I have omitted to tell you that once again I had a compass. The other one had been taken from me on my recapture, but I had purchased a second from a Russian for the sum of seven shillings. We were without food, and a dark night seemed to favor us, but before morning—we had covered only six or seven kilometres—a couple of sentries simply ran into us, and we were haled back to camp. It was ignominious, but inevitable.
If one escape merited ten days' solitary confinement, a second justified twenty-one. At any rate, that was my portion, and Grantham got ten days. Once again I was trotted round the camp as an object lesson on ingratitude for favors already received. It was after this that the monotony of prison camp life was relieved by a gentle jaunt to Russia. I am not surprised that people should imagine that I am romancing when I speak of going from Germany to Russia. Yet I am stating nothing but the bare truth. Eighty-nine men from the Münster camp were told that they were to join a party destined for "unknown regions," and as one of the officers put it to me, he considered I had "better go, or I should go somewhere worse."
How that would have been possible none but a German mind can conceive. At a railway station two thousand of us, sad-looking fellows most of them, were assembled from different camps. We were in the train for seven days, plus two days at Frankfort, before we reached our destination. At Frankfort martial law was read, and we were politely informed that we were to be asked three times whether we would work, and if we refused we were to be bayoneted! It was to Windau, in Russian Poland, that we were eventually taken, and the life there was a hell upon earth.
The re-laying of railway metals torn up by the retreating Russians and a certain amount of farm work were the duties imposed upon us. The sights I have seen! I hate the very thought of them! Men were continually being felled to the ground and kicked and bayoneted. I have even heard captives, worn out and dispirited, beg the sentries to shoot them and thus end their misery, and the poor wretches meant it, for it would be better to die than to endure such slavery. One poor chap, goaded into retaliation, was kicked viciously, had a bayonet thrust through his leg, and was then flung, half dead and bleeding, into the guard-room.
After this there was a wholesale refusal to work and much bludgeoning, and general mutiny threatened. The Germans saw they had gone too far, and they capitulated. They told us that if we behaved fair to them they would be fair to us. All the time we were under martial law, and the orders that were read out to us were signed by Hindenburg.
Escape now seemed farther off then ever, so I played 'possum, pretended to have rheumatism and other ailments, and was sent back to Münster. I was still wearing the red and white signal of my attempts to escape, and one of the first things that I did on my return was to commandeer a fresh coat, otherwise I should have been a marked man.
What new plan of campaign could I evolve? Two had been tried and failed; yet I was just as keen and just as ready as ever to stake even life itself on a desperate throw. It was now that I met with a bit of luck, for I happened to fall in with Private Leonard Walker, of Oldham, and Private Fussell, of Taunton, one a Welsh Fusilier and the other a Somerset. They were bent on escape even as I was, and Walker had also tried the game before, having spent five days and five nights in the open with a chum, living on biscuits and a rabbit which they picked up and steering a course by map and compass. They, like me, had been caught, when crossing a railway line. A woman signalled to the sentry; they were captured, and had undergone solitary confinement. Walker, Fussell, and myself were a pretty good trio, with none of the turning-back spirit in our composition. Lot's wife turned back, you'll remember, but her fate was a shorter shrift than ours, and far less uncomfortable. A grand chap for the job was Walker, and his experience stood us in good stead. He studied the situation, weighed matters carefully, was resourceful and cute, but nevertheless had that touch of recklessness so necessary for such a venture.
VI—"MY THIRD ATTEMPT—THE FLIGHT"
We fixed up our arrangements and bided our time. We stuffed our pockets—"stuffed" is a good word—with twenty-one biscuits saved from our parcels—twenty-one for three of us. We also had two tins of sardines, and, better than all, a map and compass. One thing that we determined to do was to get rid of a conspicuous stripe sewn down the sleeves of our coats and the legs of our trousers. It was a bit of a puzzle at first, but Walker got over the difficulty by cutting up his waistcoat and inserting strips under the light stripes, which, when we got clear, were torn away, leaving us to all intents and purposes clothed like ordinary citizens and not like wicked "Engländers."
It was on September 27th—fateful, happy day!—that our opportunity came. We were at work in a barn on a farm four or five miles from the Laager, for which work I had volunteered with a view to escape, feeding a threshing machine. It was a job that was supposed to last four days, but while the guard was out of the way we quietly put the machine out of action with a crowbar. Then we went off to dinner and ate as hearty a meal as we could in case of emergencies. Two sentries stood guard over about twenty of us, and one of them showed signs of sleepiness.