August 19, 2025 • 20 mins
Delve into the gripping true story of M. C. Simmons, a Canadian soldier who found himself at the mercy of the German Army during the tumultuous early days of World War I. This narrative chronicles his harrowing sixteen months as a prisoner of war, detailing his interactions with fellow captives from Allied forces, as well as his insightful observations of his captors and their homeland. Most strikingly, we follow Simmons through his daring escape attempts—each more audacious than the last—his subsequent recaptures and punishments, and the perilous journey through enemy territory that defined his relentless spirit. As McClung notes, Private Simmons is a close and accurate observer who sees clearly and talks well. He tells a straightforward, unadorned tale, every sentence of which is true, and convincing. Prepare to be captivated by a story of resilience and courage.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section twelve of three Times and Out by Nellie mc lung.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter fourteen
off for Holland. The eastern fence was the one we
had marked as our point of departure, and Saturday being
(00:22):
wash day. There was nothing suspicious in the fact that
we had hung our clothes there to dry. They had
to be hung somewhere. The boys were expecting parcels that
night for a canal boat had come up from Oldenburg,
and every one was out in the yard. Several of
the boys were in our confidence, and we had asked
(00:43):
them to stroll up and down leisurely between the hut
and the east fence. Just at the last minute, the
fourth man, Edward's friend, came to me and said, sim
we will never make it. The guards will see us
and they'll shoot us. You know, they'll just be glad
to pot us to scare the others. It is madness
(01:06):
to think we can get away from here with these
lights shining. I told him I thought we had a chance,
but did not try to persuade him. Of course, we
all knew we were taking a grave risk, but then
why shouldn't we. It was the only way out. Don't go,
sim he said earnestly. I told him we were going,
(01:30):
but if he felt as he said, it would be
better for him not to come. And already I could
see that Edwards, who was in the group of strollers,
had dropped on his stomach and was filing the lower
wire of the inner fence, and when the wire broke,
he crawled through to the other fence. I joined the
(01:50):
party of strollers then, and walking toward the fence, could
see what Edwards was doing. With his left hand, he
held the bottom wall and filed it close to the post,
which did much to deaden the sound. But when the
wire broke, to my strained ears, the crack was loud
enough to alarm the guard, but the sound of our
(02:14):
voices must have covered it over for all went well.
We walked back again leisurely, though to my excited imagination,
the sound of the filing deadened every other sound. We
were back to the fence again when I heard the
whang of the second wire, and at that I dropped
to the ground and began to crawl after Edwards. The
(02:37):
light from the arc lights caught the horseshoes on the
heels of Edward's boots, and they flashed to my eyes
and seemed to me to shine like the headlights of
an engine. It seemed to me as if the guards
must see them. On he went on and on I followed,
and behind me came Bromly. I could hear him breathe
(03:00):
above the beating of my own heart. Crawling is a
slow and terrible way to travel when every instinct cries
out to run. But for about twenty yards we crawled
like snakes, changing then to the easier method of creeping
on hands and knees. Then three shots rang out, and
(03:22):
it seemed as if our hearts stopped beating, but we
kept on going. Our first thought was, of course, that
we had been discovered, but no other sound came to us,
and looking back to the logger, we could still see
the men moving carelessly about. The bog was traversed by
(03:43):
many ditches and had a flat but uneven surface, with
tufts of grass here and there. It gave us no shelter,
but the winter night had fallen, and we were glad
of the shelter afforded by the darkness. We knew the
moon would be up before long, and we wanted to
be as far away from the camp as possible. Before
(04:05):
that happened, I had gone out to work for a
couple of days to get a knowledge of the country,
and I knew from my map that there was a
railway at the edge of the bog, and as this
would be the place where they would expect to catch us,
we wanted to get past it as soon as possible.
