More from George:
Life in the monastery was anything but dull. Ample exercise was to be had In the spacious grounds surrounding the monastery. Many of the monks spoke a little English and one of them played the violin beautifully. On a clear day it was possible to see the industrial haze hanging like a cloud over the Ruhr valley, and on a clear night one could the flak barrage, the searchlights and the glow of fires.
Soon the stranger came again and I left the monastery, following him on a bicycle as previously, back to the railway station at Nijmegen. Leaving our bicycles in a shed outside the station, we entered the station and went through the ordeal of showing our identity cards before being permitted to go through the barrier. There were a few minutes to wait before the arrival of the train, so rather than walk up and down the platform I stood well back from the line, in the shadows. A minute afterwards I was sorry. A German soldier approached me and asked politely, on which platform the 12.07 p.m. would arrive. From my meagre knowledge of Dutch acquired at the monastery I managed to answer ''Platform eight''. He walked away apparently satisfied, but then turned to look at me, but by then I had developed a very keen interest in my pro-German magazine. On the train the same magazine stood me in very good stead for at the sight of a pro-German magazine no-one wished to speak to me. After looking through the magazine, scanning each page as if I were actually reading it and sometimes allowing a smile to play about my lips, I pretended to sleep.
Stopping at an intermediate station I was obliged to offer my seat to a woman. Again I developed a very keen interest in the magazine, never allowing my eyes to leave its pages. And so we, the guide was in the next compartment, arrived at the town of Tilburg in south west Holland. I was to meet a Dutch policeman at the station and had already been furnished with a description of him. Seeing him I shook him by the hand and greeted him like a long-lost friend. The guide had quietly slipped away, giving me no opportunity to thank him. Then followed a long, rather hectic, motorcycle ride along broad highways, through quiet lanes and along narrow dirt paths, finally arriving at a wood three miles from the Dutch-Belgian border.
Leaving the motorcycle hidden in the fringe of the wood we followed a narrow path leading to the more dense part of the wood in which was hidden a small shelter made of pieces of tin, old coats, branches of trees and one or two old sacks. Hiding in the shelter were six people, a Jew and five Dutch students. The Jew had escaped from a nearby concentration camp, the students had resisted going to Germany to work in labour camps. In spite of their rather primitive surroundings and the apparent lack of facilities they looked healthy and clean-shaven. They crawled out from the shelter one by one and shook me by the hand saying they were glad to have me with them. The policeman waved farewell and soon we heard the sound of his motor cycle fading in the distance.
I was to stay there three days, before walking across the frontier. Many hours were spent talking of England, of Holland and of the Germans. They were bitter and their hatred reached almost to the point of fanaticism. Food consisted mainly of oats and fresh milk, bread and occasionally cucumber. My knowledge of the Dutch language increased enormously and soon I was able to carry on a reasonable conversation. At night we would all sit round in the warmth of the shelter talking or reading ourselves to sleep. We were seven people whom the war had thrown together in unusual surroundings, now lying huddled beneath old coats and blankets. By a coincidence one of the students knew the student I had stayed with in Nijmegen, so I was able to provide him with some useful information. The three days passed slowly and on the morning of the fourth day a young man came dressed in the green uniform of a forester (Franz). His arrival was preceded by the sound of his motorcycle. He was to show me to a lightly guarded part of the frontier and pass me across to a waiting Belgian who would accompany me to Brussels. Bidding our ''Goodbyes'' and ''Good Lucks'' to the Jew and the five students we rode off along the narrow dirt road bordering the wood. Well ahead of us was another guide acting as our observer, warning us of any danger. It was well that he was ahead of us for we came upon two German soldiers resting by the roadside. He engaged them in conversation and offered them cigarettes and we were able to pass nearer the frontier without being stopped. We rode to within a mile of the frontier, dismounted, then pushed the motorcycle through fields and behind hedges, arriving at last behind a hedge beside a road. A few minutes later several German guards marched past. We had timed it to a nicety. Hearing their footsteps fade in the distance we dashed quickly through the hedge and across the road, vanishing behind the hedge on the other side.
The forester turned to me and said ''You are now in Belgium''.