The Forgotten War

by David Fiddimore

  ‘I haven’t been told mine yet, sir.’

  ‘And I can’t tell you, because I do not know it. Only once before have I received a military detention order conveying as little information as yours. The name on that one was Rudolf Hess. Yours hasn’t even a name on it. You’re not German, by any chance?’

  I shook my head emphatically. ‘No, but they don’t believe I am who I tell them.’

  The warder smiled wryly at me, and shook his head.

  The governor continued, ‘Neither do I, laddie; neither do I. But I’m certain you’ll tell us one day. Keep your nose clean, and do what you’re told. That will suit us. I’ll try to get a release date for you.’

  ‘Can I write letters, or see a lawyer?’

  ‘Why?’ the Governor asked. ‘If you haven’t a name then you don’t exist. People who don’t exist don’t have anyone to write to, do they? You can see the padre. Apart from that you can break up stones. It will keep you fit.’

  I had arrived after the evening meal that first day. I went to sleep hungry, in a cold cell that stank of disinfectant. It was their way of telling me something.

  My passivity might worry you. It worried me when I realized it about a week later. The truth is that if you had seen Germany in the last month of the war, like I had, then you’d have seen worse places than prison. Not only did I not know what I had been sentenced for, I didn’t know what I had done to be kept in solitary. I even got to look forward to the arrival of my own private prison guard. I wonder what he’d done to deserve me. Apart from being Welsh.

  My food was delivered to my cell. Porridge, tea and a wad each morning. Meat – usually Spam or corned beef – and potatoes for dinner. Tea and wads before lights out. At half past eight each morning, rain or shine, I was taken into a small yard enclosed by high brick walls and invited to break up stones with a small sledgehammer. The same happened in the afternoon. Each morning when I went out to the yard my previous day’s work had been cleared away, and fresh stones awaited me. The stone was limestone: not the hardest rock but dusty. Nicknamed Taffy by me, my prison guard (who I learned subsequently was called Officer Hughes) told me later that it was taken away to add to runway beds at refurbished airfields. Another little irony. After a week my hands were peppered with small cuts from stone chippings, and my stilted conversations with Taffy were punctuated by the noise of rocks being pounded. The muscles in my arms and shoulders came on nicely, though. I didn’t get any ideas about the sledgehammer because of the .38 on the lanyard around his neck – I knew instinctively that he’d use it.

  I paused from the constant motion. Taffy asked, ‘Want a breather?’ He gave me a cup of water, while he drank tea from a flask. I could smell the sugar in it from ten feet away.

  He asked me, ‘So what do I call you? You’re in the books as 4741; nothing else. I looked you up. It’s very irregular. We’ve only got two specials; you’re one of them.’

  I didn’t feel particularly special just then but I told him, ‘When they were interrogating me they booked me in as A. N. Other 4741. I thought that the A stood for Albert. You can call me Al.’

  ‘But that’s not your real name?’

  ‘No – my real name’s Charlie.’

  ‘What you here for, Charlie?’ He pulled himself a thin fag from a packet of five. Player’s Weights. He noticed me looking, but didn’t offer me one.

  ‘I walked into a police station two years late for the end of the war. I was in the RAF, and got lost in Germany. Germany and Italy. Germany and Italy and Belgium and Holland and France.’

  ‘What you’d call well travelled?’

  ‘I suppose so. I told them who I was, and gave them my identity disc. That’s when the trouble began.’

  ‘What kind of trouble, boy?’

  ‘They said that the man who owned the disc was dead. Ergo, I must be someone else . . .’

  ‘ “Ergo”. I like that. You must be an educated man.’ Patronizing git.

  ‘. . . And because I can’t tell them who that someone else is, they’ve locked me up.’

  ‘You won’t mind my saying that that sounds a trifle Irish: thin and somewhat harsh?’

  ‘No. I wondered about it myself, Prison Officer . . .?’

  ‘Hughes. Edward Hughes. You can call me Prison Officer Hughes.’

  ‘OK. Prison Officer Hughes.’

