WE HIDE IN A DRAIN
It must have been a good hour before we eventually got clear of the
thickets, and our passage through them had been a pretty noisy one. No
sign of the other pair could be seen, so that after scouting round for
about twenty minutes we moved off again.
My companion was Captain Stewart of the R.F.A., and a more staunch
fellow in a hazard of this kind could not possibly be desired. From this
time on we made excellent progress through the night, and nothing of
note happened until just before the break of dawn, when we had great
difficulty in finding a suitable place to hide in during the day.
Eventually we discovered a ditch between two fields, in which we passed
the day without incident. The extreme cold, coupled with the want of
food, was beginning to tell on us, as we lay too weary to care very much
what happened, so long as only the night would come, that we might push
on again and get some circulation in our limbs. At about 7 p.m. we
started to rub our feet and legs, which appeared quite dead, and at 7.30
pushed off at a good pace. Before long we felt quite warm and
comfortable, with the exception of a gnawing sensation in the vitals,
owing of course to lack of food.
From here on till about one in the morning no incident worthy of record
happened--only the same careful skirting of villages and farms, keeping
always to the open country, and avoiding all paths and roads like the
plague. About one o’clock, to our surprise, we struck a railway line
running south-west. This we followed, not on the line, but parallel
with it, at a distance of about a hundred yards. Once or twice we heard
voices on level crossings. The reason of our following the railway was
that we had not expected to meet one so soon--in fact; not until the
following night, and then we calculated we should have to turn south for
quite ten miles in order to find it. This railway would be of enormous
importance to us, as it ran over an artificial embankment, constructed
through the centre of a lake, and thus dividing it in two, both of which
portions were connected on either side by a series of small lakes,
stretching north and south respectively, and were, I presumed, the means
by which the surrounding low-lying country was inundated.
These small lakes, which should run parallel with the frontier,
according to the maps we had seen, formed a very serious obstacle to our
advance. It was therefore of the greatest importance to find some means
to help us over the difficulty, and this railway seemed to be the only
one. If the railway we were now following passed between two small towns
situated nearly opposite to one another, and then passed through a third
within a mile or so of the last two, then this was the line running
through the lakes which we had hoped eventually to strike, in which case
we had inadvertently come across it, and were a great deal nearer the
frontier than we had thought possible. However, we did not credit such
good luck for a moment; for, in reasoning the matter out, we must have
dropped a good ten or twelve miles south from where we had started the
previous night in order to be anywhere near this railway line. To our
great satisfaction, in carrying out our intention of following this
chance line, at about 3.30 a.m. we passed between two small towns, this
time walking on the track itself, and leaving it again when we were well
clear of the outskirts.
Pushing forward at our very best speed till about four o’clock, we
found ourselves approaching another town, through which the railway ran.
A careful survey showed a station and several sidings. During this
investigation we found the inhabitants were preparing for the coming
day, and, looking at our watches, discovered, to our consternation, that
it was nearly five o’clock. Where could we find a suitable hiding-place?
We hadn’t passed anything on the way that would give shelter to a rat,
so there was nothing to be gained by retracing our steps. To try to walk
round the town might end in our being caught by the daylight, having
found no place of concealment. The only possible procedure in these
circumstances was to pass through the town on the track as best we
could. Accordingly we moved off, sometimes crawling on hands and knees
wherever we saw anything that we were not quite sure of. We tried to get
under big heaps of timber and steel rails lying beside the track, but no
consolation in the shape of a hiding-place of any sort offered itself.
We had proceeded through the town in safety, but were brought up sharp
by a party of workmen coming along the line from an opposite direction.
Fortunately we were practically on the outskirts, so that we were able
to dodge into a small garden till they passed. By this time the whole
town seemed to be awake, the usual warning lights springing up in the
cottages all round us, and day was just about to break. Passing through
the garden in our frantic endeavours to discover some place, we found
ourselves in a small fir wood, through which we rushed, heedless of the
noise we were making. Anything to get away from this dangerous spot! Why
had we come near the beastly town at all? What fools we were to be
caught by the oncoming daylight in such a dangerous place! These and
other thoughts crowded through our minds as we rushed ahead.
