CORPORAL EDWARDS (SECOND FROM LEFT) AFTER HIS ESCAPE. THE TWO GOLD BARS ON HIS LEFT COAT SLEEVE INDICATE THAT HE HAS BEEN TWICE WOUNDED.[ToList]
Simmons was single. He was sent to Canada at once and was promptly discharged. I had a wife and family awaiting me there and I wanted badly to go to them by the next boat. My wife had been receiving letters from me during my fifteen months' imprisonment; she had regularly received her separation allowance; the Canadian Red Cross and many kind friends in London had been sending me prisoner-of-war parcels for a year; the authorities admitted my identity and my former comrades recognised me; I had fifteen months' pay at $1.20 a day, besides a subsistence allowance of sixty-five cents a day, coming to me; but could not draw a cent of it. I was dead. And continued so for three months. There is no explanation. "It's a way they have in the Army"; or so the army says.
In the end it was only through the active intervention of Sir George Perley, the Canadian High Commissioner in London that my case was righted. He, I believe, cabled the Ottawa authorities, who in turn got in touch with my wife, who produced the necessary documentary evidence to prove that I had been alive and a prisoner all this time.
I went to the depot at Seaford. I borrowed from my old friends. I hung round the pay office. The paymaster said I was not on the strength of the regiment. I was old soldier enough to profit by that calamity at least. The bitter injustice of such miscarriage of justice blinded me, as I think it eventually does most soldiers, to the accepted code of civil life. I refused to attend roll call or do drills, fatigues, or any other part of my regimental duties other than certain interesting and thrice-daily rites not unconnected with the kitchen.
It is the commonness, the constant repetition of such stupidity and such lack of action that so much injures the reputation for intelligence of the army in the minds of those who have served in it; so that those who know it best, like it least—and put up with it only because it is the poor instrument of a good cause.
The paymaster fell sick. A young subaltern was acting for him. My sergeant pal tipped me off. As I have said, I was an old soldier with all that that implies. He marched me up to the officer, already more or less at sea about his new duties. I asked for money. He was aware of my history but not of the tangle I was in:
"How much?"
I wondered how much the traffic would bear.