunately, there was no doubt that a turnpike was not many miles to the north of me. To reach it, and thus ascertain my position, meant leaving the present route to the frontier. With less than two hours of darkness before the dawn, which would force me into hiding, the former factor was of far greater importance than the latter.
My nerves had been getting a little shaky under the stress. I had to press my hands to my head in order to think logically, and to exert all my will-power to keep my heart steady. Oh, for a companion! The effort cleared my brain and soothed me. I was almost cheerful when I went on.
Opposite a farmhouse, the path divided and my way became a miry and deeply rutted cart track. Past another farm, it entered a swampy meadow through a gate and disappeared. Savage at being tricked again, I wheeled round to look for the other fork of the track, but was arrested by seeing a light in the window of the farmhouse where a big dog had given the alarm when I passed. This was the last straw. Clenching my teeth, I crouched behind the hedge, an insensate fury making my ears sing. For the moment, having lost all control of myself, I was more than ready to meet man or dog, or both, and fight it out on the spot. But that feeling passed quickly.
The noise of a door being opened came to my ears. A lantern was borne from the house and obscured again. Another door opened, and the footsteps of a horse sounded on cobbles, followed by the jingling of harness. Then a cart started out into the dark. Where a cart could go there must be a road; so I followed after, stumbling over ruts and splashing through puddles, and running when the horse broke into a trot.
The cart drew up in front of a building, of which I could see only patches of the front wall where the lantern light struck. Followed the noise of heavy things dumped into the vehicle. Then it started again—back toward where I was standing. Thoroughly exasperated, I turned on my heel and walked back over the road I had come, careless whether I was seen or not. I soon drew away, tried to work round in a circle, and presently came upon a road once more.
What a relief it was to feel even ground under my feet! A little way farther on, and a sign-post pointing in opposite directions along the road, read: “Klein Recken 8 Km., Heiden 2 Km.” Out with the map. There was the road, which I had overlooked entirely so far, as it was very faintly marked. With satisfaction I saw that I had kept my direction admirably; but it was annoying to perceive that my course had lain parallel to it all the time, probably never more than a mile away. Making for the village, only about twenty minutes ahead, I could in good time reach a desolate, high plateau, where cover very likely could be found.
In Heiden, a compact little village, my footfalls rang loudly in the cobbled streets. There was no sign of life about the place, and special precautions seemed entirely superfluous. I walked past the church and struck right into the high road I was looking for, which was easily recognizable by its direction and the fact that it began immediately to ascend the plateau.
The worst of my troubles over for the night, the fact that I was tired, not so much muscularly as mentally, became only too apparent as I trudged along. I started talking to myself, imitating tricks of speech of my late companions at the sanatorium, and making up whole dialogues. This continued as long as I followed the turnpike mechanically, although I was perfectly aware of the absurdity of my behavior and tried to stop it.
The sky was now paling in the east, and about two miles out of Heiden I started to look for cover. For three quarters of an hour I kept leaving the road for likely-looking woods, always to find farmhouses concealed behind them.
Several times, while I was standing among the trees, and peering anxiously about me, white-robed figures appeared to execute weird dances between the trunks, only to dissolve into nothing on my approach to investigate them. Friends of mine had similar experiences to relate, when later on we met in prison and swapped yarns about our adventures.
The light was increasing apace, when a tall pine wood loomed up on my left. Bursting through the bushes fringing it, I proceeded a little way in, until I came to a deep, dry ditch marking its margin, and fairly effectively concealed by bushes. I had the fir woods on my left; on my right was a patch of land bounded by a wire fence and grown over by small firs and thornless furze. A little farther up, some of the furze had been cut and was lying on the ground. An examination of the stumps showed them black and weathered; there was no sign of recent work. Beyond the wire fence, and across a plowed field, a farm lay more than half concealed in its orchard.
Gathering as much as I could of the furze in my arms, I carried it to a place where the ditch was particularly deep and well concealed. Two trips sufficed to provide me with the necessary amount. Arranging the furze in the approved fashion, lengthways and across, I soon had an excellent spring-mattress in the bottom of the ditch. Undressing, I donned the dry sweater next my skin, and put all the garments I had by me over it, for the air was bitingly cold.
A last deep draft from the water-bottle, a careful wriggle to get on my couch, and I fell asleep instantly.
I awoke without a start, and with every sense alert, after barely two hours, wonderfully refreshed and not in the least stiff. The sun was low in the sky and shone like a big red disk through the morning mist. Pale-golden shafts of light penetrated into the pillared hall underneath the dark green dome of the majestic firs. It was very cold, but to me it appeared only like the refreshing sting of a cold bath. Without going to sleep again, I lay motionless, every muscle relaxed, while the sun climbed higher. As it did so, the air grew warmer, the scent of the pines became stronger, while the earthy smell of the ground suggested the new life of spring and the stirring of sap in the growths around me.
Toward eleven, an early bumble-bee paid me a visit of inspection, and took himself off again after the bungling fashion of his tribe. The cooing of wood-pigeons close to me assured me of my perfect solitude. Once a kestrel flashed across the ditch and disappeared with a startled twist of wings and tail on catching sight of me. The roar of guns miles away seemed louder and louder, but the sound was not near enough to merit any attention on my part.
When the ditch was in the full light of the sun, I rolled out of my coverings to spend a most glorious day in perfect contentment, eating a little, husbanding my water as well as I could, smoking, and looking at my maps. The next night I hoped would see me across the border. I meant to pass through a village about four miles down the road, and—but that does not matter. What mattered was that I forgot that the day was Saturday, and that people would be likely to remain about much longer than on ordinary week-days.
The shadows were meeting in the shelter of the woods when I worked my way back to the road. Tiny night-prowlers were already following their business and either scampered noisily away, or froze into the immobility of fear, as my clumsy feet crashed through their domain. From behind some bushes close to it I watched the white ribbon of the road until it was almost blotted out by the darkness, and then set forth.
CHAPTER VII
FAILURE
My water-bottle wanted filling. A spring bubbling up by the roadside gave me the opportunity. That was a mile or so down the road. I had got again into the swinging stride of the night before, and the few miles to the village of Vehlen were soon covered. A sudden turn of the road near it brought me opposite a building looking like a flour-mill. An electric light was blazing at its corner. On the other side of the road its rays were reflected by the oily ripples on a large pond, the farther side of which was hidden in the darkness.
Perhaps the strain and loneliness of the last few days were telling upon me without my being aware of it. At any rate, I did not realize that the light was a danger-signal flaunted by Providence into my very face. It never occurred to me that on seeing it I ought to get off the road at once and work around the village across-country. Instead, with the experience of last night at the back of my mind, I held on stubbornly and never realized my folly until I was fairly in the main street.
Most of the houses were lighted and a number of street lamps going. Several people were passing between houses. It was too late to turn back when I saw what I had done. Two old men in front of me, whom I had caught up with, caused me to adapt my pace to theirs so as not to pass them. They turned a corner, I after them, when from the opposite direction a bicycle appeared. The rays of its lamp blinded me. I dared not look back when it had passed, but hurried on as fast as I could short of running. After an eternity of a few minutes somebody jumped off a bicycle at my shoulder, having come up noiselessly from behind. He touched me.
“Who are you?” An armed soldier stood before me.
I gave a name.
“Where do you come from?”
“I belong to DÜsseldorf.”
“So. Where do you come from now?”
“From Borken.”
“But you are not on the road from Borken!”
I knew that, but no other name had occurred to me. What I ought to have said was “Bocholt,” I think.
“I am not bound to follow what you call the direct road, and, anyway, what do you mean by stopping me and questioning me in this fashion?”
“Where are you bound for?”
For want of anything better, I created the imaginary country house of an imaginary noble.
“Don’t know it,” said the soldier, eyeing me doubtfully and scratching his head.
By this time a crowd had collected around us. Additions to it, mostly children, were shooting full speed round the nearest corners, as I saw out of the corner of my eye, helm hard a-port and leaning sideways to negotiate the turn. But I was already hemmed in by four or five stalwarts. Outside the crowd a small man was dancing excitedly up and down demanding that I be taken before the Amtmann, the head of the village. This man turned out to be the village doctor, the cyclist who had passed me. “What a disagreeable, foxy face the chap has,” flashed through my mind. The soldier was obviously still in doubt about me, but was overruled in spite of all the arguments I could think of.
With the soldier by my side, two stalwarts in front and three behind, and surrounded by the throng, I was marched through the streets. We drew up before a farmlike building, and politely but firmly I was urged to enter. We went into a big room on the ground floor. Two desks, several chairs and tables, and file cabinets made up the furniture. A telephone was attached to the wall next the door.
A young man jumped up from his chair in front of one of the desks, and he, and those who had entered with me, regarded me suspiciously for a moment without speaking. Then the young man—he seemed a clerk—caught sight of the binoculars half concealed under my coat lapels. With the shout, “He is a spy!” he rushed upon me, and with a quick movement of his hand tore open my coat and waistcoat.
“Here, keep your dirty paws off me!” I grunted angrily.
He stepped back. At this moment the Amtmann came in, a young and gentlemanly looking chap. My assailant at once collapsed in a chair, and tried to assume a judicial attitude with pen in hand and paper in front of him. Then they searched me, and the fat was in the fire. There was, of course, no sense in continuing the bluffing game, when maps, compasses, and some letters addressed to me in Ruhleben were on the table. I had carried the latter as additional evidence of my identity for the British consul, should I get through. What they did not find was my British passport. That was cunningly, I think, and successfully concealed.
The business part of the performance being over, they became more genial. The Amtmann asked me whether or not I was hungry. “No.” Should I like a cup of coffee? “I should, and a smoke, please.” With the aid of two cups of coffee and three of my cigarettes, I pulled myself together as best I might.
The soldier who had stopped me was in the highest of spirits about the big catch he thought he had made, and obviously wanted all the credit to himself. Perhaps he expected the usual leave granted for the apprehension of fugitive prisoners of war, and the ten or fifteen marks of monetary recognition. In his anxiety to establish his claim, he forgot all about the indecision and hesitancy he had shown to start with.
“I knew you immediately for an Englander! That nose of yours!”
I have the most ordinary face and nose, and I am of no particular type, but I nodded with deep understanding.
“Where did you intend crossing the frontier?” he rattled on.
I pointed it out to him on the map lying on the table.
“You’d never have got across there,” he vouchsafed triumphantly. “In addition to the ordinary sentries and patrols, there are dogs and cavalry patrols at that point, and to the north of it.”
If only I could have got that information under different circumstances!
“What beautiful maps you’ve got, and what a fine compass! Would it—would it—would you think me cheeky if I asked you for it as a memento?”
Considering that it would be lost to me anyway, I expressed my pleasure at being able to gratify his desire. And then the Amtmann gave me to understand that it was time to be locked up.
The interview at the office had lasted some time, and the noses which had flattened themselves against the outside of the windows had decreased in number. Still, there was a fairly strong guard of adults and children to accompany us to the village lockup.
This was a small building consisting only of one floor. Here I observed for the first time another small man with sharp features who unlocked the door. It was, of course, dark about us, and at this distance it is difficult to determine what I saw then and what I learned in the course of the following day.
We entered through a big door into a place where a fire-engine—a hand-pump—was standing. A door on the left having been unlocked, the Amtmann and the small man preceded me through it. The light of their electric torches revealed a cell, with a sort of bed along one side, consisting of a straw paillasse on some raised boards and two blankets rolled up at the foot of it.
They had left me in possession of my overcoat, oilskins, oilsilk, and sweater, so I should be all right, though the night was very cold. Alone in the cell in pitch darkness, I heard the key turn in the lock, the footfalls recede, the outer door close; then all was silent.
As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I could make out a small window at my right, shoulder-high, and traversed by the black streaks of three vertical iron bars. The cell was so dark that I had the impression of being in a vast black hall. I took three steps forward and rapped my nose against the wall. Very miserable and much disappointed, almost in despair, I groped to the window and shook the bars with all my strength. They were firm and unyielding. Feeling my way to the bed, I put on all my things, disdaining the blankets, which felt filthy, then lay down and was soon asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW HOPE
I awoke, much refreshed, just before the clock from the church steeple chimed six. For some time I lay quiet, groping my way back into reality. When the recollection of my last-night’s disaster drifted back into my brain, I felt almost physically sick with disappointment and rage, until awakening determination came to my help. “No use repining. Is there no way to repair the damage? Hullo! it’s Sunday to-day. Sunday! A village jail can’t be so awfully strong! I’ll be moved to-day, though. Will they take me away in a car? Those gendarmes aren’t easily fooled! But, after all, it’s Sunday. Perhaps that’s a reason why they won’t move me!” The idea took such a hold on me that I was up in a jiffy.
