Against the pilots and the air crews I have no
complaint to make whatever. In fact, one can detect in their eyes a gleam of kindly, though restrained, compassion for the wretched victims who clamber into their machines. It is as if the engine-driver taking. a row of cattle-trucks to the gas chambers of Opocno were to cast a glance of pity upon the Jewish children being pushed into his train. On the last lap of my journey our pilot even spoke to us quite openly and disclosed, in guarded language, the destination for which we were bound and the approximate route which we should follow. We gazed up at him with haggard looks of gratitude ; it was as if Joseph Kramer, in passing, had stroked the hair of a child. I make no complaint, moreover, against the actual conditions in the several prison camps in which we were successively ' interned ; given the conditions prevailing; it was inevitable that we should sleep five in a room and that our tea should be slopped out for us, already mixed with milk and sugar, from a hot-water can. I accept the fact that a Dakota is designed, not for elderly civilians, but for ardent para- chutists; that the whole way from Camberley to Athens I was obliged to sit upon a tin bench, ill-adjusted to the human form divine ; and that the tiny aperture which served as a window was situated in the small of my back, entailing torture. I even accept the fact that the bus service between the several aerodromes and the attendant prison camps should not always function smoothly. The tumbril which at Naples fetched me from my own internment camp at 4.30 a.m. was packed already by passengers who had been collected from the other prisons ; I was obliged to stand upon the step of my tumbril grasping a typewriter in one hand and clinging on for dear life with the other. Never have I realised so fully the implica- tions of the phrase "being bumped off." I clung there in an agony of effort and apprehension, noting through a cloud of exhaustion that Vesuvius, after his recent orgy, had given up smoking. I accept such incidents as necessary suffering ; but what the nervous system cannot stand is that in addition to ordeals which are inevitable there are other ordeals which a little consideration could either remove or mitigate. There is no such consideration.
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