The Ambassador gave me the hope that, having been under age and an American by birth when I enlisted, my Government might secure my discharge. Influential friends were working for me.
On Jan. 10, 1916, in the forenoon, I was notified to report to headquarters, 300 yards behind our firing line. I laid low in the front trench all day, fearful lest at the last moment I should be shot. For a friend, who had obtained a long furlough for rest in England, on the very eve of his departure, had been killed by my side a few days before. It seemed so pitiful an ending, just when he was going home.
So eager was I to leave, that I planned the best I could how to escape. But I knew that if I yielded and went, I should forfeit my life. By a great effort, I restrained myself. But at 4:30 o'clock I could stand it no longer. My friends wept at the parting—for joy for my sake that I was going back to life; for grief that they were left, to die probably, so far from their fair Canada.
At 4:30 o'clock, then, with last hand-grips and the well-wishes of all, I jumped a little ditch and crept on hands and knees in a circuitous way to the headquarters.
I walked seven miles to the railroad. The firing sank away. The trenches and their fevers, their wounded and dead, their noxious odors and their deadly gases, and the man-eating rats—all became a memory. I was free, going home to my wife and child, my parents, my friends, unwounded.
THE FLIGHT FROM CAPTIVITY ON "THE THIRD ATTEMPT"
How I Escaped from Germany
Told by Corporal John Southern, and set down by A. E. Littler