“Bend over … More!” A deep voice from behind me said as I stood completely naked. ‘Touch the floor you dog’.
A finger was pushed roughly inside me and prodded about. At least I assumed, and certainly hoped, it was a finger.
A pair of hobnail boots with no laces, a rough pair of hessian trousers and an old Army greatcoat were thrown at my feet. The same voice, which had a distinct Russian accent, gave the order. “Put these on. Get into the back of the truck.”
The boots were about three sizes too big for me, flopping about as I walked. I had to hold the trousers up with one hand – too big again, and no belt.
A piece of paper, with the figure ‘6’ scribbled on it, was slapped onto the front of my greatcoat as I struggled to climb into the back of the windowless van.
“Sit. No talking,” ordered the Russian as he slipped a black hood over my head, pulling the drawstring tightly around my neck, and plunging me into total darkness.
It was cold. Very cold. The middle of March and the van rocked violently as if it were being driven, not along a road, but along a rough unmaintained track. My, recently violated, arse was being jarred against the cold metal floor of the vehicle and my body constantly bashed against the sides and other bodies.
We came abruptly to a halt, throwing me forward, as the back door was opened and cold air rushed in. There was the sound of scuffling as if someone or something was being removed, or perhaps taken on board, before the door slammed shut.
At the sixth stop, I was grabbed by the shoulders and dragged towards the open door. I clung on to my trousers with one hand and tried to hold on to my oversize boots with the other, but my right one slipped away. I felt a moment of terror as I was launched into space before thudding onto the hard ground.
As I staggered to my feet the hood was ripped from my head. I blinked, still in darkness as I desperately tried to focus on something – anything – to try to overcome my disorientation.
The back of the van came into focus, starting to pull away into the night with the door still open. Suddenly my breath was taken away, and I fell to my knees in pain, as my right boot crashed into my chest.
With the vehicle gone I was left in absolute silence and a claustrophobic darkness. The sky was completely obscured by cloud, what we pilots would call ‘eight-eighths cover’, and I therefore stood very little chance of getting any sense of direction.
I decided to walk with the wind on my back, mainly because, that way the greatcoat gave me extra protection, albeit still meagre.
Although I didn’t know exactly where I was, there were a few things that I did know.
I knew that if I could cross the main road, which lay about thirty miles to the south-west, then I would be out of enemy territory and would have reached freedom. Anyone this side of that main road was to be considered an enemy and must be avoided at all costs. I also knew that by first light there would be a Hunter Force in the area, intent on tracking me down. Dozens of troops who knew the ground well and trained in the art of tracking, would not only have dogs but would also have helicopters equipped with thermal imaging cameras in support. With the capability and determination of the Hunter Force and only one direction for me to go towards freedom, the odds of me avoiding capture were, well and truly, stacked against me.
It was bitterly cold and I had eaten nothing for more than twenty-four hours. Physically I was in reasonable shape. Psychologically I was beginning to feel very distressed and vulnerable.
I decided that I had to stick to the low ground and keep walking until I could find some sort of shelter. Thankfully the heavy cloud cover didn’t develop into rain. Progress was slow due to the ill-fitting boots and trousers but, after about an hour, I stumbled across a fence and a hedgerow, which I followed downhill. Eventually, there was a break in the fence-line connected by a gate, and I was in luck. The gate was tied shut with blue nylon cord.
With hands that would hardly function due to the intense cold, I managed to cut lengths of the chord on a stone and produce a pair of boot laces and two belts.
I scrapped together as many leaves and twigs as I could to use as my bed for the night, and crawled into the hedgerow. I eagerly awaited the first signs of the sun, which would not only show me which way I needed to go but might also bring me some warmth.
I had been lucky with the haberdashery, but not so with my inbuilt compass. The sun started to rise from exactly the opposite direction to that which I needed to be heading. I had no option. The only way for me to remain free from captivity, by getting out of the enemy-held territory, was for me to retrace the steps over, what progress I had made throughout the previous night.
Not long after the sun began to rise over the horizon, I heard the ominous sound of a helicopter approaching from the east.
When being observed from the sky, the first thing that will highlight the quarry’s location to the hunter is movement. The second thing, assuming the aircraft has a thermal imaging capability, is the heat emitted from the body.
The hedgerow above me was dense, and I felt reasonably confident that it would provide enough insulation to absorb my heat-signature. If I could manage to lay still, then I felt that there was a good chance that I would go unnoticed. The helicopter passed directly overhead my overnight accommodation without any change of direction, giving me no indication that I had been spotted. As the sound of the aircraft waned into the distance, I decided that I had to make some headway towards my goal, thirty miles or so, to the south-west. The sky was again obscured by heavy clouds scudding towards the north-east, and threatening to turn to rain.
There were plenty of guidelines around me to help me with my orientation, so I had no doubt that I was heading in the right direction. The propensity of moss to grow on the north-facing sides of trees, the wind direction and the lines of the shadows, despite the sky being overcast, all helped me to maintain a, generally, south-westward bearing.
I stumbled, rather than ran, across the rough and boggy terrain towards the corner of a small copse of conifer trees, about two miles in the distance.
With less than three hundred metres to go to the sanctuary of the wood, I heard, once again, the sickening drone of the Hunter Force’s eye-in-the-sky.
I immediately dived to the ground and curled up in a ball, pulling my greatcoat over my head in an attempt to disguise the shape of my body. As the predators flew away to the south and disappeared I felt a slight feeling of elation – they had been outsmarted. Once again, I thought, my knowledge of flying and observation from the air had won me the day, and I felt confident that my tactics had been enough to stop me from being seen. My arrogance was ill-founded. The eagle-eyed bastards had spotted me.
Just as I crossed the tree-line into the wood the rain started to fall.
Despite the small boost my spirits had been given by my recently successful performance in the art of illusion, I was in rag-order. The cold, now exacerbated by the heavy rain, was penetrating through to my core. My first-aid training made me well aware of the symptoms of hypothermia and exhaustion. I was tired, cold and hungry – very hungry, but I had not reached the verge of collapse, and I was shivering, so that was a good sign. Hunger was, without a doubt, my biggest problem. Whoever said that we humans can survive, quite comfortably, for three weeks without food was definitely talking through his arse. I was only on my third day without eating anything and I was already beginning to get desperate. Most of my thoughts were of food and I was constantly on the lookout for anything that could be eaten. I kept my eyes fixed to the ground in case I should stumble across a nest full of tasty eggs, and I even thought about eating leaves or grass, which I managed to convince myself must surely be full of nutrition if they were able to sustain sheep and horses.
The hunger pangs and the feelings of weakness throughout my body ground away at my general wellbeing, and I was tempted to simply lie down, try to get warm, and attempt to overcome my malaise by sleeping.
I had no doubt that trying to progress across open countryside during daylight hours was a futile exercise. Wooded areas were just too few and far between. By the time I could pick up the sound of the helicopter, I simply wouldn’t have enough time to react and find adequate top-cover to hide under. I felt that I was left with only one option. I would have to lie-up during the day under the cover of any woods that I could find, and then try to make my run for freedom during the night.
I gathered together any fallen branches that I could find and, once again, scrapped up leaves and anything else that might provide some insulation. With my back wedged against a tree trunk I crawled under my accumulation. This time I waited, not for the sun to rise, but for it to fall, and allow darkness to provide me with the protection I needed.