so after one more visit to the station I caught the one o'clock tram. The girl conductress on the tram said I was on the wrong tram when I asked for my ticket. She gave me the ticket, however, and told me to get out at the first station over the Rhine and get into the next tram. At the first station over the Rhine I got out, and seeing a Bierhalle asked for a glass of beer. I had just given the woman a mark when my tram came in, so without waiting for the change I grabbed my bag and made off. She ran after me, but I pointed to the tram and called, "It does not matter, I have no time," and boarded the tram.

CHAPTER V

THE FRONTIER

When we got to Crefeld I saw that the station was on the east side of the town, but after my experience at Düsseldorf I thought it would be much safer to walk boldly right through the middle of the town than to skirt round the edges. My brother was at this time interned at Crefeld, and I thought how amusing it would be if I were to meet him in the town and wondered if he would keep a straight face when I winked at him. The walk through the town was without incident. One fellow, in Landsturm uniform, a prison guard I should think, turned round and looked at me in a nasty way, perhaps recognizing my likeness to my brother, but I walked quickly on and nothing came of it. It must have been just after 2 p.m. when I got through into the open country on the southwest side of Crefeld, and a more horrible country I have never seen; it was absolutely flat, no trees and no signs of cover of any sort. There were one or two disused factories, which I inspected, but did not like the look of them as hiding-places. I passed several parties of French soldiers working in the fields, but did not dare to speak to them. The day was very hot and my bag was very heavy, and I could not help feeling I was rather a suspicious figure wandering about through the fields with a heavy traveling-bag within 20 miles of the frontier. It was a most unpleasant walk, and at times I thought of just throwing myself down in the middle of a field of roots, but the country was so flat that I could never be quite sure that someone would not see me crawling into them. It was not till 3.30 that I found a small alder copse with thick undergrowth, which I thought would do. There were a number of people working in the fields quite close to it, but I walked by them and round the copse, and putting the copse between them and me I doubled back into it. It was quite a small copse, about 50 by 20 yards, with thick rank grass in between the clumps. The people outside were only about 50 yards from me, and I could hear them talking and laughing. Still I was very comfortable and there were no tracks, and when I had made up some yarn to tell them if I was discovered, I went to sleep. Later on I opened a tin of Oxford sausages and had a good meal. Once a dog came through hunting rabbits, and once a man and a girl came quite close, but neither disturbed me. I began to find things very tedious and looked forward to the night's walk. Soon after 10 p.m. I started out from my hiding-place and walked hard with very few rests till 5.30 next morning, when I found a good place to lie up in. Considering the amount of energy expended, I made very little progress. Many detours were necessary to avoid the villages and houses, and for the most part I walked across country by small paths which were very clearly shown on my excellent map. However, my bag and the going were both heavy, and three-quarters of an hour's halt between 1 and 2 a.m. and some hot cocoa were most refreshing. At one place where there was a level crossing a man came to open the barrier, so I took the initiative and said, "Nach Anrath gerade aus?" (Straight on to Anrath?) He said, "Ja wohl," and opened the gate. (After that I always kept the name of the next village of which I was sure of the pronunciation in my head, so as to be able to ask my way there.)

At about 5 o'clock I was pretty tired and found myself with the large village of Süchteln in front of me, through which I had to pass, as it is on a river. I funked it, as the bridge over the river was such an obvious place to have a sentry. After thinking it out, I decided it would be less suspicious to go through just after daylight when there were a few people about, so I lay up and went to sleep in a bush in the middle of a water meadow. When I woke up, shivering with the cold, it was about 5.30 and still dark, so I crossed the road and found a splendid warm spot in the middle of a haycock, which completely covered me up. Still, I thought, they might cart the hay that day; so at 6.15 a.m., when it was just getting light, I walked boldly through the village. There were one or two people about, but they took no interest in me. At 6.30 I had found an excellent hiding-place on the far side of the town. It was rather hot all day, and I had no water-bottle and suffered from thirst a good deal, but otherwise it was very pleasant, being up in the thick bushes on the top of an old gravel pit. The time seemed very long, and in the afternoon I very foolishly wandered about a bit in the woods. I was seen by one man, but I don't think he was suspicious, and so making a short detour I got back to my hiding-place. That is the worst of being alone; it is almost impossible not to do foolish things.

I started off again about 9.30 p.m., hoping to cross the frontier that night. I was about 10 miles from the frontier, but reckoned that it would be necessary to walk nearly 15 miles if I wanted to avoid all the villages, as the country was very thickly populated. There is nothing much to say about this night's walk—it was much like the other, though I suffered rather more from thirst. At all the places where there was water there were also houses, and I did not dare to stop. I managed to quench my thirst to a certain extent by chewing roots from the fields. Unfortunately, after crossing the canal, I took a wrong road and went many miles southwest instead of west, and found myself in a long straggling village. Fortunately for my nerves there were very few dogs (very different, as I found afterwards, from Bavaria), and after walking through about two miles of village I extricated myself and got into the big wood on the frontier at about 4.30 a.m. It was a very wild spot, and rather like some thickly wooded parts of Scotland. It was also very hilly, with ridges of thick heather or long grass between almost impenetrable fir woods. I had an extremely pleasant sleep in the heather, and at 6.30 a.m. decided that I would move on cautiously. It was an ideal place for stalking, and I thought I would try and locate the frontier in the day time and if possible find out what obstacles I had before me. From my map it appeared that I had about 3 kilometres of forest between me and the frontier, but of course I did not know whether the guards would be placed exactly on the frontier. It seemed to me at the time absolutely essential, and even now I think I was quite right, to try to find out by day exactly where the sentries' line was. For all I knew there might be electrified wires, and on a dark night in the forest one was more likely than not to walk straight into them without ever seeing them at all. The rides would almost certainly be guarded, and the woods were so thick that it was impossible to crawl through them without making an awful noise. I know now that a forest is not only the most obvious place to try and cross the frontier, and for that reason the best guarded, but under any conditions, and for many reasons, the open country is the best place to try. However, I felt pretty confident that I should see the sentries before they saw me, so I