MY ESCAPE FROM GERMANY
[Illustration: MAP ILLUSTRATING THE ROUTE OF AUTHOR’S ESCAPE.
The Dotted Line shows the Route taken.]
MY ESCAPE
FROM GERMANY
BY
ERIC A. KEITH
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1919
Copyright, 1920, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, January, 1920_
INTRODUCTION
There is an element of chance and risk about an attempt to escape from
an enemy’s country which is bound to appeal to any one with a trace of
sporting instinct. Viewed as a sport, though its devotees are naturally
few and hope to become fewer, it has a technique of its own, and it may
be better, rather than interrupt the course of my narrative, to say
here something about this.
As always, appropriate equipment makes for ease. But its lack, since
a prisoner of war cannot place an order for an ideal outfit, may be
largely compensated for by personal qualities.
In considering the chances of success or failure, it must always be
assumed that the route leads through a country entirely unknown to the
fugitive. Yet this is not so great a disadvantage as one might suppose.
Once free from towns and railways, a man with a certain knowledge
of nature and the heavens, and with some powers of observation and
deduction, can hardly fail to hit an objective so considerable as a
frontier line, even if a hundred miles or so have to be traversed,
provided he knows the position of his starting-point and is favored
with tolerable weather.
With the sky obscured, he must at least have a pocket compass by which
to keep his direction; though when the stars are visible it is easier
and safer to walk by their aid.
Next in importance come maps. With fairly good maps, as well as a
compass, the chances of evading discovery before approaching the
frontier, with its zone of sentries and patrols, are, in my opinion,
about even.
Another indispensable requisite is a water-bottle--a good big one.
My own belief is that a man in tolerable condition--let us say good
internment-camp condition--can keep going for from two to three weeks
on no more food than he can pick up in the fields. But thirty hours
without water will, in most cases, be too much for him. Under the
tortures of thirst his determination will be sapped. I was, therefore,
always willing to exchange the most direct route for a longer one which
offered good supplies of water. In my final and successful attempt,
when I was leader of a party of three and had to traverse a part of
Germany where brooks and streams are rare, I always preferred taking
the risk of looking for fresh water rather than that of being without
it for more than twenty hours between sources, relying in the meantime
on what we had in our bottles.
The more clothing one can take along the better--within reason, of
course. One is prepared to do without a good deal, but food must, if
necessary, be sacrificed for a sweater and an oilsilk. Two sets of
underclothing to wear simultaneously when the weather turns cold are a
comfort. Beyond this, any one will naturally take such food as can be
carried conveniently. Chocolate, hardtack and dripping, with a little
salt, is, in my opinion, as much as one wants. Being a deliberate
person, I usually managed to have enough of these in readiness before I
even thought of other arrangements for the start.
People are very differently gifted with what might be called the
out-of-door sense, though it is strong in some who have never really
led an out-of-door life. Those who have this gift will know almost
instinctively where to turn in an emergency, and will gather from the
lie of the land information denied to those without it. This raises the
question of companionship. As I am, fortunately, possessed of a fair
share of this open-air sense, it was little handicap to me to be alone
on my first attempt. In fact, as long as I was using the railways, it
was a distinct advantage. At critical moments a man can decide more
quickly what to do, if he has only himself to think of, than when he
has to consider and possibly to communicate with a companion, who may
be contemplating a better but quite different solution. To know that it
is only one’s own skin that is at stake gives one that promptness of
decision which is itself the seed of success; the thought of involving
another man in an error easily clogs the swiftness of one’s action.
On the march these conditions are reversed. One can walk only at
night, and the approach of actual danger is best met by falling flat
and keeping motionless, or else taking to one’s heels. It is under
trying conditions just short of the actual peril of discovery that
the soothing influence of a companion is of inestimable advantage.
Cross-country walking tries one’s nervous forces to the utmost. Hour
after hour passes, and no recognizable landmark appears. At last one
gets the feeling of being condemned eternally to tramp over fields,
skirt woods, and extricate oneself from an endless succession of
morasses. In time the sky seems to reel and the compass-needle to point
in all directions but the right one. It is then that the voice of a
friend, the touch of his hand, or merely the sound of his footsteps
behind one, restores the sense of normality which, if one is alone, can
be recovered only by a deliberate effort of will that is often very
exhausting.