Leaving the wood behind us--for we could find no place either in the
trees or underneath them that a squirrel could hide in--we found
ourselves in more or less open country. Only the lights of a few
scattered cottages gleaming here and there showed that we were not out
of the danger zone yet. A little way to our left we spotted another
small wood or clearing that looked as if it might offer shelter of some
kind. To this we advanced with as much caution as possible, only to find
no undergrowth of any kind.
Things began to look desperate, voices were heard on all sides of us,
and a man came tramping through the clearing in which we were. Throwing
ourselves down, we waited with bated breath for him to pass. As soon as
he had disappeared I’m afraid we lost our heads for a short space.
Beneath our feet was a thick carpet of dead leaves. The ridiculous idea
that we could hide ourselves beneath these struck us both
simultaneously, and with one accord we fell on our knees and began
frantically scratching up the leaves in wild despair, until we got down
to the rotten mossy bed beneath, and after a few minutes succeeded, with
broken and bleeding nails, in scratching a hole large enough to hold our
bodies; but to pull the leaves over us from the inside, so that they
would look undisturbed, we found to be an impossible task.
For a moment or so I lay back in the little grave I had dug and gave
myself up to despair, and then suddenly it dawned upon me that this was
not the way to make a successful escape. We were in a very bad position,
but we were not acting with the coolness necessary to bring about a
successful issue to our project. Forthwith I jumped up, and the two of
us moved out of the clearing and scouted through the open country,
travelling in what we thought must be a westerly direction. Very soon we
espied another small clearing, this time to our right. Immediately we
made our way to it with the utmost caution, only to find that here also
there was no place of concealment. But on leaving this clearing on the
farther side we came across a deep drain about two feet broad and four
feet deep, with four inches of water in the bottom. Following this drain
down its length to right and left, we found it was just the place in
which to lie concealed, if only we could find some sort of covering for
the top that would look anything like natural.
Unfortunately it was now practically light, and there was great danger
that we might be seen whilst trying to construct a roof. Without some
sort of covering we would almost certainly be discovered by the first
passer-by. With this in view the two of us hastily snapped off a few
small branches from the neighbouring clearing, and stuck them into the
sides of the top of the drain, so as to form a rough frame-work; then
tearing up some ferns of old-man’s-hair which we found growing along
the edge of the wood, we arranged them as quickly as we could on the top
of the frame of branches, and removing our boots we wriggled in one by
one, drawing them after us. This was all right for the first one, but
extremely difficult for the second, owing to the want of space in our
retreat, since there was no room for each of us to lie on our backs. We
had therefore to wedge ourselves in, lying like a pair of spoons on our
side, pressed so close together that the slightest movement became
impossible.
Our first sensations were of intense satisfaction at having at last
found a place where we stood a reasonable chance of not being
discovered, and great bodily relief after our long trek of the night
before. Before long we felt the strain of supporting our heads above the
water, in which we were partly immersed, but were able at length to
alleviate this with the aid of our boots, which we contemplated using as
pillows, though this was more easily thought of than done, as, owing to
our wedged position, neither of us could put a hand out to reach the
boots and draw them under our heads, although they were not more than
six inches away, so that this had to be brought about by one of us
rolling over on top of the other before he could get a hand free. This
being accomplished, he rolled back into his old position, with the added
comfort of the boots as a pillow.
For a time we composed ourselves to rest with a sigh of content, only
too glad to feel that we were at least out of the danger of immediate
discovery; but before very long we began to realise that we had a very
bad time in front of us. Fortunately it was not given to us to know how
bad that day’s experience would be--one that we should ever afterwards
remember as the most terrible of our lives. No description of the awful
time we spent in that drain, however vivid, could possibly depict the
agonies of body through which we went. Owing to the cold and damp, we
were first assailed in turn by an ague which nothing could suppress, our
teeth rattling like castanets. This changed to the most severe cramp of
the stomach and legs, which, owing to our position and not being able to
move, it was impossible to alleviate. The cramp lasted till nearly
midday, when quite suddenly it passed away, to be succeeded by a
complete deadening of the limbs from the feet upwards--in fact, from the
waist downwards we were as if made of stone, without any sign of feeling
or life whatsoever. This was really a great mercy, as it relieved our
previous suffering--anything was better than that awful cramp.
