One of the New Zealand generals is reported to have said that they did not intend to shoot objectors as that would make martyrs of them. When a man is dead he can suffer no more in this life. But when he is delivered into the hands of men who will use any means to break him into subjection, his life, whether he stands out or whether he does not, can be made unendurable. There were many such prisons in France. The men sent to them were not criminals but the military machine required these places for the maintenance of army discipline.
‘It is not our intention to shoot you,’ Simpson went on, ‘but of course, if you are sent up to the Front and refuse service there, it’s hard to say what will happen to you. Conditions are different up there.’
He showed me a long list of New Zealanders who had been sentenced to death, and in quite a number of cases the note was added: ‘Sentence duly carried out.’ He said he was not going to require anything of me at present, but would send me up with a draft to Abeele. He would be following in a few days, and I was to explain when I got up there that nothing was to be done with me until he arrived.
We went up to Abeele by train. The soldiers on the way up were friendly to me as always. At Hazebrouck we saw, close to the railway, three enormous shell craters, the first we had seen in France. They were still a novelty, but we were soon to make closer acquaintance with them, where men were glad to crawl into them for shelter, and to see nothing else for miles.
On arrival at Abeele, I was handed over to the military police. The sergeant who took charge of me was a man of Belgian extraction, of gigantic build and most rugged countenance. As soon as I entered the guardroom he seized me in his giant grip and, turning my face to the light, roared: ‘You refuse to fight? They’ll waste no time over you here. If you don’t toe the mark you’ll be bloody well shot.’
After some consultation he took me over to a hut filled with men. He led me in and, by way of introduction, shouted: ‘Here’s another like these chaps we’ve been shooting here of late. A bloody CO!’
He left me and as his footsteps died away along the duck walk, a hum of curses directed at the military police ran about the hut. In five minutes I had plenty of friends and not a man said a word against me.
Next morning I did not go on parade and was sent back to the guardroom. I told the police what Colonel Simpson had said. They consulted an officer, who said I could go back to the hut and wait until the Colonel arrived.
Headquarters were in an old Belgian farm homestead and part of the building was still being used for the farm operations. I was under no restraint, so I went all round the place, taking stock of everything. I went into the sheds where girls were attending to cows, up into the lofts where men were dressing hops, and out into the field where men were turning over the rich brown earth with their one-horse ploughs. I asked a great many questions, and although most of these people (not having much English) were uncommunicative, I found some who were ready to talk, and even in the space of one day I gained a great deal of information as to their way of living, their outlook on life, and what they thought about the war.
After a few days the Colonel came up and I was brought before him. He asked me again for a statement of my views and I put them as clearly and briefly as I could.
‘Do you express these sentiments in the hut?’ he asked.
‘Yes, when I am asked I give a free account of my experiences and my views.’
‘And how do the troops take it?’
‘The troops show me nothing but friendliness.’
‘They are only carrying out the order I gave them, but it’s not in the interests of discipline to let you remain in the hut.’
Turning to the police, he said: ‘Take him to your quarters and see that he has a chance to shave and blacken his boots and clean himself up, and if he wants to go to Church on Sunday, let him go. He can go out for a walk if he likes, but he must not go into the hut.’
It was not very long before the police were as friendly as the men in the hut had been, all except Booth, the provost-sergeant, who was always cold and aloof. One of the police would say: ‘Sergeant, can I take Baxter out for a walk?’
‘Do what you like with him. It’s nothing to do with me,’ would be the reply.
Some of the police were so friendly that I almost doubted their sincerity, it seemed so remarkable, but there was really no question of it. When I met some of them up at the lines afterwards they were as friendly as ever. Of course, I don’t say these were the regular military police. They did not like the job.
One day the officer, who walked through at inspection time, looked in my face with such a friendly smile that I couldn’t help returning it. Then he became very gay, and holding me by the hand and calling me Mr Baxter, declared that he was prepared to do anything on earth for me. Was I quite sure I was all right in every way? If there was anything I wanted all I needed to do was to say the word and he would do it for me. When I thanked him, he became more affectionate still and began to try to embrace me. But those who were with him thought it was time to interfere and led him away, still trying to talk to me.
I was provided with beautiful new web equipment, which I refused to accept. It was left hanging in one of the rooms at the police quarters. The young Belgian giant said to me: ‘Look, if you don’t want that web gear, how about giving it to me? My own is old and shabby and this is a stunning rig-out. What about an exchange?’
I said it was nothing to me if they filled the guardroom with military equipment. He could take the lot as far as I was concerned. He thanked me effusively and seemed to regard it as unheard of generosity on my part. After that, he, too, was very friendly to me.
I had several interviews with Simpson and various attempts were made to induce me to take on something. I was taken down one day to a parade held for the conferring of decorations. I don’t know from whose brain the idea emanated, but it was evidently thought that the sight of all these men receiving honours from the hands of the High Command might stimulate my ambition and cause me to accept service in the army in the hope of like rewards. The military policeman in charge of me asked me what I thought of it all. I said I was not much impressed.
