Dismissed, we made a dash down past Big Ben and the Parliament Buildings for the Canadian Pay and Record Office, where at Millbank it overlooked the Thames. A sergeant took our names and after a time took us, too, in to the paymaster. Simmons drew his money without difficulty but I found that I was fifteen months dead and was told that I could get no money until my identity was reëstablished. I protested; so much so in fact that I fully expected to land in the "clink." No use. I was sent out on the street talking to myself.
We next called on Lady Rivers-Bulkeley and Lady Drummond to thank them for the very great kindness of themselves and the Canadian Red Cross in sending us our parcels regularly, and without which we would assuredly have been too weak to have made our escape. Lady Farquhar, the wife of our late commanding officer, was out of town, so we did not see her, much as we desired to thank her for similar kindnesses.
Simmons was single. He was sent to Canada at once and was promptly discharged. I had a wife and family awaiting me there and I wanted badly to go to them by the next boat. My wife had been receiving letters from me during my fifteen months' imprisonment; she had regularly received her separation allowance; the Canadian Red Cross and many kind friends in London had been sending me prisoner-of-war parcels for a year; the authorities admitted my identity and my former comrades recognised me; I had fifteen months' pay at $1.20 a day, besides a subsistence allowance of sixty-five cents a day, coming to me; but could not draw a cent of it. I was dead. And continued so for three months. There is no explanation. "It's a way they have in the Army"; or so the army says.
[Illustration: THE CEMETERY AT CELLE LAAGER Z 1 CAMP.]
[Illustration: CORPORAL EDWARDS (SECOND FROM LEFT) AFTER HIS ESCAPE. THE TWO GOLD BARS ON HIS LEFT COAT SLEEVE INDICATE THAT HE HAS BEEN TWICE WOUNDED.]
In the end it was only through the active intervention of Sir George Perley, the Canadian High Commissioner in London that my case was righted. He, I believe, cabled the Ottawa authorities, who in turn got in touch with my wife, who produced the necessary documentary evidence to prove that I had been alive and a prisoner all this time.