ALL THAT MORNING the Court sat. I thought the case would never end as witness after witness was called by the prosecution—Halsey, Hendrik, Jukes. My mind was in a daze. I remember the details of Rankin’s cross-examination because I disliked him personally and I was excited—and therefore more receptive—by Jennings’ handling of him. Of the other witnesses for the prosecution, I only remember the high lights of their cross-examination. This, chiefly because it did little to help our case, though Jennings worked hard enough. He was endeavouring to build up something that was essentially insubstantial, whereas the prosecution dealt in fact all the time. And as the evidence of each fresh witness corroborated previous evidence for the prosecution I felt our chances fading.
Halsey, for instance—Jennings made little impression on the stocky, bearded Captain. The man was solid as a rock, immovable, and his personality dominated that dreary court-room. His little black eyes darted from officer to officer, not uncertainly and restlessly like Rankin’s, but meeting each fresh gaze with sharp, aggressive mien. He had the confidence of a man accustomed to command. That confidence impressed itself on everyone—even, I think, on Jennings.
I remember Jennings tried to make a point out of the fact that Halsey had heard from Rankin that I had discovered loose planks in Number Two boat before he gave the order to stop me from having the raft cut adrift.
“Captain Halsey,” Jennings said. “Would you tell the Court why you did not want that raft cleared?” Halsey’s black eyes looked sharply at his questioner. “Certainly,” he said. And then he turned and addressed his reply to the Court. “In an emergency there can only be one man in charge of an operation. Otherwise all is confusion. You, as experienced officers, will appreciate that.” His voice was mild but forceful. “Those rafts were for use in emergencies. I needed them in reserve in case one or other of the boats was dashed to pieces.”
“But at this particular time surely both boats had been cleared?” Jennings said.
“They were both in the water,” Halsey replied. “But not necessarily clear of the ship.”
“I see.” Jennings looked down at his notes. “Number Two boat had just been launched—that’s correct, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Now supposing you had been informed that it was not seaworthy—would that have affected your action?”
Halsey met Jennings’ gaze across the court-room. “There was no question of that,” he said. “One of my officers inspected the boats daily, usually Mr. Hendrik.”
“Quite,” Jennings said in a soothing voice. “But I am asking you for your opinion. If you had suddenly heard that Number Two boat was not seaworthy, wouldn’t you have encouraged rather than tried to prevent Cook and Vardy clearing that raft?”
“I cannot reply to that,” Halsey replied shortly. “Actions in an emergency are taken on the spot. It is impossible to say what one would or would not have done had the circumstances been different.”
I could see Jennings was a little nettled by Halsey’s obstinacy on this point. But he persisted. “Captain Halsey, I put it to you that had you been aware of the state of that boat—as Vardy and Cook were, or thought they were—you would have encouraged them to cut the raft clear.”
In an endeavour to break the Captain’s confidence, Jennings said, “Perhaps your reluctance to express an opinion which would have been helpful to the prisoners’ case arises out of the fact that at the time you ordered them to stop cutting the raft clear, you did know that the boat was unseaworthy. When you were informed by Warrant Officer Rankin that the prisoners had refused to enter the boat, you told him to report to the bridge. Correct?”
“Yes.” Captain Halsey’s black eyes watched his questioner warily.
“What reason did he give for their refusal?” was the next question.
Halsey did not hesitate. “He said they thought it was unseaworthy,” he replied.
The members of the Court exchanged glances.
“But you paid no attention to that?” Jennings went on.
“No,” Halsey answered. “A lot of men not accustomed to the sea get panicky when told to get into the boats. You must remember there was a gale blowing and a fairly big sea running.”
“Did the Warrant Officer say whether he believed what the Corporal had told him?”
“I did not enquire.”
“Did he tell you they preferred a raft?”
“I believe so.”
Jennings leaned forward. “Did you stop to consider that if those boys were afraid to embark in a boat, it was strange that they should be willing to take a raft? Surely that must have struck you as strange?”
“I didn’t consider it.” Halsey glanced at the Court. “You must remember,” he said, and his voice was quiet and reasonable, “that the ship was settling and I had a lot on my mind. I had no time to worry about two men who were getting panicky. I told the Warrant Officer that, boat or raft, he was to get them off the ship.”
Jennings left it at that. To Halsey we were just a couple of soldiers who were getting panicky. His view was impressing itself on the Court. He was, after all, the master of the Trikkala. He had appealed to the Court as experienced officers and they could understand his point of view.
Jennings asked him why he had taken Rankin in his boat and made Miss Sorrel go in the raft. Again his answer was reasonable. “It was her choice, not mine. There were things to be done before I could leave the ship. I saw no reason to endanger her life by having her wait for me. I knew she would be perfectly safe on the raft, though perhaps not very comfortable. I expected to be able to pick her up in the morning when it was light.” As regards Rankin, he pointed out that as he was a Naval Warrant Officer, he had no hesitation in having him wait on board.
Jennings then asked him why it was that he had failed to pick Miss Sorrel up in the morniug. “It’s hard to say,” Halsey replied. “Some freak of the gale, maybe. We were being driven in a notherly direction for a time. I believe the raft was being blown in a south-easterly direction. That happens sometimes. Also, visibility that morning was bad. We could have been within a mile or two of the raft and not seen either it or the corvette that picked it up.”
“I have reports here from the Admiralty,” Jennings went on, “that suggest that the wind to the south of the Barents Sea between the time you took to your boat and the time you were picked up off the Faroes three weeks later was mainly northerly. This would suggest that by using your sails you could have been in the neighbourhood of the Dogger Bank within a week of the Trikkala being sunk.”
Halsey shrugged his shoulders. “Whatever the Admiralty may say about the winds at that time, all I can say is that we experienced varied winds. At one time we were as far south as latitude 68 and then we were blown as far north as the seventies. You are surely not suggesting that we enjoyed staying in an open boat half frozen and with insufficient food?”
I saw that the President of the court was no longer taking notes. Once or twice he looked at his watch. He was getting restive. Jennings put a question about the Chief Engineer. “Warrant Officer Rankin spent a lot of time in his cabin playing cards—would you describe your Chief Engineer as a drunk?”
Halsey replied, “A lot of sailors drink. All I can say is that he was an efficient officer.” And he muttered, “God rest his soul.”
That was the first time in the course of the evidence that I knew that Halsey was lying. But lying to save the reputation of a dead officer. If Jennings had proved that point it would not have helped us.
