Ernest Brough - A close call

Transcript

During this walk around there, it come dark on that first night and we're still in the cold, you see, snow on the ground and everything, and this ice belt right around the mountain and we're all looking at the ice wondering where we're going to sleep for the night, you see, we thought, "Oh, hello, there's something going on here tonight", you see, so anyway we run into this little shelter thing, a little hut, so we knocked the lock off it and got in and one of the blokes smoked a bit and he had matches so we got ourselves a little fire going, we got warm, and spent a beautiful nights sleep in that little hut but the next day we got out again, got going and came out to another cleared area and this beautiful ski slope coming straight into it and they had these things there where you could cook up a little fire or whatever it was, see, and there was nobody around, it was daylight, so we got into one of these, the three of us and we hadn't been in there long and here's a German officer coming along the ski slope with his skis on his shoulder and he walked straight past it and three of us in this little waiting to get caught, and we didn't, kept quiet and a sigh of relief and when he went past our little thingo, a little, like get a couple of people in it, something like that, you see, and then he went down a lane, down through this thick scrub, you see, it was about so wide, you see, you wouldn't drive a vehicle but you could march a bloke through it.

Anyway, we thought, we'll go down there when we get out because we thought we'll see what's at the end of it because curiosity is what kills the cat, so we got out and started walking down this and the next minute, it was getting dark and we heard clump, clump, clump, clump and a workforce coming back up this pathway, you see, so we got to one side and started laughing in German, "Ja, ja, ja, jawohl" and all this, you see, as they went past, so they would think we were some silly mugs who had been up there on the ice, and they never stopped, they kept going and we went the other way. We got down the end and there was a blue light on the thing and that meant a police station and a dog came out barking and one thing and another and we went for our lives as quick as we could to get out into the dark again.