Captain Stanley Nelson - Prisoner of War

[pbrione]

PRISONER'S LOG - DAY 10

It is now over a week since I arrived here, and hopes of rescue fade day by day. My existence in this prison is frustrating, painful even, yet so far bearable. Whilst my rank ensures I am accorded as much comfort as is granted to any of the prisoners, and by the looks of things many of the guards, I still cannot help but feel a desperate sense of despair that seems to permeate this whole place. I suspect it may be something to do with the lighting - everywhere I go there seems to be a sort of gloomy purple light reflecting off all the plain grey walls; the effect is quite unsettling.

As for the food, I am at least given three meals a day, the first generally consisting of toast, which would be fine were it not always cold by the time it reached my room. Lunch is invariably a bowl of Kusari soup, some sort of noodles and fish in it as far as I can tell, whilst for dinner I am served, again, fish of some kind, or a plate of what I beleive is referred to as sushi. Sadly as yet no desserts - I am missing the sticky toffee puddings they serve on Kensington. Still, I suppose I should count myself lucky - many of the other prisoners seem to be given nothing but a bowl of watery gruel each evening. From what I understand almost all the prison food is supplied from the nearby water-covered planet of Junyo, which would explain the constant fish dishes. Every morning I see a prison shuttle leave for Junyo, escorted by a destroyer, and every evening it returns full of exhausted looking prisoners. The Kusari seem to use the men and women housed here as slave labour to work their fishing and mining platforms - it is ironic that the only women in Kusari who are allowed to work are all convicts.

As yet I have not been instructed to join any of the work parties; in all honesty it appears that the Kusari guards here don't really know what to do with me - they seem almost intimidated to find themselves with a high ranking officer on their hands. After all, it appears that the basic prison guards here are considered to be below even the lowest of regular KNF or KSP officers and most will not even look me in the face or converse with me. I have only seen a handful of commissioned KNF officers stationed here. Yesterday 2 KNF Commanders came to sit in my cell and talk with me over a cup of sake. From what I gathered they live permanently in the base and were interested in meeting me. They seemed friendly enough, yet somewhat distant perhaps. I sensed as though they had been here so long that the ever-present gloom of the place had perhaps gotten through to them. That said they seemed cheerful enough to share a conversation with me - they avoided mentioning military matters and instead we discussed history and sport. I must confess I lied to them about the speed of Bretonian fighters I had seen when they asked about the Dublin races; it may have been an innocent enough question but I felt duty-bound not to reveal any potentially useful information.

Whilst I am, as far as I know, the only BAF officer of such high rank present in the prison, there are certainly more Bretonians here than I had ever suspected. As I am given some freedom to walk around my wing of the prison for an hour each afternoon, I have met dozens of captured Gateway, Bowex and BMM pilots and ship crews, their ships having been seized in Tau. Some of them claim have been here for years. More suprising are the handful of ex-QCRF officers I have found - I am sure that we do not have records of these missing officers, I cannot understand it. Could the records have been lost or misplaced? Was there perhaps some administrative error in failing to transfer the Missing in Action lists from the QCRF into the main body of the BAF files when the QCRF was disbanded? The men here seem lost, forgotten by their countrymen. Some even refuse to accept that the QCRF no longer exists, accusing me of spreading Kusari lies and propaganda when I try to speak to them about it. I cannot beleive that we have so easily abandoned these brave soldiers to their fate. If ever I am freed from this wretched place I vow that I shall not leave without taking as many others with me as I possibly can.

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Sir Stanley Nelson




<span style="color:#000066">Charles Canning </span><span style="color:#000066"> Foreign Secretary</span>