A quiet day amid peaceful surroundings counteracted the effects of the excitement of the previous night. We slept quite well by reason of the good conditions, and but for the soreness of Fox's heel and my left ankle would have felt extremely fit. We were guilty during the afternoon of a piece of carelessness which nearly gave us away. Fox and Blank were near the edge of our hiding-place, and went to sleep with some of our kit spread about the ground round them. I was asleep further inside our cover, but my boots were with theirs drying in the sun.

Suddenly Fox woke up and saw a woman not fifty yards from them, planting something in the field and gradually moving in [176]our direction as she worked. Waking Blank and seizing all the kit he could find he crawled into the depths of our hiding-place, followed by Blank who had got hold of other portions of our impedimenta. An hour or so later the woman departed and we found that one of my boots had remained in the open all the time. We decided that in all probability she had not seen it, and so had no fears of discovery due to her.

The night's march began at 10 p.m., but it proved to be too early an hour for such night-birds as we. Hardly had we moved two hundred yards from our cover, when a youth with a shot-gun, prowling round in search of rabbits, saw us from about sixty-yards away. We legged it and soon left him wondering what three rough-looking men with heavy bags, and of military age, were doing in that part of the country.

Making excellent progress that night, we crossed a wild stretch of heath in the early hours of the morning, and then got back to [177]more of the abominable corn-land again. Crossing a railway and passing a cottage by the level-crossing we were greeted with the usual barking of a house-dog.

Thursday, 28th June. It was now high time to think of our hiding-place for the day. Nothing presented itself and we carried on with our rush westwards. Cover after cover we examined without finding what we wanted, and at last, hearing German voices not far off, we were forced to adopt the first thing which presented itself.

This proved to be a wood cut up with broad drives, with hardly any undergrowth in it.

We had to make the best of a bad job, and by making a kind of zareba of dead branches, some sort of cover from view from anyone more than fifty yards away was possible.

The sound of voices on all sides of the wood, which was only about 200-300 yards wide, and the yapping of the ever-present [178]dogs, together with the fact that half-cut hay-fields touched the wood on two sides, made it imperative that we should have a sentry all the time. After a hot drink and a breakfast of beef and biscuits, which made us feel a little warmer, Fox and I lay down to sleep. Blank, who had asked for the first watch, for the two hours till 7 a.m., because he said he was too cold to sleep, was to undertake the duties of sentry. It is necessary to state here that, now we were so rapidly approaching the Ems river, Blank had begun to have serious misgivings about his ability to swim it.

We had fully made up our minds that there was to be no looking for boats or building of rafts for that river. The Germans, we knew, were certain to have this obstacle well guarded, and the only chance of success, and that but a slight one, lay in dashing through the watchers and swimming it. Blank had spoken of trying to find a boat in order to tackle the Ems on his own.

[179]Well, Fox and I went to sleep feeling fairly secure with a sentry to warn us in time to get away should we be discovered. After about an hour we both woke up, instinctively feeling something was wrong. Blank had disappeared. On looking out of our hiding-place I saw him lying fast asleep in the full sunlight, right in the middle of the drive some fifty yards away.

We woke him up by throwing some pieces of wood until we hit him.

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