“Found him?” I asked puzzled.
“Yes, he beat it, you know. Disappeared when they heard Bulgaria had chucked it—took most of the garrison funds with him. They found him last week in a forest near the Danish frontier. He’d hung himself.”
I returned to my farm, resolved to submit to no more restrictions, if indeed to work at all. I could not help taunting my sentry and all my favorite enemies in the village (who had so long jeered at me) over Germany’s debacle. They had always regarded me as a “Smart Alek” and now I exasperated them delightfully. My relations with the sentry reached a climax one evening when he found me reading a newspaper by candle-light in the barn.
“Das ist verboten!” he commanded.
“Who told you that, mein Lieber?” I asked, grinning condescendingly.
“Laugh at me will you? You swine!” He roared and before I was aware he struck me a blow in the chest that sent me reeling. Aghast and indignant I started back at him. Quick as a flash he had drawn his bayonet and he struck my arm threateningly with the flat of it.
“Go to bed, you swine!” he ordered.
Confronted by cold steel, there was nothing to do but to obey. I climbed slowly upstairs to my room, the German close on my heels, striking me constantly with the bayonet to hurry me. I went to bed with that wretched and maddening feeling of a man who has received blows which he cannot repay. I could not sleep. I got up and sat down and smoked until they unlocked my door in the morning.
I resolved to go to Parchim the next day and seek redress from the revolutionaries. I would see if the justice of which they prated was a reality. I had to wait until dusk, for flight was still verboten, and I must escape unobserved. Setting out in my English uniform with my buttons brightly polished and carrying my belongings in a neat little German haversack, I walked all the fifteen kilometers to Parchim, arriving in the Komandatur at about eight o’clock. I found all young boys from the new movement in charge, and they listened to my story with sympathetic indignation. I could not however, see the officer of justice until the day after tomorrow, and being a runaway, I must spend the remaining time in the detention barrack.