  Hughes shook his head at me in disbelief. ‘You won’t mind my asking, but since you’ve been shut up for an unlimited period of time, without remission and with hard labour, for what appears to be the not uncommon crime of deserting in time of war, why aren’t you kicking up all sorts of hell, and shouting “Unfair, unfair” into the long dark nights?’

  ‘I wondered about that myself.’ I was bloody repeating myself. But at least the bastard’s question gave me pause. I turned away from him and savagely battered another small boulder into submission. I realized that it had all started with the beating I had been given on the train. After that if someone said jump, I jumped . . . albeit wearily. It was as if my brain had stopped completely. It’s what happens if you lose the concept of future. Why had I believed that the bloody RAF would sort me out and come galloping to the rescue? I suddenly realized that there was no man in a white hat, just Prison Officer Hughes. He’d have to do. When I swung back he was grinning. He said, ‘Good boy. Got to you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t care whether you believe me or not, but I don’t know why I’m being treated like this.’

  ‘Nor do we . . .’

  ‘What can I do about it?’

  ‘Maybe you should see the chaplain. The company would do you good.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘You ask me. Time you was back at work, anyway.’

  I asked him the next day. As I was led along a stone corridor to the sky pilot’s office another man left it. I thought I recognized him.

  The chaplain had an amazing Adam’s apple. It had a life of its own. It roamed from side to side along his collar as he spoke. His voice was a sibilant hiss, and his hands, white and long, looked as soft as a girl’s. He too asked me what I was in for. Either no sod knew, or they were trying to trip me up all the time. He rephrased it, and asked me what my sins were. I told him I had too many to list. He shook his head; I was obviously a hopeless case.

  ‘You really should start telling the truth. God can’t find you in here unless you do.’

  I shrugged. Like I told you: I’d seen Germany. God hadn’t helped much there, either. I remembered that I had driven across Europe wearing a padre’s battledress blouse – second-hand. Maybe this was God’s payback. It had had two neat repair patches where the bullets had gone through. This parson wouldn’t have understood that; he didn’t look like one of your active-service types. I asked him what denomination he served. He smiled apologetically. ‘Sorry. I should have made that clear at the start. I’m a Catholic priest; is that a problem?’

  ‘No. I was in a Lancaster in 1944: our engineer was a Catholic too. He was from Newcastle: the one in Northern Ireland. After we’d finished our tour he went off to some priests’ school to become a padre. If I told you his name, could you get a message to him?’

  ‘Confidentially?’

  ‘Yes. I always trusted him, you see.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. What was his name?’ So I told him about Fergal.

  The chaplain asked me to pray with him. I didn’t mind that as long as he stayed on his own side of the room. The fact that someone wanted to pray for me at all, whether he believed me or not, moved me in some obscure way.

  When I went back to my cell there was my old pipe, an ounce of Erinmore and a box of matches on my bed. A present for cooperating, I supposed. Grace had given me the pipe. I sat down on the bed and nearly wept. It was a close-run thing. Stupid.

  It was a long couple of weeks before I was called up to the governor’s office. He looked embarrassed, while Prison Officer Hughes looked rather pleased with himself.

  Fergal was there
too, standing in the centre of the room. He looked magnificent, only younger . . . and he’d let his hair grow. He also looked bloody angry: like an avenging bloody angel. In all the time we flew together – me as radio operator and him as flight engineer – I had never known him properly angry; not even at the Germans. I had heard shouting just before I entered the room. Now I realized that Fergal had been doing it. He looked back over his shoulder at me, and said, ‘Hi, Charlie. Your things are in the car. I’ve signed all the papers, and you’ve accepted the War Office’s apology for their mistake. OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Do you need to collect anything else before we leave?’

  I shook my head. I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  The governor looked at me for the first time since I’d entered the room and said testily, ‘He’ll have to return his prison-issue clothes before he goes.’

  Fergal leaned over the man’s desk and said quietly, ‘We’re three floors up, governor. If you just so much as touch him again, I’ll throw you out of the fucking window, and apologize to the Good Fella later on.’

