Our day began with the Reveille at six, and concluded with Lights Out, at a quarter past ten. The intervening hours were spent in walking up and down the room and in talk. The only thing that broke the monotony of the day was the continuous business of the clearing-house. Large batches of prisoners continued to arrive from all parts of the country, where the police were making hay while the sun shone, to the no small embarrassment of the military, who seemed likely to have the greater part of the country delivered upon them. Large batches were being deported to England; and there is no doubt that many were deported whom the military had destined for their courts simply because it had become impossible to warehouse the cargoes of humanity that were being landed on their wharf. And, in slowly diminishing numbers, men were being selected....
... In the midst of this we lived suspended until our turn came on the schedules of the military wharfingers.
XI.
The day on which deportations were due was always tense and strained throughout. We were generally warned a day or so in advance by the soldiers, and sometimes had some of the names conveyed to us of those who were destined to go. However they obtained this information, it was always correct. This meant that from the time we awoke we were all restless. About two o’clock an officer would enter and read a list of names. Each of those so summoned would be given a knapsack, and informed that he was to be ready to fall in on parade outside at half-past two. No more was said; and no more was needed to be said.
Some were glad to go. It meant their removal from the danger zone, and implied that the military did not know all that might have been known. But these were few. For the most part men waited anxiously all day, and if their names were called they made a brief comment, jocular sometimes, and sometimes defiant, that intimated the dead weight that had fallen on them with the news. Whatever courts-martial might sit, so long as we were in Ireland we were at home. There was always the consciousness with us that our own people were about us and bitterly resented our fate. Whereas deportation was deportation. Moreover, one of the men who had been deported a short time before had been brought back again for trial, and his tale of what had been meted out to him in an English jail was not pleasant to hear. Altogether, this breaking up of bonds and transference to the conqueror’s own particular prisons was a thing of dread, however that dread might be covered by jocularity or grimness.
The first deportation after my arrival was on Saturday, May 20th. On that occasion none was taken from our room. We crowded to the windows to see the parade and to cheer our comrades by our presence there; but we were shouted back by the officers, who were conducting the parade,
Our very friendship with one another had become an offence.