Mills Memorial Library
M c Master University
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
GEORGE PEARSON
CORPORAL (NOW SERGEANT) EDWARD
PATRICIA S CANADIAN LIGHT INFANTRY.
EDWARDS, PRINCESS
THE ESCAPE OF A
PRINCESS PAT
Being the full account of the capture and fifteen months
imprisonment of Corporal Edwards, of the Princess
Patricia s Canadian Light Infantry, and his
final escape from Germany into Holland
BY
GEORGE PEARSON
MCCLELLAND, GOODCHILD & STEWART
PUBLISHERS :: :: :: TORONTO
COPYRIGHT, 1918,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED TN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO THE MEMORY OF
OUR COMRADES WHO FELL
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
PREFACE
In order to remove all question of doubt in the
mind of the reader it might perhaps be well to state
here that the facts as given are the bona fide experi
ences of Corporal Edwards, Number 39, Number
One Company, P. P. C. L. I., and as such were sub
jected to the closest scrutiny both by the author and
others before it was deemed advisable to give the
account to the public. In particular great pains were
taken to do full justice to all enemy individuals who
figure in the story.
Recognizing the seriousness of the charges implied
by the recital, all those concerned with it are ex
tremely anxious that the correctness of the account
should constitute its chief value : In short the inten
tion has been to make of the story a readable history.
The main facts having to do with the destruc
tion of the regiment on the eighth of May, 1915*
the identity and activities of the individuals men
tioned and the more important of the later happen
ings, including the final escape into Holland are
vii
PREFACE
matters of official record and as such have frequently
been mentioned in the official dispatches. The more
personal details are based on the recollections of
Corporal Edwards retentive mind, aided by his very
unusual powers of observation and the rough diary
which he managed to retain possession of during his
later adventures.
For the events preceding the capture of Corporal
Edwards on the eighth of May the author has relied
upon his own recollections; as he too had the honor
of having been "an original Patricia."
G. P.
Sept. i, 1917.
Toronto, Canada.
viu
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I Polygon Wood . 14
II The Fourth of May 20
III Corporal Edwards Takes up the Tale 23
IV Major Gault Comes Back ... 28
V The Eighth of May and the Last
Stand of the Princess Pats . . 33
VI Prisoners 45
VII Pulling the Leg of a German General 61
VIII The Princess Patricia s German
Uncle 70
IX How the German Red Cross Tended
the Canadian Wounded ... 76
X The Curious Concoctions of the Chef
at Giessen 81
The Way They Have at Giessen . 86
XII The Escape 104
XIII The Traitor at Vehnmoor . . . 115
XIV Away Again 123
ix
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XV Paying the Piper 140
XVI The Third Escape 158
XVII What Happened in the Wood . . 177
XVIII The Last Lap 185
XIX Holland at Last 194
XX "It s a Way They Have in the Army" 203
The Evidence in the Case 210
ILLUSTRATIONS
Corporal (Now Sergeant) Edward Edwards,
Princess Patricia s Canadian Light In
fantry Frontispiece
PAGE
British wounded waiting for transportation to
a dressing station 26
The Princess Patricias in billets at Westoutre,
Belgium 26
German prisoners bringing wounded men
down a communication trench ... 42
Wounded Canadians receiving first aid after
an attack 64
Recipes from Corporal Edward s Diary . . 84
Fellow prisoners at Geissen 98
Fellow prisoners at Geissen 98
Record of second escape and recapture . . 126
German prisoners at Southampton . . . . 136
High explosives bursting over German
trenches 146
XI
ILLUSTRATIONS
Salient details of the third escape . .
Private Mervin C. Simmons, C. E. F.
The cemetery at Celle Laager Z 1 Camp
Corporal Edwards after his escape . .
Homeward bound
PAGE
17O
192
206
206
220
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
THE ESCAPE OF A
PRINCESS PAT
CHAPTER I
POLYGON WOOD
Ypres and Hill 60 Preparing for the Gas Why the
Patricias Cheered The Retirement The Thin Red Line.
THE Princess Patricias had lain in Polygon Wood
since the twentieth of April, mid-way between the
sanguinary struggles of St. Julien and Hill 60, spec
tators of both. Although subjected to constant
alarm we had had a comparatively quiet time of it,
with casualties that had only varied from five
to fifty-odd each day.
By day and night the gun-fire of both battles had
beat back upon us in great waves of sound. There
were times when we had donned our water soaked
handkerchiefs for the gas that always threatened
but never came, so that the expectation might have
shaken less steady troops. Quick on the heels of
15
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
first news of the gas the women of Britain, their
tears scalding their needles, with one accord had
laboured, sans rest, sans sleep, sans everything, so
that shortly there had poured in to us here a steady
stream of gauze pads for mouth and nostril. For the
protection of our lungs against the poison of the gas
they were at least better than the filthy rags we
called handkerchiefs. We wore their gifts and in
spirit bowed to the donors, as I think all still do. We
soaked them with the foul water of the near-by
graves and kept them always at our side, ready to
tie on at each fresh alarm.
Once there had come word in a special army order
of the day: "Our Belgian agent reports that all
enemy troops on this front have been directed to
enter their trenches to-night with fixed bayonets. All
units are enjoined to exercise the closest watch on
their front; the troops will stand to from the first
appearance of darkness, with each man at hij oost
prepared for all eventualities. Sleep will not be
permitted under any circumstances."
The consequence had been that that night had
been one of nervous expectation of an attack which
did not materialise. We always carried fixed bay-
16
POLYGON WOOD
onets in the trenches but the Germans were better
equipped with loopholes, as they were with most
other things, and were forced to leave their bayonets
off their rifles in order to avoid any danger of the
latter sticking in their metal shields when needed
in a hurry, to say nothing of the added attention
they would draw in their exposed and stationary
position at the mouth of a loophole. The "Stand-
to" had come as a distinct relief that morning.
And always there had been the glowering fires of
a score of villages. The greater mass of burning
Ypres stood up amongst them like the warning fin
ger of God. Occasionally the roaring burst of an
ammunition dump flared up into a volcano of fiery
sound. The earth under our feet trembled in con
vulsive shudders from a cannonade so vast that no
one sound could be picked out of it and the walls
of dug-outs slid in, burying sleeping men. But like
the promise of God there came to us in every inter
val of quietness, as always, the full-throated song
of many birds.
Our forces consisted of the French who held the
left corner of the Ypres salient, then the Canadian
division in the centre, next the 28th Division of
17
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
*- -_ - - - . - - - - - - _ - ____._..._ ._ _ | __ _j ___ _._ _ -_ r . . . - --.. -
the regular British Army and then our own, the
lyth, with Hill 60 on our right flank. The enemy
attacked both at Hill 60 and at the line of the
Canadian Division and the French, and we held on
to the horse-shoe shaped line until the last possible
moment when one more shake of the tree would
have thrown us like ripe fruit into the German lap.
So near had the converging German forces ap
proached to one another that the weakened battery
behind our own trenches had been at the last, turned
around the other way and fired in the opposite di
rection without a shift in its own position. For
our own protection we had nothing. And later still
these and all other guns left us to seek new positions
in the rear so that only we of the infantry remained.
Daily there had come orders to "Stand-to" in full
marching order, to evacuate; at which all ranks ex
postulated angrily. And then perhaps another order
to stick it another day; at which we cheered and
slapped one another boisterously on the back so that
the stolid Germans over yonder must have wondered,
knowing what they did of our desperate situation.
But the dreaded order came at last and was con
firmed, so that under protest and like the beaten
18
POLYGON WOOD
men that we knew we were not, we slunk away un
der cover of darkness on the night of the third of
May to trenches three miles in the rear, and with us
went the troops on ten more miles of British front.
The movement as executed was in reality a feat
of no mean importance on the part of the higher
command. Faced by an overwhelmingly superior
force, our badly depleted three divisions had barely
escaped being bagged in the net of which the enemy
had all but drawn the noose in a strategetic sur
rounding movement.
In detail, the movement had consisted of with
drawing under cover of darkness with all that we
could carry of our trench material, both to prevent
it falling into hostile hands and equally to strengthen
our new position. A small rearguard of fifteen men
to the regiment had held our front for the few hours
necessary for us to "shake down" in the new position.
Their task was to remain behind and to give a con
tinuous rapid-fire from as many different spots as
possible in a given time, thereby keeping up the illu
sion of a heavily manned trench. Then, they too had
faded quietly away, following us.
Our new trenches were three miles behind those
19
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
we had just evacuated in Polygon Wood. Zillebeke
lay just to the left and beyond that, Hooge. We
were in the open, with Belle-waarde Wood and Lake
behind us.
We continued to face vastly superior forces. To
make matters worse the trenches were assuredly a
mockery of their kind and there was even less of ade
quate support than before. And at that the drafts
arrived each day if they were lucky enough to
break through the curtains of fire with which the
enemy covered our rear for that very purpose, as
well as for the further one of curtailing the arrival
of all necessary supplies of food and ammunition.
Every camp and hospital from Ypres to Rouen
and the sea and from Land s End to John O Groat
was combed and scraped for every eligible casualty,
every overconfident office holder of a "cushy" job,
and in short, for all those who could by hook or
crook hold a rifle to help stem this threatening tide.
And in our own lot, even those wasteful luxuries, the
petted officers servants were amongst us, doing fight
ing duty for the first time, so that we almost wel
comed the desperate occasion which furnished so rare
and sweet a sight.
20
CHAPTER II
THE FOURTH OF MAY
The Unofficial Armistice The Clash of the Scouts ^"Stick
ing It" on the Fourth.
WE suffered cruelly on the Fourth. The dawn
had discovered two long lines of men, madly digging
in plain sight of one another. There was no firing
except that one little storm when the stronger light
had shown our rear guard ridiculously tangled up
with a screen of German scouts so that some of each
were nearer to foe than to friend and so had foes
on either side. They shot at one another. Some of
us in our excitement shot at both, scarce able to dis
tinguish one from the other. Others amongst us
strove to knock their rifles up. And the Germans in
their trenches shot too. Both of us of the main
bodies continued to respect the tacit truce imposed
by the conditions under which we found ourselves,
insofar as we ourselves were concerned, and fired
only at the poor fellows in between.
As for them, I fear the absurd nature of their
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
tragic plight excited more of wonder than of con
cern. They merged into hedges and ditches swal
lowed them. Their case was only one incident of
many, and what became of them I have never heard,
except that Lieutenant Lane who commanded our
rear guard was with us on the Eighth, so I presume
that some must have crawled up to us that night and
so saved themselves for the moment. Anything else
would have been a great pity for so brave a squad.
The digging continued until the better equipped
Germans had finished their task; when they sought
their holes with one accord, an example which we
as quickly followed.
This was at nine o clock on the morning of the
fourth of May. From then on until dusk the in
tensity of a furious all-day bombardment by every
known variety of projectile had been broken only
at intervals to allow of the nearer approach of the
enemy s attacking infantry. The worst was the en
filade fire of two batteries on our right which with
six-inch high explosive shells tore our front line to
fragments so that we were glad indeed to see the
night come. Only once had ours replied, one gun
only. That was early in the morning. It barked
22
THE FOURTH OF MAY
feebly, twice, but drew so fierce a German fire that it
was forever silenced.
Some infantry attacks followed but were beaten
off. Only a weak half of the battalion was in the
front line trench. The remainder were in Belle-
waarde Wood, the outer fringe of which was a bare
one hundred yards behind the front line. They were
fairly comfortable in pine bough huts which were,
however, with some of their occupants, badly
smashed by shell fire that day.
The outcome was that although all attacks were
beaten off, our losses were well on to two hundred
men, most of whom were accounted for in the more
exposed front line.
The order had been that we were to hold this
front for several days more although the regiment
had been in the trenches since April the 2oth, and,
except for a march back to Ypres from Polygon
Wood, since early April. But after such a smashing
blow on men who were already thoroughly ex
hausted, the plan was changed and our line was
taken over by the King s Shropshire Light Infan
try, the "Shrops" we called them, a sister regiment
in our brigade, the 8oth.
CHAPTER III
CORPORAL EDWARDS TAKES UP THE TALE
Amongst the Wounded Trench Nerves Resting in
Coffins.
IT was on this day that I rejoined the regiment. I
had been wounded in the foot at St. Eloi in February
and had come up in a draft fresh from hospital and
had lain in the supports at the huts all of the Fourth.
The survivors of the front line fire joined those
at the huts shortly after nightfall. They were
stupid from shell fire, too dazed to talk. I saw one
man wandering in half circles, talking to himself
and with a heavy pack on. There were others in
worse plight ; so there was no help for him.
Myself, I was too much engrossed in a search for
my comrade Woods to bother with other men less
dear, however much I might sympathise with them.
He and I had been "mates" since Toronto days,
had made good cheer together in the hot August
days of mobilisation at Ottawa and had rubbed mess
24
CORPL. EDWARDS TAKES UP THE TALE
tins together under the starry sky at Levis before
the great Armada had taken us to English camps
and other scenes.
It was he who had fetched me out of danger at
St. Eloi. And now it was my turn. They told me
he was somewhere on a stretcher.
I searched them all. I struck matches and was
met by querulous curses; I knelt by the side of the
dying; I inquired of those wounded who still could
walk, but find him I could not. It appears that a
new and heavy moustache had helped to hide him
from me. I was in great distress, but in the fullness
of time and when our small circles had run their
route, I discovered him in Toronto.
The word was that we were to go to Vlamertinghe,
where the Zeppelins had bombed us in our huts. It
lay well below threatened Ypres.
We of Number One Company passed Belle-
waarde Lake, with its old dug-outs and its smells,
and struck off across the fields, the better to avoid
the heavy barrage fire which made all movement
of troops difficult beyond words. We reached the
railroad up and down which in quieter times the
25
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
battalion had been wont to march to and fro to the
Polygon Wood trenches.
The fire became heavier here and the going was
rough so that what with the burden of packs which
seemed to weigh a ton and all other things ; we moved
in a mass, as sheep do. When slung rifles jostled
packs, good friends cursed one another both loud and
long. This was trench nerves.
Shortly, we ran into a solid wall of barrage fire.
The officer commanding the company halted us.
We were for pushing on to that rest each aching
bone and muscle, each tight-stretched and shell-
dazed nerve fairly screamed aloud for. But he was
adamant. We cursed him. He pretended not to
hear. This also was trench nerves.
It was growing late. The star shells became
fewer. The search-lights ceased altogether. In half
an hour those keen eyes in distant trees and steeples
would have marked us down and what good then
the agony of this all-night march? Better to have
been killed back there in Belle-waarde. We were
still a good two miles from Ypres town.
The officer literally drove us back over the way
we had come. His orders had anticipated this even-
26
BRITISH WOUNDED WAITING
STATION.
FOR TRANSPORTATION TO A DRESSING
THE PRINCESS PATRICIAS IN BILLETS AT WESTOUTRE, BELCH \I.
ON TOP OF WAGON IN FOREGROUND IS
TYPE OF WIRE ENTANGLEMENTS.
"KNIFE-BEST
CORPL. EDWARDS TAKES UP THE TALE
tuality so that rather than force the passage of the
barrage fire, merely for a rest, we should rest here
where no rest was to be had. Undoubtedly, if we
had been "going up" it would have been different.
We should have gone on no fire would have
stopped us.
The half hour limit brought us to a murky day
light and an old and sloppy support trench which
bordered the track and into which we flung our
selves, to lay in the water in a dull stupor that was
neither sleep nor honest waking.
Later, when the rations had been "dished out" we
bestirred ourselves and so found or dug queer cof
fin-shaped shelves in either wall. Out of courtesy
we called them dug-outs.
I do not remember that any one spoke much of
the dead.
The rain stopped and for a time the unaccus
tomed sun came out. We drove stakes in the walls
above our coffins, hunted sand-bags and hung them
and spare equipment over the open face and then
crawled back into the water which, as usual, was al
ready forming in the hollows that our hips made
where we lay. Until noon there was little heard
27
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
but the thick breathing of weary men. Occasionally
one tossed and shouted blasphemous warnings anent
imaginary and bursting shells ; whereat those within
hearing whined in a tired and hopeless anger, and,
if close by, kicked him. Trench nerves.
All day the fire of many guns sprayed us. Near
by, the well defined emplacement of one of our own
batteries inevitably drew to the entire vicinity a
heavy fire so that one shell broke fair amongst our
sleeping men.
CHAPTER IV
MAJOR GAULT COMES BACK
"The King Is Dead" : "Long Live the King" Back to Belle-
waarde The Seventh of May.
THAT was on the fifth. In the afternoon young
Park came to us. He was the Commanding Officer s
orderly. There was down on his face but he was
full of all that strange wisdom of a trenchman who
had experienced the bitter hardships and the heart
breaking losses of a winter in the cursed salient of
St. Eloi, by Shelley Farm and The Mound of
Death. But just now this infant of the trenches
had the round eyes of a startled child, which in him
meant mad excitement.
"The C. O. s hit."
The word slid up the trench: "The C.O. s hit."
"Strike me ! Cawn t this bleedin regiment keep a
bleedin Colonel ? That makes two of them!"
"How did it happen?"
"What the devil are we goin to do?"
29
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
"Who says
"The second in six weeks !"
"Parkie."
"By - ! This mob s in a Hell of a fix, Bo ."
Park was leaning on his rifle, trench fashion.
"Oh, dry up. You give me a pain."
And then he launched his thunderbolt, "Gault s
back."
The chorus of despair became one of wild delight.
"We re jake !" "He ll see us through." "Where
is he?" "How s his arm?" "The son-of-a-gun !
Couldn t keep him away, could they?"
"No fear. Not im. Bloody well wanted to be
wiv is bleedin boys, e did. E ain t bloody well
goin to do is bloody solderin in a cushy job in
Blighty like some of em. Not after rysin us.
Do it wiv is bloody self like a man; an that s wot
e is."
The speaker glared accusingly ; but his declaration
agreed too well with what all thought for any one to
take exception to it.
The new Commanding Officer had been wounded
at St. Eloi on March 1st and this was our first inti
mation of his return.
30
MAJOR GAULT COMES BACK
Park took up his tale. "He s over there with the
C.O. now," and switching: "Shell splinter got him
in the eye. Guess it s gone and maybe the other
one too."
"By !" he burst out passionately : "I hope it
don t. He s been damn good to me and to you fel
lows too," he added fiercely, while his lower lip quiv
ered.
I think all stared anywhere but at Park, in a cu
rious embarrassment.
"Got it goin from one trench to another to see
about the rations comin up instead of stay in in
like a dug-out wallah. Got out on top of the
ground, walked across an stopped one," he added
bitterly.
A considerable draft of "old boys," ruddy of face
and fresh from hospital, together with some more
new men reached us that night. We "went up"
again with the dusk of the following night and "took
over" our previous trenches in front of Belle-waarde
Wood.
We were told that the Shropshires had been rather
badly cut up in the interval of their occupation by
a further course of intense bombardment and some
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
fierce infantry fighting. Nevertheless, the trenches
had been put into much better shape since our earlier
occupancy of them, so that what with our work
that night they were by the morning of the seventh
in fairly good shape.
The night was not unusual in any way. There
was the regular amount of shelling, of star shells,
of machine gun and rifle fire, and of course, casu
alties. Those we always had, be it ever so quiet.
Even the morning "Stand-to" with that myste
rious dread of unknown dangers that it invariably
brought gave us nothing worse than an hour of chilly
waiting and later, the smoke of the Germans cook
ing fires.
There were none for us. It was as simple as
algebra. Smoke attracted undue artillery attention
the Germans had artillery; we had not. They
had fires ; we had not.
The day rolled by smoothly enough. Except for
the fresh graves and a certain number of unburied
dead the small-pox appearance of the shell-pitted
ground about might have been thought to have been
of ancient origin; so filled with water were the
shell holes and so large had they grown as a result
32
MAJOR GAULT COMES BACK
of the constant sloughing in of their sodden banks.
During all these days the German fire on the sal
ient at large had continued as fiercely as before but
had spared us its severest trials.
The night of the seventh passed to all outward
appearance pretty much in the same manner as the
preceding one.
33
CHAPTER V
THE EIGHTH OF MAY AND THE LAST STAND OF
THE PRINCESS PATS
Morning in the Trenches The Artillery Preparation for
the Infantry Attack The P.P s Chosen to Stem the
Tide The Trust of a Lady Chaos Corporal Dover-
The Manner in Which Some Men Kill and Others Die.
IT seemed as though I had just stepped off my
whack of sentry go for my group when a kick in the
ribs apprised me that it was "Stand-to." I rubbed
my eyes, swore and rose to my feet. Such was the
narrowness of the trench that the movement put
me at my post at the parapet, where in common
with my mates, I fell to scanning the top for the
first signs of day and the Germans.
The latter lay on the other side of the ravine from
us as they had since the Fourth, except for such times
as they had assaulted our position. The smoke of
Ypres and all the close-packed villages of a thickly
populated countryside rose sullenly on every hand.
34
LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS
Over everything there hung the pallor of the mist-
ridden Flemish morning, deadly quiet, as was usual
at that time of the trench day when the tenseness of
the all-night vigil was just merging into the relieving
daylight.
At half past six that stillness was punctuated by
a single shell, which broke barely in our rear. And
then the ball commenced the most intense bom
bardment we had yet experienced. Most of the
fire came from the batteries in concealed positions
on our right, whence, as on the fourth, they poured
in a very destructive enfilade fire which swept up and
down the length of the trench like the stream of a
hose, making it a shambles. Each burst of high-
explosive shells, each terrible pulsation of the at
mosphere, if it missed the body, seemed to rend the
very brain, or else stupefied it.
The general result was beyond any poor words
of mine. All spoken language is totally inadequate
to describe the shocks and horrors of an intense bom
bardment. It is not that man himself lacks the
imaginative gift of words but that he has not the
word tools with which to work. They do not exist.
35
THE ESCAPE OP A PRINCESS PAT
Each attempt to describe becomes near effrontery and
demands its own separate apology.
In addition, kind Nature draws a veil for him
over so much of all the worst of it that many details
are spared his later recollection. He remembers
only the indescribable confusion and the bursting
claps of near-by flame, as foul in color and as ill of
smell as an addled egg. He knows only that the acid
of the high-explosive gas eats into the tissue of his
brain and lungs, destroying with other things, most
memories of the shelling.
Overhead an aeroplane buzzed. We could even
descry the figures of the pilot and his observer, the
latter signaling. No gun of ours answered. The
dead and dying lay all about and none could at
tend them: A rifle was a rifle.
This continued for an hour, at the end of which
time we poked our heads up and saw their infantry
coming on in columns of mobs, and some of them
also very prettily in the open order we had ourselves
been taught. Every field and hedge spewed them
up. We stood, head and shoulders exposed above
the ragged parapet, giving them "Rapid-fire." They
36
LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS
had no stomach for that and retired to their holes,
leaving many dead and grievously wounded.
It was at this time that we saw the troops on our
flanks falling back in orderly fashion. I called that
fact to the attention of Lieutenant Lane, who was
the only officer left in our vicinity. He said that
the last word he had received was to hang on.
This we proceeded to do, and so, we are told, did
the others. We learned later that the battalion roll
call that night showed a strength of one hundred
and fifty men out of the six hundred and thirty-five
who had answered "Present" twenty-four hours ear
lier. And the official records of the Canadian Eye
Witness, Lord Beaverbrook, then Sir Max Aitken,
as given in "Canada in Flanders," state that "Those
who survive and the friends of those who have died
may draw solace from the thought that never in
the history of arms have soldiers more valiantly sus
tained the gift and trust of a Lady," referring to
the Color which had been worked for and presented
to us by the Princess Patricia, daughter of His
Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, then Gov
ernor-General of Canada.
