TCD MS 10823 folio 29 recto
[April-Sept 1918] had been noticed walking up and down a particular side very often and that the sentries had been instructed to keep their eyes upon us, so we had to change our original plan of campaign.
All these discussions and preparations had added a new interest to life, and by the time that we were ready we were both of us very fit. We had arranged with one of the Russians who used to work both inside and outside the camp to take some of our kit outside, and bury it at a spot which he was afterwards to point out to me & which I could see from my window. This man however was unfortunately drunk for several days and forgot where he had buried the kit. But after nearly a weeks delay he retrieved most of it and put it in the right spot pointing us out the place from our balcony. We were left however with a certain amount to carry through the wire. On two occasions at dusk we waited in the garden in the hopes that the sentry would walk up and down his beat, but he refused to move from the particular spot whence he could command a good view all down the wire.
On the third occasion <one afternoon> in the latter half of September we saw that one sentry was interested in the tennis and spent most of his time watching it, while the other one was quite friendly and always ready to talk and take a cigarette. <We thereupon determined to seize the opportunity & make a dash for it>. There was a space of about 100 yards between the two sentries and the obstacles that we had to surmount were one twelve foot barbed wire fence, then a space about three yards wide, and another barbed wire fence of equal height; eight inches to a foot beyond this was a feet white wooden palisade with three strands of barbed wire on the top, on the other side of which