The cell, as I could see now, was square and very small, four paces across. The only article of furniture was the bed, which took up about one third of the floor space. There was nothing else in the room. The window was in the wall opposite the bed, the door on the right. The former was strongly barred, as I knew already. Moreover, several ladders hung in front of it along the outside of the wall. The door seemed fairly strong and was made of rough boards. So was the ceiling. A beam extended from above the window to the opposite wall. The ceiling boards at right angles did not run through from wall to wall but terminated on top of the beam, as could be seen from their different widths on each side of it. Standing on the bed, I could place my hands flat against them without stretching my arms to the full. In one place above it, and near the left wall looking toward the window, a splinter had come away from the edge of a board. Although the wood at that point showed signs of dry-rot, I did not investigate it thoroughly just then.
It was a great find, I thought at the time, when I discovered under the bed a big piece of timber, the sawn-off end of a beam, about three feet long. To pounce upon it and hide it under the paillasse was the work of seconds. It would furnish an excellent battering-ram.
Up to now I had depended upon my ears to warn me of anybody’s coming. After the discovery of the battering-ram, I made sure, by trying to get a glimpse of the next room through cracks in the door, that nobody was watching me. A part of the fire-engine could be seen, and on it a clean cup and saucer. “Somebody must have been in that room to-day! Nobody would have placed it there last night. Besides, I didn’t see anybody carrying anything. Couldn’t have been done while I was awake. Better go slow!”
Outside the window was a kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees. To the right, the corner of a house and a pigsty with a solitary undersized occupant terminated the view. My horizon was bounded by the roofs of a few houses which stood behind trees.
It was past seven o’clock when I heard the key turn in the outer door. Soon the door of my cell flew open, and in marched the short, sharp-featured man of the night before, with a pot of coffee, a cup and saucer, and something done up in paper, which turned out to be excellent bread and butter. Butter, mind you! With him entered a very young soldier, who nonchalantly sat down on my bed to survey me gravely. Around the opening of the door clustered the elder boys of the village, pushing and straining. Behind them were the girls, giggling and whispering nervously. All devoured me with their eyes. In the rear were the small fry. They overflowed into the street, where the urchins, feeling perfectly safe from the bad man inside, indulged in catcalls and disparaging shouts at my expense, while I had breakfast. I chatted the while with the man whom I shall call the warder, although he probably had many functions in the village. My efforts to obtain information from him as to whether or not I was likely to be taken away that day proved unsuccessful.
When my visitors had left me, I remembered that, experienced jailbird as I had become since the beginning of the war, I had a duty to perform—a scrutiny of the walls of the cell for any records former occupants might have left there. This leaving of inscriptions seems to be “the correct thing” among German prisoners—criminals, I mean. They are not always nice but invariably interesting, particularly under the circumstances in which they are read. The walls of my abode had been recently whitewashed, and there was only one inscription: “AndrÉ—[I forget the surname] evadÉ Avril 2me 1916, repris Avril 3me 1916.” Thus a fellow-fugitive had been here only the previous day.
I very badly wanted my morning smoke, and unexpectedly I had found two cigarettes in my pockets, but there were no matches; and I had been warned that smoking was not permitted. A woman was walking about in the garden at this time. I took her to belong to the house whose corner I could see; she was probably the wife of the owner. I intended to appeal to her compassionate spirit. After a time she was joined by an elderly woman, perhaps her mother. Although they did not show obvious interest in me, yet they kept passing in front of my window. At last I addressed them, whereupon they stopped with alacrity. The elder woman was certainly talkative. She pitched into me at once, going over the whole register of my sins as an Englishman as conceived by the German mind, and telling me what a disgusting lot of robbers, thieves, and murderers we were. As soon as she had got it off her chest, she became rather friendly. “You’d be in Holland now, if you hadn’t been taken last night.”
“Surely not,” with a puzzled frown. “I thought I’d have another two-days’ walk from here.”
“Oh, no. It’s only a four-hours’ walk by the road into Holland from here.”
“In this direction?” I pointed east, into Germany.
“No, over there. You go through —— and ——, then take the —— road on the right. It’s not more than four hours, is it?” turning to her daughter, who nodded.
“What’s the use of your telling me now when I am behind the bars again?” I groaned. Ingratiatingly: “Could you oblige me with a match? I am dying for a smoke.”
“You aren’t allowed to smoke!” severely. Then they left me.
For a time small boys kept looking in at the window. Their advent was always heralded by the sound of a scramble, from which I gathered that there must be a fence or a gate between the building I was in and the house on my right. Sometimes they were chased away incontinently by somebody I could not see. That any attempt at breaking out would have to lead through the garden was a foregone conclusion. The other side of the building was on the public street.
At about ten o’clock the warder appeared, and I managed to be let out, mainly to have a look around. When we returned, the Amtmann was waiting for me. The first thing he did was to search me for the two cigarettes. The women had split on me! Then I tried to find out whether I was to be moved that day, but could not get a satisfactory answer. This made me rather hopeful that the cell would have to harbor me for another night. Of course, I professed myself most anxious to be sent off, which was natural. The sooner the military authorities should take me in charge, the sooner I should know my punishment and get it over. I was careful to explain all this. Finally, the Amtmann asked me whether or not I wanted any of the food he had taken from me. The answer was in the affirmative. But although he repeated this question later in the day, and promised to send me the sausage, I never got it. My request for something to read he granted by sending me some German weeklies called Die Woche (“The Week”).
Then he left me, only to reappear at 11:30. This time he was very solemn, and asked me to give him my word of honor that I was not an English officer. Obviously one was at large in Germany; I could not suppose that it was a shot at random. With feeling I assured him that I was not an officer and never had been one. My questions regarding this interesting subject fell on deaf ears.
The Amtmann’s parting words excited me greatly. He regretted that I should have to spend another night in his village, because they could not arrange for an escort on Sunday. It was difficult to hide my exultation over this bit of news, but I believe I managed to look dejected and resigned.
Soon after the Amtmann had gone, the warder brought me my dinner in a dinner-pail. He left it with me and disappeared. The food was certainly the best I had ever received from German authorities at any time. The pot was full of excellent potatoes in brown, greasy onion gravy. A decent-sized piece of hot, home-made sausage lay on top. I was very hungry, but so excited that I was half-way through the mess before I realized that I was merely swallowing it down without tasting a bit of it. That was sheer ingratitude, and thereafter I went ahead slowly, thoroughly enjoying it. The pot was empty far too soon; a second edition would have been very acceptable. I complimented the warder on the excellent fare in his prison.
“I told my wife about you,” he acknowledged, “and she said we ought to give you a decent dinner anyway.”
When I had finished I thought the time favorable to begin operations. After a substantial Sunday dinner—there was evidently no shortage of food in that part of Germany as yet—the village was bound to be more or less somnolent. Indeed, no sound was to be heard from the street.
The first thing was to make a thorough inspection of the ceiling. If one could get into the loft the roof would offer little resistance, it being, as I had seen, tiled in the ordinary way.
Where the splinter had broken off, two boards appeared affected by dry-rot, a narrow one and a wider one next to it. Tentatively I pushed against the narrow one near the end which was nailed to the beam. There was some spring there, not the firm resistance of a sound board well nailed home. Under the slowly increased pressure it suddenly gave with a creak, and a shower of splinters and dust came down upon me and the bed. I could now look into the loft and see the under side of the tiles. Directly in line with my eyes was a hole where a tile had lost its upper half. This would be the place to attack, once through the ceiling.
In the meantime the sun shone through another hole which I could not see, and, through the crack upon my bed. To pull the board back into its original position had no effect. Where there had been a narrow crack in the morning another splinter had become detached, and there was the scintillating beam of light cleaving a path through the dust motes, a traitorous tell-tale. After a moment’s thought, I rolled my oilsilks into a long sausage and shoved it past the raised board into the loft in such a fashion that it would roll over the crack when the board was lowered. It worked, and after a critical inspection I decided that none but an exceptionally observant individual would ever notice that the ceiling had been tampered with.
All this had not taken very long. Absolute silence brooded over the place. Fearing that the narrow board might be insufficient to let me into the loft, I tried to get the wider one next to it loose. When it resisted the pressure of my hands, the battering-ram was brought into play, with the overcoat wrapped round the end of it to deaden the noise. Using it with discretion, I could make no impression. So I left it at that.
Having removed all traces of my work from the bed and the floor, I stood near the door and kicked my heels against it. This I did to have some explanation, should anybody have heard the battering-ram at work. Then I quieted down, resolving not to do any more until soon after the next visit.
I was now quite convinced that I should get out of the prison during the night. My one anxiety was for the weather to keep fine. I had a fair idea of how to proceed as long as I could keep my direction. Without a compass I was dependent upon the stars. There was no sign of a change in the sky; nevertheless, I kept an unceasing and apprehensive watch upon what I could see of it.
At three o’clock the Amtmann came back: “The people next door complain that you disturbed them in the night. There were thumping and bumping noises coming from this cell.” I had slept almost like a log through the night. The involuntary expression of astonishment on my face at this complaint was a more convincing answer than I could have made verbally to the Amtmann, who was watching me narrowly all the time. I protested, of course, and then volunteered the information that I had been kicking my heels against the door a short time ago, apologizing with a contrite mien.
“Oh, these people always seem to imagine things!” was his reply, wherewith he left me. I thought I had got well out of it. Obviously there was a misunderstanding, and the noise which had attracted the attention of “the people next door” was that of my efforts an hour or so ago.
At four o’clock the warder brought me coffee and bread and butter. He had a small retinue with him. When I had finished, I asked him to fill the coffee-pot with water and leave it with me. Not only was I very thirsty; I wanted to absorb as much moisture as I could while I had the chance.
As soon as he had gone I got on the bed again. The sun had now traveled far enough to the west to make the roll of oilsilks superfluous.
If, as I believed, the cell wall was an outer one, the board could now be fast only at the end above it. Applying my strength at the other end near the beam ought to give me a tremendous leverage, which should force it loose with little effort. It resisted, however, until I fancied I could hear my joints crack with the exertion. The strain lasted a few seconds; then the board came away above the wall with a rending crash. Simultaneously something heavy fell to the ground on the other side. The sound of it striking the floor, and the slant of the board, revealed the existence of a third room in the building, across which it had extended to the real outer wall of the prison, and at the same time explained its strong resistance to my efforts.
With thumping heart and bated breath I listened for any suspicious sounds from beyond the wall or from the street, but nothing happened. Still the board, which now ought to have moved easily, resisted. Getting my head into the loft, I found it littered with heavy lumps of metal and plenty of broken glass, the remnants of old street-lamp standards. Some of the metal things projected over the opening; as soon as I had pushed them away the board moved up and down freely.
This was all I dared do at the moment in preparation for the escape. The rest could easily be accomplished by the sense of touch in the night. For the present, the board had to be fitted back into place. I accomplished that, or nearly so, and trusted to the blindness of the average mortal for my safety.
When I had removed the dust and splinters from my bed, and everything looked in order, I saw the woman from next door walking in the garden. I was quite taken aback, and watched her for some time, but she seemed unconcerned enough. She could hardly have seen me except by putting her face close to the window, for the eaves projected a considerable distance beyond the walls, and were not more than eight feet from the ground. Consequently it was never light in the cell, and less so now when the sun was nearing the sky-line.
About half an hour afterward she came to my window, bringing two girls with her, who obviously had come on purpose to see the wild Englishman. The taller was a strapping, Junoesque maiden with apple-red cheeks and considerable assurance. Her friend, a foil to her, was more of a Cinderella, gray, middle-sized, reticent, but pleasant to look upon, and with intelligent eyes and a humorous mouth. She said never a word during her friend’s lively chat with me, only gurgling her amusement now and then.
When they had gone I continued my intermittent watch of “the little patch of blue that prisoners call the sky.” Gradually it changed to a rosy hue, then the color faded, and a few stars began to twinkle feebly.
With the approach of evening the temperature had gone down, and the overcoat had become a comfort. To my surprise, an inner pocket, crackling ever so little, gave up a piece of map not larger than my hand. It was from the more useless map I had bought, but the most important part of it, the only piece I had kept when setting out from Haltern. Being printed on thin, unbacked paper, it had escaped the attention of my captors the more easily as they had found the other complete map in my coat pocket. It did not tell me much more than I knew already, but, kept before me until darkness fell, it undoubtedly helped me visualize the country I was walking through later on.
CHAPTER IX
BREAKING PRISON
Before I made a move I was going to wait until the probability of a surprise visit should have passed. Such a visit I expected at about eleven o’clock, for at that time the Amtmann would probably go home from wherever he was drinking beer, and on his way would have a look at me. To give my jailers an extra hour to surprise me in, was again only ordinary precaution.
Once in the loft, I was going to take off as many tiles as I must to get through the roof into the garden, from there into the street, and out of the village in any direction. In the country it would most likely prove necessary to work round the village at a safe distance in order to strike a certain turnpike. Several miles along it a brook crossing the road was an indication that I should have to look out for a third-class cart track. Some distance along this a railway, and, shortly after, a first-class road, could be taken as evidence that the frontier was within four miles, and that I had entered the danger zone.
