by Brian Aldiss
‘Yes, and what else? In the middle of a war –’ Bertie was red in the face.
‘We went to see a flick. So what?’
‘Oh, have you seen The Grapes of Wrath?’ you asked her.
‘Oh, we wanted something light. We went to see Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in Road to Singapore. Ever so funny. They make a great comedy pair.’
‘And sat in the best seats, of course,’ sneered Bertie.
‘I’d better be going,’ you said. You were trying to suppress anger and disappointment.
Bertie thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, saying nothing. Violet accompanied you to the front door. She said she was sorry about the way things were. She gave you a fleeting kiss on the cheek and wished you well. Turning back as she was closing the door you saw tears in her eyes.
‘Goodbye, my darling,’ she called. You felt pretty irritated.
10
A Slight Change of Plan
The sea was slightly choppy. A chilly wind blew, driving cloud before it. The landing craft, with their freight of troops, tanks, guns, lorries and other support vehicles, lurched towards the French shore. It was the 20th May. German forces had already made huge incursions into France. In 1940, the war was going the Germans’ way.
This detachment of the Tank Corps, known to some as ‘Montagu’s Marauders’, were to act as reinforcements. After landing, their orders were to move immediately to supplement the defence of Paris. They were about to land on the beaches of Fecamp, a village between Dieppe and Le Havre.
As the ramp of the lead LCT came down, waves surged over it. You stood in the bows, wishing there was some way to stop looking pale. Major Hilary Montagu gripped your elbow, declaiming in a firm voice, ‘A mighty wave Odysseus overbore: Quenching all thought, it swept him to the shore.’
You looked at him in puzzlement. Montagu already had his binoculars to his eyes, and was searching the shore for signs of activity.
‘The Odyssey, old chap. Translated by someone or other. Have you never read The Odyssey? The world’s greatest book. Tut-tut.’
You said nothing. Montagu was your superior officer, recently returned from India, where he had been in command of a company of Gurkhas on the North West Frontier. A lean and civilized man with a sudden temper which made him feared by both men and officers, Montagu had adopted a somewhat fatherly attitude towards you, for which you were grateful, telling yourself you could stand patronizing. You were so young.
At his signal, the vehicle engines started up. The bottom of the LCT grated against shingle.
‘Come on!’ shouted Montagu. ‘Forward the Buffs!’ He jumped into the spray. You followed, the troops behind you. The heaving water came up to your thighs, intent on impeding you. Shingle crunched underfoot. You were too intent on watching for possible opposition ashore to notice the cold of the water.
There was no opposition on the beach, only a French officer awaiting you by a pick-up truck. As you, Captain Travers and two Red Caps directed the traffic from the landing craft into line on the sand, shouting to the soldiers to muster on a road just above the low cliffs, Montagu marched briskly towards the French officer. They saluted each other, then shook hands. They hurried to the pick-up to send out wireless messages to base across the Channel, confirming that you had landed unopposed.
You marshalled the small invading force in order on the road, with scouts out and alert and all Churchills sending out blue exhaust. Two sandy roads divided, with a wood on one side of the main road and a field with cows grazing on the other. Some distance away was a house with a barn beside it, the whole making a disturbingly peaceful picture.
The major, returning from the French pick-up, said to you in an aside, ‘Chap doesn’t speak Urdu, or much English, but it seems we should get a move on. We proceed via Rouen. There’s a straight road from Rouen to Paris, but we may encounter refugees en route.’
‘Move immediately, Sir?’
‘What else? Get on with it, Fielding.’
As you climbed into your tank, a faint siren blast sounded from across the water. Your supply ship was turning, leaving France to make the return journey back to England. At that point you felt isolated. You thought there were perhaps half a million British troops on French soil, many engaged in battles with the Wehrmacht, but none of them were anywhere near your detachment. You prickled with a sense of peril and excitement.