“I have only two more questions,” Jennings said. “At about midnight on the first day out you were on the bridge with your first officer, Mr. Hendrik. Hendrik said it would be dirty the following day. Do you remember what you replied?”
“No,” Halsey answered. “Conversations about the weather occur too frequently on board a ship for one to remember them.”
“I will refresh your memory then. You said, ‘It suits us.’ Would you explain why dirty weather suited you?”
Halsey leaned a little forward. “I don’t understand the point of this question. One of the prisoners I suppose has been listening with too much interest to conversations which have nothing to do with him. However, I can answer your question easily enough. The Russian convoy route passes a little too close for comfort to the northern tip of Norway where Germany has bases. Dirty weather is quite a good protection against U-boat attacks.”
“You said, ‘Well make it to-morrow night,’” Jennings went on. “And you then asked Mr. Hendrik whether he had switched the watches so that Jukes was at the wheel between two and four—it was between those times and on that night that the Trikkala was mined.”
“The suggestion behind your question is offensive, sir,” Halsey said sharply. He turned to the Court. “Have I got to explain every scrap of conversation overheard by people who could not understand what I was talking about? The watches were switched because we were short-handed. My remark about making it the next night referred, if I remember rightly, to the necessity for switching over duties so that the men would not be unduly taxed.”
“I am merely trying to show the effect of a scrap of conversation upon the mind of Corporal Vardy, knowing that he was in charge of a very important cargo,” Jennings pointed out. “I have one other point I would like cleared up. And let me say in advance that this conversation was overheard by Miss Sorrel, and not by either of the prisoners. Shortly after you sailed from Murmansk, Captain Halsey, you said to Mr. Hendrik: ‘I’ll think up some reason to cover that,’ What did you mean by that?”
“I can’t say I remember the conversation,” Halsey replied. “But if that is what I said, I was no doubt referring to some stores we’d wangled from a Naval vessel.” And he gave a slight chuckle. The Court also chuckled. They understood the point.
“Immediately afterwards,” Jennings continued, “you quoted a passage from Shakespeare—from Hamlet. You said: ‘Henceforth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.’ Why?”
“I often quote Shakespeare,” Halsey replied shortly, two little spots of colour appearing in his sallow cheeks.
“So I understand,” Jennings answered quickly. “I am also given to understand that you choose your characters to fit your mood: that morning you were Hamlet—and Hamlet in a mood contemplating violent action. And that, I submit, is an important point when you consider that had you known about the loose planks in Number Two boat a lot of lives might have been saved. One more question,” Jennings hurried on before Halsey could protest. “Were you by any chance the owner and master of a ship called the Penang in the China Sea before the war?”
It was then that Halsey’s black eyes flashed with unmistakable anger—anger and something else. That something else I realised later was fear. But I didn’t know him so well then as I came to know him later.
And whilst Halsey hesitated uncertainly, the prosecuting officer came belatedly to his rescue. “I protest,” he cried. “These questions have no bearing on the case.”
“I agree,” the Judge Advocate said.
“I will show that they have—later,” was Jennings’ reply and he sat down.
With Hendrik, who was the prosecution’s next witness, Jennings had more success. He questioned him about the same scraps of conversation. Hendrik with his shifty eyes and white scar was not the type of man to impress the Court. But he was not easily put out, and though his replies differed from his Captain’s the difference was not great. And then Jennings sprang on him the question about the Penang and the scar became a livid streak in his ashen face. “Is it true,” Jennings rapped out, “that in the China Sea the Penang had a reputation for being in the neighbourhood of several ships that sank with the loss of all hands?” Whilst Hendrik was still searching confusedly for an answer and before anyone had time to protest, he said, “I understand, Mr. Hendrik, that you were working on Number Two boat with one of the crew whilst the Trikkala was in Murmansk. What was the work that had to be done to the boat?”
“On the Captain’s instructions I was carrying out a general overhaul of all boats,” was the answer.
“There was nothing definite that needed repairing?”
“No. Just a general overhaul.”
“Who was the member of the crew who was working with you?”
“Jukes, sir.”
That was all he asked Hendrik. The next witness was Jukes. As soon as Jennings came to cross-examine him, he said, “You worked on the boats with Mr. Hendrik whilst you were in Murmansk, didn’t you?”
“That’s right,” Jukes replied.
“Was your watch switched so that you were at the wheel at the time the explosion took place?”
“Yes,” Jukes said. But he was beginning to look worried.
Then Jennings suddenly leaned towards him. “Were you a member of the crew of the Penang by any chance?”
There was no doubt about it this time—Jukes was scared. He was the type of man that is scared in any court of law. His broken nose, tough features with missing ear lobe, were not calculated to impress a court. He was clearly a man who gravitated by nature to the shadier quarters of the ports he shipped in and out of. He had not expected to be questioned about the Penang and he was frightened.
But Jennings had made his point. He had too little to go on to press it home. He let it go at that. Evans was never called. The case for the prosecution, being closed, Jennings opened for the defence. After a short speech, he had me give evidence on oath. Under his guidance I took the court through the whole story of those two days from my point of view. I kept nothing back. I told of my suspicions, my growing sense of uneasiness, what the cook had told me of the Penang, how I had actually felt the looseness of the planks of that boat. Here the Judge Advocate interrupted me to ask whether it was dark and if I had inspected them with a torch. When I had finished, Jennings called Bert to corroborate my story. And finally he called Jenny to show that my attitude to embarking in the boat had been so strong that she had felt convinced that a raft was safer.
That concluded the case for the defence. There followed the final speeches of defence and prosecution. And then the Judge Advocate gave his summing up.
Finally, at twelve-fifteen, the Court was closed for consideration of the finding. The only people who were allowed to remain in the court-room whilst this was happening were the two officers under instruction.
Back in the little waiting-room, Bert rubbed his hands together and grinned at me. “Cor! I wouldn’t’ve missed that for anyfink. Did yer see their faces each time Capting Jennings mentioned the Penang? Bet yer it was piracy they was up ter. And Miss Jennifer—she impressed ’em.”
I nodded. It had been exciting whilst Jennings had been cross-examining the witnesses for the prosecution. But all I could think of was the cold, factual summing up of the Judge Advocate. And now back in this dreary waiting-room with the military policeman at the door, all elation was stripped from me. Jennings had done his best. He’d tried to show the state of suspicion and uneasiness that had prompted our actions. But this wasn’t a civil court. There was no jury to impress. The men who were sitting in judgment on us were Army officers, concerned primarily with the maintenance of discipline in a civilian army at the end of a long war. And against our frail case was the solid, factual statements of witnesses reporting what had actually occurred. Jennings had warned us not to expect an acquittal. And now that the case had been presented and we were out of the court-room, I realised how thin were our chances.
