Roeselare, Belgium — 26 April 1915

David was again injected with Heroin, then his lip, chin and cheek were sutured, his scalp wound was rechecked, and he was given some Aspirin tablets and a pass to go home to recover. His orders required him to report to the field hospital in Roeselare on the 4th of May to have his sutures removed. The clerk gave him a receipt for his rifle and told him he would be issued a replacement at the arsenal after he returned.

The clerk had also explained the sick leave chit gave him passage on the train to Müllheim and the orders gave him passage back to Belgium.

Don't even know if Müllheim is home, but they accepted it.

He had been told to take the train to Ghent, where he would find a connection to Brüssel, then through Liege to Köln. 

Need a map so I can sort out where I'm going. 

In Ghent, he got off the train and walked through the station and out the front. Across the street was a bookstore, where he bought a copy of Justus Perthes' Taschen-Atlas vom Deutschen Reich, the 1908 edition of the Pocket Atlas of the German Empire.

Probably find a more recent edition in Germany, but this will do.

Back across the street, he sat on a bench in the station's waiting room, opened the atlas to the index and found Müllheim. Then turning to the Württenburg u Baden pages, he ran his finger to E-1.

There it is, just to the east of the Rhein. He measured the distance from the scale. Twenty kilometres north of the Swiss border. I've always wanted to go to Switzerland, to the Swiss Alps, and this is a great time to do it; they're still neutral in this war.

An interesting thought. An alternative to finding my way into France.

He looked up to see if anyone was watching him. Seems normal. Reading, talking or sleeping. He looked back down at the atlas and ran his eyes along the French border.

The whole thing is the Front Line now. Where would I cross? How? Does it still make sense to head there? He looked around the room again. I can get back to the regiment as easily from Switzerland as I could from France.

He nodded, closed the atlas and continued thinking, staring blankly into the room. Besides his own small fold of Belgian Francs, he had found a small wad of Reichsbanknoten in his new pockets. There was a thicker wad of notgeld, but when he had tried to pay for the atlas with it, the shopkeeper told him he'd give only fifty percent, so David used some of his own Belgian Francs.

Try again in Germany.

He shook himself from his thoughts, reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of emergency notes to examine.

Most of these were issued in Wattenscheid. Probably get better value for this flimsy scrip closer to there. So where's Wattenscheid?

He opened his new atlas again, turned to the index and looked it up.

There, to the north of Köln.

He ran his finger along the rail lines from Brüssel to Frankfurt.

Goes through Liege to Köln then up the Rhein. Köln's likely a good place to spend this.  

After the short trip to Brüssel, David boarded the train to Frankfurt, and he dozed uncomfortably on the hard seat, waking at each station stop. In Köln, he got off to go shopping, visiting several stores near the station before heading farther into town. He bought heavy wool trousers, two wool shirts, two pairs of socks, a pair of heavy walking shoes, a hat and a small rucksack. 

He also picked up a few other things as he worked to get rid of the wad of notgeld; a pocketknife, a small pair of scissors, a mirror, a roll of surgical tape, rolls of gauze and a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, among other small items. On his way back he saw a metzgerei and bought a half dozen links of landjäger.

Conrad often talks about how delicious these are, how much he misses them. Wonder what he's doing.

But his mouth was still too sore to eat anything but soup, so he had three bowls of linsensuppe and a beer in a gasthaus just along from the station. Before he boarded his train to Frankfurt, he exchanged the last of his Belgian Francs into Reichsmarks.

Didn't get much for them, but farther away they'd be worth even less.

It was well past dark when he arrived in Frankfurt. He played dazed and confused when he asked the clerk at the ticket wicket for connections to Müllheim, Baden. In the atlas index, he had seen two other Mülheims, both with a single l rather than a double.

He was told he had missed the last train of the day. The next one is 0630 tomorrow. Must remember to change at Offenburg. Otherwise, I'll end up in Konstanz.

When he had asked where he could spend the night, he had been directed to a waiting room with long wooden benches. He decided not to dig with further questions, but he was surprised there were no hostels, shelters or volunteer support services for the troops.

The YMCA run great support services behind our lines at Estaires and Ypres. Great morale booster. Welcome relief when we fall back from our trench rotations. That makes sense — long way from trenches here.

The waiting room was crowded, but he found a space on a bench along the far wall and sat. Drained, both physically and emotionally, he sat there for a long while running his situation through his mind.

It's working. I've made it this far. Many had stared at his bandaged face as he travelled, but he had acted aloof and managed to avoid engaging in conversations. A few he had needed to divert with hand gestures to his bandages and a mumbled, "Schwer zu reden"

Thankfully, they all seemed to understand it hurts to talk. Now only if this annoying kid would... It's not the kid; it's the parents who are annoying.