We were on the apex of the line and were now
37
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
unsupported on either side. It was about this time,
I believe, that a small detachment of the King s
Shropshire Light Infantry, a sister regiment in our
brigade, fetched to the companies in our rear twenty
boxes of badly needed ammunition and reenforced
the Princess Patricias.
Following the beating off of their infantry attack
the Germans gave us a short breathing spell until
their machine guns had been trained on our parapet
and a school of light field guns dragged up into
place. The aeroplane came out again, dropping to
within three hundred feet of our trench, and with
tiny jets of vari-colored smoke bombs, directed the
terribly accurate fire of the enemy guns, already so
close to, but so well insured against any harm from
us that they attempted no concealment. And the
big guns on the right completed the devastation.
This continued for another half hour, at the end
of which time there remained intact only one small
traverse in the trench, which owed its existence to
the fragment of chicken wire that held its sides up.
The remainder was absolutely wiped out. This time
there was no rapid fire, nor even any looking over
the top to see if the enemy were coming on. In-
38
LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS
stead, the Germans fairly combed the parapet with
their machine guns. Each indication of curiosity
from us drew forth from them such a stream of fire
that the top of the parapet spat forth a steady shower
of flying mud, and, which made it impossible for us
to defend ourselves properly, even had there been
enough of us left to do so.
The rest was chaos, a bit of pure hell. Men
struggling, buried alive and looking at us for the
aid they would not ask for. Soldiers all. And the
Germans now pouring in in waves from all sides,
and especially from our unprotected flanks and rear,
hindered only by the desultory rifle fire of our two
weakened companies in the support trenches. We
were receiving rifle fire from four directions and bay
onet thrusts from the Germans on the parapet.
Mowed down like sheep. And as they came on they
trampled our dead and bayoneted our wounded.
The machine-gun crew had gone under to a man,
doing their best to the last. I think Sergeant White-
head went with them, too; at least he was near there
a short time before, and I never saw him or any of
the gun crew again. The only living soul near that
spot was Royston, dragging himself out from under
39
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
a pile of debris and covered with mud and blood,
his face horribly swollen to twice its normal size,
blinded foi the moment.
To quote "Canada in Flanders" again:
"At this time the bombardment recommenced with
great intensity. The German bombardment had been
so heavy since May 4th that a wood which the
Regiment had used in part for cover was completely
demolished. The range of our machine-guns was
taken with extreme precision. All, without excep
tion, were buried. Those who served them behaved
with the most admirable coolness and gallantry.
Two were dug out, mounted and used again. One
was actually disinterred three times and kept in
action till a shell annihilated the whole section.
Corporal Dover stuck to his gun throughout and,
although wounded, continued to discharge his duties
with as much coolness as if on parade. In the ex
plosion that ended his ill-fated gun, he lost a leg and
an arm, and was completely buried in the debris.
Conscious or unconscious, he lay there in that condi
tion until dusk, when he crawled out of all that was
left of the obliterated trench and moaned for help.
Two of his comrades sprang from the support trench
40
LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS
by this time the fire trench and succeeded in
carrying in his mangled and bleeding body. But as
all that remained of this brave soldier was being
lowered into the trench a bullet put an end to his
sufferings. No bullet could put an end to his glory."
George Easton was firing with me at the gray mass
of the oncoming horde. "My rifle s jammed! 3 he
cried.
"Take mine." And I stooped to get one from a
casualty underfoot. But a moment later, as I fired
from the parapet, my bayonet was broken off by a
German bullet. I shouted wildly to Cosh to toss me
one from near by.
Just then the main body of the Germans swarmed
into the end of the trench.
Of this Lord Beaverbrook says : "At this moment
the Germans made their third and last attack. It
was arrested by rifle fire, although some individuals
penetrated into the fire trench on the right. At this
point all the Princess Patricias had been killed, so
that this part of the trench was actually tenantless.
Those who established a footing were few in num
ber, and they were gradually dislodged; and so the
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
third and last attack was routed as successfully as
those which had preceded it."
His conclusion that we had all been killed was
justifiable even though, fortunately for me, it was
an erroneous one. So I am glad for other motives
than those of mere courtesy to be able here to set
him right.
Bugler Lee shouted to me : "I m shot through the
leg." A couple of us seized him, planning to go
down to where the communication trench had once
been. But he stopped us, saying: "It s no good,
boys. It s a dead end ! They re killing us."
Cosh swore. "Don t give up, kid! We ll beat
the yet! 3 A German standing a few yards
away raised his rifle and blew his head off. Young
Brown broke down at this they had just done in
his wounded pal: "Oh, look! Look what they ve
done to Davie," and fell to weeping. And with
that another put the muzzle of his rifle against the
boy s head and pulled the trigger.
Young Cox from Winnipeg put his hands above
his head at the order. His captor placed the muzzle
of his rifle squarely against the palm and blew it
42
(JERMAN PRISONERS AFTER A SUCCESSFUL CANADIAN ATTACK,
BRINGING WOUNDED MEN DOWN A COMMUNICATION TRENCH.
LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS
off. There remained only a bloody and broken mass
dangling from the wrist.
I saw a man who had come up in the draft with
me on the 4th, rolling around in the death agony,
tossing his head loosely about in the wild pain of it,
his pallid face a white mark in the muck underfoot.
A burly German reached the spot and without hesi
tation plunged his saw-edged bayonet through the
throat.
Close by another wounded man was struggling
feebly under a pile of earth, his legs projecting so
that only the convulsive heaving of the loose earth
indicated that a man was dying underneath. An
other German observed that too, and shoved his
bayonet through the mud and held it savagely there
until all was quiet.
This I did not see, but another did and told me of
it afterward. Sergeant Phillpots had been shot
through the jaw so that he went to his knees as a
bullock does at the slaughtering. He supported him
self waveringly by his hands. The blood poured
from him so that he was all but fainting with the
loss of it.
A big German stood over him.
43
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Phillpots looked up : "Play the game ! Play the
game!" he muttered weakly.
The German coolly put a round through his head.
I was still without a bayonet, and seeing these
things, said to Easton : "We d better beat it."
He swore again. "Yes, they re murdering us.
No use stopping here. Come on!"
And just then he, too, dropped. I thought him
dead. There was no use in my stopping to share his
fate or worse. It was now every man for himself.
At a later date we met in England.
The other half of the regiment lay in support two
hundred yards away in Belle-waarde Wood and in
front of the chateau and lake of that name, where
my draft had lain on the fourth. I made a dash
for it. What with the mud and the many shell
holes, the going was bad. I was indistinctly aware
of a great deal of promiscuous shooting at me, but
most distinctly of one German who shot at me about
ten times in as many yards and from quite close
range. I saw I could not make it. I flung myself
into a Johnson hole, and as soon as I had caught
my breath, scrambled out again and raced for the
trench I had just left. I was by this time unarmed,
44
LAST STAND OF THE PRINCESS PATS
having flung my rifle away to further my flight, not
withstanding which another German shot at me as
I went toward him.
As I landed in the trench an angry voice shouted
something I could not understand. And I scrambled
to my feet in time to see a German sullenly lower
his rifle from the level of my body at the command
of a big black-bearded officer.
45
CHAPTER VI
PRISONERS
A German Version of a Soldier s Death! The Courage of
Cox Robbing the Helpless Water on the End of a
Bayonet The Curious Case of Scott Prussian Bullies
Why I Was Covered with a Fine Sweat.
THE Germans were by this time in full possession
of this slice of trench, and for the next few minutes
the officer was kept busy pulling his men off their
victims. Like slavering dogs they were.
He did not have his lambs any too well in hand,
however. O. B. Taylor, a lovable character in Num
ber One Company, came to his end here. The Ger
mans ordered him and Hookie Walker to go back
down the trench. He had no sooner turned to do so
than a German shot him from behind and from quite
close, so that it blew the groin completely out, mak
ing a terrible hole. We could not tie up so bad a
wound and he bled to death. Hookie Walker re
mained with him to the last, five hours later, when
46
PRISONERS
he said: "I m going to sleep boys," and did so.
Fortunately, he did not suffer. And all the others
except young Cox were equally fortunate, since they
were murdered outright.
Taylor s was the most calculated of all the mur
ders we had witnessed and outdid even those of the
wounded because the excitement of the fight was two
hours old and he was doing the bidding of his cap
tors at the time. The killing of those who resisted
was of course quite in order. Why he was killed
while Walker was left unharmed and at his side to
the last we did not know and could only credit to a
whimsy of our captors. No punishment was visited
upon his murderer or upon any of them so far as we
were able to learn.
Upon my later return to Canada I found that Tay
lor s sister there had received a letter from a Ger
man officer enclosing a letter addressed to her which
had been found on her brother s body, together with
three war medals and a Masonic ring. The latter
was the key to the incident since the officer also
claimed to have been a Mason. In his letter this
officer said that her brother had met a soldier s
death !
47
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Some said that our friendly officer was not a
German but an Irishman. I doubted that but it
may have been so, for it was true that his speech
contained no trace of the accent which is usually
associated with a German s English speech. His
was that of an English gentleman. And to him we
undoubtedly owed our wretched lives that day.
I in particular have good cause to be grateful. A
German, all of six foot four, who swung a tremen
dously broad headsman s axe with a curved blade,
tried several times to get at me. Each time the
officer stopped him. Still he persisted. He ap
parently saw no one else and kept his eye fastened
on me with deadly intention in it. He pushed aside
the others, Prussians and prisoners alike; he whirled
the shining blade high above a face lit up with sav
age exultation, terrible to see, and which reflected
the sensual revelling of his heated brain in the bloody
orgy ahead. As I followed the incredibly rapid mo
tions of the blade, my blood turned to water. My
limbs refused to act and my mind travelled back
over the years to a little Scottish village where I
had been used to sit in the dark corners of the shoe
maker s shop, listening to him and others of the
48
PRISONERS
old 2nd Gordons recount their terrible tales of the
hill men on the march to Kandahar with "Bobs."
And now I felt that same tremendous sensation of
fear which used to send me trembling to my childish
pallet in the croft, peering fearfully through the
darkness for the oiled body of a naked Pathan with
his corkscrew kris. Terror swept over me like a
springtime flood. He saw no one else. His eye
fastened on me in crudest hate. But as he stood over
me with feet spread wide and the circle of his axe s
swing broadening for the finale, the thread of rabbit-
like mesmerism broke and I sprang nimbly aside as
the blade buried itself deep in the mud wall I had
been cowering against. I endeavoured to dodge him
by putting some of my fellow prisoners between us.
No use. He followed me, shoving and cursing his
way among them, swinging his axe. My hair stood
on end and I felt rather critical of their much-
vaunted Prussian discipline. Another endeavoured
to bayonet Charlie Scarfe. The officer at last
stopped them both.
Our captors belonged to the Twenty-first Prus
sian Regiment and were, so far as we knew, the
first of their kind we had been up against, all pre-
49
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
vious comers on our front having been Bavarians
and latterly of the army group of Prince Ruprecht
of Bavaria "Rupie," we called him. They wore
the baggy grey clothes and clumsy looking leather
top boots of the German infantryman. The spiked
pickelhauben was conspicuous by its absence and was,
we well knew, a thing only of billets and of "swank"
parades. In its place was the soft pancake trench
cap with its small colored button in the front.
The enemy were armed for the most part with
pioneers bayonets, as well adapted by reason of their
saw edges for sticking flesh and blood as for sawing
wood; and, if for the former, an unnecessarily cruel
weapon, since it was bound to stick in the body and
badly lacerate it internally in the withdrawal ; espe
cially if given a twist.
The trench front had been about-faced since its
change of ownership and the Germans were already
casting our dead out of the shattered trench, both
in front and behind, and in many cases using them
to stop the gaps in the parapet; so that they now
received the bullets of their erstwhile comrades.
We were ordered up and out at the back of the
parapet and then made to lie there. The German
50
PRISONERS
artillery had ceased. We had none. Odd shots from
the remnant of our fellows still hanging on in the
supports continued to come over, but none of us
were hit. In all probability, they withheld their
fire when they saw what was afoot. Some German
snipers in a farmhouse at the rear were less consid
erate, but fortunately failed to hit us.
Later we were ordered to take our equipment off
and those who had coats, to shed them. We did not
see the latter again and missed them horribly in the
rain of that day. Two of the Prussians "frisked"
us for our tobacco, cigarettes, knives and other val
uables.
This was in bitter contrast to our own treatment
of prisoners under similar conditions. True, we had
always searched them but had invariably returned
those little trinkets and comforts which to a soldier
are so important. And I think our men had always
showered them with food and tobacco.
We were then marched to the rear, with the ex
ception of one, who, by permission of the officer, re
mained with the dying Taylor.
There were ten of us all told. I have only heard
of a few others who were captured that day. Rob-
Si
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
erts is still in Germany and Todeschi has been ex
changed and is now in Toronto. The latter lay with
a boy of the machine-gun crew for a couple of days
in a dug-out, both badly wounded. A German
stumbled on to them. They pleaded for water. The
German said, "I ll give you water" and bayoneted
the boy as he lay. He raised his weapon so that
the blood of his comrade dripped on Todeschi s face.
"All right," Todeschi cried in German, "kill me
too, but first give me water, you "
The German lowered his rifle in amazement:
"What, you schwein, you speak the good German?
Where did you learn it*?"
"In your schools. For Christ s sake give me
water and kill me."
"What! You live with us and then do this?
Schwein!"
"All right, I will give you water and I will not
kill you; just to show you how well we can treat a
prisoner."
Todeschi was then taken to the field dressing sta
tion where according to his own account his mangled
leg was amputated without the use of any anesthe-
52
PRISONERS
tic. But that may have been because in such a time
of stress they had none. Later he was exchanged.
I met Scott in the prison camp a few days later
and he told his tale. It appears that in the con
fusion of the earlier righting he had become sepa
rated from the regiment, became lost and eventually
floundered into an English battalion. He reported
to the officer commanding the trench and told his
story. The officer had no idea where the Patricias
lay and so ordered Scott to remain with them until
such time as an inquiry might establish the where
abouts of his regiment.
They were captured, but under less exciting cir
cumstances than occurred in our own case. And the
Germans had word that there was a Canadian
amongst these English troops. It was one of the
first things mentioned. They did not say how they
had acquired their information, but shouted out a
request for the man to stand forth. When no one
complied, they questioned each man separately, ask
ing him if he was a Canadian or knew aught of one
in that trench.
They all lied: "No." The Germans were so cer-
53
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
tain that they again went over each man in turn,
examining him.
Scott was at the end of the line. He began to
cut the Canadian buttons off his coat and to remove
his badges. Several men near by assisted and re
placed them with such of their own as they could
spare; each man perhaps contributing a button.
They had no thread nor time to use it if they had,
so tacked the buttons into place by all manner of
makeshifts, such as broken ends of matches thrust
through holes punched in the cloth ; anything to hold
the buttons in place and tide the hunted Scott over
the inspection. He passed. The Germans were
quite furious.
Scott and his companions could only guess at the
cause of this strange conduct, but presumed that the
Canadian was wanted for special treatment of an
unfavorable, if not of a final nature.
To return to our own case :
About the middle of the afternoon we were herded
by our guards into a shallow depression a short dis
tance in the rear of the trench and there told to lie
down. The officer and his men returned to the
trench. Until we were taken back to the trench at
54
PRISONERS
six we were continually sniped at by the Germans
in the captured trench. We had no recourse but to
make ourselves as small as possible, which we did.
And whether owing to the fact that the hollow we
were lying in prevented our being actually within
the range of the enemy vision, or whether they were
merely playing cat and mouse with us, I do not
know, but none were hit. Young Cox suffered stoi
cally. His mangled hand had become badly fouled
with dirt and filth, and the ragged bones protruded
through the broken flesh. So, in a quiet interval be
tween the sniping periods we hurriedly sawed the
shattered stump of his hand off with our clasp knives
and bound it up as best we could. It was not a nice
task, for him nor us, but he did not so much as grunt
during the operation. The nearest he came to com
plaining was when he asked me to let him lay his
hand across my body to ease it, at the same time re
marking: "I guess when they get us to Germany
they ll let us write, and I ll be able to write mother
and then she ll not know I ve lost my hand." He
was a most valiant and faithful soldier.
The perpetual rain and mist peculiar to that low-
lying land added to our wretched condition and in-
55
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
creased the pain of the wounds that most of us suf
fered from.
At six o clock our guards returned and curtly
ordered us to our feet. We were taken back to the
trench, where our officer friend had us searched
again. Here for the first time my two corporal s
stripes were noticed and a mild excitement ensued.
"Korporal ! Korporal !" they exclaimed and crowded
up the better to inspect me and verify the report,
and jabbering "Ja! Jar Apparently a captured
corporal was a rarity. Strangely enough, they paid
little or no attention to the sergeant of our party, al
though he had the three stripes of his rank up.
As I happened to be in the lead of our party and
the first to enter the trench, I was the first man
searched and so had to await the examination of the
others. Worn out by the events of the day and
the wound I had received early in the morning from
a shell fragment, I fell asleep against the wall of the
trench where I sat.
I was awakened by a poke in the ribs from Scarfe.
"Time to shift, mate."
I rose to my feet and, following the instructions
of the officer, led the way along the trench. The
56
PRISONERS
Germans had already, with their usual industry, got
ten the trench into some sort of shape again, with
the parapet shifted over to the other side and facing
Belle-waarde Wood. And everywhere along its
length I noticed the bodies of our dead built into
it to replace sandbags while others lay on the parados
at the rear.
It was not nice. The faces of men we had known
and had called comrade looked at us now in ghastly
disarray from odd sections of both walls. Already
they were taking a brick-like shape from the weight
of the filled bags on top of them. In places the legs
and arms protruded, brushing us as we passed. How-
ever, this was war and quite ethical.
Naturally we had to crowd by the other occupants
of the trench. And each took a poke at us as we
went by, some with their bayonets, saying: "Ver-
damnt Englander" and: "Englander Schwein,"
pigs of English. Also quite a number of them spokt
English after a fashion. There was in these men
none of the soldier s usual tolerance or good-natured
pity for an enemy who had fought well and had then
succumbed to the fortunes of war. Instead, a blind
57
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
and vicious rage which took no account of our help
less condition.
They cuffed us, they buffeted us, they pricked
us cruelly with their saw bayonets and then laughed
and sneered as we flinched and dodged awkwardly
aside. Then they cursed us.
Shortly, we were led into the presence of a man
whom I shall remember if I live to be a hundred.
He wore glasses and on his upper lip there bloomed
such a dainty moustache as is affected by "Little
Willie" as Tommy calls the German Crown Prince.
He had the eye of a rat. It snapped so cruel a hate
that one s blood stopped.
He seized me by the right shoulder with his left
hand : "You Corporal ! You Corporal !" as though
that fact of itself condemned me, and at the same
time tugging at his holster until he found his re
volver, which he placed against my temple. Then
and there I fervently prayed that he would pull the
trigger and end it all. I was fed up. The all-day
bombardment, the last terrible slaughter of helpless
men, the rain and cold, combining with the pain of
the raw wound in my side, had gotten on my nerves.
58
PRISONERS
With the revolver still at my head I turned to Scarfe :
"They re going to do us in, Charlie. I only hope
they ll do it proper. None of that bayonet stuff.
Bullets for me." Already the Prussians were crowd
ing round us threateningly again, with their saw-
edged bayonets ready, some fixed in the rifle, others
clasped short, like daggers, for such a butchering as
they had had earlier in the afternoon, when I had
been so nearly axed.
"Might as well kill us outright as scare us to
death," complained Scarfe bitterly.
Nevertheless our hearts leaped when a moment
later our mysterious black officer friend hove in
sight. Life is sweet.
He asked them what they did with us. The tab
leau answered for itself before the words had left his
lips. And then we had to listen to our fate dis
cussed in language and gesture so eloquent and so
fraught with terrible importance to us that our sen
sitized minds could miss no smallest point of each
fine shade of cruel meaning.
"Little Willie" thought it scarce worth their while
to bother with so small a bag; that it would not be
59
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
worth the trouble to send a miserable ten of Ver~
damnt Engldnder back to the Fatherland Better
to kill them like the swine they were.
Our blood froze to hear the man and to see the
poison of that rat soul of his exuding from his every
pore, in every gesture and in each fresh inflection of
his rasping voice. And all his men shouted their
fierce approval and shook in our faces their bloody
butcher s bayonets. It was a bitter draught. If they
had killed us then it would have had to have been
done in most cold blood, exceeding even the murder
of Taylor in planned brutality. He at least had
not known that it was coming and had not felt this
insane fear which we now experienced and which
made us wonder how they would do it. Would each
have to watch the other s end 1 ? And would it be
done by bullet or by bayonet? We greatly feared
it would be the latter. We pictured ourselves held
down as hogs are our throats slit !
The dark officer thought otherwise and minced
no words in the saying. Our hearts leapt out to him
warmly, in gratitude.
He sharply ordered them to desist, at which they
60
PRISONERS
slunk sullenly away, as hungry dogs do from a bone.
I felt an uncomfortable physical sensation and ran
my hand uneasily beneath my shirt. I was covered
with a fine sweat.
61
CHAPTER VII
PULLING THE LSG OF A GERMAN GENERAL
Polygon Wood and Picadilly Again German Headquar
ters Surprising Kitchener "Your Infantry s No Good"
The Germans Give Us News of the Regiment.
WE were then escorted under heavy guard out
over the fields in the rear, past the nearby farm
house, which was simply filled with snipers. The
latter, however, did not shoot at us, presumably be
cause they might have hit some of our numerous
guards. We seemed to be working right through
the heart of the German Army. Everywhere the
troops were massed. Along the road they lay in
solid formation on both sides. If we had had artil
lery to play on them now they would have suffered
tremendous losses. The whole countryside presented
a living target. All the way they shouted "Schwein"
and taunted us in both languages. Every shell-hole,
farmhouse, hut, dugout and old trench on the three-
62
PULLING THE LEG OF A GERMAN GENERAL
mile stretch between the Front and Polygon Wood
contributed its quota.
The regiment had evacuated Polygon Wood on
the night of the third. Across the old trail our fa
tigue parties had tramped new ones in the mud, up
past Regent Street, Leicester Square and Piccadily.
We passed them all.
We were marched over to the little settlement of
pine-bough huts which the regiment had previously
taken over from the French. The men with me
greeted them like old friends. Here was the Sniper s
Hut, there the Commanding Officer s. This was the
hut in which the brave Joe Waldron had "gone
West," that on the site of one where fourteen of
"ours" had stopped a shell while they slept. Mem
ories submerged us and made us weak. Even the
guiding rope that our men had used to hold them
selves to the trail of nights still held its place for
groping German hands.
Beside it lay the fragments of the French sign
boards, jocular advertisements of mud baths for
trench fever, the hotel this and the maison that.
One of my companions pointed to a larger hut which
he said our fellows had called the Hotel Cecil. The
63
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
board was missing now. And no German signboard
took its place. Their wit did not run in so richly
innocent a channel.
The huts lay just off the race track in front of the
ruined chateau, buried deep in the remnants of what
had once been the beautiful park of a large country
estate. These huts were now the German head
quarters.
There was as much English as German talked
there that day. Everywhere there was cooking go
ing on, mostly in portable camp kitchens.
As we came to a halt one big fellow smoking a
pipe observed nonchalantly: "You fellows are
lucky. Our orders were to take no Canadian pris
oners.
The man was so casual, so utterly matter-of-fact
and there was about his remark so simple an air of
directness and of finality that there was no escaping
his sincerity, unduly interested though we were.
Another officer said "Englander?"
