Scenes from a Concsientious Objector's War : A Docu-Drama of the First World War

My grandfather went to Mesopotamia in WW1 as a member of the RAMC, armed with his medical kit.

As a Conscientious Objector he refused to kill because according to his simple faith, Thou shall not kill, meant what it said.

But as a 'Conchie,' he had other battles to fight with people on every side.

Conchies were considered shirkers or cowards in WW1.

He had to battle his uneasy path with everyone and with no-one, as the endless stream of wounded came in to be tended in the searing heat.

I remember him in his sixties, waddling down the garden path like Paddington Bear, trailing vegetables, when we all lived together in Butts road.

He used to stand for hours at the kitchen sink washing up for ten of us, day after day without a murmur, and to sit in the yard peeling buckets of spuds for dinner. And how smart he looked when he proudly walked Grandma down to chapel in his Sunday best.

But fifty years before, like many young men of his generation, Grampy had had experiences in WW1 that cast part of his soul into darkness for the rest of his life.

There were also a few interludes of light, I believe, as he surveyed the beautiful landscape made familiar to him by his beloved Bible. So, this is his story, based on what he told us, his family, and given the added context of research as his war must have been: how, for example, he sat up at night in his tent, reading the Bible, waiting for the men in his Regiment to return from the field of conflict.

The book relates how on one occasion when he was sent out with an urgent message into the desert, he was captured by a band of Arabs that led to a rare adventure in the Great Marshes in the watery heart of Mesopotamia.

As a medical orderly he experienced sights and sounds that could hardly have been less horrific than those experienced in the midst of battle.