The Moon’s a Balloon

by David Niven

  I discussed with him the problem of my soldiers’ boredom.

  ‘Make ‘em use their noggins,’ he said, ‘they’re all intelligent fellers…get a few debates going—but don’t take sides yourself or you’ll be in a bloody mess.’

  The discussion periods I organised as a result of Bevin’s advice were a huge success. The liveliest one was sparked off by a leading article which had appeared in the Daily Mirror, ‘…the accepted tip for Army leadership would, in plain truth, be this: All who aspire to mislead others in war should be brass-buttoned boneheads, socially prejudiced, arrogant and fussy. A tendency to heart disease, apoplexy, diabetes and high blood pressure is desirable in the highest posts…’

  One thing stuck out a mile during these debates—the vast majority of men who had been called up to fight for their country held the Conservative party entirely responsible for the disruption of their lives and in no circumstances would they vote for it next time there was an election—Churchill or no Churchill.

  Weekends at Ditchley afforded close-ups of other members of the Cabinet: Anthony Eden was unfailingly kind and charming, but; somehow, left me with the impression that he was floating in the air far above me. Duff Cooper, a much tougher, much more down-to-earth character, was given to bursts of ungovernable fury during which his face would congest and turn an alarming magenta colour. The smallest thing could set him of and Trees’ two sons would come rushing to find me…’Come quick…Duff’s doing a turkey cock in the library!’

  I got on famously with him once he realised we had one big thing in common—we both loved America and Americans. His wife, the legendary Lady Diana, was, of course, sublime.

  My fast-becoming-forgotten movie face was occasionally pressed into service and I was sent to make impassioned speeches in factories in the Midlands during ‘Tanks for Russia Week’. I was also sent to Glasgow to head a drive to get more volunteers for the Women’s Army—the A.T. S. There, for a week? I appeared in fog-filled movie houses all over the city and harangued the paying customers whom I could barely see in the gloom. By the beginning of 1944, the Americans were pouring into Britain and many old Hollywoood friends appeared at Dorney. Bob Coote materialised in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Clark Gable, whose adored wife, Carole Lombard, had been killed in an air disaster, appeared as a major in a bombing squadron and Jimmy Stewart showed up—a colonel in the same line of business. John Ford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr were in the U.S. Navy. Willie Wyler and John Hustbn were with Combat Photographic Units. Garson Kanin was doing something very mysterious in the Army and joy of joys, John McClain arrived, a lieutenant in the U.S. Navv attached to the O.S. S.

  Dorney features so often in this account that I feel I should explain that I was in other places too. At the end of a war one forgets, thank God, the numbing patches of boredom and frustration and remembers only the fright and the fun. I am chiefly concerned with the fun and Dorney, with Primmie, was where my fun lay.

  The Free French frequently cooked their rations in our kitchen, among them Claude Dauphin and Jean Pierre Aumont. These two gave a party for us in London and Joseph Kessel ate a champagne glass, stem and all.

  Guy Gibson, the master bomber, spent a weekend with us just after he had been awarded the Victoria Cross for blowing up the Eder and Mohne dams. He was in a rare state of excitement because Winston Churchill had invited him to dinner at 10 Downing Street on the Monday. Guy made a date with us for luncheon at one o’clock on the following day so he could report everything the great man said.

  Primmie and I were at the Berkeley sharp at one—no Gibson. Two o’clock—no Gibson. We were just finishing our ersatz coffee around three o’clock when he came tottering in looking ghastly, eyes like dog’s balls. ‘How was it?’ we asked.

  ‘Marvellous—fabulous!’ he croaked. ‘God! I’m tired—that was the best yet!’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Who?’ said Gibson.

  ‘Churchill,’ I said with a touch of asperity.

  Gibson looked stricken—Then he clutched his head.

  ‘Jesus Christ!—I forgot!’

  A month later on his one hundred and twentieth bombing mission, he was shot down.

  By the early spring of 1944, it was obvious that the Second Front would soon be opened on the Continent. Training increased in tempo and there were so many American troops in Britain that only the barrage balloons kept the island from sinking beneath the waves under their weight.

