Kaserne B _to face p._ 54 Scene of the Walter-Medlicott attempt⎫ A dining-room at Holzminden ⎭ ” 61 Section and ground-plan of staircase, chamber, and tunnel entrance _p._ 73 Course of the tunnel ” 93 At the tunnel mouth _to face p._ 100 Section of attic roof _p._ 112 Orderlies digging out the tunnel between Kaserne B and the outer wall _to face p._ 142 Group of recaptured officers in a room at Holzminden ” 162 Facsimile of the original permit-card copied by Lockhead _to face p._ 169 Facsimile of the forged railway passport _between pp._ 174-5 Map of N.W. Germany and frontiers _p._ 189 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PROLOGUE “B/—th will detail the liaison officer for the Group for to-morrow the 5th.” The Brigade orderly splashed in bearing the unwelcome message. I had just turned in. The never-to-be-forgotten fatal three days’ downpour which had set in on the 31st July 1917 and had upset so many calculations had just stopped and we had enjoyed an afternoon and evening of bright sunshine and cloudless skies. The water in the dug-out, which had risen steadily in spite of temporary responses to our efforts with an old trench pump and a chain of buckets, was now gradually beginning to abate and the stretcher on which I slept was once more high and dry. Also I was due to go down to waggon-lines in two days’ time, and life generally was taking on a less sombre hue. It could afford to. Our six weeks in action in the Salient had been lived in an atmosphere of almost unrelieved gloom, an atmosphere—so we had come to believe—inalienable from the place itself.