The big fellow said "Kanadien." The other raised
his brows and shoulders: "Uhh!"
A younger officer came up: "Never mind, boys:
Your turn to-day. Might be mine to-morrow."
64
WOUNDED CANADIANS RECEIVING FIRST AID IN A SUPPORT TRENCH
AFTER AN ATTACK.
PULLING THE LEG OF A GERMAN GENERAL
Turning to the others, he too said: "Englander*?"
"No ! Canadian."
"Oh!" And he appeared to be pleasantly sur
prised. He asked me for a souvenir and pointed to
the brass Canada shoulder straps and the red cloth
"P. P. C. L. I. s" on the shoulders of the others.
But I had already shoved my few trinkets down my
puttees while lying back of the trench that after
noon. Scarf e, however, gave up his "Canada" straps.
The young officer gave him in return a carved nut
with silver filigree work and gave another man a
silver crucifix for the bronze maple leaves from the
collar of his tunic. And, more important still, he
gave us all a cigarette, while he had a sergeant give
us coffee.
That, the cigarette, was I think much the best of
anything we received then or for some time to come.
Since the bombardment and our wounding, our
nerves had fairly ached for the sedative which, good,
b id or indifferent, would steady the quivering harp
s ;rings of our nerves. And a cigarette did that.
The headquarters staff appeared on the scene.
They wanted information, just as ours would have
done under similar circumstances, but these took a
65
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
different method to acquire it. As before, in the
trench, they selected me for the spokesman. The
senior officer, a general apparently, addressed me:
"How many troops are there in front of our attack?"
I lied: "I don t know."
He shook a threatening finger at me. "I ll tell you
this, my man: We have a pretty good idea of how
many troops lay behind you and if in any particular
you endeavour to lead us astray it will go very hard
with all of you. Now answer my question!" His
English was good.
I cogitated. It would not do to tell him the ter
rible truth. That was certain. So I took a chance.
"Three divisions." He appeared to be satisfied.
The fact was, there were none behind us. We were
utterly without supporting troops.
"And Kitchener s Army? How many of them
are there here?"
"Why, they haven t even come over yet, sir."
"Don t tell me that : I know better. They ve been
out here for months."
"But they haven t," I persisted. I told the truth
this time.
"Yes," he shouted angrily.
66
PULLING THE LEG OF A GERMAN GENERAL
"No," I flung back.
"Well, how many of them are there ?"
The division yarn had gone down well. And per
haps I was slightly heated. My spirit ran ahead of
my judgment. "Five and a half to seven million," I
said.
He exploded. And called me everything but a
soldier. I could not help but reflect that I had over
done it a bit. And I certainly thought that I was
"for it" then and there.
To make matters worse he asked the others and
they, profiting by my mistake and following the lead
of the first man questioned, put Kitchener s army at
four and a half million; which was only a trifle of
four million out. So I determined to be reasonable.
When he came to me again I confirmed the latter fig
ure, explaining my earlier statement by my lack of
exact knowledge. And so that particular storm blew
over.
The general came back to me again. "You Ca
nadians thought this was going to be a picnic, didn t
you?" He was very sarcastic.
"No, we didn t, sir."
67
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
"Well, you thought it was going to be a walk
through to Berlin, didn t you*?"
"Why, no. We thought it was the other way
about, sir," I ventured.
He shifted : "Well, what do you think of us any
how?"
"Your artillery was all right but your infantry
was no good." I began to feel shaky again. How
ever, he took that calmly enough.
"Oh ! So our infantry was no good."
"We could have held them all right, sir."
He ruminated on that a moment, rumbled in his
throat and abruptly changed the subject, in an un
pleasant fashion, however.
"You re the fellows we want to get hold of. You
cut the throats of our wounded."
I denied it and we argued back and forth over
that for several minutes, and very heatedly. He re
ferred to St. Julien and said that this thing had oc
curred there. I said and quite truthfully that we
had not been at St. Julien, that we were in the Im
perial and not the Canadian Army and had been
spectators in near-by trenches of the St. Julien af
fair. I even went into some detail to explain that
68
PULLING THE LEG OF A GERMAN GENERAL
we were a special corps of old soldiers who, not be
ing able to rejoin their old regiments, had at the out
break of war formed one of their own and had been
accepted as such and sent to France months ahead
of the Canadian contingent. I added that I myself
had just rejoined the regiment, having got my
"Blighty" in March at St. Eloi and as proof of my
other statements I further volunteered that I was
one of the 2nd Gordons and after the South African
War had gone to Canada where I had finished my
reserve several years since.
He listened but was plainly unconvinced. An
other officer broke in : "I can explain it, sir. These
men were in the 8oth Brigade and the 27 th Division.
Colonel Farquhar was their Commanding Officer and
Captain Buller took command when Colonel Far
quhar was killed." We stared at one another in
amazement, for it was all quite true.
This finished that examination. We did not tell
them that Colonel Buller had been blinded a few
days before and had been succeeded by that Major
Hamilton Gault who had been so largely instru
mental in raising us.
None of our wounds had received the slightest
69
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
attention. Cox in particular suffered cruelly but
refused to whimper. Royston s head was swollen to
the size of a water bucket and he was in great pain.
We left them here and never saw them again. Cox
died two weeks later of a blood poisoning which
was the combined result of our rough surgery and
the wanton neglect of our captors. I do not think
he was ever able to write his mother as he wished.
At least she wrote me later for information. There
was no need of his dying even though it might have
been necessary to have amputated his arm higher
up. Royston was exchanged to Switzerland and re
covered from his wounds except for the loss of an
eye.
70
CHAPTER VIII
THE PRINCESS PATRICIA S GERMAN UNCLE
Roulers The Old Woman and the Gentle Uhlans Bil
leted in a Church Quizzed by a Prince.
WE were marched to Roulers, which we reached
well after dark. A considerable crowd of soldiers
and civilians awaited our coming. The Belgian
women and children congregated in front of the
church while we waited to be let in, and threw us
apples and cigarettes. The uhlans and infantrymen
rushed them with the flat side of their swords and
the butts of their muskets; and mistreated them.
They knocked one old woman down quite close to
where I stood. So we had to do without and were
not even permitted to pick up the gifts that lay at
our feet, much less the old woman.
The church had been used as a stable quite re
cently and the stone-flagged floor was deep with the
decayed straw and accumulated filth of men and
horses. We lay down in it and got what rest we
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
could for the remainder of the night. There were
about one hundred and fifty prisoners in all Shrop-
shires, Cheshires, King s Royal Rifles and other Brit
ish regiments all from our division and mostly
from our brigade. Other small parties continued to
come in during the night, but there were no more
P. P. s. In the morning a large tub of water was
carried in and each man was given a bit of black
bread and a slice of raw fat bacon. The latter was
salty and so thoroughly unappetizing that I cannot
recall that any one ate his ration, for in spite of the
fact that we had been twenty-four hours without
food, we were so upset by the experiences we had
undergone, so shattered by shell fire and lack of rest
that we were perhaps inclined to be more critical
of our food than normal men would have been.
Shortly afterward a high German officer came in
with his staff. He was a stout and well-built man
of middle age or over, typically German in his gen
eral characteristics but not half bad looking. His
uniform was covered with braid and medals. Every
one paid him the utmost deference. He stopped in
the middle of the room.
"Are there any Canadians here? 3
72
THE PRINCESS PATRICIA S GERMAN UNCLE
I stepped forward. "Yes, sir."
"I mean the Princess Patricia s Canadians."
"Yes, sir. I am. And here s some more of them,"
and I pointed at the prostrate figures of my com
panions, where they sprawled on the flagstones.
"Princess Patricia s Regiment*?"
"Yes, sir."
Well, the Princess Patricia is my niece awfully
nice girl. I hope it won t be long before I see her
again."
I grinned : "Well, I hope it won t be long before
I see her 5 too, sir."
The other fellows joined us, the straw and the
smell of it still sticking to their clothes as they
formed a little knot about the Prince and his staff.
The scene was incongruous, the smart uniforms of
the immaculately kept staff officers contrasting
strangely with our own unkempt foulness. We oc
cupied the centre of the stage. Around us were
grouped the men of our sister regiments, most of
them lying on the floor in a dazed condition. There
were few who came forward to listen. They were
too tired, and to them at least, this was merely an
incident one of a thousand more important ones.
73
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Odd parts of clothes hung on the ornate images
and decorations of the room. A German rifle hung
by its sling from the patient neck of a life-sized
Saviour, while further over, the vermin-infested shirt
of a Britisher hung over the rounded breasts of a
brooding Madonna, with the Infant in her lap.
At the door a small group of guards stood stiffly
to a painful attention and continued so to do whilst
royalty touched them with the shadow of its wings.
The Prince questioned us further and I told him
that I had been on a guard of honor to the Prin
cess when she had been a child and when her father,
the Duke of Connaught had been the General Officer
Commanding at Aldershot.
He laughed back at us and was altogether very
friendly. "You ll go to a good camp and you ll be
all right if you behave yourselves."
Scarfe shoved in his oar here, grousing in good
British-soldier fashion: "I don t call it very good
treatment when they steal the overcoats from
wounded men."
"Who did that? He was all steel, and I saw
a change come over the officers of the staff.
"The chaps that took us prisoners," said Scarfe.
74
THE PRINCESS PATRICIA S GERMAN UNCLE
"What regiment were they*?" The Prince glanced
at an aide, who hastily drew out a notebook and
began to take down our replies.
The 2 1st Prussians, sir. 3
Do you know the men*?
The 2 1st Prussians, sir."
"Do you know the men*?"
"Their faces but not their names."
"Of what rank was the officer in charge ? :
We did not know, but thought him a company
officer of the rank of captain perhaps. He asked
for other particulars which we gave to the best of
our knowledge.
"I ll attend to that," he said. However, we heard
no more of it. We refrained from complaining
about the actual ill-treatment and indignities we had
been subjected to, the murder of our unoffending
comrades, or the lack of attention to our wounds, as
we rightly judged that we should only have earned
the enmity of our guards.
"May I have your ca badge?" the Prince asked,
decently enough.
I lied brazenly: "Sorry, sir; I ve lost mine."
The fact was I had shoved it down under my
puttees while lying back of the trench the previous
afternoon.
75
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Scarf e said: "You can have mine, sir."
He took it. "Thanks so much." He glanced at
the aide again; rather sharply this time, I thought.
The latter blushed and hastily extracted a wallet,
from which he handed Scarf e a two-mark piece, equal
to one and ten pence, or forty-four cents. He gave
us his name before leaving, and my recollection is
that it was something like Eitelbert. Evidently he
was a brother of the Duchess of Connaught, whom
we knew to have been a German princess whose
brothers and other male relatives all enjoyed high
commands among our foes.
CHAPTER IX
How THE GERMAN RED CROSS TENDED THE
CANADIAN WOUNDED
"Come Out Canadians !" The Crucifixion "Nix ! Nix !"
Civilian Hate "Englander Schwein !"
WE remained in the fouled church all of that day
and night and until the following morning. No
more food appeared. We were marched down to the
railroad under heavy escort, crowded into freight
cars and locked in. The guards were distributed in
cars of their own, alternating with ours. Our
wounds remained unattended to.
At every station they thundered : "Come out, Ca
nadians !" They lined us up in a row while a staff
officer put the same questions to us in nearly every
case. They were particularly interested in the qual
ity of our rations and asked if it was not true that
we were starving and if our pay had not been
stopped. The guards invariably explained to the
77
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
civilians that these were the Canadians who had cut
the throats of the German wounded.
We did not know how to explain the prevalence
of this impression. On the contrary, we were aware
of the story of the crucifixion of three of the Ca
nadian Division during Ypres. The tale had come
smoking hot to our men in the Polygon Wood
trenches during the great battle. It gave in great
detail all the salient facts which were that after re
capturing certain lost positions, the men of a certain
regiment had discovered the body of one of their ser
geants, together with those of two privates, crucified
on the doors of a cowshed and a barn. German
bayonets had been driven through their hands and
feet and their contorted faces gave every appearance
of their having died in great agony. This story was
and is generally believed throughout all ranks of the
Canadian Army. For its truth I cannot vouch.
We knew that our own men had never mistreated
any prisoners and had in fact usually done quite the
reverse. How far other regiments may have gone
in retaliation for what was known as "The Crucifix
ion," it is impossible to say. That prisoners may
have been killed is possible, for such things become
78
THE GERMAN RED CROSS
an integral part of war once the enemy has so of
fended. But we could not believe that there had
been any cutting of throats as that would imply a
sheer cold-bloodedness that we could not stomach.
The mob surged around and reviled us, while the
guards, in high good humour, translated their re
marks, unless, as was frequently the case, they were
made to the officials in English for our benefit. The
other British soldiers were left in their cars.
Our wounded were getting very badly off by this
time. It was impossible to avoid trampling on one
another as the car was very dark at best and the one
small window in the roof was closed as soon as we
drew into a station. When taken out we were un
der heavy escort and were allowed no opportunity to
clean up the accumulated filth of the car. We suf
fered terribly for food and water, and some of the
wounds began to turn, so that what with exhaustion
and all, we grew very weak.
At one station the guards took us out and made us
line up to watch them eat of a hearty repast which
the Red Cross women had just brought them. And
we were very hungry. When, we too, asked for food
they said: "Nix! Nix!" The crowds met us at
79
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
every station and included women of all classes,
who called us Engldnder Schwem and who at no
time gave us the slightest assistance, but, instead,
devoted themselves to the guard.
Other men told us later that Red Cross women
had spat in their drinking water and in their food.
There was no opportunity for this in our case as we
did not receive any of either.
We did not receive any food during this trip,
which lasted from the morning of one day until the
night of the next. We had gone since the day of
our capture on the coffee received at headquarters in
Polygon Wood and the single issue of bread, water
and bacon received in the church, the latter of which
we could not eat; a total of three days and nights
on that one issue of rations.
We pulled into Giessen at eleven, the night of
May tenth. The citizens made a Roman holiday of
the occasion and the entire population turned out to
see the England er Schwein. There was a guard for
every prisoner, and two lines of fixed bayonets. The
mob surged around, heaping on us insults and blows ;
particularly the women. With hate in their eyes,
they spat on us. We had to take that or the bayo-
80
THE GERMAN RED CROSS
net. These were the acts not only of the rabble,
but also of the people of good appearance and ad
dress.
One very well-dressed woman rushed up. Under
other circumstances I should have judged her to
have been a gentlewoman. She shrieked invectives
at us as she forced her way through the crowd.
"Schwein!" she screamed, and struck at the man
next me. He snapped his shoulders back as a sol
dier does at attention. Then, drawing deep from the
very bottom of her lungs, she spat the mass full in
his face. The muscles of his face twitched painfully
but he held his eyes to the front and stared past his
tormentor, seeing other things.
81
CHAPTER X
THE CURIOUS CONCOCTIONS OF THE CHEF AT
GlESSEN
Oliver Twist at Giessen Acorn Coffee and Shadow Soup
Chestnut Soup Fostering Racial Hatred.
WE had a mile-and-a-half march to the prison
camp. Those who were past walking were put in
street cars and sent to the laager, where upon our
arrival we were shoved into huts for the night, sup-
perless, of course. This was our introduction to the
prison camp of Giessen.
The next morning we each received three-quarters
of a pint of acorn coffee, so called, horrible-tasting
stuff; and a loaf of black bread half potatoes and
half rye weighing two hundred and fifty grams,
or a little more than half a pound, among five
men. This allowed a piece about three by three by
four inches to each man for the day s ration. The
coffee consisted of acorns and four pounds of burned
barley boiled in one hundred gallons of water. There
82
CURIOUS CONCOCTIONS OF THE CHEF
was no sugar or milk. My curiosity led me later to
get this and other recipes from the fat French cook.
All that day and for several following, official
and guards were busy numbering and renumbering
us and assigning us to our companies. They were
hopelessly German about it, and did it so many times
and very thoroughly. There were twelve thousand
men in the camp and eight hundred in the laager.
The majority were Russian and French with a fair
ish sprinkling of Belgians. There were perhaps six
hundred British in the entire camp. The various
nationalities were mixed up and each section given a
hut very similar to those American and British troops
occupy in their own countries. A number of smaller
camps in the neighbouring districts were governed
from this central one.
For dinner we had shadow soup, so named for
obvious reasons. The recipe in my diary reads:
"For eight hundred men, two hundred gallons of
water, one small bag of potatoes and one packet of
herbs."
To make matters worse the vegetables issued at
this camp were in a decayed condition and contin
ued to come to us so.
83
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Another staple dinner ration was ham soup. This
was the usual two hundred gallons of water boiled
with ten pounds of ham rinds, ten pounds of cabbage
and twenty pounds of potatoes. The ham rind had
hair on it but we used to fish for it at that and con
sidered ourselves lucky to get a piece. Oatmeal
soup, another meal, consisted of two hundred gal
lons of water, two pounds of currants and fifty
pounds of oatmeal ; chestnut soup, two hundred gal
lons of water, on** hundred pounds of whole chest
nuts and ten pounds of potatoes. It was a horrible
concoction and my diary has: "To be served hot
and thrown out."
Meat soup was two hundred gallons of water,
ten pounds of meat, one small bag of potatoes and
ten pounds of vegetables. This was the most nutri
tious of the lot. Unfortunately for us, the small
portion of meat and most of the potatoes were given
to the French, both because the cook and all his as
sistants were Frenchmen and because the authorities
willed it so.
This was usually managed without any apparent
unfairness by serving the British first and the French
last, with the result that the one received a tin full
84
Wednesday 8
.Thursday 9
Friday 10
RECIPES FROM CORPORAL EDWARD S DIARY.
CURIOUS CONCOCTIONS OF THE CHEF
of hot water that was too weak to run out, while the
Frenchmen s spoons stood to attention in the thicker
mess they found in the bottom. This, with other
things, contributed to make bad blood between the
two races. A great show was made of stirring up
the mess, but it was a pure farce.
Rice soup consisted of two hundred gallons of
water, fifty pounds of rice, twenty pounds of pota
toes and one pound of currants; bean soup, two
hundred gallons of water, fifty pounds of beans, and
twenty pounds of potatoes ; pork soup, two hundred
gallons of water, ten pounds of pork and fifty pounds
of potatoes. Porridge was made of two hundred
gallons of water, fifteen pounds of oatmeal and two
pounds of barley. The diary states: "To be served
hot as a drink."
Once in two months a ration of sausage was dished
out. For breakfast once a week there was one pint
of acorn coffee without sugar or milk and one and a
half square inches of Limburger cheese. To quote
from the diary : "Before serving, open all windows
and doors. Then send for the Russians to take it
away."
The Germans discriminated against the British
85
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
prisoners. When there was any disagreeable duty;
the cry went up for "der Englander." The much-
sought- for cookhouse jobs all went to the French,
who waxed fat in consequence. No Britisher was
ever allowed near the cookhouse. The French had
for the most part been there for some time, and, their
country lying so close by; they were receiving par
cels. We were not, and this made the food problem
a very serious one for us. Their supplies were re
ceived through Switzerland which was the one an
chor to windward for so many of us in this and other
respects.
At first the French used to give us a certain amount
of their own food, but eventually ceased to do so.
Most of them worked down in the town daily and
could "square" the guard long enough to buy to
bacco at twenty-five pfennigs or two and a half
pence a package, which they sold to us later at
eighty pfennigs until we got on to their profiteer
ing.
CHAPTER XI
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
"Raus!" The Strafe Barracks The Appeal for Casement
Why Parcels Should Be Sent A Hell on Earth
That Brickyard Fatigue Gott Strafe England Slow
Starvation Merciless Discipline Canadian Humor
The Debt We Owe Inoculating for Typhoid?
Joseph s Coat of Many Colors The Russian Who Un
wound the Rag The Monotony of the Wire Teaching
the Germans the British Salute.
EXCEPT for the starving, as I look back now, Gies-
sen was not such a bad camp as such places go. At
least it was the best that we were to know. The
discipline, of course, was fairly severe, but on the
other hand the Commandant did not trouble us a
great deal. The petty annoyances were harder to
endure. Frequently we would get the "Raus!" at
half-hour intervals by day or night; "Raus out!"
"Raus in !" and so on.
We never knew what our tormentors wanted but
supposed it to be a systematic attempt to break
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
our spirit and our nerve by the simple expedient
of habitually interfering with our sleep so that we
would become like the Russians. They were mostly
utterly broken in spirit and had the air of beaten
dogs, so that they cringed and fawned to their mas
ters.
The least punishment meted out for the most
trifling offense was three days cells. Some got ten
years for refusing to work in munition and steel fac
tories, particularly British and Canadians.
There are large numbers of both who are to-day
serving out sentences of from eighteen months to ten
years in the military fortresses of Germany under cir
cumstances of the greatest cruelty.
The so-called courts-martial were mockeries of
trials. The culprit was simply marched up to the
orderly room, received his sentence and marched
away again. He was allowed no defence worthy of
the name.
Some of the King s Own Yorkshire Light Infan
try were "warned" for work in a munitions fac
tory. When the time came around they were taken
away but refused to work and so they were knocked
about quite a bit. One was shot in the leg and an-
88
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
other bayoneted through the hip, and all were sent
back to camp, where they were awarded six weeks
in the punishment camp, known as the strafe bar
racks.
*
This was a long hut in which were two rows of
stools a few paces apart. The Raus blew for the
culprits at five-thirty. At six they were marched to
the hut and made to sit down in two rows facing
one another, at attention that is, body rigid, head
thrown well back, chest out, hands held stiffly at
the sides and eyes straight to the front for two
hours! Meanwhile the sentries marched up and
down the lane, watching for any relaxation or lev
ity. If so much as a face was pulled at a twinkling
eye across the way, another day s strafing was added
to the penalty. At the end of the two hours one
hour s rest was allowed, during which the prisoners
could walk about in the hut but c0uld not lie
down! This continued all day until "Lights out."
For six weeks. No mail, parcels, writing or exer
cise was permitted the prisoners during that time,
and the already scanty rations were cut.
During good behavior we were allowed two post
cards and two letters a month, with nine lines to
89
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
the former and thirteen to the page of the latter.
No more, no less. Each letter had four pages of
the small, private-letter size. The name and ad
dress counted as a line. Mine was Kriegsgefingenen-
laager, Kompagnie No. 6, Barackue No. A. The
writing had to be big and easily read and, in the let
ters, on four sides of the paper. No complaint or
discussion of the war was permitted. Fully one-half
of those written were returned for infringements, or
fancied ones, of these rules. Sometimes when the
censor was irritated they were merely chucked into
the fire. And as they had also to pass the English
censor it is no wonder that many families wondered
why their men did not write.
We were there for three months before our par
cels began to arrive. We considered ourselves lucky
if we received six out of ten sent, and with half the
contents of the six intact. In the larger camps the
chances of receipt were better. The small camps
were merely units attached to and governed by the
larger ones, which handled the mail before giving
it to the authorities at the smaller ones.
Thus, a man who was "attached" to Giessen camp,
although perhaps one hundred miles away from it,
90
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
had to submit to the additional delay and chance of
loss and theft included in the censoring of the parcel
at Giessen as well as at the actual place of his con
finement.
This doubled the chances of fault-finding and of
theft. Knowing this to be true, I most earnestly
recommend the sending of parcels. True, a large
proportion of them are not received, but those that
are represent the one salvation of the prisoner-of-
war in German hands. So terribly true is this that
when we began to receive parcels at irregular inter
vals, we used regularly to acknowledge to our friends
the receipt of parcels which we had never received.