‘Would a cup of coffee impress you more?’
‘It certainly would.’
‘Then come along and I’ll shout you one.’
Another time a sergeant took me along to an enclosed yard where a little scratching of the ground had taken place and suggested that I should plant and cultivate cabbages in it for the troops. I knew that the whole thing was absurd and was only being used as a means of working me into taking service in the army. The place was not suitable for any kind of cultivation. My refusal, however, greatly angered the sergeant. He had had two brothers killed, he said, and here was I, refusing even to assist by growing vegetables.
‘You’re nothing but a rotter,’ he said, ‘and I’ve no time for you at all.’
I said I was sorry, but I hoped he might some day understand what I was fighting for.
At one of our interviews Simpson asked me if I had religious views. I said I did not belong to any organised Church, but that it seemed to me that the teaching of Christ was entirely against war or taking any part in it. But even if that had not been so I would still consider I was right in taking my present attitude. He said he did not suppose that anyone could say what would have been Christ’s attitude in war. But anyway this war was a man’s war, that was how he looked on it.
Finally he said: ‘If you won’t do anything my hand will be forced and I shall have to punish you. For your own sake, Baxter, for my sake, for everyone’s sake, for Heaven’s sake, do something.’
I was formally given an order which I refused, and was again brought before him. He sentenced me to twenty-eight days No. 1 Field Punishment, together with the usual stoppage of pay, which did not concern me as I had never had any pay.
‘If you take my advice,’ he said, ‘you’ll obey orders now. The place I am sending you to is Hell.’ He also told me to write to
him at once if I had any communication to make.
I was examined by the doctor as to my fitness to undergo the punishment.
‘I don’t believe you are fit,’ he said, ‘but I am going to pass you as fit. You’re such a damned fool you deserve all you get.’
An escort of military police took me down to the punishment compound at Oudredoum, two or three miles away. The compound was on flat ground, about a quarter of a mile from a railway siding. It consisted of an enclosure about half an acre in extent, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, containing a large dug-out used for the quarters of the camp, NCOs and the cookshop, two tents in which the men slept and two or three wooden cells against the fence.
I was handed over to a sergeant who was preparing to take the men out on their job of filling in shell-holes. He gave me an order which I refused. The sergeant-major in charge, on my refusal being reported to him, said: ‘Leave him here and I’ll see to him later when I have more time.’
Afterwards he called me into his dug-out and had a long conversation with me. He said he did not like putting men on No. 1 Field and was not doing it at present to the other men, but his orders were that if I refused to obey I was to be tied up. I told him I had never obeyed orders in the army, but had simply gone wherever they chose to take me. I would never take anything on, I said. We talked for hours. He showed interest in, and sympathy with, my views and the account I gave of my experiences, and was ready to argue in a friendly way, without trying to force or entrap me into admissions. He said, finally, that he would think the matter over and see me next day.
The following morning the sergeant asked me if I would go out with the working party. When I replied that I would not, he pressed me no further. The sergeant-major in charge had another talk with me. He had thought things over, he said, and was not going to punish me. I could go outside the compound and do what I liked. He would only ask me not to go further than the railway station.
I walked about the place within the prescribed quarter-of-a-mile radius. Sometimes I went to the siding and watched the loading and unloading of trucks. I saw practically nothing of the other men. They were out at work all day, and at night I slept in a hut attached to the cells, the tents being already full. The food was about the same as what the troops got in the lines.
This state of things had lasted a few days when an officer arrived at the compound and interviewed me. Finding that I was not being punished, he was exceedingly angry. I was not justifying my existence, he said, and ‘should not be permitted to live’.
I replied that I understood from a military point of view his saying that I was not justifying my existence, but that it was going rather far to say, on that account, that I should not be permitted to live. This made him still more angry.
‘I’ll have you shifted at once to a place where you will be adequately punished,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to it that there will be no more of this sort of thing.’
A police escort arrived from Abeele and took me to another compound, not far from Dickebusch, known as ‘Mud Farm’. The sergeant-major from the Oudredoum compound accompanied us, walking with me while the escort walked behind. He was gloomy and abstracted and hardly uttered a word for the greater part of the journey. We came to a little estaminet at the roadside, and he shouted me a cup of coffee. At last he burst out as we approached the compound: ‘This has been a hard business for me, having to bring you to a place like this. I believe it’s a damned hard show at any time, and if you refuse orders here, well …. You do intend to?’
‘Yes, I do intend to fight out to the last.’
He took my hand. ‘Look, Baxter, you are in for something here. I believe what you say. I know you intend to stick it, and I hope you are able to. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to hear that this crowd had failed to break you. Goodbye and good luck.’
He turned back here, as we were close to the compound, and left it to the escort to hand me over.