When it was too dark to continue the study of the scrap of map, I lay down, but was too excited to go to sleep. Slowly the hours and quarter-hours, chimed by the church, dragged past. As I expected, just after eleven o’clock the Amtmann entered with the warder. “Why! aren’t you asleep yet?” he asked. I protested that the rattle of the key had awakened me. They left. Half an hour after the warder came in again, said something, and disappeared. At 12:15 I burst into action.
Feeling for the sweater and oilsilks, which lay ready to hand, I rolled them into a bundle. I did the same with my jacket, waistcoat, and underclothes, after having stripped to the waist, the better to get through the narrow opening in the ceiling. Next, I folded the paillasse and propped it against the wall at the foot of the bed. Standing on it, I lifted the loose board and with a jerk of my wrists flung it free. I shoved the two bundles of clothes up, first feeling for an unencumbered space of floor, then levered myself after them.
Arms extended, and with a careful shuffle of my feet, lest I should step on some glass or metal object, I gained the spot where one or two stars glimmered through the hole in the roof.
Grasping the remaining half of the broken tile, I twisted it out as carefully as I could, not without causing a grating noise, which sounded loud in the absolute silence. After some difficulty I drew it through the enlarged hole and, again making sure that the floor was clear, deposited it carefully. The next tile gave greater trouble. It being entire, the ends of the superimposed ones had to be lifted to allow of its withdrawal. When I straightened up, in order to attack the third in the row, I was startled by the sound of a low-voiced conversation close to me and apparently on the same level.
The natural impulse was to keep quiet, which I did. I waited. The even voices went on. Carefully I pushed my head outside and looked about. In the gable of the house on the right, and only about ten yards away, was a small window. The sound of murmured speech floated through the open panes directly toward me from the dark room behind. I took it to be the bedroom of the farmer and his wife, and remembering their complaint about my having been noisy the night before, I cursed the ill chance which had made this one German farmer—one, surely, in ten thousand—fond of fresh air in his sleeping-chamber.
The bitterly cold night air was streaming over my naked shoulders while I stood waiting for the people to go to sleep. Soon the talk ceased, but I gave them a liberal amount of time before I continued my labors.
When I had taken out three tiles in the first row, those in the next and the next again were quickly removed. The opening was now sufficiently large, but the two exposed laths running through it did not leave too much space between them for a man of my size to clamber through.
Stepping back to get my clothes, I misjudged the distance, which was small—a step or two only—and almost fell through the hole in the floor. I saved myself only by quickly shifting my weight from one foot to the other, which touched something soft. With a thud one of my bundles fell back into the cell. Fortunately it was the oilsilks and sweater; unfortunately the piece of map was in the pocket of the former. I did not go after them, but left them where they had fallen, and slipped into my clothes as quickly as the want of light and space would permit. This done, it was only a matter of great care and unusual contortions to get my somewhat bulky person through the laths.
At last I stood on the lower of the two I had exposed, with the night wind soughing over me. Doubtfully, I surveyed the expanse of roof at my feet. How to get across it was the question. Sliding over the tiles meant making a tremendous noise, quite apart from the danger of possible injury. If they were removed one by one, what was to be done with them? Should I chuck them into the garden as they came off the laths? I had it! Why not repair the roof above me as I demolished it in my descent?
My sense of humor was rather tickled at the idea. To imagine the faces of the Amtmann and the warder when they were trying to reconstruct “the crime” was exceedingly funny. It made me use some extra and unnecessary care as I replaced the tiles on the laths above me, taking them, always two and two, from those below.
In a very short time I was standing on the last lath. I was in the denser shadow of the roof now, and the eight feet from the ground might have been eight thousand for all I could see of it. This made me hesitate, since a miscalculation of the distance might easily have meant a jar or a sprain. Without a sound, however, I landed on a soft garden bed.
A few moments after I was at the gate, and over, and in the street. A solitary street lamp was burning here and there; not a soul was in sight. In the shadow of the wall I stooped to take off my boots and socks. As far as I recollect, I got out of the village like a streak of greased lightning. In reality I probably walked with due caution. I did not stop until I found myself in a dark lane outside, where I put on my boots. It was now 1:15.
The news of my escape would spread, I was sure, like wildfire through the country, and a hue and cry would soon be raised. Every man Jack who could spare the time would make one of a searching party. For such a thing to happen in a small community was bound to create a far greater stir than among the more sophisticated inhabitants of even a middle-sized town. I had received a hint that police dogs were kept in Vehlen. This might have been bluff, but it was not safe to bet on it. To put as much distance between me and the pursuers was my only chance.
To do that I had to find the turnpike I have spoken of. As far as I knew, it entered Vehlen from the west. South of and parallel to it was a secondary railway track.
As soon as a sufficient expanse of sky was visible for me to take bearings, which was impossible in the lane on account of big trees on each side, I found that I should have to pass around the southern side of Vehlen to get to the desired point. This would prove difficult and wasteful of my most precious commodity, time, as an extensive copse and generally unfavorable country intervened. The seemingly bolder course of walking back through the village had decided advantages and was at this hour hardly dangerous. Off came my boots again, and at a dog-trot, which increased to a fast sprint in front of a public house with a drunken voice issuing through the window, I crossed the southern part of the village. I did not happen to come upon the turnpike as I had hoped. On taking bearings after this second traverse of the village I found it lying northeast of me and therefore concluded that both railway and road were to be looked for in a northerly direction.
“Northwest now, and damn the wire fences.” It was difficult going at first, the country, criss-crossed by fences and ditches, enclosing swampy meadows. Due north was easier walking and would do nearly as well. A path gave me a rest. It was so heavenly easy to follow. Bang! I stumbled over a rail. “Hurrah, the railway! Now for the road!”
Again across-country, I pushed on as fast as I could in my favored direction. It was not very fast, for the difficulties were enough to drive one crazy. Swampy meadows, ditches, barbed-wire fences, woods, copses, but never a bit of easy ground. Soon I was wet to the hips. Branches plucked at my garments or slashed me across the face; barbed-wire fences grasped and retained pieces of cloth as I got over them; the sides of ditches caved in under my feet and, having jumped short in consequence, I landed half in the water; and ever and anon the village church tolled another quarter of an hour.
It was an absolute nightmare. Panting and breathless, I got up after one of my many tumbles. It was in an open kind of wood. My soaked clothes were dripping, yet I felt warm with the speed of my flight. Then the sensation of being utterly lost came over me, the danger-signal that the nerves are giving way. Luckily I had sense enough to recognize it as such, and promptly sat down in half an inch of water, pretending that I was in no hurry whatever.
I tried to reason out the situation. If the road were where I sought it, I should have come to it long before. My maps were unreliable in small details. Suppose the road crossed to the south of the railway, some distance outside Vehlen, instead of in the village as marked. In that case I had started from a point north of the road and south of the railway. Better go back to the railway and follow it west until I came to the point of intersection.
I turned due south, feeling better for the rest, and ten minutes later jumped the ditch along the turnpike. The night was very fine, the road hard and smooth. My footsteps rang so loudly that it was difficult to tell whether anybody was coming up behind me or not. For the third time I took off my boots and socks, and walked the rest of the night with bare feet. It was simply glorious to be able to step out. The exercise soon sent the blood tingling and warming through my body, which had become chilled during my rest in the woods. My clothes were drying apace; I hardly knew now that they were wet. My toes seemed to grip the ground and lever me forward. It was good to be alive.
After I had traversed the considerable belt of isolated farms surrounding a village, the country became quite uninhabited for a time, until a solitary inn appeared on my right. Here another road joined from the north, and at the point of meeting stood a big iron sign-post. “Dangerous corner ahead! Motors to slow down,” I managed to decipher, clinging to the pointing arm. Soon after, the brook was crossed on a stone bridge. Not being thirsty, I did not stop, but went forward until I came to a track on my right. Posts were planted across it at measured intervals, as if it had been closed to wheeled traffic some time before, yet there were fresh cart ruts running parallel to it. The country was flat, with plenty of cover, and empty. I kept checking the direction of the path, which meandered about a little, and found it one or two points more westerly than I had expected. This worried me a little. Its angle with the road shown on the map was so small, however, that I could not attach undue importance to it. At the worst, it meant striking the frontier ultimately a mile or two farther south, increasing the distance by that much from the point the soldier had so triumphantly warned me against the night before.
In due course I came across another railroad and a turnpike. A quarter of a mile to the north a church steeple was faintly outlined against the sky, indicating a village. This tallied fairly well with my expectations. When crossing over the line of rails I had entered the danger zone, where sentries and patrols might be expected anywhere. Probably the frontier was no more than three miles ahead, and might be nearer.
Instead of proceeding along the road, I walked at about two hundred yards to one side over plowed fields. It hurt my feet until I thrust them hastily into my boots without troubling about the socks.
The sky was paling faintly in the east. It was high time to disappear into some thicket, like the hunted animal I was.
Behind a windmill and a house on my right the outline of dark woods promised cover. There was no possibility now of picking and choosing; I had to take what I could find. What there was of it was the reverse of satisfactory. Most of the ground was swampy. The trees and bushes, which seemed to offer excellent places for concealment while it was dark, moved apart with the growing light, while I grew more anxious.
At last I found a wood composed of small birches and pines, and some really magnificent trees. Several paths ran through it. Fairly in the center they left a sort of island, a little more densely studded with trees than the rest, and with plenty of long heather between them. This must have been about five o’clock.
The heather was sopping wet with dew, and I did not care to lie down in it just then. Instead, although it was already fairly light, I scouted around, trusting for safety to the early hour and my woodcraft.
At the northern end of the woods I found signs of recent clearing work, warning me to keep away from there. Farther on, a dense patch of saplings would have made an excellent lair, had it not been for the ground, which was almost a quagmire. On its farther side a cart road would give me a start on the following night. I did not lie down in the wet heather when I had returned to my lair, but pressed myself into a small fir-tree. I was tired, and soon very cold. Yet I had rather a good time. I was a little proud of myself, and picturing the faces of my late captors in Vehlen when they found the bird flown, which would happen about this time, was the best of fun. I chuckled to myself about the joke whenever my head, falling forward, awoke me from a semi-stupor.
The sun took some time to clear the morning mist from the face of the country. After that, it grew warmer quickly. It must have been a rare morning, but I was past appreciating it. Ere yet the heather was near being dry, I let myself fall forward into a nice, springy tuft which my dim vision had been gloating over for some time. I believe I was asleep before I reached the ground.
My sleep was so profound that I had no sense of the lapse of time when I awoke. As far as the temperature went, it might have been a day in the latter part of May, instead of the 5th of April. From the altitude of the sun it appeared to be between ten and eleven o’clock. Children and chickens kept up their usual concert not far away. The sound of axes came from the clearing close by. I felt quite warm and comfortable, particularly after I had taken off my boots and placed them and my socks in the sun to dry. Neither hunger nor thirst assailed me during the day, although the afternoon coffee and bread and butter of the previous day had been the last food to pass my lips. Sleep stole over me softly now and again, so softly, indeed, that wakefulness merged into slumber and slumber into wakefulness without sensation. Awake, I was as alert as ever; asleep, utterly unconscious. I am quite unable to say when or how often this happened, so swiftly did the one change into the other.
Nevertheless, the day appeared intolerably long. When the sun was still some distance above the horizon, I became so restless that I had to move about in the confined space I permitted myself. The breaking and trimming—with fingers, nails, and teeth—of a stout sapling into a heavy staff, jumping-pole and, perhaps, weapon, occupied part of the time. Then the fidgeting started again. I was eager to do something. The decision was so near. It had to come that night. The weather, still fine, was breaking. I felt it in my bones. Without the stars nothing could be done; without food, and particularly without water, and with only the clothes I stood up in, I should not last through a period of wet weather.
I did not feel apprehensive. On the contrary, I had a splendid confidence that all would go well. The Dutch border could not well be more than three miles away. I had to proceed across-country, of course, away from roads, certainly never on them, to pass successfully the sentries and patrols, who very likely would concentrate the greater part of their attention upon them. However, it would not do to depend on being safe anywhere. As a good deal of my time would have to be devoted to avoiding them, I might find it difficult to keep an accurate course, even if other circumstances did not force me to alter it considerably. All this had to be considered and certain safeguards planned. For those of my readers who are interested in the technique of my endeavors I would add that I expected to find a railroad track which ran parallel to my proposed course on my left, presumably a mile or two off, and a road entering Holland about three miles to the north of me, which in an extreme case would prevent my going hopelessly astray.
