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Escaping Club

<hr style="width: 65%;" />[213] <h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> <h3>THROUGH WURTEMBERG TO THE FRONTIER</h3> Twelfth night.—Owing to a village in front of us, we had to make a late start. It was nearly 10.30 before we marched through without incident. Later on that night, between 1 and 2 a.m., we crossed the Iller at the large town of Illertissen, and though there were many street lamps burning, we met no one. This night's march and the next one were very weary marches for me, as my feet hurt me most abominably. Buckley was perfectly splendid, and though he must have been very tired, he was cheerful and encouraging the whole time. He allowed me to grumble, and did nearly all the dirty work, the little extra bits of exertion, which mean so much. We both of us found walking uphill rather a severe strain, even though the gradient was slight; still, we kept at it with very few rests all night. Early in the night we stole some potatoes and peeled and munched them as we marched. About this time we took to singing as we marched. Singing is, perhaps, rather a grandiloquent term for the noise—something between a hum and a moan—which we made. However, it seemed to help us along. Buckley[214] taught me some remarkable nursery rhymes. One was about Jonah in the whale's belly, I remember; and we sang these and a few hymn tunes which we both happened to know. There was no danger in this—the sound of our feet on the road could be heard much farther than the song, and no one could possibly have recognized the words as English. After collecting a good supply of potatoes, we found a comfortable place to hide in some small fir trees and heather at the edge of a wood. For some hours we were made rather miserable by a heavy shower of rain, but when the sun came out towards midday we soon dried ourselves, and then, as usual, lay gasping and panting for the rest of the day. In undergrowth it is hard to find shade from a sun which is almost directly overhead. Our day's ration of water was very small, and I am sure that lying in the sun for eight or ten hours took a lot of strength out of us. I know that we started each night's march parched with thirst. I was, at this time, able to make a fairly accurate calculation of the time it would take us to reach the frontier, and found it necessary to cut down our rations once more. We hoped to make this up by eating largely of potatoes, for it was only too obvious that both of us were becoming weaker for the want of food. Food—that is to say, sausages, eggs, beef, and hot coffee—was a barred subject between us, but I remember thinking of several distinct occasions on which I had refused second helpings in pre-war days, and wondering how I could have been such a fool. We realized now that it would be necessary to lose[215] no time at all if we were to reach the frontier before we starved. Thirteenth Night.—Accordingly, the next night we walked through the village ahead of us at an earlier hour than that at which we usually entered villages. We saw and were seen by several people, but we walked at a good steady pace, when necessary talking to each other in German, and were past before they had had time to consider whether we looked a queer pair. We must have looked pretty good ruffians, as we had not washed or shaved, and had been in the open for close on a fortnight. About 3.30 a.m. we came to the large town of Biberach, and in the outskirts of the town we climbed down to the embankment from a bridge over the railway, and then followed the railway in a southwest direction till nearly 5 a.m. We lay up in a small copse about 60 by 40 yards, at the side of the railway. It proved to be a damp, midgy, and unpleasant spot, but we were undisturbed all day. Fourteenth Night.—The next night we made an early start, walking parallel with the railway, on which we considered it dangerous to walk before 10.45, across some bare cultivated land, and thereby gained half an hour. For the rest of the night we followed the railway, passing through Aulendorf and Althausen. This railway runs east and west and is some 30 miles from Lake Constance. From here, for the first time, we caught sight of the mountains of Switzerland on the far side of the lake. A great thunderstorm was going on somewhere over there, and their snowy peaks were lit up continually by summer[216] lightning. I suggested, though I never meant it seriously, that we should cut south and try and cross or get round the east end of the lake. Buckley was all for the Swiss border, and though we argued the pros and cons for a bit, we neither had the slightest doubt that Riedheim, where we eventually crossed, was the place to go for. Along the railway at intervals of 2 or 3 kilometres were small houses, inhabited apparently by guardians of the line, and always by dogs. Sometimes we could steal by without arousing attention, but usually the dogs barked whilst we were passing and for ten minutes after we had passed. I have never really liked dogs since—the brutes. Once a man with a dog, and what looked like a gun, came out after us and chased us for a bit, but it was all in the right direction, and he soon gave it