A Girl in Wartime (18 page)

‘They'll have to have your bed in the parlour, love, and you use the sofa in the front room. It's only for a few days before they go back.'

‘Can't Albert have the sofa and Ron go upstairs with Dorothy?' It made sense but Mum looked as if she'd been struck by a fist.

‘Connie, they're not married!'

Her voice sounded so aghast, especially given that they now had a little daughter, that Connie had to curb a smile. So that was it. She was to use the front-room sofa for a few days. It was a house full of people, her sisters popping round to see the baby and their brothers, Ronnie upstairs with Dorothy most of the time, despite the concern of Mum's prim and proper mind. Though three days after giving birth, what would they be expected to get up to? And with Albert bringing his Edie home at all odd times too, with no room to sit, Connie was glad to get back to work – and Stephen.

August 1916

Squatting by the field where he'd been digging seed trenches along with another group of prisoners – conscientious objectors like himself – George ate his meagre meal in gulps. He had only fifteen minutes to eat before he had to get back to work. They'd been marched off to work early this morning despite the drizzle. Taunted by other prisoners, who were hardened criminals, and bullied by guards who saw them only as cowards, each bore it with fortitude.

He had been in Dartmoor a few months now, brought here in April from where he'd been in a local prison, moderately fed despite being treated with scorn. Here, something they called a midday meal consisted of a small hunk of bread and a bowl of watery soup they called skilly. Exercise comprised of two twenty-minute sessions, walking round and round the seventy-five-foot-square high-walled courtyard, forbidden to speak to their fellow prisoners on pain of three days on bread and water. George's only outlet was forced labour outside the prison, and hard work it was too. These last few months he had been mending roads. Squatting by the roadside as he ate, his only consolation was that he was working with others who'd been imprisoned for the same beliefs as himself.

As he finished the last crumb of the stale bit of bread, having soaked it in the skilly, his thoughts went back to that day he'd been arrested. Having received his calling-up papers, his stomach had churned over as he gazed at them; he'd put them to one side in the mad hope that by ignoring them he might be overlooked. They'd sat there glowering at him from his friend's sideboard. Ernest, a member of his chapel who was about the same age as George, had taken him in when he'd left home. Ernest too stood firmly by their deep-rooted conviction that a man does not kill his fellow man.

‘You've got one too,' Ernest had said, producing his own summons.

‘I'm going to ignore it,' George told him firmly and his friend had grinned.

‘You can't do that. They'll be down on you like a ton of bricks. Best thing is for you and me to go together, tell them our beliefs won't allow us to accept military service of any kind. And I mean
of any kind
!'

Next to the official letter there had sat another, from his mother. He'd read it but hadn't replied to it, not quite sure what to say. She'd wanted to tell him that his brothers were home on five days' leave and maybe he might like to see them. She'd said that Ronnie didn't look at all well: he seemed a little vacant at times, hardly talked, and she was worried about him. She'd said that she missed him: no matter his convictions, he was still her eldest son and she loved him, no matter what.

It was the words ‘no matter what' that hurt, stopped him from replying. It had nagged on his mind for ages afterwards and maybe it was that which had made him lose his temper the way he had.

Ernest's set expression had heartened him at the time but there'd been another question to settle. ‘What if we're given the option of doing work of national importance, nothing to do with combat?' George had asked. ‘Like market gardening or going into the medical corps?'

‘We'd still have to sign the military oath, and that in itself makes us a traitor to our beliefs.'

Then something had happened that had entirely altered his thinking. All these months later, it still plagued him, disturbed his sleep, and even now as he stood up beside his brethren on a command to resume work, he couldn't stop thinking of it.

Surprisingly, he and Ernest Jarvis hadn't been marched off to prison for refusing to enlist; they had instead been given time to think it over, told that they would be summoned again and by that time they would have changed their minds and opt for non-combatant work.

