The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1918-09-20

| so much in the city that L began TO
| feel that I was really q Belgian, and
assumed the Indifference that they
seemed to feel.
| l decided, therefore, to walk out OF
the city in the daytime, when the SEN
| tries would be less apt to be on the
watch. 1t worked fine. l was not
| held up a moment, the sentries evil
! dently taking me for a Belgian peas
| ant ON his way to work.
Travelling faster than I had ever
done before since my escape, l was
soon out in the open country, and the
| first Belgian 1 came to I approached
| for food. He gave me half of his
lunch and we sat down on the side OF
the road to eat it. OF course, he tried
to talk to me, but I used the old ruse
Of pretending I was deaf and dumb
and he was quite convinced that 1t was
so. He made various efforts to talk
to me in pantomime, but l could not
make out what he was getting at, and
I think he must have concluded that I
was not only half starved, deaf and
dumb, but %ooney" in the bargain.
When night came l looked around
for a place to rest. I had decided to
travel in the daytime as well as night,
because understood that it was only
a few miles from the frontier, and l
was naturally anxious to get there at
the earliest possible moment, although
l realized that there 1 would encounter
the most hazardous part Of my whole
adventure. To get through the heavily
guarded barbed wire and electrically
charged barrier was a problem that l
hated to think of even, although the
hours I spent endeavoring to devise
some way of outwitting the Huns
were many.
1t had occurred to me, for instance,
that it would not be such a difficult
matter to vault over the electric fence,
which was only nine feet high. In col
lege, I knew a ten-foot vault is consid-
cred a high-school boys accomplish
ment, but there were two great diff
f1culties in the way of this solution.
In the first place it would be no easy
matter to get a pole of the right
length, weight and strength to serve
the purpose More particularly, how
ever, the pole-vault idea seemed to me
to be out of the question because of
the fact that on either side of the elec-
tric fence, six feet from it, was six
foot barbed wire barrier. To vault
safely over nine-foot electrically
charged fence was one thing, but to
= n06
vault was a feat which even a college
athlete in the pink of condition would
be apt to funk. Indeed, l don't be-
lieve it Is possible.
Another plan that seemed halfway
reasonable was to build pair of stills
about twelve or fourteen feet high and
walk over the barriers one by one. AS
youngster 1 had acquired consider
able skill in stilt-walking and I have
no doubt that with the proper equip
ment it would have been quite feas-
ible to have walked out of Belgium
as easily as possible in that way, but
whether or not l was going to have
chance to construct the necessary
stills remained to be seen.
1nere were Il SOOu lnany bicycles LII
use by the German soldiers in Belgium
and it had often occurred to me that
If I could have stolen one, the tires
would have made excellent gloves and
insulated coverings for my feet in
case it was necessary for me to at
tempt to climb over the electric fence
bodily. But as had never been able
to steal bicycle this avenue Of es-
cape was closed to me.
I decided to wait until I arrived at
the barrier and then make up my mind
how to proceed.
To find a decent place to sleep that
night, I crawled under a barbed wire
fence, thinking 1t led into some field.
AS | passed under, one of the barbs
caught in my coat and in trying to
pull myself from it l shook the fence
for several yards.
Instantly there came out of the night
the nerve-racking command: Halt! !"
Again / feared I was done for. 1
crouched close down on the ground in
the darkness, not knowing whether to
take to my legs and trust to the Huns