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.

Private Donahue had been fearing that he would hear that word. But now
he recognized it as spoken by an American voice.

"I am an American!" he cried joyfully, springing to his feet.

Soon he was sleeping inside his own lines, under two old potato sacks.
At dawn he ate a good breakfast at the field kitchen, then reported at
headquarters.

He had kept his eyes open during his seven days' journey through the
German lines, and had some important information to give at French
headquarters.

But many times the captives had no opportunity to escape before they
were locked in the prison camp somewhere in Germany. Then it demanded
every bit of Yankee ingenuity to get away.

One of the most elaborate attempts, involving the escape of a great
number of men, is told in the following story.

There were seventy Americans among the prisoners in a German camp at
Villingen in Baden. Not all had arrived at the same time. Some were
newcomers, others unfortunately had been detained there for more than a
year.

The prison consisted of a barracks for the men, surrounded by a large
stretch of land, all inclosed with two rows of high wire fencing,
completely charged with electricity. The second fence, which was six
or eight feet away from the first, was very strong and bent inward
toward the top, so that if a prisoner by any possible