Lest We Forget: World War StoriesThompson, John G. (John Gilbert)
History
Lest We Forget: World War Stories
Thompson, John G. (John Gilbert)
Readers -- History; Readers -- World War, 1914-1918
Few persons could do this and come through alive. This English flyer a
few weeks before had fallen eight thousand feet, with a bullet in his
neck, when his airplane had been shot down in a fight with four German
machines. When picked up within the German lines, he was enough alive
to be taken to a hospital. The bullet was removed, and he recovered. He
was a British flyer, simply because America did not enter the war soon
enough for him, and like many other young Americans, he was eager to
fight the German beast and "save the world for democracy."
He was being taken with six other officers from a prison in Belgium to
a prison camp in Germany. He knew that, once there, his chances for
escape would be very small; and he felt he preferred death to life in a
German prison camp. He knew that, if he were not killed in his leap
from the train, the Germans would doubtless shoot him as a spy, should
they succeed in recapturing him. Some Germans wanted all Americans who
enlisted in the Allied armies to be shot, as they had shot Captain
Fryatt, on the ground that they were non-combatants attacking war
forces; for this was before America entered the war against Germany.
Besides, prisoners were not allowed to know what was going on in
Germany. An escaped prisoner who could find out was, therefore, likely
to be treated as a spy.
Pat O'Brien's cheek was cut open, and his left eye badly injured and
swollen so that he could not open it. He had scratched his hands and
wrists, and sprained his ankle. But he was hard to kill. In the
excitement caused by his jump through the car window, the Germans did
not stop the train immediately, and so did not reach the spot where he
had fallen, until he had recovered consciousness and had got away from
the track. He was careful in walking away to hold the tail of his coat
so that the blood dropping from his cheek would not fall upon the
ground and show which way he went. Before daylight he had been able to
put more than five miles between him and the tracks. He then hid in a
deep woods, knowing that he must travel by night and keep out of sight
by day, for he was wearing the uniform of a British flyer.
The story of his adventures is one of the most interesting of all the
strange and interesting stories of the World War. When he reached
England, King George sent for him to come to Buckingham Palace and
spent nearly an hour listening to it. Lieutenant O'Brien has published
it in a book which he calls "Outwitting the Hun." Boys and girls who
like an exciting story of adventure, a true story, will want to read
this book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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