On A Prisoner Of War

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Title:     On A Prisoner Of War
Author: A. G. Gardiner [More Titles by Gardiner]

There are still a few apples on the topmost branches of the trees in the orchard. They are there because David, the labourer, who used to come and lend us a hand in his odd hours--chiefly when the moon was up--is no longer available. You may remember how David opened his heart to me about enlisting when he stood on the ladder picking the pears last year. He did not like to go and he did not like to stay. All the other chaps had gone, and he didn't feel comfortable like in being left behind, but there was his mother and his wife and his Aunt Jane, and not a man to do a hand's turn for 'em or to dig their gardens if he went. And there was the allotment--that 'ud run to weeds. And ...

Well, the allotment has run to weeds. I passed it to-day and looked over the hedge and saw the chickweed and the thistles in undisputed possession. For David has gone. "It will take a long time to turn him into a soldier," we said when we saw him leave his thatched roof last spring to join up, and watched him shambling down the lane to the valley and the distant station. "The war will be over before he gets into the trenches," I said cheerfully to his wife, his mother, and Aunt Jane as they sat later in the day mingling their tears in the "parlour"--that apartment sacred to Sundays, funerals, and weddings. "Poor boy, what'll he do without his comfortable bed?" moaned his mother.

But by May there came news that David was in France. By June he was in the trenches, and woe sat heavy on the three women to whom the world without David was an empty place.

Then came silence. The postman comes up the lane on his bicycle to our straggling hamlet on the hillside twice a day, and after David had gone his visits to the cottages of the three women had been frequent. Sometimes he put his bicycle at the mother's gate, sometimes at David's gate, less often at Aunt Jane's gate. For David was an industrious correspondent, even though his letters were a laborious compromise between crosses and "hoping you are well as it leaves me at present."

But in August the postman ceased to call. Long before his hour you could see the three women watching for his coming. I think the postman got to dread turning the corner and facing the expectant women with empty hands. He could not help feeling that somehow he was to blame. At first he would stop and point out elaborately the reasons for delay in the post. Then, when this had become thin with time, he adopted the expedient of riding past the cottages very hard with eyes staring far ahead, as though he was going to a fire or was the bearer of an important dispatch.

But at the end of a fortnight or so he came round the corner one morning more in the old style. The women observed the change and went out to meet him. But their faces fell as they looked at the letter and saw that the handwriting was not David's. And the contents were as bad as they could be. The letter was from a lad in the valley who had "joined up" with David. He wrote from a hospital asking for news of his comrade, whom he had seen "knocked over" in the advance in which he himself had been wounded.

For the rest of the day, it was observed, the cottage doors were never opened. Nor did any one venture to break in on the misery of the women inside. The parson's wife came up in her gig from the valley, having heard the news, but she did not call. She only talked to the neighbours, who had had the details from the postman. Every one felt the news like a personal blow, and even the widow Wigley, who lives down in the valley, was full of sympathy. She had never quite got over her resentment at the funeral of David's father. Her own husband had been carried to his grave on a hand-bier, but at the funeral of David's father there was a horse-drawn hearse and a carriage for the mourners. "They were always such people for show," said Mrs. Wigley. And the memory had rankled. But now it was buried.

Next day we saw the mother and the wife set out down the lane for the village post-office, and thereafter daily they went to await the arrival of letters, returning each day silent and hopeless. At last, in reply to inquiries which had been made at the War Office, there came the official statement that David had been reported "wounded and missing." We learned that this usually meant that the man was dead, but the women did not know this.

And, curiously enough, David's mother, who had been the most despairing of women, and seemed to regard David as dead even before he started, now discovered a genius for hopefulness. She had heard of a case from a neighbouring village of a man who had been reported dead, and who afterwards wrote from a prison camp in Germany, and she clung to this precedent with a confident tenacity that we did not try to weaken. It was foolish, of course, we said. She was pinning her faith to a case in a thousand; but the hope gave the women something to live for, and the wound would heal the better for the illusion.

And, after all, she was right. This morning we saw the postman call at the cottage. He handed a post card to the wife, and it was evident that something wonderful and radiant had happened. The women fell on each other "laughing happy." No more going into the house to shut the door on the world. They came out to share the great tidings with their neighbours. "David is alive! David is a prisoner in Germany.... He's wounded.... But he's going on all right.... He can't write yet.... But he will."

Yes, there was the post card all right. The English was not very good and the script was German, but the fact that David was alive in hospital shone clear and indisputable.

"It's as though he's raised from the dead," cried the wife through her tears.

The joy of the old mother was touched with solemnity. She is a great chapel-goer, and her utterance is naturally coloured by the Book with which she is most familiar.

"My son was dead, and is alive again," she said simply; "he was lost and is found."

When I went out into the orchard and saw the red-cheeked apples still clinging to the topmost branches I thought, "Perhaps David will be able to lend me a hand with those trees next autumn after all."

[The end]
A. G. Gardiner's essay: On A Prisoner Of War

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