OUT
Immediately we set out to find a road. There would be no more skulking through fields for us. We were free again, entitled to all the privileges of road and bridge.
We soon found a good wagon-road leading to a bridge over the canal. Across the bridge we boldly went, caring nothing for the houses at our right and left, whose windows were lighted and whose dogs may have been awake for all we cared. It seemed wonderful to be able to walk right in the middle of the road again! Ted said he wanted to sing, but I advised him to curb the desire. We were a little hazy as to the treatment accorded prisoners by a neutral country.
We still kept west, thinking of the bulge in the German boundary to the south of us. The road was smooth and hard, and we felt so good that we seemed to be able to go as fast as we liked. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten. A man on a bicycle rode past us and shouted a greeting to us, to which we replied with a good, honest English "Good-night," instead of the sullen grunt we had hitherto been using to hide our nationality.
Cows were plentiful that night, and we got apples, too, from the orchards near the road. The only thing that troubled us was that our road had turned southwest, and we were afraid that it might lead us into the little strip of Germany. However, we went on a short distance.
Then we came to a place where there were many canals, some of them very large, and the straggling houses seemed to indicate a town. Afterwards we knew it was the town called Nieuwstadskanaal.
We took a poor road, leading west, and followed it over a heather moor, which changed after a mile or two into a peat-bog with piles of peat recently cut. We kept on going, until about five o'clock in the morning we came to a house. It looked desolate and unoccupied, and when we got close to it we found that it had been badly damaged by fire. But it made a good shelter for us, and we went into what had been the living-room, and lay down and slept. The floor was even and dry; it was the best bed we had had for twenty nights, and, relieved as we were from the fear of detection, we slept for hours.
When we awakened, the sun was pouring in at the curtainless windows, and we were as hungry as bears. "Now for a potato-feed," Ted said, looking out of the window at a fine field of potatoes across the road. The field had been reclaimed from the peat-bog, and some of the potatoes had already been dug and put into pits.
In looking around for material to light a fire, I saw scraps of newspapers, which I examined closely and found they were Dutch papers, one bearing the name of "Odoorn" and the other "Nieuwstadskanaal." This supported us in our belief that we were in Holland.
We got potatoes from the field and roasted them in the fire which we built in the fireplace.
A young Hollander, fired with curiosity, came to the door and looked in at us. We hailed him with delight and asked him to come right in, and be one of us! He came in rather gingerly, looking at us wide-eyed, and we were sorry to find he could not speak English. There were certain things we wanted to know!
We were drying our matches by the fire, for they had become rather damp, and our supply was getting low. Also our tobacco was done. So we said, "Tabac," showing him our empty pipes, and from the pocket of his coat he brought out a pouch, and we filled our pipes. I don't know whether he knew we had been prisoners or not. He drifted out in a few minutes, but I think he told others about us, for after we had had our smoke, and had gone to the canal to fix up, we found some interested spectators.
At the canal we washed, shaved, cleaned our teeth, combed our hair, and went as far as we could in getting ready to see people. Ted had his Canadian soldier's tunic, with the regular prisoner's dark-blue trousers such as the British Red Cross supplies. His tunic was torn in several places and his hair was unkempt and in need of cutting. He had cut the heels out of his boots, several days before, because they hurt him. I had the regular prisoner's suit, dark-blue cloth, and had cut off the yellow stripe which had been sewed down the legs of the trousers; I had also cut off my prison number. My boots had held well, and there was not even a hole in my socks. My hair was getting shaggy, and I suppose we were both looking fairly tough. Our clothes were wrinkled and crushed and dirty.
There was one older man who watched us, with many exclamations of friendliness, who, when we had concluded our efforts, made us understand that he wanted us to come with him to have something to eat. He could speak no English, but he made us understand. We went back to the deserted house, gathered up our things, and went with him. Two young fellows came along, too, and we were taken to a canal-boat near by.
The woman who waited on the breakfast table in the canal-boat, and served us with rye-bread, margarine, and coffee, gave us hard looks, which made us think her heart was still in the fatherland. Conversation was naturally difficult, because no one of them could speak English, but we began to ask about Rotterdam, for we knew that that would be the port from which we should sail, and we were anxious to know how to get there. One of the young men, a fine-looking fellow with a frank, pleasing countenance, said something and made gestures, which made us think he would take us there in his boat.
