13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison

by John Alan Lyde Caunter

When all was quiet we continued our advance, cutting across corn-fields and getting nice and wet from the dew in so doing.

Striking a village, we walked through it and then took the wrong road for a mile or so before finding out our mistake. On getting on to our correct line again we crossed a level-crossing and began to pass through the outskirts of a small town. Turning north to avoid this we arrived at another level-crossing, where we halted to discuss our route. Suddenly the door of the cottage by the level-crossing opened and a man came out. He stood and stared at us, ten paces away.

We quietly moved off and got to the edge of a dense copse, where we doubled on our tracks as quickly as possible, crossing the railway some two hundred yards from the cottage. In crossing a railway one has to be particularly careful not to trip over the signal wires in the darkness. We made some noise on this occasion, as we did not know of the wire's existence and naturally crashed right into it. We did not wait to see if our noise had drawn anyone or not, but pushed ahead rapidly. A few hundred yards and we were on the bank of the river which flowed swiftly by, looking a pretty formidable obstacle in the light of the moon.

We had agreed to have a rapid search for a boat, and then, if we had no luck, to swim the river as soon as possible. Fortune favoured us, however, and we found a large ferry-boat moored to a post within one hundred yards of the place where we had first debouched on the river's bank. It did not take us long to get aboard and push off into the middle of the stream. Fox, an expert punter, took on the task of getting the boat across, although his bad hands suffered somewhat in the process. Enjoying our ride in the boat we let her drift down-stream for a mile or so. We felt extremely happy at this piece of good fortune and discussed quite seriously what we should have for dinner the first night in town, when we got back. The banks fairly flew past and it was not very long before we had left the farm, near to which we had discovered our boat, a long way behind us. Our free ride over, we chose a landing-place.

Fox brought the boat in towards the western side, and I agreed to go up the bank first in order to make sure that there were no Boche sentries patrolling the top of it. When the boat struck the bank where it was covered with bushes, I jumped out and forced my way up to the top, to find it all clear of Germans.

Now occurred what nearly proved to be a tragic episode, but it fortunately ended more comically than otherwise.

Coming down the slope again I put my foot on a rotten piece of bank which gave way, with the result that I went crashing into the bushes. Fox, thinking that the Germans had seized me, and that the noise he heard was made by my fighting with them, pushed the boat off into the river again, he and Blank lying flat on the bottom of it. When I got up I saw the boat swirling away down-stream, apparently empty and absolutely out of control.

For an awful moment I imagined that Blank had fallen overboard and had clutched Fox in doing so, and that now the two of them were drowning each other in the mud at the bottom of the river. I shouted, softly at first, and then louder and louder, but got no answer. The boat still drifted down-stream until it was lost to sight round a bend.

Here was a pretty state of affairs; all the water bottles were in the boat I knew, and my companions were Heaven knows where. Thinking it over, I decided that they might still be in the boat and that they had seen Germans or heard their voices. This decided me to remain still and quiet for an hour in the hopes of something turning up.

After half-an-hour or so, I saw two figures coming along the bank towards me and found on shouting to them, that it was indeed Fox and Blank. They had heard me shout before, but had thought it was meant for a warning to tell them to clear out. We were very relieved to have this episode over. They had brought all the water-bottles on with them and then turned the boat adrift, and watched it float down-stream. We could afford now to laugh at the whole thing, but for all that it was a far from pleasant experience.