This was the low cunning developed by our treat
ment. If advised that a parcel of tea, sugar or other
luxuries had been sent and it did not appear after
weeks of patient waiting, we knew that we should
never see that parcel. Nevertheless, we usually
wrote and thanked the donor and acknowledged the
receipt, fearful otherwise that he or she should say:
What s the use"?" and send no more. And we were
not allowed to tell the truth that it had been
stolen.
The first three months of our stay at Giessen were
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
probably the worst of all, including as they did the
transition period to this life. It seemed then a hell
on earth. The slow starvation was the worst. Once,
in desperation, I gave a Frenchman my good boots
for his old ones and two and a half marks, and then
gave sixty pfennigs of this to the French cook for
a bread ration. Again, in going down the hut one
day, I espied a flat French loaf cut into four pieces,
drying on the window sill. Seizing one piece, I
tucked it under my tunic and passed on before the
loss was discovered. Some of the British could be
seen at times picking over the sour refuse in the
barrels. This amused the Germans very much. We
endeavoured to get cookhouse jobs for the pickings
to be had, but could not do so. At a later date,
when the Canadian Red Cross, Lady Farquhar, Mrs.
Hamilton Gault and our families were sending us
packages regularly, we made out all right.
Some English societies were in the habit of send
ing books, music and games to the prisoners but none
of these ever reached the group with whom I asso
ciated, even before our later actions put us quite
beyond the German pale.
The appeal for Casement and the Irish Brigade
92
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
was made to us. A number of prisoners were taken
apart and the matter broached privately to them.
Pamphlets on the freeing of Ireland were also dis
tributed. I did not see any one go over, and an
Irishman who was detailed with another Canadian
and myself on a brickyard fatigue said that they had
recruited only forty in the camp. The whole thing
turned out to be a failure.
There were twelve of us all told on that brick
yard job. Three or four shoveled clay into the mix
ing machine, two more filled the little car which
two others pushed along the track of the narrow-
gauge railroad. We were guarded by four civilian
Germans of some home defense corps, all of whom
labored with us. The two trammers used to start
the car, hop on the brake behind and let it run of
its own momentum down the incline to the edge of
the bank where it would be checked for dumping.
Sometimes we forgot to brake the car so that it
would ricochet on in a flying leap off the end of the
track, and so on over the dump. The guards would
rage and swear but could prove nothing so long as
our fellows did not get too raw and do this too fre
quently.
03
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
One day we shovelers decided to add to the gaiety
of nations. While one attracted the guards atten
tion elsewhere we slipped a chunk of steel into the
mess. There was a grinding crash, and a large cog
wheel tore its way through the roof. In a moment,
the air was full of machinery and German words.
It was a proper wreck. The guards ran around gesti
culating angrily, tearing their hair and threatening
us, while we endeavoured to look surprised. It is
reasonable to suppose that we were unsuccessful, for
we were hustled back to camp and drew five days
cells each from the Commandant. There was no
trial. He merely sentenced us.
United States Ambassador Gerard only came to
Giessen once in my time there, and that was while
I was off at one of the detached camps, so I had no
opportunity of observing the result.
We knew very little of what was going on in
the outside world. The guards were not allowed to
converse with us, and if one was known to speak
English he was removed. However, they were more
or less curious about us so that a certain amount of
clandestine conversation occurred. Some were cer
tain that they were going to win the war. Others
94
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
said: "England has too much money. Germany
will never win." They used frequently to gather
the Russians, Belgians and French together and lec
ture them on England s sins. They said that Eng
land was letting them do all the fighting, bleeding
them white of their men and treasure so as to come
out at the end of the war with the balance of power
necessary for her plan of retaining Constantinople
and the Cinque Ports of France. Many were con
vinced, and this did not add to the pleasantness of
our lot.
The notorious Continental Times was circulated
amongst us freely in both French and English edi
tions. It regularly gave us a most appalling list of
German victories and it specialised in abuse of the
English. We counted up in one month a total of
two million prisoners captured by the Germans on
all fronts.
As I have said, Giessen was the best camp of all,
barring the starvation. But the discipline there was
merciless. The laager was inclosed by a high wire
fence which we were forbidden to approach within
four feet of. A Russian sergeant overstepped that
mark one day to shout something to a friend in an
95
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
adjoining laager. The sentry shouted at him. He
either failed to hear or did not understand. The
sentry killed him without hesitation.
A Belgian started over one day with some left
over soup which he purposed giving to the Russians.
The sentry would not let him pass. He went back
and told his mate. The latter, a kindly little fel
low, thinking that the sentry had not understood the
nature of the mission, decided to try himself. The
sentry stopped him. He attempted to argue. The
sentry pushed him roughly back. He struck the
German. The latter dropped him with a blow on
the head, and while he lay unconscious shoved the
bayonet into him. It was done quite coolly and
methodically, without heat. He was promoted for
it. We were told that he had done a good thing
and that we should get the same if we did not be
have.
A Canadian who was forced to work in a muni
tions plant and whose task included the replacing of
waste in the wheel boxes of cars enjoyed himself for
a while, lifting the greasy waste out and replacing it
with sand. He got ten years for that.
The German in charge of our laager hated the ver-
96
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
damnt Engldnder and lost no opportunity of bull
dozing and threatening us. One of the Canadians
who had been in the American Navy was unusually
truculent. The German purposely bunted him one
day. "Don t do that again! 3 The German re
peated the act. The sailor jolted him in the jaw so
that he went to dreamland for fifteen minutes. The
prisoner was taken to the guardroom and we never
heard his ultimate fate, but at the ruling rate he
was lucky if he got off with ten years.
It is men like this to whom our Government and
people owe such a debt as may be paid only in a
small degree by our insistence after the war that they
be given their liberty. A greater glory is theirs than
that of the soldier. They wrought amongst a world
of foes, knowing their certain punishment, but dar
ing it rather than assist that foe s efforts against
their country.
One day we were told that we must be inoculated
in the arm against typhoid. We thought nothing of
that. But the next day men began to gather in
groups so that the guards shouted roughly at them,
bidding them not to mutter and whisper so.
Where the word came from I know not. It may
97
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
have emanated in the fears of some active imagi
nation on the chance and truthful word of a guard,
flung in derision at some desperate man, or in a
kindlier mood and in warning. The word was that
we were to be inoculated with the germs of consump
tion. I understand that it appeared also in the
papers at home. It seemed horrible beyond words
to us. The idea appeared crazy but was equally on
a par with the events we witnessed daily. Myself,
I planned to take no chances; if it were humanly
possible.
We were all ordered to parade for the inocula
tion. I hid myself with a few others and so escaped
the operation. Nothing was said so I could only
suppose that they failed to check us up as it was not
in keeping with the German character as we had
come to know it to miss any opportunity of cor
rective punishment even though the inoculation had
been for our own good.
It is true that some of the men so inoculated fell
prey to consumption. On the other hand one of
them had had a well defined case of it before, and
it was almost certain that the living conditions pre
vailing amongst us would insure the appearance of
98
FELLOW PRISONERS AT GEISSEN. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: A CHESHIRE
REGIMENT MAN, A SIBERIAN RUSSIAN, AN EAST YORKSHIRE
LIGHT INFANTRYMAN AND A GORDON HIGHLANDER.
FELLOW PRISONERS AT GEISSEN. THREE HIGHLANDERS AND A
YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRYMAN.
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
the disease so that we had no proof that any man
was so inoculated. Some of the men so affected
were sent to Switzerland for the benefit of the moun
tain air through an arrangement made by the Red
Cross with the Swiss authorities.
One of our guards was subject to fits and habitu
ally ran amuck amongst us, abusing some of the
prisoners in a painful fashion. We made complaint
of this through the proper channels, for which crime
the officer in charge stopped our fires and other privi
leges for the time being.
Most of the men wore prison uniforms or in some
cases, suits sent from England which were altered by
the authorities to conform to their regulations. These
required that if one was not in a distinctive and
enemy uniform that broad stripes of bright colored
cloth be set into the seam of the trousers ; not sewed
on, but into the goods. A large diamond shaped
piece or else a square of such cloth was set into the
breast and back of the tunic. I preferred my uni
form, dilapidated though it was. We were permit
ted the choice, probably less out of kindness than
because of the saving involved.
There was a big simple giant of a Russian here
99
Ik J . H 4 A O-tT-r-v
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
who was badly sprung at the knees. He had been
forced to work during the winter in an underground
railway station near Berlin. He had had no shoes
and had stood in the water for weeks, digging. He
was very badly crippled in consequence.
Some four hundred Russians came to us after the
fall of Warsaw. They were mostly wounded and
all rotten. On the three months march to Giessen
the wounded had received absolutely no attention
other than their own. Here we had a crazy German
doctor, a mediocre French one and Canadian order
lies. If an Englishman went to the hospital for
treatment it was "Vick!" Get out. These Rus
sians were treated similarly. The French fared bet
ter. One big, fine-looking Russian, with a filthy
mass of rags wound round his arm, reported for at
tention. They unwound the rag and his arm
dropped off. He died, with five others, that after
noon, and God only knows how many more on the
trip they had just finished.
They were buried in a piano case, together. Usu
ally they were placed in packing cases. We asked
for a flag with which to cover them as soldiers should
TOO
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
be. They asked what that was for and there it
ended.
Another Russian had a foul arm which leaked
badly so that it was not only painful to him but of
fensive to the rest of us. Nothing was done for
him.
They were all thoroughly cowed, as are dogs
that have been illtreated. And they jumped to it
when a German spoke excepting two of their of
ficers, who refused to take down their epaulets when
ordered to do so. We did not learn how they fared.
These were the only captive officers of any national
ity whom we saw.
We became sick of the sight of one another as
even the best of friends do under such abnormal
conditions. For variety I often walked around the
enclosure with a Russian. Neither of us had the
faintest idea what the other said, but it was a
change !
The monotony of the wire was terrible and just
outside it in the lane formed by the encircling set of
wire, the dogs, with their tongues out, walked back
and forth, eyeing us.
There was so little to talk about. We knew noth-
IOJ
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
ing and could only speculate on the outcome of the
commonest events which came to us on the tongue
of rumour or arose out of our own sad thoughts.
The authorities were not satisfied with our recog
nition or lack of it of their officers and took us
out to practice saluting drill a thing always de
tested by soldiers, especially veterans. The idea was
to make us salute visiting German officers properly,
in the German fashion and not in our own. Theirs
consisted of saluting with the right hand only, with
the left held stiffly straight at the side, while our
way was to salute with the hand farthest from the
officer, giving "Eyes left" or "Eyes right" as the case
might be, and with the free hand swinging loosely
with the stride.
So a school of us were led out to this. The very
atmosphere was tense with sullen rebellion. The
guards eyed us askance. The officer stood at the
left awaiting us; beyond him and on the other side
of the road, a post.
An unteroffizier ordered us to march by, one by
one, to give the Herr Offizier "Augen Links" in the
German fashion, and to the post, which represented
102
THE WAY THEY HAVE AT GIESSEN
another officer, an "Augen Rechts" when we should
come to it.
"I ll see him in hell first," I muttered to the man
next me. I was in the lead of the party. I shook
with excitement and fear of I knew not what.
As the command rang out I stepped out with a
swing, and with the action, decision came to me. As
I approached the officer he drew up slightly and
looked at me expectantly.
I gave him a stony stare, and passed on.
A few more steps and I reached the post. I pulled
back my shoulders with a smart jerk, got my arms
to swinging freely, snapped my head round so that
my eyes caught the post squarely and swung my
left hand up in a clean-cut parabola to "Eyes right,"
in good old regimental order.
A half dozen shocked sentries came up on the
double. It was they who were excited now. I was
master of myself and the situation. The unteroffi-
zier ordered me to repeat and salute. I did so liter
ally. The officer was, to all outward appearances,
the only other person there who remained unmoved.
My ardour had cooled by this time, and his very si
lence seemed worse than the threats of the guard.
103
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Nor was I exactly in love with my self-appointed
task. Nevertheless, I saw my mates watching me
and inwardly applauding. I was ashamed to quit.
I did it again. That won me another five days 7 cells.
104
CHAPTER XII
THE ESCAPE
Picking a Pal for Switzerland Cold Feet The Talk in the
Wood Nothing Succeeds Like Success and ! Sim
mons and Brumley Try Their Hand.
MERVIN SIMMONS of the yth, and Frank Brum
ley 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 to
gether. 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 re
marks which indicated certain sporting proclivities, I
broached the subject to him. He was most en
thusiastic. We decided on Switzerland as our ob
jective and awaited only the opportunity to make
a break.
105
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
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 con
versed 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-
106
THE ESCAPE
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 re
ceived a little sausage and a bit of bread for break
fast. 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, except
ing the rough map, which was drawn from hearsay
107
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
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. Oc
casionally 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
1 08
THE ESCAPE
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. 3
"Oh! They ll see us sure, Edwards and tele
graph 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 im
agination could envisage: Every bush was a Ger
man 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
109
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
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, except
ing 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 re
quired 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 per
sonal 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
no
THE ESCAPE
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 fol
lowed 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 ut
terly tragic to have failed without trying! Ed-
wards 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
in
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
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 in
credulous jeers. But it was all terribly discourag
ing and made me most despondent.
And that finished that trip to Switzerland.
A few days later Simmons and Brumley disap
peared. 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
112
THE ESCAPE
means for a real escape. Quite aside from my natu
ral desire for freedom I felt that my good name as a
soldier was at stake. However, I waited for an op
portunity to converse with Simmons and Brumley
before doing anything as I felt that their experi
ence 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 remov
ing. By morning they were well on the way to
Switzerland. They figured that they, too, could
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
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 lit
tle 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
114
THE ESCAPE
hours off. Simmons and Brumley were unarmed.
There was no use in running for it. So they sur
rendered with what grace they could. There was
the usual verdamning^ growling and prodding but
no really bad treatment. For this they were sen
tenced 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.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAITOR AT VEHNMOOR
The Swamp at Cellelaager Seven Hundred Men and Two
Small Stoves Taking the Stripes Down The Recre
ant Sergeant Major "Go Ahead an* Shoot !"
Gi ESSEN is in Hesse. Shortly after this we
were all sent to Cellelaager in Hanover. This was
the head camp of a series reserved for the punish
ment or the working of prisoners. Each unit re
tained the name of Cellelaager and received in ad
dition a number, as Cellelaager 1, Cellelaager 2 and
so on. There were grounds here providing a lot
for football, and a theatre run by the prisoners, for
which there was an entrance fee, and other like
amusements. These, however, were only for those
prisoners who were on good behaviour and who
were employed there. As such they were denied such
desperadoes as ourselves.
We remained there for two weeks and were then
sent to the punishment camp known as Vehnmoor
116
THE TRAITOR AT VEHNMOOR
or Cellelaager 6. This was a good day s ride away
and also in Hanover, fifteen kilometres from the big
military town of Oldenburg. Here we were turned
out to work on the moors with four hundred Rus
sians, one hundred French and Belgians and two
hundred British and Canadians. We were housed
in one large hut built on a swamp and were con
tinually wet. There were only two small stoves
for the seven hundred men and we had only a few
two pound syrup tins in which to cook. A poor
quality of peat was our only fuel. As only five
men could crowd round a stove at a time, one s
chances were rather slim in the dense mob, every
man-jack of whom was waiting to slip into the first
vacant place that offered.
We slept in a row along the wall, with our heads
to it. Overhead a broad shelf supported a similar
row of men. Above them were the windows. At
our feet and in the centre of the room, there was a
two foot passage way and then another row of men,
with two shelves housing two more layers of sleep
ers above them. Then another two foot passage
way, the row of men on the floor against the other
wall and the usual shelf full above them. The ver-
117
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
min were bad and presented a problem until we ar
ranged with the Russians to take one end to them
selves, the French and Belgians the middle and we
the other end. By this means we British were able
to institute precautionary measures amongst our
selves so that after feasting on the Russians and
finishing up upon the French, our annoying friends
usually turned about and went home again.
The swamp water was filthy, full of peat and
only to be drunk in minute quantities at the bidding
of an intolerable thirst. There was no other water
to be had and we simply could not drink this. The
Russians did, which meant another fatigue party to
bury them. The only doctor was an old German,
called so by courtesy ; but he knew nothing of medi
cine. As a corporal, I was held responsible for
twenty men. That implied mostly keeping track
of the sick and I have seen nineteen of my twenty
thus. But that made no difference. It was "Raus !"
and out they came, sick or well.
Every morning an officer stood at the gate as we
marched out to the moor, to take "Eyes right" and
a salute, for no useful purpose that we could see ex
cept to belittle a British soldier s pride. As cor-
118
THE TRAITOR AT VEHNMOOR
poral I was supposed to give that command to my
squad but rather than do so I took my stripes down,
although that ended my immunity as a "non-com"
from the labour of cutting peat. Others, I am sorry
to say, were glad to put the stripes up and at times
went beyond the necessities of the situation in en
forcing their rule on their comrades. It was one of
these who was found to be trading in and selling his
packages to his less fortunate comrades and who was
ostracized in consequence.
There were here at Vehnmoor, as there had been
at Giessen, a certain few of our own men who traded
on the misfortunes of their own comrades. This man
was the worst of them all. He was a sergeant-ma
jor in a certain famous regiment of the line in the
British Army. He was a fair sample of that worst
type which the army system so often delegates au
thority to and complains because that authority
does not meet with the respect it should on the part
of its victims.
He excelled in all the arts of the sycophant : The
pleasure of the guards was his delight, their dis
pleasure, his poignant grief. He assumed the au
thority of his rank with us, he reported the slight-
119
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
est of misdemeanours amongst us to the guards and
was instrumental in having many punished. These
and other things gave him and others of his kidney
the run of the main grounds so that they could
stretch their legs and have some variety in their
lives. Such liberty was there for any man who
would do as they did.
None of us were safe from these traitors. The
sergeant major in particular, spied on us, reporting
all criticisms of our guards and other things Ger
man. We raged. He had for hie virtue a small
room to himself in a corner of the hut. When par
cels came from England, addressed to the senior non
commissioned officer of his regiment, for him to dis
tribute; he called the guards in. Shortly they went
out with their coats bulging suspiciously. We were
then called to receive ours whilst he stood over, bully
ing us with all the abusive "chatter" which the
British service so well teaches. And afterward we
watched covertly, with all the cunning of the op
pressed, and saw him receive other stealthy favours
from the guards that were not within his arrange
ment with the Commandant.
So one of his own men who had a certain legal
120
THE TRAITOR AT VEHNMOOR
learning took down all these facts as I have recited
them and calling us together, bade us sign our names
in evidence of so foul a treachery. Which we gladly
did. And it was and is the prayer of all that when
the gates of the prison camps roll back this docu
ment will get to the War Office and there receive the
attention it deserves.
My comrades in misfortune here told me of an
other such a man who had gone away just before my
arrival at this camp. He, too, was a sergeant-ma
jor of a line regiment in the old army. I had known
him in the old days in India. In his own regiment
he was never known by his own name, but instead
by this one: "The dirty bad man." No one ever
called him anything else when referring to him.
That was his former record and this is what he did
here to keep the memory of it green.
He was instrumental in having fixed on us one
of the most terrible of army punishments. It ap
pears that some time before one of our men had
broken some petty rule of discipline and the Ger
mans had asked the sergeant-major what the punish
ment was in our army for such a "crime," as all of
fences are termed in the army.
121
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
"Number One Field Punishment or Crucifix
ion," had been his lying reply. That meant being
spread-eagled on the wheel of a gun limber, tied
to the spokes at wrist and ankle, with the toes off
the ground and the entire weight of the body on
the outraged nerves and muscles of those members.
Lacking a gun limber, the Germans used a post
with a cross-bar for this man s case. After that, this
was a recognized mode of punishment for many
petty offences in this camp.
It is true that this form of punishment is a part
of the so-called discipline of our army. But it was
not meted out for offences of the nature of this man s
and if it had been, the obvious thing for the sergeant-
major to have done would have been to have lied
like a man; instead of which he piled horror on
horror for his own countrymen. I have the facts
and names of these cases.
There will be many strange tales to come from
these camps in the fulness of time. No doubt some
will go against us, but the truth must be told at all
costs, else the evil goes on and on.
We were sent out one day to dig potato trenches
on the moors in a terrible rain. We stuck our spades
122
THE TRAITOR AT VEHNMOOR
in the ground and refused. The guards had French
rifles of the vintage of 1870 which carried cartridges
with bullets that were really slugs of lead. They
began to load. A little unteroffizzer tugged ex-
\J +* C-/C7
citedly at his holster for the revolver.
A big Canadian stepped up: "Wait a minute,
mate." He reached down to the little man s waist
and drew the gun.
He offered it to its owner, butt forward, "Now
go ahead and shoot, and we ll chop your damned
heads off."
The rest of us confirmed our leader s statement by
gathering around threateningly and making gruesome
and suggestive motions with our spades. There were
two hundred of us and only forty guards. We
meant business and they knew it. They took us
back to the laager and locked us up.
The following night, that of January 22nd, our
guards were reinforced by thirty more.
123
CHAPTER XIV
AWAY AGAIN
Why the Prisoners Walked Cold Feet Again The Man
Who Turned and Fled Brumley s Precious Legs The
Wait in the Wood The Cunning of the Hunted Bad
Days in the Swamps Within Four Miles of Freedom
The Kaiser s Birthday Another Trip to Holland.
SIMMONS and Brumley, together with my com
panion of the first escape, had determined to make
a break for it with me. And although we were not
quite ready at this time the addition to the guards
forced our decision. We had a scanty supply of
biscuits saved up and I had wheedled a file from a
friendly Russian ; Simmons got a bit of a map from
a Frenchman; and we secured a watch from a Bel
gian. With this international outfit we were ready,
except that we lacked a sufficient store of food.
However, there was no help for that.
The laager was a twelve-foot-high barbed wire
124
AWAY AGAIN
enclosure, eighty feet wide by three hundred long,
with the hut occupying the greater part of the
central space. There was sufficient room below
the bottom wire to permit the trained camp dogs
to get in and out at us.
They patrolled the four-foot lane that enclosed
the laager and wandered up and down it, their
tongues out, always on the alert. They were as
well confined as we were, since the outer wall of
wire was built down close to the ground. They
were very savage and seemed instinctively to regard
us as enemies; as all good German dogs should.
The sworn evidence of prisoners exchanged since
my escape mentions that in one case an imbecile Bel-
gian was daily led out to the fields, wrapped up in
several layers of clothes and then set upon by the
dogs under the guidance of their guards; this was
for the better instruction of the dogs.
At each corner of the laager there hung an arc
light. The sphere of light from those at the end did
not quite meet and so left a small shadow in the
center of the end fence.
As soon as night came we arranged that six other
men should walk to and fro from the end of the
125
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
hut to the shadow at the wire, as though for exer
cise. Others, ourselves included, clustered round the
end of the hut. I watched my chance, and when
the moment seemed favorable, fell into step beside
the promenaders.
We swung boldly out, intent apparently, on noth
ing. Our arrival at the inner wire synchronized
with that of one of the guards beyond the outer wire.
We turned about without appearing to have seen
him. Still walking briskly, we reached the hut and
turned again. The guard s back was now turned;
he was walking away. At his present rate of travel
he should be twenty yards off when we next reached
the wire. We dared not chance suspicion by slacken
ing our gait. My heart stopped.
As we reached the shadow I fell prone and lay mo*
tionless. No dogs were in sight. Niagara pounded
in at my ears but no hostile sound indicated that
I had been observed. I dragged myself carefully
through and under the clearance left for the dogs,
until my cap brushed the lower wires of the main
and outer fence. My feet still projected beyond the
inner wire into the main enclosure so that on their
126
Thursday 6
.
*r _ i
&>
/ Frida 7
,
~ "j? Ma,
r ^
* * * ~a*f
f
tura
**
RECORD OF SECOND ESCAPE AND RECAPTURE.
