"For nearly a month afterward I thought my left eye was gone. The scars are there yet. By the time the train stopped, a half-mile on, or more, was up and stumbled to a hiding place. Those Germans looked every day. As I put it up where—on the side of the tracks toward the border. I was in the opposite direction.
"It was a month before I got rid of my English uniform. I stole a pair of overalls one night. I got a cap the next and a shirt later. A Belgian gave me a scarf. That was all the help I got."
As an appetizer, Lieutenant O'Brien ate turnip. The entree was sugar beet, and the meal closed with a cabbage stump that even the Germans scorned.
"And I never did like vegetables," he said. "I hope I never have to eat another."
One night a German soldier saw him swimming a river, and raised the alarm.
"I felt sure they would be on top of me in a few minutes," he said, "so I ran upstream and swam back to the other side. I knew the ways of the Hun pretty well by then. They looked everywhere on the other side, but not a German came near me.
"Swam the Meuse.
"One of the hardest things I did was to swim the Meuse river. I had all my clothes on, to my boots, and the river was half a mile across. It nearly got me twenty-five feet from shore. I was choking, and I admit praying. My boyhood on the Kankakee saved my life.
"When I got up the bank I fainted." 