My Escape from Germany 12

My Escape from Germany 12

It was an absolute nightmare. Panting and breathless, I got up

after one of my many tumbles. It was in an open kind of wood. My

soaked clothes were dripping, yet I felt warm with the speed of my

flight. Then the sensation of being utterly lost came over me, the

danger-signal that the nerves are giving way. Luckily I had sense

enough to recognize it as such, and promptly sat down in half an inch

of water, pretending that I was in no hurry whatever.

 

I tried to reason out the situation. If the road were where I sought

it, I should have come to it long before. My maps were unreliable in

small details. Suppose the road crossed to the south of the railway,

some distance outside Vehlen, instead of in the village as marked. In

that case I had started from a point north of the road and south of the

railway. Better go back to the railway and follow it west until I came

to the point of intersection.

 

I turned due south, feeling better for the rest, and ten minutes later

jumped the ditch along the turnpike. The night was very fine, the road

hard and smooth. My footsteps rang so loudly that it was difficult to

tell whether anybody was coming up behind me or not. For the third time

I took off my boots and socks, and walked the rest of the night with

bare feet. It was simply glorious to be able to step out. The exercise

soon sent the blood tingling and warming through my body, which had

become chilled during my rest in the woods. My clothes were drying

apace; I hardly knew now that they were wet. My toes seemed to grip the

ground and lever me forward. It was good to be alive.

 

After I had traversed the considerable belt of isolated farms

surrounding a village, the country became quite uninhabited for a time,

until a solitary inn appeared on my right. Here another road joined

from the north, and at the point of meeting stood a big iron sign-post.

“Dangerous corner ahead! Motors to slow down,” I managed to decipher,

clinging to the pointing arm. Soon after, the brook was crossed on

a stone bridge. Not being thirsty, I did not stop, but went forward

until I came to a track on my right. Posts were planted across it at

measured intervals, as if it had been closed to wheeled traffic some

time before, yet there were fresh cart ruts running parallel to it.

The country was flat, with plenty of cover, and empty. I kept checking

the direction of the path, which meandered about a little, and found

it one or two points more westerly than I had expected. This worried

me a little. Its angle with the road shown on the map was so small,

however, that I could not attach undue importance to it. At the worst,

it meant striking the frontier ultimately a mile or two farther south,

increasing the distance by that much from the point the soldier had so

triumphantly warned me against the night before.

 

In due course I came across another railroad and a turnpike. A quarter

of a mile to the north a church steeple was faintly outlined against

the sky, indicating a village. This tallied fairly well with my

expectations. When crossing over the line of rails I had entered the

danger zone, where sentries and patrols might be expected anywhere.

Probably the frontier was no more than three miles ahead, and might be

nearer.

 

Instead of proceeding along the road, I walked at about two hundred

yards to one side over plowed fields. It hurt my feet until I thrust

them hastily into my boots without troubling about the socks.

 

The sky was paling faintly in the east. It was high time to disappear

into some thicket, like the hunted animal I was.

 

Behind a windmill and a house on my right the outline of dark woods

promised cover. There was no possibility now of picking and choosing;

I had to take what I could find. What there was of it was the reverse

of satisfactory. Most of the ground was swampy. The trees and bushes,

which seemed to offer excellent places for concealment while it was

dark, moved apart with the growing light, while I grew more anxious.

 

At last I found a wood composed of small birches and pines, and some

really magnificent trees. Several paths ran through it. Fairly in the

center they left a sort of island, a little more densely studded with

trees than the rest, and with plenty of long heather between them. This

must have been about five o’clock.

 

The heather was sopping wet with dew, and I did not care to lie down in

it just then. Instead, although it was already fairly light, I scouted

around, trusting for safety to the early hour and my woodcraft.

 

At the northern end of the woods I found signs of recent clearing

work, warning me to keep away from there. Farther on, a dense patch of

saplings would have made an excellent lair, had it not been for the

ground, which was almost a quagmire. On its farther side a cart road

would give me a start on the following night. I did not lie down in the

wet heather when I had returned to my lair, but pressed myself into a

small fir-tree. I was tired, and soon very cold. Yet I had rather a

good time. I was a little proud of myself, and picturing the faces of

my late captors in Vehlen when they found the bird flown, which would

happen about this time, was the best of fun. I chuckled to myself about

the joke whenever my head, falling forward, awoke me from a semi-stupor.

 

The sun took some time to clear the morning mist from the face of the

country. After that, it grew warmer quickly. It must have been a rare

morning, but I was past appreciating it. Ere yet the heather was near

being dry, I let myself fall forward into a nice, springy tuft which my

dim vision had been gloating over for some time. I believe I was asleep

before I reached the ground.

 

My sleep was so profound that I had no sense of the lapse of time

when I awoke. As far as the temperature went, it might have been a

day in the latter part of May, instead of the 5th of April. From the

altitude of the sun it appeared to be between ten and eleven o’clock.

Children and chickens kept up their usual concert not far away. The

sound of axes came from the clearing close by. I felt quite warm and

comfortable, particularly after I had taken off my boots and placed

them and my socks in the sun to dry. Neither hunger nor thirst assailed

me during the day, although the afternoon coffee and bread and butter

of the previous day had been the last food to pass my lips. Sleep stole

over me softly now and again, so softly, indeed, that wakefulness

merged into slumber and slumber into wakefulness without sensation.