up. Once or twice men called after us—to which we answered "Guten Abend," and marched on. One of these threw open a window as we were passing, and asked us who we were and where we were going—"Nach Pfullendorf? Gerade aus," I called back. "All right," he shouted, "there are so many escaping people (Flülingen) these days that one has to keep a lookout. Guten Abend." "Guten Abend," we shouted, and marched on. Though, unfortunately, we were unable to find potatoes that night, we were so cheered by the sight of Switzerland, the promised land, and by our tactful methods with the watchmen, that we made wonderful progress. Unfortunately a bit of my map of that railway was missing. I thought the gap was about 10 kilometres, but it turned out to be nearer 20. We had hoped to pass Pfullendorf[217] that night, but did not do so. When we got into our excellent hiding-place at the side of the railway, careful measurements on the map showed us that it would be quite impossible to cross the frontier on the next night, as we had at one time hoped to do. We intended to get within 10 or 15 kilometres of the frontier the next night, and cross the night following. We did not wish to lie up close to the frontier, as we knew from other prisoners that the woods close by were searched daily for escaping prisoners. During the day, which was most pleasant, we once more divided our rations to last two more days. It was a pretty small two-day ration for two men already weak from hunger. Our eagerness to get on, and the unpopulated country in which we were, induced us to start walking at a still earlier hour the next night. Fifteenth Night.—Soon after starting we saw a gang of a dozen or more Russian prisoners escorted by a sentry. They were about 100 yards off and took no notice of us. After walking for about half an hour an incident occurred which was perhaps the most unpleasant one we experienced, and the fact that we extricated ourselves so easily was entirely due to Buckley's presence of mind. Coming round a corner, we saw ahead of us a man in soldier's uniform cutting grass with a scythe at the side of the road. To turn back would rouse suspicion. There was nothing for it but to walk past him. As we were opposite to him he looked up and said something to us which we did not catch. We answered "Good evening," as usual. But he called after us again the same words, in some South[218] German dialect, I think, for neither of us could make out what he said, so we walked on without taking any notice. Then he shouted "Halt! Halt!" and ran down the road after us with the scythe. It was an unpleasant situation, especially as we caught sight at that moment of a man with a gun on his shoulder about 50 yards away from us on our right. There was still half an hour to go before it would be quite dark, and we were both of us too weak to run very fast or far. There was only one thing to do, and we did it. In haughty surprise we turned round and waited for him. When he was only a few yards away, Buckley, speaking in a voice quivering with indignation, asked him what the devil, etc., he meant by calling "Halt!" to us; and I added something about a South German pig dog in an undertone. The man almost let drop his scythe from astonishment, and turning round walked slowly back to the side of the road and started cutting grass again. We turned on our heels and marched off, pleased with being so well out of a great danger, and angry with ourselves that we had ever been such fools as to run into it. We passed one more man in the daylight, but ostentatiously spoke German to each other as we passed him, and he took no notice. Before dark we saw other gangs of Russian prisoners. About 11 p.m. we got on the railway again, and walked without incident for the rest of the night. Owing to the gap in our maps, previously referred to, being longer than we expected, it was not till well after midnight that we passed through Pfullendorf and realized that we still had another two nights' march before we could hope to cross[219] the frontier. It was not so much the walking at night which we minded though we were both weak and weary, it was the long lying up in the day time which had become almost unendurable. For eighteen long hours we had to lie still, and were able to think of little else but food, and realize our intense hunger. When I saw the name Pfullendorf written in huge letters in the station, I felt a very pleasant thrill of satisfied curiosity and anticipated triumph. We had always called this railway the "Pfullendorf railway," and in the past months I had often imagined myself walking along this railway and passing through this station, only a day's march from the frontier. For the last two nights and for the rest of the journey my feet had become numbed, and the pain was very much less acute. This made a vast difference to my energy and cheerfulness. So much so that for the last four nights I did the march with less fatigue than Buckley, who seemed to be suffering more than I was from lack of food. I have already mentioned that we divided up the food, and each carried and ate at his own discretion the food for the last three days. When Buckley opened his last packet of chocolate, it was found to contain