But now the likely possibility flashed across our minds that, when
nightfall came, we might not be able to continue our journey, if indeed
we should be able to walk at all; and even if we got the circulation
back into our legs and stuck it out during the following night, but did
not succeed in crossing the frontier, should we be able to last another
day and night without food, and could we possibly stand another day like
this? Of course we should go on till we collapsed, but for that matter
we might have done that already. We could only wait for nightfall to put
it to the test.
Soon after the cramp had left us a party of children passed, so close
indeed that it seemed as if they must be walking almost on top of us. We
feared they might be poking along the drain in search of minnows or
something. The danger passed, but for some little time we could hear
children’s voices, which kept us in a perpetual fear that some game or
other might lead them accidentally to stumble upon us. From this time on
pedestrians passed close by, either singly or in pairs at varying
intervals, which brought us to the conclusion that we had chosen a spot
near to some footpath or other across the fields, as we afterwards
discovered to be the case. Just about this period it began to rain
pretty hard, for which we were very thankful, although it made us more
uncomfortable than ever, as we calculated it would reduce the number of
pedestrians who would be likely to take a footpath across the fields.
Until the time when the first lot of children had passed, playing by the
way as they went, we had felt pretty secure in our retreat, which was
our chief consolation for being in such an awfully cramped place; but
now that the danger of detection was becoming more frequent, owing to
our close proximity to a path of some sort, we began to suffer mentally
as well as physically. It was not long before we discovered that, if the
rain reduced the number of people likely to be abroad in the fields, it
was also very considerably diminishing our head-covering, which, if the
rain did not soon cease, would be reduced to a minimum, on account of
its being chiefly composed of old-man’s-hair fern, which, as most people
know, is a kind of grey fibre, very much like horsehair. These hairs,
when dry, had formed a beautiful thick and fluffy covering, but now that
they were soaked with rain they had become shrivelled and hung down in
lank tresses. We could now see out perfectly clearly; but owing to the
depth of the drain, and not being able to move, we could not observe
anybody who passed, though we felt their eyes could not fail to spot us,
which is, I know, very bad reasoning, since one can always see a
passer-by from the window of a room without being seen in return.
But philosophic reasoning such as this requires a better mental and
physical condition than was ours at that time. Consequently we suffered
tortures every time any one passed by. In one case in particular our
nerves were strained to breaking-point. A man came along the path,
carelessly humming a tune to himself. Just as he was passing us he
suddenly stopped, and so apparently did our hearts. For a moment or two
he stood motionless. How long he actually remained, or why he did so, I
cannot tell, but to us it seemed a thousand years. Finally he moved off
and started humming again, though he took our peace of mind with him. We
felt sure that he must have seen us, but had feared to take us on
single-handed, and had now gone to summon help. For that every German
kept his eyes and ears open in the hopes of detecting escaped prisoners
we were well aware, as the reward offered by the German Government for
such information as might lead to the capture of prisoners was very
considerable, especially for the hated English. Rumour had it that any
person lodging reliable information received the sum of two thousand
marks.
What should we do? If we crawled out, it would probably be hours before
we got our legs to work, in the meantime being exposed to the view of
everybody. No! we must stay, and pray that we were mistaken and had not
been seen. From this time on, however, we were a prey to the most
harassing fears, as we listened with bated breath for the slightest
sound which might foretell the coming of our captors. One or two more
pedestrians passed, and at the coming of each we thought the game was
up, but all went by without incident. Towards 6 p.m. the rain ceased,
but the sky was overcast with heavy grey clouds, which, with the coming
of dusk, decided us to try to extricate ourselves.