Another U3A effort - the assignment was to write about war. This is based on a true story of a relative - Mike Duncan, who wrote a book about his adventures called Underground from Polsen. He actually escaped from Bieberach in southern Germany but started his escape plans when he was in a Polish camp - called Polsen.

I'm not much good at poetry. I started out trying not to rhyme - but then found it was much easier for me to write if it did - so it is sort of mix. Don't know if that is allowed.

Escape from Bieberach

Duncan’s the name, I’m a prisoner now,
Along with 300 brave Brits.
The nine months we’ve rotted is nine months too long,
Our rebirth will soon be here.

Our birthing tunnel we’ve carved every day
With spoons and tiles and such,
Stored the soil in the roof of our huts.
So far our secret is safe.

I’ve heard that soon we’ll be moved from this camp
To a stalag some miles away.
Tho our tunnel’s far short of its intended length
We must go now without a delay.

We waited til dark, then took off our clothes,
Made a pack of our gear and our food.
The tunnel would come up a foot from the fence
Our chances were not very  good.

The idea being mine, I took the first place
And crawled through the walls very neat.
My breath was cut short, thro panic or not
But I tapped out the last several feet.

The guards were not looking, how lucky was that?
I crawled as fast as I could
To some shelter –at least a partial hideout
But we needed the cover of woods.

Barry came second, I heard him emerge.
He saw me, but his progress was slow.
We’d planned our escape to the nth degree
We knew just were we would go.

The border lay South, they’d be looking for us,
So we wearily wended northwest.
We walked, and we limped for the rest of the night
And when it grew light, we took rest.

Later we heard that 96 had got out
But 94 did not last the course.
They were captured again by the end of the week
And back in the camp, no doubt worse.

It took us a fortnight of walking by night
Of sleeping by day, if we could.
We managed to evade any curious eyes
And slowly our destiny stood.

Our rations of chocolate and porridgy mix
Lasted our long trip through.
But when we emerged in Swiss land at last
We gobbled their wonderful food.

It took two more months to get us home.
The Swiss were neutral you see,
So they couldn’t let us do other than stay
In safety, but not really free.

So we found our way from there to France
And then we went into Spain.
We got to Gibralter, that wonderful rock
And from there we reached home again.