Awake, I was as alert as ever; asleep, utterly unconscious. I am quite

unable to say when or how often this happened, so swiftly did the one

change into the other.

 

Nevertheless, the day appeared intolerably long. When the sun was still

some distance above the horizon, I became so restless that I had to

move about in the confined space I permitted myself. The breaking and

trimming--with fingers, nails, and teeth--of a stout sapling into a

heavy staff, jumping-pole and, perhaps, weapon, occupied part of the

time. Then the fidgeting started again. I was eager to do something.

The decision was so near. It had to come that night. The weather, still

fine, was breaking. I felt it in my bones. Without the stars nothing

could be done; without food, and particularly without water, and with

only the clothes I stood up in, I should not last through a period of

wet weather.

 

I did not feel apprehensive. On the contrary, I had a splendid

confidence that all would go well. The Dutch border could not well

be more than three miles away. I had to proceed across-country, of

course, away from roads, certainly never on them, to pass successfully

the sentries and patrols, who very likely would concentrate the

greater part of their attention upon them. However, it would not do to

depend on being safe anywhere. As a good deal of my time would have

to be devoted to avoiding them, I might find it difficult to keep an

accurate course, even if other circumstances did not force me to alter

it considerably. All this had to be considered and certain safeguards

planned. For those of my readers who are interested in the technique of

my endeavors I would add that I expected to find a railroad track which

ran parallel to my proposed course on my left, presumably a mile or

two off, and a road entering Holland about three miles to the north of

me, which in an extreme case would prevent my going hopelessly astray.

 

At last the sun touched the sky-line. Before it was quite dark, but

after the voices of children and fowls and the sounds of work in the

woods had ceased, my restlessness forced me to do something. I sneaked

along the paths and into the thicket of saplings I had discovered

in the morning, there to ensconce myself close to the road. Once a

girl and a soldier in animated conversation passed me, while ever so

gradually twilight deepened into darkness.

 

When the night was as black as could be hoped for, I walked a hundred

yards or so along the road, bent double and with every sense alert.

Then a path on my right led me through tall woods. Coming into the

open, I corrected my course, and not long after I was stopped by a

deep ditch, almost a canal. Its banks showed white and sandy in the

starlight; on the side nearest me was a line of narrow rails. Some

tip-over trucks were standing on them, and a few lay upturned on the

ground. I remember bending down, in order to feel whether or not the

rails were smooth on top, a sign of recent use, but straightened

immediately. Since I should be either in Holland, or a prisoner, or

dead before the morning, these precautions seemed superfluous.

 

The ditch threw me out of my course. Walking along it, I noticed a

triangular sheen of light in the sky bearing northwest. It looked as if

it were the reflex of a well-illuminated place miles ahead. I took it

to be the first station in Holland on the railway from Bocholt. Later I

was able to verify this.

 

When I got to the end of the ditch, I struck out across the flat

country toward the light. It took me some time to extricate myself

from a swamp. In trying to work around it, with an idea of edging in

toward a railway line which I knew to be entering Holland somewhere

on my left, I suddenly came upon a road running northwest. I left it

quicker than I had got on it, walking parallel to it over plowed land

and keeping it in sight. Shortly after, I passed between two houses, to

see another road in front of me running at right angles to the former.

 

I crouched in the angle between the two roads, trying to penetrate the

darkness, and listening with all my might. I could see no living thing,

and all was silent. Just across from me a structure, the nature of

which I could not make out, held my gaze. I waited, then jumped across

the road into its shadow. It now resolved itself into an open shed,

with a wagon underneath. Again I listened and looked, with my back

toward Holland, watching the two houses I had passed, and nervously

scanning the road.

 

Far down it a small dog began to bark. Not taking any notice of it at

first, I was in the act of starting across a field covered knee-high

with some stiff growth, when it occurred to me that the barking sounded

like an alarm, of which I could not be the cause.

 

Gaining the shelter of the shed again, and straining my ears, I became

aware of distant and approaching footsteps, regular and ominous. I

ducked into the ditch, crawling half under the floor of the shed, and

waited. When the sound was only about a yard from me, the helmet, the

head, the up-slanting rifle muzzle, and the shoulders of a patrol

became outlined against the sky. He walked on and was swallowed up by

the darkness. His footsteps grew fainter, died away.

 

“Splendid!” I thought. “This road must be close to the border. It runs

parallel to it. Maybe I am through the sentry lines.” I pushed on, very

much excited, yet going as carefully as I could. A barbed wire and

ditch were negotiated. A patch of woodland engulfed me. Going was bad

on account of holes in the ground; my instinct was for rushing it, and

difficult to curb.

 

Three shallow ditches side by side! I felt them with my hand to make

sure they were not merely deeply trodden paths. “This must be the

frontier!”

 

I was shaking with excitement and exultation when I started forward

again. My leg went into a hole, and I fell forward across a dry piece

of wood, which exploded underneath me with a noise like a pistol shot. I scrambled to my feet, listened, and walked on.