I walked for five days, sleeping during the day and moving by night. I stripped off my uniform and buried my machine pistol behind an oak tree but kept the revolver tucked into the trousers I"d stolen from a peasant"s hut while the fellow had been working in the fields. I"d taken a shirt and a tunic and a little bit of food and left a few zlotys on the table. During my journey I ate what I could, sometimes buying food from peasants when I felt it safe to show myself, drank from the cold, fast-moving streams I forded and picked gooseberries from the vine. This, and the emotional hunger to get home, to see my family, moved me along.
On the morning of the fifth day, I washed my face in a stream thinking that home felt close by. I knew the nearest village, Pauk. The farmers had come to my fat