But the ditches, filled with water cold as ice, gave
(04:28):
us great trouble. Generally we could jump them, but sometimes
they were too wide and we had to scramble through
the best we could. About eight o'clock the moon came
up a great ball of silver in a clear blue sky,
and turned the stagnant water of the bog to pools
(04:48):
of silver. It was a beautiful night to look at,
but a bad night for fugitives. Bromley, being a little
heavier than either Edwards or I, broke through the crust
of the bog several times and had difficulty in getting out.
About midnight, with the heavy going, he began to show
(05:10):
signs of exhaustion. His underwear shrunken with cold water washing
bound his limbs, and he told us he could not
keep up. Then we carried his overcoat and told him
we would stop to rest just as soon as we
crossed the track if we could find a bush, and
he made brave efforts to keep up with us. You'll
(05:33):
be all right, tom when we get out of the swamp,
we told him. About half past two, we reached the railroad, and,
finding a close thicket of spruce on the other side,
we went in and tried to make Bromly comfortable. He
fell fast asleep as soon as he got his head down,
(05:53):
and it was evident to Edwards and me that our
comrade was in poor shape for a long tramp. Still,
we hoped that a day's rest would revive him. He
slept most of the day and seemed better before we
started out. The day was dry and fine, but of
course we were wet from the hard going across the bog,
(06:16):
and it was too cold to be comfortable. When not moving.
We could hear the children playing and the wagons passing
on a road near by, and once we heard the
whistle of a railway train, but no one came near
the wood. At nightfall, we stole out and pushed off again.
(06:37):
Bromley made a brave attempt to keep going, but the
mud and heavy going soon told on him, and he
begged us to go on and leave him. If you
don't go on, boys, he said, we'll all be taken.
Leave me and you too will have a chance. I
can't make it, boys, I can only crawl along. We
(07:00):
came to a road at last, and the going was easier.
Bromley found he could get along more easily, and we
were making pretty fair time when we saw something dark
ahead of us. I was of the opinion that we
should go around it, but Bromley could not stand any
more traveling across country, and we pushed on. The dark
(07:24):
object proved to be a house, and it was only
one of many. For we found ourselves in a small town.
And then we took the first road leading out of
the town, and, walking as fast as we could, pushed
quietly out for the country edwards ahead, I next and
Bromley behind. I heard some one whistling and thought it
(07:48):
was Bromly, and waited for him to come up to
tell him to be quiet. But when he came beside me,
he whispered, they are following us. We went on. Soon
a voice behind us called, halt, it's no use, sim
they have us. Bromley whispered ahead of us was a
(08:09):
little bush toward which we kept going. We did not
run because we thought that the people who were following
us were not sure who we were, and therefore would
not be likely to shoot. Bromley knew he could not
stand a race for it in his condition, But knowing
him as I do, I believe he would have made
(08:30):
the effort. But I think he saw that if he
went back and surrendered, it would give us more time
to get away. Go on, sim he whispered to me.
We had agreed that if anything happened to one of us,
the others were to go on. We could not hope
to help each other against such numbers. When we got
(08:53):
opposite the wood, we made a dash for it. I
think it was then that Bromley went back and gave
himself up. I often wondered what he told them about
the other men they had seen. Whatever he thought was
best for our safety, I am sure of that, for
Bromley was a loyal comrade and the best of chums.
(09:18):
We lay there for a while wondering what to do.
We were about in the middle of a very small grove,
and knew it was a poor place to stay in,
for it was a thin wood, and the daylight was
not far distant. Edwards, who was right beside me, whispered
that he had seen a soldier climb a tree, and
(09:40):
another one handing him a gun. This decided us to
crawl to the edge of the wood again. But when
we reached it, Edwards, who was ahead, whispered back to
me that he saw three civilians right in front of us.
This began to look like a tight corner. We determined
(10:01):
to take a chance on the civilians not being armed
and make a dash for it. We did, and the
civilians turned out to be a group of slim evergreens.
