Refugee's Report

I have had to do with many refugees in ministry. Here is a story a refugee told me. He explained it by means of this diagram. A press gang had entered his village, he said, and taken all able-bodied men for war. He was appointed as valet to a colonel. But the colonel beat him severely, and he was frightened by gunfire. He looked for every opportunity to escape. When he finally did, he was soon recaptured. The colonel said: “You are a spy! That is where you went!” He ordered him to dig a big hole, and to pack the bottom with salt (pictured). The colonel made him lie in it, then closed it up with wooden boards and posted a guard. After two days in this prison, the young man’s guard became drunk, was “smoking too much marijuana”, and had a woman. He opened up a hole, and peeped out. Very quietly, he said, he crept out of his hole, and out of the camp, and “walked and walked and walked”. For days he walked, until he crossed the border.