At last the sun touched the sky-line. Before it was quite dark, but after the voices of children and fowls and the sounds of work in the woods had ceased, my restlessness forced me to do something. I sneaked along the paths and into the thicket of saplings I had discovered in the morning, there to ensconce myself close to the road. Once a girl and a soldier in animated conversation passed me, while ever so gradually twilight deepened into darkness.
When the night was as black as could be hoped for, I walked a hundred yards or so along the road, bent double and with every sense alert. Then a path on my right led me through tall woods. Coming into the open, I corrected my course, and not long after I was stopped by a deep ditch, almost a canal. Its banks showed white and sandy in the starlight; on the side nearest me was a line of narrow rails. Some tip-over trucks were standing on them, and a few lay upturned on the ground. I remember bending down, in order to feel whether or not the rails were smooth on top, a sign of recent use, but straightened immediately. Since I should be either in Holland, or a prisoner, or dead before the morning, these precautions seemed superfluous.
The ditch threw me out of my course. Walking along it, I noticed a triangular sheen of light in the sky bearing northwest. It looked as if it were the reflex of a well-illuminated place miles ahead. I took it to be the first station in Holland on the railway from Bocholt. Later I was able to verify this.
When I got to the end of the ditch, I struck out across the flat country toward the light. It took me some time to extricate myself from a swamp. In trying to work around it, with an idea of edging in toward a railway line which I knew to be entering Holland somewhere on my left, I suddenly came upon a road running northwest. I left it quicker than I had got on it, walking parallel to it over plowed land and keeping it in sight. Shortly after, I passed between two houses, to see another road in front of me running at right angles to the former.
I crouched in the angle between the two roads, trying to penetrate the darkness, and listening with all my might. I could see no living thing, and all was silent. Just across from me a structure, the nature of which I could not make out, held my gaze. I waited, then jumped across the road into its shadow. It now resolved itself into an open shed, with a wagon underneath. Again I listened and looked, with my back toward Holland, watching the two houses I had passed, and nervously scanning the road.
Far down it a small dog began to bark. Not taking any notice of it at first, I was in the act of starting across a field covered knee-high with some stiff growth, when it occurred to me that the barking sounded like an alarm, of which I could not be the cause.
Gaining the shelter of the shed again, and straining my ears, I became aware of distant and approaching footsteps, regular and ominous. I ducked into the ditch, crawling half under the floor of the shed, and waited. When the sound was only about a yard from me, the helmet, the head, the up-slanting rifle muzzle, and the shoulders of a patrol became outlined against the sky. He walked on and was swallowed up by the darkness. His footsteps grew fainter, died away.
“Splendid!” I thought. “This road must be close to the border. It runs parallel to it. Maybe I am through the sentry lines.” I pushed on, very much excited, yet going as carefully as I could. A barbed wire and ditch were negotiated. A patch of woodland engulfed me. Going was bad on account of holes in the ground; my instinct was for rushing it, and difficult to curb.
Three shallow ditches side by side! I felt them with my hand to make sure they were not merely deeply trodden paths. “This must be the frontier!”
I was shaking with excitement and exultation when I started forward again. My leg went into a hole, and I fell forward across a dry piece of wood, which exploded underneath me with a noise like a pistol shot. I scrambled to my feet, listened, and walked on.
CHAPTER X
CAUGHT AGAIN!
“Halt!” The command came like a thunderclap and shook me from head to foot. Yet I did not believe that it could mean anything but a Dutch sentry. I stopped and tried to locate the man, who, from the sound of his voice, must be very close. I could not see him.
“Come here, and hold up your hands!”
I did so and stepped forward.
“Here, here!” The voice was almost at my elbow. Then I saw the white patch of a face above a bush. He came up to me, putting his pistol muzzle in my stomach.
“Who are you?”
I was a bit dizzy and shaken, but not quite done yet.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m a frontier guard.”
“Dutch or German?” I could not see his uniform.
“German!”
I groaned aloud; then: “What the —— are you stopping me for? What are you doing here, anyway? Leave me alone; I’m on Dutch soil.”
For answer he stepped back, saw the cudgel in my upraised hand, and said sharply, “Drop that stick.” I obeyed. He whistled, and got an answer from close by, followed by the breaking of branches and footsteps, as somebody else moved toward us. My captor put his automatic into his pocket, keeping his hand on it.
“Who are you?” he demanded again.
“That has nothing whatever to do with you. I crossed the frontier about fifty yards down there. Good night!”
“Stop! You’re over an hour from the frontier yet.”
For a moment I wondered whether I could get my weight into a blow on his jaw and make a break for it; but, as I swung slightly forward, lowering my left a little at the same time, I reflected that I could not possibly tell whether he was in reach; it was too dark. Now I believed that I was still far from the frontier. Even if I could down him, there was the second man close by. And if a bullet did not bring me down, they could easily catch me in a race, knowing the country as I did not, or bring any number of soldiers about my ears. If I were caught after having struck him, it would merely mean a blank wall and a firing party. Not good enough!
All this passed quickly through my mind, the ideas being only half formed. In the long days of solitary confinement, by which I expiated my offense, I sat in judgment upon myself again and again, every time condemning myself for a slacker. But I knew much more about the actual position later than at the moment of capture, and when one is brooding in cells, ready to barter half one’s remaining life for a glimpse of the open, it is difficult to come to a just judgment. To-day I cannot see that I could have done anything but give in. Had I had money on me I should have tried offering a bribe, but I had not even a farthing piece in my pocket. The “noes” had it.
My two captors took me between them and marched me off for some time along wood-paths. The reaction had set in now, and my senses were dulled. I kept stumbling and falling until they took my arms, when we made better progress.
“Did I come straight toward you or what?” I asked dully, after a time.
“No. We were close to the place we got you at. I heard something, and walked toward the sound. Then I saw you,” was the reply of the first man.
After an indefinite time, we struck the railway and turned down it toward Germany. We walked and walked. I was beginning to collect my thoughts, and with them my suspicions of foul play were returning, when we were challenged.
A sentry flashed his torch over us. In its light I perceived for the first time that my captors were in civilian clothes, without badge or any sign of officialdom. This, and the fact that we had picked up the sentry only after walking some time in the direction toward Germany, increased my perplexity.
I had been dully aware of a strong light in front of us. It was from the headlights of a train standing in a small station. In front of it we passed over a level crossing, and approached an inn opposite.
They took me into a bar-room. At a table on one side of the bar sat a soldier in the uniform of what the Germans call “a sergeant-major-lieutenant,” a Catholic priest, and a civilian, who turned out to be mine host. The sentry reported to the soldier while the old priest made me sit down at their table. The officer did not seem to like this arrangement at first, but the padre took no notice of him. He asked me in English whether I was hungry and thirsty. I pleaded guilty to both counts, and the nice old man forthwith ordered beer and sandwiches for me, telling me the while in bad English that he had been to the Jesuit College in Rome, where he had picked up his knowledge of the language from Irishmen.
In the meantime my captors were regaling themselves at the bar. Turning to them, the padre suddenly asked, “Where did you get him?” “Near ——,” was the answer from the first man. “But—but—but that’s very near the frontier,” stammered the priest, with a look of astonishment on his face. “No, no,” chorused the assembled company, as if acting on instructions, “that’s still an hour from the frontier,” using exactly the words my captors had used in the woods. I stopped eating for a time. I felt physically sick. Only to imagine that I had won through, actually got over the frontier, as I began firmly to believe now, to be tricked back!
The food and the beer had given me fresh strength. When I was told that it was time to go, I felt more or less indifferent. We passed along a road, the two civilians in front, the soldier behind, and I in the middle, occupied with my own thoughts and only answering with a grim cheerfulness such questions as were addressed to me.
Here I made my second grave mistake, counting the attempt at passing through Vehlen as the first. Had I kept alert for “something to turn up,” I could not have failed to see that we were marching along the road which I had crossed some time before, and passing the same shed. Had I noticed it then, instead of the next morning, I should have known where the guard-room was in which I spent the night. Instead of that—but that is anticipating events.
Presently we arrived at the guard-house, an ordinary farmhouse the ground floor of which had been cleared for the sterner duties of war.
Above the table of the N.C.O.[1] in charge a large scale map hung against the wall. I was not permitted to go near it, but its scale, being perhaps three or four inches to the mile, allowed me to see pretty much all there was to be seen from the other side of the room, where I had to spend the night on a chair. I recognized the road I had crossed (the ditch was marked on it); and, where the three narrow ditches ought to have been, there began the blank space with the name “Holland” written across it.
I could not see the guard-house marked, probably because I did not know where to look for it. Consequently I had not the faintest idea of what to do provided I could get away. This uncertainty made me miss a chance. Of course I was never alone in the room, but once during the night the N.C.O. took me out. He had no rifle with him; I doubt whether he had a pistol. Naturally he kept close to me; yet, had I only known where to turn, a break might have been possible, without entailing unreasonable risks.
At last the morning came, and with it the usual stir and bustle. One of the soldiers cursed me up and down for an Englishman. I concluded he had never been to the front. We prisoners had the same experience over and over again: the fellows with the home billets were the brutes and bullies. I was right, for my antagonist was stopped short in his peroration by a small man with a high treble voice, the result of a brain wound.
“Shut up, you! You make me tired. You’ve never seen the enemy. If any cursing of Englanders is to be done, I’ll do it. I had three English bullets in my body. T’other side’s doing their duty same as we.”
“Yes,” broke in another, “I’ve fought against the English. As long as we say nothing, keep your mouth shut. I’ll tell you as soon as your views are wanted, Mr. Stay-at-home.”
These two latter shared their breakfast with me, otherwise I should have had nothing. The second one took me outside: “Sorry, old man, hard luck! Sure you weren’t in Holland when these —— [a nasty name] dropped on you?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Only this—strictly between you and me and the doorpost, mind!—my friend and I would have liked you to get home. We can imagine what it means—‘prisoner of war.’ Make no mistake, we’d have stopped you, if you’d come across us. If only you’d been caught by soldiers instead of these —— agents! Don’t let anybody hear it, but from what I heard you were in Holland all right.”
At about ten o’clock I was taken to the inn to be examined by the “sergeant-major-lieutenant.” On the way we passed, and I recognized, the shed.
“How far is it from here to the frontier?” I asked my escort.
He did not answer.
“Look here, I can’t get away from you, can I, with no cover within two hundred yards and you having five in the magazine and one in the barrel? Can’t you understand that I want to know?”
He eyed me doubtfully.
“You can spit across the frontier from here,” he made slow answer.
That, I knew, was meant metaphorically, but it sufficed for me.
The examination did not amount to much. I was considered with grave suspicion by the sergeant-major, because at that time I could not tell him the name of the village I had escaped from. Also, the British officer was haunting their minds still. If he and I were not identical, I might have met and helped him, was their beautifully logical argument. “See that he is taken to Bocholt on the two-thirty train and handed over to a man from Company Headquarters. Now take him back to the guard-room.”
When we got back there, they put a sentry in the yard, who sat on a chair with a rifle across his lap, and went to sleep. It must have been a strictly unofficial sentry. Nobody took the slightest notice of him, and he was quite superfluous, because most of the soldiers off duty were in the yard all the time enjoying the warm sunshine. Dinner-hour came and went. I, of course, received nothing officially, but the man who had talked with me in the morning gave me several of his sandwiches.
After dinner I was alone in the guard-room with a fresh N.C.O. in charge, who was writing up some reports. The window in the next room where the men slept at night, and which was now deserted, was not latched. I wondered whether I could get it open and make a dash for it down the road into the next cover. I had been fidgeting about, and when I changed to a steady tramp into the kitchen, through the guard-room, and then several steps into the dormitory, it attracted no attention. I doubt whether the N. C. O., intent on his task, was aware of me at all. The window was hinged, as all windows are in Germany. Twice I visited it and got it ajar. The third time I pulled it open, and had placed my hands on the sill to get out, when a patrol came into view. He saw me at the same time. The movement of his rifle could not be misunderstood. I closed the window and stepped back. The patrol came into the room and gave me some good advice: “Don’t be a fool! We’ll get you sure. Can’t afford not to. What do you think would happen to us, if you escaped? Last night, a Frenchman wouldn’t stand on challenge. He’s dead now. This is in the daytime.” He never reported me, though; or, if he did, I never heard of it.
I talked with the soldiers now and then. It appeared that fugitives were caught virtually every night. They would not admit that many got over. About one in ten was killed, so they said; but I think that is exaggerated.
They laughed when I told them of the punishment I was expecting. “You to be punished, a civilian?—nonsense! You have a right to try for it, if you care to take the risk. Why, military prisoners of war get only a fortnight cell in camp for escaping. We’ve had a Frenchman here three times in eight weeks.”
Two soldiers took me to the train and to Bocholt. There I was handed over to another N.C.O., and after a tedious journey on a steam tram we arrived at Company Headquarters in Vreden, where I was again examined, this time very thoroughly and with great cleverness.