We saw a forest ahead and made for it. The
ground was sandy and poor, and the trees were scattered
and small and grew in clumps. The going was not hard,
(10:25):
but the loss of Bromley had greatly depressed us. Once
we met a man, ran right into him and probably
scared him just as much as he did us. He
gave us a greeting, to which we grunted a reply,
a grunt being common to all languages. We saw the
headlight of a train about three o'clock in the morning,
(10:49):
reminding us of the railroad to the south of us.
Coming to a thick spruce grove, we decided to take
cover for the day. The morning was red and cloudy,
with a chilly wind crackling the trees over our heads,
but as the day wore on, the wind went down
and the sun came out. It was a long day, though,
(11:12):
and it seemed as if the night would never come.
It was too cold to sleep comfortably, but we got
a little sleep some way. When we started out at night,
we soon came to a ditch too wide to jump,
and as our feet were dry, we did not want
to wet our socks, so we took them off and
(11:34):
went through. January is a cold month for wading streams,
and a thin crust of ice was hard on the feet.
They felt pretty numb for a while, but when we
had wiped them as dry as we could and got
on our socks and boots again, they were soon all right.
(11:54):
But our care for our feet did not save them,
for the muddy ground full of bogles which we next
encountered made us as wet and miserable as we could be.
One large town, it may have been Soggle, gave us
a considerable trouble getting around it. The time of year
(12:16):
made the going bad. There were no vegetables in the
gardens or apples on the trees, no cows out at pasture.
Even the leaves were gone from the trees, thus making
shelter harder to find. The spruce trees and scotch fir
were our stronghold, and it was in spruce thickets we
(12:38):
made our hiding places by day. The advantage of winter
travel was the longer nights, and although it had been
raining frequently and the coldest, most disagreeable rains, the weather
was dry during the time we were out, but the
going was heavy and bad, and when the time came
(12:58):
to rest we were completely done out. We had put
ourselves on short rations because we had not been able
to save much. We had no way of carrying it
except in our pockets, and we had to be careful
not to make them bulge. We had biscuits, chocolate, and cheese,
(13:18):
and not being able to get even a raw turnip
to supplement our stores, we had to save them all
we could. On January twenty fifth, our third day out,
the bush was so short we had to lie all
day to remain hidden. We could not once stand up
and stretch, and the day was interminably long, a bird's
(13:43):
nest deserted now, of course, and broken, hung in a
stunted scotch fur over my head, And as I lay
looking at it, I thought of the hard struggle birds
have too to get along, and of how they have
to be on the watch for enemy. Life is a
queer puzzle when a person has time to figure it out.
(14:06):
We make things hard for each other. Here we were
ted and I lying all day inactive, not because we
wanted to, but because we had to to save our lives,
lying in a patch of scrub, stiff, cold and hungry,
(14:26):
when we might have been clearing it out and making
of it to farm, which would raise crops and help
to feed the people. Hunger sharpens a man's mind and
gives him a view of things that will never come
when the stomach is full. And as we lay there
under scrub, afraid even to speak to each other, afraid
(14:47):
to move for a crackling twig might attract some dog
who would bark and give the alarm. I took a
short course in sociology. The Catholics are right about having
the people come fasting to Mass, for that is the
time to get spiritual truths over to them. Hunger would
(15:07):
solve all the capital and labor troubles in the world.
That is, if the employers could be starved for a week, well,
not a whole week, just about as long as we had, say,
two biscuits a day for three days, with nothing better ahead.
But hunger is just a word of two syllables to
(15:28):
most people. They know it by sight. They can say
it and write it, but they do not know it.
At these times, the thought of liberty became a passion
with us. Still, we never minimize the danger, nor allowed
ourselves to become too optimistic. We knew what was ahead
(15:51):
of us if we were caught the cells and the
straf barrack with incidentals. On the fourth day, we crossed
an open patch of country, lightly wooded, and then came
to a wide moor, which offered us no protection whatever.
(16:11):
Our only consolation was that nobody would be likely to
visit such a place. There was not even a rabbit
or a bird, and the silence was like the silence
of death. I knew from my map that we had
to cross the river Ems, and I also knew that
this would probably be the deciding factor in our escape.
