observations as a warning, we were safe to proceed but with great caution once it grew dark enough to leave our hut.
We left in pairs advancing, wherever possible, using bushes and any other cover near the fence at the side of the track. We lay down as each train passed. We were still in countryside and the going was comparatively good. We knew we had to leave the railway shortly and move to the west, on our right, away from it. In the dark we hadn't noticed a deep stream on our left and what we took to be a wide canal only 50 or 60 yards away on our right. We saw a bridge ahead at a rise in the ground and realised we had come too far, but the canal had prevented us leaving the railway earlier. We were in effect in a funnel, with the only way out being forwards past the bridge, or retreating far enough to cross the canal and regain open ground. Ginger and I decided we would approach the bridge very cautiously to see if it was guarded. We couldn't bypass it because of the water features. If it wasn't guarded we would use the road that crossed it, which, on our map, also crossed the canal. We would then, as the crow flies, be about a mile from our safe house. If it was guarded, there was no alternative but to retreat. Success was tantalisingly close.
Immediately before the bridge the railway entered a shallow cutting and we crept our way along, halfway up the cutting, on the left side. Thorny undergrowth made progress difficult. A passenger train passed very slowly and as it left us there was a shout "There they are - grab them." We were caught in a carefully laid trap, for the defenders were not only on the bridge, but lying low along each side of the railway. For us there was no way out and we had to concede capture.
I was taken up on to the bridge where a Police Constable took charge of me and told me to sit at his feet. A mobile fish and chip van arrived and someone bought him a helping. Ginger, by this time, had joined me and was sitting by me on the pavement. The Constable taunted us about being hungry while he had food. This annoyed me somewhat. I wasn't being held in any way so escape was fair game. I waited until he was looking away and had his mouth full, nudged Ginger, and all in one action sprang to my feet, tipped the Constable's helmet forwards over his eyes, and ran like hell down a slope towards the railway on the other side of the bridge to that on which I had been captured. No luck. One of our Squadron's Corporals jumped out and caught me.
I was frog-marched back to the Constable who promptly handcuffed me and gave me a good talking to, which I was perfectly entitled to ignore. Not long afterwards a Police patrol car came along and stopped. I was bundled in and whisked off to Rugby Police Station.
I was man-handled into the Main Bridewell and pushed behind an iron gate leading to the cells, where I was 'collected' by a burly Sergeant who put me in a cell where there were piles of other captives clothes. He ordered me to strip naked. I could hear the shouts of familiar voices and was soon to join them in a cell where a CID man was doing his best to carry out interrogations - with little success in the riotous, abusive, not to say distinctly smelly, atmosphere. It was about 8 o'clock in the evening and we were held in a passageway and the adjacent cells, but no cell doors were ever locked.
One of the captives decided to be 'helpful' and volunteered to be questioned. We were a bit surprised when he said he had been making for the locks. "Which locks," he was asked, "Bollocks," he replied. The Sergeant had been listening and let out some verbal abuse at us whereupon, quite spontaneously, a number of us set on him and debagged him, telling him at the same time that if we were naked he was bloody well going to join us.
The keys to the iron gate were extracted from him, the gate was unlocked, and some of us, me included, opened it and lifted it off its pintles and set it against the 246