Luck on the Wing: Thirteen Stories of a Sky Spy

by Elmer Haslett

“Well,” I thought, “this is easy.” So, continuing my tour, I got around to the side where I found that during the day some prisoners had been working, probably digging weeds, for to my pleasant surprise I discovered, perhaps for their own purposes, they had left their tools, including a couple of spades. Such luck, for with those spades, on such a dark night it would be easily possible to tunnel out. The big rub was that the orderly told us that the door to the hut would be locked at nine o’clock and that we could not go out of the house until seven o’clock the next morning. It was then about a quarter of nine, so I went in and told Davis, and he, of course, agreed to attempt to escape that night. The big point first was to manage to get out of the house, which could only be effected by crawling through a window. Davis was just in the act of testing the strength of the window when the door opened and the orderly came in with our sumptuous repast. In ravenous anxiety we sized up the banquet—it consisted of a piece of hard, mealy, black bread, dimensions two inches by three inches by three inches, and in a pot was the rest of the dinner, which consisted of soup.

I never did like soup, but I’ll say this much in favor of it: I have never enjoyed a meal in my life like I enjoyed that soup. We had two nice tin pans in which to serve our soup. We put the pot on the stove to keep it warm while I proceeded to dish it out, spoonful by spoonful, the liquid coming first; then we divided the remaining vegetables—two dilapidated looking spuds and three little samples of hard, gritty, grimy meat. I gave Davis one piece and I took the other, then we matched three times to see who would get the other piece. We matched, and the first time I won; the next flip Davis won. Believe me, small and insignificant as that piece of meat was, I was too hungry to lose it, so I got cold feet.

“Davis,” I suggested, “this is damned foolishness. We’ll cut that meat in two pieces. I’m scared I’m going to lose.”

As Davis was cutting it this hard, gritty, grimy, little piece of meat slipped and fell into a pail of water which we had just lifted off the stove. Like two South Sea Islanders diving for coins thrown by the generous tourist from shipboard, we rescued the meat by diving into the water with both hands, making a beautiful splash all over the floor. Davis showed himself to be a religious sort of a guy, for he suggested that since we had been so lucky in escaping with our lives that we make a burnt offering of this meat. I didn’t know whether he was joking or not about the burnt offering, so I took no chance on his not being serious and told him we had already made one burnt offering that day in burning up that airplane. Without further argument we sliced the meat into two pieces and each had his portion.

I had eaten about half of my bread and was still so hungry that I could have eaten puckery persimmons with considerable relish when I realized that if we intended trying to escape that night we had best lay off mincing that bread, for we would certainly need it the next day. We talked it over, then viewed it from every angle, but since we were in occupied French territory we decided that I could speak enough French, and with Davis’s pathetic eyes we could sure win enough favor with the “froggies” to get by, although they probably had barely enough to eat themselves.

We crawled into our bunks without removing our clothes for the reason that it was too cold to sleep without them and we also intended to get out during the night. About two o’clock, after continued tossing and tumbling, wondering just what process we would follow in the attempt, I got up and awakened Davis; then I crept to the window. After a good twenty minutes of tinkering with that window, cautiously moving it an eighth of an inch at a time, I finally got it open to such a point that we could get out—at least, so I thought. Directly in front of us was one of those little houses so commonly used at garrisons in France and Germany, known as Sentry Boxes. I figured the old boy would be in there all right, but he would be fast asleep, so I stuck my head out, gave a little spring, and as I brought my stomach up on the sill like a flash from out the sentry box stepped this hardboiled Boche. He had a huge flashlight and immediately I was in the spotlight. The window was the stage and I the star. There is some humor in the situation, now as I look back upon it, but believe me, there was none then. For when that German began to excitedly ejaculate “Loze! Loze!” whatever that is, I took my head to cover just like a tortoise draws his protruding physiognomy into the secret confines of his shell.

“It’s all right,” I called as we hit for our bunk, “we’ve got to have a little air.”

That night we almost froze to death, for we didn’t dare to close the window, for we did not know the extent of the German sentry’s memory of foreign expressions, and the fact that we left the window open all night would be a good alibi for opening the window in that we did need air. It was a hard result, but since it was our story we shivered and stuck to it. Take it from me, we were icebergs the next morning.

Fortunately they served us an early breakfast, which consisted of some hot German Ersatz coffee, which is no coffee at all. It is made from acorns and it doesn’t go well as a substitute. In fact, you must train your appetite and taste for Ersatz just as you do for olives. They brought us a little confiture, which was also imitation and it didn’t have any more consistency than a marshmallow. The orderly started to walk away and simultaneously Davis bawled out, “Where is our bread?” The orderly explained that they had given us our allowance last night for twenty-four hours.

If this was to be our regular ration I could see ourselves starving to death by degrees. It was useless to say that they had not given us enough, for that line does not appeal to the German. If each of us received a piece of bread, that settled the argument, but if the allowance for both of us was brought in one piece there was room for discussion. The orderly claimed he had brought two pieces of bread, but I claimed that he had brought only one piece, so how did we know it was supposed to be for the both of us. Finally I said that I was going to tell an officer. This got results, for after conferences between the Sergeant of the Camp, the Corporal of the Guard, the Orderly, the Cook and the Keeper of the Official Storehouse they brought us in another little piece of bread.