(16:33):
If we got over the Ems, we should get the
rest of the way. At two o'clock in the morning,
we reached the Ems. It is a big river in
normal times, but it was now in flood. As we
could see by the trees which stood in the water,
as well as by the uprooted ones that floated down
(16:53):
the stream. Swimming was out of the question. We hunted
along the bank that morning but could find nothing, and
as daylight was coming, we had to take cover. All day,
we remained hidden in a clump of spruce and looked
out upon the cruel sweep of water that divided us
(17:15):
from Liberty. The west wind came softly to us, bringing
sounds from the Holland border, which we knew from our
map was only four or five miles away. We heard
the shunting of cars and the faint ringing of bells.
We discussed every plan. We would search the river bank
(17:39):
for a boat, though we were afraid the German thoroughness
would see to it that there was no boat on
this side of any of their border rivers. Still, they
could not watch everything, and there might be one. Failing that,
we would make a raft to carry our clothes and
swim it. We had a knife, but no rope. I
(18:02):
remember in Swiss family Robinson, how easily things came to
hand when they were needed. And I actually looked in
the dead grass at my feet to see if by
any chance I might find a rope or wire or something.
But there were no miracles or fairies, no fortunate happenings
(18:23):
for us. And when night came on again, we scoured
the bank for a boat, but in vain never a
boat could we see. We then drew together some of
the driftwood that lay on the shore, but when we
tried it in the water, it would hardly float its
own weight. I felt the hopelessness of this plan, but
(18:47):
Ted worked on like a beaver, and I tried to
believe he had more hope than I had. But suddenly
he looked at me as he stopped, and I felt
that our last plan was gone. It's no use. He said.
There was only the bridge left, and that we knew
(19:08):
was very dangerous. Still there was a chance it might
not be guarded. The guard might be gone for a
few minutes. And all the time the murmurs came to
us on the wind from the Hall and Border and
sounded friendly and welcoming. We started out to find the bridge.
(19:30):
We were better dressed than Bromley and I had been
for we had on the dark blue overcoats, but not
being able to speak the language was dead against us.
Even if they do get us, sim Ted said, we'll
try it again if we live through the punishment. All right,
(19:51):
I said, I'm game. End of chapter fourteen.
Section twelve of three Times and Out by Nellie mc lung.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter fourteen
off for Holland. The eastern fence was the one we
had marked as our point of departure, and Saturday being
(00:22):
wash day. There was nothing suspicious in the fact that
we had hung our clothes there to dry. They had
to be hung somewhere. The boys were expecting parcels that
night for a canal boat had come up from Oldenburg,
and every one was out in the yard. Several of
the boys were in our confidence, and we had asked
(00:43):
them to stroll up and down leisurely between the hut
and the east fence. Just at the last minute, the
fourth man, Edward's friend, came to me and said, sim
we will never make it. The guards will see us
and they'll shoot us. You know, they'll just be glad
to pot us to scare the others. It is madness
(01:06):
to think we can get away from here with these
lights shining. I told him I thought we had a chance,
but did not try to persuade him. Of course, we
all knew we were taking a grave risk, but then
why shouldn't we. It was the only way out. Don't go,
sim he said earnestly. I told him we were going,
(01:30):
but if he felt as he said, it would be
better for him not to come. And already I could
see that Edwards, who was in the group of strollers,
had dropped on his stomach and was filing the lower
wire of the inner fence, and when the wire broke,
he crawled through to the other fence. I joined the
(01:50):
party of strollers then, and walking toward the fence, could
see what Edwards was doing. With his left hand, he
held the bottom wall and filed it close to the post,
which did much to deaden the sound. But when the
wire broke, to my strained ears, the crack was loud
enough to alarm the guard, but the sound of our
(02:14):
voices must have covered it over for all went well.
