TCD MS 10823 folio 32 recto
[Sept 1918] Here we remained for about two hours feeling very wet & uncomfortable, as our hands had been badly torn by the wire. We did not dare to move as the main road was not thirty yards away & people were passing by the whole time, but none thought of looking in the ditch for us. When it had been dark about an hour, we slowly sallied forth and crossed the wood, but under the Scotch firs, it was very dark & impossible to get along without making a noise. We emerged with much caution on the far side, in case there might be sentries there, and after going a yard or two, I saw what looked like a stump in front of me: on kneeling down quickly, I saw that it was a man not five yards away. Shouting to Edmundson that it was a man, I ran back into the wood, whereupon the sentry fired four shots with his revolver at me. Edmundson he had not seen, as he had lain perfectly still, & as the sentry followed me up by the noise that I made in the wood, he managed to slip past him into the open country. About this time I lost the bag with my biscuits for the journey, & after going rather noisily about a hundred yards in the wood, tried to debouch again, only to find the sentry waiting for me: I therefore crawled back very quietly to the point at which I had first slipped out & got into the open country. Edmundson & I were however separated, but I felt certain that I should meet him at the spot where the remainder of the Kit was buried, so that the next thing to do was to try & reach the buried kit. This was very close to the camp, but after making a detour, I found to my disgust that a line of sentries had been posted between me & the “cache”. I succeeded never the less by using infinite caution in crawling past them & reaching the required spot. Here I waited for six hours, hidden among the young Scotch Firs, hoping that Edmundson would rejoin me. During that time I could hear our pursuers searching with lanterns & beating out the wood that I had just left, & I was able distinctly to recognise the voice of Lieutenant Schmidt, a German officer whom we all cordially disliked.