Outwitting the Hun: My Escape from a German Prison CampO'Brien, Pat
History
Outwitting the Hun: My Escape from a German Prison Camp
O'Brien, Pat
Prisoner-of-war escapes; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, German
Now, when I expected any moment to suffer a similar fate, I could not
help thinking of that poor Hun's last look of agony.
I realized that my only chance lay in making an Immermann turn. This
maneuver was invented by a German--one of the greatest who ever flew
and who was killed in action some time ago. This turn, which I made
successfully, brought one of their machines right in front of me, and as
he sailed along barely ten yards away I had "the drop" on him, and he
knew it.
His white face and startled eyes I can still see. He knew beyond
question that his last moment had come, because his position prevented
his taking aim at me, while my gun pointed straight at him. My first
tracer-bullet passed within a yard of his head, the second looked as if
it hit his shoulder, the third struck him in the neck, and then I let
him have the whole works and he went down in a spinning nose dive.
All this time the three other Hun machines were shooting away at me. I
could hear the bullets striking my machine one after another. I hadn't
the slightest idea that I could ever beat off those three Huns, but
there was nothing for me to do but fight, and my hands were full.
In fighting, your machine is dropping, dropping all the time. I glanced
at my instruments and my altitude was between eight and nine thousand
feet. While I was still looking at the instruments the whole blamed
works disappeared. A burst of bullets went into the instrument board and
blew it to smithereens, another bullet went through my upper lip, came
out of the roof of my mouth and lodged in my throat, and the next thing
I knew was when I came to in a German hospital the following morning at
five o'clock, German time.
I was a prisoner of war!
IV
CLIPPED WINGS
The hospital in which I found myself on the morning after my capture
was a private house made of brick, very low and dirty, and not at all
adapted for use as a hospital. It had evidently been used but a few
days, on account of the big push that was taking place at that time of
the year, and in all probability would be abandoned as soon as they had
found a better place.
In all, the house contained four rooms and a stable, which was by far
the largest of all. Although I never looked into this "wing" of the
hospital, I was told that it, too, was filled with patients, lying on
beds of straw around on the ground. I do not know whether they, too,
were officers or privates.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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