less than we had expected. I offered a redivision. Buckley, however, refused. I think myself that the quantity of food in question was too small to have affected in any way our relative powers of endurance. Ever since we found potatoes Buckley had eaten more of them than I had, and when we were unable to find any, he felt the lack of them more than I did. Just before dawn we climbed off the railway embankment to a[220] small stream. Here I insisted on having a wash as well as a drink. Buckley grumbled at the delay, but I think the wash did us both good. Soon afterwards, about 4.30 a.m., we came on an excellent hiding-place. Buckley wanted to push on for another half an hour, but I considered that a good hiding-place so close to the frontier was all-important, and he gave in. As we were just getting comfortable for our before-breakfast sleep I found that I had left my wrist compass behind at the place where we had washed. I determined to walk back and fetch it, as it was an illuminate compass and might be indispensable in the next two nights. That I was able to do this short extra walk with ease and at great speed—I even got into a run at one point—shows how much fitter and stronger I was now that my feet had ceased to hurt me. Our hiding-place was in a very thick plantation of young fir trees, and we were quite undisturbed. The place was so thick that when I crawled off 10 yards from Buckley I was unable to find him again for some time, and did not dare to call to him. Sixteenth Night.—Starting about 10.15 we followed the railway as it turned south towards Stokach near the west end of Lake Constance. Just before midnight we struck off southwestwards from the railway. We soon found that we had branched off too early, and got entangled in a village where a fierce dog, luckily on a long chain, sprang at us and barked for twenty minutes after we had passed. Later we passed a man smoking a cigarette, and caught a whiff of smoke, which was indescribably delicious, as we had been out of tobacco for more than a fortnight.[221] A couple of hours' walk, steering by compass by small paths in thick woods, brought us into the main road to Engen. Some of the villages, such as Nenzingen, we avoided, walking round them through the crops, a tiring and very wet job, besides wasting much time. At about 4.30 we were confronted with the village of Rigelingen, which, being on a river, was almost impossible to "turn," so we walked through it, gripping our sticks and prepared to run at any moment. However, though there were a few lights showing, we saw no one. About 5 o'clock we got into an excellent and safe hiding-place on a steep bank above the road. A mile or so down the road to the west of us was the village of Aach, and we were less than 15 kilometres from the frontier. We determined to eat the remains of our food and cross that night. I kept, however, about twenty small meat lozenges, for which, as will be seen later on, we were extremely thankful. During our last march we decided that we must walk on the roads as little as possible. Any infantry soldier knows that a cross-country night march on a very dark night over 10 miles of absolutely strange country with the object of coming on a particular village at the end, is an undertaking of great difficulty. We had an illuminated compass, but our only methods of reading a map by night (by the match-light, with the help of a waterproof, as I have previously explained) made it inadvisable to use a map so close to the frontier more often than was absolutely necessary. I therefore learnt the map by heart, and made Buckley, rather against his will, do so too. We had to remember some such rigmarole[222] as: "From cross roads 300 yards—S. W. road, railway, river—S. to solitary hill on left with village ahead, turn village (Weiterdingen) to left—road S. W. 500 yards—E. round base of solitary hill," etc., etc. Our anxieties were increased by two facts—one being that all the sign-posts within 10 miles of the frontier had been removed, so that if once we lost our way there seemed little prospect of finding it again on a dark night; secondly, the moon rose about midnight, and it was therefore most important, though perhaps not essential, to attempt to cross the frontier before that hour. We left behind us our bags, our spare clothes and socks, so as to walk as light as possible, and at about 9.30 left our hiding-place. Seventeenth Night.—The first part of our walk lay through the thick woods north of Aach, in which there was small chance of meeting anyone. For two hours on a pitch-dark night we made our way across country, finding the way only by compass and memory of the maps. There were moments of anxiety, but these were instantly allayed by the appearance of some expected landmark. Unfortunately the going was very heavy, and in our weak state we made slower progress than we had hoped. When the moon came up we were still 3 to 4 miles from the frontier. Should we lie up where we were and try to get across the next night? The idea of waiting another day entirely without food was intolerable, so we pushed on. The moon was full and very bright, so that, as we walked across the fields it seemed to us that we must be visible for miles. After