Chapter Six

On the Run

Ash and Asselin kept digging, tearing through dirt and the roots of plants. When they popped their heads up, they saw that the tunnel had gone exactly where it was supposed to—into a potato field beyond the wire fence. Asselin started to speak, but Ash put his hand over his friend’s mouth and gestured toward the camp. A soldier was on patrol just inside the fence. Asselin’s eyes widened as he followed Ash’s movement and spotted the guard himself. He nodded to Ash, who slowly removed his hand from his friend’s mouth. The guard, meanwhile, came closer to the fence. But he kept his eyes focused on the camp. He walked by without glancing toward the potato field.

The pair began to crawl along the dirt, taking cover in ditches that ran through the field. Then, they got up and made a run for the nearby forest. Hearing his footsteps hit twigs, Ash thought, It’s so loud—I’m so loud! But he realized that was just his fear of being discovered so soon after leaving the tunnel. Back inside the camp’s fence, none of the guards heard a thing.

At the edge of the forest, Ash and Asselin stopped.

“You’re okay?” Ash whispered. Asselin nodded. “Then let’s go!”

They started running again. Ash listened for the sound of rifle shots or shrieking alarms, which would mean the Nazis had seen them or the others now scrambling out of the tunnel. But the night remained silent. I’m free, Ash thought. I’m finally free. All those weeks of digging out the dark, cramped tunnel had paid off.

The two POWs moved as fast as they could, though in spots the wet ground slowed them down. They avoided roads and houses as much as possible, so they wouldn’t be spotted. Finally, just before sunrise, they collapsed under a group of tall trees.

“How far do you think we got?” Asselin asked.

“At least ten miles. Maybe more.”

As they settled onto the ground to sleep, Ash thought about all he had been through. In the past year he had been beaten, locked in the cooler, and gone hungry. But he never lost his will to be free and to fight again. He was proud of all he had done. But he knew that when daylight came, the Nazis would discover the escape. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Germans would begin searching the countryside, looking for him and the others. He tried not to think about that as he fell asleep on a bed of dry leaves.

When they woke, Ash and Asselin spent the rest of the day hiding in the same spot. That night, they heard German soldiers nearby, the beams of their flashlights cutting through the darkness. Ash sat motionless as the searchers passed within just a few feet of where he and Asselin hid. Somehow, the Germans didn’t see them.

For almost a week, Ash and Asselin kept moving toward Warsaw. They ate the Mixture they had brought, then searched for vegetables stored at farms. For water, they drank from streams. When they could, they slept in barns. One night, they came to a bridge guarded by a soldier at each end.

“We should keep going,” Asselin said. “We can cross the river farther down.”

“It’s too deep to wade across,” Ash said. “And we’d be out in the open, where they could see us. Let’s take a chance here.”

Each German soldier had a small shelter he could use to find some warmth on cold nights. Ash and Asselin waited for the guards to enter their shelters, then slowly made their way, crawling across the bridge. Shadows helped hide them, but at one point, one of the guards left his shelter and approached the bridge. The escapees froze. But the guard stopped and turned back without seeing them. Ash and Asselin continued their crawl. They reached the other side of the river and headed for the woods. Ash let out a deep breath.

“That was close. I hope this trip gets a little easier from this point on.”

By then, several days had passed since the escape. Everyone in the region knew that thirty-three prisoners had gotten out of the POW camp. And Ash soon learned that not all the local people were against the Nazis. One chilly morning, he and Asselin woke up and saw that they were surrounded by farmers with pitchforks.

“Should we run?” Asselin whispered.

“I don’t think we’d have a chance,” Ash said. “Look over there.” He pointed past the small group of farmers. A woman was coming toward them with several German soldiers right behind her. When she and the soldiers reached Ash and Asselin, she began pointing and shouting in German.

“Do you know what she’s saying?” Ash asked.

“I think she wants them to shoot us.”

The soldiers approached Ash and Asselin and ordered them to stand. Then they marched them to the nearest village and threw them in jail. Ash glanced at Asselin, who looked like a beaten man.

“This is it for me,” he told Ash. “No more escapes. I feel like if I try again, I’ll end up dead.”

“I know it,” Ash said. “It’s dangerous.”

“So what will happen now?”

“The soldiers here will take us back to the camp in Schubin,” Ash explained. “You, me, and anyone else they’ve rounded up will spend some time in the cooler. And then some of us will try to figure out another way to escape.”

The next morning, just as Ash had predicted, the captured prisoners were driven back to the camp and each was tossed into his own cooler cell. Ash soon learned that most of the men had been recaptured. One had gotten more than five hundred miles by train before the Germans found him.

When he got out of the cooler, Ash learned how well the escape had gone—at first. The guards had not discovered that the men were missing until after eight a.m. on the morning of March 6, about ten hours after Ash and Asselin had first popped out of the tunnel. The guards searched the entire camp looking for Ash and the others.

Ash also learned that the camp commandant had been punished and replaced for failing to prevent the escape. The new commandant and his team were determined to stop future attempts. But Ash soon learned that his next escape attempt would not be made at Schubin. In April, he and the other recaptured prisoners boarded trucks and headed back to Stalag Luft III.