that we decided to lay up there for the day. Nothing
happened that day, and our greatest trouble was a growing hunger.

Night came, and we were all excited, for this was our fifth night and
we judged that we were close to the Holland border. As soon as
darkness fell we made our way cautiously out, and after a short walk,
came in sight of a good-sized town. Our map showed two towns, one on
either side of the border, but as the map was not scaled, we could not
tell which one was on the border. As near as we could figure, the
German town was a night's travelling from the border, and we decided we
couldn't make the Holland town that night, so we took the first cover
we came to and laid up for the day. Everything seemed very quiet, and
the only disturbance came from some wild birds on a slough nearby.

We had come to the end of our rations. The day before we had only one
biscuit among the three of us, and we were in a quandary to know how to
divide it. It was hardtack and it would neither break nor cut; so
finally we marked it off into thirds with a pencil and each one ate up
to his line. We had nothing for a morning meal, and as we lay there,
thinking how hungry we were, Blackie surprised us by taking from his
pocket a small tin of cocoa. He had been keeping it for emergency
rations, and we almost ate him in our joy at seeing anything eatable.
The can was quickly opened, and the three of us proceeded to munch down
dry cocoa. It stuck in our throats and we looked like greedy chickens
that had taken pieces larger than they could swallow. We finished our
tin of cocoa and everything seemed so quiet that we thought it might be
safe to get up and try to warm our feet. So we each chose a large tree
and, keeping behind it, we stamped around in our endeavour to work up a
circulation. We had only been at this a few minutes, when to our great
astonishment a voice behind us said "Guten Morgen!" We wheeled around
and found ourselves covered by a double-barrelled shotgun. It was in
the hands of a military policeman who was guarding the border. There
was no use resisting, and our feelings are better imagined than
described as we were marched back to the nearest town. It was two
miles away, and in all that distance he kept us covered every second.
I said to Blackie, "Gee, I wish this son of a gun would take his gun
off us for a minute," and Blackie said, "No chance of his risking that,
but I'm afraid that the crazy nut wil