CHAPTER X[ToC]
EXIT BLANK, SHEDS
A quiet day amid peaceful surroundings counteracted the effects of the excitement of the previous night. We slept quite well by reason of the good conditions, and but for the soreness of Fox's heel and my left ankle would have felt extremely fit. We were guilty during the afternoon of a piece of carelessness which nearly gave us away. Fox and Blank were near the edge of our hiding-place, and went to sleep with some of our kit spread about the ground round them. I was asleep further inside our cover, but my boots were with theirs drying in the sun.
Suddenly Fox woke up and saw a woman not fifty yards from them, planting something in the field and gradually moving in our direction as she worked. Waking Blank and seizing all the kit he could find he crawled into the depths of our hiding-place, followed by Blank who had got hold of other portions of our impedimenta. An hour or so later the woman departed and we found that one of my boots had remained in the open all the time. We decided that in all probability she had not seen it, and so had no fears of discovery due to her.
The night's march began at 10 p.m., but it proved to be too early an hour for such night-birds as we. Hardly had we moved two hundred yards from our cover, when a youth with a shot-gun, prowling round in search of rabbits, saw us from about sixty-yards away. We legged it and soon left him wondering what three rough-looking men with heavy bags, and of military age, were doing in that part of the country.
Making excellent progress that night, we crossed a wild stretch of heath in the early hours of the morning, and then got back to more of the abominable corn-land again. Crossing a railway and passing a cottage by the level-crossing we were greeted with the usual barking of a house-dog.
Thursday, 28th June. It was now high time to think of our hiding-place for the day. Nothing presented itself and we carried on with our rush westwards. Cover after cover we examined without finding what we wanted, and at last, hearing German voices not far off, we were forced to adopt the first thing which presented itself.
This proved to be a wood cut up with broad drives, with hardly any undergrowth in it.
We had to make the best of a bad job, and by making a kind of zareba of dead branches, some sort of cover from view from anyone more than fifty yards away was possible.