“Where is he? What happened to him?” asked several, as all crowded around Tom and Jack to hear the news.
Jack, reading the note, told them. The missive was written in very good English, though in a German hand. It stated that Harry Leroy had been shot down in his plane while over the German lines, and had fallen in a lonely spot, wounded.
The wound was not serious, it was stated, and the prisoner was doing as well as could be expected, but he would remain in the hands of his captors until the end of the war. The reason his whereabouts was not mentioned before was that the Germans did not know they had one of the Allied aviators in their midst.
Leroy had not only fallen in a lonely spot, but he was made unconscious by his fall and injuries, and when he recovered he was lying near his almost demolished plane.
He managed to get out his log book and other confidential papers, and set fire to them and the plane with the gasoline that still remained in the tank. He destroyed them so they might not fall into the hands of the Germans, a fate he knew would be his own shortly.
But Harry Leroy was not doomed to instant capture. The blaze caused by his burning aeroplane attracted the attention of a peasant, who had not been deported when the enemy overran his country, for the young aviator had fallen in a spot well back of the front lines. This French peasant took Harry to his little farm and hid him in the barn. There the man, his wife, and his granddaughters, looked after the injured aviator, feeding him and binding up his hurts. It was a great risk they took, and Harry Leroy knew it as well as they. But for nearly two weeks he remained hidden, and this probably saved his life, for he got better treatment at the farmhouse than he would, as an enemy, have received in a German hospital.
But such good luck could not last. Suspicion that Americans were hidden in the Frenchman's barn began to spread through the country, and rather than bring discovery on his friends, Leroy left the barn one night.
He had a desperate hope that he might reach his own lines, as he was now pretty well recovered from his 'Injuries, but it was not to be. He was captured by a German patrol. But by his quick action Harry Leroy had removed suspicion from the farmer, which was exactly what he wished to do.
The Germans, rejoicing over their capture, took the young aviator to the nearest prison camp, and there he was put in custody, together with some unfortunate French and English. The tide of war had turned against Harry Leroy.
So it came about that, some time after he had been posted as missing and when it was surely thought that he was dead, Harry Leroy was found to be among the living, though a prisoner.