That evening I was lodged in prison. Also, the weather broke, and it was to the music of dripping eaves and gurgling spouts that I fell asleep.
CHAPTER XI
UNDER ESCORT
On the fourth morning, when it seemed to me I had spent about a year in Vreden prison, the warder informed me that my escort had arrived. I had plenty of time to get over the excitement produced by this piece of news, for I was not called for until four o’clock, which caused me to miss my evening bowl of skilly, a dire calamity.
The soldier was waiting in the gateway. Walking down the passage toward him, I had to pass by a big burly N.C.O. of the German Army, who had a tremendous sword attached to him. I felt that something was going to happen when I approached him. As I was squeezing past him in the narrow corridor, he suddenly shot out a large hand, with which he grasped mine, limp with surprise. Giving it a hearty shake, he wished me a pleasant Auf Wiedersehen! (Au revoir!) I was almost past utterance with astonishment, and could only repeat his words stammeringly. “Not on your life, if I can help it,” I murmured when I had turned away and was recovering from the shock. Still, I suppose it was kindly meant.
My escort, a single soldier, went through the usual formalities of loading his rifle before my eyes and warning me to behave myself. The cord for special marksmanship dangled from his shoulder.
He was strictly noncommittal at first, and only assured me again, apropos of nothing, during our walk to the station, that he did not intend to have me escape from him. Afterward he thawed considerably, but always remained serious and subdued, talking a good deal about his wife and children, what a hard time they had of it, and that he had not seen them for eighteen months.
The preliminary jolt of the small engine of the narrow-gage train gave me the sinking sensation usually caused by the downward start of a fast lift, and for a time my heart seemed to be getting heavier with every revolution of the wheels, which put a greater distance between me and the frontier. Had I cherished hopes in spite of all? I don’t know.
With several changes the journey to Berlin lasted through the night. I was very hungry, and the soldier shared with me what little food he had. Two incidents are worth mentioning.
At the time of my escape a political tension between Holland and Germany had caused rumors of a threatened break between the two countries. The soldier who arrested me in Vehlen had alluded to it. My escort and I were alone in a third-class compartment of the east-express, about midnight, when a very dapper N.C.O. entered. He took in the situation at a glance.
“Prisoner’s escort?”
“Yes.”
“What is he?”
“An Englander.”
“Trying to escape to Holland?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I only hope the trouble with Holland will come to a head. We’ll soon show those damned Dutchmen what German discipline means. We’ll sweep the country from end to end in a week. Did he get far?”
“Close to the frontier.”
“However did he manage that in that get-up?” and he sniffed disgustedly.
The other incident was interesting in case of future attempts to escape. About an hour before the train entered Berlin, detectives passed along the corridors asking for passports. I began to wonder how I had managed to get as far as I had.
We arrived in Berlin about 9 A.M. Before we proceeded to the prison, the soldier compassionately bought me a cup of coffee and a roll at the station buffet. I had had nothing to eat since 11:30 A.M. the previous day, except a roll the soldier had given me about midnight.
This was at Alexander Platz Station, fairly in the center of Berlin. As we left the station, Alexander Platz was in front of us with the faÇade of the Polizei PrÄsidium on our right. Turning in this direction, we entered a quiet street along the right side of which the arches of the railway accommodated a few small shops and storage places underneath them. On the other side a wing of the Polizei PrÄsidium continued for a hundred yards or so. The next building was plain, official-looking but of no very terrible aspect, for the four rows of large windows above the ground floor were not barred on the outside. In its center a large gateway was closed by a heavy wooden double door. “Here we are,” said my escort, as he pressed the button of the electric bell.
One half of the door was opened by an N.C.O. of the army. Inside the gateway on the left a corridor ran along the front of the building, terminating at a door bearing the inscription “Office,” on an enameled shield. A motion of the hand from the N.C.O. directed us toward it. We entered. Another N.C.O. was sitting at a table, writing. My soldier saluted, reported, then shook hands with me and departed.
“Your name, date of birth, place of birth, and nationality?” said the N.C.O. at the table, not unkindly.
I looked at the plain office furniture of the irregular room before answering, feeling very downhearted. Having given him the information he wanted, I asked apprehensively: “What are you going to do with me?”
“We’ll put you in solitary confinement.”
“For how long?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“And what then?”
“You’re going to stay with us so long that you needn’t bother yet about the ‘what then.’”
“But aren’t you going to send me back to Ruhleben when I’m through with my punishment for escaping?”
“I’ve nothing to do with it and don’t know. But I’m pretty sure you’ll have to stay here till the end of the war.”
“That’s hard punishment for an attempt to get home!”
“Bless my soul, you’re not going to be locked up all the time! There are a number of Englanders here. Most of them are up and down these stairs the whole day.” With this he went out and shouted for some one. Another N.C.O. appeared. “Take this man to Block Twenty-three and lock him up. Here’s his slip.” The slip, I saw later, was a piece of paper stating my name and nationality, and marked with a cross which stood for “solitary confinement.” It was to be fastened to the outside of my cell door.
CHAPTER XII
THE STADTVOGTEI AND “SOLITARY”
In its original meaning Stadtvogtei denotes the official residence of the Stadtvogt. This was an official appointed in feudal times by the overlord of the territory, as keeper of one of his castles, around which an early settlement of farmers and a few artisans had grown into a medieval town or Stadt.
Later on, as a fit successor of the old Stadtvogtei, a prison arose in its place, which was modernized from time to time, until in 1916 a new modern building stood where once victims had vanished into dungeons, and, later, political prisoners (among them Bebel, in 1870) had languished in dark, musty, insanitary cells.
Bricks, iron, concrete, and glass had been used in the construction of this building, the scanty furniture and the cell doors being the only wood to be found in it.
I never came to know the whole of the Stadtvogtei, but learned gradually that it enclosed a number of courtyards. These were triangular in shape and just sixty paces in circumference. Around them the walls rose five stories high, and made deep wells of them rather than yards. The regularly spaced windows, tier upon tier, with their iron bars increased the dreariness of their aspect.
With a yard as a center, each part of the prison surrounding it formed a structural entity, a “block,” separated from the next one by a space about eight feet wide, and extending from the ground floor right up to the glass roof above. The aggregation of blocks was enclosed by the outer walls as the segments of an orange are enclosed by the peel. With the cell windows toward the yards, the doors were in the circumference of the blocks. In front of them, frail-looking balconies, or gangways, extending around the blocks, took the place of corridors, and overhung by half its width the space separating the component parts of the prison. Their floors consisted in most places of thick plates of glass, fitting into the angle-irons of the cantilevers. Iron staircases and short bridges permitted communication between the different floors and blocks.
Imagine yourself standing at the end of one of these corridors and looking down its vista. In the wall nearest to you the perspectively diminishing quadrilaterals of eighteen evenly spaced doors, each with its ponderous lock, bolt, and a spy-hole in the center, with a row of ventilating holes above them, and, underfoot and above, the glass of two balcony floors. On the opposite side a breast-high iron railing, beyond it four feet of nothingness, and then the blank stretch of a whitewashed wall, reflecting the light from the skylights on top of the building.
Try to think of yourself as so situated that a chance of “enjoying” this view mornings and evenings, when the cell doors are unlocked for a few minutes, is eagerly anticipated as a change from the monotony of the cell, and you will in one respect approach the sensations of a man in solitary confinement.
Then imagine that the sight of this same gaunt vista every day causes you a feeling of almost physical nausea, that you keep in your cell, or somebody else’s, as much as possible to escape it, and you may perhaps realize a fractional part of the circle of the disagreeable sensations of a man who has had the “liberty of the prison” for, say, six months.
As a rule such emotions are subconscious, but they come to the surface when the periodical attack of prison sickness of the soul lays hold of you, a temporary affection of the mind which is very disagreeable to the individual who suffers from it, and may have unpleasant effects on his companions and friends. We used to hide these attacks as carefully as we could from one another.
Originally the prison had been used for criminals undergoing light sentences of two or three years and less, and for remand prisoners. One entire block had been used for the latter. There the cells were superior to those in the remainder of the building, where there were stone floors, very small windows, and no artificial light, while the beds consisted of boards on an iron frame and a paillasse. In the remand cells the floor was covered with red linoleum, and in this part landings and corridors were covered with the same material, there were larger windows, spring mattresses hinged to the wall, and—luxury beyond belief to a man from Ruhleben camp—electric lamps.
Except when special punishment was being inflicted, the political prisoners, among whom I count the civil prisoners of war, inhabited this better part of the prison, comprising perhaps three hundred cells around one yard.
Over a year before my arrival the German military authorities had taken over the greater part of the Stadtvogtei for their own prisoners. Only a small portion was still occupied by the civil prison authorities and their charges. One or two of the latter occasionally appeared in our wing, in the charge of a civil warder, to do an odd job. They were permanently used in the kitchen, the bath and disinfecting place, and before the furnace.
In the military part of the prison N.C.O.’s of the army acted as warders for the military and political prisoners.
Of the former there were always a great many. They were undergoing punishment for slight breaches of discipline, or were remanded there awaiting trial before a court martial. Occasionally a number of French soldiers, and now and again an English Tommy or tar, were incarcerated among them. When this happened, and we heard of it, we tried to help them with food, tobacco, and cigarettes. It was very seldom that we succeeded, as we were not allowed on corridors the cells of which were used for military prisoners.
Since, however, the remand block did not quite suffice for the political and civilian prisoners of war, we occasionally found ourselves in the military block, though quartered above the soldiers on separate corridors. In this fashion, and on occasional trips through the prison to see the doctor or to get something from the kitchen, we saw and heard enough of the treatment meted out to the German soldiers to form an opinion of their sufferings.
In this the most cherished traditions of the German Army, and of the German N.C.O.’s, were rigidly adhered to. We never heard one of the poor prisoners being spoken to in an ordinary voice by their jailers. They were shouted at, jeered at, abused, beaten, and bullied in every conceivable way. Their part of the prison was in a continual uproar from the voices of the N.C.O.’s, who evidently enjoyed the privilege of torturing in perfect safety their fellow-beings.
Sometime during 1917 an N.C.O. who had spent most of his life in England came to the prison. I heard him talk with one of my friends one evening. A few days after, on my way to the kitchen, I had the unpleasant experience of seeing him break up one of his charges. The man had obviously had a dose before I arrived on the scene, for he was sobbing in his pitch-dark cell, while the N.C.O. was talking at him in a way that made my blood boil.
A few weeks before this happened, a friend of ours, a former A. S. C. man, had shot into the cell where I was sitting with a chum. He was laughing queerly, highly excited and pale.
“Look into the yard, look into the yard!” he cried, jumping on a table underneath the window. We followed as fast as we could, but were just too late. This is what had happened:
A Black Maria had been driven into the yard. Two or three N.C.O.’s had surrounded it and opened the door, and one of them had climbed inside. The next moment a German cavalryman, manacles on wrists and ankles, was pitched literally head over heels on to the stone pavement of the yard, where he lay, seemingly stunned. Two of the N.C.O.’s grabbed him by the collar and, kicking the motionless form, dragged him through the gates, which closed after them.
Most of the military prisoners were kept in dark cells. I do not know for how long this kind of punishment may be inflicted, but I believe six weeks is the maximum term. Imagine what it means to spend only two weeks in a perfectly dark, comfortless room on bread and water, sleeping on bare boards without blankets. Yet that, as it appeared, would be a very ordinary sentence.
This kind of punishment could be inflicted on anybody who was directly under military law, as we prisoners of war were. During my seventeen months in prison, it occurred only once that an Englishman, an ex-navy man, got a week of it. My particular friends and I were able to get a well-cooked, hot meal to him on most days. When he came out, he vowed he could have stuck a month of it, thanks to our ministrations, but his drawn face seemed to belie his words.
While the military prisoners had their food sent in from a barracks outside—judging from what we saw of it, it was rather good—we were supplied from the prison kitchen. The food varied somewhat in quality and quantity at different times. In 1914 and again in the following year it was nauseous, and so insufficient that after four weeks in prison young men found it impossible to mount the four flights of stairs to the top corridor in less than half an hour. When I arrived it happened to be comparatively good for a few weeks. The amount one got would have kept a man alive, though in constant hunger tortures, for perhaps six months, if he was in good condition to start with.
Breakfast was at 7:30 and consisted of a pint of hot black fluid, distantly resembling very thin coffee in taste, and a piece of bread weighing eight ounces, black, but much better than the bread we were accustomed to in camp. A pint of soup was served for dinner, but there was never any meat in it. Rumor had it that meat was occasionally added but disappeared afterward. The staple substance in the beginning was potatoes, with mangel-wurzels during the following winter. By far the best soup, which disappeared from the bill of fare altogether for a long time, contained plenty of haricot-beans. It was usually given out on Saturdays or Sundays, and tasted rather good. Another one, tolerable for a hungry man, consisted of a sort of black bean, with hard shells but mealy kernels, and potatoes. A fish soup appeared on the menu three times a week; fortunately one could smell it as soon as the big pails left the kitchen at the other end of the building. This gave one a chance of accumulating the necessary courage to face it in one’s bowl. It really was horrible beyond words.