AWAY AGAIN
next trip one of my comrades inadvertently touched
my foot, startling me.
I held the strand in my left hand and fell to filing
with my right so that at the snap there should be no
noisy rebound of the spring-like wire. A post was
at my right, and, the wire having been nailed to it,
I was safe from this danger on that side.
The sound of the tramp of those faithful feet re
ceded but the sound of them came strongly back to
me like a message of hope.
By the time they were back once more I had cut
through three strands and was crawling cautiously
toward my objective, a pile of peat two hundred
yards distant, which seemed to offer cover as a
breathing spot and starting point. On the signal
from the promenaders that I was through the wire,
Simmons followed, and after him, Brumley. The
other man lived up to the example he had previously
set himself. He drew back in alarm and refused
to make the attempt.
With twenty-five guards all about and some only
thirty feet away, the very impudence of the plan of
fered our only hope of success. I still lacked fifty
yards of the peat heap when I heard three shots, next
127
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
the dogs, and then the general outcry which followed
the detection of Brumley.
I rose to my feet and ran. We had already
mapped out our course in advance by daylight, for
just such a contingency; so I struck boldly out. I
was still in the swamp to my knees, and under those
conditions even the short start we had might prove
sufficient, since our pursuers would also bog down.
The swamp was intersected by a series of small
ditches and scattered bushes, which added to the
difficulty of the passage. I heard Brumley flounder
ing and swearing behind and went back to pull him
out of a bottomless ditch. Simmons joined us while
I was still struggling with him. In another
hour Brumley s legs played out. We could still
make out the lights of the laager. It was vitally
necessary to push on; so we encouraged him as best
we could and managed, somehow, to reach the edge
of the swamp by daylight. We put ourselves on the
meagre rations our store allowed, one biscuit for
breakfast and another for supper, with a bit of choco
late on the side. We had apparently outdistanced
the pursuit. We prayed that our friends might not
be too. severely punished for their part in our escape.
128
AWAY AGAIN
We lay in the heather all day, soaked to the skin
with the brackish water of the swamp, the odor of
which still hung to our clothes. It was January and
very cold and sleep was impossible under such con
ditions. We nibbled our tiny rations and struck
out as soon as darkness came. Our plan was to go
straight across country, but Brumley could not navi
gate the rough going of the fields; although on the
level roads he made out fairly well. So we chanced
it on the latter.
Brumley was struggling along manfully but his
legs caused him great suffering. At about two
o clock in the morning we lay to in the shadow of a
clump of trees at the roadside, thinking to ease him
a bit. He flung himself down. Simmons massaged
Brumley s legs whilst I watched.
We had just said: "Come on," and they were ris
ing to their feet, when another figure stepped off the
road and in amongst our trees. It was so dark where
we stood that he probably would not have seen us
had not Brumley at that very moment been rising
to his feet. He appeared as much surprised as we
were and started back as though in amazement.
And then without more ado, he turned and fled the
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
way we had come whilst we made what haste we
could in the opposite direction, all equally alarmed.
Who he was or what he wanted, we could only
surmise. If he was not also an escaped prisoner then
he must have been badly wanted by the authorities
to have been travelling in such a fashion at such
an hour; and above all, to have been so alarmed by
this chance meeting with fugitives. In any event we
wished him luck and promptly forgot all about him.
Later on in the night our road led us directly into
a village. We hesitated as to what we should do.
Brumley was for pushing through. The alternative
was to go round and through the fields, lose valuable
time and play out Brumley s precious legs. It was
past midnight, so we decided on the village route,
and started on.
We passed through without being molested, but
just as we were leaving the other side some civilians
saw us and shouted "Halt !" and other words mean
ing "to shoot." We paid no attention. Espying a
wood in the distance, we struck out for it. Brum
ley was in misery and threw up the sponge. We
stopped to argue with him, at the same time drag
ging him along, and while doing so saw two more
130
AWAY AGAIN
civilians rushing up and shouting as they came.
Lights began to spring up all over the village.
Brumley stopped dead and refused to go farther.
We had previously agreed that if anything should
happen to any one of us the others were to push on,
every man for himself. No good could be gained by
fighting when we were so hopelessly outnumbered,
so Simmons and I rushed into the wood, swung
around and out again and lay down on the edge of it,
in time to see them take Brumley and come sweeping
by us in hot pursuit. The main body stopped only
a moment to inspect their capture, gathering around
poor Brumley so that we could not at first see what
had happened to him. Then several of them started
back toward the village, with him limping along at
their side. Ten yards away a knot of them gathered
and assisted another up into a tree to watch for us.
One handed him a rifle and the pursuit went on into
the wood. Occasionally we heard the sentinel stir
ring.
We scarcely breathed. It seemed impossible that
he could not hear the pounding of our hearts. We
grew quite stiff in our cramped positions, but feared
to shift a limb and waited for three-quarters of an
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
hour before we dared to worm our way cautiously
in the other direction. The snap of a twig was like
that of a rifle on the stillness of the night.
Once we stopped, thinking that certainly he had
heard us. It was only the beat of a night bird s
wings. We dared take only an inch at a time, slid
ing forward on our bellies and then waiting.
We met another sentry farther up, but worked
around him in safety and with more of ease, as we
were by this time on our feet.
Arriving at the end of the small wood, we walked
boldly across the intervening fields to another one,
large enough to afford cover for an army corps, and
there felt comparatively safe.
We were, however, very wet and cold and alto
gether miserable, buoyed up only by the liberty
ahead. As it was only two o clock, we pushed on
for several hours before stopping to lie by for the
day.
For days we carried on thus without discovery.
Each night was a repetition of the preceding one, an
interminable fighting of our way through dark for
ests, into and out of sloppy ditches, over fields and
132
AWAY AGAIN
through thorny hedges, dodging the lights of vil
lages.
We went solely by the stars, which Simmons un
derstood after a fashion, and, aided by our map, we
held fairly well to our general direction. We had
no other sources of information than our own good
sense. We watched the sky ahead at night for the
glow which might indicate to us the size of the com
munity ahead; and aided by a close observation of
railroads, telegraph wires and the quality of the
wagon roads and the quantity of travel on them,
were able to form fairly accurate estimates of where
we were and which places to avoid. Except on un
frequented byways we travelled by the fields, hug
ging the road from a distance. This made travel
arduous but safer.
At that, we were sometimes spoken to in neigh
borly greeting. We grunted indifferently in reply,
as an unsociable man might. When, as sometimes
happened, people rose up in front of us from gate
ways or hidden roads, it was very disconcerting.
On such occasions only the darkness saved us, for
we took no chances, wherever there were lights.
It was really harder in the day time; when, try as
133
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
we might, we could not count on avoiding for our
hiding place the scene of some labourer s toil or per
haps the covert of some child s play. We slept by
turns with one always on guard. It was difficult in
deed for the guard not to neglect his duty, so ut
terly weary were we. The lying position we needs
must retain all day long aided that tendency, and
yet we were always so wet and cold that real sleep
was difficult to secure.
In this district the swamps were numerous and
difficult to cross. The small ditches and canals that
drained them or the almost equally swampy fields
added to our grief. The feet slipped back at each
muddy step: We fell into ditches: Dogs barked:
And we almost wept.
Once a dog helped us by his barking. It was night
and we were crossing a very bad swamp, an old
peat bog which was full of the ditches and holes that
the peat had been taken from. These were full of
black water which merged so naturally into the pre
vailing darkness that we repeatedly fell into them.
We floundered out of one only to fall into another,
uncertain where we were going and lost to all sense
of direction. There was no vestige of track or road.
134
AWAY AGAIN
It was then that the dog barked. We stopped to
listen, conversing in low tones. Certainly, we
thought, the dog must be near a house and that
meant dry land and a footing. So we advanced in
the direction of the sound, stopping to listen to each
fresh outburst so as to make certain that we should
not approach too closely. Apparently he had smelt
us on the wind.
Before we reached the dog we felt the solid ground
under foot and were off once more at a tangent from
the sound of his barking.
The swamps were a great trouble to us, as were
also some of the fields, so cut up by ditches and
hedges were they, and yet, in order to avoid the roads
and the wires, we frequently had to lay a circuitous
route to avoid these obstacles or else chance the road,
which we would not do. Often, when we could see
our course lying straight ahead on the road, we put
about and tacked off and away from it because a
parallel course was impossible on account of the
swampy nature of the ground. With these bad
places passed we could perhaps pull back to our true
course again, but only after double the travel that
should have been necessary.
135
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
However, we did not mind that so much. Nor did
we greatly mind the short rations we were on. The
other privations were too severe for us to notice these
minor ones.
The worst was the continual state of wetness and
the resultant coldness of our bodies. It was not so
bad at night when we were walking and so kept our
blood circulating, but by day it was very bad. We
used to pray for night and the end of our enforced
rest. We were never dry or warm but were always
very cold and miserable. The sun, on those rare
occasions when it came forth, did not appear until
ten or eleven in the morning. By mid-afternoon
it was again a thing of the past. At best it was
very weak and we had to hide in the bushes where
it could not reach us. All we could do was to take off
one garment at a time and thrust it cautiously out
near the edge of our hiding-place to some spot on
which the sun shone. Under these conditions we
grew steadily weaker on our allowance of two bis
cuits a day ; for the time of year precluded the possi
bility of there being any crops for us to fall back
upon for food, and it was too risky a proceeding to
attempt to steal from the householders.
136
GERMAN PRISONERS MARCHING THROUGH GOOD NATURED ENGLISH
CROWDS AT SOUTHAMPTON.
HIGH EXPLOSIVES BURSTING OVER GERMAN TRENCHES. BRITISH
DEAD IN FOREGROUND.
AWAY AGAIN
On the eighth day we reached the River Ems.
We had no difficulty in recognising it, as it was the
only large one on our map that lay on the route we
had chosen, and we had passed nothing even faintly
resembling it, with the exception of some large ca
nals, which were easily recognizable as such and
which we had swum. We made out trees which ap
peared to be on the other shore.
We regretfully decided that it was too late to
attempt the crossing that night. The daylight
proved the line of trees to be merely the tops of a
flooded woodland. The shore was a good quarter
of a mile away. It was January; the water was cold
and full of floating ice, and very swift. Fording was
out of the question. For two days and nights we
wandered up and down the bank, vainly seeking a
boat or raft with which to make the crossing. We
finally discovered a large bridge, which was sub
merged except for its flood-time arches. There was
no sign of life and it looked safe, so we proceeded to
cross. We discovered, however, that we had not
reached the bridge proper, but were merely on the
approach to it. We dropped off onto the main steel
portion. The wind beat the cold rain against us so
137
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
that we could neither see nor hear. However, we
went on and were nearly across when suddenly a
light flashed on us and we heard a startled "Halt!"
We could barely make out the mass of buildings
that indicated the line of the shore. It seemed too
bad to throw up the sponge so easily.
I said under my breath to Simmons : "We ll push
right on," and loudly: "Hollander!" thinking we
might perhaps get far enough away to make a run
for it. But there was no show : It was too far to
the shore.
There was a shouted command and the clatter of
rifle-bolts striking home. It was no use. We
stopped and shouted that we would not run, and
then waited while they advanced toward us.
The elderly Landsturmers guarding the bridge
gathered us in and took us over to their guardroom
at the hotel. We judged the incident to be an epoch
in the monotony of their soldierly duties. They were
very good to us. Two of them moved away from
the fire to make room for our wet misery and they
gave us a pot of boiling water, two bivouac cocoa
tablets and a loaf of black bread. The news spread,
and civilians dropped in to stare at and question us.
138
AWAY AGAIN
In the morning the entire population came to see the
Englander prisoners. We learned that we were
only four miles from Holland, and cursed aloud.
The town was Lathen and when, the next morning,
we discovered that it was gayly bedecked with flags
and bunting we decided that we were indeed per
sonages of note if we could cause such a celebration.
However, it was only the Kaiser s birthday.
In the afternoon they took us by rail to Meppen
and shoved us in the civilian jail, where we were
allowed a daily ration of two ounces of black bread,
one pint of gruel and three-quarters of a pint of cof
fee for two days, until, on January thirtieth, an es
cort came from Vehnmoor. They roped us together
with a clothes-line, arm to arm, and marched us
through the principal streets by a roundabout route
to the station so that all might see.
We were unwashed, unshaven and so altogether
disreputable as to satisfy the most violent hatred
such for instance as we found here. It did not re
quire our pride to keep our hearts up or to keep us
from feeling the humiliation of so cruel an ordeal.
We simply did not experience the painful sensations
that such a proceeding would ordinarily arouse in
139
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
the breast of any man; just as after heavy shell-fire
no man feels either fear or courage ; he is too dazed
and stupid for either. Many spat at us and good
old England er Schwein came to us from every side.
It seemed like meeting an old friend, after our few
days away from it. The faces of these people were
different from those we had left at camp but their
hearts were the same. They lined the streets and
jeered at us. But we were too tired and hungry
to care.
And that ended that trip to Holland.
140
CHAPTER XV
PAYING THE PIPER
Sheer Starvation Slipping It Over the Sentry The Court
Martial Thirty Days Cells No Place for a Gourmand
In Napoleon s Footsteps Parniewinkel Camp- "Like
Father, Like Son" The Last Kind German Running
Amuck The Torture of the Russians The Continental
Times "K. of K. Is Gone!"
Upon arrival at camp, we were put in cells for
.eleven days while awaiting our court-martial.
During that period we suffered terribly from sheer
starvation. The daily rations consisted of a poor
soup and a small quantity of black bread. Hungry
though I was, there was only one way by which I
could eat it hold my breath and swallow. I am
aware that the Germans consider this food quite
palatable but that may be because they are accus
tomed to it. It was to us the resort of starving
men. The cells were quite dark four-by-eight-
foot wooden boxes. The confinement and short ra-
141
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
tions on top of our arduous journey, during which
we had had nothing but the two biscuits a day,
caused us to grow weaker daily.
Our friends, however, contrived occasionally to
get portions of their food to us. They maintained
a sentry of their own, whose duty it was to watch
for and report our trips to the latrine. It was unsafe
for us to ask for this permission more than once a
day with the same guard. As the latter was fre
quently changed, however, we were enabled to work
the scheme to the limit.
At the worst, this let us out of our cells for a few
minutes; and, if we were lucky, enabled us to get a
handful of broken food. Seeing us come out, the
prisoner on watch would stroll into the hut and pass
the word. Shortly, another would come out to us
and in passing frequently manage to slip us some
thing. On one long-to-be-remembered occasion,
a man of the King s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry,
managed to "square" the guard, a pleasant-faced
young German, in some manner we could never
fathom, so that the latter actually brought to us two
spoons and a wash basin full of boiled barley, which
142
PAYING THE PIPER
we ate in the latrine. That was the most humane
act experienced from German hands during my fif
teen months sojourn in Germany.
On the eleventh day we were marched out to what
would be the Germans orderly room. A Canadian
who had picked up a smattering of German acted as
interpreter. He did what he could for us, which
was little enough.
Asked why we had tried to escape, we feared to
tell the truth, that we had been forced to it by ill-
treatment; so merely stated that we were tired of
Germany and wanted to go home. The presiding
officer said: "Well, you fellows have been a lot
of trouble to us. I ve been told to tell you that if
you give us any more; we ll ha\e a little shooting
bee." We were sentenced to thirty days dark cells.
That was our court-martial.
One lucky thing happened to us here : When they
took our map away it fell in two, as a result of hav
ing been folded in our pockets. The officer crumpled
one piece up, made a handful of it and tossed it
away, at the same time shoving the other half at me,
which I eagerly clutched. That piece showed the
portion of Germany adjoining the Holland border.
143
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Our thirty days dark cells were spent in the mili
tary prison at Oldenburg. As before, they were
four-by-eight feet in size, but with a high ceiling
which gave me room to stand on my hands for ex
ercise. Each of us was confined alone. The walls
and floor of the cells were of stone ; the shutters, of
steel which were always closed. There was no furni
ture other than the three boards which served as
the mockery of a bed and which were chained up
to the wall every morning. A small shelf which held
the water pitcher was the only other furnishing. No
ray of light was permitted to enter the place. The
month was February but there were no blankets, and
the place was unheated. The rations consisted of
half a pound of black bread and a pitcher of water,
which were thrust in to us every morning, so that
except for the guard who unchained the boards at
night we had no visitation in the twenty-four long,
long hours.
I cannot remember that I brooded much. Rather,
I let my mind run out as a tired sleeper might,
which was no doubt fortunate for me. My family
were greatly in my thoughts. I wondered how my
wife was making out and if she was receiving her
144
PAYING THE PIPER
separation allowance all right, for I had heard of
many cases where the reverse had happened; and
whether the boys were well and going to school. I
hoped that all was well with them and that they
did not worry too much over my lot.
As I was not permitted either to send or receive
letters during the period of my trial and incarcera
tion, my wife was in fact in great distress of mind
about me as she received no word for many weeks
and imagined the worst. And when at last I could
write it was only to say that although I had been
well I had been unable to write, leaving her to draw
her own conclusions.
The cell door opened promptly at five o clock
every morning. We were allowed ten minutes in
which to clean our cell, go to the lavatory and wash
up, all under guard. These were the only occasions
during which we had an opportunity of seeing one
another or the other prisoners. These rites were all
performed in silence, and communication of any de
scription was forbidden and so keenly watched for
as to be impossible. However, Simmons and I got
what small comfort we could out of seeing one an
other frequently, and by this time there had grown
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
up between us such a mutual respect as to make us
value this highly. The other prisoners included Ger
mans as well as our allies and there were some
civilian German prisoners. The German soldier
prisoners were mostly in for committing the various
crimes of soldiering which in the British Army would
have put them under the general head of defaulters.
That classification, however, had been done away
with in the German Army. The slightest infringe
ment of discipline was punished with cells. Non
commissioned officers received the same punishment
as the men, without, however, losing their rank, as
would have been the case in our army.
Upon finishing the ten minutes allotted to us we
were forced to re-enter our cells and stand against
the wall, at the back, so that we could neither see nor
communicate with one another until the guard got
around a few minutes later and looked in to see that
all was as it should be before slamming the door.
There was no use in trying to stretch the ration
out for two meals. I tried to and gave it up. And
after that I ate the bread, filled up on water and
sat down on the cold stone floor for another twenty-
four hours of waiting.
146
PAYING THE PIPER
My thoughts dwelt greatly on food. We were
supposed to receive soup every fourth day, but we
did not. The prisoners of other nationalities did,
and in addition were exercised regularly. At least
we could hear the rattle of their spoons against their
bowls and the tramp of their feet. The slow starv
ing was, to my mind, the worst. And after that the
loss of sleep. If one did drop off, the cold soon
caused a miserable awakening. I tried not to think,
and did all the gymnastic drill I knew, even to stand
ing on my hands in the darkness of the cell. I knew
that if I gave up it would be all off, for I could daily
feel myself getting wabbly as the confinement and
starvation, added to my already enfeebled and
starved condition when I entered, began to tell on
me. It must be borne in mind that I had already
served eleven days solitary confinement on insuffi
cient food, after several days of jail on ditto, and
eight days while escaping, during which I had been
continually wet and without food, other than the
two biscuits daily, before beginning to serve this sen
tence. Simmons, of course, was in the same plight.
The last day, that of February 22nd, rolled
around finally. We were taken from our cells at nine
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
o clock and marched out for an unknown destination
which we knew only as a stronger punishment camp
than the others we had been in. Ahead of us we
saw poor Brumley ; but were unable to communicate
with him, and I do not know whether he saw us or
not. That was all we ever learned directly of his
fate. His wife, in Toronto, has since informed me
that he is still in Germany and has only lately been
recaptured after another attempt at escape.
At eleven that night we arrived at our destination.
This was the strong punishment camp of Parnie-
winkel, in Hanover, on the road over which Na
poleon had marched to his doom at Moscow. We
wondered if we, too, were going to ours.
We had had no food that day, nor did we get any
that night, but were shoved into a hut full of Rus
sians, who did not know what to make of us. We
were so long of hair and beard, so ragged, so emaci-
dj 7 \j\ij *
ated and so altogether filthy that they must have
thought us anything but British soldiers.
Later we found that there were, in all, between
four and five hundred Russian, eighty French and
Belgian, and, including ourselves, eleven British
prisoners, of whom Simmons and I were the only
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PAYING THE PIPER
Canadians, all shoved into two huts in the middle of
the usual barbed-wire laager.
As Giessen was the best camp, so this one was the
worst of all those we were to know. It was not so
wet as the swamp at Vehnmoor, but the drinking
water was even worse than the brackish, peat-laden
water there. The general sanitary arrangements were
terrible and the food was worse than at Giessen,
the camp in which that lack had been the worst fea
ture among many bad ones. And on top of it all
the treatment was very bad, much worse than any
we had previously known.
A soup, made from a handful of pickled fish roe
and a few potatoes, was a stock dish, and terrible to
taste. On one night a week we received a raw herr
ing fresh from the brine barrel, which we were sup
posed to eat raw and uncleaned, but could not. On
one day in seven there was a weak cabbage soup and
of course, a small daily ration of potato-and-rye
bread. Fortunately, our parcels were beginning to
arrive by this time, so that, in fact, we fared better
than at any of the better camps, in the matter of
food. With the Russians it was different, and we
used to give our soup to them in exchange for their
149
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
share of boiling water, which we used in conjunction
with the contents of our parcels and which they had
no use for anyway, especially for washing purposes.
It was difficult to get an opportunity to boil water
for the making of tea or cocoa, even when parcels
furnished the essentials, as there were so many men
and so few stoves that it was a constant struggle to
get near the latter.
However, as we had refused to work, we did not
require very much food. We used also to give our
black bread to the Russians, for which they insisted
on doing our washing, though it was little enough of
that they did for themselves. They were very good
and simple men.
Ours was a good bunch of fellows and gave freely
to one another and to the unfortunate Russians, who
rarely received parcels. There was no selling or
trading on misfortune here, as in some of the other
camps we had been in. The Germans themselves
were short of necessities here. They hated to come
to the Eng landers to buy, so used to send the Rus
sians to beg for soap which they would not use in
any event, and in this case simply sold to the guards.
Discovering this, we shut down on indiscriminate
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PAYING THE PIPER
giving. Soap or any other fatty substance was by
that time very scarce in Germany, amongst the lower
classes at least. I was the only "non-com" in our lot,
and so put up the stripes I had taken down to avoid
giving Augen Rechts at Vehnmoor. I used that au
thority now to persuade my fellow Britishers to give
to the unfortunate Russians rather than to the
French, who, like ourselves, were receiving parcels.
A boy of five years or thereabouts used to come
regularly to the wire, upon which he would climb
and hang like some foul spider on its web. Grasp
ing it in both small hands and kicking vainly at it
and us, he would scream : "Englander Schwein," and
I know not what other names, spitting venom like
a little wildcat. This was not the riffraff of the
camp. The boy was the son of the camp Command
ant, and the apple of his father s eye and the thing
was often done under that eye and amid the vicious
applause of the young father and his terrible crew.
The Commandant was a young chap, a lieutenant.
What he lacked in years he made up in hate. He
was known as an England hater. We were poison
to him. The latrine, a mere shallow pit, was just
outside the door of our hut and the Commandant
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
saw to it that the latrine fatigue was always wished
off on to the British. We were made to bail it out
daily with buckets, which we then carried to the
surrounding fields, on which we spread the contents
while the Commandant and guards laughed. The
unteroffizier in immediate charge of us, if left alone
r
would not make us do this. He was the last kind
German I remember, and I have mentioned all whom
I can recall as having performed the slightest act of
kindness to us, even of the most negative quality.