“Come’n, mate—’ave a fag,” Bert said in a chirpy voice. “You look as though we was hincarcerated in the beastly Glass’a’se already. I know the ruddy prosecution didn’t mince ’is words in ’is final speech. An’ the summing up of that Judge Advycate bloke—that won’t ’ave ’elped us much.”
“Oh, it was fair enough,” I said.
“Well, I reckon we got a chance, see. Jennings made Rankin look pretty cheap. Wot d’you fink?”
He was holding a packet of cigarettes out. I took one. I didn’t want to damp his cheerfulness, so I said nothing. “Oh, well,” he said, “maybe they’ll ’ave ter find us Guilty fer the sake of appearances. But I reck’n the sentences’ll be light.”
“Well,” I said, “we won’t know what the sentences are for some time. If we’re found Not Guilty they tell us right away. But if we’re Guilty we’re not told anything now.”
We smoked in silence for a moment. Then the door opened and Jenny and her father came in. With them was Bert’s missis. I don’t know what we talked about—anything but the trial. Jenny’s father was a gentlevoiced man with bright twinkling blue eyes and white hair. He was a Scot. He had great charm. Though they were not in the least like each other physically, he and Jenny had much in common; the same trick of looking constantly surprised with the world, the same easy almost childish delight in things, the same soft, musical voice. But where her father’s enthusiasm for life merely twinkled, hers sparkled gaily.
They were an odd contrast to Mrs. Bert, who was a solidly built, angular woman with a rollicking sense of humour that shook the walls of that wood-lined room. She might have been a barmaid or kept a winkle stall in her youth. But now there was only the faintest trace of the buxom Cockney beauty she had once been. She was worn with work and cares. But beneath the wrinkled skin and faded clothes was a warmth that did me good. It was the warmth of a friendly nature that seemed to expect the worst from a hard world, accepted it and triumphed over it so that you felt in her that flood of good-neighbourliness that is the spring of happiness.
Time passed slowly. Conversation was not easy. It was like waiting for a train to go out. At a quarter to one our visitors were ushered out and we were marched back into the court-room. Nothing seemed to have changed. Everyone was seated in the same places. But there was a subtle difference. And the difference was in the attitude of the five officers of the Court. Their faces were no longer receptive. They had made up their minds. Their eyes watched impersonally as the court-room settled itself. I suspect they were impatient for their lunch. No doubt there were more cases to be dealt with and ours had taken longer than they expected. I felt a chill void inside me as we were ordered to stand to hear the sentence of the court.
Tobacco smoke drifted in a splash of sunlight. They had relaxed, smoking, whilst deciding our fate.
The voice of the President was cold and impersonal as he addressed us. “The Court has no announcement to make.” The signet ring flashed in the sunlight as he massaged his jaw. “The findings of the Court, being subject to confirmation, will be promulgated in due course.”
The court-room stirred restlessly. I felt cold and numb as though nothing could hurt me any more. The Judge Advocate turned to the prosecuting officer and asked, “Have you any statement to make with regard to the accused?”
The prosecuting officer produced our Army records. Jennings made a speech of mitigation, stressing our excellent record and the fact that our actions had been prompted by good intentions. Once again the Court was closed, this time for consideration of sentence.
Ten minutes later we were taken in again. This time we were told, “The sentence of the Court, being subject for confirmation, will be promulgated later.” And then the President glanced round the room. “And, therefore, the proceedings now in Open Court are accordingly terminated.”
A buzz of conversation swept through the room. Chairs scraped. I found myself being marched out. I remember a brief glimpse of Jenny, smiling brightly, and then we were behind the wire cage of the three-tonner and roaring back along the road we had come.
Two weeks later the sentences were promulgated. I shall never forget the shock I experienced when I stood before the Camp Commandant and heard him say: “Corporal Vardy. At your trial, which took place at Exeter on 28th April, 1945, when you were charged with mutiny, you were found Guilty and sentenced to be discharged the Service with ignominy and to serve four years penal servitude. That sentence has been confirmed by the confirming authority, and findings and sentence are accordingly promulgated.”
Bert got three years.
I don’t think we really believed our ears for the moment. It took time for the harsh reality of it to sink in. But during the evening we went through a process of mental readjustment which was frighteningly humiliating. We had to accustom ourselves to the idea that we should be cut off from the world as we knew it for three and four years. It seemed like eternity.
Next morning we were packed into the same three-tonner with the wire-caged back and driven off. “Where d’yer reckon well serve our time?” Bert asked. All the cheerfulness had been beaten out of him.
“God knows,” I said.
We skirted Plymouth and drove inland through Yel-verton. We turned right there and began climbing. It was sunny with cotton wool clouds and the plain below us a patchwork of cloud and sun. The earth looked warm and glowing. A tor with an RDF mast on the top of it appeared away to our left as we sat looking down the winding road to the flat country of the Tamar. And suddenly an awful fear gripped me. For I knew where I was. I knew this part of the country. Several times I had stayed with a friend of mine at his family’s place at Dartmeet. This was the Moor. And the road we were on led to Prince town.
I had heard some talk about long-term military prisoners being imprisoned there. I hadn’t thought much about it. But now that rumour gripped at me like a stomach ulcer. I looked at Bert, blissfully unconscious of his whereabouts. He caught my eye and grinned wanly. “Turned a’t nice again, ain’t it,” he said. Then he shook his head. “The kids’d like this sort of country. D’yer know they ain’t never seen the country? Bin in ruddy Islington all their lives. The eldest is only four. The missus was kind o’ lonely an “I reck’ned I’d soon be going overseas. That’s why we started raisin’ a family. Poor little chaps! All they seen o’ the world is bombs an’ rubble an’ dirty tenements. They ain’t never seen street lights after dark, nor eaten bananas—but the eldest, already ’e knows the difference between a Spitfire and a P38, can tell a bomb from a V-i an’ knows the barrage balloons by ’is own pet names. An’ now, when the stupid war’s nearly over an’ I reckoned ter be able ter show ’em the sea an’ a spot o’ country like this on me demobilisation leave, this ’appens. It’s just damnable!” he added savagely.
