OFF FOR HOLLAND!
The eastern fence was the one we had marked as our point of departure, and, Saturday being wash-day, there was nothing suspicious in the fact that we had hung our clothes there to dry. They had to be hung somewhere.
The boys were expecting parcels that night, for a canal-boat had come up from Oldenburg, and every one was out in the yard. Several of the boys were in our confidence, and we had asked them to stroll up and down leisurely between the hut and the east fence.
Just at the last minute the fourth man, Edwards's friend, came to me and said:—
"Sim, we will never make it. The guards will see us, and they'll shoot us—you know they'll just be glad to pot us to scare the others. It is madness to think we can get away from here with these lights shining."
I told him I thought we had a chance, but did not try to persuade him. Of course, we all knew we were taking a grave risk, but then, why shouldn't we? It was the only way out.
"Don't go, Sim," he said earnestly.
I told him we were going, but if he felt as he said, it would be better for him not to come, and already I could see that Edwards, who was in the group of strollers, had dropped on his stomach and was filing the lower wire of the inner fence, and when the wire broke he crawled through to the other fence.
I joined the party of strollers then, and walking toward the fence, could see what Edwards was doing.
With his left hand he held the bottom wire and filed it close to the post, which did much to deaden the sound, but when the wire broke, to my strained ears the crack was loud enough to alarm the guard. But the sound of our voices must have covered it over, for all went well.
We walked back again leisurely, though to my excited imagination the sound of the filing deadened every other sound. We were back to the fence again when I heard the whang of the second wire, and at that I dropped to the ground and began to crawl after Edwards.
The light from the arc-lights caught the horseshoes on the heels of Edwards's boots, and they flashed to my eyes and seemed to me to shine like the headlights of an engine! It seemed to me as if the guards must see them.
On he went—on—and on I followed, and behind me came Bromley. I could hear him breathe above the beating of my own heart.
Crawling is a slow and terrible way to travel when every instinct cries out to run. But for about twenty yards we crawled like snakes—changing then to the easier method of creeping on hands and knees.
Then three shots rang out, and it seemed as if our hearts stopped beating—but we kept on going! Our first thought was, of course, that we had been discovered. But no other sound came to us, and, looking back to the Lager, we could still see the men moving carelessly about.
The bog was traversed by many ditches, and had a flat but uneven surface, with tufts of grass here and there. It gave us no shelter, but the winter night had fallen, and we were glad of the shelter afforded by the darkness. We knew the moon would be up before long, and we wanted to be as far away from the camp as possible before that happened.
I had gone out to work for a couple of days, to get a knowledge of the country, and I knew from my map that there was a railway at the edge of the bog, and as this would be the place where they would expect to catch us, we wanted to get past it as soon as possible. But the ditches, filled with water cold as ice, gave us great trouble. Generally we could jump them, but sometimes they were too wide and we had to scramble through the best we could.
About eight o'clock the moon came up, a great ball of silver in a clear blue sky, and turned the stagnant water of the bog to pools of silver. It was a beautiful night to look at, but a bad night for fugitives. Bromley, being a little heavier than either Edwards or I, broke through the crust of the bog several times, and had difficulty in getting out.
About midnight, with the heavy going, he began to show signs of exhaustion. His underwear, shrunken with cold-water washing, bound his limbs, and he told us he could not keep up. Then we carried his overcoat and told him we would stop to rest just as soon as we crossed the track, if we could find a bush, and he made brave efforts to keep up with us.
"You'll be all right, Tom, when we get out of the swamp," we told him.
About half-past two we reached the railroad, and finding a close thicket of spruce on the other side, we went in and tried to make Bromley comfortable. He fell fast asleep as soon as he got his head down, and it was evident to Edwards and me that our comrade was in poor shape for a long tramp. Still we hoped that a day's rest would revive him. He slept most of the day and seemed better before we started out.
The day was dry and fine, but, of course, we were wet from the hard going across the bog, and it was too cold to be comfortable when not moving.
We could hear the children playing, and the wagons passing on a road near by, and once we heard the whistle of a railway train—but no one came near the wood.
