Against the Wind

by Geoffrey Household

  But it was not the time for this personal armistice. Truer fulfilment, considering my environment and its opportunities, was to exercise such powers of creation as I had in wide human relationships rather than in a miniature setting for them. And I was swiftly hurled into a position where harmony had to be made from the raw materials of hatred and malice, without even a little decent human envy to lighten the mixture. I was ordered to Beirut to take over the security of the docks during the evacuation of the Vichy troops.

  They were the Army of the Levant in which we had placed all our hopes during the early Roumanian days. Disillusioned, sullen and isolated from home, they accepted the defeat of France and obeyed the Vichy government of Pétain which was still administering the mandated territories of Syria and the Lebanon. Relations with the British were correct and, on the Palestine frontier, by no means cold. Middle East Command, already engaged to the last man and vehicle in the desert, Abyssinia and Greece, had no wish whatever for added trouble in Syria.

  When, however, Rashid Ali’s revolt of May 1941 broke out in Iraq, he was assisted by German aircraft. Dentz, the French commander-in-chief, permitted the refuelling of the aircraft in Syria and even supplied the rebels with French arms. This was a most dangerous threat to the garrison of the Middle East, then, though we did not feel it, a besieged army, for it could turn our whole position and cut off the vital Iraqi oil supplies as well.

  The intentions of the enemy were obvious, and there was nothing for it but to occupy Syria and the Lebanon before he did. Operations began on June 9, 1941. Fighting was hard and for the first week or two critical, but the common tradition of military politeness—chivalry is too delicate a word for modern weapons—was on the whole preserved, since aggressors and defenders understood each others’ motives. The campaign ended with the armistice of July 14, under the terms of which we agreed to repatriate the Vichy troops by sea to France with the honours of war. That trumpet phrase of heraldry meant in practice that every officer and man should march on board with his personal arms. Also I think—for words are still magic—it enforced an eighteenth-century standard of courtesy upon the victors and preserved the pride of the gallantly defeated.

  But ease was bedevilled by the Free French, though not for a moment can they be blamed. They insisted that the mandated territories were not ours to occupy, and were quite unimpressed by our offer of independence for Syria and a qualified independence for the Lebanon. De Gaulle did not so much distrust our intentions as our ability, in the stress of war and the confusion of peace, ever to carry them out. He was, of course, right. Even assuming that we had held the territories in trust and formally returned them to France after the war, the Arabs themselves, as later they did, would have demanded an end to foreign tutelage. If French influence was to survive at all, French participation in the campaign and the continuity of French administration were essential.

  The intervention of de Gaulle and his handful of fanatical gallants might reasonably have been expected to limit the fighting and to make surrender more palatable for the Army of the Levant. It did not. It poisoned all negotiations with the bitterness of civil war. The Free French needed both troops and administrators. They therefore demanded and obtained the right to canvass the defeated Vichy army, coercing every officer and man to opt for repatriation or enlistment under the cross of de Gaulle with no alternative. They obtained only five thousand out of thirty-seven thousand. Humiliated by failure, they tried every trick of Gaullist intransigence to delay the embarkation. Each side accused the other of betraying France. Both appealed to the British for protection.

  That was the position when I arrived in Beirut at the beginning of August. The Free French prowled around the Vichy camps in some danger of their lives. The Lebanese fawned upon the British, swearing that they desired nothing so much as to become a colony of Empire—a most transparent lie, for if, in spite of their tastes, they did not like the French they would have been bored to the point of rebellion by the Anglo-Saxon. In the St Georges Hotel, with its sun-umbrellaed terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, its balconies and its cool restaurant, life remained obstinately fixed at 1939. Families of the wealthier French officers discussed packing. Christian Arabs bought and sold the futures of commodities which did not exist, and discussed the peculiarities of British officers who were too blind to see a bribe when delicately offered. Intelligence captains and majors conferred in corners, with half an eye upon the exotic mistresses of the French army and colonial service, restless, poor lovely darlings, with the problem of whether they should transfer their affections to Free French, who were as moneyless as monks and a lot more honest, or sail to unknown severities in France.

  High on Lebanon the brigadiers and colonels of the Armistice Control Commission exhausted their energy in preventing furious disputes on the merits of Pétain and de Gaulle, and somehow found a little more to arrange the transference of administration and the order in which the troops should embark. Under the olive trees of the coastal hills was the ultimate arbiter, the Australian Corps, behaving very well under the formidable impact of Lebanese araq and intensely disappointed to find that the village maidens, often of startling beauty, were just as unsatisfactory as the Greeks. Meanwhile the liners, by courtesy of the British and German Admiralties, had started from Marseilles.

  Fortunately our commander was that patient military diplomat, General Wilson, now Field-Marshal Lord Wilson of Libya. His executive instrument was the Control Commission. Among the committees responsible to the Control Commission was the Embarkation Committee, upon which I represented the interests of security.

