13 Days Part 13

He looked a weird sight, swimming slowly on his chest.

I tied my boots to my waist-belt and then tried to balance my coat on to the top of my head. This would not work. Time after time it rolled off on to the gra.s.s. I suppose the top of his head is flatter than mine, but on mine the bundle would not stay. At last, desperate at seeing him on the other side of the river trying to land, I tied my coat on to my left shoulder with a large handkerchief to hold it there, knotted round my neck. Then I also took to the water, swimming on my right side, so as to keep my coat and its contents as dry as possible.

I had noticed that Fox was still stuck at his point of striking the other bank, and was evidently hung up by the dense bushes which hung well over the river at that point. This made me strike a little up-stream so as to make for a clearer place on the other bank.

This I reached and got ash.o.r.e without difficulty.

Fox had found it extremely hard to get out of the river at all; in fact he had got to the other side to find that he could not get his feet on to solid ground, and had tried to pull himself ash.o.r.e by clutching at the over-hanging branches with his hands. It was now that the bundle on the top of his head, well-behaved till that moment, came adrift and fell into the water, and getting under a submerged branch, while the big handkerchief which held it still remained round his neck, practically pulled him under. In this predicament he could not yell for me at the other side of the stream to come to his a.s.sistance for fear of giving our position away to the German river patrols.

After a hard struggle he managed to pull himself into the bank and was able to get ash.o.r.e.

This episode cost him his boots, as they became unhitched in his struggles with the bundle, and sank.

On his telling me this I was able to help him in his problem of footwear. Although leaving all unnecessary kit behind, I had by error put a spare pair of thick woollen socks into the pocket of my khaki coat and was now able to produce them.

He put them on over his own and we proceeded on our way towards the frontier, running and walking, both for the sake of warmth and also to make the best use of the hour or so of half-light that remained to us.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE GERMAN RELIEF Pa.s.sED WITHIN 200 YARDS OF MY HIDING PLACE" (_page 215_).]

CHAPTER XIII

ACROSS THE FRONTIER

During our rapid march we pa.s.sed a few houses, and shortly afterwards began to cross an open moor which spread flat and wide in front of us.

Our map showed a ca.n.a.l bordering the frontier itself, and it was along this ca.n.a.l that we antic.i.p.ated having to avoid the line of actual frontier watchers.

We were desperately anxious to make the frontier line within the next half-hour, in order to avoid having to lie waiting for the next night within a mile or so of it, as so many unfortunate escaped prisoners have been caught while hiding near the frontier itself. This anxiety on our part was now the cause of our making an appalling error, which nearly ended disastrously for us both. When within a mile of a line of trees, which we decided must be along the ca.n.a.l bank and must practically define the frontier line, we suddenly saw two German soldiers advancing some thousand yards in front of us. Had they seen us? We dived to the ground and lay still, in the hope that we had not been seen. Soon there was no doubt whatever that we had been observed, as the two Boches came straight towards us at a steady walk.

We decided that by separating one or both of us might succeed in getting away from them, and so I crawled towards the north while Fox went off southwards towards a peat observation hut.

Fox was dressed in his dark blue suit still, and I had now got my khaki coat as my outside garment. The value of the khaki coat now came out.

They evidently saw Fox crawling and not me, as they very soon changed their direction slightly in order to go after him. Fox and I had crawled two hundred yards apart when he must have had no doubt that they were definitely after him, and I suddenly saw him get up and run off, away from the frontier direction.

He seemed to me to be keeping the hut between him and his German pursuers. The latter, probably oldish men, or wounded and not absolutely recovered, had no idea of running after him, and I suppose they knew that their shooting was not good enough to score a hit at a running-man four hundred yards from them. However, they followed his course at a brisk walk, pa.s.sing me at some hundred to two hundred yards distance.

I saw them go to the hut, look in, and not finding anything in it of interest to them, continue their pursuit. Fox led them over the worst pieces of boggy ground he could find. Having no boots and very light footwear, by reason of the two pairs of socks being his all, he was able to do excellent "time" over the peaty soil.

The Germans got others to help them, and eventually had quite a number of Boches after him. Finding a hole in the ground which satisfied his requirements, Fox got into it and covered himself over with peat and heather.

The "field" now included dogs and cyclists. When the dogs had got sufficiently near him to cause real alarm a marvellous stroke of luck came to his a.s.sistance. A flock of sheep, grazing on the moor, wandered right across his track, drowning all scent and completely defeating all the efforts of the dogs to follow his line.

After lying s.h.i.+vering in his hole all day he commenced his final dash for the frontier at about 11 p.m., and crossed a mile or so to the north of the place at which I pa.s.sed through the German frontier line, without seeing any sentries.

After the Germans had gone well past me in their hunt after Fox, I began to crawl again; but I made slow progress, as going on all-fours was out of the question, the vegetation being seldom more than eighteen inches high and in places considerably less. It was a most tiring game this sort of land-swimming, and I continued as long as I could each time I did a crawl, and then rested a s.p.a.ce. In three hours I covered five hundred yards and then considered that I was far enough from the scene of our discovery to be safe, should the Germans return to see if anything of interest had been left at the place where they had first remarked Fox crawling.

I then lay still and began to feel fearfully cold on account of the soaking wet clothes clinging to me. I had a meagre meal. I had no water, so soon began to feel thirsty as the day began to warm up.

