In the first week of December he resolved to escape. “The State Model Schools stood in the midst  of a quadrangle,” he wrote. “Surrounded on two sides by an iron grille and on two by a corrugated-iron fence about ten feet high, these boundaries offered little obstacle to anyone who possessed the activity of youth, but the fact that they were guarded on the inside by sentries, fifty yards apart, armed with rifle and revolver, made them a well-nigh insuperable barrier.” The original plan of escape was Haldane’s idea. Included in the plan was Sergeant Major Brockie of the Imperial Light Horse who had been taken prisoner while on patrol and passed himself off as a lieutenant in order to get better quarters.