From the News

Dated: December 25, 1918

The following description of his escape from Germany is submitted by Private D. Bilson Merry, No. 23416, Seventh Battalion, Trail, B. C., who enlisted in August, 1914, and spent three years, April, 1915, to April, 1918, in various prison camps of Germany. He has recently received his discharge, and, in spite of many hardships, he is in A-1 condition.

As tales of many ex-prisoners of war corroborate, in general details, part of my own experience in Germany, it would, perhaps, prove more interesting if I were to leave out the general impressions and deal with the more personal aspects.

The first step towards disorganizing the prisoners was taken in the early part of 1916, when the Germans divided us into small parties distributed to "Kommandos" or working squads. It might sound strange to hear of disorganizing prisoners, but such was the case. Early in 1915, when we had first been sent to work, we Canadians were resolved, as a body, to refuse to do any kind of industrial or agricultural work, and it was amusing to note the peculiar occupations of some men. A great many were bartenders, others were salesmen, and one claimed to be a "draught clerk." When 'questioned as to what was meant, he explained that it was opening and shutting windows. Although we were justified in refusing to work on anything of national importance, the Germans looked on it as defiance of the military laws of Germany, they themselves ignoring agreements and international conventions in asking us to work.

Their procedure was frightfulness - flogging, imprisonment, strafe, barracks or threatening to shoot ring-leaders. One German interpreter said we would be shot and afterwards severely dealt with. Evidently they didn't intend to kill us outright. All this had no effect on us, so, for a short time they were really at a loss as to how to handle us, during which we spent the time in trying to amuse ourselves in camp life.

Early in the winter of 1916 we were divided into two large parties and sent to different camps. From here we were distributed. After two unsuccessful attempts to escape, found myself at a stone quarry along with two Regular Army men. Being the only three English-speaking men amongst 140 Russians, and all working at different parts of the works, we could not oppose them in any way. Later, at this camp, we were joined by two other Imperial men, one of whom had just previously witnessed the cold-blooded murder of his chum and various other atrocities at a frontier camp. I soon found, too, that to live to fight another day it was necessary to be very obedient and have nothing to say.

The food consisted of turnips and weeds, mixed with some indescribable meat into some sort of mystery stew. The meat, evidently, was brought from the zoo and may have been anything from elephant down. Once, after indulging in a slightly worse mixture than usual, we made the pleasing discovery that the chief ingredient was crocodile. As a great treat we were offered raw herring. Dogs and cats were very scarce, and I have no doubt that their disappearance could be easily accounted for. Had it not been for the Canadian Red Cross we should certainly all have starved long ago. The poor Russians received no parcels and so were worse off than we were. Half starving, and with little or no clothing, they were forced to do as much work as the Germans themselves. The conditions were deplorable. Men were allowing stones to roll on their limbs to escape this slavery. I saw one Russian put his finger under a wagon full of stone and had it severed close to the hand. The Germans at once suspected it as wilful and, after dressing the hand, sent the Russian back to work. Others were beaten mercilessly with rifle butts or kicked with the guard's ever-ready boot into insensibility. It was extremely hard to watch all this and we felt our helplessness, but cheered ourselves with the thought that we should soon try to give them the slip.

One of my companions, Frank ___, had been with me when I attempted to escape the second time in October, 1917, and, as we were not separated, immediately after our punishment, we resolved again to try and get away. It took the intervening five months between our second and third attempts to save enough food from the Red Cross parcels to sustain us on our journey.

The building used as a barracks was a large square stone structure, with walls about four feet thick, which, in peace times, was used as a store room in connection with the quarry. Our quarters were on the top floor, and above this was a small attic where we hid our supplies. Besides my limited rations I had a compass obtained from a German civilian by bribing him with a piece of soap, and a road map which I had traced from one in the possession of a Belgian fellow prisoner. These I had succeeded in concealing in spite of the very careful search on the part of the Germans after my previous attempt and they proved most invaluable to us as may be supposed.

Forced to work in sabots and under strong guard we considered it advisable to make our try from the "lager" regardless of the fact that it was really a stronghold enclosed by a high barbwire fence and patrolled by guards. On the appointed night - April 7th, 1918—we had roll call at 7 :30 and were locked in for the night. Having previously watched the movements of the sentries, about half an hour later we got busy to cut the bolt out of the door of our room which we shared with about 20 French and Belgians. Each had a turn cutting with a knife while the remaining two made as much noise as possible playing on a "doodle- sack" (small accordian), the other prisoners gazing at us in amazement at our daring.

We knew the guard changed at 10 o'clock and the relieving guard came up to sleep on the third floor, so we realized the necessity of getting downstairs before the first relief, We slipped down the iron stairs in our stocking feet and took refuge in a wash room on the ground floor, the windows of which were covered by heavily barred iron plates. After pausing to ascertain the whereabouts of the guard, we started to loosen the plate, which took us an hour and a half. It finally came off with a bang, fortunately unheard by anyone, and we dropped out into the square. The guard being engaged in conversation in the centre, we were able to slip along the wall, cut the barbed wire, and get away.