He used to say that it was a pity to treat us so;
that such a job was good enough for the Russians,
who were no soldiers, anyhow, and who smelled bad
and would not wash; but for us who were soldiers
it was a great shame.
The vermin were so bad here that we chanced
further trouble by writing on post cards as though
to friends in England, and complained. We knew
that they would be intercepted and go to the Com
mandant. They did. We were marched to Celle-
laager to go through the fumigating machine. We
went into a large hut, stripped, tied our clothes in a
bundle and shoved them into the large oven to bake
for five hours while we sat round with nothing on
152
PAYING THE PIPER
but a smile. In the interval we were made to run
the clippers closely over our heads and bodies. There
were sores on some of the Russians as big as a hand,
eaten deep into by the vermin and the bones threat
ened to break through the skin of some as we sat
about naked, shivering. Uncleanly at best and de
nied soap here, the lower class of them neglected all
the rules of cleanliness. Their "non-coms" were the
reverse, being almost without exception men of some
education and general attainments.
Upon our return to this camp we were told by a
friendly Russian in the orderly room that the post
cards were being held there as evidence against us.
We begged him to give them to us. He did so, and
we had barely finished destroying them when a Ger
man officer, accompanied by a file of men, entered
and demanded them. We explained that they had
been destroyed. He would not believe us. We
pointed to the charred ashes. He searched our
bodies, our beds and the scanty furnishing of the hut,
naturally without avail. The Russian orderly was
severely admonished and our fire was cut off as
punishment.
The treatment at this camp was uniformly bad.
153
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
The next morning the Raus blew at four-thirty in
stead of five, as was customary. While we were
still engaged in dressing the guards rushed in, some
with fixed bayonets, others with them gripped short,
as with daggers. The leader wore a button, the in
signia of non-commissioned rank. He gave a ber
serker roar of rage and charged furiously at an in
offensive Russian and stabbed the poor fellow in the
neck; while his victim lay back in pleading terror,
with outstretched arms. And then, still roaring, he
slashed a Frenchman who was walking past, on the
back of the head. Going down the hut, he espied
Harckum, of the East Lancashire Regiment, tying
his shoes. Without warning he plunged at him, and,
striking, laid open the entire side of the man s face,
splitting the ear so that it hung in two pieces. This
was all quite in order because we were slow in
dressing.
The Russians, with the exception of a lucky few
who received some from a Russian society in Eng
land, got no parcels, and suffered accordingly. They
were more amenable to discipline than we were, and
perhaps because of their hunger used to go out daily
to work on the moors from daylight until dark.
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PAYING THE PIPER
They were a cheerful lot, considering everything,
little given to thinking of their situation and not
blessed by any great love of country nor perhaps the
pleasantest recollections of it; and to that extent at
least appeared to be comparatively satisfied, even
under ill treatment. Ill fed as they were, they used
frequently to fall out at their work from sheer ex
haustion, which the Germans said was only laziness
and malingering and for which they would be re
turned to a point near the laager, where we were, for
their punishment. By the Commandant s orders this
consisted of forcing them to run the gauntlet of two
lines of soldiers who jabbed them with bayonets if
they fell into a walk until the victims could run
no more and dropped in their tracks. The Germans
would then roll their eyelids back for signs of sham
ming, and if any such indications were shown, they
were jabbed again and usually were, anyhow
until their failure to respond proved that they were
really unconscious.
This happened with alarming frequency on a
regular schedule, forenoon and afternoon, to all Rus
sians who refused to work. On one occasion we saw
six or eight of them laid out unconscious at one time
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
in this manner. We wished to do something for
them, but were refused permission, and one man
who was thought to be a ring leader was selected to
make an example of; he was awarded seven days
cells.
We had previously agreed that if we were
awarded this punishment; we should refuse to run
the gauntlet and should let them do their worst.
There was no more heard of all this, but after that
the Russians were punished on the other side of a
belt of trees just outside the laager, where we could
not see them, though their piteous cries could plainly
be distinguished.
Three of the Russians broke away from this camp,
and finding themselves near the stores, crawled in
the window and stole a half of a pig. They were
recaptured, and, after doing thirty days cells, were
forced to work out the price of the pig at the rate of
thirty pfennigs or six cents a day, which ordi
narily would have been credited to them for the
buying of necessities. And pork came high in Ger
many.
There was one kind of pill for all ailments. That
however, may have been only stupidity. At least
156
PAYING THE PIPER
the practice is not confined to the prison camps nor
the army of Germany, as all British soldiers know.
But even these were not for the British.
On another occasion a party of Russians arrived
from another camp twelve miles away.
They said that some Englishmen there who had
refused to work had been shot at until all were
wounded in the legs.
We continued to receive our old friend, the Con
tinental Times, here, and through it first learned of
the Skager-Rack or Jutland battle, in which, the
paper claimed, over thirty major British ships had
been sunk, in addition to a larger number of smaller
ones. The Times said it was a great victory for the
Germans. The last we doubted and the first we
knew to be untrue, since some of the ships they
claimed to have sunk had been destroyed previous
to our capture, nine months before. It was in the
Times, too, that we first heard of Kitchener s end.
We could not believe it, and for a month laughed
at the guard s insistence on the story, until one day
a post card arrived from England, saying: "K. of K.
is gone." That was a terrible blow to us, for to the
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
British soldier; Kitchener was the tangible expres
sion of the might of his Empire.
Some of our party of eleven British had been
prisoners since Mons and they were in a very bad
way. The poor food, the lack of the fundamental
necessities of the human frame, the terrible mo
notony of the continual barbed wire, the same faces
round them, mostly unfriendly, all combined to have
a most depressing effect, not only upon their bodies,
but upon their minds. Many of them will never be
of any use again. Compared to Ladysmith, when
that place was besieged in the South African War,
the latter, terrible though it was, was far and away
better than this, even if we did live on horse meat at
the last in Ladysmith.
There was a certain amount of vice here, induced
by the life. A kilted Highlander was accused of
having fathered a child in a German family, where
he had been employed. We did not learn the facts
of the case; but such, at least, was camp gossip and
it served to detract materially from the habitual
despondency of our lot.
158
CHAPTER XVI
THE THIRD ESCAPE
Saving Up for the Day A Special Brand Watchful
Waiting Off Again Why the Man in the Moon
Laughed A German Idyll The Narrow Escapes.
SIMMONS and I had been planning on another es
cape ever since our recapture. So we kept on our
good behaviour, while we saved up food for Der
Tag. We had hitherto refused to work, as had the
remaining Britishers, but in order to keep ourselves
fit; we finally volunteered to carry the noon ration
of soup out to the Russians who worked on the moor.
Our job consisted of carrying an immense can of
soup, swung high on a pole from our shoulders, out
to the workers, under guard of course. Starting at
eleven each day and, by permission of the guard, oc
casionally resting, we were usually back by one
o clock. Each day we saved a portion of our food.
We wanted twenty days rations each, estimating
that it would take us that long to walk to Holland.
159
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
We specialised on concentrated foods from our par
cels biscuits, tinned meats, and so on. We had
our cache in a hole, dug under cover of night, under
the flooring of the hut. It was unsafe to keep food
on our bodies or near our beds, as the guards were in
the habit of calling the Raus at all hours, and some
times, several times during the night. It might be
at twelve, two or four, although it was never alike
on any two nights in succession, except that they al
ways searched us. We could see no reason for this ;
other than to break our rest and perhaps our spirits,
as at Giessen Camp. Certainly, no one would carry
any forbidden thing on his person, under such sur
veillance, and they well knew we could hide any
thing we wished in other places ; as we did.
Each Saturday morning, Simmons and I paraded
for paint. We stood, while a big Russian, with a
brush and bucket, painted large red and green circles
on our breasts, backs and knees. Thin stripes were
also painted down the seams of our trousers and
sleeves and around the stiff crowns of our caps. This
was to mark us as dangerous characters. As such
we received more of the unwelcome Raus attentions
1 60
THE THIRD ESCAPE
than the others and were the more wary in conse
quence.
We were busy opening our mail on one of those
rare occasions, when Simmons gave a startled excla
mation. I looked up and saw him gazing curiously
at a small cheese which he turned slowly around in
his hand. As I stepped to his side, a guard came in.
He hastily shoved the cause of the strange behaviour
into his pocket. When the guard had gone ; he passed
me a letter to read. It was from his brother in
Canada. "I received your letter all right and am
sending you a special brand of cheese," I read and
understood.
We waited on tiptoe until night, to open the
cheese. It was one of the cream cheeses, so popular
in Canada, no bigger than my closed hand. We
gingerly unwrapped the tin foil and broke it open.
To our great joy, in the hollow heart of it there was
tucked away the tiny compass Simonds had written
for from Vehnmoor just before our second escape.
With it were four American quarters.
Not anticipating this good luck, we had exercised
our ingenuity to construct a rude compass of our own
out of a safety-razor blade and an eyelet from my
161
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
boot. It was within fifteen to twenty degrees of the
true north. In addition we had a safety lamp, which
one of the guards had long been looking for under
the impression that he had lost it.
We now had our twenty days rations saved up
and so took turns sitting up at night, awaiting our
chance. We spent two months in this watchful wait
ing, watching the wire and the sentries. But no
opportunity offered. We took turn about, one man
on watch all night long, every night. He could not
seem to watch but must lie in his place, observing all
movement in the hut and listening carefully for any
indicative noises outside. Occasionally, he might
step outside and ostentatiously walk about as though
sleepless, and, if spoken to, say that he was not well.
But always there were the shining eyes of the
watching dogs, growling, if one came too near, and
outside the stodgy sentries; and above all, much
light.
So we determined to volunteer for work, figuring
that they were so short of men that they would not
lightly refuse us. It so happened that ten men were
asked for that Saturday to hoe turnips on a near-by
farm. The pay was thirty pfennigs or six cents
162
THE THIRD ESCAPE
a day. We volunteered and were accepted without
cavil. They thought our spirit gone and that we
had accepted the inevitable. We reasoned that if
we worked hard while we studied the lie of the land
we might be asked for again, could go prepared, and
make a break for it.
And so it fell out. We worked hard all that day,
at the same time impressing the topography of the
country upon our minds. At the close of the day we
were taken to the farm for our supper of potatoes
and buttermilk and then marched off to the laager,
four miles distant. On the following Monday we
were ordered to go out to the same place. Unfor
tunately we could not take our store of food as its
bulk would have meant our detection. In addition
to the equipment already mentioned I carried two
packages of tobacco, a shaving brush and a box of
matches. Simmons had a terrible razor which would
not shave, four boxes of matches and a small piece
of soap. These were all our worldly possessions. It
will be seen that, true to our British tradition, the
shaving outfit constituted the most formidable part
of our impedimenta.
We worked all day. And so did the rain. We
163
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
knocked off for supper at eight o clock. The three
guards escorted us to the farmhouse, but after lock
ing the front door, went into an adjoining room
with the farmer for their own meal. The back door
was forgotten. We were famished, so fell to on the
supper of buttermilk and potatoes. I finished first
and strolled lazily over to the door. Besides Sim
mons, there were seven Frenchmen and an English
man, all of whom were still at table and none of
them aware of our plans. I carelessly opened the
door and stood on the sill a moment. Still pour
ing. "Come here, Simmons, and see this. We re
going to get wet before we get back." Simmons
shoved his chair back and joined me. We both
stepped outside and gently shut the door.
Once more we were on our way ! We found our
selves at the edge of the village in which the farm
ers hereabouts had their homes. We worked our
way carefully round the outskirts and made for a
bit of a wood a mile and a half away. We were only
half way to our objective when the village bells
began to ring. Once more the hue and cry was on!
When the deep baying of the dogs joined in we
said "Ataboy !" cast aside all concealment and began
164
THE THIRD ESCAPE
to run for it. We reached the wood safely enough,
but it turned out to be only a thin fringe of trees,
offering no concealment whatever. We dashed
through them. On the other side a village opened
up. Back to the wedge of wood we went. A good-
sized ditch with a foot or so of water in it ran along
the edge of the wood. Its sides were covered with
heather, which drooped far down into the water.
We flung ourselves into it, after first shoving the tin
box containing our precious matches into the heather
above. Pitch darkness would not come until ten
o clock. During the intervening two hours we lay
on our backs in the water with only the smallest pos
sible portion of our faces projecting. Once the guard
jumped over the ditch less than four yards away.
We suffered intensely, for, although it was late
August, the water was very cold.
When things had become quiet and daylight had
passed we withdrew ourselves from the muck, and
after rubbing our numbed bodies to restore the cir
culation, struck out across the country, intent on
shoving as much distance as possible between our
selves and the camp before another day rolled round.
We knew that the alarm would be out and the whole
165
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
country roused, with every man s hand against us.
We were getting used to that. I, for one, had de
termined not to be taken alive this time. But I cer
tainly did not want to be put to the test. So we
plowed our way through oat and rye fields and over
and through ditches many of them. Once we
stripped our soggy clothes off to swim a river that
faced us. In no place did the water come above our
knees; but what it lacked in depth, it made up for
in coldness. We saw none of the humour in that,
so we cursed it and stumbled on, two very tired men.
We pulled handfuls of oats and chewed dryly on
them as we plunged up to our waists through the
crops. We reckoned that we had made thirty miles
by morning and apparently had outdistanced our
pursuers.
One night early in our pilgrimage, we espied some
cows in a field. Simmons had been a farmer in
Canada and so was our agricultural and stock au
thority here. He plunged through the hedge to see
if he could not capture a hat full of milk whilst I
stood guard outside. I stepped into the shadow of
some trees, and occasionally I could hear a guarded *
166
THE THIRD ESCAPE
"Soo Cow! : footsteps and then as like as not, a
muffled curse. I smiled.
Two figures came hurriedly down the road. I
pressed back against the bole of the tree, holding
my breath. It was fairly light on the road and to
my amazement I saw two men who wore French uni
forms. Also they had heavy packs on their back.
That last meant but one thing food.
I rose to my feet: "Kamerad!"
One of them stopped short. The other pressed on.
He muttered something under his breath and the
other broke into a trot to catch up.
I edged along, trying desperately to be friendly.
That made them the more timid. They would have
none of me. No further word was exchanged just
then except for a repetition of my "Kamerad."
I whistled softly to Simmons. That alarmed
them the more. They lengthened their stride. So
did I mine.
One said something I could not catch. They half
halted and made a brave attempt to pose as Ger
mans, to judge by their guttural talk and brassy
front.
I could not explain, although I tried in the half
167
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
light to show my friendliness, and Simmons, now a
few rods away, did likewise. I endeavoured to ad
dress them in French and could not. I tried
German. That was worse and the final result
chaos.
All I could think of was "Kamerad." I kept on
like a parrot, foolishly repeating it.
All this took but a moment and then they were
gone and we after them.
So there were they, walking hurriedly, fearful of
us for Germans no doubt and casting uneasy glances
back. I followed slowly, at a loss to know what
to do, my eyes glued on the inviting squareness of
their heavy packs. Simmons jogged behind, en
deavouring to catch up. The moon laughed at all
four of us.
"Come on," I said. They re Frenchmen. We ll
follow them. They have two packs on their backs !
Grub ! And maybe we can bum them for a bit."
Simmons needed no second invitation but set out
as eagerly as I in cautious pursuit; so fearful were
we of alarming our quarry. Our eyes were glued
on their packs.
Just then the road opened up into a broad ex-
168
THE THIRD ESCAPE
panse of heather. And there we lost them. We
beat about in the heather for a long time, and called
loudly, but without avail. They were no doubt ly
ing down, hiding.
We found some potatoes in a field that night,
dug them up with our bare hands and ate them raw.
We were very sad when we thought of those packs.
It was, I remember, on the day following that
we saw some of the lighter side of German life.
The woods thereabouts were cut up into big blocks,
as city streets are. We were laying to in one of
them, thankful for the thickness of our shelter
when we heard laughing voices and then a gust of
laughter as a flying group of girls and boys romped
past. They played about for half an hour, causing
us great alarm by their youthful fondness for sudden
excursions into unlikely spots, after nothing in par
ticular. The oldest of the group, a sizable boy of
seventeen or thereabouts and a pretty girl of near
that age, hung back long after the younger children
had passed on. We had little to fear from them.
They were quite evidently engrossed in one another.
He argued earnestly, while she listened with a half-
smile. Once, he made as if to take her hand but she
169
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
drew back and stiffened. He ignored the rebuff.
A moment afterward he said something that pleased
her so well that the last we saw of them his arm
was about her waist as they went down the path
together.
Parniewinkel lay forty to fifty miles northeast of
Bremen, which in turn was one hundred and fifty
miles from the Holland border. We reckoned on
having to walk double that in covering the stretch,
and figured on twenty-one days for the trip.
My diary for that day, August 22, 1916, reads:
"Still raining. Soaked and cold. Breakfast, dinner
and supper: turnips and oats." The night was a
repetition of the preceding one, and made worse by
the number of small swamps we had to struggle
through. The next day s diary reads : "Rain stopped
and not so cold. Fair cover; still soaked but con
fident."
We had our first narrow escape that day. We
were lying in the corner of a hedge. It was so misty
as to give almost the effect of night, but so long
past day as to make travelling unduly dangerous.
When the mist lifted we found ourselves within
fifty yards of a thickly populated village with just
170
Supday21
191
Monday
>
Tuesday ^2
SALIENT DETAILS OF THE THIIU) ESCAPK.
THE THIRD ESCAPE
a narrow strip of field between. We could hear all
the early morning bustle of any village, the world
over. This was about three o clock. An old man
followed by a dog made straight for us. I had just
come off the watch, which we took turn about. Sim
mons whistled cautiously to me, the very sound a
warning to be quiet.
I looked up. The old man wandered along the
hedge and stood over him for several minutes.
It was very trying but he lay motionless, for fear
of the dog. A blow would have sufficed for the old
man. The latter remained so for a couple of min
utes, standing over him, busy.
The meals for that day were peas and oats. It
was a slow way of making a meal. We liked the
oats the best and pulled some whenever we came to
them, if our pockets were not already full, so that
they should always be so. We ate them as we went,
from the cupped hand, spilling some and spitting
out the husks of the others which sometimes stuck in
our throats, making them very raw.
For August twenty- fourth the diary reads : "Very
hard night. Crossed about five kilometres of swamps
and numerous canals. Bad accident. Clothes went
171
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
to the bottom, but recovered. We are soaked, as
usual, and only made about eleven kilometres. Are
outside town of Bremen. Cover very poor. Meals
for the day: Nix. Still confident." The cover
ranked before the food as an item of interest to us.
Knowing the general direction of Bremen from the
camp, and that it was much the largest town in the
vicinity, we experienced no difficulty in locating it
by the reflection of its lights against the sky.
"August twenty-fifth: More rain and cold. Hid
ing on the bank of the Weser. Better going last
night. Going to look for boat to-night. River two
hundred yards broad. Socks played out. Made
pair out of a shirt. Met a cow. Meals for day:
turnips, carrots and milk."
August 26th: More rain. Found boat and
crossed river. Hedges grown so close and so many
of them, we have to go around them. Takes a lot
of time. Otherwise going good. Meals for the
day: turnip, peas and oats. Met another cow.
Frisked her. Cover none too good. Trying to dry
our clothes in sun. More confident." We always
became more confident at the slightest semblance of
warmth.
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THE THIRD ESCAPE
The socks we made out of a shirt which came from
the clothes-line of some haus-frau. We made
"dutch" socks in Western fashion by cutting out
large diamond shaped pieces of the cloth, which
when the foot was placed on it, folded up nicely into
a sock of a kind.
The cow, or rather, her milk, was the greatest
treat of all.
It required some searching before we found a boat.
We finally discovered a boat house which we broke
into and by great good luck found inside it a boat
which answered our purpose. Our chief concern was
lest the owners might raise a hue and cry against
the theft. However, when we reached the further
shore we gave the boat a good push out into the
stream so that if they attempted to follow our trail
they might find the boat a long ways down stream.
"August twenty-seventh: Rain left off. Try
ing to dry ourselves in sun. Had a hard night
keeping clear of town. Good cover in a wood.
Meals: turnips and another obliging cow. Feet
pretty sore. No socks. Still in the best otherwise."
The town in question was the second one we
passed after leaving Bremen. We saw the reflec-
173
THE ESCAPE OP A PRINCESS PAT
tion of its lights in the sky and thought that we
should easily miss it. But suddenly from some high
ground we found ourselves working directly down
on the streets so close below us that we could dis
cern people going to and fro. We turned and fled.
Swinging well round to the south we thought at
last to clear the town easily, instead of which we
again came up against it, in the outskirts this time.
And we repeated that disheartening performance a
couple of times before we cleared the obstacle and
once more swung on our way.
It was such occurrences as this that disheartened
us more than anything else, even the great hard
ships. To labor and travail, to do the seemingly
impossible, night after night and then in the snap
of a finger to find all our pains, all our agony gone
for nothing, reacted on us terribly at times.
On the following morning we met with our second
narrow escape, under much the same circumstances
as the first. We had crawled into a hedge toward
the heel of the night, and rather earlier than usual
on account of a thick mist which prevented us from
holding to our course. When it lifted we made out
the slope of a house roof shoving itself out of the
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THE THIRD ESCAPE
grey fog directly in front of us. Our hedge divided
two fields, in both of which labourers were already
cutting the crops. In this hedge, on each side of us,
were gateways so close together that when, as occa
sionally happened, people passed through one, we
were forced to crawl up to the other to avoid detec
tion. We had done so again when, without warn
ing, a drover came plodding up behind his sheep.
We had no time in which to go back up the hedge.
The sheep crowded from the rear and overflowed at
the narrow gateway into the hedge where we lay and
so ran over our bodies. We remained quiet, thinking
he would pass on; but what with the frightened
actions of his sheep and the yelping of the dog his
attention was inevitably attracted to the spot where
we lay. He came over, looked down at us, but said
nothing and stalked on. We were uncertain as to
whether he had seen us or not. Numerous incidents
of a similar nature had made us overconfident. We
had previously escaped detection in some very tight
corners by simply lying quiet. Casual travelers had
all but walked on us upon several occasions, and at
night we ourselves passed many people and thought
nothing of it.
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A moment later the shepherd walked off directly
toward the labourers, glancing back over his shoulder
at us as he did so. We struck out at once, before
the crowd could gather. We had, at the beginning
of this, our third escape, agreed not to be taken alive
to go through a repetition of the torture of mind and
body which we had already undergone, and, perhaps
for this time, worse. And it was understood that if
one played out the other should carry on. Each of
us had a stout club and could have made a tidy
fight.
Concealment was useless and, furthermore, im
possible. We passed close by a group of the harvest
ers and headed for a wood that lay on the other side
of them. They could not mistake either the vermil
ion circles on our khaki tunics, faded though they
were, nor our wild and dilapidated appearance, which
was not made more reassuring by the clubs we car
ried. Glancing back, we saw them gathering hur
riedly in little knots.
We reached the wood, flung ourselves down and
watched them until dark, during which time they
made no attempt to follow us. Nor did we see any
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THE THIRD ESCAPE
sign of other pursuers, though we kept on the qui vzve
all night, as we trudged through the interminable
fields, forcing our way through tight hedges and
plunging waist deep into the water of small canals.
177
CHAPTER XVII
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOOD
Weather Bad but Hopes High Primitive Dressmaking
The Woman at the Farm The Zeppelin The Fight in
the Wood.
