Strike Out The Top Line On Both Papers

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 258, 4 December 1914, Page 8

Strike Out The Top Line On Both Papers

stole in there. It was as well that I hid, for in the evening the Germans came back. Pour of them installed themselves in the room beneath the loft. For two days they remained there, going in and out, cooking their meals, chatting, and laughing while I lay hidden in the hay above. I was in a very bad way, and exhausted from want of food, but I could not help laughing when I thought of the Germans below me, all unconscious of their ex-prisoner above them. The Idea of Escape. '' From the window of the loft I had noticed an old man pottering about the deserted and silent village, unheeded by the Germans. This gave me an idea for my escape. As soon as my Germans had left the house I came out, got into a house next door, and found a set of peasant clothes, which I donned. Then in order to complete my makeup I got a calf from the village, and, leading it, passed unrecognised right through the German lines into the French. None of the Germans took the faintest notice of me. I have got that peasant suit still;, and mean to keep it as a souvenir of my experience.

'T fell in with the French in a •wood. I saw cavalry, and thinking they /were Germans, hid, but presently discovered they were French. At first the French took me for a spy, but one of their officers who spoke English well soon recognised me, _ and passed me through to the British. A week later I returned to Varreddes and found the body of poor Geoffrey Pearson lying where I left it. I buried it there with the assistance of some peasants, and planted a cross with the name and date on the grave, the position of which I carefully noted, so that it can be easily found later on.''

Mr Pearson's grayejiea ia thtrTOiddle ofa great-smiling plain, the battlefield of the Marne. It is close to the village of Varreddes, where blackened w r alls, gaping shell holes, and weeping women distraught at the disappearance of their husbands, "hostages'* in German hands, mark the passage of the "Boehes." A few spadefuls of brown earth turned between a haystack and the road, a little Union Jack, and a few nosegays of withered flowers placed there in grateful remembrance by the hands of poor village women mark his last resting place. A Noble Burying Place.

He is the only: Englishman buried in this part of the battlefield. His is a noble bjirying place. In every direction as far as the eye can see are the simple graves of those who fell in battle, little graves like his marked by a blood-stain-ed kepi, a handful of flowers or a little flag, in the case of the French, or long mounds of brown earth surmounted by a rough cross in the case of the Germans.

The French graves bear traces of all kinds of tender attentions. Here is a well-made wooden cross,, the work of a village carpenter, with the pencilled inscription, "The graves of 28 brave men of the Eegiment of Infantry.'' Here is a note pinned to a rough cross fashioned from a broken lance: "This is the grave of my son Eugene, recognised by me. Please do not move the cross." The father's name and address follow. Over the whole plain reposes the silence of a devastated countryside. The roads are deserted, the fields abandoned, the villages ruined and desolate.