turning the village of Weiterdingen we were unable to find a road on the far side which had been[223] marked on my map. This necessitated a study of the map under a mackintosh, the result of which was to make me feel doubtful if we really were where I had thought. It is by no means easy to locate oneself at night from a small-scale map, 1:100,000, examined by match-light. However, we adopted the hypothesis that we were where we had thought we were, and disregarding the unpleasant fact that a road was missing, marched on by compass, in a southwest direction, hoping always to hit the village of Riedheim. How we were to distinguish this village from other villages I did not know. Buckley, as always, was an optimist; so on we went, keeping as far as possible under the cover of trees and hedges. Ahead of us was a valley, shrouded in a thick mist. This might well be the frontier, which at that point followed a small stream on either side of which we believed there were water meadows. At length we came on a good road, and walking parallel with it in the fields, we followed it westwards. If our calculations were correct, this should lead us to the village. About 1.30 we came on a village. It was a pretty place nestling at the foot of a steep wood-capped hill, with fruit trees and fields, in which harvesting had already begun, all round it. Was it Riedheim? If it was, we were within half a mile of the frontier, and I knew, or thought I knew, from a large-scale map which I had memorized, the lie of the country between Riedheim and the frontier. We crossed the road and after going about 100 yards came on a single-line railway. I sat down aghast. There was no doubt about it—we were lost. I knew there was no[224] railway near Riedheim. For a moment or two Buckley failed to realize the horrible significance of this railway, but he threw a waterproof over my head whilst I had a prolonged study of the map by match-light. I was quite unable to make out where we were. There were, however, one or two villages, through which railways passed, within range of our night's walk. I explained the situation to Buckley, who instantly agreed that we must lie up for another night and try to make out where we were in the morning. It was impossible that we were far from the frontier. Buckley at this time began to show signs of exhaustion from lack of food; so leaving him to collect potatoes, of which there was a field quite close, I went in search of water. After a long search I was not able to find any. We collected thirty to forty potatoes between us, and towards 3 a.m. made our way up the hill behind the village. The hill was very steep, and in our exhausted condition it was only slowly and with great difficulty that we were able to climb it. Three-quarters of the way up, Buckley almost collapsed, so I left him in some bushes and went on to find a suitable place. I found an excellent spot in a thick wood, in which there were no paths or signs that any one entered it. I then returned and fetched Buckley, and we slept till dawn. At this time I was feeling fitter and stronger than at any time during the previous week. I am unable to explain this, unless it was due to the fact that my feet had quite ceased to hurt me seriously. At dawn we had breakfast on raw potatoes and meat lozenges which I divided out, and then, sitting just inside[225] the edge of the coppice, tried to make out our position from a close study of the map and the surrounding country. In the distance we could see the west end of Lake Constance, and a compass bearing on this showed us that we were very close to the frontier. Through the village in front of us there was a railway. There were several villages close to the frontier through which passed railways, and two or three of them had steep hills to the north of them. We imagined successively that the hill we were sitting on was the hill behind each of these villages, and compared the country we could see before us carefully with the map. That part of the country abounds in solitary hills capped with woods, and the difficulty was to find out which one we were sitting on. There was one village, Gottmadingen, with a railway through it, and behind it a hill from which the map showed that the view would be almost identical with that we saw in front of us. Buckley thought we were there. I did not. There were small but serious discrepancies. Then I had a brain wave. We were in Switzerland already, and the village below us was Thaingen. It explained everything—or very nearly. Buckley pointed out one or two things which did not seem to be quite right. Again then, where were we? I think now that we were slightly insane from hunger and fatigue, otherwise we should have realized without difficulty where we were, without taking the risk which we did. I don't know what time it was, but it was not till after hours of futile attempt to locate ourselves from the map from three sides of the hill, that I took off my tunic, and in a gray sweater and in gray flannel trous[226]ers walked down into the fields and asked a girl who was making hay what the name of that village might be. She was a pretty girl in a large sun-bonnet, and after a few preliminary remarks about the weather and the