ong to walk to Holland. We
specialised on concentrated foods from our parcels--biscuits, tinned
meats, and so on. We had our cache in a hole, dug under cover of
night, under the flooring of the hut. It was unsafe to keep food on
our bodies or near our beds, as the guards were in the habit of
calling the _Raus_ at all hours, and sometimes, several times during
the night. It might be at twelve, two or four, although it was never
alike on any two nights in succession, except that they always
searched us. We could see no reason for this; other than to break our
rest and perhaps our spirits, as at Giessen Camp. Certainly, no one
would carry any forbidden thing on his person, under such
surveillance, and they well knew we could hide anything we wished in
other places; as we did.

Each Saturday morning, Simmons and I paraded for paint. We stood,
while a big Russian, with a brush and bucket, painted large red and
green circles on our breasts, backs and knees. Thin stripes were also
painted down the seams of our trousers and sleeves and around the
stiff crowns of our caps. This was to mark us as dangerous characters.
As such we received more of the unwelcome _Raus_ attentions than the
others and were the more wary in consequence.

We were busy opening our mail on one of those rare occasions, when
Simmons gave a startled exclamation. I looked up and saw him gazing
curiously at a small cheese which he turned slowly around in his hand.
As I stepped to his side, a guard came in. He hastily shoved the cause
of the strange behaviour into his pocket. When the guard had gone; he
passed me a letter to read. It was from his brother in Canada. "I
received your letter all right and am sending you a special brand of
cheese," I read--and understood.

We waited on tiptoe until night, to open the cheese. It was one of the
cream cheeses, so popular in Canada, no bigger than my closed hand. We
gingerly unwrapped the tin foil and broke it open. To our great joy,
in the hollow heart of it there was tucked away the tiny compass
Simmons had written for from Vehnmoor just before our second escape.
With it were four American quarters.

Not anticipating this good luck, we had exercised our ingenuity to
construct a rude compass of our own out of a safety-razor blade and an
eyelet from my boot. It was within fifteen to twenty degrees of the
true north. In addition we had a safety lamp, which one of the guards
had long been looking for under the impre