It had sounded tempting, but a harsh talking to from his pastor had him thinking straight again. He would not consent to any sort of non-combatant work, and especially to signing the military oath.

For a long time he'd had to put up with jibes and taunts, even face-to-face accusations of cowardice from those he'd pass in the street or whilst sitting on a bus or entering a cafe. There'd been times when he had even been refused service. He'd managed to rise above it, walking away straight-backed from the cafe or after being ordered off the bus or when a white feather had been thrust into his hand.

That day in February his mother's letter had still been on his mind, that and the awareness that he'd not had the courage to go and see his brothers while they'd been home. He'd just been to a particularly harrowing service where he'd listened to all sorts of horrors one could inflict upon another under the orders of an army officer, he himself who'd maybe never even yet soiled his hands with the blood of another man. He had come away incensed at the wickedness men could inflict on others.

He was thinking about it as he'd made his way along Shoreditch High Street, having again to walk after being refused boarding a bus by a young conductress, no doubt having taken the place of a man who'd gone off to kill.

At the corner, he'd paused to light a cigarette. As he'd put away his matches, a young woman had ran up to him and, with one movement of her open hand, had swept the cigarette from his mouth, her voice a shriek, stopping other passers-by in their tracks.

‘You ain't wearing an armband!' she'd screeched as he stood shocked. ‘Why ain't you wearing a bloody armband?' she'd yelled, giving him no chance to speak. ‘You're one o' them bloody conchies, aren't you? Feckless cowards, 'iding be'ind your bloody Christ's blooming coat tails, and my poor husband only this week reported missing believed killed, you stinkin' cowardly bastard!'

With that, she'd fetched a handful of white feathers from her handbag, obviously stored in there for this very reason, and had thrown the whole lot in his face.

In a sudden burst of unexpected anger, already upset by being unceremoniously rejected from the bus, he'd taken a step towards her without thinking what he was doing. She had instinctively leapt back, catching a foot on a jutting corner of a paving stone and had landed on her backside on the pavement.

Several had rushed to help her up, at the same time glaring up at him, but one man, a biggish lout, had come at him. In an effort to defend himself from a hefty blow, he'd shut his eyes and struck out with both fists. They'd landed on the man's jaw without him hardly being aware of it.

It was pure self-defence, but the force of that protective move had sent the man sprawling. Then, without realising what he was doing, he'd thrown himself on top of the sprawled body, his hands around the man's throat in a blind rage – blind, animal fury that had come from nowhere. It seemed to be someone else trying to choke the life out of the body beneath him, such was the rage that rose up from the soles of his feet. The next thing he knew, he had been yanked off his victim by someone, one arm twisted way up behind his back, causing such pain that he'd cried out. Moments later, his wrists were manacled behind him and he'd been bundled into a police van to be thrown into prison for assault.

There'd been no thought, no reason for it that he could think of now, and it haunted him that he, normally a mild-mannered man, a believer in turning the other cheek, should attack another with such a desire to hurt, even kill, as he had felt. And all because …

To this day he couldn't believe it of himself. But no matter how he tried to excuse himself from that moment of insanity, one thing still played on his mind: if he, with all his beliefs in
thou shalt not kill
, could feel such a surge of anger as to want to kill, how was it that he saw himself as above such things?

Often he'd recall with shame how his declaration in court that he was a conscientious objector was met with a storm of laughter. But sitting in that cell awaiting transfer to a longer term prison, into his heart there'd crept the realisation that still disturbed him: he who'd been so against killing his fellow man had tried to do just that, and not even in self-defence. Wasn't that what his beliefs were supposed to be about – that a believer didn't kill, even to defend himself or his loved ones from his enemy? Even when faced with death? Yet murder had been in his heart when he'd clamped his hands round his attacker's throat, propelled by blind fury, and he hadn't even been defending his country or his loved ones.

