BID FOR FREEDOM

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2709, 2 March 1916, Page 6

BID FOR FREEDOM

: —• '< BRITISH SOLDIER'S ADVENTURES IN GERMANY/ v A young British soldier, now a prisoner _in Germany, recently made a determined but unsuccessful attempt to escape (says' the Central News). He has told yhe story in a letter to bis father which the German military ccnsor has allowed to come through. The narrative runs as follows: "Dear Father—lt is only by the worst of luck and some of the best of German organisation that I am not at homo with you all by now. It is now many long months since I first conceived tho idea- of trying to escape from here to Holland and from there homo. Well after a lot of trouble and very difficult preparations, I put iny idea into action on November 25 at midday whilst ht work. I was away from tliis prison 'from Thursday midday, November 25, to Sunday night, 11 o'clock on November 28, after creeping through forests, over rough country, woods, copses, and all kinds of difficult places, travelling by night only and in the day lying hidden in forests. I "I was captured on Saturday night bv German sentinels. Where do' you think? One hundred yards from 'my goal! The German and Holland frontier. One. hundred yards more and : ( I should have been a free man; free | to return to you nil and hare tG'liristinas with you. I think this is about the worst stroke of luck that I have ever had. _ After swimming through the Lippe in a snowstorm, picking my way. through forests, woods, copses, streams, ditches, barbed wire fences, and lying from 6.30 eaoh riiorning until dark at 6 o'clock in the evening dead 'still, without covering, in deep snow, prao. tically frozen through and through, with only what food I could carry in my pockets, and only a small compass to guide me. After all this becauso my legs were frozen from my knees downward I was captured 100 yards, a paltry thirty to sixty seconds' walk, from the frontier, over which had I been able to take one step I should have been, a freo man, I feel like crying, so weak and disappointed was I to have lost by so narrow a margin, but now I am inclined to laugh jnst a little, because there is a humorous side to ever-? question. I have just recovered the use of my legs, over a week after, but I limp. lam afraid it will be a long time, if ever, before I shall be able to walk properly. "Of course my popularity star among the prison officials is in the descendant, I am kept locked up night and day alone, being let out of my coll each day for exercise. At present lam allowed to receive my parcels, hut I might be tried and condemned ony day, and {his privilege stopped. It does seem hard. The weather here is very had. Seal wintry weather, hut I am warm and dry in my cell. I have had very bad luck, and 1 want chccring up."