THE only roads we habitually used were side ones,
and especially did we avoid any with telegraph
wires which might be used against us. It was a flat
and swampy country, full of mist, and the nights
were few in which it did not rain. And we were al
ways very wet and very cold. The latter was worse
than the lack of food. Sometimes we struggled for
hours at a time, knee-deep in desolate stretches of
mist-covered morasses which gave no promise of
firm footing but which often dropped us in to the
waist instead. In addition, the country was cut up
by numerous small ditches, six to eight feet wide,
which along toward morning presented so much of
an effort in the jumping that we usually plunged
into the water by preference. Our feet were adding
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WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOOD
to our misery by this time. On one occasion, as we
dragged ourselves out of the water, two dogs came
rushing at us and then followed, yelping. It was
nearly daylight and a woman came down to see
what was going on. We remained motionless near
a hedge. She failed to see us, which was perhaps
good luck for both her and us.
The diary for that period reads : "August 28th :
Rain worse than ever. Not a piece of our clothes
dry and too much water to lie down. Good going
last night. Cover in a wood outside village. Good.
Meals: Nix. Ought to reach the Hustre river to
night. In good spirits."
"August 29th: Rain stopped and a bit of sun
came out. Feeling much more cheerful. Just had
a shave and clean-up. Going last night very bad.
Swamps and canals. Had to leave our course. Feet
feeling better. Meals for the day: turnips, peas
and green apples. Did not reach the river. All s
well. No complaints." That shave was a terrible
torture.
"August thirtieth: Rain, thunder and lightning
most of last night. Got a bit of shelter in a cow
shed in a field. We are wet and cold as usual, with
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THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
no sun to dry. Fair cover in a small wood. Going
good last night. Haven t struck the Hustre yet.
Meals : green apples and brambles. Feet pretty sore.
Made a needle out of wood and did a bit of sew
ing. Best of health."
We had been ploughing through the mist, confused
by it and the numerous hedges, when at the side of
a small field we had run into this cowshed, a tumble
down affair of sods, caved in at the sides and partly
covered by a thatched roof. We built up the side
from which the wind came the worst, hung a rotting
canvas we found at the other end and then snuggled
up together to exchange warmth.
The mist had scarcely lifted when we heard a
slight noise. We looked up. A woman was at the
entrance to our hovel, looking down full at us. She
turned and walked away. We rose, still dazed with
sleep, and found that we were quite close to a farm
house which owing to the mist we had failed to ob
serve before, and from which our visitor had evi
dently observed the result of our building operations.
"She saw us," I said, and we regretted not having
seized her. She appeared to be signalling.
A good-sized wood lay well up ahead. "Come
1 80
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOOD
on," I said. "Let s beat it. We can handle a few
of em better than the whole mob." We could see
the farm labourers gathering in a knot. The rain
came on just then and perhaps assisted in dampening
their ardour. At any rate they did not follow us into
the wood. We spent rather an uneasy time though,
when, late that day, some men approached our
hiding place in a clump of bushes and for half an
hour shot their fowling pieces off all around where
we lay.
They did not seem to be after us ; more likely they
were hunters. The same thing had happened in a
lesser degree several times before. None the less it
was very uncomfortable to have the buckshot rat
tling all around us in the bushes where we lay and we
felt much better when they had gone.
As for the wooden needle: That was of course
the result of our necessity. It was a long thorn
first, a punch in the cloth and like as not a stab in
the finger in the bargain, then a withdrawal of the
crude needle and a careful threading of the hole
with our coarse string, after the fashion of a clumsy
shoemaker. Some sewing ! Some needlewoman !
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THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
The green apples and the berries which we got
here proved a most welcome change in our diet.
"August thirty-first: Not much rain but very
cold. Too dark to travel last night. No stars out
to go by. Crossed the river this morning, at last.
Good cover in bushes. Feet are badly peeled. Hope
for better luck to-night. Meals : apples and turnips.
Cold and rain are putting us in bad state. But still
confident." We were daily growing weaker and
prayed only that our strength would last to put us
over the border.
"September first : No rain and a little sun. Feel
ing much better. Going last night much the best we
have had. Good cover in a thicket. Will soon be
going over the same country we did last time we
escaped. Meals: peas and beans. Still in good
health."
"September second: No rain, but cold out of
the sun. Pretty fair going last night. Feet still
sore. Cover on straw stack in middle of field.
Warmer than the woods. Zeppelin just passed
oveihead going north. Meals: turnips, carrots, ap
ples and peas."
"September third: Fine weather. Good going
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WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOOD
last night. Feet still pretty bad. Had to cut my
boots. Fine cover in the wood. Meals: baked po
tatoes. Feel fuller." This was our first cooked
meal and the pleasure it gave us was beyond all
words. We lit it under cover of night so that by
the time day had come there was nothing but glowing
coals in which the potatoes roasted while we slept.
My feet were badly swollen by this time so that
I was faint with the pain of them.
The Zeppelin, strange though it was under the cir
cumstances, was only a small incident in many others
of vaster importance which were happening daily to
us but it was flying so low that we deemed it best
not to move until it had passed. We wondered if
it were going to England, and envied it.
"September fourth : More rain. Hard going half
the night. Crossed large peat bog and wet to the
waist. Very cold. Cover in wood. None too
good. Got scared out of our first cover. Meals:
Milk, apples and peas. Feet not so sore. Still rain
ing and cold. We should soon be at the River Ems."
On the evening of this day we walked out to the
edge of the wood we were in and stood there sizing
up the near-by village. It was about seven o clock
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THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
and wanted about an hour to darkness and our usual
time for hitting the trail. Without any warning, a
burly farmer confronted us. He was as badly start
led as we were. Our remnants of painted uniforms
and our ragged, soaked and generally filthy condi
tion no doubt added to our terrible appearance. We
had long since lost our caps and our hair was matted
liks a dog s. The German was armed with a double-
barreled shotgun, and at his heels a powerful-look
ing dog showed his teeth to us, so that I marked
the red of his tongue. If he raised the alarm we
were done for. We still had our cudgels.
I do not know whose was the offensive. But I
do know that the three of us came together with
one accord in a wild and terrible medley of oaths
in two languages and of murderous blows that beat
like flails at the threshing. Simmons and I strug
gled for the gun which he tried so hard to turn on
us, the dog meanwhile sinking its teeth deep in our
unprotected legs and leaping vainly at our throats;
while we felt with clutching fingers for his master s,
intent only that he should not shout.
In those mad moments there sped through our
brains the reel of that whole horrid film of fifteen
184
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE WOOD
months torture of mind and body; the pale, blood-
covered faces of our murdered comrades of the regi
ment, the cries of the patient Russians behind the
trees, and our own slow and deadly starvation and
planned mistreatment. All these, and God only
knows what else, should be ours again if we should
be recaptured.
We were near to Holland. In fancy and by con
trast we saw the fair English fields and the rolling
beauty that is Ontario s ; we heard the good English
tongue and beheld the dear faces of our own folk.
We bore that farmer no ill will. And his dog was
to the last a very faithful animal, as our clothes and
limbs bore true witness. We had no ropes. And
we were two very desperate men, badly put upon.
We dropped his gun in the bushes, together with
the body of his dog; and passed on. It had not
been fired and we had no desire to have the charge
of carrying firearms added to the others against us if,
in spite of all, we should be so unfortunate as to be
recaptured.
185
CHAPTER XVIII
THE LAST LAP
Crossing the River The Terrible Swamp Valuable Ap
ples Safe Across the Border Real Walking at Last
Barbarous Barbering.
"September fifth: Stopped raining and a little
warmer. Got our clothes dry once more. Cover in
a wood outside a small town. Going last night good,
after we had crossed another peat bog. Meals : milk,
baked potatoes and apples. Hope to reach the river
to-night. Bad feet. Best of health otherwise."
"September sixth : No rain and warmer. Heavy
dew. Fairly good going. Best of cover. Had a
fire. Pretty comfortable. Milk, potatoes, apples."
"September seventh: Still fine weather. Very
poor cover in a hedge. Good load to go on. Made
pretty good time last night. Feet feeling better.
Running out of tobacco. Otherwise in the best and
still hope the same. Meals : potatoes and beets."
We spent a great deal of time discussing ways
186
THE LAST LAP
w
and means of adding to our stock of tobacco. Any
smoker knows what it is to want the weed. Con
sider then our half famished, wet and utterly weary
condition. It was a real necessity to us. We dis
cussed waiting at the roadside until a man with a
pipe appeared; when we should rob him. We dis
missed that as too hazardous. It would be necessary
to kill him and that seemed a bit thick for a pipe of
tobacco. So we did the only thing that was left to
do cut down our already scanty rations of tobacco
and took scrupulous care to smoke to a clean ash
every vestige of each heel of old pipe, but in spite
of that our supply became exhausted.
"September eighth: Lovely weather to-day.
Good going last night in small swamp. Good cover
in a forest on the banks of the Ems. We will try
to cross to-night. Meals: potatoes and mangels.
Our final try for liberty. Feel good for it."
We had arrived at the river at two o clock that
morning, too played out to attempt the crossing then.
We retraced our steps to a potato field, dug some
of the tubers and, when daylight came, lit a fire
and roasted them. We were in a dense forest of
young trees, so that by lighting the fire before the
187
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
mist lifted, the latter hid our smoke. We remained
unperceived, though we could hear voices and foot
steps on every side.
"September ninth: Swam the river and two
canals. Crossed a large swamp. No rain but very
cold. Think we are over the border. Very poor
cover in a hedge. Wet to the skin. Clothes got
soaked but in best of spirits and confident."
We went down to survey the river shortly before
dusk and found it both broad and swift. We went
back again and tore a gate from its hinges, carried
it the five hundred yards down to the river and
then stripped for the crossing. The gate was not big
enough to carry us but answered for our clothes.
Simmons swam ahead, guiding it, while I shoved
from behind. We made the crossing without mis
hap but straightway fell into one of the worst expe
riences of the entire trip. We plunged into a swamp
which took us five hours to get through. There
were moments when we all but gave up and thought
we should never get out. At times we sank in it up
to our waists, particularly after leaping at the
numerous tufts of grass which seemed to promise a
footing that they never realised and which some-
1 88
THE LAST LAP
times sent us in it to the armpits, so that we were
sure we were doomed to be sucked down for good in
the filthy mess.
The fearful odour that our plunging around stir
red up, naturally aided our nervous imaginings and
it was undoubtedly the worst trial we had yet met
with on the journey. I cannot convey the black de
spair which took possession of our hearts at the seem
ing hopelessness of all our efforts to find firm foot
ing or a break in the landscape which might indicate
a change in the nature of the country, a light, a voice,
anything that would help to lift from our hearts the
feeling of utter isolation from all human assistance
and the seeming certainty that a few bubbles would
be the only indication that we had struggled there.
The darkness of the night intensified these thoughts.
The rain did not matter. In fact it helped; for we
were covered with the worse than water of the
morass.
We looked at one another. We dared not speak.
Anyhow, to do so was not our custom at such times
as these. But each knew. A dull anger took pos
session of us at the thought of so inglorious an end
after all that we had suffered to attain our freedom.
189
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
With a prayer in our hearts we cast ourselves for
ward and somehow, sometime, found at last that we
were safe and so flung ourselves down in our stink
ing clothes to lie like dogs in a drunken stupour that
recked not of time or of our enemies.
We discovered an apple orchard here, in which the
fruit was ripe. All the apples we had had up to date
had been of the small and green variety. And even
they, with the occasional milk, represented our all
of luxury, so that these seemed indeed the food of
the gods. We proceeded to fill up and after eating
all that we thought we could, filled our pockets until
they bulged, and started off, each carrying an arm
ful of the fruit. At every step we dropped some.
We stopped again and ate our surplus to make
room. We refused to lose any of them. We came
to a river, stripped, tied our clothes up in a bundle
and proceeded to swim across, shoving the clothes
ahead. I lost control of mine and they sank. I
dived repeatedly in the darkness before I found
them. The cargo of apples in the pockets made a
bad matter worse. I should rather have drowned
than have lost my apples. The possible loss of the
clothes worried us very little. We had already de-
190
THE LAST LAP
cided in that event to waylay some German Michel
rather than to go naked into Holland. However,
by alternately dragging the bundle behind and swim
ming on our backs with it held high on the chest with
one hand, we made the crossing, apples and all.
We were sitting in the shadow preparing to dress
and wondering whether we were really over the bor
der and if we could safely walk abroad, when we
heard men walking toward us. We knew them to
be Germans by the clank of the hobnailed boots
which all our guards had worn. We had not a stitch
on and our hearts were in our mouths. The patrol
of six men stopped within five yards of us and then
passed on within five feet and did not see us. We
dressed quickly and went on, only to find a canal, for
which we had to strip again.
Arriving at the other side; we dressed in the
shadow of the bank, crawled to the top and plunged
through the heather on to a road which we had al
most crossed, when there came a cry of "Halt!"
The patrol must have been standing in the trees
where we had broken out from the heather, and
very quietly, too, for we had lain for five minutes
to make certain that all was safe. Evidently we
191
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
were on or near the border if the number of patrols
was any indication. We were not certain whether
these were Hollanders or Germans. We made one
i
big buck jump. "Fire, Gridley, when ready!" I
left the entire knee of one trouser leg on a clutching
thorn. But the patrol did not fire.
And then another canal. "I m fed up with swim
ming to-night."
"So am I," agreed Simmons. "There are houses
over there. There must be a bridge."
t
We slunk along the bank and to our joy found a
small bridge. We dashed across it and debouched
safely into a tiny village. Here we saw a difference,
especially in the houses and the roadway. It was
in the very atmosphere, a result no doubt of instincts
made keen by the hunted lives we had led. On
either side the fields stretched out, criss-crossed by a
perfect network of small canals and ditches, which
also served as fences.
We knew we were in Holland.
We deemed it unwise to show ourselves as yet,
distrusting the sympathies of the Hollanders and
fearful that they might give us up; and continued
this policy until the next day. However, we took
192
PRIVATE MERWIN C. SIMMONS OF THE ?TH BATTALION,
1ST DIVISION, CANADIAN EXPEDITIONARY FORCE.
THE LAST LAP
a chance and stuck to the road, a treat, indeed,
to feel a firm footing after our weeks of travelling
across country fields. This enabled us to shove
thirty miles between us and Germany by morning.
It was not quite daylight when we espied a cow
in a field at the roadside and gave chase. There
was no other food in sight, so when our quarry threw
up its tail and bounced off; we set out grimly to run
our breakfast down. It was half an hour later that
we corralled it in a corner between two broad ditches
and were already licking our chops in anticipation;
when we discovered that our cow was only a big
heifer. Twenty-four hours earlier it would have
been a tragedy. As it was, we only laughed. Such
is liberty.
At this distance from the border we felt that we
were safe from the Germans but were very much
afraid that we might be interned. So we holed up
in a farmhouse which had been partly burned down
and built a roaring fire out of the remains of the
charred furniture, placed some of the potatoes that
were lying about in the fire, made a rough bed and
went to sleep. Awakening later in the day, we raked
the blackened potatoes out of the ashes and filled up
193
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
on them. We were a fearful team ; absolutely filthy,
uncombed, unwashed, unshaven, and with the Rus
sian s paint still thick upon us. Afterward we went
down to the canal and endeavoured to knock the
worst of it off. All danger was past now. We
seemed to walk on air. We were once again British
soldiers. And so fell to abuse of one another, find
ing fault and grousing; as all good British soldiers
do when they are well off. I made out to shave
Simmons. The terrible razor had never been sharp
and lately had rusted from its travels. Simmons
swore lustily and threatened me, ordering me at the
same time and in no uncertain terms; to desist from
the torture.
"Well, we want to go into Holland lookin re
spectable. What ll they think of British soldiers if
they see us^ Have a heart! I expostulated.
"Don t give a damn ! I ve had enough for being
a Canadian; but I won t stand for this." I left
him with his beard still on in patches and the bare
spots bleeding angrily. As I had already committed
myself, I had to bear in silence his purposely clumsy
handling of that hack-saw. It was terrible, and Sim
mons, the scoundrel, laughed like a demon.
194
CHAPTER XIX
HOLLAND AT LAST
"No Intern" Real Bread Tipperary A Real Time
The Splendid Hollanders The Hague.
THE diary summarizes the later events of that
day:
"September tenth : Fine weather and in Holland.
All our troubles are over. We struck a small town
called Alboom where the people did everything they
could for us. Plenty of food. Slept in a house !"
A man smoking a big pipe and wearing baggy
breeches and wooden shoes came up and surveyed
us with kindly amusement, as Simmons scraped at
me with infinite gusto. He was a Hollander; not
a "Dutchman." We soon learned that the latter
was a term of contempt applied by the former to
the Germans.
I asked him for some tobacco, which he readily
gave to us from a capacious pouch. He waved his
pipe at us in friendly fashion and said something
195
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
which we took to be a question as to our identity.
"English," we said, and in desperation turned to
our scanty stock of French: "Soldats; prisoniers"
"Engelsch !" he boomed. We nodded. He simply
threw his arms round first one and then the other, so
that I wiped the ashes from his pipe out of my eyes.
He lumbered off and shortly returned with a counter
part of himself. He talked rapidly to his compan
ion and waved his pipe. We made out the words
"Duitsch," "Engelsch," and enough of others to
know that he was telling our tale as he imagined it.
Our fears coming uppermost, we gave voice to
them: "Intern?"
"No intern. Engelsch." The other took up the
cry: "Engelsch goot ! Frient." However our sus
picions would not down.
The first man pointed out to the canal where a
barge lay and made us understand that it was his.
He wanted us to work our passage on it down the
canal with him. They invited us by signs to go on
board the barge for breakfast, an invitation which
we joyfully accepted. We rowed out to the barge
and sat down in the tiny cabin. The meal was plain.
On the centre of the table was a loaf of brown bread,
196
HOLLAND AT LAST
quite good enough it was true, but so reminiscent of
the perennial black ration of the Germans that my
gorge rose at the sight. Out of the corner of my
eye I saw a white loaf on the shelf, the first in fifteen
months. I caught Simmons eyeing it. We ex
changed guilty looks but were ashamed to ask for it.
They offered us the brown loaf and delicious coffee.
I thought perhaps that if we exhausted the brown
loaf the other might be forthcoming. I kicked
Simmons on the shins and fell to on it, and, as oppor
tunity offered, thrust pieces in the pockets of my
tunic until, to our relief, they brought out the white
bread, which we devoured to the last crumb. It
was very good.
We filled our pipes in high contentment and went
ashore, where a procession of enthusiastic villagers
waited to escort us to the village. Men, women and
children, wooden shoes and all, there were four hun
dred of them. The men all shook hands and pressed
money on us. The women cried and one white-
haired old lady kissed us both. The quaint little
roly-poly children ran at our sides, a half dozen of
them struggling to hold our fingers in their chubby
fists.
197
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
The procession started off, the burgomaster lead
ing, the two sailors and ourselves coming next.
Some one behind dragged out a mouth organ and
struck up Tipperary, and men, women and children
all joined in. It was glorious. We sang, too, in
English, and they in their tongue. The result was
so ridiculous a medley that I smiled myself; but it
made no difference. The spirit was there; we were
happy.
Arriving at the village the burgomaster took us
to his home and sat us down to a steaming breakfast,
while a few of the chosen were invited in to watch
us polish it off. The crowd remained outside,
choking the road. Some of the bolder of the children
crept slyly in the door, others peered shyly at us
from the crack of it. And one little chap, braver
than his comrades, clumped sturdily up to my knee,
where he stood clutching it in round-eyed wonder
and saying never a word for the rest of the meal,
envied of his mates.
Not until we had leaned back, not contented, but
ashamed to ask for more, did our hosts give vent to
the curiosity that was eating into their vitals. An
interpreter was found and they led us out to the
198
HOLLAND AT LAST
road so that all might hear. The crowd flocked
around while the officials questioned us. Many were
the smothered interjections that went up from the
men and exclamations of pity from the women as our
tale unfolded. And the warm sympathy of their
honest faces warmed our hearts like a good fire.
We started off on our triumphal course again.
We were repeatedly invited into houses for some
thing to eat. We accepted seven such breakfast in
vitations during the next two and a half hours and
stopped only out of shame. We were still hungry.
Every one gave us cigars, immense things, which
projected from every pocket and which we carried in
bundles under our arms. There was no refusing
them. They were the insignia of the entente. And
the coffee ! The good, honest, Holland coffee with
no acorns in it! I doubt if our starving bodies
could have carried us many days more on the un
cooked roots we had been living on. The motherly
housewives, in their Grecian-like helmets of metal
and glass that fit closely over their smoothed hair
like skull-caps, bustled merrily about, intent only
on replenishing our plates and cups, full of a tear
ful sympathy which was as welcome as their food.
199
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Later in the day the officials took us to the police
station at . We became very much alarmed
again. They read our thoughts and a subdued mur
mur of: "No intern, no intern," swelled up. The
local burgomaster came to us. His first words, and
in good English, too, were: "Have something to eat."
We did. And then more cigars. The police were a
splendid lot of men. They loaded us down with
gifts and asked perfunctory questions for their rec
ords. One of them, H. Letema, of , took us to
his home, where his comely wife and daughter loaded
the table with good things; while he brought out
more cigars. He showed us to a bed-room before
we understood where he was taking us. We re
fused, for reasons of a purely personal nature.
"Nix," we said, and when he would not accept our
refusal we tried it in Niederlander. "No, no."
Still he persisted, and his good wife too. So we
led him firmly aside and showed him the indescrib
ably verminous condition we were in. That con
vinced him. They appreciated that little touch and
gave us a deep pile of blankets, flung down on three
feet of sweet-smelling straw in an outhouse, where
we slept as we had not slept for many months.
200
HOLLAND AT LAST
In the morning Letema escorted us down to Aas-
chen, which was the nearest large town. A Belgian
and a Holland lady, hearing of the escaped English
prisoners, met us within twenty minutes of our ar
rival, took us in hand and loaded us down with kind
nesses. We ate only five full sized meals that day,
not counting the extras we absorbed between them.
And there were more cigars. The raw oats and
potatoes seemed a long way off.
Our day at Aaschen was a repetition of the pre
vious one at Alboom and Borger, but on a grander
scale. The ladies took us down to Rotterdam and
did not leave us until they had turned us over to
the British consul there, whose name I have forgot
ten but who, with the vice consul, Mr. Mueller, was
very kind indeed; in fact, all whom we met, irre
spective of their nationality, age or sex placed us un
der eterns} obligations to them. In particular Mr.
Neilson, the rector of the English church and in
charge of the Sailors Institute there, seemed to live
only for us.
Mr. Henken at the American consulate was
equally kind. They lodged us at the Seaman s Rest,
took our painted rags away and clothed us in blue
201
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
"civvie" suits which seemed to us the height of sinful
luxury. We were shaved, clean and could eat every
thing in sight, at any time of the day or night. And
did so. The meals we used to shift! We were
very glad to get rid of our waterproof suits for
that is what they had become, from the paint.
Mr. Neilson took us sight seeing every day. Once
we went out to Mr. Carnegie s Peace Palace which
had been closed on account of the war but which we
were permitted to inspect. I had not thought such
buildings were done, except in dreams. It made our
own bitter past seem unreal. The Italian room, in
particular, seemed like a delicate canvas in marble
and done in a fashion the memory of which gripped
me for days and still haunts me. We spent days
thus; supremely happy.
We were joined here by Jerry Burke of the 8th
Battalion of Winnipeg. He was a nephew of Sir
Sam Hughes, the then Canadian Minister of Mili
tia and had just made his escape from some other
camp.
We were to have left on the fifth with a fleet of
boats which sailed then. By the time we had got on
board, however, the sailors from the first boat were
202
HOLLAND AT LAST
returning. They had been torpedoed. And that
stopped us.
