However, before six days had passed a good number of the twenty-nine had already been rounded up and brought back to camp. As they were kept in the strictest isolation, it was only possible to hear their stories by bribing the cell attendants to bring written messages from them. If bribes failed, the message was concealed somehow in their trays of food. Every officer in detention cell had to have a friend to feed him—i.e. cook his food and see that it was delivered to him; otherwise he existed in semi-starvation on the German ration. It was the usual thing, preparatory to an attempt to escape, to arrange for your feeding arrangements in “jug”; and the penalty of recapture was shared to the full by the luckless partner, who thus had double work. Sharp and Luscombe were the first pair back, as they had been the last pair away. They had had two days and a night out and had been caught passing through a village at night about 15 miles down the Weser. Sharp reported that at his search on being brought back to the camp, Niemeyer had vented his spleen on him by picking a valuable gold watch to pieces with his pocket knife, and by giving instructions for his civilian clothes (which included a brand new coat from England) to be ripped to ribbons. Every day brought in some fresh recapture, and, the cell accommodation being completely inadequate to cope with the numerous criminals, the town gaol was drawn upon to afford relief. It was a sad blow to the camp when some of the foremost spirits in the adventure—Mardock, Lawrence, Butler, and Langren—were brought back after being out about ten days. Butler had stolen a bicycle and was caught on it while passing through a village. The others had been taken in the vicinity of the Ems. All these separate captures used to be described at length and with appropriate embellishments in the Hanoverian press. Thus in one organ it was stated that the refugees were all wearing British uniform; another had it that British naval uniform was the mode, with the buttons altered; yet another explained that the prisoners had escaped in civilian disguise procured from British friends outside the camp. To be sure, we had British friends outside the camp—what prisoner-of-war did not? But one could imagine the burghers of Hanover reading this sort of stuff and commenting on the lax policy of the Government towards enemy aliens!