Before starting I always knew roughly what lay before me, and what
I had to expect, until I met either with success or with complete
failure by being captured. Even when the chances seemed to suggest it,
I would never trust blindly to mere good luck, which I kept in reserve
as an absolutely last resource. Once in hiding for the day, I usually
worked out a detailed plan for the following night’s walk, and spent
hours looking at the maps in order to impress on my mind a picture, as
complete as possible, of the country directly in front of me and to
each side of my route.
When this book was first published I pointed out, that “It is one of
the penalties of an escape that, so long as others remain behind, it is
impossible for obvious reasons to give too precise details, and often
the moments one would most wish to describe have of necessity to be
camouflaged from the observation of the enemy.” Now that the war is
over and there is nothing to hinder it, I have been able to augment
my original story with certain details originally omitted for reasons
mentioned above. In its present form the book has been considerably
enlarged and no detail of my escape has been omitted.
E.A.K.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION v
PART I
I THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE 3
II RUHLEBEN: THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS 13
III THE SANATORIUM 25
IV PLANNING THE DETAILS 31
V A GLIMPSE OF FREEDOM 39
VI IN HIDING 52
VII FAILURE 69
VIII A NEW HOPE 76
IX BREAKING PRISON 91
X CAUGHT AGAIN! 109
XI UNDER ESCORT 120
XII THE STADTVOGTEI AND “SOLITARY” 126
XIII CLASSES AND MASSES IN THE STADTVOGTEI 146
XIV PRISON LIFE AND OFFICIALS 154
PART II
XV A FRESH ATTEMPT 179
XVI FROM BERLIN TO HALTERN 190
XVII WESTWARD HO! 202
XVIII THE GAME IS UP 218
PART III
XIX FOOTING THE BILL 233
XX RUHLEBEN AGAIN 251
XXI THE DAY 265
XXII ORDER OF MARCH 292
XXIII THE ROAD THROUGH THE NIGHT 304
XXIV CROSSING THE EMS 319
XXV THE LAST LAP 333
XXVI FREE AT LAST 348
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
The date was April 7, 1916. The fat German warder backed out of my
cell, a satisfied smile on his face; the door swung to, the great key
clicked in the lock, and I was alone.
Prison once more! And only a bare three miles away was the frontier
for which I had striven so hard--the ditch and the barbed wire that
separated Germany, and all that that word means, from Holland, the
Hook, the London boat, and freedom.
The game was lost. That was the kernel of the situation as it presented
itself to me, sitting on my bed in the narrow, dark cell.
Vreden, where I thus found myself in prison, is a little town hardly
three miles from the Dutch frontier, in the Prussian province of
Westphalia. So near--and indeed a good deal nearer--had I got to
liberty!
Twenty-four hours before, my first attempt to escape from
Germany--which might be described with some justification as my
third--had failed, and instead of being a free man in a neutral
country, I was still a British civilian prisoner of war.
Apart from the overwhelming sense of failure which oppressed me, I
was not exactly physically comfortable. To start with, I wanted a
change of clothing and a real bath. I had not had my boots off--except
during several hours when I was walking in bare feet for the sake of
silence--for over eight days, and for almost the same length of time
I had not even washed my hands. The change of clothing was out of the
question. The bath--One does not feel as if one has had a bath after an
ablution in a tin basin holding a pint of water, with a cake of chalky
soap the size of a penny-piece, and a towel which, but for texture,
would have made a tolerable handkerchief. And no water to be spilled on
the floor of the cell, mind you!
My prison bed was an old, wooden “civilian” one with a pile of
paillasses on it, and the usual two blankets. It was fairly comfortable
to lie on, as long as the numerous indigenous population left you
alone, which they rarely did.
The warder--the only one, I believe, in the prison--had asked me
immediately after my arrival whether or not I had any money on me.
