Fifteenth Night.—Soon after starting we saw a gang of a dozen or more Russian prisoners escorted by a sentry. They were about 100 yards off and took no notice of us. After walking for about half an hour an incident occurred which was perhaps the most unpleasant one we experienced, and the fact that we extricated ourselves so easily was entirely due to Buckley's presence of mind. Coming round a corner, we saw ahead of us a man in soldier's uniform cutting grass with a scythe at the side of the road. To turn back would rouse suspicion. There was nothing for it but to walk past him. As we were opposite to him he looked up and said something to us which we did not catch. We answered "Good evening," as usual. But he called after us again the same words, in some South German dialect, I think, for neither of us could make out what he said, so we walked on without taking any notice. Then he shouted "Halt! Halt!" and ran down the road after us with the scythe. It was an unpleasant situation, especially as we caught sight at that moment of a man with a gun on his shoulder about 50 yards away from us on our right. There was still half an hour to go before it would be quite dark, and we were both of us too weak to run very fast or far. There was only one thing to do, and we did it. In haughty surprise we turned round and waited for him. When he was only a few yards away, Buckley, speaking in a voice quivering with indignation, asked him what the devil, etc., he meant by calling "Halt!" to us; and I added something about a South German pig dog in an undertone. The man almost let drop his scythe from astonishment, and turning round walked slowly back to the side of the road and started cutting grass again. We turned on our heels and marched off, pleased with being so well out of a great danger, and angry with ourselves that we had ever been such fools as to run into it. We passed one more man in the daylight, but ostentatiously spoke German to each other as we passed him, and he took no notice.
Before dark we saw other gangs of Russian prisoners.
About 11 p.m. we got on the railway again, and walked without incident for the rest of the night. Owing to the gap in our maps, previously referred to, being longer than we expected, it was not till well after midnight that we passed through Pfullendorf and realized that we still had another two nights' march before we could hope to cross the frontier. It was not so much the walking at night which we minded though we were both weak and weary, it was the long lying up in the day time which had become almost unendurable. For eighteen long hours we had to lie still, and were able to think of little else but food, and realize our intense hunger.
When I saw the name Pfullendorf written in huge letters in the station, I felt a very pleasant thrill of satisfied curiosity and anticipated triumph. We had always called this railway the "Pfullendorf railway," and in the past months I had often imagined myself walking along this railway and passing through this station, only a day's march from the frontier. For the last two nights and for the rest of the journey my feet had become numbed, and the pain was very much less acute. This made a vast difference to my energy and cheerfulness. So much so that for the last four nights I did the march with less fatigue than Buckley, who seemed to be suffering more than I was from lack of food. I have already mentioned that we divided up the food, and each carried and ate at his own discretion the food for the last three days. When Buckley opened his last packet of chocolate, it was found to contain less than we had expected. I offered a redivision. Buckley, however, refused. I think myself that the quantity of food in question was too small to have affected in any way our relative powers of endurance. Ever since we found potatoes Buckley had eaten more of them than I had, and when we were unable to find any, he felt the lack of them more than I did. Just before dawn we climbed off the railway embankment to a small stream. Here I insisted on having a wash as well as a drink. Buckley grumbled at the delay, but I think the wash did us both good. Soon afterwards, about 4.30 a.m., we came on an excellent hiding-place. Buckley wanted to push on for another half an hour, but I considered that a good hiding-place so close to the frontier was all-important, and he gave in. As we were just getting comfortable for our before-breakfast sleep I found that I had left my wrist compass behind at the place where we had washed. I determined to walk back and fetch it, as it was an illuminate compass and might be indispensable in the next two nights. That I was able to do this short extra walk with ease and at great speed—I even got into a run at one point—shows how much fitter and stronger I was now that my feet had ceased to hurt me. Our hiding-place was in a very thick plantation of young fir trees, and we were quite undisturbed. The place was so thick that when I crawled off 10 yards from Buckley I was unable to find him again for some time, and did not dare to call to him.
Sixteenth Night.—Starting about 10.15 we followed the railway as it turned south towards Stokach near the west end of Lake Constance. Just before midnight we struck off southwestwards from the railway. We soon found that we had branched off too early, and got entangled in a village where a fierce dog, luckily on a long chain, sprang at us and barked for twenty minutes after we had passed. Later we passed a man smoking a cigarette, and caught a whiff of smoke, which was indescribably delicious, as we had been out of tobacco for more than a fortnight.
A couple of hours' walk, steering by compass by small paths in thick woods, brought us into the main road to Engen. Some of the villages, such as Nenzingen, we avoided, walking round them through the crops, a tiring and very wet job, besides wasting much time. At about 4.30 we were confronted with the village of Rigelingen, which, being on a river, was almost impossible to "turn," so we walked through it, gripping our sticks and prepared to run at any moment. However, though there were a few lights showing, we saw no one.
About 5 o'clock we got into an excellent and safe hiding-place on a steep bank above the road. A mile or so down the road to the west of us was the village of Aach, and we were less than 15 kilometres from the frontier.
We determined to eat the remains of our food and cross that night. I kept, however, about twenty small meat lozenges, for which, as will be seen later on, we were extremely thankful. During our last march we decided that we must walk on the roads as little as possible. Any infantry soldier knows that a cross-country night march on a very dark night over 10 miles of absolutely strange country with the object of coming on a particular village at the end, is an undertaking of great difficulty.
We had an illuminated compass, but our only methods of reading a map by night (by the match-light, with the help of a waterproof, as I have previously explained) made it inadvisable to use a map so close to the frontier more often than was absolutely necessary. I therefore learnt the map by heart, and made Buckley, rather against his will, do so too. We had to remember some such rigmarole as: "From cross roads 300 yards—S. W. road, railway, river—S. to solitary hill on left with village ahead, turn village (Weiterdingen) to left—road S. W. 500 yards—E. round base of solitary hill," etc., etc. Our anxieties were increased by two facts—one being that all the sign-posts within 10 miles of the frontier had been removed, so that if once we lost our way there seemed little prospect of finding it again on a dark night; secondly, the moon rose about midnight, and it was therefore most important, though perhaps not essential, to attempt to cross the frontier before that hour. We left behind us our bags, our spare clothes and socks, so as to walk as light as possible, and at about 9.30 left our hiding-place.
Seventeenth Night.—The first part of our walk lay through the thick woods north of Aach, in which there was small chance of meeting anyone. For two hours on a pitch-dark night we made our way across country, finding the way only by compass and memory of the maps. There were moments of anxiety, but these were instantly allayed by the appearance of some expected landmark. Unfortunately the going was very heavy, and in our weak state we made slower progress than we had hoped. When the moon came up we were still 3 to 4 miles from the frontier.