This part of Jock's escape saw him travel from Detmold to Ostbevern, across what is now the Paderborn Ranges. He took a more southerly route that we were able to (those army lads wouldn't be too keen on us wandering around their big toys playground), but we rejoined around Hovelhof. This took us two days of running 30+km a day and Jock and his pals took 3 days, so fair play for the progress they made.
Just like their experiences, it is still highly forested and traversing this area is quite easy. Lots of cover and lots of tracks through the forests. Unlike 100 years ago though, the weather for us was a brutal 35+ degrees and relentless sun. We had to cut our days short due to exhaustion and it was getting pretty dangerous at times.
A couple of interesting things we noticed. Milte is no longer a small hamlet of 6 houses but a thriving village with maybe 500+ houses, factories and the biggest church I've seen outside a city. Then when we were passing Ostbevern, we too had a rainstorm.
6th NIGHT.
At the start of the 6th night we got badly lost, principally due to …… robbing us of the stars …… which always a nuisance to stop and try to get a bearing by the light of an electric torch. After wandering about for a long time, we struck a path going in the right direction and at daylight lay up in an open fir wood just off the track, some 4 miles due of E. of GUTERSLOH. We were not disturbed, however, and Leggatt who was a bit of an artist drew a very fine sketch of our small camp in a hollow of the wood.
7TH NIGHT.
The early hours of this night were spent in getting round GUTERSLOH our aim being a railway line running W. to HARSEWINKEL. In passing GUTERSLOH, we got a glimpse of the old camp where I was first taken to but whether it was still used as a camp we could not tell, although the fact of the Arc lamps still being lit made us think it must be. We found our railway all right and made very good progress along it, daylight finding us about 3 miles from HARSEWINKEL where we found a good hiding place in a thick plantation about ¼ mile N. of the railway line.
8th NIGHT.
LOVERS QUARREL
From our maps we could see that our only easy road for the next 8 miles was a main road which came up to the railway line about a mile from where we were, and as it was running through woody country with only one small village to detour, we decided to take it. We therefore re-joined our railway and walked along it until we came to the road. Just before leaving the railway we had to lie down to allow a train to pass, after which we took to the road, stopping at the first stream to have our nightly wash under the bridge. While doing so we were treated to a lovers quarrel above us in German of course. We couldn't make out all that was said but from a word caught here and there the Lady seemed to be pitching into her faithless swain for having transferred his affections to someone else. We made good fast going along this road, only meeting one Hun who was whistling at the top of his power, so we stepped off the road to let him pass.
During our 10 minutes halts we always fell fast asleep now, and found it increasingly difficult to get up, shoulder our still heavy packs and move on for another 50 minutes. As day was dawning we crossed the main road from WARENDORF to SASSENBERG, finding cover in a wood just south of the last named village.
9TH NIGHT.
At the start, we got lost owing to the difficulty of finding a suitable track, but eventually struck one which led us to a second-class road just south of MILTE which village we partly skirted and partly walked through, as it was composed of only some half dozen houses and we knew there was not much risk of running into an armed policeman here.
This road took us to OSTBEVERN which village we detoured, helping ourselves to the produce from some of the gardens in passing and found good cover in a young fir plantation some 2 miles W. of OSTBEVERN.
Shortly after we got into cover, a thunderstorm burst over our heads the fierceness of which really frightened us. The flashes were, or seemed to be coming so close that every minute we expected some of the trees to be struck beside us and one could feel a strong smell of singeing in the air. We were soaked to the skin and did not get properly dry until 2 days later. Twice during the day we had to move, the first time for a German officer walking through the woods, and the second time for a gamekeeper whose dog came unpleasantly close.
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