"Gesehen. Gut Zum Austritt Kommandant 2 Kompagnie, Landsturm Batl.
Aachen," we were free, so we thought, to shake the dust of Germany from
our feet. Hoisting our rucksacks, we gave up box cars in favor of a
civilized passenger train, northward bound, and at noon crossed the
Dutch border at Simplefeldt.

For three hours we talked English, consulted maps, took notes, and
asked questions where and when we pleased. The holiday cost us
dear. At the end of that time we were under lock and key in the town
of Maastricht, the Province of Limburg, and the supposedly free and
neutral Kingdom of the Netherlands. We suspected at the time, and
in view of what I learned upon a later trip to Berlin I am quite certain,
that the long arm of the German Secret Service had reached out for
us across the border.

Having started from Antwerp during its investment, but prior to its
siege by the German army, we were now on the third stage of a
round trip which was to land one of us back in the Belgian temporary
capital in time for the bombardment. During the previous two weeks
we had been stopped, questioned, and sometimes examined, no less
than one hundred and thirty times. Thirteen, we calculated, was our
average number of hold-ups on our early "marching days"; that is to
say, during those wanderings which led us by foot, train, ox cart, and
automobile past the double sector of Antwerp's fortifications, through
the Belgian fighting lines to Ghent and Termonde, and thence into the
arms of the German pickets on the outskirts of Brussels.

And now, as the heavy door of the Maastricht police headquarters
slammed in our faces, and the key rattled in the guardroom lock, my
companion in crime threw down his hat and coat in rage. Between us