THE ESCAPE
Picking a Pal for Switzerland--Cold Feet--The Talk in the
Wood--Nothing Succeeds Like Success and--!--Simmons and Brumley
Try Their Hand.
Mervin Simmons of the 7th, and Frank Brumley of the 3rd Battalion,
Canadian Expeditionary Force were planning to escape. Word of it
leaked through to me. This added fuel to the fire of my own similar
ambition. They, and I too, thought that it was not advisable for more
than two to travel together. I began to look around for a partner. I
"weighed up" all my comrades. It was unwise to broach the subject to
too many of them. I bided my time until a certain man having dropped
remarks which indicated certain sporting proclivities, I broached the
subject to him. He was most enthusiastic. We decided on Switzerland as
our objective and awaited only the opportunity to make a break.
There were few if any preparations to make. We were not yet receiving
parcels and our allowance of food was so scanty that it was impossible
to lay any by. We had a crude map of our own drawing. And that was our
all.
In the interval we discussed ways and means of later travel and
endeavoured to prepare our minds for all contingencies, even capture.
We talked the matter over with Simmons and Brumley at every
opportunity, so as to benefit also by their plans. This required
caution so we were careful at all times that we should not be seen
together; rather that we should even appear unfriendly. We developed
the cunning of the oppressed. Once we even staged a wordy quarrel over
some petty thing for the benefit of our guards and others of the
prisoners whom we distrusted. At other times we foregathered in dim
corners of our huts as though by chance. We conversed covertly from
the corners of our mouths and without any movement of the lips, as
convicts do. This avoidance of one another was made the easier because
of the arrangement of the personnel of each hut. The various
nationalities were pretty well split up in companies, presumably to
prevent illicit co-operation and each company was separated from the
others by the wire.
Our chance came at last. We were "warned" for a working party on a
railroad grade near by. As compliance would enable us to get on the
other side of the wire, we made no protest. This work was a part of
the authorities' scheme of farming prisoners out to private
individuals and corporations who required labour. In this case it was
a railroad contractor. As a rule the contractors fed us better than
the authorities, if for no other reason than to keep our working
strength up.
We were marched out of the laager without any breakfast each morning
to the work and there received a little sausage and a bit of bread for
breakfast. At noon we received soup of a better quality than the camp
stuff. It was cooked by a Russian Pole, a civilian; one of many who
was living out in the town on parole. These had to report regularly to
the authorities and had to remain in the local area.
We were on the job a week before things seemed favourable. We had only
what we stood in, excepting the rough map, which was drawn from
hearsay and our scanty knowledge of the country. We planned to travel
at night, lay our course by the stars and perhaps walk to Switzerland
in six weeks.
We worked all morning, grading on the railroad embankment. At noon we
knocked off for soup and a rest. We were on the edge of a large wood.
Some of the men flung themselves on the bank; others went to see if
the soup was ready. A few went into the wood. The solitary guard was
elsewhere. We said good-bye to the few who knew of our plans. They
bade us God-speed and then we, too, faded into the recesses of the
wood.
We had no sooner set foot in it than I noticed a curious change come
over my companion. He said that it was a bad time, a bad place, found
fault with everything and said that we should not go that day.
However, we continued, half-heartedly on his part, to shove our way on
into the wood. Occasionally he glanced fearfully over his shoulder and
voiced querulous protests. I did not answer him. A little further on
and he stopped. A dog was barking.
"There's too many dogs about, Edwards. And just look at all those
houses." He pointed to where a village showed through the trees.
"Sure thing, there'll be houses thick like that all the way. It's our
job to keep clear of them."
"Yes, but look at the people. There's bound to be lots of them where
there's so many houses."
"Of course there are," I replied: "Germany's full of houses and
people. That's no news. Come on."
"Oh! They'll see us sure, Edwards--and telegraph ahead all over the
country. We haven't got any more show than a rabbit."
With that I lost patience and gave him a piece of my mind. We stood
there, arguing it back and forth.
It was no use: He fell prey to his own fears; saw certain capture and
a dreadful punishment. He conjured up all the dangers that an active
imagination could envisage: Every bush was a German and every sound
the occasion of a fresh alarm. He was like to ruin my own nerves with
his petty panics.
It was in vain that I pleaded with him: He could not face the dangers
that he saw ahead. The laager seemed to him, by comparison, a haven
of refuge. When all else failed, I appealed to his pride. He had none.
I warned him that we should meet with nothing but scorn from our
comrades, excepting laughter, which was worse. I begged and pleaded
with him to go on with me. No use. All his courage was foam and had
settled back into dregs.
