Now a “Caterpillar” is just about the finest tractor in the world for general purposes, provided it is run by a man that has had plenty of experience with its funny little ways; in the hands of any one else—even a first-class engineer that is quite at home with a wheel tractor—it is the original fount of trouble. To me the machine was an old friend, however, for I had run one for two or three seasons in the West and worked for a winter in one of the company’s factories in Illinois. I took the first opportunity to let the Huns know my qualifications, and when they saw me start in to true up the wobbly “track,” they just about fell on my neck then and there. They had seized the machine in a Belgian sugar-beet field a few days after the outbreak of the war, they explained, and it had been used for a while to haul heavy artillery in the drive into France. After a time the hard usage had begun to tell on the “track,” and—as they had no new parts to replace worn ones with—it had been giving about as much trouble as it was worth ever since. When I told them that it was adjustment rather than replacement that was needed, and that in a few days I could have the machine as good as new, they fairly tumbled over themselves to “borrow” me for the job.
As a matter of fact, the old “crawler” was just about on its last legs, but I knew in any case that I could tinker it into some kind of running shape, and the comparative freedom of the job was what I wanted. This worked out even better than I expected, for after the first day or two, in order to save the time taken up by returning me to the prison camp at night and bringing me back in the morning, they arranged for me to bunk in in the road camp. They were too much occupied in hustling the job along to think about asking me for my parole—a lucky thing, for I should have had a hard time to keep from breaking it.
With two men to help me, I took the tractor all down, “babbitted” up the bearings, readjusted the gears, and had it up and running at the end of a week. With a string back to the seat to open up the throttle for the sharp pulls, I had it snaking a string of ten waggon-loads of crushed rock where it had been stalling down on three before the overhauling. During that week I had also managed to pick up—no matter how—several marks in money, and had succeeded in concealing so effectually the greasy jacket of one of my assistants that he gave up hunting for it and got a new one. A machinist’s cap had already been given me, and the evening that the other helper washed out his overalls and flung them over his tent to dry, I—seeing a chance to complete my wardrobe—decided promptly that the time had come to make a move. They had offered me a steady job running the old “Caterpillar,” and at something better than ordinary “prisoner’s pay,” but as it would have kept me in the same neighbourhood, I could not figure how it would help my chances in the least to “linger on.”
There was supposed to be a sentry watching the road machinery, and also keeping a wary eye on the tent where I bunked with a half-dozen of the engineers, but he did not take his job very seriously, and I knew I would have no difficulty avoiding him. We had had a hard day of it, and my tent mates were in bed by dark—about 8 o’clock—and asleep, by their deep breathing, a few minutes later. They all slept in their working clothes, else I could have made up my outfit then and there. But it did not matter, for within half a minute of the time I had slipped noiselessly under the loosened tent-flap, I was making off down the road with a full suit of German machinist’s togs under my arm. Five minutes later I stopped in the darker darkness under a tree by the roadside and slipped them on over my prison suit, rightly anticipating that the extra warmth of the latter might be very welcome if I had much sleeping out to do.
It was partly bravado, probably, and partly because I felt that, if missed, I would be searched for in the opposite direction, that caused me to head for the two-mile-distant town of X——. And it was probably the same combination which led me, after passing unchallenged down the long main street, to march up to the wicket of a “movie” show, pay my twenty-five pfennig and pass inside. Had there been a “hue and cry” that night (which there was not), this was undoubtedly the last place they would have looked for me in.
The films were mostly war views—cracking fine things from both the Russian and French fronts—and other patriotic subjects, but among them was one of those “blood-and-thunder thrillers” from California. I don’t recall exactly how the story went, but the thing that set me thinking was the way the heroine pinched the lights off the automobile they had kidnapped her in, and afterwards pawned them for enough to get a ticket home with. What was to prevent my going back and getting busy on my old “Caterpillar”? I asked myself. The magneto was worth something like a hundred dollars, and even if I had no chance to sell it, it was a pity to overlook so easy a bit of “strafing.” I concluded that my steps had been guided to that “movie” show by my lucky star, and promptly got up and started back for the road-making camp. On the way some tipsy villagers passed me singing the “Hymn of Hate,” the air and most of the words of which I had already picked up, and, out of sheer happiness at being again (if only for a few hours) at liberty, I joined in the explosive bursts of the chorus, booming out louder than any of them on “England!” Evidently, unconsciously, I had done quite the proper thing, for they raised their voices to match mine, gave a “Hoch” or two, and passed on without stopping. That also gave me an idea. During the whole following two weeks of my wanderings in Germany every man, woman or child that I passed upon the road, in light or in darkness, might have heard me humming “The Hymn of Hate,” “Die Wacht am Rhein,” or, after I had mastered it toward the end, “Deutschland über Alles.”
It was plain that my flight had not been discovered, for I found the camp as quiet as when I left it three hours before. I could just make out the figure of the sentry pacing along down the line of tractors and dump-waggons, but the canvas which had been thrown over the “Caterpillar” to protect it from possible rain made it easy for me to escape attracting his attention. Of light I had no need; I knew the old “65” well enough to work on it in my sleep. A wrench and pair of nippers, located just where I had left them in their loops in the cover of the tool-box over the right “track,” were all I needed. First I cut the insulated copper wires running to the magneto with the nippers, and then (placing my double-folded handkerchief over them to prevent noise) unscrewed with the wrench the nuts from the bolts which held the costly electrical contrivance to the steel frame of the tractor. Then I cut off with a knife a good-sized square of the canvas paulin that covered the machine, wrapped the magneto in it, and tied up the bundle with a piece of the insulated copper wire, leaving a doubled loop for a handle. Then I threw out some of the more delicate adjustments, dropped some odds and ends of small tools and bits of metal down among the gears where they would do the most “good,” pocketed the knife and nippers, and, with the magneto in one hand and the biggest wrench I could find in the other, set off for X—— again. The wrench was my last and greatest inspiration; it was to take the place of the one the Huns had robbed me of in the trenches. I am glad to be able to write that I have it by me at the present moment, and that it is slated to go back to the Front with me—, I hope to do a bit of the “strafing” that Fate denied the other.
Probably no prisoner of war was ever loose in the interior of Germany with a clearer idea of what he wanted to do, and how he intended to do it, than I had at this moment. I knew that my only chance of escaping capture within the next twenty-four hours was in putting a long way—a hundred miles or more—between myself and that place by daylight, when the “alarm” would go out. I knew the only way this could be done was by train; but I also knew that the quickest way to instant arrest was to try to enter a station and take a train in the ordinary way. To any but one who had “hoboed” back and forth across the North American Continent as I had the game would have seemed a hopeless one.
I was far from despairing, however; in fact, I never felt more equal to a situation in my life. The whole thing hinged on my getting my first train. After that I felt I could manage. I had studied German passenger cars as closely as possible in watching them pass at a distance, and was certain they offered fairly good “tourist” accommodation on the “bumpers” or brake beams; but I did not feel that I yet knew enough of their under-slung “architecture” to board them when on the move. This meant that I was going to have to start on my “maiden” trip from a station or siding, where I could find a train at rest. A siding would, of course, have been vastly preferable, but as I had none definitely located, and knew that I might easily waste the rest of the night looking for one, the X—— bahnhof was the only alternative. Because this was so plainly the only way, I was nerved to the job far better than if I had had to decide between two or three lines of action.