To End All Wars_ A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 - Adam Hochschild [134]
The court-martial found Rochester guilty. Friends who waited on tables at his brigade's officers' mess told him that they had overheard officers talking angrily about earlier letters he had sent home, which they had read as censors, so it is possible that they were waiting for an excuse to punish him. According to Rochester, when his letter was discovered, he was first hauled before his commanding general, an Indian-army veteran, who fumed, "I'll break you, my man: I'll break your very soul."
Stripped of his corporal's stripes, he was sentenced to 90 days of Field Punishment Number One, plus menial labor and an hour every morning and afternoon of "pack drill"—rapid marching while wearing a full load of equipment. The general was out to break him, and "frankly," Rochester wrote later, "...I felt afraid."
A burly sergeant took him to a small outbuilding, guarded by sentries, that served as the nearest military prison. It was a particularly harsh winter; rivers froze solid and soldiers in the trenches found ice forming on the edge of their plates before they had finished eating. A handful of men shared Rochester's cell on this piercingly cold night. "Only one blanket per prisoner was allowed, so that for warmth, we laid one blanket on the filthy straw, and anchored together under the remaining bedding. Live rats ... kept us awake for hours, so that we began to confide in each other." As they talked through the night, Rochester realized that the others had troubles far worse than his. His cellmates were Bantams, and included Stones, Goggins, and McDonald.
The three were, Rochester discovered, working-class men like himself: Stones and Goggins were coal miners from Durham, in England's far north, known for its militant unionism, and McDonald was a steelworker from nearby Sunderland. "These men huddled up along side me," remembered Rochester, "...all spoke hopefully of acquittal. Poor devils!"
In the morning, after a meager breakfast, pistol-carrying military police took the three condemned Bantams away to a more isolated cell. Rochester, meanwhile, was led off between two sentries to a storage dump, where he was given three wooden posts, three ropes, and a spade. Then the sentries marched him up a hill "until we reached a secluded spot surrounded by trees." An officer and two sergeants arrived and marked three places in the snow, a few yards apart, ordering Rochester to dig a posthole at each. Suddenly he realized that this was where his cellmates were to be shot—unless Haig commuted their sentences.
In Britain, this winter was a depressing one for opponents of the war. Several thousand conscientious objectors were in prison, but there were few signs of the groundswell of antiwar feeling that they kept hoping for. Sometimes, however, encouragement came from unexpected sources. In December, Bertrand Russell received a letter that began, "To-night here on the Somme I have just finished your Principles of Social Reconstruction. . . . It is only on account of such thoughts as yours, on account of the existence of men and women like yourself that it seems worth while surviving the war.... You cannot mind knowing that you are understood and admired and that those exist who would be glad to work with you." The writer, Second Lieutenant Arthur Graeme West of the 6th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, was killed three months later, at the age of 25.
As the year drew to a close, Herbert Asquith at last paid the price for his lackadaisical leadership. Under pressure, he capitulated to a proposal, put forward by Milner and other critics, for tight, decisive control over the war effort to be vested in a small committee—soon to be known as the War Cabinet—headed by Lloyd George. Soon after, his support in Parliament eroding further, Asquith went to Buckingham Palace to hand in his resignation