The bat was a bit of a rafter, the ball a piece of rag tied with string; and the wicket a parrot cage with the clean, dry corpse of a parrot inside…
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Evans was captured trying – unsuccessfully – to set fire to his plane in No Man’s Land. He had the empty box of matches in his hands when he was arrested by a filthy crowd of soldiers led by an officer whose face he did not like.
Sent to Cambrai with a box of cigars and then on to the Gutersloh camp which had been built in an old lunatic asylum, Evans was getting such an overpowering aversion to being ordered about by Germans that he began very seriously to contemplate escape.
One night, he fitted himself up in a civilian suit, bought for twenty marks from a local tailor, pocketed a pair of nail pincers, pinched off a German electrician, and a compass, hand made by a Belgian officer, and cut his way out through the fence surrounding the pea patch in the camp garden. Evans had also made himself hat since in those days the fashion of going bare-headed had yet to come in.
Once out, Evans walked to the local station and bought a ticket on an early morning train to Dusseldorf. Pretending to sleep the entire way, he arrived in the city and bought a map and some sandwiches using the few German phrases he had committed to memory, like “Ja, wunderschon” and “Die haben sie recht.” From Dusseldorf he walked towards Crefeld on the Dutch border.
For three days, Evans walked by night and hid in haystacks when it was light. He made it to within twenty yards of the border, where he was found with his legs sticking out of the back of a bush.
After two weeks of solitary confinement, Evans was sent off to Fort 9 in Bavaria. The camp was nothing short of an escaping club. It was filled with the most ingenious men who could make keys which would unlock any door, or temper and jag the edge of a table knife so that it could be used to cut iron bars. Some were expert photographers, others expert engineers, some spoke German perfectly, others shammed insanity perfectly.
Living off a diet of cabbage soup, acorn coffee and loaves that were hard as brick, and most useful as firelighter, Evans plotted with his fellows and prepared flights of fancy.
There were only two ways out of Fort 9: one through the gatehouse and the other across the moat. For his first escape Evans fashioned a saw out of a table knife, then slowly hacked through the bars of the latrine. One night he squeezed through the gap and scurried over the moat, which had frozen over in winter.
Evans was caught by two farmhands on the far side and served five days in solitary.
Undeterred, Evans teamed up with some French and Russian engineers and spent three weeks digging a tunnel down from their cell towards the inner bank of the moat. The shaft was propped up with bits of broken furniture, and the soil sent back on a wooden cart which was emptied in the latrine. Air was pumped down through a hose and a set of homemade bellows.
The French decided they would strip and wade through the moat, carrying their clothes above their heads, but Evans disliked the idea of being chased naked in winter. So he made himself a diving suit out of a mackintosh and some grease.
When it was done, the prisoners rigged dummies in their beds which breathed when you pulled a string to fool the guards, then played a quick round of baccarat to decide who would be first to go through the tunnel.
This time, Evans made it a little further, to the neighbouring village, before he was caught and sent back.
Sick and tired of his antics, the Germans sent Evans to another camp, at Zorndorf. But he and another officer, Buckley jumped out of the train window and ran away.
With a stash of Oxo cubes and chocolate, supplemented by the raw potatoes they dug out of the fields, they set off towards the Swiss border. They hid in the day and hiked at night, hunkering down under their overcoats to study maps by match light.
By the twelfth night they were sick with hunger and fatigue.
“I just thought of bread and butter pudding,” declared Buckley.
Evans tried to close his ears, muttering zabaglione.
“Surely you mean zabaione?”
Buckley began to recite the ingredients: egg yolks, sugar and Marsala wine…
“It’s not Marsala wine,” said Evans with desperation gnawing at his stomach. “It’s Moscato d’Asti.”
Oblivious, Buckley moved onto other recipes dear to his mother’s Italian cook including her panforte and torta di cioccolata, Evans tried to get him to promise not to broach the subject anymore.
But Buckley would not stop.
“Of course, it’s not only that,” he went on. “It was the home-made tortelloni with veal meat and sage from the garden. And when there wasn’t home-made tortelloni with veal meat, there was veal in bread crumbs. She went to choose the calf from the local abattoir.”
Evans could not take it anymore.
“Buckley,” he said with all the sarcasm he could muster in his weakness, “would you mind awfully shutting up? Otherwise I might just carve you up and put you piece by piece over the fire.”
Buckley was appalled.
“Oh, I say, steady on!” he cried. “How could you be so cruel, Evans!”
But Evans was in no mood to be kind.
“Is that all you’ve got for me? – Tears!”
He took the knife from his pocket and held it at Buckley’s throat.
“Don’t hurt me!” cried Buckley, holding up his gnawed hands. “I’ll give you something to drink! I’ll give something to eat!”
Days later, somewhere – by his reckoning – near the border of Lake Constance, Evans found himself floundering in a muddy field with a hatless scarecrow that began to look strangely like a grimacing and desperate Buckley.
Evans was too tired even to crawl and fell momentarily unconscious.
When he came to, he was staring at the jackboot of a German officer; it seemed to Evans as though he had stepped into another war.
Buckley had his gnawed hands up above in the cloudless sky and was protesting wildly as before:
“Don’t hurt me! I’ll give something to drink! I’ll give you something to eat!”
It made no bally difference.
The officer called two of his men, who hauled him up. They tied him to the scarecrow.
The German platoon raised their rifles.
Evans in his delirium looked around, and there again was his nemesis.
“Don’t hurt me!” cried Buckley. “I’ll give you something to eat! I’ll give you something to drink!”
Evan turned again to face the firing squad, realising he would never eat tortelloni or veal in breadcrumbs. He would never drink Marsala, or Moscato D’Asti ever again. Or for that matter, Buckley.