our prisoner's uniform over them. When we got to
the mine we took off the uniform and slipped the mining clothes on over
the others. We worked all day. Coming up from work in the late
afternoon, Nick and I held back until everyone else had gone. We went up
alone in the hoist and tore off our mining clothes as we ascended,
dropping each piece back into the pit as we discarded it.

It was fairly dark when we got out of the hoist and the guards did not
pay much attention to us. There was a small building at the mine head
where we prisoners washed and dressed after work and a separate exit for
the civilians. Nick and I took the civilian exit and walked out into
the street without any interference.

[Sidenote: Near the Dutch border.]

We could both speak enough German to pass, so we boldly struck out for
the Dutch border, which was about 85 miles away, traveling only during
the night. We had a map that a miner had sold to us for a cake of soap
and we guided our course by that. We got to the border line without any
trouble whatever, but were caught through overconfidence, due to a
mistake in the map. Close to the line was a milepost indicating that a
certain Dutch town was two miles west. The map indicated that this town
was four miles within the Dutch border.

[Sidenote: Captured and punished again.]

"We're over!" we shouted when we saw that welcome milepost. Throwing
caution aside, we marched boldly forward, right into a couple of
sentries with fixed bayonets!

It was two weeks' "black" they meted out to us that time. The
Kommandant's eyes snapped as he passed sentence. I knew he would have
been much more strict on me as the three-time offender had it not been
that the need for coal was so dire that labor, even the labor of a
recalcitrant prisoner, was valuable.

"No prisoner has yet escaped from this Kommando!" he shouted, "and none
shall. Any further attempts will be punished with the utmost severity."

[Sidenote: A new method of getaway planned.]

Nevertheless they took the precaution to break up my partnership with
Nicholson, putting him on the night shift. I immediately went into
partnership with Private W. M. Masters, of Toronto, and we planned to
make our getaway by an entirely new method.

The building at the mine where we changed clothes before and after work
was equipped with a bathroom in one corner, with a window with one iron
bar intersecting. Outside the window was a bush and beyond that open
coun