anything. I prefer to keep my pass and use it in 'environs' where there
is fighting." So he returned to Brussels. I thought he was most wise,
and I wanted to return with him. But I did not want to go back only
because I knew it was the right thing to do, but to be ordered back so
that I could explain to my newspapers that I returned because
Colonel This or General That sent me back. It was a form of vanity for
which I was properly punished. That Morgan was right was
demonstrated as soon as he left me. I was seated against a tree by
the side of the road eating a sandwich, an occupation which seems
almost idyllic in its innocence but which could not deceive the
Germans. In me they saw the hated Spion, and from behind me,
across a ploughed field, four of them, each with an automatic, made
me prisoner. One of them, who was an enthusiast, pushed his gun
deep into my stomach. With the sandwich still in my hand, I held up
my arms high and asked who spoke English. It turned out that the
enthusiast spoke that language, and I suggested he did not need so
many guns and that he could find my papers in my inside pocket.
With four automatics rubbing against my ribs, I would not have
lowered my arms for all the papers in the Bank of England. They took
me to a café, where their colonel had just finished lunch and was in a
most genial humor. First he gave the enthusiast a drink as a reward
for arresting me, and then, impartially, gave me one for being
arrested. He wrote on my passport that I could go to Enghien, which
was two miles distant. That pass enabled me to proceed unmolested
for nearly two hundred yards. I was then again arrested and taken
before another group of officers. This time they searched my
knapsack and wanted to requisition my maps, but one of them
pointed out they were only automobile maps and, as compared to
their own, of no value. They permitted me to proceed to Enghien. I
went to Enghien, intending to spend the night and on the morning