It is not strange therefore that our men wished rather to die than to be prisoners. Nor is it strange that, having been taken, they made the most desperate attempts to escape. Naturally the easiest time to break away was while being carried from the front to the rear of the German lines. Once thrown into prison, the difficulties were much greater. Often the captive was handed back from one company of guards to another, being made to work for the enemy on his way. Private Donahue was one who was sent back in this manner, after being captured in a midnight skirmish near Chateau-Thierry. He was dropped unconscious on the ground outside a German officer's tent, and when he revived he found that all his belongings,--even letters and snapshots from home,--had been taken from him. A German stood over him and began questioning him, hoping to gather important military information. When asked how many Americans were at the front, the prisoner said, "Thirty-two American divisions and forty French." "Pigs!" shouted the German lieutenant, and the cry was caught up by the guards, who came at a signal and dragged Donahue away. From early morning until nightfall, he worked with the camouflage men, masking the batteries and cutting leafy branches for screening the stores of ammunition heaped by the roadside. The Germans gave him no blankets at night, and for food poured out for him a sort of tasteless gruel and tossed him chunks of coarse black bread to eat with it. Every day a different soldier took him in charge. Each night he was closely guarded. He knew from the distant sounds of the guns that he was being taken back into Germany. On the seventh night, he lay on the ground with Germans sleeping all about him. His guard sat beside him, leaning against a tree, his rifle between his knees. Private Donahue wished that he were back in the American lines, when suddenly in the moonlight he could see the guard's head nodding and nodding. Now was his time to escape. He stole away and began creeping through the woods. There were Germans lying all around and he stumbled over several of them. But they only grunted savagely, and he crept fearfully on. Soon he reached the edge of the woods and crawled under a bush to think. Above No Man's Land an occasional shell was bursting, by whose light he could dimly see the American lines, eight kilometers away. He crept along in the shadows, lying still whenever a soldier passed near him. When morning came, he crawled into a grain field and lay down so that no one might see him. Several times soldiers passed so close to him that he could hear them talking. Once he was nearly trampled under the hoofs of two horses, and twice a Red Cross dog threatened to disclose his presence in the field. But he lay still as death and the dog went off. That night he was creeping up the side of a ravine when he was discovered by the sentry. "Halt!" cried the guard.