  Out of the blue, I was ordered to report to General Sir Frederick Morgan at a highly camouflaged headquarters in a wood near Sunningdale. Morgan, although I did not know it, had for months been drawing up the invasion plans that would soon be put to effect in Normandy. He came straight to the point.

  ‘You’ve lived in America for some years?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Do you like Americans?’

  ‘Very much, sir.’

  ‘Good, because you’re going to be seeing a great deal of them…I’m taking you out of Phantom and promoting you to Lieutenant Colonel…from now on you will be under the direct order of General Barker—an American:’

  He told me where to go and I found General Ray Barker in a Nissen but under the trees. He, it transpired, had been working with Morgan on the overall invasion plan.

  ‘One thing we dread is a repetition of what happened between the British and the French in the last war,’ he said. ‘Sir John French and General Lanrezac were commanding adjoining armies. They didn’t speak each other’s language; they detested each other and tried to win private feuds to impress Field Marshal Joffre.

  ‘Their feeling percolated down to the troops. The Germans repeatedly attacked this weak link in the chain and very nearly won the war as a result.’

  General Barker was the finest type of contemporary American…quiet, courteous and full of humour but underneath his evident compassion and gentleness, one could detect the steel…I listened attentively as he went on…

  ‘When we land on the Continent, there will be Americans, British and Canadians to start with. Later there will be Poles and French. I am charged by General Eisenhower with seeing that this time, there are no weak links in the chain. Misunderstandings and rumours are bound to arise but they will have to be dealt with promptly at all levels from friction between army commanders, right down to arguments about what programmes should be beamed to the troops by the B.B.C. and the American Forces Network. After we invade you will be in the field doing odd jobs for me and from now on you take orders only from me.’

  ‘A’ Squadron gave me a silver tankard and I handed over to John Hannay, my second-in-command for the past two years. It was a big wrench but my love of change soon dispelled my disappointment and under the highly efficient John the squadron prospered.

  A celebration luncheon with Ian Fleming at Boodle’s ‘revealed that the place was much changed. A direct hit had demolished the back of the building but the beautiful façade and famous ceilings were still intact. Most of the windows were boarded over. Food had become very scarce.

  ‘My members don’t take to whale steaks at all,’ said Davy mournfully. We were peering at the daily menu displayed in the darkened hall when the oldest member growled in my ear, ‘Can’t see the damn thing in this gloom—what’s on the card today?’

  ‘Moules marinieres, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Good God!’ he trumpeted, ‘the bloody fellers have got us eatin’ moles now!’ We held a belated christening party for little David and with the exception of Bob Laycock, all the godparents came to Dorney.

  Larry and Vivien produced a Jacobean drinking mug with ‘D.W.’ engraved on it. I complained about this to Godmother Vivien who said, ‘I’m not going to change it so from now on you’ll just have to be called ‘Wiven’, that’s all.’

  Godfather Noel Coward donated a silver cocktail shaker on which was inscribed—’

  ‘Because, my Godson dear, I rather Think you’ll turn out like your father.’

  The day, however, was ma
de by a retired Nannie—Miss Maple—who at seventy had decided that she could still ‘do her bit’ so she struggled with little David to enable Primmie to return to work at Hawker’s. Some of my methods, however, had upset this redoubtable old lady and she suddenly appeared and announced to the assembled guests.

  ‘It’s bad enough when the Colonel takes Master David’s olive oil for the salad dressing—but when he steals his concentrated California orange juice for the cocktails—it’s going too far!’

  I was so proud of Primmie, of her flower-like beauty of course, but everyone loved her and the reason was obvious…She never thought an unkind thought about anyone. She was incapable of saying an unkind word. On the June night before I left for Normandy we clung together miserably. The parting was not made easier by the news that her uncle, Michael Laycock, had just been killed on the beaches and that her brother, Andrew, had been blown up when his destroyer hit a mine. His captain reported that ‘blown up’ was the correct description because Andrew was on the foredeck when it happened and the next moment the captain, high on the bridge, saw Andrew above his head. Miraculously, he fell in the sea and survived.