Sleep was out of the question, firstly on account of the cold and afterwards on account of the great heat when the sun got high.

I lay and thought of many things, mostly of that line of trees I could see ahead of me which I knew must be practically along the frontier line. The fear of recapture now became haunting. Up till then I had been fully prepared to find myself rounded up and then taken back to five months' solitary confinement, and I had managed to think of that probability with complete calm, as so few of the many who try to escape have the luck to get right through with it.

But now it was different, to be so near and know that twelve or fourteen hours of inactivity lay in front of one before the last great effort could be attempted, in which time one was powerless to move in the midst of this "Frontier" zone, was a nerve-shattering experience.

It would have been much better with a companion, as a whispered exchange of thoughts makes all the difference.

I wondered whether Fox had been caught and whether either of us would get over, but never dreamt that we should both have the marvellous luck to do so. While lying there waiting for night good luck again came to my a.s.sistance. The German relief for their posts actually on the frontier, marched across this open moor every two hours, and they pa.s.sed along a track within 200 yards of my hiding-place, so that I could time their pa.s.sing and was able to make plans accordingly.

They pa.s.sed me regularly at half-past-five, half-past seven, half-past-nine, etc., and those that were relieved and had to return across the moor generally came by about three-quarters of an hour afterwards.

I was also able to watch them until they disappeared every time in a clump of bushes under the trees I had already noticed and conjectured must be along the frontier. Thus, I could fairly well a.s.sume that the position of one post was fixed. The afternoon wore on and I managed to pa.s.s some of the time by drying the compa.s.s, which had got full of water during the previous night's swim. With the exception of the regular pa.s.sings of the Boche sentry-relief, the only other human being who showed himself was a shepherd, some five hundred yards away.

I had an anxious time for a spell as he drove his sheep towards me, and I feared that if they came past me the dog might give me away.

Fortunately he turned the flock homewards when still some three hundred yards from me. Evening slowly came, and the long hours of twilight gradually gave way to partial darkness. I cannot call it a stronger darkness than that, as the moon rose at once and the north never lost its weird light all night. I felt the want of sleep badly, but had not been able to sleep for even a quarter of an hour all day and now could not run the risk of waking too late, so had to do without it.

At 10.30 I came to the conclusion that I could move at last, and very pleased I was to stand up and rub my legs after my enforced uncomfortable position all day.

Setting out cautiously towards the frontier post that I had been able to more or less mark down, it was not very long before the mile or so of open that had to be covered was completed.

I thought that, were I to pa.s.s close to the post of which I knew the position, I must necessarily be as far from the unknown one on my right as possible.

At about 200 yards distance from what I judged to be the line of posts, I got on all fours and worked forward noiselessly. My khaki coat again stood me in good stead, as I must have been an extremely difficult object to see, even in the light which was at that time quite strong.

Once more my luck held good. When about midway between the posts, the Boche sentry on duty on my right, about whom I knew nothing, very obligingly chose that moment to stand up against the sky-line and begin singing "Die Wacht am Rhein." It was a fine night, which perhaps caused him to be jovial, but probably it was the result of smuggled spirits.

After singing a bit, my friend the sentry began shouting to his companion next beyond him.

This made matters easier for me, and I was able to crawl forward in full confidence. A d.y.k.e, at the bottom of which was a little water, had to be crossed, and then some rough fields.

Shortly after this I heard a patrol which I easily avoided in the corn. Several more d.y.k.es, the deepest water in any of them only reaching to my knees, had to be crossed, and I was once more on arable land. I must now have been two miles inside Holland, but now again I heard a patrol. This time a cyclist dashed along the road on hearing me, I suppose, and once again the same curlew noises began to spread themselves around me.

However, this time I knew about them and pushed on extremely rapidly, cutting across country and keeping to the cornfields where I knew I should never be followed and be very difficult to catch.

I soon left this danger behind, and then struck a pave road and a railway line. The sleepers were wooden, whereas in Germany they are iron.

I felt now that I was across, but continued steadily on my way. Seeing a great number of powerful lights in front of me I made for them, and eventually reached them, to find that they belonged to a factory working at top pressure. Around this factory straggled a large village.

_Tuesday, 3rd July._ Here I found no guards and sat down to wait for daylight to show me the language of that village as indicated on the advertis.e.m.e.nts in the shop-windows. I had got in here at 3.30 a.m. and at 4.30 knew that the words in the shop-windows were Dutch and not Boche. What a great feeling of relief and rest it was!

The first man I saw was a soldier on a bicycle, to whom I made myself known. He was very quick to find me breakfast at the cottage of a fellow soldier of his. The latter refused all payment, and was an excellent fellow. Later I reported myself to the local policeman, and while talking to him heard Fox's voice. He had arrived two hours after me, after crossing the frontier a mile to the north of where I had pa.s.sed the line. We were delighted to see each other, but at the time were not so tremendously struck by the fact that we had come together again. Of course it was an extraordinary thing to happen really, but we only realised that later.

At the moment we only thought of the fact that we were both safely across and would be home in due course, and that we had had the most marvellous luck that could well have come our way.

Fox had covered this distance, roughly a hundred and seventy miles as we did it, in twelve and a half days, and I had taken thirteen days and a few hours.