Realisation had slowly dawned on him that it was an automatic response to resist when threatened, despite all his high ideals of pacifism. Maybe he was wrong to have done what he did. But it had shown him how weak a man could be. He'd not appealed to his God, but had lashed out: every lesson he'd ever learned had fallen apart in that one short moment. Not only was he still ashamed of himself, he'd come to see that he was no better than the rest of them.

He stood now with his fellow prisoners, pickaxe in hand, ready to resume the work he'd been consigned to do, and wondered at himself. He knew that if his brothers or his parents were at the mercy of a loaded gun, he would strike, never mind all his high-blown beliefs.

For a moment he wanted to throw down the pickaxe, march towards his guards and announce before all his fellow prisoners that he had changed his mind. But those with him would view him as a traitor to his beliefs and he couldn't bring himself to face that.

He was a coward too.

The short break over, he retrieved his pickaxe and, bending his back beside the others, he suddenly understood that his duty lay, not in fighting, but in helping those wounded in their struggle for freedom. The realisation was like a heady shot of brandy. He could never take part in the killing of others but he could help those who had been ordered to and injured in the process. Maybe the medical corps would take him? Otherwise he would take any mundane job he was asked to do in an effort to help shorten this terrible war. And damn the preaching of Joseph Wootton-Bennett.

George stood facing the recruiting officer who was seated behind his desk, aware that the man was regarding him with some scepticism and not a little scorn.

‘So …' he breathed, his thin lips twisting sarcastically. ‘Why this sudden change of heart, man? What's made you alter your mind so damned suddenly?'

‘I've been thinking a lot about it lately, sir,' George muttered, even more ill at ease than before. To his ears that sounded such an inadequate excuse, mumbled as it was, that his insides cringed.

The officer clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘For God's sake, man, speak up! What was that?'

‘I said I've been thinking about it a lot lately, sir,' George began again in a stronger tone.

‘You've been thinking about it a lot,' the officer echoed in a mocking tone that made his victim squirm inwardly. ‘In what way?'

The man was tormenting him, verbally torturing him for the bother and inconvenience he was causing by deciding finally to sign the military oath after all this time wasted, as the officer seemed to deem it. He was finding it hard to explain his change of heart, especially with his inquisitor gazing up at him with disdain written all over his narrow face. But he had to explain this change of heart, as the man called it.

‘Since I lost my temper and hit someone, even though he was attacking me, I've come to realise,' he said desperately, ‘that whatever a man thinks he believes in … I mean, not to retaliate … I mean …' Unable to explain his actions, his words trailed off. ‘I'm sorry, sir, I can't explain it any more than that,' he heard himself saying, surprised at his own outspokenness. ‘At the time I just lost control and hit out. It's weighed on my mind ever since and I finally realised … well, it's as I said. It's like we're all just people. No matter how much we think we're above lashing out, we are, well … frail, I suppose. And that thought's helped me change my mind about what I thought I believed in. And, well … that's all, sir.'

He knew he was talking like a fool; at any moment he would be told he was only trying to get out of prison. But the officer lifted his chin, gave a brief sigh and nodded.

‘Very well – we'll get the ball rolling. But …' His eyebrows drew themselves together, he glowering up at George from beneath them in a warning gesture. ‘I don't want you changing your mind at the last minute, man, or you'll find yourself in deep trouble – and I mean …
deep trouble
. D'you understand me?'

George nodded, finding it hard to breathe; it felt like it had on the day he had received his calling-up papers. His heart turned over – in fear? Was that all it had ever been, the fear of fighting itself and all that it entailed? But he'd committed himself and there was no going back.

‘It will be in a non-combatant capacity, sir?' he asked bluntly, his tone surprising him, suddenly strong and direct. ‘I still refuse to fight or kill anyone, you understand, sir.'

Was it this decision that was making him more direct than he'd ever been in his life?

The officer looked up, studying him closely. ‘That goes without saying, of course. So, non-combatant, do you have a preference? Agriculture, maybe market gardening?' It sounded almost sarcastic.