Shot Down: The Secret Diary of One POW's Long March to Freedom by Kerr Alex

Author:Kerr, Alex [Kerr, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Aviation
ISBN: 9781473878044
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2017-01-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

ON THE LOOSE, 1942

We emerged in our twos and threes, faces and hands blackened, knives, other implements and rations concealed in our clothing. We had to crawl across 100 yards of open field to the relative safety of the woods beyond. That crawl will ever remain indelibly printed in my memory. We could not look back but had to move forward in silence, in the moonlight, making as little movement as possible. At any moment a guard in a watchtower might be taking a bead on the back of my head. My tongue and mouth were so dry that I literally could not swallow. All the saliva was drained from me as adrenaline pumped through my veins to prepare me for whatever effort might be called for. It seemed to me that I spent about an hour crawling and waiting for that fateful shot, but in truth it was probably no more than 15 minutes.

As it was, it all passed uneventfully and Chip, Wingy and I gathered ourselves together once we were under cover and sped off through the woods to put as much distance as possible between us and the camp before the disturbed earth was discovered and the inevitable happened.

At the edge of the forest in a steady drizzle of rain we took stock of the layout. The forest was quite thick and thus would offer good cover. But the dense forest made it easy to lose one’s bearings. ‘South is this way,’ said Chip pointing at right angles to the camp.

‘I agree,’ said Wingy and we took off without further delay, each of us trying to make sure we did not deviate from our line.

Our hideout that morning, under a fallen branch in the forest, was not the best but we managed to last out the day and got underway as soon as night fell, our clothes having dried out during the afternoon. We pushed on through forests all that night, heading south by the stars, and finally picked a hideout — a small nook in a wood. We camouflaged it with branches and leaves as day was breaking and then settled down to sleep after a small meal.

Before setting out on the second night we took a wash at a nearby stream which was running through the centre of a large field. As we were cleaning our teeth an aeroplane flew overhead, turned and switched on its landing lights as it headed in our direction. It lit up the field and my heart leapt until I realised that it would have been impossible for him to see us motionless near the stream. Unwittingly we had stopped near the flight path of a flying field. We took no chances and moved out of that area without further delay. After a strenuous night’s walking we selected our hideout in dense forest by a large stream. There was a considerable amount of dry grass hanging around and we gathered it together to lie in the bottom of some large holes which we came across — evidence of recent tree-felling activity.

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