Four-Fifty Miles to FreedomJohnston, Maurice Andrew Brackenreed
History
Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom
Johnston, Maurice Andrew Brackenreed
Prisoner-of-war escapes; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
Our thirty-fifth morning found us in a state of great depression. There
seemed no chance left of getting out of the country. Lying in our
hiding-places we reviewed the situation in an almost apathetic mood.
We were on the eastern side of a W-shaped bay, a mile wide, and opening
southwards. Its eastern arm was the creek, in which was the boat we had
failed to capture. There was a similar western arm, the two creeks
being separated by a narrow spit of land. From quite early in the
morning motor-lorries could be seen and heard winding their way along
the tortuous road. In several places this closely followed the coast
line, and at one or two was carried on causeways across the sea itself.
We lay on a headland on the seaward side of the Turkish encampment, and
were overlooked by the look-out post on the cliff-side.
At noon a council of war was held. As we were lying dotted about some
distance from one another, for the time being we all crept into an
old shelter made of branches, not many yards from us. There matters
were discussed. Although several schemes were put forward, going back
to the ravine in which we had spent so many wearisome days was not
one of them. To return there would have made us into raving lunatics.
The final decision was to make another attempt that night to seize
the boat; this time there should be four of us in the water. If that
failed, about the most attractive proposal was to go boldly on to the
coast road and by bluff obtain a lift on a motor-lorry, demanding as
Germans to be taken in a westerly direction to the nearest big town,
Selefké: we might get a boat of some sort there. The chief lure of
this scheme was that, should the lorry-driver believe our story, we
should cover a few miles without walking on our flat feet. This was a
fascinating thought indeed, for despite nearly a fortnight on the coast
we had no wish to set out on the tramp again.
Two or three of us, however, thought we might sum up the energy to
march eastwards along the road in the hope of finding a boat in the bay
of Ayasch. But even if we did this there was still the difficulty about
food and drink. Unless we replenished our supply we should have to
undertake a sea voyage of at least a hundred miles with only two days'
rations and perhaps a water-bottle full of water apiece. The consensus
of opinion was thus come to that if we failed again that night we might
as well give ourselves up the next day. We then went back into our old
and safer hiding-places.
At about two o'clock in the afternoon we heard the sound of a far-off
motor. This was no lorry. It came from a different direction. In a few
seconds we were all listening intently.
"It's only another lorry after all!"
"No, it can't be. It's on the sea side of us!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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