  I lied to Primmie about leaving after breakfast and at dawn when she had finally fallen asleep, I slipped out of bed, dressed, looked down at her with the little boy asleep in his cot beside her, and tiptoed out of the house.

  The Empire Bartleaxe was a Liberty ship with elements of an American Division. I boarded her at Southampton.

  ‘That’s one helluvan encouraging send-off,’ observed a G.I. as, over the side, we watched hundreds of wounded being helped or carried ashore from a tank landing craft—boys with shocked faces and staring eyes, in their bandages and hastily applied field dressings, grown old in a few short hours.

  Once opposite the Normandy beach, we were ordered into the landing craft and, to the continuous roll of gunfire, ferried ashore. Beach Masters pointed to the white taped paths through the minefields and we went our separate ways.

  There is no place in these pages for harrowing bloodsoaked descriptions of man’s inhumanity to man—all that has been raked over a thousand times by a thousand more competent writers since that June of 1944 so let me say at once that lying in a ditch that first night in Normandy, my most vivid recollection was the sound of the nightingales.

  Before the war, eminent lady cellists were employed by the B.B.C. to sit in remote black woods to try and coax these timid little birds into song. The nightingales of Normandy were made of sterner stuff—they all but drowned out the gunfire with their racket.

  Between British Second Army and American First there was a small bridge at Carentan. It was in fact the one vital link between our very meagre bridgeheads and, consequently, was shelled by the Germans at close range many times a day.

  Several spare Bailey bridges were kept handy so that replacement was speedy and the lifeline kept open, but it was a hazardous crossing and I had to make it frequently. Foxholes were dug on either side of the bridge and once, trapped by the shelling, I was cowering in the bottom of one of them when, after what seemed an eternity, the lethal rain seemed to have let up. I peeked timidly out and couldn’t believe my eyes. Like a cock-pheasant in the bracken, a familiar head was sticking out of a foxhole a few yards away—John McClain.

  After the barrage, my transport was no longer functioning so my old friend gave me a ride in his command car driven by a very disapproving American sergeant. McClain also pinned on my chest the Iron Cross.

  Cherbourg was still in enemy hands and McClain, with a psychological warfare unit, had been bombarding the defenders with a verbal barrage via sound truck. General von Schlieben, in an attempt to shore up the morale of the defenders, had for some days been handing out decorations like Lady Bountiful at a village fete. He had radioed for more Iron Crosses to be delivered by parachute and they had been dropped in error on McClain and his outfit.

  My work completed at First Army, McClain suggested a light luncheon at a little inn he had heard about from Captain Bob Low, an ex-Time reporter, now working in First Army Intelligence.

  ‘Low says it’s in a backwater,’ he said, ‘no krauts there—nobody—untouched by the war—let’s go.’

  Quetthou, on the coast about five miles south of Barfleur, was all that Bob Low had predicted and the inn, ‘Aux Trois Cents Hommes’, was unforgettable. The disapproving sergeant refused to join us and sat outside morosely chewing his ‘C’ rations, while McClain and I, the first Allied combatants they had seen, were treated like royalty by the three bosomy ladies who ran the place. We were given a sumptuous meal of omelettes, delicious little flat fish and Camembert cheese, washed down by bottles of Bordeaux which they dug up from the cabbage patch where they had been hidden from the Germans.

  On the way back, we grew strangely silent as we approached Carentan because it became obvious from the noise that we were going to have to run the gauntlet of the bridge once again.

  ‘Er…lookit, Sarge,’ said McClain. ‘Isn’t there some way round by the beach so we can cut out that goddam bridge?’

  The disapproving one was unbending.

  ‘The way I see it Lieutenant—it’s either got your name on it, or it hasn’t.’

  McClain’s reply was really brave.

  ‘Well—it may have your fucking name on it—but it doesn’t have mine.’ The Normandy battles raged around Caen and St. Lo longer than had been expected and this frustration of their plans sparked the first differences of opinion between the Allied commanders. Finally, at the end of July, with the British and Canadians containing the bulk of the German armour, the Americans were able to break out on the Western flank and the charge on Paris and Brussels began.

