Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-11-24

"l scrambled into the brush a
 best l could. Very soon bullets wer,
 whistling about me as the train ha,
 been stopped and guards were ol
 my trail. l could not make spec;
 Ill the condition was in, so to save
 my life ] held up my hands in toke,
 of surrender when the guards wer. about 13 yards away.
 When they came up to me one of them welcomed me with blow with his rifle. l was beaten anC l kicked and knocked down seven o. eight times before they finally load ed me back into the train.
 Arriving at the camp waa Gswathed in paper bandages- they ] have very little cloth in Germany i you know. Had it not been for food supplied by the Red Cross Pm sure l woudd have starved to death, but with that we fared very well and within a month l had regained my /. strength. There were about 150 Russian officers and 1J American oi- 1 flcers in the camp'
 ] Lieutenant lSaacs and other officers immediately began to lay plans for escape by collecting necessary arti- 1 cles, such as pieces of wire and rope and short boards with which to make ladder if necessary. They also traded somt of their food to & Russian for a pair of wire cutters he had smuggled into - the camp. Three different times they had their plans completely, each time within the connivance of a Russian, and each time they had reason to believe the Germans had been appraised and they did not try.
 Finally we learned that they were to take all the Russians away on Oct. [ and, working without the Rus slans, we planned to try again or the night of Oct. 6. Fifteen feet from our high barred windows was a barbed wire fence which turned in- ward at the top much the same as at our internment camps ln the Sta tes. Between the fence and our window was ditch seven feet wide filled with scrapped barbed wire. We had almost severed the bars of the window in the room in which I was imprisoned, using an impro- vised saw one of the officers had ob- tained from Russian. ,t
 'The other officers with me were to use two tennis court markers, eighteen feet longs as a bridge from our window to the top of the barbed wire fence. Ths wooden markers which we calculated would barely hold us when strapped together were to be brought into cur room after the roll call at night.
 We figured that soon after the attempt the guards would be at tracted from the main gate, so three officers elected to try dash there at the proper moment. Three others were to attempt to get through the fence with the wire cutters, while two others planned to get over. We had fixed the electric light wires so that we could quickly short circuit them This was to he done exactly at 10:30 o'clock. when every man was to be ready to go.
 q will tell the name of only one of the officers, as l do not know the fate of the others. He was Corporal Harold B. Willis of Boston, mem Der of the Lafayette Escadrille. He was one of those who were to dash through the gate. and he and I had rendezvous two miles ffom camp
 When the lights were extinguished by the short-circuiting, we forced the bars as quietly as possible. and ran out the two markers strapped tOge- ther, and darkened with shoe-blacking as much as possible in the short tint we had. There was no moon, but the sky was clear.
 "One of the window bars stuck, and we made considerable noise fore ing it, but it didn't take us long to start the risky trip to the top of the fence. I got out all right, but there were guards both to my right and left. There were no protecting trees so I ran as fast as I could, with bull lets whistling about me.
 ,"I met Willis at the rendezvous and we set out southwest. We tra- yelled at night, slept in the day and lived on raw vegetables we took from gardens. At lastN we reached . the Rhine at point between Schaffhau- sen and Basic.
 Swan the Rhine.
 'sWe found that at every place where me might approach the bank it was thoroughly guarded. We de- cided then to find a creek if possible and wade down it until we struck the Rhine. The current ill the one we found was very swift and the water was cold Willis had just talk en off most of his clothes for the pplunge in the Rhine when he was swept away by the current which at that point moved about twelve kilo- meters an hour.
 "It was an awful trip in the cold water with eddies swisbing me around <and at one time l turntd on my back, to float as long as possible. It seemed that it was impossible to bring that bank any closer with my waning strength. Finally was for tunate enough to be caught in an eddy that swept me to the shore. When able to walk, I found farm house and was warmly welcomed by the Swiss peasants. told then of Willis and asked them to send some one down the. bank to look for him. l A short diataS1ce down the road tht