John Masters

by The Rock

  Hitler armed, planned, and maneuvered with ferocious efficiency. France of the Third Republic staggered from one political crisis or scandal to the next. England dithered. The United States looked the other way.

  The inhabitants of Gibraltar were in for a rough time ... but let us pause now and examine the apes. Later we shall not have time.

  As already mentioned, these beasts must have been imported into Gibraltar by the Moors. History does not record the origins of the legend that the British would leave Gibraltar when the rock apes did, but it sounds like a not-so-subtle Spanish joke. From the beginning of this century the huge new dockyard, increasing population, urbanization, and mechanization all worked to restrict the areas where the apes could live and to reduce the plants on which they fed. Their numbers fell drastically, until in 1924 only four apes could be found on the whole of Gibraltar. These had taken to raiding down into the town, fouling roofs (always used to collect drinking water), and stealing vegetables from barrows and backyards. The year before—whether moved by concern for the apes or for the people—the Secretary of State for the Colonies applied for permission to have the remaining apes transported back to Africa. This was refused on account of the legend, and more attention was paid to the preservation of the surviving animals.

  The "head keeper" was the artillery general in Gibraltar, who appointed one of his officers as Officer in charge of Rock Apes. A master gunner was appointed to see that they had enough to eat, supplementing their natural food with scraps and leftovers begged from military kitchens and civilian institutions. At last the Colonial Office was persuaded to make an allowance for their care and feeding. The master gunner's post became that of cageman-cumstoreman. The "cage" part of the title came in because by then covered cages had been built to provide shelter for the apes, who now consisted of two mutually hostile packs, one at Queen's Gate and one at Middle Hill.

  When Winston Churchill began to take a personal interest in the apes, during Hitler's war, the numbers were again very low. By 1943 there were only seven, even after imports from North Africa. Gradually, with the devoted attention of the famous cageman Gunner Portlock and his successors, the numbers increased. Now the apes have assumed an importance which makes a look at the Ape files like a glimpse into the mind of Edward Lear....

  Telegram from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the Governor of Gibraltar, February 3, 1951:

  "Parliamentary question, APES: Following is text of question down for oral reply February 7: To ask S of S for the C if he is satisfied that subsistence allowance of 4d a day paid out of civil funds for maintenance each Barbary ape at Gibraltar is still sufficient; when amount was fixed at 4d; and to what extent the ape population has increased or decreased since the end of the war...."

  And in May, 1953, after the queen made Winston Churchill a Knight of the Garter:

  "After careful consideration the Commander Royal Artillery has decided not to authorize a change in the name of the ape 'Winston'. Winston Churchill himself is still called Winston, even though now knighted."

  About this time, with the population in the low thirties, apes were offered to zoos all over the world, with free transportation by Royal or United States navy, although a monkey expert thought that to keep the pack going needed a strength of about one hundred. The reason for this apparently reckless generosity was that the Gibraltar civil government, which had taken over financial responsibility for the apes, announced that it would not pay the subsidy of fourpence a day for more than thirty apes.

  The humorless Hitler, caring not a fig for the havoc he would cause in the files and among the apes and their keepers, invaded Poland on August 31, 1939. At this point Neville Chamberlain became suspicious of his intentions, and preparations were hurriedly made to teach the bounder a lesson. Gibraltar's days of leisure, hunting, and upper-class dalliance were over forever, and Pablo Larios had died with them.

  Nothing much was done until the fall of France in June, 1940. Then, with a thunderstroke of astonishment, Whitehall realized that only Spain lay between Hitler's armies and the Rode; and Spain's ruler owed his position in part to Hitler's help.

  Between July and November, 1940, all male civilians, except about 4,000 engaged in vital work, and all females, to the total number of 16,700, were evacuated. To be more precise, they were evacuated twice, first to Tangier and French Morocco, whence they soon had to return owing to the hostility of the Spanish and Vichy French governments installed there; and then reevacuated to Britain, Jamaica, and Madeira. Those who went Home found it less homelike than it had seemed from the Rock; the Jamaican climate and landscape, which some have thought idyllic, were too lush and tropical for the Gibraltarians; only those who went to Madeira found anything to rejoice over—as much as anyone can rejoice uprooted from home and/or separated from husband, lover, family. The only women in Gibraltar were nurses, a few in the services, and the senoritas who still came every day to work from Spain and could sometimes, by a well-worded offer to carry their bags, be persuaded to spend the night in the fortress.

  The civil population had been about 20,000. Britain now put in that number of troops. And the troops laid barbed wire and sandbags and installed guns, mortars, machine guns: and above all, under all, they dug, like fear-crazed moles. Under the personal omnipresent drive of the governor, Field Marshal Lord Gort, V.C. (recently defeated at Dunkirk), the engineers tunneled and bored. Rock began to be thrown out by thousands of tons. At first all the excavated stone went to make a runway, for when Hitler defeated France, it was considered that even the racecourse would have to be sacrificed for the making of an allweather airfield large enough to take modem fighters. While this runway crept out westward into the bay from under the north face (the Spanish protesting all the time that Gibraltar had no territorial waters and no right to build out from the isthmus), the tunnelers hammered and blasted and gouged deeper into the bowels of the Rock....