At about five o’clock a pint of hot water with barley was intended to furnish the last meal of the day. Often there was less than a pint of fluid, and most often the barley was entirely absent. But the water had always a dirty blue color; consequently it did not even appeal to one’s Æsthetic sense. On Sundays these rations were sometimes supplemented by a pickled herring or a small piece of sausage. I could never bring myself to touch these.
Subsistence on the prison food exclusively would have been almost impossible. I am not speaking from the point of view of the average man, who has had plenty all his life, but as a one-time prisoner of war in Germany, who has seen what incredibly little will keep the flame of life burning, at least feebly.
Fortunately, almost all the politicals or prisoners of war obtained extra sustenance in some way or another, although the majority of the Poles and Russians did so only occasionally and in small quantities.
As far as the British were concerned, we got enough food from England in our parcels to do entirely without the prison diet. Those amongst us who found themselves temporarily short of eatables simply drew from others who were better supplied.
I had had a foretaste of prison in Cologne in November, 1914, which had not been encouraging. Consequently I felt apprehensive enough, while mounting the stairs behind the N.C.O. on the morning of my arrival.
The prison being very full, only a convict cell ten feet long and five wide was available for me, into which I was thrust without ceremony. A small window, barred, and high up in the narrow wall, faced the door. The bed on the left was hinged to the brick work and folded flat against it. A stool in the corner by the door was balanced on the other side by the hot-water pipes for heating. Farther along, toward the window, a small double shelf, with three pegs underneath, took the place of wardrobe, cupboard, and bookcase. It held a Prayer Book, a New Testament, an earthenware plate, bowl and mug, a wooden salt-cellar, a tumbler, and a knife, fork, and spoon. Against one side of it hung a small printed volume of prison rules and a piece of cardboard, showing a dissected drawing of the shelves, with the contents in regulation order, and an inventory underneath. In the center of the wall a small table was hinged and fastened like the bed. A Bible text above decorated the cell.
When in the course of the morning bed-linen and a towel were issued to me, I was vastly pleased. I had not expected such luxuries. The former consisted of a coarse gray bedcloth, an enormous bag of the same material, but checkered in blue, and another small one of the same kind. The big bag was to serve as a cover for the two blankets, which were to be folded inside; the small one was a pillow-slip.
Dinner meant another welcome interruption in the difficult task of settling down, and, since it was Saturday, turned out to be bean soup. Although the quantity was far short of what I required, particularly in my famished state, it appeared so tasty, so far beyond anything I had been accustomed to in camp as far as German rations were concerned, that I was beginning to think myself in clover.
Still, I was in solitary confinement. How long was this state of affairs to last? I had asked the man in charge of the canteen, a British prisoner who paid me a visit in his official capacity. He did not know. He had had four and a half months after his escape of the previous summer. The N.C.O.’s refused to commit themselves, if they answered my questions at all. So I tried to face the prospect of being shut up in a small cell, with no company but my own, for five months. On this basis I worked out the final date, made a very rough calendar, and thereafter at 11 A.M., the hour of my arrival in the Stadtvogtei, marked with great ceremony the termination of every twenty-four hours in “solitary.”
I was not examined again, contrary to my expectations, and my clever plans, framed in Vreden prison, of “diddling the Boche” into a forgiving frame of mind could not be tested. My hopes of a glimpse of Ruhleben camp and my friends were not realized. The term of my solitary confinement evidently was regarded as a state secret, not to be communicated even to the person whom it most concerned. This was a policy always pursued by the Kommandantur in Berlin—whether out of sheer malice or callous indifference I don’t know. Since I was the first escaper to be punished under a new regulation, there was no precedent to form an opinion from; but I did not know that, and consequently expected the same term of “solitary” as other men before me. Those who came after me were not permitted to have much doubt about the subject. We saw to that.
On the morning of the second day I was told that, in addition to solitary confinement, punishment diet had been ordered by the powers that were. One day out of every three (for four weeks) I was to receive bread and water only. It sounded unpleasant. The canteen man, who came to see me every day for a few minutes, assured me that this was something new, quite outside his experience, and, being pressed, cheered me vastly by consenting to my expressed opinion that it might, perhaps, indicate a correspondingly short term of “solitary.”
As it turned out, the punishment diet proved the reverse of what it was intended to be, an aggravation. In filling power, twenty-four ounces of bread were far superior to the ordinary prison food, and much more palatable than fish soup. Very soon I began to look forward to my “hard” days.
On the morning of the third day a different N.C.O. took charge of my corridor and me. I cannot speak too highly of him. Good-natured and disinterestedly kind, he made my lot as easy as possible. Knowing a little about prison routine by now, I had got up before the clanging of the prison bell had sounded, apprehensive of being late. Then I set to work cleaning my cell, scrubbing the floor and dusting the “furniture,” and was quite ready when the doors were opened to permit us to empty the cell utensils and get fresh water. This was soon accomplished, and I lingered outside in the corridor to enjoy the “view.” Not far from me a Polish prisoner was cleaning the balcony floor, and the N.C.O.—let us call him Kindman—was trying hard to make the Pole understand that the water he was using was too dirty for the purpose. The poor Pole, not comprehending a word, was working away doggedly, while Kindman was gradually raising his voice to a shriek in his efforts to make his charge understand, without producing the slightest effect. He was not at all nasty about it, as one would have expected from a German N.C.O.; he merely substituted vocal effort for his lack of knowledge of Polish.
“I tell you, you are to use clean water, not dirty water, clean water, not dirty water, dirty water no good, no good,” shaking his head. Pause, to get a fresh breath. Roaring: “Clean water, clean, clean, clean!” Despairingly he glanced in my direction. I fetched my own pail, full of clean water, put it beside the Pole’s, and, stirring it with my hand, nodded vigorously. Then, pointing to the thick fluid in the other pail, I made the sign of negation. The Pole understood.
“You cleaned your cell before opening time this morning?” Kindman asked a little later. “You needn’t do that. I’ll get you a Kalfacter—a man to do the dirty work for you. You’re a prisoner of war. You are allowed these privileges. There are plenty of Poles here who’ll be only too glad to do it for a mark a week.”
After some hesitation I assented. In camp I had perhaps taken a foolish pride in doing everything myself, with the exception of washing my underclothes. Now, in prison, I had a Kalfacter to scrub and clean. Instead, I began to do my own washing, not liking to entrust it to the doubtfully clean hands of a Pole.
“I’ll get you a better cell,” was Kindman’s next announcement. A few days after I moved into one of the remand cells with its comfortable bed, its nice red “lino” floor, and a bright electric light burning up to nine o’clock, while hitherto I had sat in darkness of an evening.
So far so good. There were no terrible physical hardships to endure. It was unpleasant not to have enough food. I did get some help from my fellow-countrymen, but parcels were arriving irregularly just then, and it was little they could spare me. My own had stopped altogether, and I had only very little money to buy things with, and that borrowed, and consequently it had to be hoarded like a miser’s until I could get some of my own. I was always hungry, and often could not sleep for griping pains, while pictures of meals I had once eaten, and menus I would order as soon as I got to England, kept appearing before me.
It was a red-letter day when my hand-bag arrived from the sanatorium. Besides the clothes, it contained several tins of food, which I determined to consume as sparingly as possible. That, however, was easier planned than done. Knowing the food to be within reach, I simply could not keep my hands from it. It all went in two days. I remember getting up in the middle of the night to open a tin containing a Christmas pudding, and eating it cold to the last crumb. Marvelous to relate, I went peacefully to sleep after that.
The actual treatment in “solitary” was much better than I had hoped for in my most optimistic moments. Mentally, however, I suffered somewhat during the first fortnight or three weeks. I had to battle against the worst attack of melancholia I had ever experienced. I never lost my grip of myself entirely, but came very near succumbing to absolute despair. The uncertainty about the duration of my punishment, the cessation of all letters and parcels from Blighty at a time when I most wanted them, the fear that my correspondence would merely wander into the waste-paper basket of a German censor, and last, but not least, the lack of response from my friends in camp to my post-cards—all combined to depress my spirits horribly.
I began to wish heartily that I had made a daylight attempt from the guard-house, which certainly would have ended my troubles one way or another. The drop from the balcony to the stone flags below had an unholy fascination. For a number of days I gazed down every moment of the few minutes I was allowed outside my cell.
In the beginning of the war I had read of the attempted escape of a British officer from a fortress in Silesia. When he was apprehended somewhere in Saxony, he committed suicide with his razor. “What a fool!” had run my unsympathetic comment to my friends; “what did he want to do that for?” Now I could not forget his tragic end, and not only understood his action but almost admired him for it.
Every afternoon the other men in solitary confinement and I spent an hour—from three to four o’clock—walking in single file round the yard. An N.C.O., with a big gun strapped to his waist, kept guard over us, and had been ordered to see that we did not talk together. With an indulgent man on guard it was occasionally possible to get in a word or two, even to carry on a conversation for ten minutes or so. In this way I made the acquaintance of all the other Englishmen who were in the same position as I.
As I became more cheerful, I began to relish the books which were sent to me by the other English prisoners, and to look about for means of snatching what enjoyment I could under the circumstances. Two visits to the prison doctor for the treatment of “sleeplessness” gave me opportunities of chatting for half an hour with my friend Ellison, who faked up some complaint on the same days.
My punishment diet was to end on the 8th of May. That over, I expected another four months under lock and key, until the 10th of September.
On the 7th of May, while tramping round the yard, the sergeant-major, second in command, came in and beckoned me to him.
“You’ve finished your ‘solitary’!” he said.
“Do you mean to say to-day?” I asked. “Am I to have my cell door open, and may I see the other men?”
When the hour of exercise was over, I sped up the stairs, taking four steps at a stride, and searched for Kindman.
“I’m out of ‘solitary,’” I bawled. “I’m going to see the other chaps!”
“Hey, wait a moment,” he cried. “I must lock your cell door first.”
“But I tell you I’m out of ‘solitary’!”
“I believe you, though I don’t know officially. I’m not going to lock you in, but lock the door I will. If we leave it open, you’ll find all your things gone when you come back. These Poles would take anything they can lay their hands on, and small blame to them. Most of them haven’t a shirt to their back.”
I did not return to my cell until lock-up time, feeling comfortably replete from various teas I had had, and my throat raw from incessant talking.
The part of our block reserved for men in solitary confinement, one side of the triangle, was separated from the rest by iron gates on each landing. These gates barred access to the military part as well. They were always kept locked. To clamber over them was easy enough; to be seen doing so spelled seven days’ cells. My first care, consequently, was to get a cell “in front of the gate.” This term was equivalent among us for ordinary confinement as opposed to solitary, for, in ordinary circumstances, nobody would willingly stay in a cell “behind the gate” if not in “solitary,” and was, in fact, not supposed to do so.
An unexpected physical phenomenon, which I afterward observed in others, made itself unpleasantly felt in my case. The first days following my release from “behind the gate” I was extremely nervous and restless; at times I longed to be back in “solitary” with the cell door securely locked upon me.
CHAPTER XIII
CLASSES AND MASSES IN THE STADTVOGTEI
The prisoners interned in the Stadtvogtei were divided into two classes, the aristocrats, or rather the plutocrats, and the rest, thus repeating faithfully the state of affairs in the outer world.
To the former belonged all the British without exception, a few occasional Frenchmen and Belgians, a number of Russians of education and means, temporarily some German socialists—they would be disgusted if they read this—and one or two German undesirables, adventurers and high-class pickpockets, who had come out of prison recently, but were probably not considered safe enough to be at large.
The “rest” was composed of an ever-changing mass of Russian and Polish laborers, never less than two hundred and fifty in number.
Wealth admitted to the upper class. The possibility of procuring food was wealth. This explains why all the British were plutocrats, for they received parcels from home, and had more food, as a rule, than anybody else. Frenchmen and Belgians, on the contrary, held a precarious position on the outside edge of society. Not having friends in Germany who could supply them with food, as was the case with the Russian and German plutocrats, and their parcels from France and Belgium being exceedingly few, they were frequently in straits. But then, of course, they were “taken up” by some of the “plutocratic” Englishmen, who chose their associates according to other standards than those of digestible possessions.
As far as malice aforethought is concerned, Englishmen have been, and are, the worst treated of all the prisoners of war in Germany. I believe the Russians had a harder time of it from sheer neglect by the higher authorities, being delivered over to the tender mercies of the German N.C.O. and private soldier, clothed with a little brief authority. This class of human beings was always chary of tackling Englishmen, either singly or in small groups.