We started out with him and his companion, not sorry to leave the sour-faced lady who glared at us, and walked along the road beside the canal. We were on the outskirts of Odoorn, a town whose chief industry is the shipping of peat. It being Sunday, nobody was working, and the people, especially the children, came out to see us. The young man took us to one of the houses and introduced us to his father and mother, who welcomed us kindly and wanted us to have something to eat. But we declined.
We were then taken by him along the road, and the crowd of children that followed us seemed to be growing bigger every minute. Our friend, anxious apparently to do the proper thing, took out his mouth-organ and played "It's a Long Way to Tipperary"—and it certainly hit the spot with us.
He conducted us to the home of the gendarme—and for a minute our old fear of being interned came back to us! The gendarme was plainly bored—he had been having a Sunday-afternoon sleep, and had not finished it. He yawned as he spoke.
The young man talked to him very earnestly, and at last he invited us in. Up to this time we had not heard a word of English. The gendarme's wife, a nice-looking, well-dressed woman, brought in a tray and gave us tea, and little cakes with seeds on them, and soon a young man who could speak English came in to act as interpreter.
He began to question us, but we soon turned the conversation by questioning him. We asked him if there was any danger of our being interned? He told us we could be interned if we liked, but we hastened to assure him we should not like it.
Then he said we could stay in Holland and work, but again we declined. We wanted to go to England, we said.
He tried to dissuade us. Why go to England? That would mean going back into the army. Holland was the best and safest place!
We insisted that we wanted to go to England, and he warned us that if we wanted to change our minds we must do it now; because we couldn't change after we had "signed the paper." We were still sure we wanted to go!
The gendarme then went upstairs and came down in his uniform and took us out with him. We didn't know where he was taking us, but supposed it was to some place to make arrangements for our passage to England. When we came out of the house we found some women gathered there waiting for us, and a very poorly dressed woman, with a fine face, stepped up and gave us a small sum of money, which she had evidently collected for us. We thanked her warmly, and with sincere gratitude. Then we set out across country about four miles to Borger, where we were taken to the Burgomaster's house.
The Burgomaster's house was one of the best in the little town, and when we went in, we found there a young man, evidently calling on the daughter of the house, and he could speak English.
We were taken downtown to the Burgomaster's office, and official papers were made out, and we signed them. This was what the gendarme's interpreter had been telling us, about not being able to change our minds after we had signed the paper!
The Burgomaster evidently told the gendarme to take us to the hotel and have us fed, and by this time, after our walk, we were quite ready for something. When we offered them money for our meal—which was a good one—it was politely refused.
We were then taken to the home of one of the Borgen gendarmes where we stayed for the night. His name was H. Letema. We ate with the family and were treated with great kindness. The white bread and honey which we had for tea were a great treat to us. One of the other gendarmes gave Ted a pair of socks, and he was able to discard the strips of underwear. We had a bed made of straw, with good blankets, and it seemed like luxury to us.
The next morning Mr. Letema gave us each a postal-card addressed to himself, and asked us to write back telling him when we had safely reached England. Then another gendarme walked with us to Assen, which seemed to be a sort of police headquarters. We stayed there all day.
In the afternoon a Belgian girl came to see us, and although I tried hard to understand what she said, she talked so fast I could not follow her, although I knew a little French. She brought us some cigars, and we could see she wanted to show us her friendliness. When she went away, I deeply regretted my ignorance of the French language. But the Belgian girl came back in a little while, accompanied by a Holland woman who could speak English, and then we found out about her.
She had fled from Antwerp at the time of the bombardment, and was supporting herself by needlework at Assen, where she was the only Belgian person, and I suppose she was tired of "neutrals" and wanted to see us because we were of the Allies. She urged us to tell her what she could do for us, and we asked her for some postal-cards, so we could tell our friends that we had escaped. She sent them to us by her friend the interpreter, who also gave us some English books and a box of cigars.
