During the course of a war, another fellow, who reminded me of Walls, and I were captured by the Russians and imprisoned. We were in a rather isolated section of the jail and no one else was around us. We had a computer similar to an IBM personal computer which had been captured with us. A lot of data containing secret, American information was on the computer.

We weren't well protected and we were able to walk away from where our computer was. We looked back and saw about five Russians officers gathered around our computer. Walls began trying to climb over a wall to get out, but I pulled him back down and told him to look, that there was a guard tower nearby. In addition, the five Russians near our computer could have clearly seen Walls, if they hadn't been so engrossed with the computer.

I pointed out to Walls that there was a garbage can nearby and that if we wanted to, we might try standing on it later and using it to climb over the wall.

We walked over to a fence where there was a Russian guard who spoke English. I asked him if he could supply me with a Russian grammar and a Russian/English dictionary. He wasn't very friendly, but he said he would see about it.

Walls and I then returned to where the computer was. The Russian officers had already left. I began thinking we might indeed try to escape, but first we needed to erase all the American secret information from the computer. Also, the Russians had begun putting their own information on the computer, and I thought perhaps we could remember some of that information to take with us.

We were rather high up in what appeared to be a tower. However right next to us was a flat concrete place. A small hole was in the concrete and I noticed two tiny people about 10 centimeters high climb out of the hole and walk away.

Walls then went over a hole and, using a ladder, climbed down into the hole. I looked down into the hole and could see a lot of garbage down in it. I could also see light. Walls hollered up to me to come down. I hollered that I had to put my shoes on first and I ran to get them. I also wanted to get a map, because I wasn't completely sure where we were going to go.

Meanwhile, Walls came back up and I spoke with him. I decided it would be better if we waited until night to go, instead of leaving in the middle of the day like that. I thought we could rest during the day and then travel all night. That would give us a big lead over anyone trying to catch us. It appeared that we would be able to escape by going down the ladder into the hole, but I wanted to be sure we had a big lead when we left. I also knew there was a possibility we would have trouble on the outside if we left if we had to filter through enemy lines.