In the Stadtvogtei the usual order was reversed. There we were the cocks of the walk among the prisoners, and, in time, entirely unofficial privileges developed appertaining to us as Englishmen. They were inconspicuous enough in themselves. An incident will serve as an illustration. It was the more startling in its significance as I had no idea that the privilege in question had come to exist until it had happened.
It was in the summer of 1917. The prisoners in ordinary confinement were allowed to be in the courtyard at certain hours of the day, but were supposed to enter and leave it only at the full and half-hours. I had observed this rule so far, except on a very few occasions, when I had asked the doorkeeper to let me in and out at odd times. I was doing certain work for the British colony, which now and then called me there on business.
One morning I happened to be walking about with Captain T., then recently released from solitary confinement for an attempt at escaping. We were waiting for the door to be unlocked to leave the yard, and when the doorkeeper opened it between times, I, followed by the captain, passed through, nodding my acknowledgment to the N.C.O. On seeing my companion, he stepped up to him threateningly and shouted, “What d’you mean by coming out, you ——” I had not grasped the situation, but jumped between them instinctively and said, “Hold on. This is an Englishman!”
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t know. I thought he was a Pole. I’ve never seen him before.”
Captain T. had missed the meaning of the affair, and I had to explain it to him. I went up the stairs to our cell feeling very chesty.
Up to the beginning of June, 1916, the British numbered less than twenty. During the course of the summer and autumn our colony grew until we were about thirty-four strong. More than half of the new arrivals were escapers. We had our experiences in common, and a class feeling, even some class characteristics. We certainly all felt equally hostile to that particular section in Ruhleben camp whose attitude toward us was summed up in these words: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves? Can’t you stay and take your gruel?” We were actually asked these questions.
K. was the doyen of our group. He was older than the rest. His attempt, with a companion, in April, 1915, to which I have referred in a previous chapter, was the first made from Ruhleben, and he had been at liberty longer than any one else—more than three weeks. He was one of the most charming men one could wish to meet, though, as he was a Scotsman, it took some little time to break down his reserve. Hailing from the same part of the kingdom, there were W. and M. who had been in prison since June, 1915, followed soon after by Wallace Ellison, my friend and comrade-to-be, and another man—both excellent fellows. Wallace was my neighbor on the right, as K. was on the left, when I had succeeded in getting a cell on the top floor, coveted on account of the light and air and the greater expanse of sky visible from the window. Of some of the men who came after me I shall speak later on.
One of my companions, not an escaper, was Dr. BÉland, a well-known Canadian. He had been residing in Belgium when the war broke out, and, although a physician, he had been arrested in the summer of 1915, and sent to prison in Berlin. The Germans regarded him as a member of an enemy government, and justified their action in their own way, by saying that this eliminated his standing as a member of the medical profession. As a matter of fact, Dr. BÉland was not a member of the Cabinet in Canada, and had not been for some time. He belonged, however, to the House of Commons.
Dr. BÉland was a man of great personal charm. His wide experience, his high good humor, which never failed under the ordinary, trying conditions of life in prison, his readiness to help all those in distress, and his brilliant powers as a conversationalist, made it a delight to meet him. In the course of time we got to know each other well, and in January, 1917, he rendered us, particularly a friend and myself, a great service by the delicate handling of an affair which almost got us sent to a penal prison.
Little consideration was ordinarily shown him by the German authorities. When they had an opportunity, as once happened to be the case, they treated him with a refined cruelty which created universal indignation among his companions.
Apart from the British who were permanent boarders at our establishment, occasional birds of passage on their way to Ruhleben camp alighted there for a night or two. Most of them were boys who had been residing in Belgium. Unable to get away when the invasion overwhelmed that unhappy country, and not having attained the “internable” age of seventeen, they had been compelled to stay on, until the day of their seventeenth birthday brought their arrest and subsequent internment as a Greek gift from the conquerors.
Among the other plutocrats, whatever their nationality, we found some cheery and interesting companions. Several of the socialists were men of high intellectual attainments and charming manners. We were on the best terms with them, a circumstance which, I believe, gave rise to some uneasiness to the prison governor. He certainly had always something nasty to say about them, looking down from the height of his semi-education upon men who knew what they were talking about, who knew—none better—the German governing classes, and who were perfectly frank about them. We often had them to tea in our cell. They gave us sufficient insight into the pre-war intrigues which led to the catastrophe, and into the falsehoods and falsifications of the German Government, to make us catch our breath.
The component parts of the “rest,” the Polish and Russian laborers, came and went. We did not get into real contact with them. The difficulties of language stood in the way, for one thing. Poor and ignorant, most of them illiterate, they were greatly to be pitied. With very little besides the prison food to live on, and constantly maltreated by the N.C.O.’s, it is still somewhat of a marvel to me that they did not succumb. Their powers of passive resistance, their ability under such circumstances to keep on living, and even to retain a certain amount of cheerfulness, can be explained only by their low intellectual and emotional standard and the centuries of slavery or semi-slavery their ancestors had endured.
The most pitiable objects were boys, children almost, who occasionally appeared among them. Tiny mites they were as to stature, with the faces of old men on bodies of children of eight or nine years of age. They, too, had been recruited by German agents. Most of them seemed to have been sent into the coal-mines, where hard work and little food had broken them completely. Their actual years were usually between thirteen and sixteen.
With their mental powers almost destroyed, and nearly too weak to walk, they used to sit in their cells or stand listlessly about the corridors, their eyes lusterless and vacant.
Whenever any of them were about, they were taken on by some of us as pensioners. But even a hearty meal set before them did not bring a smile to their lips or a gleam into their eyes. Like graven images they wolfed it down, tried to kiss your hand or the hem of your coat, and went to sit or stand as before.
CHAPTER XIV
PRISON LIFE AND OFFICIALS
Not long before I arrived in prison, a change had taken place in its official personnel. Formerly, the internment side and the military side had been under different commanders.
What I heard from my friends about the character of the man in charge of the interned, previous to my coming, caused me to congratulate myself upon my good luck in not having to encounter him. He had been an out-and-out bully. He was transferred to Ruhleben camp later on, where he went under the name of “Stadtvogtei Billy.”
The officer in command of the prison after “Stadtvogtei Billy” had gone, had charge of the interned and military prisoners. This Oberleutnant, to give him his German title, was a schoolmaster in civil life. As such he was a government official and duly imbued with the prescribed attitude of mind.
Officially we had not much to do with him. Occasionally we had to approach him for some small request or other, and found him courteous enough then. When he took the initiative, something disagreeable usually happened, or was going to happen.
Often he called upon some of us for a chat. That was always something of a trial. He never could get rid of his ex cathedra manners; he knew only the approved official version of whatever he was talking about, and mostly chose rather unfortunate themes for his discourses. “Prussian superiority in everything, but particularly in war,” “the eminent qualities of the Prussian rulers,” “Prussian strategy in war favorably compared with that of other nations, particularly the British,” “Jewish treason and wickedness”—such were his favorite topics. Quite frankly he ran down everything British and American. The United States in particular was sighing under the absolute rule of two wicked autocrats, one called the “President,” the other the “Almighty Dollar.” They were inhabited partly by Germans and partly by a mass of ignorant and unteachable fools and cowards, who, unable to grasp the intellectual and moral righteousness of the German nation, spouted against them, but were afraid to act. He used to bore us to tears, and his departure was always followed by sighs of relief.
Of middle size, he was well built, and kept himself superbly fit. He knew a little about boxing, and often commanded one of the Englishmen to be his sparring partner in one of the big empty cells of the military part. His tactics were to strike blows as hard as he could. Once or twice this was discouraged by his opponent.
The sergeant-major came officially into contact with us every day when he made his rounds. He was a handsome fellow, stout, with almost white hair and a fresh complexion, much younger than he looked, and an old army man. With the mannerism of a German N.C.O., he was a kindly fellow at heart, and easy to get on with. Although his voice could be heard thundering somewhere in the prison at any hour of the day, his bark was ever so much worse than his bite.
The N.C.O.’s acting as warders in our section were always considerate to us and the other plutocrats, though in different degrees and for different reasons. One or two treated us decently, quite spontaneously, and strictly within the limits of their duty. As for the rest, a quid pro quo was the more or less openly confessed basis of their behavior toward us.
The scarcity of food in Germany made it inexpensive and easy for us to keep the wheels oiled. A tin of herring or of dripping, or a few biscuits went a very long way. I think we were perfectly justified in making these small donations.
The doctor visited the prison only for an hour or two every morning, except Sundays. Any one who was foolish enough to be taken suddenly and seriously ill after he had gone, had to wait until the next day, and, if he carried his stupidity so far as to do it on a Saturday, he could not hope for medical attention until Monday morning.
Dr. BÉland always helped as far as he could in such cases. Many a night he was fetched out of bed to give first aid. He was handicapped in this work of charity by his lack of drugs and stimulants.
There was a chapel in the prison, whose parson was supposed to look after our spiritual welfare. Personally, I never spoke to him, nor did I approach his shop. The expression fits, as I shall try to demonstrate.
Among us we had an engineer, M., who felt it necessary to observe his religious duties, and wished to take part in the services held in the chapel. He went to the parson to proffer his request.
“The Lord God is not for the English,” were the words in which he refused it.
The unchanging routine of our prison day was as follows: the doors of the cells, locked during the night, were opened again at half-past seven o’clock in the morning. While the Kalfacters cleaned the cells, we prepared breakfast in the kitchen. The meal over, some went into the courtyard for a walk, while others employed themselves in whatever way they felt most inclined. The canteen was open from ten o’clock until half-past ten. At eleven o’clock the midday soup was distributed. It did not concern us Englishmen, for we never took our share. The kitchen was opened again now for the preparation of the midday meal, and there was usually a rush to secure one or more of the gas-rings. The cleaning of vegetables, peeling of potatoes, and other preparations had been previously undertaken in the cells by all hands. The cooking itself was attended to by the cook of the mess and day. Soon after eleven the distribution of parcels from England was to be expected. On their arrival an N.C.O. went into the yard and shouted the names of the lucky ones, generally mispronouncing them. Leaving everything to take care of itself, their owners went helter-skelter down to the office to take possession of their packages. From half-past three o’clock till five it was again possible to brew tea and cook, and from four to six to be in the yard. At seven o’clock we were locked up for the night. In summer, artificial light was not permitted in the cells; in winter, the current was switched off at nine o’clock.
The most important question for us was that of the food-supply. If, accidentally, a week or two was barren of parcels, the man who missed them was apt to become a nuisance to his companions by his constant expressions of grieved astonishment about this “absolutely inexplicable stoppage.” This was the case regardless of whether he had a month’s supply in hand or not.
It did not mean that we were gluttons. Apart from the absolute necessity of receiving a sufficient amount of English food, parcels and letters were the links connecting us with the Old Country. When a link was broken we felt lost and forsaken. A cessation of letters had a similar effect. Our correspondence was limited to four post-cards and two letters a month. Communication between prisoners of war in different places of internment was prohibited. We were not informed of this, however, until the summer of 1917. A great light dawned on me then, for I could understand at last why my friends in camp had not written to me.
While in “solitary” and for two months afterward, I had a struggle to make both ends meet as far as food was concerned. Only a modicum of my letters and parcels from England arrived. I was absolutely ignorant of the fact that friends were helping me with a generosity for which I can never be sufficiently grateful. Having no relatives who could send me food, I applied at last to one of the organizations sending parcels to prisoners of war and was adopted by a generous lady in Southampton.
About that time I joined a mess of four. The pooling of our resources made them rather more than merely sufficient for us. I debated whether I should stop the last-named parcels. But there was always so much opportunity of helping others, and so much doubt whether our parcels would continue, that I said nothing.
Among a section of the British community it had always been considered an obvious duty to help their less fortunate compatriots with food, when they could afford it and the latter were in need. All new-comers required help until their parcels began arriving. Those who were placed in solitary confinement had to be looked after during the term of their punishment, for they were not permitted to have their parcels.
At first this was all done without method and with resulting hardships to individuals. When coÖperation among the greater number of the British prisoners was finally brought about, every man “behind the gate” received tea for breakfast, a hot dinner of canned meat and vegetables, and a substantial supper at five o’clock.
Occasionally we received cases of food from the Relief in Kind Committee at Ruhleben to be distributed among the British. Here again little method was observed at first. But in course of time the organization was perfected.
Up to the beginning of May, 1916, the prisoners had to heat their food on spirit stoves as best they might. Then fuel for these stoves became unobtainable, and the prison authorities turned one of the large cells on the top floor into a kitchen, installing a number of gas-rings at the private expense of the British colony. For a charge the equivalent of a cent, one could obtain a pint of boiling water or use one of the rings for half an hour.
