The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-11-24

t hS' "ho aie LII tue verge or star V vation.
 mother ship and three days in a lant 7 prison, carefully guarded and badl, fed. During this time he was taken tc }. ithe German battleship Kaiser Wilhelm s II, the flag ship of the fleet, and ques. !, toned by staff officer.
 : T finally told him that the United a States would send so many men tc e France that the battle lines wouldn't d hold them,' said the lieutenant "l s was then taken to Karlsruhe and placed Tn an hotel room by myself the first day ] Ihe next day was put into another
 room with eight French officers, ii haVlng been learned In the meantime that l spoke French. These rooms l [ afterward learned were known as the listening rooms,' and they were rightly named. The Frenchmen and I found three dlctaphones and destroyed them, The next day l was placed in room ! With three British officers and there were dictaphones in that room" : After few days at Karlsruhe the
 lieutenant was started for preliminary distributing camp at Villingen, Baden In the railway carriage with him were two guards. He was unaware of con- lditions at the Villingen camp. and de- clded to try and get away from the train if the slightest opportunity came
 One of the guards seemed to be doz-
 ng While the other was Interested in lsomething out the other side of the car lrlage when I dove through the carriage
 window" the officer said "1,he train was moving more rapidly than I be- llleVed, Tor l received an awful bump on the head and both of my knees were cut
 on the iron ties of the parallel track.
 BULLETS WHISTLED ABOUT
 scrambled into the brush as best could. Very soon bullets were whist Ing about me as the train had been stepped and guards were on my trail could not make speed in the condition was In so to save my life I held up my hands in token of surrender when the guards were about 75 yards away.
 When they came up to me one of them welcomed me with blow with his rifle. was beaten and kicked and knocked down seven or eight times be- fore they finally loaded me back into the train
 Arriving at the camp I was swathed Tn paper bandag ages-they have very lit- tle cloth in Germany you know. Had It not been for food supplied by the Red cross m sure l would have starved to Ideath,-but with that we fared very well Iand within a month I had regained my strength There were about 15O Rms sian officers and 75 American officers | in the camp"
 Lieutenant Isaacs and other officers immediately began to lay plans for es cape by collecting necessary articles. such as pieces of wire and rope and short boards with which to make a lad der if necessary. They also traded some or their food to Russian for pair of wire cutters he had smuggled into the camp Three different times they had thelr escape plans completed each time IWlth the connivance of Russian and each time they had reason to believe the Germans had been appraised and they did not try.
 FINAL PREPARATIONS Finally we learned that they ,vars to take all the Russians away on October ana, working without the Russians we planned to try again on the night of october 6. Fifteen feet from our barred windows was high barbed wire fence which turned inward at the top much the same as at our internment camps in the States Between the fence and our win aow was a ditch seven feet wide filled with scrapped barbed wire. We had all most severed the bars of the window Tn the room in which I was imprisoned using an improvised saw one of the off cers had obtained from a Russian.
 Iwo other officers with me were to TS.A long, as a bridge from our window to the top of the barbed wire fence The wooden markers which we calculateu would barely hold us when strapped to- gether were to be brought into our room after the roll-call at night
 We figured that soon after the at tempt the guards would be attracted from the main gate, so three officers elected to try dash there at the proner mo | ment. Three others were to attempt ro l get through the fence with the wire eut ters, while two others planned to get over We had fixed the electric light wires so that we could quickly short 1 circuit them This was to be done ex- 1 actly at 10.30 o'clock, when every man was to be ready to go.
 T will tell the name of only one of the | officers, as I do not know the fate of | the others. He was Corp. Haroldr K. | Willis of Boston, member of the Lafay- cite escadrille. He was one of those who | were to dash through the gate, and he ana l mad rendezvous two miles from | camp.
 When the lights were extinguished hv tho short-circuiting, we forced the bars as quietly as possible, and ran out the l two markers strapped together and darkened with shoe blacking as much as | possible in the short time we had. There was no moon but the sky was clear.
 Oic oi tHe WlnuOW bars stuck, and we !! made considerable noise forcing it. but | it didn't take us long to start the risky trip to the top of the fence I got out side 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 bullets whistling about me
 T met Willis at the rendezvous and we set out southeast We travelled at night | slept in the day and lived on raw vege- tables we took from gardens. At last We reached the Rhine at a point between Schaffhausen and Basic.
 SWIMMING THE RHINE
 We found that at every place where we might approach the bank it was thor II oughly guarded. We decided then to l find creek if possible and wade it down II until we struck tha Rhine. The current in the one we found was very swift and fl the water cold. Willis had just taken, off most of his clothes for the plunge Il into the Rhine, when he was swept away N by the current which at that point moved N about 12 kilometres an hour. Tt was an awful trip in the cold water with eddies swishing me around. and l at one time turned my back to float as