  The governor kept quiet after that, and didn’t even look up from his desk as we left the office. It looked as if I’d never happened.

  When they opened the gate for me nobody said anything. There were no signatures. No formalities. I expected a voice to call me back at any minute, but it didn’t happen. On the street outside Fergal hugged me, and didn’t say a word. I’m not big on being hugged by other men, and Fergal’s bigger than me, so it was a bit like being suffocated. There was a big khaki Humber saloon with the word Kate painted in careful italics on its scuttle: it was the car I had driven across Europe, and I’d last seen it in France. The regimental and unit flashes had been carelessly crossed through with green paint: it had been demobilized. A familiar smiling figure was behind the wheel. Les turned to shake my hand once I was settled. ‘Hello, guv’nor,’ he said, ‘I wondered where you’d got to. Can’t you stay out of trouble for a minute?’

  I couldn’t reply because there was something the matter with my voice. There was something the matter with my eyes as well, because my cheeks were wet. Les asked, ‘How long you been inside?’

  ‘Not quite sure.’ I sniffed; then I explained. ‘More than a few weeks. I lost count in the middle for a while.’

  ‘Fancy a wet, anyone? The pubs are open.’ Les was always good at getting things back on track. He added, ‘There’s half a dozen papers in the back I got for you. Thought you might want to get up to date.’ I opened the Mirror to find that someone had cut out the Jane cartoon. Always the bloody same. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten what year it was, and had to look at the masthead. How the hell had that happened? 1947.

  The barman at the Station Hotel was Czech, obviously one of those who’d managed to stay behind after the war. He told us that he could mix any cocktail we’d care to name. I didn’t know any. Les said, ‘How about a got-out-of-jail-free cocktail for this unfortunate young man here?’ He touched my shoulder. ‘Something that will make him very drunk, very quickly.’

  The barman put four large whisky tumblers on the bar, and added three fingers of an amber liquid to each. The bottle was unlabelled and greasy but the peaty whisky smell from it was unmistakable. On top of that, from a bottle he produced from under the bar, he poured three fingers of something brown and sticky-looking. Then he put a small iceberg in each. Les said, ‘I drank this before: it’s somethin’ Canadian.’

  ‘Cheers, Charlie,’ Fergal said and raised his glass.

  I was slowly coming out of the daze in which I’d felt since being put in the slammer. It was like surfacing into the sunlight after a particularly deep dive. I looked at Fergal.

  ‘Have I said thank you yet?’

  ‘We’ll take it as read. Thank the barman for pouring us these lovely drinks, and ask for four more.’

  I did. Then I realized that the smile that had been on Les’s face since we’d driven away had been an anxious one, and that it had gone. The old Les grin had come back. We sat at a small round table in a corner where Les could see the door. The barman polished glasses and kept his eye on us.

  I asked Les, ‘What happened to Maggs and the kids?’

  ‘The Major’s got them. He did what he told us. He bought a little pub down on the South Coast, and is adding an eatery and tea shop. I hope that the locals have strong stomachs; his cooking was . . .’

  ‘Experimental . . .’ I remembered.

  ‘The German kid is in the local school, and the nipper’s toddling. They live over the bar with Maggs. She runs the bar for the Major; he’d better keep an eye on her or she’ll turn it into a knocking shop.’

  That’s what Maggs had been doing when I met her. That was after she had woken up in her house in Paris one morning, found a Lancaster full of dead men in her garden, murdered her husband, and had an affair with the German salvage officer who came to take the aircraft scrap away. Her story is better than mine.

  I smiled as I thought of her. ‘Good old Maggs. How’s Carlo?’ Grace’s kid.

  ‘I told you. He’s a late mover; toddling, but he’s a wicked way with the ladies already.’

  ‘What about Dieter?’

  Dieter was the other kid I’d inherited. We found him when he was five on a battlefield just over the German border. He was sitting holding the hand of his dead elder brother; a little boy soldier all of fourteen years old . . . as old as he was ever going to get. I don’t need to tell you there are worse places than prisons.