The vehicles rolled. You began the trek south-west on the more important road. Almost immediately, you encountered refugees. Many were on foot, travelling in families, fathers pushing prams loaded with provisions and cooking utensils; some were in cars of ancient vintage, with mattresses tied to the roof; some had carts, farm carts of various sizes, drawn by horses, with bedraggled sons and daughters of farmers who were trudging alongside the turning wheels. This was what the great French nation had been brought down to.
The road you were taking was raised above the level of the surrounding fields to prevent it from flooding. Many refugees had problems getting up on the road from the fields; carts had to be heaved with a united effort, babies and small children had to be carried, grandmothers had to be pushed, cars in some cases to be abandoned. It was a terrible scramble, involving shouting, cursing and screaming. The fear was always that Stukas would fly over and strafe the crowds. Fortunately none appeared; the skies remained clear.
But your progress was painfully slow. Some refugees, travelling on foot, seized the opportunity to climb on the sides of the tanks for a brief respite. You did not have the heart to order them off. Captain Travers had the passengers of his tank turned away.
Your company had landed at dawn. Cloud had blown away, leaving blue skies. Just before one o’clock you arrived at the town of Yvetot, to find much of it in flames following a German bombing raid. A mixed bunch of soldiers and gendarmes was barring entrance to the town.
Major Montagu handed over command to Captain Travers and went on foot to order the mayor to give us permission to pass through. He returned after ninety minutes, during which time the men had ‘brewed up’. One of the men handed you up a mug of tea. Montagu looked grim. The mayor had been injured by a bomb blast and his harried second-in-command had no control over affairs. He claimed that bomb craters had closed the streets and there was no road open to Rouen: you would have to turn back.
The Major had persuaded or forced the man to sign a piece of paper, which he waved at the soldiery on guard. A large blond Frenchman wearing an old-fashioned helmet came forward and bellowed at the gendarmes to let the British tanks through.
Moving slowly along the shattered streets, you all had your first close glimpse of the destruction brought by the war Hitler had wished upon you. It was a still day. Smoke lay like layers of mist, generated by buildings reduced to smouldering wrecks. A car burned quietly, its driver hanging dead from its open door.
The hospital had suffered a direct hit. Injured persons were lying under blankets in the grounds, with unharmed people thronging about, nursing the dying, weeping, or trying to administer medicines or water to the wounded. A young boy was crawling on hands and knees towards the church, dragging a bloody leg.
The church and its grounds were crowded with frightened people; nuns went among them, smiling and gentle, to soothe or to pray. Two men in uniform were dragging a corpse towards the cemetery. When they saw your vehicles, they stopped and stood rigidly to attention, saluting your unit until every tank had passed.
All shops were closed. A once cheerful main street was completely dead. A queue had formed outside the shutters of a boulangerie. There were no signs of looting.
The number of bomb craters had been exaggerated. Your tanks experienced greater difficulty negotiating the rubble of collapsed houses strewn across the thoroughfare. It took two hours before you had picked your way through Yvetot, and were on the road to Rouen – or ‘the road to ruin’, as the troops put it.
What were you thinking at the time? Do you remember?
I hardly thought. Oh, I suppose I was
relieved in a way to see the devastation, the suffering. I told myself that this was how it had always been, that this was simply part of the tragic human condition. Or maybe I thought all that later, when there was time to think, when I was in prison.
Were you aware that this was a peak moment in your life?
No – for once I was totally preoccupied by the present.
You were not more than a kilometre down the road, and were passing through a grove of poplars lining each side of the road, when three Stukas came roaring overhead. The bombs they dropped whistled as they fell, to add to the terror of the attack.
No order was needed for you to dive for cover under or beside your vehicles. Hapless refugees fled to either side of the road among the tall trees, to crouch in ditches. Fortunately, the bombs did little damage, exploding in nearby fields.
‘Stay where you are,’ Montagu shouted. ‘The blighters are liable to come back.’
Indeed the planes did come back. They wheeled and returned from the north-west, flying low down the road, machine guns blazing. Many refugees were hit; several were killed. Some did not die outright; screams of pain and terror rang out long after the planes had gone.
