"Go on."
"One went to work before light, my colonel, in that accursed prison-camp. One was out of sight from the guard for a moment, turning a corner, so [pg 132] that on a morning I slipped into some bushes and hid in a dugout—for it was an old camp—all day. That night I walked. I walked for seven nights and lay hid for seven days, eating, my colonel, very little. Then, v'la, I was in front of the French lines."
"You ran across to our lines?"
"But not exactly. One sees that I was yet in dirty German prison clothes, and looked like an infantryman of the Boches, so that a poilu rushed at me with a bayonet. I believed, then, that I had come upon a German patrol. Each thought the other a Hun. I managed to wrest from the poilu his rifle with the bayonet, but as we fought another shot me—in the side."
"You were wounded?"
"Yes, my colonel."
"In hospital?"
"Yes, my colonel."
"How long?"
"Three months, my colonel."