And so we returned. I was heart-broken. But there was no use in my
going on alone. To travel by night we must sleep in the day time and
that required that some one should always be on watch to avoid the
chance travellers of the day--which was obviously impossible for any
one who travelled alone.
We had been gone only an hour and a half and the guard was just
beginning to look around for us. Otherwise we had not been missed nor
seen, for the wood was a large one and we had not yet gotten out of
its confines. The guard was too relieved to find us, when we stepped
out of the wood and picked up our shovels, to do more than betray a
purely personal annoyance. He asked where we had been and why we had
remained for so long a time. We gave the obvious excuse. He was too
well pleased at his own narrow escape from responsibility to be
critical, so that the affair ended in so far as he or his kind were
concerned. Which made what followed the harder to bear.
For it was not so with our own comrades. My prognostication had been a
correct one. A few of them had known that we were going; some had bade
us good-bye. They rested on their picks now and stared at us, lifting
their eyebrows, with a knowing smile for one another and a half-sneer
for us. My companion had already plumbed the depths of fear and so was
now lost to all shame. Myself, I found it very hard. Soldiers have,
outwardly at least, but little tenderness, except perhaps in bad
times, and they showed none now. Nor mercy. The situation would have
been ridiculous had it not been so utterly tragic--to have failed
without trying! Edwards's escape became camp offal. We became the butt
and the byword of the camp, so that I honestly regretted not having
pushed on alone. I felt sure that the almost certain capture and more
certain punishment would have been more bearable than this. There was
nothing that I could say in my own defense except at the other man's
expense--which would have been in questionable taste and would have
been deemed the resort of a weakling. So I kept my counsel and
brooded. The ignorance of the guards made the tragedy comic. It was
very humiliating. I gritted my teeth and swore that I at any rate
should go again in spite of their incredulous jeers. But it was all
terribly discouraging and made me most despondent.
And that finished that trip to Switzerland.
A few days later Simmons and Brumley disappeared. There was no
commotion. One day they were with us and the next--they were not. The
guards said nothing and we feared to ask. I longed ardently to be with
them.
In a few days the camp was thrown into a mild turmoil. The poor
fellows were escorted in under a heavy guard. And very dejected they
looked too--in rags, very wet and evidently short of food, sleep and a
shave. Nevertheless, I envied them.
They disappeared for a long time. We were told they got two weeks'
cells and six weeks of sitting on the stools in strafe barracks. I
remembered the Yorkshiremen and my envy was tempered.
I spent most of my time casting about for the means for a real
escape. Quite aside from my natural desire for freedom I felt that my
good name as a soldier was at stake. However, I waited for an
opportunity to converse with Simmons and Brumley before doing anything
as I felt that their experience might contain some useful hints for
me.
They appeared at the end of two months, quite undismayed. They told me
of what had happened to them and Simmons approached me on the subject
of making another try of it with them. I readily consented. They were
now convinced that three or four could make the attempt with a better
chance of success than two men. I would have agreed to go an army! All
I wanted was an opportunity to prove my mettle and retrieve my lost
reputation.
They told me their story. It seems that they had been sent out as a
working party to a near by farm. They were locked in the room as usual
at nine o'clock that night after the day's work and then waited until
they had heard the sentry pass by a couple of times on his rounds. The
window was covered with barbed wire which they had no difficulty in
removing. By morning they were well on the way to Switzerland. They
figured that they, too, could do it in six weeks' of walking by
night, laying their course by the stars. They had no money and were
still in khaki.
They were four days' out and lying close in a small clump of bushes
adjoining a field in which women were digging potatoes when a small
boy stumbled on them. They knew they had been seen the day before and
chose this exposed spot rather than the near-by wood, thinking that it
was there the hue and cry would run. But he was a crafty little brat
and pretended that he had not seen them. They were not certain whether
he had or not and hesitated to give their position away by running for
it.
The boy walked until he neared the women, when he broke into a run and
soon all gathered in a little knot, looking and pointing toward the
fugitives. Some of the women broke away and evidently told some
Bavarian soldiers who had been searching. The latter had already been
firing into the woods to flush them out so that if the boy had not
seen them the soldiers would in all likelihood have passed on, after
searching the main wood.
It was just four o'clock with darkness still four hours off. Simmons
and Brumley were unarmed. There was no use in running for it. So they
surrendered with what grace they could. There was the usual
_verdamning_, growling and prodding but no really bad treatment. For
this they were sentenced to two weeks cells and six weeks of strafe
barracks.
They had been much bothered by the lack of a compass on their trip; so
when they finished their strafing and were once more allowed the
privileges of the mail, Simmons took a chance and wrote on the inside
of an envelope addressed to his brother in Canada: "Send a compass."
He was not called up so we hoped that it had gone through.