You heard a dog yelping terribly with pain. Suddenly it was silenced.
You had First Aid kits with you, and administered what help you could to the injured. A peasant woman, herself with a badly damaged shoulder, sat nursing a dead child. Over and over, in a choking voice, she cried, ‘Putain de bordel de merde! Putain de bordel de merde!’ You let her drink from your water bottle.
A ragged hound was lapping up blood on the road. You kicked it aside. The scene was one of chaos, of splinters, of ruined limbs. A horse lay struggling in its death agonies, entangled in reins. It had broken a wheel of the cart to which it was attached. One of your troop, a young soldier called Palfrey, put his rifle to the horse’s head and shot it. He helped three men to cut the horse free and drag its body and the ruined cart to the side of the road. An adolescent girl, seemingly unharmed, was leaning against a tree, covering her face, weeping.
Your wireless operator called to the major. An RT message awaited him. Montagu beckoned you to follow him. You stood by the wireless truck while he spoke intermittently in an incomprehensible language, all the while watching the chaos nearby. He finally pronounced an English ‘Out’, and returned the handset to the operator. He locked his hands behind his back and spoke quietly to his two officers, Captain Travers and you.
‘I thank God that a comrade of mine is in the Southampton HQ. We once took a holiday in Ootie together. We can bolo in clear Urdu to each other. Security is maintained – I doubt many Huns bolo Urdu.
‘The news in whatever language is extremely poor, gentlemen. Advanced German Panzer columns have overwhelmed Amiens and Abbeville, on the River Somme. In case you don’t know, those cities are not too far distant from here; about sixty miles.’
He nodded towards the north-east.
‘Now the Panzers are heading this way. We aren’t making the progress we had anticipated. The Germans are making the progress we did not anticipate. We are in some danger of being cut off. The Prime Minister of France, Paul Reynaud, is talking of giving up the struggle.’
‘I always said the French were a bunch of cowards,’ said Travers. He was a wiry man with a lean, hard face, handsome in its way. You had always found him reserved and unfriendly. ‘I’ll wager they lose their nerve.’
Montagu frowned, but let the remark pass. ‘If France packs it in, we shall have a few problems on our hands. Indeed, we have some already.’ The nod of his head was directed towards your men, who were standing in front of their vehicles, rifles pointed at a group of ten or more men and a woman, who were attempting to take possession of the two supply lorries.
One of the soldiers fired his rifle in the air, low over the heads of the advancing group.
The major removed his hands from behind his back and marched briskly to where his men stood. He addressed the French mob in English. He told them that you were a detachment going to help defend their capital city, that their actions threatened to upset military plans, and that the Boche were closing in rapidly on their position.
‘In other words, clear off, the lot of you!’
Whether the refugees understood what he said was doubtful. But his firm, reasonable and authoritative voice had its effect. The mob slunk away and returned to help their wounded comrades.
‘Danke schön,’ said Montagu calmly, turning back to you officers. ‘Now then, I have received orders for a slight change of plan. Somewhere to the west of here lies the city of Rennes, in Brittany. About one hundred and seventy miles away as the crow flies. There’s a firm in Rennes called Colomar, part British-owned. Their HQ is on the Place de Bretagne, a main square, thik hai?’
‘What’s all this to do with us, Major?’ Travers asked.
Montagu continued as if he had not heard the question.
‘Colomar currently hold three-million-pounds-worth, sterling, of industrial diamonds. We don’t want this haul to fall into German hands. You, Fielding, what are industrial diamonds used for?’
You replied, ‘They are essential for the manufacturing of machine tools, and tools necessary for making armaments.’
‘Full marks. The way the war is going, we do not want these diamonds falling into German hands, for obvious reasons. Our orders are for one of us to press on immediately to Rennes, take charge of the diamond stock, and to transport it to Saint Nazaire, a port on the south coast of Brittany at the mouth of the River Loire. I gather there may be some difficulty in persuading the company to hand the diamonds over. However, we are armed and they are not. A persuasive point.’
