Sensitive Sentry

The mystery of the guardsman who vanished in his scarlet uniform three weeks ago from a sentry post at Buckingham Palace (TIME, May 13)--the first palace sentry in British history so to disappear--was solved last week. The solution came, not through Scotland Yard, but from the missing sentry himself.

He, Signaler George Sivewright, ist battalion, Scots Guards, dressed in dusty civilian clothes, stumbled into his mother's home in Aberdeen, Scotland. As he soaked his aching feet (Aberdeen is 500 mi. from London; he had walked), he confessed that he had wilfully deserted. His reason: Although only 19, he had been made a lance corporal. His jealous fellow-guardsmen had made his young military life unbearable. When he was publicly reprimanded for lacklustre buttons at guardmount, the sensitive sentry could stand no more. He threw his rifle and fur busby into the Buckingham bushes and stole away. Sentry Sivewright now faces a two-year imprisonment. Were England at war, even technically, he would face a firing squad.