  The chairman was Colonel Robinson. Those perfect military manners which I had, trembling, appreciated in Athens now paid a dividend. He understood French well, and spoke it with that touch of hesitation and those delightfully English constructions which always engage the affections of Frenchmen. There were two majors from A and Q branches of the Vichy staff, who quickly warmed to our friendly intentions. There was a Free French captain whose orders were obviously to protest at anything and everything. On our own side were representatives of Movement Control and of the Navy. The Vichy navy was represented by a lieutenant-commander who was frigid and correct until he was allowed—in private—to say what he thought of our attack on the French fleet at Mers el Kebir. Discovering that we had no strong opinions, for or against, he became almost human and would even drink with the hated British, assuring us in the most friendly manner that the Germans were even more detestable.

  The main duties of security were three: to ensure that no unauthorised person went on board the ships or disembarked from them, since every convoy provided a heaven-sent chance for the enemy to communicate with agents and sympathisers: to inspect personal kit for valuables and papers during the embarkation parade of the troops: to make a thorough customs examination of the main baggage. For these duties I had an Australian guard company, one and sometimes two Australian Field Security sections and Oswald Ormsby’s magnificent section—most of whom had commissions within a year—which had arrived from England two months before. Most important of all, I had that dream of a security officer, a free hand—provided of course that I did not create or look like creating any international incident which the Control Commission could not settle.

  The first convoy arrived; and the quays of Beirut, empty except for the grey, reptilian urgency of the Navy, were suddenly gay with Europe. The very names of the liners, drawn from the fleets of the Cie. Transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes, were a reminder that peaceful harbours still existed, though for many years yet neither they nor we would be released to visit them.

  On every gangway were armed guards, with orders to allow no one on or off the ships who did not present my handwritten pass stating the name and rank of the person. The passes were squares of coloured cardboard, and what the colour of the day would be depended on my random choice among the sheets bought from a stationery shop. It looked an unbreakable system—al
ways remembering that the weak point of any system of passes is the guard.

  The Australians were ideal. By birthright and taste they were no respecters of persons, and I reinforced the national humour by giving them specimen passes with ranks of brigadier upwards and with names and initials—if you looked at them closely—of pungent indecency. There was no bluffing them. They would not have allowed General Wilson himself on board without my pass.

  But the perfect system was of course immediately disorganised by the unforeseen. Although the Vichy troops could not be induced to join the Free French, the crews of the liners were only too willing. When forced back up the gangways, they either jumped into the sea or swarmed down the mooring cables or carried refuse on shore and refused to return.

  There was little chance of evading the strong force of guards on well-lit quays, or the patrol boats in the harbour. At least I have always hoped so. But even if we arrested every deserter, the position was impossible. Without their proper complement of engineers and electricians the ships could not be sailed back to Marseilles—as the Free French were happily aware. And our sentries were becoming muddled and uncertain; for, if you qualify a sentry’s orders by too many exceptions, he is inclined to treat his duty as a boring ceremonial and to be of no more worldly use than a bayonet outside Buckingham Palace.

  We appealed to the Control Commission. So, with fury and an unanswerable case, did the Free French. The judgement was deliciously British. On no account was anyone to be permitted to leave the ships. But, if they did, they were to be arrested and handed over to the Free French, who on their part were not to harangue, encourage or assist deserters but to be truly thankful for what God and the security officer might give them.

  In practice I translated this to mean: (a) that any Free French officer hanging about the ships should be imperceptibly drawn off to a harbour café to talk about de Gaulle; (b) that deserters, if still on the gangway or preparing to jump, should be deterred by the utmost Australian ferocity; (c) that if a deserter actually had both feet on the quay, he was to be escorted to the guardroom.

  The orders worked. A sentry with a good breakfast in his belly would stretch them a bit; another who happened to be feeling anti-French, Free or not, would work to rule. And the guardroom was usually occupied by half a dozen outrageously cheerful deserters awaiting interrogation by their compatriots.

  Free French security appeared, to our minds, eccentric. If the man rallying to de Gaulle were a Catholic and interrogated by a Catholic, he was passed at once; he was also all right if he were an anti-clerical Socialist, and happened to be interrogated by an anti-clerical Socialist. But if his luck were out, and he got an interrogator from the wrong party, he was held in custody for further and prolonged examination. My own interrogations—which I only undertook if a man looked of interest to other branches of Intelligence—usually ended in too much boisterous goodwill all round, and assurances that if there were any pro-Boche about his companions would unearth him sooner than I. In their case that was probably true. Groups of the homeless, however, are inclined to whisper to the security officer against the silent, the eccentric or the contemptuous, and to accept the plausible, talkative rogue.

  During the three or four days between the arrival of the ships and their departure the Field Security sections had to turn themselves into customs officers. The French were allowed to take home their used furniture and household goods. This meant that married officers and administrators, who might have served for many years in Syria, had each of them enough beautifully-made and nailed crates to fill a removal van. The export of gold, of new goods, of documents and of food was forbidden. Our problem was to guess if any of these were hidden in the cavernous recesses of the crates.