As he tried to relax, he was repeatedly pestered by a young lad in lederhosen and tethered on a leash.

He needs a shorter leash – no, he needs stronger parents. Doesn't look five yet, closer to four, but he controls them.

David finally stood, shouldered his pack and walked out into the evening to get away from the kid wanting to play with his face dressings.

After walking for the better part of an hour, he went back to the station and was relieved to see the annoying family had left. He spent the night on a hard wooden bench, wrapped in his greatcoat, pleased it was large enough to also wrap his new rucksack. His wounds added to the discomfort and he woke frequently to check the time from Josef's wristwatch – my watch now. He had no trouble making the early train southward. 

In Offenburg, he easily found his platform in the small station. He boarded the connecting train, and he remained in his seat during the station stop in Müllheim. He had been surprised at how lax security had been once he left the area near the Front. He hadn't been questioned. He fit in as part of the scene with so may other wounded soldiers travelling. 

During his study of the area in the atlas, David had seen the border between southern Germany and Switzerland was the Rhein as it wound downstream from Schaffhausen to Basel. But at Basel, he noted an odd bulge of Switzerland across to the north side of the Rhein, and for what appeared on the map scale to be about five kilometres, both banks of the Rhein were in Switzerland. He had travelled up the river all the way from Köln, and he knew it drained the high Alps. It was broad, swift and likely cold, so he headed toward the bulge of the border. 

I'd much prefer to walk across the border rather than to try to swim across. 

When he got off the train in Weil am Rhein, two armed soldiers stopped him and asked to see his hundemark and his orders.

Oh, God! Why now? David tugged the red cord around his neck to pull out his identity tag, then he took the sick leave chit and orders from his pocket and unfolded them.

The Korporal examined the tag and the papers, then he asked, "Was machen Sie in Weil? Ihr Zuhause ist in Müllheim."

David's mind spun with possibilities to explain why he was here rather than home in Müllheim. So close to the border here. They're watching for deserters. Then he pointed eastward while mumbling through his heavily bandaged mouth, "Fräulein im Lörrach."

The Korporal paused, examining the blood-stained bandaging and the muddy uniform, then he nodded and handed the papers back. "Gehen Sie, sich und lassen Sie sich von Ihrer Liebsten umsorgen." 

Yes, clean up and some care would be great. David returned the chits to his pocket, then he walked through the town, following signs to Lörrach. The Swiss border was only a hundred yards to his right as his route led him beyond the last houses. The narrow gravel road turned to follow the base of a hill, and now only a split-log fence separated him from Switzerland. 

Three German soldiers stepped out from the small copse beside a sharp bend in the road and stopped him. He handed his sick leave chit, orders and weapon receipt to the one who had asked for identification. Then he took the postcard from his breast pocket and mumbled, "Fräulein im Lörrach," through his bandages.

The soldier looked at the papers and read the postcard. Pursing his lips, he hefted his crotch up and down a few times before he slapped David's shoulder and handed back the documents and the postcard, saying, "Weitermachen, Glückspilz."

Their loud laughing chatter receded behind him as he headed up a curving rise beside a forest grove covering the steep slope to his left.

So I'm a lucky devil, they think – the girlfriend trick works well.

After a quick look around, he stepped off the road and into the trees.

About fifty feet up the slope he stopped and sat on a moss-covered fallen tree. He took out his atlas and studied the page again, thought for a while, then slapped his knee.

Time to do it.

Quickly changing into his new clothes, he put on his walking shoes, emptied the uniform pockets and the boots and cached them in the hollow of a tree. He unwound his head wrappings to check the appearance of his face dressings in the small mirror, then removed the one on his cheek. The gauze was more yellowed than bloody. He replaced it with a small piece from his new roll and held it in place with surgical tape.

Won't need the head wrapping for this.

He checked his appearance in the mirror, then with his rucksack slung over a shoulder, he headed back down the slope toward the road. He heard bells ringing and peered down through the trees in their direction, looking for the source of the sounds. Then he heard a gunshot.

He stopped short. Paused to listen, then with the movements of a stalking cat, he slinked silently down the short distance to his right and into the crotch between the steep hillside and the trunk of a large oak.

Coming down the road from the direction of Lörrach were three armed soldiers. One of them began talking to the leader of the three-man patrol coming up from the direction of Weil, the patrol which had questioned him. They met just up the road from his tree and stood looking across the fence into Switzerland and talking.

He was a little too far away to get the details of the conversation, but he did hear enough to tell him another deserter had been stopped. Then he heard another gunshot. After a brief discussion, the patrols turned and headed back along the road.

David waited for a long while before he dared move. He pondered his options. Just across the road from him, on the other side of the fence was Switzerland. Face down, a dozen yards into the Swiss field, lay a dead German soldier, still warm.

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