Welsh Journals

WONDERED where I was when I woke and saw the faint grey glimmer in the narrow window. And then the reveille blew-a faint taUoo with wistful deeper notes-and this troubled world was turning to face the dawn of another day. This is now the fifth day of imprisonment awaiting court martial. A long bare room with whitewashed walls and narrow slits of windows high up. No furniture but the wooden bed boards and no occupation for its inmates but to pace up and down, or to lie about the floor, when night- fall makes walking dangerous. "Makes you feel like a b- bear at the Zoo" is the comment of "Cockney," a deserter who has been in this den for five weeks awaiting his trial by court-martial. When I first turned in here I found three other prisoners. Their proficiency in profane language convinced me that they were old soldiers-and on further conversation I found they were Expedi- tionary Force men who had been through the horrors of winter, 1914, in France. It made me wish more than once that some of the academic or ecclesiastic apologists for war and its cleansing fires could have overheard the yarns that followed one after another. The water-logged and befouled trenches in which-they stood for days, the vermin, the stench of decaying corpses, the mad orgy of the bayonet charge, the splatter of the blood of comrades- were all commonplaces of this fight of "right against might." And the stories trickled out: ooys shot for cowardice; old scores against sergeants or officers being wiped off "over the top"; men butchered in dozens through a mis- taken order; the brothels in the French villages and towns; the harlots and drunken bouts which celebrated the return to Blighty. On the first night they spoke of these things with a kind of careless riotous abandon, guffawing over the more extravagant escapades. But I soon found that there is a convention of hypocrisy of evil no less than of good. The swashbuckler is so often only on the outside of these men. As the days and the nights wore on there emerged that other and more tragic side of them -the souls in bondage, held fast in this machine that gave them no middle choice between killing and being killed. "Blimy," said Cockney, "if ye did in peace time what ye do out there they'd 'ang ye." "'Taint nothing but b- murder," interjects the old Manchester tough, who has seen sixteen year's service, and is in for "drunk." "What about that ("b commandment 'Thou shalt not kill?' I tell ye chum, I'm finished with war." And then would follow a farrago of abuse for those who are making war, and for themselves IN A 1918 GUARD ROOM by A Welsh "Conchie." for being duped by them in khaki. "They talk about Christianity," said Welshy. "They gave me twenty-one days field punishment No. i tied me to a b- cross — crucifixion they calls it-for two hours every morning-snow on the ground an' all. And then they told me to fall in to go to Church Parade in the afternoon. I said I'd be shot first. And the Provost-sergeant says 'e didn't wonder." It did not take them long to understand where I stood in the matter; and one after another has said, "You stick it out chum." The old toughs have given me confidential hints on deportment in prison, how to get one's prison rights, and not to offend the warders. "Prison never did me no good, hardens ye"-said Manchester thought- fully "and ye can't get a job when ye come out. The pinchers are arter ye and down on ye." And yet these days in prison and with these "toughs" have been to me an unspeakable re- velation of man's unconquerable soul. The good ness of them blooms out constantly like roses on brambles, and the real man in them has the heart of a little child. We had had a rather hectoring sergeant of the guard in charge of us, who-like many such smaller tyrants-had not seen real service. "Only a b- lodgin'- ouse keeper-I says," grunted Cockney, vowing sundry penalties if he met the sergeant when he got out. Next morning the Colonel-a courteous grave old soldier-came on his weekly round. The prisoners stood up like ramrods, as the august presence looked at them. I asked him if it was not possible for us to have a light in the even- ings as the five hours of total darkness were unnecessarily wearisome. He enquired of the sergeant-major and ascertained that lights were not according to regulation. A little later he returned alone and explained with some em- barassment his difficulty in allowing such a con- cession hinted that it might be possible to treat me as a "prisoner at large." I told him I did not want any privileges that the other pri- soners couldn't share, but asked if there was any objection to them having some books to read to break the monotony. "Certainly not," he said, "I will speak to the sergeant about it." As soon as the door had closed behind him the two toughs grinned delightedly. "Ain't 'e an old torf," said one. "Like a b- father to us," murmured Cockney. And this "hard case," this gaol-bird from a London haunt of crime and poverty, sobbed as though his heart would break when a letter came from "'is Missis" saying that "the little nipper ,4d been near death at the 'orspital."