Ernest Brough - Escape

Transcript

And when we got in there, they were some of the fellows that were caught in Greece and Crete, see, they were in there, but, they'd found out how to tip the lock over, see, so they said they can do anything they liked, willy-nilly, but the prison keepers didn't know anything about it, see, because when it came morning tea time and one bloke said he would come back now and then to have a cup of tea now and again, you see, but they didn't say why or how or anything else, you see, and we thought this is up for us so we managed to get hold of a map and a compass and of a Sunday you could walk to another camp, not far away and we got this map and everything and we used to have to go to. 

The local girls used to hand out the stuff, where it was kept, Red Cross parcels and so to upset them all of us went down together because we were only supposed to go down together in twos, and of course they'd get a bit confused and we'd have the trousers in the sock and we're slipping them down out of the boxes into the trousers, see, and we'd get back up to the camp again and we'd say "Well, do you want that one or that one? We'll have that one."

See, and we'd have the stuff that would keep a fair while, see, that you didn't have to cook up and everybody would share it out, you see, and the first night was on good Friday, that was sort of an anniversary day for us and we did about 15 miles the first night and we got down on the Drava River and we finished up, I didn't want them to go in but they wanted to go into the weir in the water and I said "Nah, don't get in there."

I said, "That's the river "and they got in there and we lost all our food, the whole lot of it and we're in there and cooked up a bit of porridge or something and we stayed there the night and then we thought, coming daylight, we thought "Now we better get out of here", watched the train go past, you see, and of course they'd been cutting the trees down to get the engines, to keep the trains going and then we, see, we were lying down looking at the high bridge, we spent the day in a little lover's nest about a hundred feet up in the hills there and we kept down low so they couldn't see us.

We slept all day up in the top of hills, we got out at night and got in and we'd lost all our food and anyway we got up in the morning and got out early and there was some rough country, they'd been cutting down the trees to feed the engines, the railway line and that, and we stayed in that and we walked right around nearly to Switzerland following the ice ring around.