CHAPTER XVI[ToC]
The Third Escape
Saving Up for the Day—A Special Brand—Watchful Waiting—Off Again—Why the Man in the Moon Laughed—A German Idyll—The Narrow Escapes.
Simmons and I had been planning on another escape ever since our recapture. So we kept on our good behaviour, while we saved up food for Der Tag. We had hitherto refused to work, as had the remaining Britishers, but in order to keep ourselves fit; we finally volunteered to carry the noon ration of soup out to the Russians who worked on the moor. Our job consisted of carrying an immense can of soup, swung high on a pole from our shoulders, out to the workers, under guard of course. Starting at eleven each day and, by permission of the guard, occasionally resting, we were usually back by one o'clock. Each day we saved a portion of our food. We wanted twenty days' rations each, estimating that it would take us that long to walk to Holland. We specialised on concentrated foods from our parcels—biscuits, tinned meats, and so on. We had our cache in a hole, dug under cover of night, under the flooring of the hut. It was unsafe to keep food on our bodies or near our beds, as the guards were in the habit of calling the Raus at all hours, and sometimes, several times during the night. It might be at twelve, two or four, although it was never alike on any two nights in succession, except that they always searched us. We could see no reason for this; other than to break our rest and perhaps our spirits, as at Giessen Camp. Certainly, no one would carry any forbidden thing on his person, under such surveillance, and they well knew we could hide anything we wished in other places; as we did.
Each Saturday morning, Simmons and I paraded for paint. We stood, while a big Russian, with a brush and bucket, painted large red and green circles on our breasts, backs and knees. Thin stripes were also painted down the seams of our trousers and sleeves and around the stiff crowns of our caps. This was to mark us as dangerous characters. As such we received more of the unwelcome Raus attentions than the others and were the more wary in consequence.
We were busy opening our mail on one of those rare occasions, when Simmons gave a startled exclamation. I looked up and saw him gazing curiously at a small cheese which he turned slowly around in his hand. As I stepped to his side, a guard came in. He hastily shoved the cause of the strange behaviour into his pocket. When the guard had gone; he passed me a letter to read. It was from his brother in Canada. "I received your letter all right and am sending you a special brand of cheese," I read—and understood.
We waited on tiptoe until night, to open the cheese. It was one of the cream cheeses, so popular in Canada, no bigger than my closed hand. We gingerly unwrapped the tin foil and broke it open. To our great joy, in the hollow heart of it there was tucked away the tiny compass Simmons had written for from Vehnmoor just before our second escape. With it were four American quarters.