As long as vegetables were obtainable, we fared very well. On our declaring that we could not take the prison food, the authorities issued potatoes to us by way of compensation. During the winter of 1916-17 the scarcity of this vegetable became so great in the “Fatherland” that mangel-wurzels were generally used instead, of which we got our scanty share. It was a severe tax upon our culinary skill to disguise them sufficiently to make them eatable. Palatable they could not be made. I was cook at the time for a small mess and the sauces I manufactured with the help of curry-powder, pepper, salt, vinegar, and mustard, would haunt a professional cook to the end of his days.
I am afraid I have dwelt a long time upon this question of food. But then, it was the most important one for us. We never could escape it. Three times a day at least we were reminded of it by the necessity of preparing a meal. Our attitude toward food and eating was largely influenced by a feeling of insecurity. “How long will it be before our parcels stop arriving?” was a question ever present in our minds.
It must be admitted that we seldom lost our appetites, despite the fact that we could take little exercise. Officially, the only place to get this was the yard. Paved with granite blocks, it did not offer altogether ideal facilities. The sun reached the bottom of this well in one corner only during the three best months of the year. In fine, mild weather it was always so packed with humanity—and that not of the cleanest kind—that the air was worse than in the cells. Except in rainy or cold weather it stagnated, and engendered a feeling of lassitude which often was the precursor of a headache.
Generally speaking, the prison was badly ventilated, although seemingly ample provision had been made for a change of air in the building. At certain hours of the day smells of the worst kind pervaded the corridors. In the broken light of the evening, the pall of fetid and evil air surrounding the whole place became visible to any one looking from an upper window across the yard toward the bright western sky. In spite of all, however, Swedish drill at night, occasional fierce romps with our friends, or a few rounds with the gloves in a space which permitted only a stand-up ding-dong way of sparring, kept us in tolerable health.
We were fortunate in having a considerable number of private books. In addition to these, the Ruhleben camp library sent us consignments which we returned for others. From serious and instructive books to the lightest kind of literature, we were plentifully supplied with reading matter.
Sometimes we managed to get hold of an English newspaper. They were on sale in Berlin but strictly forbidden to us prisoners. The reason for this prohibition has always been to me one of the inexplicable vagaries of the German mind. The “Daily Telegraph” and the “Daily Mail” were read on the sly, mostly after lock-up time, by one after the other, until they fell to pieces.
The royal game of chess was a great consolation. It was played to excess, often resulting in staleness.
The first two escapers to arrive after me were C. and L., a happy combination of Scotland and Ulster. They had gotten away from camp in a very adventurous fashion, to be caught three days later by an unfortunate combination of love and flowers.
At dawn, one morning, they had found excellent cover in a clump of lilac bushes growing close to an unfrequented road. In the course of the morning a German soldier, fully armed, was passing their hiding-place, when he caught sight of the lilacs in bloom. Some flaxen-haired maiden must have been in his thoughts, for he started to gather a bunch of them. Only the best flowers would do, of course, but they were inside the thicket, away from the chance passerby. With his eyes lifted in search of the blooms, the soldier did not see the two fugitives until he trod on them. Before they had time to do anything, he had them covered with his rifle.
When C. and L. came out of “solitary,” they and Wallace and I soon became good friends. Naturally, we discussed the chances of another attempt to escape from prison. If possible, we would make that attempt together. For this purpose it would be desirable to be in one cell.
There were four big cells on each landing at the three corners of the courtyard. They were by far the most desirable, with good company to share them with you. They had a water-tap and a private lavatory, and their cubic capacity per man was considerably greater than that of the single cells. When one of these on the fourth floor became temporarily empty at the beginning of July, the four of us asked for and obtained permission to take it.
We all felt a little doubtful about the experiment at first, but it turned out magnificently; and for all purposes we were a very strong combination.
As far as I was concerned, the happiest time of the whole of my three years as a prisoner of war was spent in that cell. I slept well again, and I lost the restless feeling which had obsessed me while in a cell by myself, for I had gone through a time of great spiritual loneliness before C. and L. arrived. Now I simply basked and expanded in this circle of congenial companionship. I seldom cared to leave the cell, and almost ceased visiting my other friends in theirs.
Generally speaking, the internment in the Stadtvogtei was no worse than the internment in Ruhleben camp. The latter was healthier, and there were ever so many more distractions, with opportunities for sport and serious work. The camp could be almost pleasant in summer, but it was terrible in wet or cold weather. The prison was always the same, neither hot nor cold. Climatic conditions, the changes of the seasons, did not affect us at all. Ruhleben was one of the dirtiest places in the world; Stadtvogtei was always clean and dry.
We worked hard, nevertheless, to bring about our return to Ruhleben. Whether any of us preferred the life in camp or that in prison, on one point we were all agreed: the camp was much easier to escape from.
So we sent periodical petitions to the Kommandantur in Berlin for transfer to Ruhleben, and on the rare occasions when a representative from the American Embassy or, later on, from the Dutch Legation, paid us an unexpected visit we never failed to complain bitterly about the injustice of being kept in prison. But these complaints did not avail. It was probably due to the comparative charm of the life in a big cell that no actual attempt was made by us four between June and October, 1916. Discussions of ways and means were frequent, of course, in secret meetings throughout the house. For a long time the plans under consideration always involved the destruction of iron bars in front of our windows and the erection of a light scaffolding made from table boards and legs. This scaffolding was to help us gain the roof, and less perilously than the method favored by our friend Wallace. But Wallace was a crag-climber in civil life. We understood perfectly that his hobby had affected his brain and would not allow him to climb to any high point unless he could, by stealth or cunning, do it in the most dangerous way. Under pressure, however, he was still sane enough to relinquish his idea—for this once. We applied the pressure. Once on the flat roof of our portion of the prison we were to traverse it for some distance, and then drop down the face of a blank wall, sixty feet high, by means of a rope we had plaited from strings saved from our parcels. I doubt whether the rope was quite long enough.
We finally hit upon another plan. Its attractions were very tempting in comparison with the first one, and we tried to put it into execution.
If we could get out of our cell at night and open a window on the first floor, we could easily drop into the street. As I have mentioned in an earlier chapter, the windows of the prison overlooking the street were not barred on the outside except on the ground floor. These were made impassable by iron gratings on the inside which opened like a door, and were unlocked by the same key that fitted the locks of our cell doors. The windows themselves were opened by a hollow square key. A pair of small strong pliers would do as well.
The corridors were almost incessantly patrolled at night. The necessity of trying to dodge the patrol would be not only disturbing but somewhat difficult.
Next the stairs, on each landing, was a room used for various purposes. These rooms were not patrolled. The one on the first floor which was naturally the most attractive to us was labeled “CLERK.” This too had the same lock as the cell doors. In there we should be quite undisturbed while attending strictly to duty.
We made a key out of a piece of thick wire and the tin lid of a priceless beer-glass. The lid was beautifully and appropriately engraved. So was the glass, which had a considerable sentimental value. Wallace, the rightful owner, sacrificed the lid on the altar of the common weal. With the wire as a core we cast the key in a plaster-of-Paris mold and filed it to fit. C. filed it. He would not let anybody else touch it. He now holds it as his most treasured souvenir of the war.
It was not at all difficult to obtain the plaster of Paris for the mold. The making of the key was an extremely simple affair altogether, though it sounds extremely romantic.
The opening of the cell door was an outside job, for the lock was quite inaccessible from the inside with any of the instruments we possessed. One of us had to get himself locked out by mistake, hide somewhere in the prison, and release the others at the proper time. Wallace volunteered to do this. He got the job.
On the top floor of the building, in a sort of blind corner, was the prison library. It was separated from the rest of the corridor by a wood-and-glass partition. Above its door was an opening large enough to offer an easy passage for Wallace’s small but athletic frame. As the library would hardly be used after lock-up, Wallace would be more than reasonably safe there during his vigil.
We intended to walk from Berlin to the Baltic Sea and make the passage to the nearest Danish island in any kind of craft we could dishonestly come by.
“All there?” asked the N.C.O. in charge of our corridor at seven o’clock of the evening fixed for the new venture.
C. and I were sitting opposite each other at chess. L. was bending with knitted brows over another chess board. The stool opposite him was empty.
“Yes,” I answered absently, without lifting my eyes from the board.
“Where’s Ellison?” using Wallace’s surname.
I looked up and made a motion toward the privy our cell boasted.
“All right. Gute Nacht.”
“Good night, Herr Unterofficier!”
The door swung closed and the bolt shot home. L. continued playing chess with himself, still with that concentrated look of his. C. was mean enough to take an unfair advantage of my inattention and declared “mate” after ten or twelve more moves.
Then we talked disjointedly with long pauses after each remark. “Wace must have managed all right.” “Seems so.” “Too early to do anything yet.” “Oh, I don’t know. If they come in here again to-night, the game will be up anyway.” “Not necessarily; we might have luck.” “We certainly need it for the next ten days or so.” “Oh,” with the long yawn of nervousness, “let’s eat.” “All right, let’s eat.” We ate. Then we started dressing. Double sets of underwear in my case, and also collar and tie. I had almost finished, though my two friends still looked pretty much as usual, when we heard footsteps approach our door and the rattle of the key in the lock. With a white stiff collar around my neck, albeit without coat or waistcoat, I took a flying leap toward the door and into such a position that the whole of my person except my face would be concealed by one of our two-storied bed structures. It was our N.C.O. who appeared through the opening door. Without coming farther than half a step into the cell he handed me, who was nearest to him, a bundle of letters from “Blighty” and disappeared again.
We completed our preparations and then lay down on our bunks in order to get as much sleep as possible while there was a chance. We did not get much during the next five hours. We were under the nervous stress of having to wait for somebody else to act. The hours seemed to be of Jupiterian size. Occasionally one of us would turn over and mutter something, mostly commenting upon the situation we were in, expressing his views briefly and forcibly. Now and then I lost consciousness in brief spells of slumber. I think our emotions were not very different from those experienced by men who are waiting for the zero hour to go over the top. As my brief fighting experience was in the artillery, I cannot speak with authority.
At two o’clock, with a tremendous noise and without warning, a key turned in the lock and Wallace came into the room in his stocking-feet, carefully fastening the door on the inside by a little wooden latch. The latch was a strictly unofficial attachment of our own making.
We were up and around him before he had done with the door. “No use. We’re up against it,” he whispered.
We were not absolutely unprepared for this. We had been alarmed at something during the afternoon of that day. I forget now precisely what it was. It had been somewhat intangible. Yet it had puzzled us a good deal. As Wallace had needed some assistance in getting into the library, we had been forced to take one or two of our comrades into the secret. We felt, of course, as sure of their trustworthiness as we were of our own, but it is always possible to make a mistake.
“I’m certain they have a suspicion that something is afoot,” Wallace explained, “and are merely lying low in order to catch us in the act. They may not know who it is. When I came out of the library I passed X.’s cell. The door was a quarter open. There was a light inside and they were talking. That pig Doran [one of the N.C.O.’s] was in there. I then sneaked down to the clerk’s room in order to open the door. I couldn’t. Has none of you noticed that there is a countersunk screw through the bolt? Has any one of you ever seen that door used? Now, what are we to do?”
We decided not to go that night. We were unanimous. Briefly, Wallace told us the rest of his adventures while we crept between our blankets. I personally felt of a sudden very, very tired. But before I fell asleep I reasoned with mixed feelings that we might have pushed the attempt a little further.
We were up at an unusually early hour in order to remove all traces of our fell intent. We unpacked the two small grips we had wanted to take with us and put our extra clothes away. The cell, to appear as usual, required general tidying up.
Hoch, our N.C.O., thrust a startled face in upon us when he came to unlock the door at seven o’clock. As usual, L., wrapped in blankets up to his chin and over his ears, was placidly puffing clouds of smoke toward the ceiling. As usual, C. and I were performing our morning ablutions in front of the sink. As usual, Wallace was watching us sleepily from his elevated bunk next the door, waiting for his turn, and hoping that it might be long in coming.
Hoch, after his first swift survey while still in the corridor, had quickly advanced to the center of the room and looked immensely relieved when he had counted his chickens.
“Why, your door was unlocked!” he exclaimed. Wallace nodded sleepily.
“Yes, one of your fellows came in and disturbed us at six o’clock.”
“Who was it?”
“Don’t know. We were asleep and he woke us up. Very rude of him. He just looked in and walked away, and forgot to lock the door.”
Hoch laughed loud and long, like a man who has had a bad jolt and finds himself unhurt. He was an Alsatian and as such was always more or less suspected of disloyalty. In order to shield him as much as possible we had chosen a night when he would not be on duty, but even so, he would have found himself in difficulties had we got away.
Friend Hoch was a smart man, however. Nothing further was said about the open door, but he didn’t believe us; of that I’m certain. Nothing had happened, so he let sleeping dogs lie, but he made up his mind that nothing should happen. He was uncomfortably vigilant from then on. He never locked up, after that, until he had made sure that we were all in our cell.
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