At nightfall we stole out and pushed off again. Bromley made a brave attempt to keep going, but the mud and heavy going soon told on him, and he begged us to go on and leave him.
"If you don't go on, boys," he said, "we'll all be taken. Leave me, and you two will have a chance. I can't make it, boys; I can only crawl along."
We came to a road at last and the going was easier. Bromley found he could get along more easily, and we were making pretty fair time when we saw something dark ahead of us. I was of the opinion that we should go around it, but Bromley could not stand any more travelling across country, and we pushed on.
The dark object proved to be a house, and it was only one of many, for we found ourselves in a small town. Then we took the first road leading out of the town, and, walking as fast as we could, pushed quietly out for the country, Edwards ahead, I next, and Bromley behind.
I heard some one whistling and thought it was Bromley, and waited for him to come up to tell him to keep quiet, but when he came beside me, he whispered, "They are following us."
We went on.
Soon a voice behind us called, "Halt!"
"It's no use, Sim—they have us," Bromley whispered.
Ahead of us was a little bush, toward which we kept going. We did not run, because we thought that the people who were following us were not sure who we were, and therefore would not be likely to shoot. Bromley knew he could not stand a race for it in his condition, but, knowing him as I do, I believe he would have made the effort; but I think he saw that if he went back and surrendered, it would give us more time to get away.
"Go on, Sim," he whispered to me.
We had agreed that if anything happened to one of us, the others were to go on. We could not hope to help each other against such numbers.
When we got opposite the wood, we made a dash for it.
I think it was then that Bromley went back and gave himself up. I often wondered what he told them about the other men they had seen. Whatever he thought was best for our safety, I am sure of that, for Bromley was a loyal comrade and the best of chums.
We lay there for a while, wondering what to do. We were about in the middle of a very small grove, and knew it was a poor place to stay in, for it was a thin wood, and the daylight was not far distant.
Edwards, who was right beside me, whispered that he had just seen a soldier climb a tree and another one handing him a gun. This decided us to crawl to the edge of the wood again. But when we reached it, Edwards, who was ahead, whispered back to me that he saw three civilians right in front of us.
This began to look like a tight corner.
We determined to take a chance on the civilians' not being armed, and make a dash for it. We did, and "the civilians" turned out to be a group of slim evergreens. We saw a forest ahead, and made for it. The ground was sandy and poor, and the trees were scattered and small, and grew in clumps. The going was not hard, but the loss of Bromley had greatly depressed us.
Once we met a man—ran right into him—and probably scared him just as much as he did us. He gave us a greeting, to which we grunted a reply, a grunt being common to all languages.
We saw the headlight of a train about three o'clock in the morning, reminding us of the railroad to the south of us.
Coming to a thick spruce grove, we decided to take cover for the day. The morning was red and cloudy, with a chilly wind crackling the trees over our heads, but as the day wore on, the wind went down and the sun came out. It was a long day, though, and it seemed as if the night would never come. It was too cold to sleep comfortably, but we got a little sleep, some way.
When we started out at night, we soon came to a ditch too wide to jump, and as our feet were dry we did not want to wet our socks, so took them off and went through. January is a cold month for wading streams, and a thin crust of ice was hard on the feet. They felt pretty numb for a while, but when we had wiped them as dry as we could and got on our socks and boots again, they were soon all right. But our care for our feet did not save them, for the muddy ground, full of bog-holes, which we next encountered, made us as wet and miserable as we could be.
One large town—it may have been Sögel—gave us considerable trouble getting around it.
The time of year made the going bad. There were no vegetables in the gardens or apples on the trees; no cows out at pasture. Even the leaves were gone from the trees, thus making shelter harder to find. The spruce trees and Scotch fir were our stronghold, and it was in spruce thickets we made our hiding-places by day.
The advantage of winter travel was the longer nights, and although it had been raining frequently, and the coldest, most disagreeable rains, the weather was dry during the time we were out. But the going was heavy and bad, and when the time came to rest, we were completely done out.
