The Escaping Club

by A. J. Evans

Should we lie up where we were and try to get across the next night? The idea of waiting another day entirely without food was intolerable, so we pushed on.

The moon was full and very bright, so that, as we walked across the fields it seemed to us that we must be visible for miles. After turning the village of Weiterdingen we were unable to find a road on the far side which had been marked on my map. This necessitated a study of the map under a mackintosh, the result of which was to make me feel doubtful if we really were where I had thought. It is by no means easy to locate oneself at night from a small-scale map, 1:100,000, examined by match-light. However, we adopted the hypothesis that we were where we had thought we were, and disregarding the unpleasant fact that a road was missing, marched on by compass, in a southwest direction, hoping always to hit the village of Riedheim. How we were to distinguish this village from other villages I did not know. Buckley, as always, was an optimist; so on we went, keeping as far as possible under the cover of trees and hedges.

Ahead of us was a valley, shrouded in a thick mist. This might well be the frontier, which at that point followed a small stream on either side of which we believed there were water meadows. At length we came on a good road, and walking parallel with it in the fields, we followed it westwards. If our calculations were correct, this should lead us to the village.

About 1.30 we came on a village. It was a pretty place nestling at the foot of a steep wood-capped hill, with fruit trees and fields, in which harvesting had already begun, all round it. Was it Riedheim? If it was, we were within half a mile of the frontier, and I knew, or thought I knew, from a large-scale map which I had memorized, the lie of the country between Riedheim and the frontier. We crossed the road and after going about 100 yards came on a single-line railway. I sat down aghast. There was no doubt about it—we were lost. I knew there was no railway near Riedheim. For a moment or two Buckley failed to realize the horrible significance of this railway, but he threw a waterproof over my head whilst I had a prolonged study of the map by match-light. I was quite unable to make out where we were. There were, however, one or two villages, through which railways passed, within range of our night's walk. I explained the situation to Buckley, who instantly agreed that we must lie up for another night and try to make out where we were in the morning. It was impossible that we were far from the frontier. Buckley at this time began to show signs of exhaustion from lack of food; so leaving him to collect potatoes, of which there was a field quite close, I went in search of water. After a long search I was not able to find any. We collected thirty to forty potatoes between us, and towards 3 a.m. made our way up the hill behind the village. The hill was very steep, and in our exhausted condition it was only slowly and with great difficulty that we were able to climb it. Three-quarters of the way up, Buckley almost collapsed, so I left him in some bushes and went on to find a suitable place. I found an excellent spot in a thick wood, in which there were no paths or signs that any one entered it. I then returned and fetched Buckley, and we slept till dawn.

At this time I was feeling fitter and stronger than at any time during the previous week. I am unable to explain this, unless it was due to the fact that my feet had quite ceased to hurt me seriously.

At dawn we had breakfast on raw potatoes and meat lozenges which I divided out, and then, sitting just inside the edge of the coppice, tried to make out our position from a close study of the map and the surrounding country. In the distance we could see the west end of Lake Constance, and a compass bearing on this showed us that we were very close to the frontier. Through the village in front of us there was a railway. There were several villages close to the frontier through which passed railways, and two or three of them had steep hills to the north of them. We imagined successively that the hill we were sitting on was the hill behind each of these villages, and compared the country we could see before us carefully with the map. That part of the country abounds in solitary hills capped with woods, and the difficulty was to find out which one we were sitting on. There was one village, Gottmadingen, with a railway through it, and behind it a hill from which the map showed that the view would be almost identical with that we saw in front of us. Buckley thought we were there. I did not. There were small but serious discrepancies. Then I had a brain wave. We were in Switzerland already, and the village below us was Thaingen. It explained everything—or very nearly. Buckley pointed out one or two things which did not seem to be quite right. Again then, where were we? I think now that we were slightly insane from hunger and fatigue, otherwise we should have realized without difficulty where we were, without taking the risk which we did. I don't know what time it was, but it was not till after hours of futile attempt to locate ourselves from the map from three sides of the hill, that I took off my tunic, and in a gray sweater and in gray flannel trousers walked down into the fields and asked a girl who was making hay what the name of that village might be. She was a pretty girl in a large sun-bonnet, and after a few preliminary remarks about the weather and the harvest, she told me the name of the village was Riedheim. I must have shown my surprise, for she said, "Why, don't you believe me?" "Naturally, I believe you," I said; "it is better here than in the trenches. I am on leave and have walked over from Engen and lost my way. Good day. Many thanks." She gave me a sly look, and I don't know what she thought, but she only answered "Good day," and went on with her haymaking. I walked away, and getting out of her sight hurried back to Buckley with the good news. "But how could a railway be there?" I thought. "It was made after the map was printed, you fool." On the way back I had a good look at the country. It was all as clear as daylight. How I had failed to recognize it before I can't think, except that it did not look a bit like the country that I had anticipated. There was the Z-shaped stream, which was the guarded frontier, and there, now that I knew where to look for it, I could make out the flash of the sun on a sentry's bayonet. Everything fitted in with my mental picture of the large-scale map. The village opposite to us in Switzerland was Barzheim; the little hut with a red roof was the Swiss Alpine Club hut, and was actually on the border between Switzerland and Germany. Once past the sentries on the river we should still have 500 yards of Germany to cross before we were safe.

The thing to do now was to hide, and hide in the thickest part we could find. The girl might have given us away. Anyhow, we knew that the woods near the frontier were usually searched daily. Till 4 o'clock we lay quiet, well hidden in thick undergrowth, half-way up the lower slopes of the Hohenstoffen, and then we heard a man pushing his way through the woods and hitting trees and bushes with a stick. He never saw us, and we were lying much too close to see him, though he seemed to come within 15 yards of us. That danger past, I climbed a tree and took one more look at the lie of the land. Then Buckley and I settled down to get our operation orders for the night. For half an hour we sat on the edge of the wood, waiting for it to become quite dark before we started.

Eighteenth and Last Night.—It was quite dark at 10.15 when we started, and we had one and three-quarter hours in which to cross. Shortly after midnight the moon would rise. "I can hardly believe we are really going to get across," said Buckley. "I know I am, and so are you," I answered. We left our sticks behind, because they would interfere with our crawling, and rolled our Burberrys tightly on our backs with string.

A quarter of an hour's walk brought us to the railway and the road, which we crossed with the greatest care. For a short distance in the water-meadow we walked bent double, then we went on our hands and knees, and for the rest of the way we crawled. There was thick long grass in the meadow, and it was quite hard work pushing our way through it on our hands and knees. The night was an absolutely still one, and as we passed through the grass it seemed to us that we made a swishing noise that must be heard for hundreds of yards.

There were some very accommodating dry ditches, which for the most part ran in the right direction. By crawling down these we were able to keep our heads below the level of the grass nearly the whole time, only glancing up from time to time to get our direction by the poplars. After what seemed an endless time, but was actually about three-quarters of an hour, we reached a road which we believed was patrolled, as it was here that I had seen the flash of a bayonet in the day time.