harvest, she told me the name of the village was Riedheim. I must have shown my surprise, for she said, "Why, don't you believe me?" "Naturally, I believe you," I said; "it is better here than in the trenches. I am on leave and have walked over from Engen and lost my way. Good day. Many thanks." She gave me a sly look, and I don't know what she thought, but she only answered "Good day," and went on with her haymaking. I walked away, and getting out of her sight hurried back to Buckley with the good news. "But how could a railway be there?" I thought. "It was made after the map was printed, you fool." On the way back I had a good look at the country. It was all as clear as daylight. How I had failed to recognize it before I can't think, except that it did not look a bit like the country that I had anticipated. There was the Z-shaped stream, which was the guarded frontier, and there, now that I knew where to look for it, I could make out the flash of the sun on a sentry's bayonet. Everything fitted in with my mental picture of the large-scale map. The village opposite to us in Switzerland was Barzheim; the little hut with a red roof was the Swiss Alpine Club hut, and was actually on the border between Switzerland and Germany. Once past the sentries on the river we should still have 500 yards of Germany to cross before we were safe. The thing to do now was to hide, and hide in the thickest[227] part we could find. The girl might have given us away. Anyhow, we knew that the woods near the frontier were usually searched daily. Till 4 o'clock we lay quiet, well hidden in thick undergrowth, half-way up the lower slopes of the Hohenstoffen, and then we heard a man pushing his way through the woods and hitting trees and bushes with a stick. He never saw us, and we were lying much too close to see him, though he seemed to come within 15 yards of us. That danger past, I climbed a tree and took one more look at the lie of the land. Then Buckley and I settled down to get our operation orders for the night. For half an hour we sat on the edge of the wood, waiting for it to become quite dark before we started. Eighteenth and Last Night.—It was quite dark at 10.15 when we started, and we had one and three-quarter hours in which to cross. Shortly after midnight the moon would rise. "I can hardly believe we are really going to get across," said Buckley. "I know I am, and so are you," I answered. We left our sticks behind, because they would interfere with our crawling, and rolled our Burberrys tightly on our backs with string. A quarter of an hour's walk brought us to the railway and the road, which we crossed with the greatest care. For a short distance in the water-meadow we walked bent double, then we went on our hands and knees, and for the rest of the way we crawled. There was thick long grass in the meadow, and it was quite hard work pushing our way through it on our hands and knees. The night was an absolutely still one, and as we passed through the grass[228] it seemed to us that we made a swishing noise that must be heard for hundreds of yards. There were some very accommodating dry ditches, which for the most part ran in the right direction. By crawling down these we were able to keep our heads below the level of the grass nearly the whole time, only glancing up from time to time to get our direction by the poplars. After what seemed an endless time, but was actually about three-quarters of an hour, we reached a road which we believed was patrolled, as it was here that I had seen the flash of a bayonet in the day time. After looking round cautiously we crossed this, and crawled on—endlessly, it seemed. Buckley relieved me, and took the lead for a bit. Then we changed places again, and the next time I looked up the poplars really did seem a bit nearer. Then Buckley whispered to me, "Hurry up, the moon's rising." I looked back towards the east, and saw the edge of the moon peering over the hills. We were still about 100 yards from the stream. We will get across now, even if we have to fight for it, I thought, and crawled on at top speed. Suddenly I felt a hand on my heel, and stopped and looked back. Buckley pointed ahead, and there, about 15 yards off, was a sentry walking along a footpath on the bank of the stream. He appeared to have no rifle, and had probably just been relieved from his post. He passed without seeing us. One last spurt and we were in the stream (it was only a few feet broad), and up the other bank. "Crawl," said Buckley. "Run," said I, and we ran. After 100 yards we stopped exhausted. "I[229] believe we've done it, old man," I said. "Come on," said Buckley, "we're not there yet." For ten minutes we walked at top speed in a semicircle, and at length hit a road which I knew must lead to Barzheim. On it, there was a big board on a post. On examination this proved to be a boundary post, and we stepped into Switzerland, feeling a happiness and a triumph such, I firmly believe, as few men even in this war have felt, though they may have deserved the feeling many times more. We crossed into Switzerland at about 12.30 a.m. on the morning of June 9th, 1917. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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