We had put ourselves on short rations because we had not been able to save much; we had no way of carrying it except in our pockets, and we had to be careful not to make them bulge. We had biscuits, chocolate, and cheese, but not being able to get even a raw turnip to supplement our stores, we had to save them all we could.
On January 25th, our third day out, the bush was so short we had to lie all day to remain hidden. We could not once stand up and stretch, and the day was interminably long. A bird's nest, deserted now, of course, and broken, hung in a stunted Scotch fir over my head, and as I lay looking at it I thought of the hard struggle birds have, too, to get along, and of how they have to be on the watch for enemies.
Life is a queer puzzle when a person has time to figure it out. We make things hard for each other. Here we were, Ted and I, lying all day inactive, not because we wanted to, but because we had to, to save our lives. Lying in a patch of scrub, stiff, cold, and hungry, when we might have been clearing it out and making of it a farm which would raise crops and help to feed the people! Hunger sharpens a man's mind and gives him a view of things that will never come when the stomach is full; and as we lay there under scrub, afraid even to speak to each other, afraid to move, for a crackling twig might attract some dog who would bark and give the alarm, I took a short course in sociology.... The Catholics are right about having the people come fasting to mass, for that is the time to get spiritual truths over to them!
Hunger would solve all the capital and labor troubles in the world; that is, if the employers could be starved for a week—well, not a whole week—just about as long as we had—say, two biscuits a day for three days, with nothing better ahead. But hunger is just a word of two syllables to most people. They know it by sight, they can say it and write it, but they do not know it.
At these times the thought of liberty became a passion with us. Still, we never minimized the danger nor allowed ourselves to become too optimistic. We knew what was ahead of us if we were caught: the cells and the Strafe-Barrack, with incidentals.
On the fourth day we crossed an open patch of country, lightly wooded, and then came to a wide moor which offered us no protection whatever. Our only consolation was that nobody would be likely to visit such a place. There was not even a rabbit or a bird, and the silence was like the silence of death.
I knew from my map that we had to cross the river Ems, and I also knew that this would probably be the deciding factor in our escape. If we got over the Ems, we should get the rest of the way.
About two o'clock in the morning we reached the Ems. It is a big river in normal times, but it was now in flood, as we could see by the trees which stood in the water, as well as by the uprooted ones that floated down the stream. Swimming was out of the question.
We hunted along the bank that morning, but could find nothing, and as daylight was coming, we had to take cover.
All day we remained hidden in a clump of spruce and looked out upon the cruel sweep of water that divided us from liberty. The west wind came softly to us, bringing sounds from the Holland border, which we knew from our map was only four or five miles away! We heard the shunting of cars and the faint ringing of bells.
We discussed every plan. We would search the riverbank for a boat, though we were afraid the German thoroughness would see to it that there was no boat on this side of any of their border rivers. Still, they could not watch everything, and there might be one.
Failing that, we would make a raft to carry our clothes, and swim it. We had a knife, but no rope. I remember in "Swiss Family Robinson" how easily things came to hand when they were needed, and I actually looked in the dead grass at my feet to see if by any chance I might find a rope or wire—or something.
But there were no miracles or fairies—no fortunate happenings for us; and when night came on again we scoured the bank for a boat, but in vain. Never a boat could we see.
We then drew together some of the driftwood that lay on the shore, but when we tried it in the water it would hardly float its own weight. I felt the hopelessness of this plan, but Ted worked on like a beaver, and I tried to believe he had more hope than I had. But suddenly he looked at me, as he stopped, and I felt that our last plan was gone!
"It's no use," he said.
There was only the bridge left, and that, we knew, was very dangerous. Still, there was a chance. It might not be guarded—the guard might be gone for a few minutes. And all the time the murmurs came to us on the wind from the Holland border, and sounded friendly and welcoming.
We started out to find the bridge.
We were better dressed than Bromley and I had been, for we had on the dark blue overcoats, but not being able to speak the language was dead against us.
"Even if they do get us, Sim," Ted said, "we'll try it again—if we live through the punishment."
"All right," I said, "I'm game."