We got away on the S. S. Grenadier on the six
teenth, and after hugging the length of the Eng
lish Coast, arrived safely at Newcastle-upon-Tyne
on the eighteenth.
Here our troubles began !
203
CHAPTER XX
<C !T J S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY"
Red Tape in the Army A Disgruntled Soldier "Old Sol
dier, Old Fox" A Touch for Twenty Quid Augen
Rechts at Seaford Canada!
MY family in Canada have since remarked that
although my letters had invariably been cheerful
throughout my imprisonment, from the time I set
foot on English soil they reflected the deepest
despondency. That could be explained in part by
the fact that uncheerful letters could not pass the
German but could pass the British censor. But
more particularly it was due to the fact that I be
came entangled in the interminable red tape of the
army system, and, instead of meeting with the warm
sympathy that an exile longs for, met, on the part
of the army, with cold suspicion ; however kind some
individuals were to me.
Simmons and I were not permitted to leave the
boat until the military came for us. So far so good.
204
"IT S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY"
We were taken to the headquarters of the General
Officer Commanding that district. He briefly exam
ined us and good-naturedly gave us some money out
of his own pocket and tickets to London, where we
were ordered to report at the War Office.
Arriving in "The Smoke," as the army has named
that city, we proceeded the next morning to 14
Downing Street and sent our names in to the offi
cial we had been directed to by the general. He was
in mufti, whoever he was, and received us kindly
enough. We were closely questioned about our ex
periences, particularly in relation to our guards,
food, treatment, and so on. He also asked us as to
the amount of sickness among the prisoners, the con
dition of the country, and so on.
Dismissed, we made a dash down past Big Ben
and the Parliament Buildings for the Canadian Pay
and Record Office, where at Millbank it overlooked
the Thames. A sergeant took our names and after
a time took us, too, in to the paymaster. Simmons
drew his money without difficulty but I found
that I was fifteen months dead and was told that I
could get no money until my identity was reestab
lished. I protested; so much so in fact that I fully
205
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
expected to land in the "clink." No use. I was
sent out on the street talking to myself.
We next called on Lady Rivers-Bulkeley and
Lady Drummond to thank them for the very great
kindness of themselves and the Canadian Red Cross
in sending us our parcels regularly, and without
which we would assuredly have been too weak to
have made our escape. Lady Farquhar, the wife of
our late commanding officer, was out of town, so
we did not see her, much as we desired to thank her
for similar kindnesses.
Simmons was single. He was sent to Canada at
once and was promptly discharged. I had a wife
and family awaiting me there and I wanted badly
to go to them by the next boat. My wife had been
receiving letters from me during my fifteen months
imprisonment ; she had regularly received her separa
tion allowance; the Canadian Red Cross and many
kind friends in London had been sending me pris
oner-of-war parcels for a year; the authorities ad
mitted my identity and my former comrades recog
nised me; I had fifteen months pay at $1.20 a day,
besides a subsistence allowance of sixty-five cents a
day, coming to me; but could not draw a cent of it.
206
THE CEMETERY AT CELLE LAAGER Z 1 CAMP.
CORPORAL EDWARDS (SECOND FROM LEFT) AFTER HIS ESCAPE. THE
TWO GOLD BARS ON HIS LEFT COAT SLEEVE INDICATE
THAT HE HAS BEEN TWICE WOUNDED.
"IT S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY"
I was dead. And continued so for three months.
There is no explanation. "It s a way they have in
the Army" ; or so the army says.
In the end it was only through the active interven
tion of Sir George Perley, the Canadian High Com
missioner in London that my case was righted. He,
I believe, cabled the Ottawa authorities, who in turn
got in touch with my wife, who produced the neces
sary documentary evidence to prove that I had been
alive and a prisoner all this time.
I went to the depot at Seaford. I borrowed from
my old friends. I hung round the pay office. The
paymaster said I was not on the strength of the regi
ment. I was old soldier enough to profit by that ca
lamity at least. The bitter injustice of such miscar
riage of justice blinded me, as I think it eventually
does most soldiers, to the accepted code of civil life.
I refused to attend roll call or do drills, fatigues, or
any other part of my regimental duties other than
certain interesting and thrice-daily rites not uncon
nected with the kitchen.
It is the commonness, the constant repetition of
such stupidity and such lack of action that so much
[injures the reputation for intelligence of the army in
207
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
the minds of those who have served in it; so that
those who know it best, like it least and put up
with it only because it is the poor instrument of a
good cause.
The paymaster fell sick. A young subaltern was
acting for him. My sergeant pal tipped me off. As
I have said, I was an old soldier with all that that
implies. He marched me up to the officer, already
more or less at sea about his new duties. I asked for
money. He was aware of my history but not of the
tangle I was in:
"How much?
I wondered how much the traffic would bear.
"Twenty quid, sir," I ventured. He went up in
the air.
"Impossible ! I ll give you ten."
I O. KM that while the words were yet warm on
his lips. Fifty dollars is a great deal of money to
a soldier. He gave it to me with a pass for Scot
land where I had relatives to which I had long
been entitled but which had been useless to me as
long as I had no money.
I quickly gathered my cronies together and we
packed into the canteen to celebrate the occasion fit-
208
"IT S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY 5
tingly, in the only fashion a good soldier knows, in
army beer so thick and strong that the hops floated
on the tops of the mess-tins. While searching for
the bottom of one of these I heard the orderly shout
ing: "Corporal Edwards ! Corporal Edwards !" The
other men gathered round me in the corner, drinking,
while I scrunched down so that the orderly passed
on and out still shouting my name.
I fled to the tent and was hastily getting my
things together when a corporal came hot-foot say
ing that the officer wanted me at once. I went in,
gave him my very best regimental salute and stood
at attention.
"I find that you are not on the strength, cor
poral, and are not entitled to any money, so I ll
trouble you to return that money I gave you."
"I m sorry, sir," I said sadly, "but it s gone."
"Gone? How?"
"Debts, sir," I said firmly. "My mates have been
keeping me going."
"Well, you must get it back from them at once
and return it to me. It s most irregular. Push on
now and see that you re back here in an hour s time
209
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
with that money before those fellows spend it all in
the canteen."
"Very good, sir." I gave him a smashing good
Augen Rechts to cheer him up against the time he
should discover that I was well on my way to Scot
land.
And I remained there until I received notice that
my regimental bones had been officially exhumed;
after which I had no difficulty in getting my back
pay and three months furlough for Canada and
home!
AUTHOR S NOTE. An amusing and at the same time
gratifying sequel to this story developed immediately upon
the heels of its publication in a considerably smaller form
in the Saturday Evening Post. Sergeant Edwards, who
had not previously been consulted by the authorities, was
at once offered his choice between doing "duty" in Canada
or taking a discharge from the army, instead of going over
seas again. He chose the discharge.
An interesting fact in connection with Brumley, the man
who was the first to be recaptured on the second attempt
to escape, is that according to a post card received from
him by his wife, he has since made two other unsuccessful
attempts at escape. Scarfe, who was exchanged to Switzer
land, reports that he has married a Swiss girl there.
Stamper, another Patricia who was captured at the same
time as Edwards, has recently been exchanged and is now
in England. Scott, who was captured with the men of an
310
"IT S A WAY THEY HAVE IN THE ARMY
English regiment, was exchanged to Switzerland and re
cently returned to Toronto and has been in hospital, in a
serious condition, ever since. The fate of the others is un
known.
211
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
In order to remove any vestige of doubt in the
reader s mind as to the authenticity of Corporal Ed
wards tale, it has been deemed advisable to present
reproductions of certain newspaper articles and cor
respondence which bear directly on some of the
points touched upon in the story.
It will be noticed that quite aside from the major
fact of the escape itself having been brought out
here, there is the equally important one of the bring
ing out of a great number of lesser points which tally
to a hair with such references to them as are made
in the story, such for instance as the references to
the delay in England, the references in their post
cards of those fellow-prisoners who remain in Ger
many and other facts of a similar nature.
The following are exact reproductions in every
case, except for the explanatory note which prefaces
each item.
212
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
Extract from Toronto Daily Star, May 30, 1915.
WAS BACK ONLY THREE WEEKS
CORP. EDWARDS, REPORTED MISSING, WAS WOUNDED
SHORT TIME AGO.
Lance-Corp. Edward Edwards of the Princess
Pats who is reported missing to-day, has only been
back at the trenches for three weeks, after having
been wounded and in England for a month with
a bullet in his foot. He lived at 70 Standish
Avenue, Rosedale, where his wife and three young
sons now live. He is 38 years of age and has been
in Canada ten years. Previous service in Africa
and India with the Gordon Highlanders is to his
credit.
Letter from Corporal Edwards to His Wife in
Toronto.
Mon Adress exacte:
GIESSEN (Allemagne)
Compagnie No. 6 Baraque No. A.
Nom et Prenom: E. Edwards. Oct. 2nd, 1915.
MY DEAREST EM : A few more lines, hoping
they find all in the best of health and everything
going on all right. I received your parcels all
right. They were a treat and came in good con
dition. How are the boys getting along? Aw-
213
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
fully sorry about Hector but hope he is all right
again, poor chap s been having a hard time of it.
How are Gordon and Frank. Tell them I was
asking for them. I guess the Beastie has grown
quite a big chap. Thanks for J. Birnies address.
I will drop him a card some time but you see I can
only send two letters a month. Jack wanted me
to write to the lodge but I can t see how I can man
age it. Em, lass, don t send me any clothing as I
will manage all right. Col. Farquhar s wife is go
ing to send me out some and Major Gault is send
ing tobacco and cigarettes so I will be all right. I
had a parcel from Bob with a shirt and some eat
ables; also one from Jean at Blacktop and one
from home. We are always on the lookout for
them. Have you had any word from Mina? I ve
had letters from them all. We are having rather
cool weather. I sent a post card to G. Nelson ; I
don t know if he ever got it but you can ask him
when he comes up. Em, what are you doing about
the house? Are you getting it fixed up or are you
coming over home? It would be rather late this
year to come over but please yourself; only let me
know what you are doing. Is George still in Can
ada ? Jean was expecting him to drop in any time.
He has been very good to me ever since I landed
first in England. I will never be able to pay her
2*4
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
back. I can t give you any news as I don t know
it myself. Don t wait on a letter from me before
you write but write often and tell me all about
yourself and the boys. Tell Jack to write and I
will drop him a card when I can. Keep your
heart up and look after yourself. Tell Miss
Holmes I was asking for her; also Mrs. Arlow.
Tell her I got her letter; also tell all my friends I
was asking for them. If Mr. Skerrow comes up
again tell him I am doing fine but would sooner be
working up in N. Toronto but am making the
best of it. I think I will stop Em; I have really
nothing to tell you, only write soon and often.
Give the boys a tight one for me. Best love to
you all. Good bye.
Your Affect. Ed.
149 Corpl. E. Edwards,
Barrack A.,
Company 6,
Prisoner of War.
Giessen, Germany.
P. S. Just received your letter Sept. 3rd. Tell
Mrs. Bownie not to bother sending anything. I
have got all I want. Can t send a long letter.
This is all we are allowed. Ed.
215
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Extract from Montreal Gazette, Sept. 21, 1916.
EDWARD EDWARDS ESCAPES FROM FOE
TORONTO SOLDIER WITH Two OTHERS MAKE GET-AWAY.
WANDER FOR THREE WEEKS.
BRASS BAND ESCORTS THEM TO MAYOR OF TOWN IN
HOLLAND.
London, Sept. 21. Registered as dead by the
Canadian Pay and Record office, which was about
to authorise distribution of their effects, Lance-
Corp. Edward Edwards of the Princess Patricias,
70 Standish Avenue; Pte. James Jerry Burke
(1216) Eighth Battalion, Winnipeg and Pte.
M. C. Simmons (23445) f Seventh Battalion,
Port Arthur, have arrived in London after having
escaped from a German prison camp. They ex
perienced some strenuous adventures. For three
weeks they were at large; slowly and cautiously
wending their way to the Holland frontier, they
covered the distance of 150 miles. In Holland
the fugitives to their surprise, found a warm wel
come. In fact, a local band headed them in pro
cession to the Mayor, who in turn communicated
with the British Consul, with the result that they
were shipped to England.
216
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
Extract from Toronto Daily Sfar, Sept. 22, 1916.
MRS. EDWARDS IS REJOICING
CAN HARDLY BELIEVE THAT HUSBAND ESCAPED FROM
GERMAN PRISON.
HEARD So MANY DIFFERENT TALES.
COMRADES WHO HAVE RETURNED ASSURED HER HE
WOULD GET AWAY.
"I cannot believe it until I hear from him.
But I do hope it is true. I am glad I never kept
him back, and never told him not to go. He is a
soldier to the backbone."
Mrs. Edward Edwards, 70 Standish Avenue,
Rosedale, was discussing the report that her hus
band, Lance-Corp. Edward Edwards of the
Princess Patricias, had escaped from a prison camp
in Germany and after travelling over 150 miles
of country arrived with two others on Dutch ter
ritory whence they were shipped to England after
being feted by some of the people in Holland.
"I have heard so many different stories. At first
*
I was told he was killed, but later he sent me a let
ter from Germany telling me he was in a prison
camp there. Only last Saturday I had a letter
from him in which he asked me to send him on a
box of soap to wash his clothes. He said in that
letter that he had enough tobacco, cocoa and coffee
217
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
to last him for some time but he needed soap."
Lance-Corporal Edwards, who was connected
with the Royal Grenadiers, in Toronto, was for
merly a member of the Gordon Highlanders, and
fought with the 2nd Battalion of that regiment
throughout the South African War. Stationed in
India at the outbreak of that war the regiment
was sent to South Africa and was shut up in Lady-
smith. He is the possessor of three medals and
five clasps. He took part in the great Delhi
Durbar.
"Over a year ago my husband was shot in the
foot," said Mrs. Edwards. "He returned to the
trenches and was just three weeks back when he
was posted as missing. That was a year ago last
May. For a long time I had no word of what had
happened to him until I had a letter from him."
VISITS FROM COMRADES.
"Many of the returned Princess Patricias come
to see me. Only last Sunday one of them said to
me when talking of my husband: He will be
escaping from the Germans some of these days/
And it is just like him to do that. But he and the
two with him must have suffered terribly in the
time they were hiding through 150 miles of the
enemy s country. I wish I had him home now."
218
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
"I heard from him regularly every six weeks by
letter. Occasionally he would send me a post
card between the letters. He never discussed the
war, except in the phrase that it could not last for
ever. He always wrote bright and cheerful let
ters."
At No. 68 Standish Avenue lives the widow of
Private Percy Edwards, brother of Lance-Cor
poral Edwards. Private Edwards was a reservist
of the Gordon Highlanders and at the outbreak of
the war was called home to join his regiment. He
was killed in the first action in which the Gordons
were engaged. His widow and three young sons
live next door to Mrs. Edwards, who also has
three young sons. Both of the Edwards brothers
and their wives are natives of Aberdeenshire, Scot
land.
Postal Card to Mrs. E. Edwards, 70 Standish Ave.,
N. Rosedale, Toronto, Ont., Canada.
12th Sept. 1916. Assen, Holland. Dear Em:
I guess you will get my letter along with this
card explaining things. You will know that I
have escaped from Germany and am on my way to
England but will write you every chance I get.
Give my love to the boys and I hope all is well
219
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
at home. I am feeling pretty good. This is
where I am just now. Yours ever, Ed.
Postal to Mrs. E. Edwards, 70 Standish Ave., N.
Rosedale, Toronto, Canada.
Sept. 8th, Newcastle-on-Tyne, England.
Dear Em: Hope you have received all my let
ters that I have written you from Holland. They
will tell you all about my escape. I leave here
for London to-night. Will write you from there.
Love to the boys. Write me Bulter address. Ed.
Postal Card to Mrs. E. Edwards, 70 Standish Ave.,
N. Rosedale, Toronto, Canada.
Sept. 22nd, 1916. Folkestone, England. Dear
Em : Hope you got the cable all right, also some
of the letters and cards I sent you. What do you
think of my escape? Not so bad, eh? Write me
at Bulter. How are the boys? Give them my
love. Am back at ShorneclifTe with the regiment.
Will be going on leave. Trying to get over to
see you. Will write you to-morrow. Write as
soon as you can. Ed.
Post Card to Cpl. E. Edwards, 7 St. Mary s Place,
Cut tor, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, from Cpl. E.
Hardy, a fellow prisoner.
220
HOMEWARD BOUND. CORPORAL EDWARDS IN CENTER.
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
Mon Adress Exacte :
Nom et Prenom : Cpl. E. Hardy
No. matricule: 1906
No. de la Compagnie : 8
Lettre de la baraque: "E"
GIESSEN (Allemagne)
Giessen, le 25-9-1916.
Dear Ted : I received your P. C. quite safe. I
did a little dance on my own. Charlie Walker
is away somewhere. How are Dennie and Nobler
going on. You may be sure I was pleased to hear
of you getting in port safe. Sorry to hear you
got wrecked on your first trip but you have no
worry now. Good Luck. Ted.
Post Card to Cpl. E. Edwards, Number One Com
pany P. P. C. L. /., St. Martins Plains, Shornecliffe,
England. Via Holland, from Hookie Walker, a
fellow prisoner.
Mon addresse exacte:
Nom et prenom : C. Walker,
No. matricule:
No. de la compagnie : 6, Baraque : B.
No. du detachement: 1
Giessen (Allemagne) Oct. 1st, 1916.
221
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Dear Old Ted: I received your P. C. God
Bless you and good Luck be with you always. I
have been on the water and got wrecked also but
I have not given up by any means. I am in the
best of health. Remember me to all and God be
with you. Hookie.
Undated Post Card to Mr. E. Edwards Jun, 7 St.
Mary s Place , Cutter^ Aberdeenshire^ Scotland. Via
Holland, from Cpl. Hardy.
Mon Adresse exacte:
Nom et prenom: Cpl. E. Hardy
No. matricule: 1906
No. de la compagnie: 8, Baraque "E"
No. du detachement:
Giessen (Allemagne)
Dear Ted : I am very glad everything went on
Ai. I am sorry I was not with you. I am not
wanting anything, thanks. I hope you have a good
time when you go to Canada. I have not seen
anything of Hookie for about 12 months, nor
Stamper. I have still got a few things safe for
you when I come home. I will close with best
respects, Ted.
222
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
Undated Card to Mrs. Edwards, Rotterdam, Hol
land.
Dear Em. Hope you are getting my letters all
right and that all is well at home. I am still
feeling and getting treated pretty good and will be
in England in two or three days. Since it all
goes well write me c/o of Bulter address and I
will be sure to get them. How are the boys ? Is
the wee chap still holding my place? Tell Gor
don when I get to England I will help him get a
bicycle so that he can be the same as Hector. This
is where I am just now but will be on my way in
a few hours. I have sent you Tinnie s photo.
How will she do? It might be all we can get.
Ed.
Postal to Mrs. Edwards, 70 Standish Ave., N. Rose-
dale, Toronto, Canada.
26-10-16. From Folkestone.
Dear Em: Arrived back in Folkestone all
right. Called on Mrs. Cawthra. Had a long talk
with her. Can t get any word of when I am to
get over to Canada but will let you know as soon
as possible. Might be some time yet. Got the
letter with Hector s and will bring the things with
me when I come home. How are the boys get
ting along? Wish I was there. Good-bye. Ed.
223
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
Extract from Toronto Daily Star, December -, 1916.
HOME ON LEAVE AFTER ESCAPE FROM THE
HUNS
SOT. EDWARD EDWARDS TELLS GRAPHIC STORY OF 100
MILE FLIGHT.
WIFE HAD TO PROVE HUSBAND WAS ALIVE.
SENT His PHOTO AND LETTERS BEFORE WAR OFFICE
WOULD BELIEVE IT.
No bands played and no Reception Committee
extended the welcome hand to Sergt. Edward Ed
wards when he stepped off the train at the Union
Station and walked to the home of his wife and
family one day last week, after two years and
seven months absence at the front with a store
house of thrilling experiences that rival even the
exploits of the Three Musketeers. That he was
one of only 49 left of the crack Princess Patricias
who were mown down at the Ypres Salient on
May 8, 1915, was wounded twice, missing and
officially declared dead and escaped twice from
German prison camps in company with two com
panions are only incidents in a long chapter of
events which surpass in thrilling interest Dumas
most daring fiction. Tom Brumley, another
member of a Toronto regiment, and Mervin Sim
mons, a Canadian from Trail, B.C., were the two
friends of the modern D Artagan, but unfortu-
224
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
nately Brumley was recaptured by the Huns
during the first escape and Sergt. Edwards has not
heard from him since.
Sergt. Edwards is now on ten weeks furlough
and is due to report in England on May 10, when
he expects to go into the fighting again. "We went
to the Ypres salient in May. I was one of ten in
my company to get through," said he.
TRIBUTE TO COL. BULLER
Here Sergt. Edwards paid a tribute to his late
commanding officer, Col. Duller, who was killed
on the 2nd of June of this yean "It was the
Germans, too, who told us of our old Colonel s
death. They knew everything, it seemed, about
our commanders and could tell the regiment and
division that we belonged to."
We were taken to Roulers, Belgium. After a
brief stay there we were taken to Giessen. There
were 1,200 prisoners, mostly Russian and French.
The food we got was awful.
REFUSED TO WORK
"After a stay here of about six months I was
sent with my two friends, Brumley and Simmons,
to a punishment camp for refusing to work in a
steel factory to make munitions. Three hundred
225
THE ESCAPE OF A PRINCESS PAT
British and Canadians also refused in spite of
threats, and ill-treatment, and all were sent on to
Celle Laager, the main punishment camp. We
were there two weeks and then we were split into
small parties and I was slated with my two friends
for a place called Oldenburg. Here they wanted
us to go into a moor and drain the place to grow
potatoes. It was from this place that we made
our first serious attempt to escape.
We made a dash for the shelter of the moor.
In a few minutes we heard the baying of a vicious
pack of dogs they had sent in pursuit, but we
managed to elude them and struck out for the
Dutch border more than 100 miles distant. We
came to the River Ems four miles from the bor
der of Holland. We could not find a boat or
raft and were recaptured.
MADE FINAL ESCAPE
After undergoing this sentence, Sergt. Edwards
and Simmons were taken to another punishment
camp at Salsengen and it was from here that they
made their successful escape on August 21.
The British Consul at Rotterdam arranged the
wanderers passage to England, where they ar
rived on the i8th of September. When he re
ported in London, Sergt. Edwards had to prove
226
THE EVIDENCE IN THE CASE
he was alive, because the records of the War Of
fice had him marked up as dead. A lot of red
tape had to be untangled before the gallant sol
dier could be officially brought back from the
dead, but at that time he was still writing to his
wife, so that, when she saw her husband s name
in the casualty list, she at once contradicted the
officials by sending her husband s letters and his
pictures.
Postal card to No. 39 Cpl. E. Edwards, P. P. C. L.
7. Depot, South Camp, Seaford, Sussex, England,
from Charles Scarfe, who was also captured on May
8tk.
Manor Farm, Interlaken, Switzerland, Jan. 3rd,
1917.
Dear Old Pal Teddy :
Just a card hoping to find you well as it leaves
me A- 1 . Hope you had a good Christmas. Had
a fairly good one myself but hope we are in Can
ada next one. Have had enough of being a pris
oner of war. Remember me to all the boys and
write soon. From your old pal, Charlie.
Postal card to 39 Cpl. E. Edwards, P. P. C. L. I.
Depot, South Camp, Seaford, Sussex, England, from
his comrade in the escape.
227
DATE DUE
CAT. NO. 1 13 7
4*1765
39005 0035t3&8/b
a II.
1)
ii
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