The officers’ quarters stood on one side of the road by which we approached. On the other side of the road was the compound proper, nearly twice the size of the one at Oudredoum. At the left as one entered the gate was a building containing stores, cells and guards’ quarters. In front of the building were the tents where the men slept. To the right, from the gate, was the cook-house and at the end of it, the latrines. Right at the other end of the compound stood the tents for the German prisoners who were run in in batches to spend one night there on their way to the base. The whole enclosure was about an acre in extent, but enough barbed wire was used in making it secure to fence a fair-sized farm. A double row of barbed-wire entanglements surrounded the whole enclosure. A further row ran round the two tents in front of the guard huts, and, inside that again, each tent had its own encirclement of wire. A lieutenant of the Imperial Army and a New Zealand sergeant were in charge of the compound. Coming along the duckwalk from the gate I observed a long row of stout, high poles to the right. These poles were used for the infliction of No. 1 Field Punishment.
Handed over to the sergeant in charge, I was searched and stripped of everything except the clothes I stood up in and my two blankets. No prisoner was allowed to have a knife or razor or any sharp instrument of any kind.
‘The other men are out at work,’ said the sergeant, ‘but I can give you a job helping in the cook-house in the meantime.’
‘I don’t obey any military orders,’ I said. ‘It’s for refusing to obey orders that I’ve been sent here.’
‘Then you’ll have a rough spin. You’ll get No.1 when the other men are at work and on pack drill. Better think it over.’
‘There’s no need for me to think it over. I’m not taking on anything.’
‘Right-oh,’ he said. ‘Come along. I’ve got my orders.’ He took me over to the poles, which were willow stumps, six to eight inches in diameter and twice the height of a man, and placed me against one of them. It was inclined forward out of the perpendicular. Almost always afterwards he picked the same one for me. I stood with my back to it and he tied me to it by the ankles, knees and wrists. He was an expert at the job, and he knew how to pull and strain at the ropes till they cut into the flesh and completely stopped the circulation. When I was taken off my hands were always black with congested blood. My hands were taken round behind the pole, tied together and pulled well up it, straining and cramping the muscles and forcing them into an unnatural position. Most knots will slacken a little after a time. His never did. The slope of the post brought me into a hanging position, causing a large part of my weight to come on my arms, and I could get no proper grip with my feet on the ground, as it was worn away round the pole and my toes were consequently much lower than my heels. I was strained so tightly up against the post that I was unable to move body or limbs a fraction of an inch. Earlier in the war, men undergoing this form of punishment were tied with their arms outstretched. Hence the name of crucifixion. Later, they were more often tied to a single upright, probably to avoid the likeness to a cross. But the name stuck.
A few minutes after the sergeant had left me, I began to think of the length of my sentence and it rose up before me like a mountain. The pain grew steadily worse until by the end of half-an-hour it seemed absolutely unendurable. Between my set teeth I said: ‘Oh God, this is too much. I can’t bear it.’ But I could not allow myself the relief of groaning as I did not want to give the guards the satisfaction of hearing me. The mental effect was almost as frightful as the physical. I felt I was going mad. That I should be stuck up on a pole suffering this frightful torture, a human scarecrow for men to stare at and wonder at, seemed part of some impossible nightmare that could not continue. At the very worst strength came to me and I knew I would not surrender. The battle was won, and though the suffering increased rather than decreased as the days wore on, I never had to fight it again.
The poles were in full view of passers-by in the road. By turning my head a little—the only movement I could make—I could see them as they came from one direction towar
ds the gate. Then they passed out of my line of vision. Peasants came by in carts and on foot, people from the small towns round about, Belgians, I suppose. The civilian population, one and all, went past with averted heads, never looking in my direction, as long, at least, as I could see them. But the men in uniform, whether on foot or not, always looked. Cars went by, full of officers staring with all their eyes, often slowing down and almost stopping behind me, to get, I suppose, a better view. It is difficult to know what conclusion to draw from these two contrasting modes of behaviour. I hated the staring and much preferred the civilian attitude. But, as it afterwards proved, one at least of those who looked, looked to some purpose.
Towards the end of the afternoon, in the small corner which was visible to me of the enclosure on the other side of the road, heads began to appear and disappear with great rapidity and much blowing of whistles and roars of ‘Double, double!’ resounded from the same quarter. After some time the sergeant came over and released me. I set out to walk to the tent without waiting, as I afterwards learned to, for the slow and painful return of the circulation to my numbed limbs, and immediately fell. I struggled on again, somehow, and, stumbling and falling, managed to make my way to the tent. By the time the other men came in, I had pulled myself together, determined to show no sign, if possible, of what I was suffering. They were exhausted from pack drill. Doubling round a yard, with eighty-pound packs on their backs, was very hard on men after a day’s work on starvation rations. They were in no gentle mood and cursed the NCOs, the whole military outfit, the war, the world and its rulers. There were several Clydeside workers amongst them. One whom they called Jock, was the chief and lawgiver in the tent. Next to him came Scotty, also a Clydesider, a much younger man. The two were devoted to each other, but Jock snubbed Scotty continually, while Scotty grumbled and criticised him.
The Auckland University Press Anthology of New Zealand Literature Page 35