  ‘The kids in the school gave him a hard time at first; him being a German. They were in Doodlebug Alley down there. Then Maggs told the teachers how you found him, and that seemed to change things. Some of the teachers told some of the parents an’ of course it got back to the kids. Things were different after that; he’s got a lot of pals. I think that the Major would like you to contribute to their keep when you’re mindful. A visit wouldn’t be out of order. The boys keep asking where their father is.’ The Major had been our boss across Europe, of course. I felt bad about the kids. I felt bad because I didn’t want to be tied to someone else’s children: it was just something that had crept up on me. Or perhaps I’d just been plain stupid.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve got a fair bit of money somewhere.’

  ‘. . . And we got those houses in Germany we bought from Tommo. He’s rented them out to the Yanks, and is depositing the rents for us.’

  ‘Is that legal?’

  ‘Seems to be. I invested some o’ mine with the Major. That’s already paying off, too.’

  Another glass. Fergal seemed to be getting the hang of it. I felt drunk. I asked Les what had happened to him after I’d handed myself in.

  ‘I went back to the house in Highgate. The unit still has it, although I think they got no use for it now: the Army’s going all regular again. My brother Stan is housekeeping it for them – moved in with his wife and kids when he got demobbed. He’s got a nice little window-cleaning round on the side, so he’s doing OK.’

  ‘I’m pleased.’

  ‘He told me that the Major had got out, too, and where I could find him.’

  ‘So you went to . . . Bosham, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Nah; the Major’s club in London. He goes all round the country buying up food for his restaurant. He spoke to the Army an’ told them I’d returned from the last mission he had sent me on – which was stretching the truth, I thought, because as I recall it was you and me who decided to follow your Grace off to Italy when the armistice was signed . . . the Major was out of it by then; he stopped thinking for a few days, remember?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘. . . And he tells them that I’m pretty beat up, and suffering from battle fatigue, and won’t be fit to be interviewed for a while, but that he’ll keep an eye on me for them. The interview ain’t happened yet, but me demob papers came through, and so did my back pay.’

  ‘Jammy bugger.’

  ‘Eventually I went to Maggs to find out what had happened t
o you. She said that she hadn’t heard from you since you walked into a cop shop in Bedford and did the proper thing. You’d disappeared, she said, and she was running short of money. She couldn’t go to the cop shop herself, because she only has a French passport, and if they had taken against her the kids would have ended up split up in care. She knew that you wouldn’t want that.’ He paused for breath, and a gulp at one of the beers that the Czech had conjured up, then finished his bit of the story. ‘So I went to the police station, didn’t I? Flashed our old pass at the sergeant who told me that you’d been nicked back by the military – he obviously wasn’t happy about it, because he’d been asking questions about a list of names and addresses you’d given him. Caused so much of a fuss that his Chief Constable told him to back off or lose his pension. He gave me his stuff, and I followed up on some of it until I met the same sort of threats. So I went back to the Major.’

  Fergal interrupted: ‘About then I received a letter from your prison chaplain – seems a reasonable chap despite being English. Eventually there was me making daily phone calls to my Member of Parliament, and the War Office, and me bishop . . . and Les and the Major were still stirring things up, and then someone told your dad, and that was that.’

  ‘My dad?’

  ‘He went straight down the Legion, and kicked up shit. Did you know that he was big in the Legion?’

  ‘I knew that he was a member. Armistice Day and all that.’

  ‘He’s a Grand Wizard, or whatever they calls themselves. Anyway, your British Legion started rattling the War Office’s cage, and the War Office quickly threw in the towel. No contest. It was simple in the end. It’s nice to think that soldiers can still be trumped by old soldiers, isn’t it? Apparently you’re now a misunderstood war hero. I got a phone call from me archbishop, I did, telling me to come and extract you discreetly from the pokey – here we are.’

  ‘How did you meet Les?’

  Fergal raised his eyes piously towards the ceiling, with a grin. ‘God moves in mysterious ways. He was on the end of a telephone number the archbishop gave me. Les and I decided to spring you together.’