We walked back again leisurely, though to my excited imagination,
the sound of the filing deadened every other sound. We
were back to the fence again when I heard the
whang of the second wire, and at that I dropped
to the ground and began to crawl after Edwards. The
(02:37):
light from the arc lights caught the horseshoes on the
heels of Edward's boots, and they flashed to my eyes
and seemed to me to shine like the headlights of
an engine. It seemed to me as if the guards
must see them. On he went on and on I followed,
and behind me came Bromly. I could hear him breathe
(03:00):
above the beating of my own heart. Crawling is a
slow and terrible way to travel when every instinct cries
out to run. But for about twenty yards we crawled
like snakes, changing then to the easier method of creeping
on hands and knees. Then three shots rang out, and
(03:22):
it seemed as if our hearts stopped beating, but we
kept on going. Our first thought was, of course, that
we had been discovered, but no other sound came to us,
and looking back to the logger, we could still see
the men moving carelessly about. The bog was traversed by
(03:43):
many ditches and had a flat but uneven surface, with
tufts of grass here and there. It gave us no shelter,
but the winter night had fallen, and we were glad
of the shelter afforded by the darkness. We knew the
moon would be up before long, and we wanted to
be as far away from the camp as possible. Before
(04:05):
that happened, I had gone out to work for a
couple of days to get a knowledge of the country,
and I knew from my map that there was a
railway at the edge of the bog, and as this
would be the place where they would expect to catch us,
we wanted to get past it as soon as possible.
But the ditches, filled with water cold as ice, gave
(04:28):
us great trouble. Generally we could jump them, but sometimes
they were too wide and we had to scramble through
the best we could. About eight o'clock the moon came
up a great ball of silver in a clear blue sky,
and turned the stagnant water of the bog to pools
(04:48):
of silver. It was a beautiful night to look at,
but a bad night for fugitives. Bromley, being a little
heavier than either Edwards or I, broke through the crust
of the bog several times and had difficulty in getting out.
About midnight, with the heavy going, he began to show
(05:10):
signs of exhaustion. His underwear shrunken with cold water washing
bound his limbs, and he told us he could not
keep up. Then we carried his overcoat and told him
we would stop to rest just as soon as we
crossed the track if we could find a bush, and
he made brave efforts to keep up with us. You'll
(05:33):
be all right, tom when we get out of the swamp,
we told him. About half past two, we reached the railroad, and,
finding a close thicket of spruce on the other side,
we went in and tried to make Bromly comfortable. He
fell fast asleep as soon as he got his head down,
(05:53):
and it was evident to Edwards and me that our
comrade was in poor shape for a long tramp. Still,
we hoped that a day's rest would revive him. He
slept most of the day and seemed better before we
started out. The day was dry and fine, but of
course we were wet from the hard going across the bog,
(06:16):
and it was too cold to be comfortable. When not moving.
We could hear the children playing and the wagons passing
on a road near by, and once we heard the
whistle of a railway train, but no one came near
the wood. At nightfall, we stole out and pushed off again.
(06:37):
Bromley made a brave attempt to keep going, but the
mud and heavy going soon told on him, and he
begged us to go on and leave him. If you
don't go on, boys, he said, we'll all be taken.
Leave me and you too will have a chance. I
can't make it, boys, I can only crawl along. We
(07:00):
came to a road at last, and the going was easier.
Bromley found he could get along more easily, and we
were making pretty fair time when we saw something dark
ahead of us. I was of the opinion that we
should go around it, but Bromley could not stand any
more traveling across country, and we pushed on. The dark
(07:24):
object proved to be a house, and it was only
one of many. For we found ourselves in a small town.
