On the Friday, some hours previous to the time of my departure, I obtained from the sergeant-major permission to receive in my cell, between 7 and 8 o’clock in the evening, all the British prisoners. The reader will remember that the cells were usually locked for the night at 7 o’clock. These men then assembled in my cell and there for this last hour we talked over the events of the war and the probable length of their detention. Notwithstanding the joy I felt at the prospect of getting out of this hell, I regretted leaving behind me those with whom I had shared the lonesomeness of captivity, shared the hardships received at the hands of our jailers, and deprived of liberty and the beneficence of their mother country.
The train was to start at 9 o’clock, and my escort and I were to leave the jail at 8 o’clock. It was at this hour that I said farewell to these worthy fellows. I was a free man. They were to remain prisoners. We were all under the influence of a powerful emotion.
The train was due to depart from Silesia Station. I was accompanied thereto by three military men: an orderly, a non-commissioned officer, and an officer. The officer was to accompany me as far as the frontier, and when we reached the station, he said he proposed to ask the authorities to allow us to occupy a compartment exclusively to ourselves, as we would have to spend the whole of one night on the train. With this end in view, he interviewed the station master, and when the train arrived at the station this official considerately placed a compartment at our disposal.
The officer had to give what was accepted as a valid reason of state in order to obtain this privilege. It was the transportation of a prisoner of British nationality through German territory. This was sufficient. The conversations “this British prisoner” might have overheard had he been allowed to mingle with others on the train, might have been indiscreet and of a nature calculated to harm the German interests should they be repeated in England!
Whether that was the correct view of the matter or not, or whether other reasons prompted my companion to make the demand, certain it is that a whole compartment was placed at our disposal, and in order that it should not be “besieged” by other passengers a notice was affixed to the glass pane of the door opening into the corridor of the train to the effect that in the compartment there was a British prisoner. To this intimation was added the one word: “Gefahrlich,” which in German means: DANGEROUS!
When I afterward read this notice, which had been posted against myself, I could not repress a smile.
All trains which leave the Silesia Station en route for Holland must cross the city of Berlin and pass in front of the famous Stadtvogtei prison. I was aware of this fact, and when we reached this point–the train was then traveling at full speed–I stood at the window to get a last look at those dark grey walls which during three long years had separated me from the outer world. To my great surprise, I saw that the sergeant-major had allowed my former companions in captivity to open one of the windows on the fifth story of the jail and there they stood waving their handkerchiefs as a sign of farewell. “Poor, unhappy fellows!” I said to myself.
The next morning at 8 o’clock, we arrived at Essen, the town where the famous Krupp works are situated. Here we had to change trains. The incoming train was late, and the officer and I had to pace up and down the platform of the station of that great city for fifteen or twenty minutes before the train, which was to convey us near the frontier, arrived. Then we took our seats and reached our destination at about noon. But my troubles were not yet over. I had to wait a little longer to obtain absolute freedom.
Through a mistake by the orderly my baggage had been checked through to a more northerly station. Inquiries were made by telegraph and we received a reply from the officer in command of the military post addressed advising patience and the baggage would be returned the following day. Thus we were compelled to remain for the night in this German frontier village of Goch, where it was a serious problem to obtain mid-day and evening meals as we were without food cards. However, when one, after prolonged confinement, is breathing the air of comparative liberty, and knows that the morrow will give him absolute freedom, he can, without much difficulty, overcome the pangs of a hungry stomach!
At noon the next day the trunks which had strayed returned to me safely, and I was ready and anxious to continue the journey over the remaining two or three miles which separated us from the frontier where final inspection was to take place and adieux said.