“Ah!” and he again looked around, shaking his head with intermingled scorn and pride that he, the Prussian, had been able to bulldoze an American. “Didn’t you know that the moment that plane hit the ground, it became German property and that you wilfully destroyed German material?”
I most emphatically told him that I did not know it, for while I convicted myself on my previous confession, I didn’t intend to sign my own decree of execution. He assumed a slightly conciliatory attitude.
“Now,” he continued, “where is your partner, or comrade?”
I told him that I did not know.
“Oh, yes you do,” he argued, coaxingly.
After a little dickering dispute, I looked him squarely in the eyes and said, “I do not know.”
Then he became fierce again. “Don’t lie to me,” he snarled in rage. “You do know and you are going to tell me.”
I became pretty well convinced that my days were done for, so consequences momentarily did not matter. It was more than I could stand, for this was a matter that not only insulted my character as a soldier, but my integrity as a man—that he should call upon me to divulge the hiding place of my friend and my comrade-in-arms. In spite of the effort to control my temper, it flared up like a tire-pressure indicator and in a daring attitude, I exclaimed, “I don’t know and if I did know I would not tell you.”
He flew into a white rage. “Is that so?” and he quickly reached back to his hip and pulled out a Leugger, the most deadly German automatic pistol, and with fiery eyes he put it right at my heart, the barrel even touching my clothing. I admit I inwardly swooned; in fact, I almost fainted for, while all the time I thought I was going eventually to be killed, I had no idea that there was going to be any snappy action like this. He meant business; there was no argument about that. His very attitude and the decisiveness with which he drew out the gun and the way he put his finger on the trigger convinced me that to spar was to die. If there was any chance at all, it lay in silence. He must have time to cool down or something else must intervene; so, like a weak sister I looked at him, just hoping.
“Are you going to talk or not?” he began quietly and I have never heard words uttered more decisively. I knew quite well that Davis had gone over to the left. One thing was certain, while above all things else I would not tell where he was, at the same time I was not exactly prepared to die. Since I was to die some time it could just as well be later, so, looking over to the right, in exactly the opposite direction in which Davis had gone, I noticed a clump of trees about three hundred yards away. In an attitude indicating that I was only telling to save my own life, I pointed to the clump and breathlessly whispered, “Over there.”