212
THE YPRES TIMES
Danny Dick suffered in mind and body as he watched the grey hordes swarm
over the ground. He was pinned helpless at a time when he so wanted to be
fighting. Could he but free himself he would use a rifle and bayonet as long as
life was in him. But he was not discovered. The Germans did not make any
attempt to clear the trench he was tin, and only two of them came near, searching
for plunder among the dead. Danny was tortured with thirst, and almost delirious
from the pain of his wound and cramped muscles. Different parties of Germans
went past, but none saw him, and, at last, it was night, and with the night
came a strong shell fire from the British guns.
Shells churned anew the chaos about him, and death came very near when an
explosion tore a hole in the parados. He lay semi-conscious for a time, and then
recovered and found that one arm was free. Working desperately, he loosed the
other and, in half an hour, crawled from his cavity. Creeping over the debris he
found a dead German who had a full water bottle. The water was warm and
brackish, but he drank every drop. Then he began to crawl towards the Canadian
lines.
He had to rest frequently, and amid the bursting shellsi and terrible din it was
difficult to keep his sense of direction. He had gone a considerable distance when a
German officer led a party across his path and discovered him. They compelled
him to rise. A soldier supported him on each side, and they hustled him over the
rough ground. At the German support line he was handed over to a second party
who meted him such rough treatment that he fainted. When he was conscious
again he found that he was being half-carried, half-dragged in a German ground-
sheet. His carriers were so terrified of shells that burst near them that twice he
was abandoned until fire slackened.
He was placed in an ambulance and had a nightmare trip to Menin, to a
sort of hospital, the waiting-room of the station, and there his wound was dressed
for the first time. At .noon he was placed on a train and taken to Courtrai. The
German doctors were rough, but their treatment was effective, and he made rapid
recovery. His food was mainly turnip soup and sour bread, with rice as an
occasional treat. After four weeks he was taken to Friedrichsfeld Camp, a camp of
10,000 prisoners, herded 600 men to a hut, the whole enclosed by barbed wire fences
ten feet high and charged with electricity.
There is not space to tell of Danny Dick's prison life, and it is well, for the
story is not easily believed. Suffice to say it was one long agony of endurance, of
a cruelty imposed which would hardly be credited to the dark ages. There was
barely food enough to hold life in the body; a coffee of acorns, boiled mangels and
war bread. And the work they were given would test men who were well fed.
Danny might have fared better had be been ofj different character, but, farm bred,
with a wholesome aspect of life, he intervened on behalf of some ill-treated Russians,
and the hatred of the guards fell on his head. They abused him in every
conceivable manner, twice thrust him in the Black Hole," to subsist on scraps
and water, locked in with a foul, vermin-laden prisoner who could not speak his
language.
Fate gave Danny his chance to escape in May, 1917. He was loaned to a
farmer for the seeding time, and found opportunity to dodge from the hut where
he was lodged at night. For twenty-two days he tramped fields at night, and hid
in ditches. He hid under bushes, he ate grass roots, half rotten turnips, any scrap
he could find. He slept under hedges in chilling rains, he endured more than could
be expected of flesh and blood, but, by some miracle of chance, survived and found
his way to the British Consul at Rotterdam. There he collapsed. His rugged
constitution was a thing of the past, and the will that had spurred him through
everything had slackened.