  It was manifestly impossible; so would it have been for real customs officers. But we were most of us travellers, and knew their procedure and their limitations. Like them, we wanted to send off our thirty-two thousand speaking well of the good nature of the British; like them, we had to find scapegoats so that army wife would whisper to army wife, before they packed, of the appalling indignities suffered by poor Mme Telle, and how Colonel Chose, who had bought so much beautiful embroidered bed linen had been forced to take it all back to the shop and sell it for what they would give.

  The customs officer has no real defence against the nonprofessional smuggler but the informant. Nor had we. Being Arabs, our informants were more often actuated by malice than a sense of duty; they tended to accuse police and officials whom they did not like of smuggling out the Lebanese gold reserve hidden in upholstery. By God and His Glory, we had only to rip it all up and we should see! Ormsby’s section, which was normally stationed in Beirut and gathered the information, grew brilliant at sifting the true from the false. Their chief source was the shopkeeper who knew very well that the passengers were not allowed to buy household goods for shipment to France and promptly reported any purchase. If we had no information whatever and still had to make an example of somebody, we naturally chose the difficult, the protesting or the evasive—who had to suffer the disappearance of the military into their crates, the exposure upon the dock of the open wardrobes and the dining-room suite, and the long wait for a carpenter with a hammer and nails.

  Dock concrete blazed in the sub-tropical sun, and the sparkle of the sea, promising blue cold of diamonds, deceptively added still more heat from its tepid upper layer. The Field Security N.C.Os, their shirts and shorts dark brown with sweat, worked in groups of three—always containing one fluent French-speaker—questioning, chalking and occasionally opening. They never lost cheerfulness, and seemed to impress upon the French themselves that this was a sort of relentless, top-speed game. I can remember despair among the voyagers and irony and such half-humorous language as any soldier might in the circumstances be expected to use, but little real resentment or bitterness. We in the customs sheds could afford to be merciful, knowing ourselves to be chiefly a deterrent. The true work of detection was being done outside the port by a sinister-looking sergeant of Ormsby’s section who had already familiarised himself with a fair cross-section of the good and bad characters of the waterfront.

  The day of embarkation was more formal. Sam Brownes shone and webbing was blancoed, for we were to impose ourselves upon the French army in parade order. The battalions which had at last, in spite of all Free French obstruction, obtained their embarkation orders marched to the place d’armes on the east of the docks, and lined up in column of companies for inspection. Our men went slowly along the ranks, asking a question here and searching a kitbag there. I doubt if we ever confiscated anything. Fresh from the opulent crates of staff and administration we were in socialist mood when it came to discovering a cheese or a present of cheap jewellery in the poor haversacks of other ranks.

  The troops were allowed the personal arms proper to their ranks, and nothing more. On one occasion, with doubtful legality, I ordered tommy-guns to be surrendered. The French lieutenant-colonel protested that his establishment was one sub-machine-gun to a platoon, and that its bearer carried no rifle. When I pointed out that the Middle East was very short of tommy-guns and that we could use them on Germans whereas he could not, he very sportingly gave way. But I had to assure him that the British, not the Free French, would be armed with them. Which in fact did get them I do not know, but four were acquired by the sections as cherished possessions, covered by the completely worthless but unchallengeable authority of the Embarkation Committee.

  Nothing else, being moderate men, did we spirit away except much-wanted .45 ammunition and two cars. The ammo, was very necessary, for the Army, though it had provided us with revolvers, refused us more than twelve rounds per man. Thereafter the Syrian and Palestine sections could really learn to shoot and challenged each other to matches, losing section to order and pay for dinner in the back room of whatever grubby and efficient restaurant they patronised.

  The history of the two cars is a cautionary tale for y
oung officers who should always be careful that their winnings are covered by paper, preferably issued by a unit about to depart for some other theatre of war.

  Our friends on the Vichy embarkation staff, who left last of all, were reluctant to surrender their staff cars to the Free French and told us in what street they had parked them. Ormsby, who was deep in plain-clothes work, needed a civilian car as well as his section truck. As for me, I had not even a truck, having been issued with a horrible little toy Italian car, captured in the desert. So we helped ourselves—he to a discreet black Citroën, I to a powerful Ford open tourer.

  For months we used our cars without a care, but meanwhile the Free French, instead of attending to their internal politics, were ferreting out the fate of all the vehicles which should have been theirs and were not. A mild enquiry from Ninth Army, interested though obviously bored by nonsensical claims, was a warning that we should hear more of the matter. For me, instant action was easy. A friendly Australian R.A.S.C. company maintained my vehicles. I had no trouble in persuading its commanding officer to condemn my Italian horror and formally to issue the Ford in replacement. Thereafter I could look any military policeman in the eye. But Ormsby went for months in terror of court martial with the Citroën hidden under a cover in the section yard. Being a man of honour, he could not sell it; and he could not either lose it or drive it into the sea in case possession was ever incontrovertibly traced to him. In the end that car demanded the joint efforts of Robin Wordsworth, the adjutant and the most secret offices of the Middle East before it would consent to vanish into the anonymous mass of British Army vehicles.