I put my hand on his shoulder. There was nothing I could say. Thank God I had no family. But I felt I’d let him down. I ought not to have acted so hastily—I ought to have thought of the consequences. And yet if we’d obeyed Rankin, we should have got into that boat and we should not have been alive now. I thought then what irony of fate it was that Rankin, who had brought the charges against us, owed his life to me. He, too, would have been in that boat if I hadn’t refused to obey his orders.
The truck had reached the top of the long climb out of the plain. We were in the moors now and all about us were fire-blackend hills. Here and there patches of gorse that had escaped the flames blazed golden in the sunlight. The road snaked out behind our humming wheels, curving like a white ribbon over the shoulder of a rock-crested tor. Behind the tor the sky was dark with smoke. Away to our left the moors rolled endlessly to the sky-line, and everywhere smoke curled up from the warm, peaty earth. In a valley close below the road men with flaming brands were setting fire to grass and gorse, the flames crackling merrily in a great curve that the wind had made. They were burning the moors over to improve the grazing—swaling, they call it. They do it every spring. They were not supposed to do it during the war because of the blackout. But they did it all the same, beating the flames out at night.
We picked up the railway and a few minutes later drove into Princetown. I waited with my heart in my mouth. If we turned left in the market square … The truck slowed and then turned. I suddenly felt frightened. To suspect the worst is one thing. To see your suspicions confirmed is another. This meant solitary cells and the coldest, dampest, most horrible prison in the whole of Britain. Cold little stone houses bristled at the road edge. They were warders’ houses. Then a high, bleak wall beat back the sound of our engine. The truck stopped and the horn was blown. Voices and then the heavy sound of bolts being withdrawn. I looked quickly at Bert, surprising a dumb, hurt look in his eyes as he stared with horror at that blank wall. I looked away. A voice called out, “Okay!” The truck ground forward in bottom gear and bumped noisily between great iron-studded gates that had been thrown back. As we went down the slope into the prison, the gap in the wall through which we had entered closed on us as the two great doors were swung to and bolted.
The truck stopped. Our escort came and unlocked the wire cage. There was a warder with him. “Come on, you two—out you get,” the warder ordered. And then added automatically. “Come on, look sharp now.”
Bert and I jumped out. We were in a kind of V formed by two of the many wings of the prison. The wings were ugly rectangular blocks built of solid granite from the nearby quarries. The roofs were of grey slate rising to a shallow crest. Each prison block was punctured by rows of neat little barred squares. Cell windows! Rows and rows of them like square portholes in grim, age-old prison hulks. A round brick chimney dominated the prison, belching smoke in the sunlight. Bert looked about him, dismayed and awed by those sombre granite blocks. He turned to the warder. His voice sounded husky as he said, “What’s this place, mate?” The warder grinned. “For goodness’ sake where are we?” Bert repeated.
“Dartmoor,” the warder answered.
It took a moment for this to sink in. The warder didn’t hustle us. Bert gazed about him, an expression of surprise and horror on his face. Then he turned to the warder again, “Come orf it, chum. You’re kiddin’. That’s the place they used ter send the ol’ lags to, the ones wot were sentenced ter long stretches.” He turned quickly on me. “’E’s kiddin’, ain’t ’e, Jim?”
“No, Bert,” I said. “This is Dartmoor all right. I’ve often seen it—from the outside.”
“Dartmoor!” Bert’s tone was one of utter disgust. “Blimey!—give me the merry Glass’a’se any day.”
“Come on—stop that talking?” the warder bawled out with sudden impatience. Then he marched us away out of the sunlit compound between the granite blocks into the cold, dark interior of the prison with its clanging doors and the sound of iron-shod boots ringing hollow on stone-floored passages. We were inspected, interviewed, docketed, clothed and finally marched to our cells. As the iron door clanged shut and I was alone, I realised at last that we had been absorbed into the soul-destroying machinery of the prison. The walls closed in on me, the ceiling clamped down on my head, the barred square of light that was the window seemed to recede until it was barely wide enough to put my hand through. A sudden panic seized me. I felt crushed by the smallness of that rectangular cubicle. Six paces long four wide. Steel bars at the door. Steel bars at the window Pencil scribbles on the walls. Initials and dates cut deep into the stone. The dingy carbolic cleanliness of it clamped down against my brain so that I wanted to scream. And ahead of me streamed the years I was to spend there. Four years—say, just over three if I got full remission for good conduct. One thousand, one hundred and twenty-six days! No—I should still be here in 1948, and 1948 was a leap year—one thousand, one hundred and twenty-seven! Twenty-seven thousand and twenty-four hours! One million, six hundred and twenty-one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes! And I had calculated all that in a minute. Just one minute! And more than a million and a half minutes to go. I suddenly felt I wanted to scream. Footsteps sounded in the empty corridor, keys jangled. I sat down on the bed. I must get a grip on myself.
Then somebody began tapping on the wall. I replied. Thank God for my basic training. I knew morse and realised suddenly that even in the confines of my cell I was not alone. I could talk. The jail telegraph was morse. The message tapped on the wall above my bed was passed on from Bert and told me that he was in the next cell but one. The knowledge that Bert was there, even if I couldn’t see him or talk to him, was a great comfort to me.
I am not going to dwell on the time I spent in Dartmoor. It is only an interlude in the story and has no real bearing on what happened later, save that it toughened me mentally and physically. I doubt whether, without that period in Dartmoor, I should ever have had the guts or desperation to do what I eventually did. It was sheer desperation that drove me to Maddon’s Rock on one of the wildest sea enterprises it is possible to conjure up even in a dream. It was Dartmoor—the damp, grim, granite awfulness of Dartmoor—that gave me the courage. Now, as I look back on the year I spent in that wretched prison, it seems like some frightful nightmare, so faded and veiled are its memories by more recent happenings.
The dread of solitude, however, has never really left me. I hated that cell with a bitter loathing. It crowded in on me, it symbolised my isolation from the rest of the world, it was the thing above all that seemed bent on destroying me utterly—crushing my spirit and warping my brain to madness. I have always had a tendency to claustrophobia—a dread of being alone in small, enclosed spaces and a morbid curiosity in any cave or shaft that took me into the bowels of the earth. The result was that I was happiest sweating my guts out in that damned quarry which had provided the stone to build the prison or labouring on the prison farm. I didn’t mind the cleaning, the discipline, the work—so long as I was in the company of other human beings. Even now I cannot read accounts of men who suffered solitary confinement in German concentration camps without feeling panic seizing at me. I think if that had happened to me I should have gone mad. But as long as I had plenty of hard work during the day and a book to read at night, I managed to stave off the feeling of loneliness that I dreaded more than anything else.
