Arizona republican., 1918-11-26
LIEUT.. ISAACS HAS SERIES OF BLOOD
 STIRRING MISHAPS

on the head and both of my knees were cut on the iron ties of the parallel track. | T scrambled into the brush as besl I could. Very soon bullets were whist ling about me as the train had beer stopped and guards were on my trail could not make speed in the condition 1 was in, so to save my life I held ut, 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 a blow with his rifle. l 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 l was swathed | in paper banda ges-they have very | little cloth in Germany you know. Haa | it not been for food supplied by the Red Cross, I'm sure I would have starved t. death, but with that we fared very well 1 and within a month 1 had resained my strength. There were about 150 Rus sian officers and . American officers in Ee 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 anc short boards with which to make 8 lad
  | of their food to a Russian for a pair of wire cutters he had smuggled into the camp. Three different times they had their esca pc plans completed, each time with the connivance of a Russian, and each time they had reason to believe l the Germans had been appra ised and they did not try.
 l Finally we learned that they Wer. to take all the Russians away on Oct. | and, working without the Russians, We planned 10 try again on the night oi Oct 6. Fifteen feet from our barred windows was a 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 window was a ditch seven feel wide filled with scrapped barbed wire. l We had almost severed the bars of the window in the room in which 1 was i'm prisoned, using an improvised saw one of the officers had obtained from a Russian.
 Two other officers with me were to use two tennis court markers, eighteen feet long, as a bridge from our window to the top of the barbed- wire fence. The wooden markers which we calcu- lated would barely hold us when strapped together were to be brought
 
 night.
 We figured that soon after the at tempt the guards would be attracted from the main gate, so three officers elected to try a dash there at the prop CT moment. Three others were to at tempt 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 be done exactly at 10:3 30 o'clock, when every man was to be ready to go.
 "l will tell the name of only one o. the officers, as I do not~know the fate of the others. He was Corporal Har- old B. Willis of Boston, member of the Lafayette Escadrille. He was one : ofthose who were to dash through the gate, and he and I had q rendezvous two miles from camp
 When the lights were extinguished , by the short -circuitins, we forced the bars as quietly as possible, and ran out the two markers strapped together. and 7 dsrkened with shoe -blacking as much as possible in the short time we 1aG There was no moon but the sky w~e clear.
 "One of the window bars stuck, and we made considera ble noise forcing it.
 
 risky trip to the top of the fence l got outside all right. but there were guards both 10 my right and left There were no protecting trees, so l ran as fast as 1 could with bullets whistling about me.
 'l met Willis at the rendezvous and we set out southwest. We travelled at night, slept in the day and lived on Ia " veg etables we took from gardens At last we reached the Rhine at a poin; : between Schaffhausen and Basic . We found that at every place where we might approach the bank it was thoroughly guarded We decided then to find a creek if possible and wade down it until we struck the Rhine The . current in the one we found was very swift and the water cold. Willis had just taken off most his clothes for the plunge into the Rhine, when he was , swept away by the current which al that point moved about twelve kilo- , meters ar hour.
 Tt -as an awful trip in the cold water with eddies swishing me around and at one time I turned on my bacl to float as long as possible. It seemed that it was impossible to bring tha1 ,, bank any closer with my waning strength Finally I was fortunate enough to be caught in .an eddy that 1 swept me 10 the SDOfe.
 When able to walk I found a farm house and was warmly welcomed by the Swiss ~easants. I told them o , Willis and asked them to send som con, a down the bank to look for him. A shor distance down the road the peasan | met one of his neighbors who had come I to look for me Willis had landed muci n the same as I had, was treated as I hat 7 been by another peasant and had sen ' a messenger for me just as I had fo | him. Willis went to France and I as sume has joined his command by thi | lime