Not all could leave the camp, they knew. Many did not care to risk it, while thirty of the seventy Americans were doctors and thought they ought to stay and do what they could for their weak and sickly fellow prisoners. But in the final plan, sixteen men were to try this break for liberty.
One of the men was Lieutenant Harold Willis of Boston, an aviator in the famous Lafayette Escadrille. He had been captured after a battle in the air. Not even fourteen months in a German prison could kill the daring spirit of this young lieutenant. Instead, the cruel treatment of the prisoners, the daily contact with the stupid German guards, made him long once more to cut through the clouds and bring down another boche. Accordingly, he became a leader in carrying out the plans for escape.
Lieutenant Edward V. Isaacs, of Cresco, Iowa, an officer in the United States Navy, was another leader. He was crossing the Atlantic in the big American transport, President Lincoln, when it was torpedoed by the submarine U-90, on May 31, 1918. He went down with the ship, but came to the surface again and crawled up on a raft where he stayed until one of the lifeboats came by and the men took him off. But the boat had gone but a short distance, when the guilty submarine pushed its nose up through the surface of the water near by. Its commander ordered the lifeboat to draw near and the helpless oarsmen had to obey. When asked the whereabouts of the captain of the vessel, the men in the lifeboat answered that, as far as any of them knew, he had gone down with the ship.
Then the commander, probably noticing his uniform, singled out Lieutenant Isaacs, demanded that he come on board the submarine, and informed him that if he did not find the captain, he would take him instead to Germany.
Two days later, the U-boat carrying this American officer was sighted by two American destroyers. Immediately the destroyers made for the submarine and tried to sink it.
The U-boat quickly submerged and floated far below the surface while the destroyers circled about for several hours dropping many depth bombs, five of which exploded not three hundred yards from the submarine. So great was the shock of these explosions that, in telling of his experiences afterward, Isaacs said it seemed as if the ocean shook the boat much as a dog shakes a rat.
During this time not a word was spoken except by the watch officers, who were at their posts like the rest of the crew, and reported to the commander the directions in which the bombs were falling, thus enabling him to move the boat about in a safe course. The bombing continued until nightfall. Then the commander thought he was safe. But the next day, another American warship appeared, and the U-90 made for its home port as fast as possible.
Lieutenant Isaacs, more fortunate than many U-boat prisoners, was treated well by the officers and crew. He messed with the officers and heard them most of the time discussing why the United States entered the war. They told Isaacs that the only possible reason was that the United States had loaned so much money to the Allies that she was obliged to enter the war to make sure of being repaid.
But Isaacs had no intention of remaining in the U-boat. As it entered neutral waters about four miles off the Danish coast, it began running along above the surface.
Isaacs secretly left his room, hurried to the deck, and was just about to dive over into the water, hoping to swim ashore, when Captain Remy, the commander, caught hold of him. He had suspected Isaacs and had followed him from below. "Stupid fool," he exclaimed as he drew him away from the side of the boat and ordered him below.