immediately caught.

Transvestia

The

The Germans increased their flood- lights around the walls, added dog patrols, and made it difficult for any one to come near the walls without being spotted. To prevent a reoccurance of such individual attempts, and also to prevent the discovery of one escape plan from leading to the discovery of another, we desig- nated an escape officer to coordinate escape plans. It was not until August that our first successful attempt took place. A British Officer noted that the Germans had grown careless in their security precautions when collecting the garbage. He proposed to the escape cap- tain that he have himself covered with garbage by several fellow prisoners. When no one was looking and in an al- tered uniform which made him look like a German work- man, he slipped into the back of the truck, was quickly covered, and soon was hauled through the gates. Germans did not even bother to search the truck. His escape was discovered at the evening roll call, an ordeal which we had to go through twice a day, and word was immediately flashed around the countryside. The Ger- mans forced us to stand for several hours while they lec- tured us on escapes, and threatened any would-be escaper with 30 days solitary confinement. At the next evening roll call, a sheepish looking British Officer was brought back under guard, and the Germans smilingly told us that garbage trucks in the future would be throughly ex- amined. The captured prisoner was given his 30 days in solitary confinement, and when he returned from con- finement, we all pumped him about his escape. He said that the chief obstacle to a successful escape was the fact that there were several villages in the countryside, and they were intensely suspicious of anyone that they did not know. He said he had been stopped several times by Germans who asked him why he was not in the army, or where he was from, and while he had shown them his identity card (forged by our escape committee) as an itinerant worker, they had still remained suspicious. Apparently someone turned him in, for he was soon taken into custody by the police, taken to the nearby police station and questioned. Even though his papers passed inspection, the Germans were concerned about why such a worker would be in the neighborhood. While he was being questioned the alarm arrived that a prisoner was missing and the game was up. His conclusion was that it would be exceedingly difficult to get any place in

31