The night after we had left the German mess, both Lee and Austin were so ill from stomach trouble that it was impossible for them to think of escaping. It was, however, in all probability the last night on which we should be within walking distance of our lines, so I determined to make the attempt by myself. Owing to the nature of their illness, both Lee and Austin were compelled to make frequent visits to the latrines, which were little wooden huts about 50 yards away in the middle of the compound. I also pretended to be ill, and went out each time accompanied by a sentry, who usually came with us the whole way; but Austin reported that one sentry had allowed him to get 20 yards ahead, so I made what preparations I could to escape. We had no map, no compass, and very little food between us, but it was a starlight night, and I thought I could scarcely fail to hit the coast. The first three times I went, the sentry kept too close to me to permit me to escape without considerable risk of an immediate alarm, and as I hoped with luck and by a skilful manœuvre to be past the outside sentries, if there were any, before my escape was noticed, after due delay I returned each time.
The fourth time I went out, the more careless of the three sentries came with me, and as he stopped for a moment to say something to his mates, I walked on quickly and got 20 yards ahead of him. When I came to the latrine, I pretended to enter the door but actually stepped behind the hut, and walked rapidly away, keeping the hut between the sentry and myself. However, I had not gone 30 yards when he saw me. I heard him shout, so I ran. I think he threw a stone after me, but he did not fire. As a matter of fact, I must have been a very dim target in that light by the time he had unslung and cocked his rifle. I passed through a gap in the prickly pear hedge, and just outside saw a small tent near which several men were sitting round a fire. One of the camp pickets I thought; but I passed without being seen and struck out, walking and running alternately, across the marshy valley of the Kishon, making to hit the coast somewhat south of Cæsarea. At times I thought that the alarm had been raised behind me, and twice the barking of dogs made me think that I was being followed. Imagination plays one strange tricks under circumstances of this sort when one's nerves and senses are strung to the very highest pitch, for this escape had been by far the greatest strain on my nerves that I had ever experienced. It was so much worse than any escape in Germany, because of the long, tense hours while I waited for an opportunity, because I had to go alone, and because the risks were greater and the dangers and chances less calculable than in any previous adventure. "Omne ignotum pro magnifico est."
It had been just about midnight when I left the camp, and it was very little after 1 o'clock when I reached the rising ground on the west side of the valley, near the valley of Megiddo, after over 6 miles of very bad going. All that night I pressed on at top speed, avoiding the villages and meeting no one in that wild and desolate country. Though I had to cross several small valleys, most of the time I was climbing, and dawn found me on rather a bare exposed part on the top of the ridge from which, when day came, I saw the sea. It had been most difficult to pick a good hiding-place, as there were no trees and very few bushes; and some thickish heather behind a small boulder was the best cover I could find. The country had appeared so desolate at night that I hoped to find it quite uninhabited in the day time, but I soon saw my mistake. From about 6 o'clock onwards shepherds with their flocks wandered on many of the distant hills, and a quarter of a mile away down in the valley there were many small patches of cultivation, where men were working. I made up my mind that if chased by Arabs in that country in daylight the chances of escape were nil, so I took off my boots and went to sleep. About 8 o'clock I woke up and saw an Arab with a rifle standing about 10 yards off looking at me. His appearance in every sense was most unexceptionally unpleasant. I nodded to him as he came up, and said Guten Tag, and motioned to him to sit down beside me. He sat down and made some unintelligible remarks to me, to which I answered in German, and offered him a cigarette. He smoked for a bit, and things seemed to me to be going rather well. Then he started talking again, and kept on repeating some words which I suddenly recognized as Jenin, the name of the German aerodrome about 4 miles away. I jumped at that and said, "Ja ja, Deitscher—Jenin tiara (Turkish for aeroplane) boom, boom," and pointed to myself, by which he was supposed to understand that I was a German flying man from Jenin aerodrome, and my natural habits were bomb dropping. He seemed to grasp this, and after smoking another cigarette went away over the brow of the hill, to my great relief. Soon after his departure I selected another hiding-place, about 100 yards away, and crawled into it on my hands and knees. Even if he had come back to look for me (for I thought he might put two and two together if he learnt during the day that a prisoner had escaped), I doubt if he would have found me without the help of a dog.
All that day—and the day seemed endless—I lay in the broiling sun and suffered very greatly from thirst; for I had had nothing to drink since about 2 o'clock on the previous night. The only food I had with me was half a pound of bread and about the same amount of dried greengages, a food much eaten by the Turkish soldiers and quite nourishing. However, I was far too thirsty to eat. During the day I saw some German aeroplanes flying low over the countryside, and thought that perhaps they were looking for me, as I found out afterwards was the case. Being an airman myself, I knew that their chance of finding me if I lay still was just nil, and watching them helped to pass the time. During the day I almost changed my mind and decided to go due south to our lines, but the sight of the sea was so attractive that I determined to keep on in that direction.