And then we took the first road leading out of
the town, and, walking as fast as we could, pushed
quietly out for the country edwards ahead, I next and
Bromley behind. I heard some one whistling and thought it
(07:48):
was Bromly, and waited for him to come up to
tell him to be quiet. But when he came beside me,
he whispered, they are following us. We went on. Soon
a voice behind us called, halt, it's no use, sim
they have us. Bromley whispered ahead of us was a
(08:09):
little bush toward which we kept going. We did not
run because we thought that the people who were following
us were not sure who we were, and therefore would
not be likely to shoot. Bromley knew he could not
stand a race for it in his condition, But knowing
him as I do, I believe he would have made
(08:30):
the effort. But I think he saw that if he
went back and surrendered, it would give us more time
to get away. Go on, sim he whispered to me.
We had agreed that if anything happened to one of us,
the others were to go on. We could not hope
to help each other against such numbers. When we got
(08:53):
opposite the wood, we made a dash for it. I
think it was then that Bromley went back and gave
himself up. I often wondered what he told them about
the other men they had seen. Whatever he thought was
best for our safety, I am sure of that, for
Bromley was a loyal comrade and the best of chums.
(09:18):
We lay there for a while wondering what to do.
We were about in the middle of a very small grove,
and knew it was a poor place to stay in,
for it was a thin wood, and the daylight was
not far distant. Edwards, who was right beside me, whispered
that he had seen a soldier climb a tree, and
(09:40):
another one handing him a gun. This decided us to
crawl to the edge of the wood again. But when
we reached it, Edwards, who was ahead, whispered back to
me that he saw three civilians right in front of us.
This began to look like a tight corner. We determined
(10:01):
to take a chance on the civilians not being armed
and make a dash for it. We did, and the
civilians turned out to be a group of slim evergreens.
We saw a forest ahead and made for it. The
ground was sandy and poor, and the trees were scattered
and small and grew in clumps. The going was not hard,
(10:25):
but the loss of Bromley had greatly depressed us. Once
we met a man, ran right into him and probably
scared him just as much as he did us. He
gave us a greeting, to which we grunted a reply,
a grunt being common to all languages. We saw the
headlight of a train about three o'clock in the morning,
(10:49):
reminding us of the railroad to the south of us.
Coming to a thick spruce grove, we decided to take
cover for the day. The morning was red and cloudy,
with a chilly wind crackling the trees over our heads,
but as the day wore on, the wind went down
and the sun came out. It was a long day, though,
(11:12):
and it seemed as if the night would never come.
It was too cold to sleep comfortably, but we got
a little sleep some way. When we started out at night,
we soon came to a ditch too wide to jump,
and as our feet were dry, we did not want
to wet our socks, so we took them off and
(11:34):
went through. January is a cold month for wading streams,
and a thin crust of ice was hard on the feet.
They felt pretty numb for a while, but when we
had wiped them as dry as we could and got
on our socks and boots again, they were soon all right.
(11:54):
But our care for our feet did not save them,
for the muddy ground full of bogles which we next
encountered made us as wet and miserable as we could be.
One large town, it may have been Soggle, gave us
a considerable trouble getting around it. The time of year
(12:16):
made the going bad. There were no vegetables in the
gardens or apples on the trees, no cows out at pasture.
Even the leaves were gone from the trees, thus making
shelter harder to find. The spruce trees and scotch fir
were our stronghold, and it was in spruce thickets we
(12:38):
made our hiding places by day. The advantage of winter
travel was the longer nights, and although it had been
raining frequently and the coldest, most disagreeable rains, the weather
was dry during the time we were out, but the
going was heavy and bad, and when the time came
(12:58):
to rest we were completely done out. We had put
ourselves on short rations because we had not been able
to save much. We had no way of carrying it
except in our pockets, and we had to be careful
not to make them bulge. We had biscuits, chocolate, and cheese,
(13:18):
and not being able to get even a raw turnip
to supplement our stores, we had to save them all
we could. On January twenty fifth, our third day out,
the bush was so short we had to lie all
day to remain hidden. We could not once stand up
and stretch, and the day was interminably long, a bird's
(13:43):
nest deserted now, of course, and broken, hung in a
stunted scotch fur over my head, And as I lay
looking at it, I thought of the hard struggle birds
have too to get along, and of how they have
to be on the watch for enemy. Life is a
queer puzzle when a person has time to figure it out.
