July 4, 1918 
Land & Water 
15 
Life and Letters QjJX.Souire 
A Man of Action 
I THINK it is about a year since I last reviewed here a 
war book that seemed to me to be sure of a protracted 
life. That was Captain Brett-Young's Maichir.g on 
Tanga, and I have now read another which I should 
say is equally certain to be read long after the war 
is over. This is Outwitting the Htm, by Lieutenant Pat 
O'Brien (Heinemann, 6s. net). It is as much unlike the 
other as one good book can be unlike another. The Tavga 
book was a reflective poetic work, beautifully composed by 
an artist. Outwitting the Hun, as might be deduced from its 
mere title, is not by an artist, and is entirely iJevoid of con- 
scious literary effort. It belongs to the other main type of 
good narrative : it is a good book perpetrated unawares 
by a man who has extraordinary adventures to relate, a 
vivid personality which seasons them, a keen eye, gusto. 
and a capacity for driving straight ahead. Slangy and 
unsophisticated, this candid tale will be read when a hundred 
more ambitious works of the " Dawn broke over Helles. 
The vermilion sun slid upwards into a sky of purple and 
puce" species arc forgotten. 
Lieutenant O'Brien is an American citizen ; his extraction 
it were superfluous to sppcify. He had been risking his 
neck for several years when in May, 1917, at the age of 
twenty-four, he joined the R.F.C. with other .Americans. 
He was not at the front long ; his third chapter begins ; 
I shall not easily forget August 17, 191 7. I killed two 
Huns in a double-seated machine in the morning, anothe* 
in the evening, and then I was captured myself. 
It was characteristic of him that when he did come down he 
fell eight thousand feet, insensible, in a spinning nose-dive, 
and was picked out of the wreckage with bullet-holes in 
throat and lip, but not one bone broken. That takes a lot 
to live up to' ; but by the time one has finished his book one 
feels that this tumble was a comparatively tame episode. 
For three months he led a life that would have done credit 
to both Robinson Crusoe and BrigaOier Gerard. One 
despairs of giving an adequate impression of his ordeals and 
his resourcefulness ; all one can do is, pro\'ide a rough sum- 
mary, quote a few sjiecimen incidents, and commend every 
kind of reader to a book which may be guaranteed to interest 
the most blase and excite the most phlegmatic. 
• i» * « * * 
He was taken to a hospital where German airmen were 
kind to him, a German doctor was offen.sive, and a wounded 
German officer said that we wanted to make Germany a 
republic "and hang the damned Kaiser into the bargain." 
All his experiences here are told with the simplicity and 
straightforwardness of the man who takes things as he finds 
them, and has no theories. After a sojourn in a Belgian 
prison, the daily details of which arc most vividly shown, 
he was put into a train en route for a reprisals camp at Stras- 
burg. They were nearly there ; the train was going at over 
thirty miles an hour; his companions whispered "Don't be 
a fool. Fat" ; when he suddenly hoisted himself up by the 
rack in front of his guard and shot himself out of the window. 
" I landed on my left side and face, burying my face in the 
rock ballast, cutting it open and closing my left eye, skinning 
my hands and shins, and straining my ankle." His old 
throat wound re-opened ; he thought he had lost the sight 
of one eye ; he had a British uniform, a Gerrhan cap, two 
pieces of bread, a piece of sausage, and a pair of flying mittens. 
He was over two hundred miles from the Dutch frontier, 
with part of Germany, Luxembourg, and Belgium to cross. 
When he got to the frontier he would have to tackle a triple 
barrier of barbed wire, one hne of which was electrically 
charged. That, as they say, was his problem. 
He solved it. 
the whole time 
fortune which mi 
to command. T 
crowded, and hi 
jaunty, that the 
profusely," he w; 
but I checked it 
face, and I also 
.the blood as it 
ground." Here 
His luck in subsidiary matters was cruel 
but in the worst corners he had the good 
■n so quick and courageous often seem almost 
rhe tale of hardships and misfortunes is so 
s method of recounting them so terse and 
effect is actually comic. " I was bleeding 
rites, "from the wounds caused by the fall, 
somewhat with handkercjiiefs I held to my 
held u]) the tail of my coat so as to catch 
fell, and not leave tell-tale traces on the 
we have both his businesslike style and his 
ready astuteness : the\- are everywhere the same as he pro- 
ceeds with the story of his two months' wanderings. He 
travelled by night. He was always wet throiigh from swim- 
ming rivers and canals and squelching through marshes. 
