I had thought long and carefully about the problem of getting out of the camp, and had found a possible solution. The great difficulty was to find (1) an aerodrome in easy distance of Donington Hall, and (2) a trained flying-man, for I had never sat in an aeroplane. From a map in Meyer's _Encyclopædia_ I reckoned that the distance from Nottingham (in the neighbourhood of Donington) to Ostend would be roughly 300 kilometres by air route. With a modern type of machine, therefore, one ought to reach Ostend in about two hours, if all went smoothly. If the machine which I intended to annex had not enough petrol in the tank we should have to come down on the sea and trust to chance to find a rescuer. But I was certain that petrol could be found somewhere or other in the aerodrome. On my journey to London I had noticed that the flying ground at Hendon, at that time the largest in England, was practically unguarded. What was the use of detailing a large number of sentries, seeing that no one had ever yet thought of stealing an aeroplane! I became so enthusiastic at the idea of being free much sooner than I had expected and of taking home an up-to-date aeroplane that some nights I never slept a wink. Of the flying men in camp none was suitable. They had all been captured early in the war and had never handled a modern machine. But as new prisoners were constantly arriving I was confident that sooner or later a flying man would turn up. There could be no doubt there was a flying ground somewhere in the neighbourhood of Donington, for almost every day aeroplanes flew over the camp in a northerly direction. They always landed a long way off in one certain direction. Watch in hand, we observed their flight every day, noting when and where they landed, and were, in this manner, able to estimate approximately the distance of the flying ground. I used the same method in studying the neighbouring railway system. By observing the speed of the locomotives and by noting the time that elapsed before the first stop, we were enabled roughly to locate the neighbouring railway stations. We made our observations independently, and fixed in this manner also the direction of trains which we could hear but not see. Naval-Engineer Lieut. Laurer was very helpful to me in preparing two large maps by the aid of our observations and of a tiny map which we had discovered in an old novel. One of them represented the immediate surroundings of Donington; the other represented the southern portion of England and a strip of the North Sea as far as Ostend. From new prisoners who arrived at the camp via Nottingham I learned that an aerodrome was being built near the railway about eight miles from the camp. Two hangars were finished and a third was in course of construction. All our information pointed to the conclusion that a big biplane was already stationed there.