He stood there sturdily in the middle of the road, looking at you.
‘Rennes is a long way from home. Why is it up to us, for God’s sake?’ asked Travers.
‘Because we are on the spot, Captain. We happen to be British troops farther to the south than other units.’ He spoke briskly, before turning to you.
‘Fielding, you are young and brave, I am delegating you the task of taking one of the vehicles and collecting the diamonds from Colomar.’
You asked why there was this sudden change of plans.
‘Better ask the fornicating Germans that.’ Montagu continued with his instructions.
‘You will drive with the diamonds, going like the clappers, to St Nazaire in the south, where a Royal Naval ship will deliver you and the valuables back to Britain.’
You were horrified. ‘Why me, Sir?’
As you asked the question, you remembered the OCTU report in a stray roster you had caught sight of. There lay a summary of your qualities: ‘6ft 2ins. Good-looking, good accent. Knows how to handle knife and fork. Officer material.’ Nothing was said there about a capacity to collect diamonds from a distant French city.
‘Why not Captain Travers, Sir?’
Montagu gave a low growl.
‘Captain Travers has a poor opinion of our French allies and does not speak French. You do speak French, Lieutenant. You are young and foolhardy. You will do well.’
‘But, Sir … well, I can’t deal in diamonds, Sir. I’m a Socialist.’
In a quiet voice, Montagu said, ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, Fielding. There are larger issues at stake than your political conscience. The whole continent of Europe totters on the very brink of falling to Hitler’s armies. Britain will then stand alone. We need those industrial diamonds and so do the Huns. We must secure them. Take one of the gharies and two volunteers and a Bren gun and off you go. Jaldhi!’
‘Not my tank, Sir?’
‘The ghari is much faster. Stop arguing and go, will you?’
‘What’s the name of the ship I have to rendezvous with, Sir?’
‘You’ll find out when you get there. Starting from now!’
You stood poised to move. But there was a further question, born of the danger you were all in.
‘What about you, Sir?’
Montagu gave
you a rictus that passed for a smile. ‘The rest of us will continue on to “Gay Paris” as ordered. The way you are going, away from the immediate combat, should be less dangerous. If you get a move on.’
You found yourself reluctant to leave the presence of this forceful officer. ‘Hope you make it, Sir.’
Montagu put his hands behind his back and stuck his chin in the air. ‘I rely on the motto of the Montagus, forged on the Khyber Pass, Numquam wappas – Never backwards!’
11
Carnage on the Road
The vehicle Major Montagu referred to as a ghari was a five-ton lorry. Among the few supplies loaded into the back of it sat Private Furbank, manning the Bren gun. Private Pete Palfrey was driving the ghari. You swung yourself up into the front seat beside him.
You were entering the hilly country to the south of Bernay, where no refugees filled the roads – where indeed it seemed there were no inhabitants. Signs of human occupation were few – a barn here, an old tractor there, a dilapidated house with a picket fence. Apple trees lined the road, in full blossom, turning hedges white and pink. But not a man with a spade, not a woman hanging out washing, not a child leading a dog along. It was as if the tribes of mankind, having finally got things going, had themselves gone.
Here the spring had come, in contrast to the carnage you had witnessed in Yvetot, the season announced in the trumpets of daffodils by roadsides, and not only there. Cuckoos called from nearby hills. Other birds sang, warbling from tree to tree. The spring enfolded them with its calming presence.
And it rained. It was but a shower. You kept on driving.
Dusk was falling by the time you reached a tiny village on a crossroads, by name Monnai.
‘Stop here,’ you told Palfrey. He drew up at the side of the little street, where the houses crouched against the pavement, looking as if they had closed for the duration of the war.
Furbank came round to the window and asked where you all were.
You responded with an order. ‘You two go and find if there’s somewhere we can eat. Keep your rifles ready for trouble.’
