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[Page 21]
with our "fair correspondents'* who were anxious that we should call on them before we made our escape. Our plans bye-the-way were far from completion as all we had obtained from the German girls so far had been a map giving details of the roads of the country between us and Holland ~ so with the hope of getting more particulars we resolved on visiting them.
Our sentries, who were posted indoors, counted us before "lights out" and didn't worry us until the time came for "up stand" as they used to call it - otherwise "reveille". Apparently they thought that we/ were there for duration being so comfortably quartered, but they were certainly out in their calculations. All the weak places of the building that offered any means of escape had been located in the first week of our residence there. The window of our room- in fact all the rooms - had been caged in, but the fanlight was only nailed. By removing the nail it could be opened and was then wide enough to allow one to squeeze through and get a footing on the window-sill. Reaching cunt along the wall a lightning conductor strong enough to hold a mans weight could be reached, there/was then about twenty-five feet to be negotiated to the ground hanging on to the lightning conductor. It certainly looked alright in theory but when we put it into practice one night shortly after midnight barefooted and garbed in our English prisoner-of-war clothes, with our nerves in a high state of tension, it was by no means easy. Having gained the ground we made our
way to where a tree had been left conveniently standing adjacent to the fence - climbing this tree it was comparatively easy to clear the barbed wire and then drop to the ground to be a free man for m few short hours.
Luckily for us the streets were dark and unfrequented and we were able to reach the house and enter unobserved at the ground flat where the girls were waiting for us. We certainly were right in the boom for there were four of them there, two married and two single. The married one's husbands were both engaged in war work one being a "Feld Webel" which is equivalent to the rank of Sergt Major in the artillery in France, and the other an engineer in a munition factory in Berlin.
The people living in the middle flat were hostile to us for on one occasion they had reported our "friends" to the police, but being unable to give definite proof as