The next night's walk was the most terrible experience that I have ever had. All night, till 4.30 the next morning, I found no water, and without water I could scarcely eat. Towards morning I could only breathe with difficulty, my tongue and throat seemed to have swollen, and I made a harsh whistling noise when I breathed. I tried sucking various herbs, and eventually tried the leaves of the cactus, which seemed to give momentary relief, so I put some bits of it in my pocket. The loneliness was oppressive past all belief and I longed for a companion, but the only noises were the occasional bark of a dog from an Arab village and the almost continual wailing of the jackals. The going was for the most part very bad, always up or down hill, and was made more difficult by the clouds which obscured the moon for a good part of the night. In one valley which I had to cross, the ground, for a mile or more, was strewn thickly with loose boulders, varying in size from a football to a grand piano. The boulders lay on loose shingle so that they slipped or moved if you stepped on them, and in the cracks and crevices between the boulders were thick thorn bushes. In my exhausted state and in the dim light, it was a nightmare getting through this place. I fell repeatedly trying to jump from one boulder to another, and my clothes were much torn and my face and hands were bleeding freely before I got out of that dreadful place. Once I collapsed, and as I lay on the ground I fell asleep. Half an hour later I woke and, feeling rather better, pushed on again. About 3.30 a.m. I got through the hills and on to the flat country which borders the coast. If I could have found water earlier I believe I should have reached the coast that night, but it was not till about 4.30 a.m. that I found a square hole in a rock half full of water. I drank that dry. A few hundred yards farther on I heard men talking, and going forward cautiously saw Turkish soldiers seated round a small fire. Making a detour, I marched on for half a mile and then heard a man call out on my right. There was only a dim light, as the moon was half hidden by clouds, and I could not see the man. Another man answered him on the left, and I realized that I was passing through a line of sentries. But if I could not see them they could not see me, so I pushed on till I suddenly saw a troop of cavalry advancing on me. I dropped to the ground and curled myself round a small bush about 2 feet high and lay quite still—it was the only possible thing to do. The cavalry came straight towards me, and it was not till they were 10 yards off that I saw that there was only one horseman and that he was driving half a dozen cattle before him. The cattle passed a yard or two to my right and left, but the horse actually stepped over my head without touching me. I felt most thankful when they had disappeared from sight, and realized that I must now be in the middle of a Turkish military area. However, as there was no hiding-place of any sort to be seen, I walked on once more, keeping a very careful lookout both for the Turks and for a hiding-place. I soon found the latter. It was a patch of corn about an acre in size, so I crawled into it and lay down in the middle, feeling fairly secure. It was a great pity to lose half an hour of darkness, but I knew that an hour or two's walk would bring me to the coast, and it might be difficult to find a better hiding-place in that flat country. Once more I suffered a great deal from heat and thirst, for I found to my surprise that corn stalks give no shade from a sun which beats almost straight down.
That evening it began to rain, and as soon as the sun set it became pitch dark. When it was so dark that a man could not be seen at 5 yards' distance I left my cornfield and marched due west. I had taken my bearings from the sun during the day, so that even if there were no stars I should know by landmarks in which direction I was walking. Soon all landmarks were blotted out by the inky darkness and pelting rain, and I began to realize that it might be possible to lose my way even when within one hour's walk of the sea. Owing to the rain the going was rather heavy, being mostly over cultivated land, and when I had been walking for half an hour I began to feel fearfully tired. I staggered rather than walked, and could scarcely put one clay-laden foot before the other. Quite suddenly I collapsed, and lay on the ground totally unable to move. I managed to put my hand over my heart and could feel that it was running most irregularly and misfiring in the most extraordinary way. After about a quarter of an hour it got much better, so I had a few mouthfuls of bread and went on again. Before long I came on a field of things that looked like beans. I tried eating them, but they seemed to clog up my throat and made me feel worse than before. For the next hour I guided myself by the croaking of the frogs in the marshes, which I knew ran parallel to the sea and only a few miles away from it. When I reached the marshes it had stopped raining, but the clouds were so dense that I could see no moon or stars. I had rather a struggle crossing the marshes, and in some places was up to my waist in mud and water. Once my feet almost stuck, and as I dragged them out the soles of both my shoes tore off the uppers. I bound them on again as well as I could, and then walked on again in the direction I thought was right. For the next four hours I pushed on at a good pace, hoping against hope that every step would show me the sea. But it was not to be. My shoes were so uncomfortable that much of the time I went barefooted, but there were many stones and thistles about and I hurt my feet and made poor progress. At about 3 a.m. I got a glimpse of the moon and saw that I was walking northeast instead of west. Heaven knows where I was or for how long I had been walking in a totally wrong direction. For all I knew I might have walked 10 miles from the sea in the last four hours. Then the moon went in again and the rain came on. Soon after that I ran into an encampment of some sort and was chased by dogs; they followed me some way barking, but did not attack me. Then I got tangled up in more marshes, and in the darkness lost my direction again hopelessly.