(14:06):
We make things hard for each other. Here we were
ted and I lying all day inactive, not because we
wanted to, but because we had to to save our lives,
lying in a patch of scrub, stiff, cold and hungry,
(14:26):
when we might have been clearing it out and making
of it to farm, which would raise crops and help
to feed the people. Hunger sharpens a man's mind and
gives him a view of things that will never come
when the stomach is full. And as we lay there
under scrub, afraid even to speak to each other, afraid
(14:47):
to move for a crackling twig might attract some dog
who would bark and give the alarm. I took a
short course in sociology. The Catholics are right about having
the people come fasting to Mass, for that is the
time to get spiritual truths over to them. Hunger would
(15:07):
solve all the capital and labor troubles in the world.
That is, if the employers could be starved for a week, well,
not a whole week, just about as long as we had, say,
two biscuits a day for three days, with nothing better ahead.
But hunger is just a word of two syllables to
(15:28):
most people. They know it by sight. They can say
it and write it, but they do not know it.
At these times, the thought of liberty became a passion
with us. Still, we never minimize the danger, nor allowed
ourselves to become too optimistic. We knew what was ahead
(15:51):
of us if we were caught the cells and the
straf barrack with incidentals. On the fourth day, we crossed
an open patch of country, lightly wooded, and then came
to a wide moor, which offered us no protection whatever.
(16:11):
Our only consolation was that nobody would be likely to
visit such a place. There was not even a rabbit
or a bird, and the silence was like the silence
of death. I knew from my map that we had
to cross the river Ems, and I also knew that
this would probably be the deciding factor in our escape.
(16:33):
If we got over the Ems, we should get the
rest of the way. At two o'clock in the morning,
we reached the Ems. It is a big river in
normal times, but it was now in flood. As we
could see by the trees which stood in the water,
as well as by the uprooted ones that floated down
(16:53):
the stream. Swimming was out of the question. We hunted
along the bank that morning but could find nothing, and
as daylight was coming, we had to take cover. All day,
we remained hidden in a clump of spruce and looked
out upon the cruel sweep of water that divided us
(17:15):
from Liberty. The west wind came softly to us, bringing
sounds from the Holland border, which we knew from our
map was only four or five miles away. We heard
the shunting of cars and the faint ringing of bells.
We discussed every plan. We would search the river bank
(17:39):
for a boat, though we were afraid the German thoroughness
would see to it that there was no boat on
this side of any of their border rivers. Still, they
could not watch everything, and there might be one. Failing that,
we would make a raft to carry our clothes and
swim it. We had a knife, but no rope. I
(18:02):
remember in Swiss family Robinson, how easily things came to
hand when they were needed. And I actually looked in
the dead grass at my feet to see if by
any chance I might find a rope or wire or something.
But there were no miracles or fairies, no fortunate happenings
(18:23):
for us. And when night came on again, we scoured
the bank for a boat, but in vain never a
boat could we see. We then drew together some of
the driftwood that lay on the shore, but when we
tried it in the water, it would hardly float its
own weight. I felt the hopelessness of this plan, but
(18:47):
Ted worked on like a beaver, and I tried to
believe he had more hope than I had. But suddenly
he looked at me as he stopped, and I felt
that our last plan was gone. It's no use. He said.
There was only the bridge left, and that we knew
(19:08):
was very dangerous. Still there was a chance it might
not be guarded. The guard might be gone for a
few minutes. And all the time the murmurs came to
us on the wind from the Hall and Border and
sounded friendly and welcoming. We started out to find the bridge.
(19:30):
We were better dressed than Bromley and I had been
for we had on the dark blue overcoats, but not
being able to speak the language was dead against us.
Even if they do get us, sim Ted said, we'll
try it again if we live through the punishment. All right,
(19:51):
I said, I'm game. End of chapter fourteen.
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