There she apparently met some members of the Royal Engineers who had been attached to the 51 st Highland Division. Waters, gave her a detailed written account of his with others escape from France back to England via Spain and Gibraltar between 12 June and 23 September The original text of this true story is reproduced here.
Waters, MBE Documents. They were then taken in lorries, by stages over three days, to near Doullens. Although we had been considering escape ever since the day of our capture on June 12 th , it was not until June 20 th that Dennis [Lennon] and I [Waters] decided life as prisoners was no longer tolerable. To make matters worse we were herded into a more than unusually unpleasant camp, consisting of a disused sports stadium, where there was no grass or shade, and two enormous latrines at each end.
After being almost sick, and making a rather futile attempt to cook some eggs, it was time to retire to bed; this was actually a more comfortable procedure than usual, as we had been allotted the rifle range, where there was cover and straw — unusual luxuries. We were not, however, to be deterred by this transient luxury from forming our plans, and after some discussion decided to escape from the column at the first opportunity on the following morning. Thinking that some form of disguise might assist us, we canvassed round the prisoners for suitable clothes, but could only obtain one beret from a French officer, at the exorbitant cost of 50 Fr it was worth approximately 10 Fr new.
Having made a few other preparations in the way of provisions, shaving kit, etc. The prospect did not seem quite so easy in the cold light of the morning and it required considerably more courage to carry on with our plans. The column marched out of the camp at 6 a.
Feverishly looking round for suitable opportunities as we marched through the town, we began to get desperate, fearing that our plan was going to fail at the very first stage. However, to our relief the column began to straggle out, and as we came to the outskirts of the town luck was in our way; the column became more and more disorderly and the fusil mittrailleuse mounted on the lorry in front passed completely out of sight.
