Transvestia

the countryside.

The only real hope for an escape was to reach Bremen or Hamburg or some other large city, the nearest of which was 100 miles away.

This escape failure discouraged attempts for a while and the onset of cold weather tended to stop much of the outdoor activity. To pass the time we decided to do ama- teur theatricals and on the request of our Commanding Officer, the Germans turned over a fourth floor room of the west wing to the castle. The room assigned to us had apparently been used for theatricals before because in one end of the room was a raised platform which could be used as a stage. Access to the room had aparently been possible through both our section of the castle and the German section, but someone had plastered over the old doorway leading to the west wing. I was assigned the job of restoring the stage along with George, a short stocky lieutenant from the British fleet air army. While the Germans watched, I opened a small cupboard door under the stage, found a lot of old scenery stored there, and began working my way through it. Handing or push- ing much of the stuff back to George. As I was working I thought I heard music and women's voices, and after pushing some ma terial out of the way I crawled back to the wall and found a small hole in the wood paneling which formed the end of the closet and looking through I saw what had once obviously been a library, but now there was a phonograph playing and several Germans were dancing with women of assorted ages. Most of the older women sat around talking to some soldiers who were not dancing. Without saying anything I crawled back and told George that I had enough for the day, and I spent the next several hours looking at the entrance to the German wing of the castle from the third floor of the prisoner's wing. About 9 p.m., I saw several smartly dressed young women step out of the entrance to the Ger- man section, walk to a nearby bus and board it. Several older German women were walking somewhat behind and when they boarded the bus, the driver started it and left. After several weeks of observation I came to the conclu- sion that it was only on Saturday that these women came and as luck would have it, there were two different buses. One of which usually left a half hour before the other. I also scouted out the space under the stage, and found

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