Free Silent in an Evil Time by Jack Batten Page B

when Edith shook him awake. “I am in trouble,” she said. “You will have to come with me.”
    Edith helped the young soldier down the stairs and across the yard behind the clinic to a shed, which held large barrels of green apples. Edith cleared one barrel of enough apples to make room for Scott to fit inside. Then she covered him in apples, spreading them loosely so that he had enough air to breathe. Scott squatted down and listened for sounds in the silent night.
    Soon, he could make out the thump of boots on the stairs inside the clinic. He knew that German soldiers had arrived, though he was never told how Edith learned in advance that they planned a raid on Rue de la Culture that night. The boots came closer, into the backyard. Scott heard German voices. He held himself rigid, not daring to move, as he listened to the soldiers poke around the yard. But nobody disturbed his barrel, and after a while, the Germans strode back into the clinic. Several more minutes of Scott's excruciating wait went by before silence fell once again. The Germans had left the building.
    Edith pulled Scott out of the barrel, and in the next days, she hired guides to take him to Holland. Charlie Scott was home in Englandbefore the middle of April, another soldier saved by Edith's ingenuity and nerve.

    For some British soldiers, escape from the Germans was an adventure full of excitement. For others, it was a necessary part of their jobs as soldiers, one they would have preferred to avoid. Since they had no choice, they made the best of the situation. For a few soldiers, the challenge of avoiding the clutches of the Germans became a terrible strain that affected their health for the worse. Ernest Stanton of the 4th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment was one of the men whose health suffered from the stress.
    When Stanton was left behind after the fighting at Mons, Auguste Joly and his wife, Sidonie, hid him in the small cottage where they lived in Wiheries. Joly was the miner known in the secret organization mainly as a guide who led the escaping soldiers to Brussels. But Auguste and Sidonie took one soldier into their home, and he was Ernest Stanton. The Jolys kept him in the little cottage for seven months, a time of almost unbearable tension for Stanton.
    He was a large man, over six feet tall, with a husky build. His size made him an awkward fit for the tiny room where he spent most of his time. Even tinier was the place where Stanton hid when the Germans made one of their frequent inspections. At each German raid, Stanton squeezed into an empty cistern, under the cottage's floor. The cistern was the size of an ordinary barrel, barely wide enough to hold him. As soon as he slid into the cistern, Auguste Joly popped a lid on top, and Stanton sweated out the wait until the Germans left the cottage.
    By the time Stanton was led to Edith's clinic in April, he had become a nervous wreck. He felt worn down, as if he couldn't go on for another day, and one morning, he made the frightening discovery that he was unable to speak. The worry and trouble of the past seven months had caused the power of speech to desert poor Stanton.
    Edith took special care of the soldier. She spent as much time as she could with him, trying to ease his anxieties. By the time he left the clinic, guided on his way back to England, his speech had finally returned.
    At home, Stanton's general health improved. He married his sweetheart and settled down after the war. But the strange loss of speech returned to Stanton one more time. As in Belgium, it was temporary, and he was soon able to speak again. The loss lasted for just one day. It was the day of Edith's funeral.

    Edith did her best to conceal the strain that the secret work put her under. It wasn't her nature to complain or express regret. If it was too much for Edith to deal every day with raiding Germans, with Irish soldiers who made too much noise in the night, with a maid who might be a spy, with the potential