There were about three hundred military prisoners in Dartmoor at the time. Of these only about a third were in for military crimes for which they had been sentenced, like Bert and myself, by court-martial. The rest were soldiers who had committed civil offences for which they had been tried and sentenced by civilian courts. Their crimes covered the whole gamut of civil offences—assault, theft, arson, burglary, manslaughter, looting. Some of them were pretty tough; hard-bitten die-hard criminals from London’s East End, sly characters from the race-courses, tough little men from the Gorbals district of Glasgow, men to whom razors came more readily to their hands than a rifle, men without any social conscience, bullies, liars, cheats, habitual criminals, murderers, men with minds so warped by their upbringing that they took it for granted that the world and every one they met in it was against them. All the riff-raff, hooliganism, abnormality that the Army had swept up in the maw of conscription and had been unable to digest. And a few, like Bert and myself, who seemed to have landed up there by mistake.
I’ll never have a better schooling in world misfits than I had there. Sometimes it made me hate my own kind I was so disgusted. And sometimes I wanted to burst into tears at some example of kindliness exhibited by a man who looked tough enough to kick his best friend to death if he should so much as trip over a curb and be temporarily at his mercy.
All the time I was in Dartmoor I never really ceased to be conscious of the grim history of the place. You couldn’t escape it. There were initials everywhere. J.B.N. July 28, 1915—1930. I always remember that. It was deeply etched into the wall above my bed. I often wondered about J.B.N., for I had been born on the day he entered Dartmoor and by the time he was out I was a boy of fourteen. The cells, the prison yards, the workshops, the kitchens, the laundry—everywhere the ghosts of these men who had been forced to live out long stretches of their life in this place clung to walls and tables and benches in the form of initials and dates. But these ghosts of the past were not obtrusive. They were too numerous. The walls had seen too much misery and wretchedness and hopelessness to retain any impression of individual cases—only there was a general atmosphere of wretchedness imprisoned on those damp-streaming walls.
It’s a strange irony that this prison, which had been built for French and American prisoners of war at the beginning of the nineteenth century and had been a horrible Home Office ash-can for the country’s human refuse for almost a century should now hold British soldiers. But we weren’t the only occupants of Dartmoor. Ours was a world apart, an almost military world with prison discipline. But there was another world within those walls—the world of Borstal. Why the authorities turned over part of this most disreputable of all our prisons to be a home for Borstal Boys, God knows. But they did, and the boys shared the Moor with us. It was not an easy marriage. Their world was a softer, pleasanter world than ours. They were divided into houses like a school. They were allowed a number of little privileges which made our own lot harder to bear. And the easier discipline gave rise to riotous outbreaks for which there was no cure. For these boys were only boys in the eyes of the authorities. Their ages were anything up to twenty-three or so, and many of them were hardened criminals.
All these impressions came slowly. At first I was too dazed and too absorbed in the task of adjusting myself to the life to absorb much of the atmospere. But gradually I came to take the background for granted and then, when I had time to think and take stock—that was when I began to feel frightened. But I got over it. I established a routine for myself so that I would never have time to think. I always made certain I had something to busy myself with in the evenings in my cell. I caught up with the days and kept a calendar, but I never allowed myself to think of the months stretching endlessly ahead of me. I tried not to think of what had brought me here. To kick against the pricks and to count the days to release—that would bring no satisfaction. I no longer tried to sort out the mystery of whether there really had been something wrong with the Trikkala’s boats or what Captain Halsey had been up to during the twenty-one days he had been sailing in an open boat in the Barents Sea. I accepted it all and that way got some peace of mind. I tried not to think about myself at all, but abstract things—geography, history, cross-word puzzles. Anything but myself. I wrote to my family to tell them where I was. It was not an easy letter to write. I knew how hard they would be hit by the news that their son was in Dartmoor. But after that my correspondence with them was easier, for it became entirely impersonal.
But letters to Jenny were more difficult. We fell into a regular correspondence. And whilst I looked forward with the excitement of a school kid to a letter from her, keeping it in my pocket unopened for days, trying to make it bridge the gap to the next, they were a weakness in the armour of acceptance and indifference I was building to my condition. For she wrote to me of the Highlands, of hunting, of sailing in the lochs, she sent me plans of the Eilean Mor, took me all through her reconditioning almost plank by plank. It was hard, because she wrote of things I loved which were out of my reach. But her letters were a real contact with the outside world. They were my one form of dissipation in the routine of forgetfulness that I had planned. They made me think of the future, of what I should do at the end of my three years. They made me unhappy. And yet I loved them as the one bright thing to look forward to from day to day.
So the spring warmed into summer. VE Day came and went. Then VJ Day. The leaves turned on the trees behind the church and blew in gay clusters around our marching feet as we turned in at the prison gates. Then winter clamped down, hard and black. The moors became thick with mists. In November a drift of powdery snow stung our faces on an early parade. The walls of our cells streamed with damp. Our clothes never seemed dry. The moors, so pleasant to summer visitors stopping for tea in their cars, became a mysterious, frightening void. The mists closed down on the prison for days at a time so that the great rocky battlements of the surrounding tors were seen as dim glimpses through fleeting gaps in the murk.
All this time Bert and I were in constant contact. Messages passed back and forth between us through the intermediary of a burglar who occupied the cell between us. This burglar had been on the Moor before. He was a hardened criminal, a mixture of Scot and Irish with a small bullet head and a wicked temper. He had been in R.E.M.E. till he burgled the till of a Naafi canteen in a big military camp near Carlisle. He was always planning escape. He never did anything about it. But he’d work it out to the last detail and then pass it on to Bert and myself. It was his way of passing the time. He might just as well have done cross-word puzzles.
Sometimes Bert and I managed to talk to each other. I remember one day he was in a great state of excitement. We were in the same work party and he kept on catching my eye, his face all a-grin. As we fell in to march back to the cells he pushed his way alongside and whispered, “I seen the dentist, mate. They’re goin’ ter give me me denchers.” I looked at him quickly. I’d got so used to him without them that I couldn’t visualise him with teeth. The screw in charge of the party told us to stop talking.
Then one day about a month later I met Bert on our cell landing while on the way to empty some slops and barely recognised him. The wizened little monkey face was gone. His mouth was full of teeth. They grinned at me like horse’s teeth. It was as though he had filled his mouth with some white pebbles and was afraid of swallowing them. It made him look grotesquely young. I’d never thought about his age before. But now I realised suddenly that he could not be more than thirty-five. The teeth moved up and down as he spoke.