Until he got to Belgium, where friendly poor peasants occa- 
sionally gave the bearded and ragged fugitive food, he ate 
only a few vegetables : 
I was living on nothing but cabbage, sugar-beets, and 
an occasional carrot, always in the raw state, just as I got 
them out of the fields. The water I drank was often very 
rank, as I had to get it from canals and pools. One night, 
I lay in a cabbage-patch for an hour lapping the dew from 
the leaves with my tongue. 
Another time, in the dark, he swam the same curving river 
twice ; and even then had to dive for an hour to recover a 
shoe which had come off. Hidden under bushes, he had 
narrow escapes from travellers and woodcutters. But his 
direct cdhtact with humanity did not begin until he had 
entered Belgium, having swum the Meuse, half a mile wide, 
in a bruised, tired, starved state which would cer- 
tainly have meant death by. drowning to an5-one but those 
rare Heroes of Adventure whom the gods protect in order to 
show mankind what can be done. He fainted on landing ; 
and awoke delirious; walking along talking with "a Pat 
O'Brien with a yellow streak" who wanted to throw up the 
sponge and lie down for the Huns to find him. 
• « « « « • 
He pulled himself together, and began the direct contacts 
with people which give the story dramatic passages that 
make one's heart stand still in fear for him. With a stone 
in his handkerchief as a weapon in case of need, he goes to 
cottages at midnight to demand food : old men and women 
open to a tall, shaggy; dirty tramp who can speak not a 
word of French or Flemish, and talks by signs. By gifts and 
burglaries he acquires clothes to cover his uniform : then 
dehbcrately walks through a village where Germans are in 
order to train himself for what must come ; then he is 
searched by German sentries, agonised lest they (who think 
he may be smuggUng potatoes) should invite speech from him 
or go through his clothes thoroughly. He starves until his 
wrist-watch has to be thrown away, as he finds it heavy 
wheii swimming. He gets into a big city, and in touch with 
a greedy and treacherous dealer in false passports, who hides 
him in a large unoccupied house. There he stays for days, 
hungry ; once darting into the street to steal a piece of 
stewed ' rabbit from a cat. Once a German squad entered 
the house ; he ran down to the cellar and hid while they 
wandered about breaking things and battering walls. But 
they had only come to look for metal pipes, taps, etc. His 
confidence increased, and he began wandering the streets: 
One evening he spent at a cinema at the same table as two 
German officers ! The waiter came for orders ; the starving 
man longed for food, but could not understand the menu, 
and had to say "Bock," which he had just heard a neigh- 
bour say. He tendered a note ; the waiter had no change ; 
another crisis which seemed to demand speech. But after 
scores of encounters which a novelist would never think of 
and escapes for which the word "hairbreadth" is not ade- 
quate, he got to the frontier and the great barrier, charged 
with current and paraded by sentries. He did not bribe ; 
he rejected the plan of a pole-jump and the other (it was 
like him to think of it) of a pair of titanic stilts ; and his 
impromptu ladder collapsed and nearly got him electrocuted. 
How did he get over, then ? He dug his way under, making 
a trench in the earth ^^'itll his fingers, whilst the sentry passed 
and repassed in the dark. On its way to England his boat 
had — one begins to think that it could not but have — a 
collision with a destroyer. But he survived to have an 
interview with King George — which he confesses fright( ncd 
him more than most thing!-: — and to supply the authorities 
with a great deal of information. He is sure the Germans 
will not be starved out. He thinks their machine has a 
great deal left in it. But he is equally certain that the 
German soldier personally longs for peace. He never heard 
them laugh or sing. ''I don't believe." he says cheerfully, 
"I saw a single German soldier who didn't look as if Ive had 
lost his best friend— and lie. probably had." Lieutenant 
O'Brien has now gone to America to sec his family. He says 
" I would have to be pretty hungry to-day before I could 
ever eat cabbage again ; and the same observation applies 
to carrots, turnii)s,' and sugar-beet^ — especially sugar-beets." 
As for turnips, the mere smell makes him sick. 