Needless to say the pace at first was terrific, but we soon slowed down to a forced march pace. It was across country, and our first difficulty was a canal. This we crossed on the locks and found a road leading to an open moor. On this we travelled for miles, passing a small prison camp, but were unobserved and kept on until halted by daylight. We found our resting place for a day on a slight elevation in a swamp, and were protected by bushes and heather. We carried on in this way, continuing our journey under cover of darkness and trying to sleep in the day time for the rest of the way. The country over which we travelled was mostly low-lying farming lands and open moor with an occasional small forest. Our chief obstacles were waterways which were very numerous. As we dared not cross bridges through fear of being captured, we were forced to wade or swim most of them. We had several narrow escapes from being seen - on one occasion being accosted by a gendarme patrolling the road on a bicycle. He addressed us, and had it not been for the faultless German accent of one of my friends we should certainly have been suspected. Another time we jumped into a ditch on the side of the road on hearing a mouth organ, and as the player passed we perceived a very small boy swaggering along and playing to comfort and reassure an old lady coming some distance behind, presumably his grandmother.

On the fifth night we reached our danger zone - a large canal about 15 miles from the frontier and we reckoned we had already covered about 60 miles, an average of 15 miles a night. It was our intention to swim this canal, so we set out to find enough wood to make a small raft on which to place our clothing and food. This part of the country was absolutely without wood, even chips were few and far between, so we went into an orchard and picked up a sawhorse, a ladder and some stakes out of the fence. After spending over an hour on the hunt we found, after construction, that the raft would hardly float itself, much less serve our purpose - so we were forced to abandon this idea.

All at once the idea came to my other friend. – Phil - that this particular part of the country was familiar to him, he having been captured in a previous attempt in this district. So we put on our clothes again and set out towards a bridge of which he told us. About two hundred yards from the spot where we had intended to cross a number of canal boats were anchored. Tied to one of these by a 4-inch rope was a small row boat, which we thought would solve the problem of crossing, so we cautionsly climbed down the bank and Phil stepped into the boat to cut the rope while I held it steady against the bank. After about five minutes of sawing he reported the rope about half cut, when suddenly a German watchman popped up from the interior of the barge within an arm's reach of Phil. The order to beat it was whispered, and Frank and I scampered up the bank full speed ahead. Phil crouched in the bow of the boat, and when the German went below, possibly in search of a weapon, he, too, changed his mind. about staying and crawled up, 'only in a different direction. For a while there was great fear that we had become separated, but, after half an hour, we found each other, and walked boldly along the bank until we came to the bridge which Phil remembered and declared to be unguarded. To prove it he agreed to walk over and back himself, which he did and we followed. We afterwards learned that if we had crossed in the boat our difficulties would have been very much greater, as the place was a series of canals and ditches. We were so pleased with ourselves that we decided to find a favorable location for our daily rest.

After a miserable day in the rain, we proceeded on our way a little later in the evening than usual, and soon entered a small village on the outskirts of which we observed a sign reading 2 kilometres to M__" and a little further on in the village we found another sign reading "10 kilometres to M___" these signs having doubtless been placed to deceive escaping prisoners. Had it not been for Phil's knowledge of this we should probably have fallen into the trap. We left the village and a road which led to a guarded bridge and made a detour which brought us out on the bank of the river about a mile above the bridge. Much as we disliked the idea of swimming in an unfamiliar river, swollen with Spring rains, on a cold, wet night, we realized that this was the only course. We had heard that more prisoners had been lost in that river than had ever been able to reach Holland, but there was nothing left for us to do, so we prepared to make the plunge. We did not stop to dry our cloths.

We found large peat holes and numerous small lakes lay in our path, and it was necessary to make many detours. Frequently we would fall into these holes and experienced difficulty in getting out. We had to pass through about 15 miles of this by a light and, making a detour, we reached the road running along the canal bank on which we narrowly escaped capture by two cycle patrols. If all patrols were like these, escaping from Germany would be an easy matter. As before, our boots tied about our necks and overcoats in our packs we easily reached the other side.

Changing our direction we observed a row of trees in the distance which looked a likely dividing line. Cautiously approaching this we saw what we took to be a sentry and walked around viewing him from different angles. Upon closer inspection, however, we discovered this "sentry" to be a dummy, which had been blown over by the wind, and which created a ludicrous appearance. A flash of light put us on guard once more, and we made haste to get across what we took to be the border. To make certain of this we continued across country, very similar to the past 15 miles, until we reached a road leading northwest which we agreed to take. On this we walked until 9 o'clock the next morning, quite heedless of daylight. Needless to say we were all in, having walked from 8:30 the previous night - 13 hours without a halt. Our rations were exhausted by this time with the exception of a small bar of chocolate each, which we hastily devoured on seeing an exceptionally clean looking village ahead of us.

Here we met a Belgian who informed us that we were in Holland to be sure, and led us to an electric plant to dry out. We waited for about two hours and got thoroughly dried out, or at least dry to what we thought was dry. About 11 :30 a boy came to take us to the police who gave us a lunch and took us to the train, when we proceeded to a place Coevordin by name. Handed over to the military authorities and taken to a small detention house where we waited a day; thence proceeding to Enchede, where we were quarantined for 16 days.

From the time we entered Holland we found nothing but hospitality and friendliness. The 16 days at Enchede were rather tiresome, but were a splendid rest, giving us plenty of time to recuperate from our long term in "Gefangenenschaft."