However, I think I got used to them quicker than he did. Scotty, our burglar chum, spent hours relaying to me Bert’s comments on those teeth. Bert came in for a lot of chaff, but he gave as good as he got. He was popular with everybody. With or without his teeth he continued to grin and crack jokes.
Christmas came and the snow began to pile up on the Moors. For a week in January we seemed to do nothing but clear the snow, shovelling a way through the drifts to keep the roads open. “Huming snowploughs, that’s all we is,” Bert grumbled. But I enjoyed those days out in the snow. It was warm working and if we made good progress discipline was relaxed and we were able to talk and sing.
Then suddenly the snow was gone and the moors glowed a warm golden brown in crisp sunshine. Life began to stir even up on those bleak hills. An occasional bird began to sing. The men became restive. They smashed up their cells. Fights became more frequent. The Borstal Boys started organised rioting. I was infected by the general spring malaise. The limitations of my cell began to irk me more and more. I wanted to smash it up. But I was scared—scared of chokey. I couldn’t face solitary confinement. I had fits of terrible depression, violent longings to get out and walk in freedom across the moors. I found my thoughts becoming dominated by memories of shady walks in summer woods, meadows of buttercups beside a river and the sparkle of water in sunlight as my sailing dinghy trod the wavelets in Cornish estuaries. And all these longings began to focus on Jenny. I started counting the days to each letter, getting miserable and angry when they were late, or what I chose to consider as late. I found myself upbraiding her in my letters and then tearing them up. And then one day I woke up to the realisation that I had fallen in love with her. I cursed myself for a fool. I was a prisoner in Dartmoor, disowned by my fiancée, a failure to my parents. What future could I possibly have? What could I possibly offer her? In a fiendish debauch of mental masochism I didn’t write to her for three weeks, so that she wrote to me asking why I hadn’t written, was I sick, should she come down and see me? I hated myself then, hated myself even more when I wrote a dull, impersonal letter in reply.
And then suddenly the world changed and my cloak of misery and frustration fell away from me in the eager burst of enthusiasm with which I concentrated all my thoughts on one single idea.
It happened this way. I got hold of papers whenever I could. One of the screws, a jailer named Sandy, was a decent sort and used to slip me one now and then. I read them avidly. They gave me great satisfaction. It was an impersonal contact with the outside world. They produced the illusory feeling that I was sitting by my own fireside. On the 7th of March, it was—7th March, 1946. I managed to see a copy of the previous day’s issue of one of the London dailies. I was glancing through it with the pleasant absorption that went with the illusion that I was part of the world about which I was reading, when my eye was caught by the single word Trikkala. It was in the second head to a down-column story on the front page. It was quite short, a paragraph or two, but it started my brain racing with a thousand half-digested thoughts and suspicions.
I tore the story out and the worn fragment of newsprint lies on my desk as I write. This is what it said:
NEWCASTLE, TUESDAY—Captain Theodore Halsey, master of the Kelt Steamship Company’s 5,000 ton freighter, Trikkala, at the time she was sunk, plans to salvage the half-million pounds worth of silver bullion that went down with the ship some 300 miles north west of Tromso. He and several other survivors of the Trikkala have pooled their resources to form a limited company called Trikkala Recovery. They have purchased an ex-Admiralty tug and are equipping it in a Tyneside dock-yard with all the latest deep-sea diving equipment. It is already fitted with azdec which will be used to locate the wreck.
When I met Captain Halsey on the bridge of the tug, which has been christened the Tempest, he said, “I’m glad you’ve come along to-day, for it is exactly a year now since the Trikkala was mined and sunk.” Captain Halsey is short and stocky with a neat black beard and sharp, restless eyes. His movements are quick and decisive. His manner is confident. “I don’t think there is any secret now in the fact that the Trikkala carried a valuable cargo of silver bullion. I intend to lift that bullion. I know where she went down. It happens to be in an area where the depth is reduced by a wide shelf of rock. I believe she lies on that shelf. If I am right then I am convinced that with the help of the improvements in diving equipment and methods achieved during the war, we shall be able to raise the bullion.” He described the expedition as the first post-war underwater treasure hunt.
He introduced me to his officers, both Trikkala survivors. Pat Hendrik, a Scot, had been first officer. He looked tough and competent. Lionel Rankin had just come out of the Navy after fourteen years. He was a Warrant Officer. Two other Trikkala survivors are among the crew. All are in the syndicate. “We feel that those who had the misfortune to be on board the Trikkala when she was hit and who survived a three weeks’ voyage in an open boat in winter should be the ones to claim salvage on the recovery of the bullion,” Captain Halsey said to me. “And I think we’ll do it. We aim to leave on 22nd April, all being well.” He refused to reveal who was backing the expedition, merely repeating that the five survivors had a financial interest.
God knows how many times I read that story through. I went over it word by word. And all the time something at the back of my mind kept fidgeting my brain with the thought that there was something phoney about it. For the first time since I had been in prison I let my mind roam over the events and conversations on board the Trikkala. And all the time the thought rattling round my mind was, why are all these survivors still together? Halsey, Hendrik, Rankin, Jukes and Evans—they were together on the deck of the Trikkala when we were put on to the raft, they were together in the open boat that was twenty-one days afloat in the Barents Sea before being picked up, they were together at our Court-Martial, and here they were together again on board a tug going in search of the Trikkala’s bullion. Rankin had even got out of the Navy to be on that tug. They must be very sure of recovering the bullion. And why hadn’t some of them got jobs? That Halsey and Hendrik should be together in the venture was reasonable. But Jukes and Evans might have been expected to ship on other boats and be at the other end of the world. Was it chance that brought them all to England at the same time to ship with Halsey? Or was it something else? Suppose they were afraid of each other? Suppose they shared some awful knowledge? Suppose the boats had been tampered with?
Thoughts like these shot like electrons through my brain. And out of the chaos emerged one decisive view—there was some compelling force, outside of the natural desire to hunt for treasure, that kept these five men bound irrevocably to each other. Of that I became convinced. And all my subsequent reasoning was based on that assumption. The name Penang began to stand out in my mind as large as Trikkala. I began to recall the details of that story. The old cook drifted into my cell, his apron floating in water, his hair like short strings of seaweed, and his lips framing the word PIRACY. Then he was gone and my mind grasped at the straw my imagination had produced. The money for the purchase of the tug—where had that come from? What would it cost to purchase and equip a salvage tug—£20,000, £30,000? Halsey had refused to say who his backer was. Suppose it was Captain Halsey of the Penang who was backing it? Jewels fetch high prices now. Jewels are a cash transaction in many places in London. Jewels might well have financed this expedition.