That night a young gendarme took us upstairs to his room, which was nicely decorated with flags and pennants, and he told us the Germans could never conquer Holland, for they would cut the dykes—as they had done before. He showed us the picture of his fiancée, and proudly exhibited the ring she had given him.
The next day we were taken by another gendarme to Rotterdam by train, passing through Utrecht and in sight of the Zuider Zee. Arriving there, we were taken to the alien officer, who questioned us and wrote down what we told him. Then the gendarme took us to the British Consul, and left us there. The Consul shook hands with us and congratulated us on our escape, and put us in charge of a Vice-Consul, who was a Hollander.
We stayed at the "Seaman's Rest," which was in the same building as the British Consulate. There we met two Americans, who were very friendly and greatly interested in our escape. They encouraged us to talk about the prison-camps, and of what we had seen in Germany, but it was not long until we became suspicious and careful in our answers. One of them had an American passport, which seemed to let him have the freedom of the city; the other one had no passport, and complained that he could not get one, and it was causing him no end of inconvenience, for he found it impossible to get a job at his trade, which was that of "trimmer" on a vessel. He went every day to the docks, looking for a job, and acquired considerable information about ships and their time of sailing. At night, he and his friend were together, and the knowledge was no doubt turned over.
Mr. Neilson, Superintendent of the Sailors' Institute, very kindly invited us to go with him to The Hague, to see the Peace Temple, and it was then that we made bold to ask for some spending money. The Vice-Consul, the Hollander, was a thrift-fiend so far as other people were concerned, and it was only after Mr. Neilson had presented our claim, and we had used all the arguments we could think of, that we got about two dollars each.
Our clothes—too—had not yet been replaced with new ones, and we felt very shabby in our soiled uniforms. We mentioned this to the Vice-Consul, and told him that we believed the Canadian Government would stand by us to the extent of a new suit of clothes. He murmured something about the expenses being very heavy at this time. We ventured to remind him that the money would be repaid—Canada was still doing business!
The next day our American friends invited us to go to a picture show with them. We went, but at the door a gorgeously uniformed gentleman, who looked like a cross between a butler and an admiral, turned us back—that is, Ted and me. We had no collars on! The public had to be protected—he was sorry, but these were his orders.
Then we sought the Vice-Consul and told him if he did not get us decent clothes, we should go to the Consul. The next morning we got the clothes!
On the sixth night we sailed from Rotterdam, and the next morning, in a hazy dawn, we sighted, with glad hearts, the misty shores of England.
As we sailed up the Tyne, we saw war shops being built, and women among the workmen, looking very neat and smart in their working uniforms. They seemed to know their business, too, and moved about with a speed and energy which indicated an earnest purpose. Here was another factor which Germany had not counted on—the women of the Empire! Germany knew exactly how many troops, how many guns, how many ships, how much ammunition England had; but they did not know—never could know—the spirit of the English people!
They saw a country which seethed with discontent—Hyde Park agitators who railed at everything British, women who set fire to empty buildings, and destroyed mail-boxes as a protest against unfair social conditions—and they made the mistake of thinking that these discontented citizens were traitors who would be glad of the chance to stab their country to the heart. They knew that the average English found golf and cricket much more interesting than foreign affairs, so they were not quite prepared for that rush of men to the recruiting offices at the first call for volunteers! Englishmen may abuse their own country, but it is a different matter when the enemy is at the door. So they came,—the farmer, the clerk, the bank boy, the teacher, the student, the professional man, the writer, the crossing-sweeper, the cab-man,—high and low, rich and poor, old and young, they flocked to the offices, like the land-seekers in the West who form queues in front of the Homestead offices, to enter their land.
I thought of these first recruits—the "contemptible little army"—who went over in those first terrible days, and, insufficiently equipped as they were, went up against the overwhelming hosts of Germany with their superior numbers and equipment that had been in preparation for forty years.... and how they held back the invaders—though they had but one shell to the Germans' hundred—by sheer force of courage and individual bravery... and with such losses. I thought of these men as I stepped on the wharf at Newcastle, and it seemed to me that every country lane in England and every city street was hallowed by the unseen presence of the glorious and unforgotten dead!