When he heard I had not, his face fell. Since he could not make me
profitable he made me useful, and put me to peeling potatoes in the
morning, a job I liked very much under the circumstances.
The food in Vreden prison was scanty, barely sufficient. I was always
moderately hungry, and ravenous when meal-time was still two or three
hours off. Twice in four days I had an opportunity of walking for
twenty minutes round the tiny prison yard, sunless and damp, where
green moss spread itself in three untrodden corners, while the fourth
was occupied by a large cesspool. The rest of my time I spent alone in
my cell, now and again reading a few pages of Jules Verne’s “Five Weeks
in a Balloon,” execrably translated into German and lent me by the
warder. But mostly I was busy speculating about my immediate future, or
thinking of the eighteen months of my captivity in Germany.
Technically, I was not being punished as yet for my escape. I was
merely being kept under lock and key pending my removal back to
Ruhleben camp or to a prison in Berlin, I did not know which. But if it
was not punishment I was undergoing in the little frontier town, it was
an excellent imitation of it.
Some experiences, exciting when compared with the dull routine of camp
life, were still ahead of me; the journey to Berlin was something to
look forward to, at any rate. But what would happen afterward? I did
not know, for I flatly refused to believe in solitary confinement to
the end of the war--the punishment which had been suggested as in store
for unsuccessful escapers.
I had not escaped from Ruhleben, as my predecessors had. I had walked
out of a virtually unguarded sanatorium in Charlottenburg, a suburb
of Berlin, where British civilian prisoners of war, suffering from
diseases and ailments which could not be properly combated in camp,
were treated. Might not this give an earnest to a plea which was
shaping in my mind? Could the Germans be persuaded to believe that
I had acted under the influence of an attack of temporary insanity,
caused by overwhelming homesickness? True, I had “gone away” well
prepared; I had shown a certain amount of determination and tenacity of
purpose. On the other hand, I had not destroyed any military property.
Of course, I had damaged a good deal of property, but it wasn’t
military property! A fine point, but an important one, especially in
Germany.
These were the sort of reflections which mostly occupied my four days
in Vreden prison, unreasoning optimism struggling desperately against
rather gloomy common sense.
What I looked forward to most in the solitude of my cell was a meeting
with my old friends in Ruhleben camp in the near future. The other
escapers had all been returned to camp for a short time before they
were taken to prison, to demonstrate to us ocularly the hopelessness
of further attempts. Surely the Germans would do the same with me; and
then I should get speech with one or two of my particular chums. For
this I longed with a great longing, although I did not look forward to
telling them that I had failed.
Only one of them knew the first links in the chain of events which
connected my sensations of the first day of the war with the present,
when I was restlessly measuring the length of my cell, or sitting
motionless on the edge of the bed, staring with dull eyes upon the
dirty floor. Under the pressure of my disappointment, and without the
natural safety-valve of talk to a friendly soul, I naturally began to
examine my experiences during the war, opening the pigeon-holes of my
memory one by one, reliving an incident here, revisualizing a picture
there, and retracing the whole length of the--to me--most important
developments leading up to my attempted escape.
* * * * *
When the storm clouds of the European war were gathering I was living
in Neuss, a town on the left bank of the Rhine, between Düsseldorf, a
few miles to the north, and Cologne, twenty miles to the south. I had
been there a little over a year. Immersed though I was in business, I
was by no means happy. I was distinctly tired of Germany, and was on
the point of cutting short my engagements and leaving the “Fatherland.”
I had turned thirty some time before, and hitherto my life, although
it had led me into many places, had been that of an ordinary business
man. In spite of unmistakable roaming proclivities, it was likely to
continue placidly enough. Then suddenly everything was changed.
One afternoon, about the 20th of July, I was standing in the enclosure
of the Neuss Tennis Club, waiting for a game. The courts were close to
a point where a number of important railway lines branched off toward
Belgium and France. I was watching and wondering about the incessant
traffic of freight-trains which for days past had been rolling in that
direction at about fifteen-minute intervals. They consisted almost
exclusively of closed trucks.