I communicated the contents of the paragraph to Bert. We spent the rest of the evening discussing it through the medium of our burglar chum. Next day, I remember, it was bright and clear. The moors lay all about the prison, warm and brown and friendly. The tors were no longer black, mysterious battlements, but sun-warmed rock cresting the hills. The sky was blue.
It was on that day I decided to escape.
At what moment I made the decision I cannot recall. It was an idea that grew within me. And the focal point of my idea was Rankin. I don’t think I had any feeling about Halsey or Hendrik, certainly not about Jukes or Evans. But Rankin had grown in my imagination to the size of an ogre. The long winter of captivity had taught me to hate. And though by my effort of will, I had suppressed all conscious thought of these men or the events on the Trikkala, yet when the flood tide of recollection was released from my pent-up brain by the story of the salvage attempt, I found myself with a violent hatred for Rankin. His heavy body, soft hands, white face and little eyes seemed stamped in my memory, together with every action, every gesture so that I felt him to be the embodiment of everything unhealthy. He wandered in and out of my brain like a big, white maggot. And because I knew he would be afraid of me if I suddenly accosted him when he thought me safe in Dartmoor, I became feverishly excited with the idea of doing just that. From him I would get the truth. And I would get it before the Tempest sailed, if I had to smash every bone in his body. Dartmoor had done that for me. It had toughened me mentally as well as physically. I felt there was nothing I would not dare, nothing I would not do to come at the truth which had forced me to spend almost a year in that dismal place.
It was typical of my frame of mind that at first I thought only of what I would do after I had escaped, not of how I was going to escape. All that evening I planned. I would make for Newcastle. I would find the tug. Rankin would be on board, or if he had not yet taken up his quarters on board, he would be in the vicinity, probably at one of the hotels in Newcastle. I would lay in wait for him. And then, when he gave me the chance of a lonely spot, I’d wring the truth out of him. I visualised it all so clearly. I never stopped in my dreaming to consider the snags that might arise to prevent my reaching him, or to wonder if the truth might not be just as they had stated and all my suspicions and uneasiness the imaginings of an over-wrought mind.
But next morning dawned cold and chill, with the moors hidden in a thick mist. The cold damp of the grim, stone blocks pressed upon my spirits and I suddenly began to have doubts. How was I going to get out? I’d need money and clothes. As we went out on the parade ground the great prison wall seemed to mock at my plans. How was I going to get over it? How was I to get clear of the moors? I knew the prison routine for escapes too well—the tolling of the great prison bell, the patrol cars, the warders out beating across the moors, and the dogs. There had been several Borstal escapes quite recently. They’d got caught in the end. And I knew what happened outside. I’d seen it on holidays before the war. All the towns around Dartmoor warned. The few roads through it patrolled. Police checks at every road exit. An escaped prisoner had to walk off the moors and at night. I knew enough about the moors to reckon the chances of succeeding pretty slim. I began to feel depressed.
And then something happened that made me feel as though fate were on my side. Half a dozen of us were detailed for a painting job. We were taken to a shed on the east side of the prison. Inside it were paint pots, brushes, carpentry tools, and ladders. I walked out of that shed supporting one end of a long green ladder and the prison wall was right above me. When we brought the ladders back in the evening, I managed to slip some putty into my pocket. This I transferred to a tobacco tin I happened to have in my cell to keep it moist. That night I tapped a message to Scotty in the next cell. Being a REME engineer he was employed in one of the workshops. If I gave him a putty impression of a key could he cut it for me in the workshops? Back came the answer—Yes. Two days later I got my opportunity. We were painting the outside of one of the blocks and the screw in charge suddenly discovered that we had no turps. I should say perhaps that I was regarded quite favourably by most of the staff. Anyway, the warder turned to me and told me to run over to the shed for the turps. And he tossed the key across to me. I remember staring down at it in my hand hardly daring to believe my eyes. “Come on, look sharp, Vardy,” he said. I made off then before he changed my mind.
Next morning when we were cleaning out our cells I slipped Scotty the tin with the putty impression of the key. Bert was close beside me at the time. “Wot you bribing ’im for, Jim?” he asked. He thought I had handed over a tin of tobacco. I told him then what I planned to do. He’d a right to know, for if I succeeded in getting anything out of Rankin it might well lead to a revision of our sentences.
I’ve never seen a man come to life with excitement the way Bert did. I realised then that below all his cheerfulness and wise-cracking, he was pretty wretched. “You’ll let me come wiv yer, Jim,” he whispered. “You’d never make it on yer own like.”
I said, “Don’t be a fool, Bert. You’ve served at least a third of your sentence allowing for good conduct remission.”
“Nark it,” he said. “That ain’t got nuffink ter do wiv it. If you’re makin’ a break I’m comin’ wiv yer. I know wot you’re up to. It’s on account o’ that story in the paper aba’t those brutes going after the Trikkala’s bullion. You fink there’s somefink phoney, an’ so do I. You’ll make for Newcastle, won’t yer?”
I nodded.
“Well,” he said. “I don’t aim ter be in stir while you’re beating the living daylights a’t o’ that little tyke, Rankin. Yer can count me in. Wot aba’t makin’ it Friday? There’s a rumour goin’ ara’nd that the Borstal Boys is goin’ ter stage another riot on Friday. Zero hour is planned for eight o’clock in the evening.”
“Look, Bert,” I said. And then I stopped, for one of the jailers was approaching us.
That evening Bert was telegraphing to me madly. I was surprised at his insistence. I thought at first that he wanted to come out of sheer good nature. I was already feeling a little scared at the thought of doing the whole thing on my own with no one to brace up my spirits. But as message after message was relayed to me demanding to come with me, I began to realise that it was something more. Bert wanted to come, wanted to come for the sake of the chance in a million of getting clean away. I warned him again and again what it meant if we discovered there was nothing phoney about the Trikkala salvage attempt. If Halsey and the rest of his gang were on the level he would be a fugitive for the rest of his life unable to live with his wife and kids, unable to have any sort of a normal job. That was, if we got clear. If we were caught, it meant a severe increase in his sentence just when he was getting to the time when he could begin to think of the future. To all his pleadings I replied No. Finally his messages ceased and I thought he had accepted the situation.