As it began to get light I found myself near some quite nice-looking stone buildings, and sitting down in an orchard in the pouring rain I debated what to do. I was very exhausted, and most dejected at my ill luck. Our lines could not be less than 18 miles away, so that even if I hit the coast very early the following night I should not cross the lines without two more nights' marching and still worse two more days of lying hid. I was desperately hungry and my food was almost exhausted. If recaptured I could only expect very rough treatment, and I wished to keep a little strength in hand to stand that. Added to this, my feet were in such a condition that walking was most painful. But that which finally made me decide to give myself up was that for the last two hours I had come across no spot which would serve as a hiding-place. How I longed to have Buckley with me! If he had been there I think we should have encouraged each other to carry on for one more night at any rate. However, I can't blame myself too much, as I was in a pretty hopeless position. The remembrance of the whole adventure annoys me beyond words. I was so near success. That last night is to me a tragedy. What is to come is sheer comedy.
The house where I had made up my mind to give myself up was a square stone two-storied building with a wooden veranda along one side. It was surrounded by a high wall in which there was an iron gate. Finding the gate shut, I turned my attention to a wooden outbuilding, in one of the windows a faint light was showing. I banged on the door, and after a minute or two it was opened by a small dark man in trousers and shirt and bare feet. He appeared rather frightened, and said some words which I did not understand. I tried him in German, saying that I wanted shelter and food. As I had had practically nothing to eat for sixty hours, and was drenched to the skin, he had no difficulty in guessing what I wanted, if he did not understand. He went back into the room and put on some boots and a coat. The room seemed almost completely bare except for a number of people who were sleeping, rolled in blankets, on the floor or on very low beds. Soon the man came out again and shouted towards the house in a language which I guessed to be Hebrew, as there was no mistaking his nationality. After much shouting a man of a most pronounced Jewish type came to the gate. We had some difficulty in understanding each other, as he spoke a thick and almost incomprehensible German. He wanted to know who I was and what I wanted, and when he learnt, much to his surprise, was most unwilling to have anything to do with me. The prospect of immediate food and shelter made me quite callous about the more remote future, so I said he could send for the Turks in the morning if he would only take me in for the night. At that he opened the gate and beckoned to me to follow him. After mounting some wooden steps outside the house to the balcony he brought me into a room which stank most horribly of stale humanity and garlic. The room was quite bare except for two beds and a sort of couch, on which men were lying rolled in blankets. They gave me some incredibly disgusting cold rissoles, mainly made of garlic, which nearly made me sick; but I managed to eat two or three of them. In this extraordinary household they all appeared to go to bed in their day clothes, and looked and smelt as if they had never washed from the day they were born. I think they meant to be kind to me, but they were very frightened and miserably poor in food and utensils of every sort. They made signs to me to lie on a bed which one of them vacated, so I took off most of my wet clothes and fell asleep instantly.
I was awakened from my sleep abruptly by the blankets being torn off my bed. A nasty-looking Arab, in a uniform of a Turkish officer, was standing close to me brandishing a revolver. A few feet away was a Turkish sentry, and in the background the Jews huddled together in the corner. The Arab took hold of my wrist and tried to pull me out of bed. That made me mad with anger, so I shook him off and damned his eyes, whereupon he presented the revolver at my head. So I took hold of myself and, obeying signs from him, got out of bed and began to dress into my wet things. Seeing me more docile he lowered the revolver and, seizing his opportunity, patted me on the head to show there was no ill feeling. My resentment at this was so obvious that he produced the revolver again, but thereafter kept his distance. My feet and my shoes were in such a condition that it was clear that I should have great difficulty in walking. I pointed this out to him and, whether at his order or out of kindness—the latter, I think—one of the Jews brought me a pair of old boots. Though the Jews had immediately sent word to the Turks, I feel no violent resentment towards them, as they were obviously frightened out of their skins at my presence in the house. In other ways I think they did their best for me, and were sorry for me; owing to their extreme poverty they could not do much. I suppose they just had licence to live from the Turks, and that's about all. Even at the time most men would have preferred infinitely to take my chances of life and treatment rather than live under the conditions in which these Jews were living. Poor brutes! But then I had the same feeling about every Turkish soldier. Perhaps that is why the Turks are so callous of life. They live so close to the borderland where life becomes intolerable that it can mean little to them to die. Just before we marched off the Jews gave me some more of their disgusting meat, and, when I reproached them for sending for the Turks so soon, they answered that they were terrified and could not help it. When we had gone a few hundred yards from the house I saw suddenly that my wrist-watch was missing. I made the Arab understand this by signs, and let him know that I wanted to go back and fetch it. He refused, and when I showed signs of obstinacy began to finger his revolver. So we continued the march. I made sure then that the brute had stolen it.