Another member of the club pointed his racket toward one. “War
material. Soldiers!” he said succinctly. With a sinking heart I gazed
after the train as it disappeared from view. The political horizon was
clouded, but surely it wouldn’t come to this! It couldn’t come to this.
It was impossible that it should happen.
The police, always troublesome and inquisitive in Germany, seemed to be
taking some unaccountable interest in me. Nothing was further from my
mind than to connect this lively interest in an obscure individual like
myself with anything so stupendous as a war.
And then it happened. War was declared.
I was warned not to leave the town without permission. I was eating my
head off in idleness and anxiety. I hoped to be sent out of the country
at short notice, but the order to pack up and be gone did not come.
Instead, I was invited to call upon the inspector of police at 9 A.M.
on the 27th of August. I obeyed. An hour later I was locked up in a
cell of an old, evil-smelling, small prison. I did not know for what
reason, beyond the somewhat incomprehensible one of being a British
subject. Nor did I know for how long. The inspector of police had
answered my questions with an Oriental phrase: It was an order!
It appeared that the order referred to Britishers of military age only,
which, according to it, began with the seventeenth and ended with the
thirty-ninth year. Thus it came about that I made the acquaintance
of three out of the six Englishmen then temporarily living in Neuss,
but hitherto beyond my ken. They were all fitters of a big Manchester
firm, Messrs. Mather & Platt Ltd., employed in putting up a sprinkler
installation in the works of the International Harvester Co., an
American concern in Neuss.
We were treated comparatively well in prison. Nevertheless, the days
we had to pass in that old, evil-smelling house of sorrows were
interminable. Most of our time we spent together, in a locked-up part
of the corridor on the second floor. Outside it was glorious summer
weather. All our windows were open to the breeze, which never succeeded
in dispersing the stench pervading the whole building. Sitting on
the uncomfortable wooden stools, or walking idly about, we smoked
incessantly, read desultorily in magazines and books, and talked
spasmodically. And always the air vibrated with the faint, far-away,
half-heard, half-sensed muttering of distant guns. The news in the
German newspapers was never cheering to us.
As suddenly as we had been arrested we were released from prison after
eleven days, and confined to the town.
There followed nine weeks of inactivity and endless waiting. For the
first time I gave a fleeting thought to an attempt of making my way out
of Germany by stealth. It hardly seemed worth while, as we were “sure
of being exchanged sooner or later”! Twice I left the town for a few
hours. On my return I always found the police fully conversant with
every one of my moves, which showed how carefully they were watching
me. Having always provided excellent explanations for my actions, I
escaped trouble over these escapades.
As announced beforehand in the German press, we were arrested again
on November 6, 1914. We passed four cheery days in the old familiar
prison, and then came the excitement of our departure for Ruhleben
camp, via Cologne, where we and a hundred and fifty other civilian
prisoners, collected from the Rhine provinces, spent a night in a large
penal prison.
Under a strong escort we were marched to the station at seven the
following morning. Before starting we had been told that there was
only one punishment for misbehavior on transport--death! Misbehavior
included leaving the ranks in the streets or leaning out of the windows
when in the railway carriages.
Entraining at eight o’clock, we did not reach our final destination
until twenty-three hours later. The first hour or so of our journey
was tolerable. We were in third-class carriages. Having had hardly any
breakfast, and no tea or supper the previous day, we soon became hungry
and thirsty. But we were not even allowed to get a drink of water.
Whenever the train drew into a station, the Red Cross women rushed
toward our carriages with pots of coffee and trays of food, under the
impression that we were Germans on the way to join our regiments. But
they were always warned off by uniformed officials: “Nothing for those
English swine.” We were evidently beyond the pale of humanity.
At 2 A.M. we disembarked at Hanover station, to wait two hours for
another train. Here a bowl of very good soup was served out to us.
At 7 A.M. on the 12th of November our train drew up at a siding. We
were ordered roughly to get out and form fours. It was dark and cold.
A thin drizzling rain was falling. Hardly as cheerful as when we left
Neuss, we entered Ruhleben camp.