But next day he reopened the matter over a bin of potatoes. We were on spud peeling. It was one of those wretched jobs that crop up from time to time. He manoeuvred himself next to me and I found myself alone with him in a corner of the shed, our heads close together across the bin. “When d’you aim to make the break, Jim?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “First opportunity I get when Scotty gives me the key. If opportunity offered, I think I’d choose just before eight on Friday, as you suggested. If the Borstal Boys start rioting everything will be so confused it may mean longer before they find out I’e escaped.”
He nodded, his hands working busily at the potatoes. “’Ow d’yer aim ter get up ter Newcastle?” he asked then. “There’s money and clothes ter be got, the police checks ter be avoided. An’ don’t ferget them beastly dawgs. You don’t want ter be lying a’t on the moors this time o’ the year fer long. Look wot ’appened ter them two Borstal kids wot got away Christmas time. Free days a’t on the moors an’ sufferin’ from frostbite when they was brought in.”
“Well, it’s warmer now,” I whispered. “As for clothes and money—remember I told you I’d stayed with a friend of mine at his people’s place at Dartmeet when I was a kid? Well, they still live there. He’s dead—killed at Alamein. I wrote to him some months back. Thought he might come up and see me. It was his father who replied. A nice, kindly letter. I think I might be able to get clothes and money there. As for getting off the moors, well that’ll depend on luck as much as anything else.”
He said nothing for a moment and we went on peeling potatoes in silence. Suddenly he stopped and looked up at me. “Listen, Jim,” he said. “We bin pals ain’t we? You an’ me—we bin through all this business together. We ain’t done nuffink wrong. We ain’t crooked or rotten or anyfink. We ain’t deserted or got scared in a scrap an’ run a’t on our pals. We don’t belong in this dump. An’ if you’re goin’ ter take a chance on gettin’ a’t, well I aim ter come wiv yer.”
His brown eyes were watching me anxiously. He wasn’t pleading now. He was stating his decision. I thought of his missis and the kids he hadn’t seen much of and the fact that he’d probably little over two years to go. “Don’t be a fool,” I said. “We’ve been over all this last night. In just over a year you’ll be out.”
“I’m comin’ wiv yer,” he repeated obstinately. “We bin in on this together from the start. We’ll see it fru tergether.”
“You fool!” I said. “Look—the odds are I never get as far as Newcastle. It’s not easy getting off the moors. If you’re caught, there’s a nice little sentence added on.”
“Well, wot aba’t you?” be said. “You’re taldn’ the risk, ain’t yer.”
“In my case it’s different,” I told him. “Even allowing for good conduct I’ve got at least two years more to serve. And that’s a hell of a slice out of one’s life. Besides, unless I can get evidence that’ll reverse the decision of that Court, what sort of future do you think I’ve got?”
“Well, wot aba’t me? Ain’t I got no pride? D’yer think I want people sayin’—‘Oh, Bert Cook, ’e’s the bloke wot done three years on the Moor fer mutiny’? I got me self-respec’. No. If you makes a break, you takes me along wiv yer. An’ if we gets caught, well, we gets caught, that’s all. Now I knows where Rankin is I aims ter be ara’nd when ’e gets ’is horrid dial bashed in. ’E ain’t the type ter take a thrashin’ an’ ’old ’is tongue. If there anyfink ter spill, ’e’ll spill it.”
I was beginning to argue, when he caught my arm suddenly in a fierce grip. His hand was trembling. He was wrought up to a sudden nervous pitch. “Listen, Jim,” he said. “I wouldn’t ’ave stuck this place if it ’adn’t bin fer you. As long as you were in it wiv me, it was all right. I saw you stickin’ it an’ I thought if ’e can stick it a’t, Bert, then so can you. But don’t leave me, Jim. Fer goodness’ sakes don’t leave me. I wouldn’t stand it, honest, I wouldn’t.” He was all worked up and his eyes had no laughter in them now—they were wide and scared. “You saved my life,” he went on in a quick flood of words. “But you done more than that. You’ve kep’ me from doin’ somefink foolish. I couldn’t stand it ’ere on me own. I got some good pals ara’nd, but they’re crooks an’ scum—they ain’t my type o’ crony. Nah jist you resign yerself ter the fact that I’m comin’ wiv yer. Okay?”
I started to tell him it was impossible, stupid. But he stopped me with a fierce gesture. I was watching his face. It was a-twitch with anxiety. He was so tensed up that I was convinced he meant what he said. It seemed stupid for him to run the risk. But—I held out my hand. “If that’s the way you feel about it, Bert,” I said, “I’ll be glad to have your company. We’ll make it somehow.”
He gripped my hand eagerly. His face was suddenly full of a bright grin. “We’ll ’ave a jolly good try anyway, mate,” he said.
So it was agreed. Next morning Scotty slipped me the key he had made to fit my putty impression. “A’m no guaranteeing it’ll work,” he said. “But onyway, gude luck to ye.”
That was on the Thursday. That evening we were able to confirm that the Borstal riot was scheduled to begin at eight o’clock the following night. It would be dark then. We decided to make the attempt at 7.45, a quarter of an hour before the riot. The one problem was how to be legitimately out of our cells at that hour.
And it was here that Scotty, who knew all about our plans, gave us a hand. He’d made so many escape plans that the organisation of a small detail like this came quite easily to him. He tapped through to me that he and a pal of his were detailed for a coal fatigue the following day after the evening meal. He reckoned the fatigue would take about one and a half to two hours. His idea was that we went on that fatigue and answered to their names when the roll was called. If we kept in the background the screw in charge wouldn’t notice that we’d changed places. He and his pal would return to their cells, feign sickness and say they couldn’t do the fatigue, but that we had replaced them. That would account for our being absent from our cells. The rest was up to us.
It was the best plan we could hit on. Accordingly we reported with about twenty other men for coal fatigue at 6 oclock on the Friday evening. We kept in the background and the warder calling the work party roll never glanced up from the list of the detail as he called the names.
Five minutes later Bert and I and the rest of the work party were loading coal, into sacks. “Got the key, mate?” he whispered as I shovelled coal into the mouth of the sack which he held open for me.
“Yes,” I said.
We didn’t talk after that. I think we were both too busy with our own thoughts. There was a slight drizzle falling. The light slowly faded from the leaden sky. The clouds were very low. Every now and then grey wisps curled about the eaves of the ugly prison blocks. The weather was with us. In half an hour it would be pitch dark. I looked at my watch. It was just past seven. Three quarters of an hour to go.