The Escaping Club

THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY Publishers New York

Copyright 1922 by THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY All Rights Reserved PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.

TO MY MOTHER WHO, BY ENCOURAGEMENT AND DIRECT ASSISTANCE, WAS LARGELY RESPONSIBLE FOR MY ESCAPE FROM GERMANY, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK, WHICH WAS WRITTEN AT HER REQUEST.





For over three months No. 3 Squadron had been occupied daily in ranging the heavy guns which night after night crept into their allotted positions in front of Albert. On July 1st 1916 the Somme offensive opened with gas and smoke and a bombardment of unprecedented severity. To the pilots and observers in an artillery squadron the beginning of this battle brought a certain relief, for we were rather tired of flying up and down, being shot at continually by fairly accurate and remarkably well hidden anti-aircraft batteries, while we registered endless guns on uninteresting points. On the German side of the trenches, before the battle, the country seemed almost peaceful and deserted. Anti-aircraft shells arrived and burst in large numbers, coming apparently from nowhere, for it was almost rare to see a flash on the German side; if one did, it was probably a dummy flash; and of movement, except for a few trains in the distance, there was none. Only an expert observer would know that the thin straight line was a light railway; that the white lines were paths made by the ration parties and reliefs following the dead ground when they came up at night; that the almost invisible line was a sunken pipe line for bringing water to the trenches, and that the shading which crept and thickened along the German reserve trenches showed that the German working parties were active at night if invisible in the day time. For the shading spelt barbed wire.