  I found B’ Squadron of Phantom hidden in a wood behind the Orne. Dennis Russell was still in command. Hugh (Tam) Williams, that fine actor, was still in the squadron. They told me that Hugh Kipdersley had been badly wounded and ‘Tam’ and I agreed that if we had known about the German Nebelwerfer—a six-barrelled mortar—we would never have joined the Army in the first place. (After the war, like many others, ‘Tam’ found his place had been filled while he had been away and that he had been largely forgotten as an actor. He went bankrupt and then emerged triumphant as one of the most successful playwrights that London has seen.)

  In a tent far to the rear lived a group of war correspondents typing out pages of self-glorification…’as the bullets sang past my head’, etc. There were some heroic and exemplary war correspondents, of course—Ernie Pyle, Bob Capa and Chester Wilmot, to name a few—but anyone who says a bullet sings past, hums past, flies, pings or whines past, has hever heard one—they go crack.

  Just before the breakout at Falaise, General Barker recalled me for a few hours to England.

  The D.C.3 lumbered off the makeshift runway on a cliff top above the landing beaches. After an alarming dip, it gained height and headed home. Below much of the damage wrought by the disastrous three-day storm at the end of June was still apparent. The ‘Mulberry’ harbour opposite St. Laurent was completely wrecked and of the 800 landing craft originally smashed ashore, at least half still lay there like beached whales.

  An American intelligence colonel sitting on the bucket seat beside me, told me that the storm had reduced the unloading of vital stores and reinforcements to a trickle and for two weeks it had been touch and go whether we could hang on in Normandy.

  We landed at Croydon at eight o’clock in the morning. Flying bombs were now being directed into London all day long and driving through the City, the damage was much greater than I expected.

  General Barker concluded his business with me with great dispatch, then with his customary thoughtfulness, he said, ‘Your plane goes back at seven this evening so go on home and give your wife a surprise.’

  I caught the fast train to Reading, got off at Taplow and borrowed the station master’s bicycle. I could be in Dorney by one and the five o’clock train back seemed days away.

  Land-girls were cutting lettuce and digging pota
toes in the fields on either side of the road. They looked up and waved as I pedalled past. My heart was bubbling with excitement. In my mind I rehearsed all sorts of stiff-upper-lipreturning-warrior platitudes. I wished I had a toy for the little boy.

  Quietly, I leaned the bicycle against a tree and pushed the back door—it was locked. The front door was locked too. I walked round and round the house…nobody was home. I opened a back window by breaking a pane and crawled through…The family was gone and judging by the state of the kitchen had been gone for some days.

  Disconsolate and also alarmed, I mounted the bicycle and made enquiries in the village shops.

  ‘Mrs. Niven picked up her ration books a week ago but nobody knows where she went.’

  Back at the house, I called Bill Rollo in London at his office but he was out.

  I had beer, bread and cheese and pickled onions in the village pub then went home again and waited for Bill to call back. While I was waiting, I mowed the lawn and weeded Primmie’s little vegetable garden. At three o’clock Bill called and told me she had decided to evacuate the London area and take little David up to the peace and quiet of Quenby in Leicestershire.

  I put through a call to Quenby but there was a three-hour delay. I pleaded with the operator but she was granite.

  ‘We all ‘ave our little problems these days don’t we, luv?

  I drank the remainder of a bottle of gin in the kitchen and weaved off on the stationmaster’s bicycle in time to catch the five o’clock for London and Normandy.

  ∨ The Moon’s a Balloon ∧

  THIRTEEN

  By mid-August the Canadians had entered Falaise. The Poles were above Chambois and with the British and Americans in full spate, the bulk of the German Seventh Army was wiped out in the Mortain Pocket. Sixteen of the twenty German generals involved, however, managed to escape to fight another day and this touched off more asperity between the Allied commanders with everyone accusing everyone else of being too slow, too quick or too cautious.