  INSIDE

  1941

  "Who are you?"

  The man addressed started out of his study of the sheet metal ventilation ducting running along the side wall of the tunnel. It was a good question. What should he answer? The late assistant manager of Coggeshall Colliery, Yorks? Samuel Chaddock, B.Sc. (Notts)? The only son of Joseph Chaddock (ne Crapp), Esq., and of Mrs. Margaret Chaddock (nee Akers-Carr), of Darley Court, near Pewsey, Wiltshire?

  "Well, speak up, man."

  He stared at the speaker, a tall thin brigadier in well-cut khaki battle dress, a row and a half of ribbons, and a thin, grayish mustache. Chaddock's company commander was at the brigadier's elbow and now cut in, frowning. "This is Captain Chaddock, sir, my new second-in-command."

  The brigadier stuck out his hand. "I'm Hamilton, Chief Engineer. Sorry I couldn't see you when you arrived. I was laid up with gippie tummy.... What were you looking at?"

  Chaddock said, "The metal ducting. It's full of leaks, and it's very difficult to take down and put up for blasting. I was wondering whether rubberized canvas could be used."

  "Put in for some. Try it out. In your own time, of course. Make a report. In quadruplicate," the brigadier said. They were walking fast along the tunnel now, the brigadier in the middle, Chaddock on one side, Major Hughes, commander of 177 Tunneling Company, Royal Engineers, on the other. The racket of drilling increased. The colonel shouted, "Remember, that's for development heads only. We have natural ventilation in the main shafts.... What are you? Coal?"

  Chaddock nodded. "Yorkshire."

  "This is quite different. Hard rock. Tunneling, not mining. I keep asking for more hard-rock men. Quarry men. University?"

  "B. Sc., Nottingham School of Mines, sir."

  The brigadier glanced at him curiously and yelled, "School?"

  Chaddock tensed. Why the hell couldn't a man who wanted to get out of some place he'd been put in be allowed to move without being pestered, reminded, firmly slammed back?"

  "Don," he said, "and King's. I have a B.A. of a sort, too."

  "Though
t so," the brigadier shouted. "Well, I won't hold it against you as long as you get your yards in. Four hundred and forty cubic yards per platoon per week." They were close behind the men drilling charge holes in the face now. The nearest drill coughed to a momentary stop as the colonel shouted again, "Four hundred and forty yards!"

  The man at the drill bellowed in a powerful Geordie accent, "Ah fucking know it's four hundred and forty fucking yards, but we have to do it one fucking yard at a time!" He turned his head and saw the red tabs. "Ma Goad!"

  Major Hughes said, "Sergeant, take that man's name." The brigadier waved his hand. "No, no. What's a few kind words between miners? Keep that bloody thing going, sapper, so we can't hear what you want to say next."

  They edged back from the clamorous work face and walked back down the twin sets of rails to a row of waiting empty tubs. The noise faded. The brigadier said, "You've come in at the beginning of a great game, Chaddock. Before this war began, there were less than four miles in the whole Rock. We plan to put in over twenty. We're going to make the Rock absolutely, finally, totally impregnable to any assault, no matter how great the firepower. The Royal Engineers' motto is Ubique, 'everywhere,' as you know. Well, here in the tunnels we have a little extra motto. Four hundred and forty or..." He jerked his thumb. "Off to the infantry you go." He indicated the row of men sitting along the tunnel wall. "4th Black Watch, acting as muckers to save our chaps for the technical jobs. We're getting some Eimco-Finlay loaders soon, though." He slapped his swagger stick into his hand for emphasis. "You've got to get the feel of this rock, Chaddock. This limestone is not like coal. It's hard as hell, but it's absolutely honest. No deception. No tricks. It'll give you fair warning, and then if you ignore it—wham! You've got to break it, but you've got to respect it... love it, I think."

  He strode away, tapping his leg with the swagger stick. When he was fifty feet away, Hughes brought his hand down from the salute. "You are supposed to salute, too, Chaddock," he said.

  "I know," Chaddock said. "I was thinking of something else."

  "It's better to concentrate on the work in hand," the major said, "and safer, too."

  "Yes, sir," Chaddock answered formally. Hughes was Welsh, a colliery manager in peacetime, careful, anxious to please owners or seniors. He said, "By the way, Tunneling H.Q. Mess is inviting all the army nurses to drinks tomorrow." He nodded and hurried off.

  Chaddock began to walk back toward the face. The drills were making a lot of dust, yet they were drilling dry. Limestone was much safer than silicas, but he must find out whether X-rays were being taken and how often. Surely they could wet-drill here, using seawater? Safety was poor all round. No one wore miner's helmets except the drillers. The infantry muckers didn't even wear their steel helmets.

  The section sergeant fell in beside him, and he remembered the name—"Gaffer" Farley, small, fiftyish, a coal-mine foreman in peace. Chaddock started asking questions ... were they using hole directors for the easers? What about the dry drilling? The helmets? How much air was reaching the face? What was the maximum capacity of the pump? How about exhaustion of fumes? The little sergeant answered patiently in an accent Chaddock could barely understand.

  The blast master came and asked permission to blow the round. Chaddock walked back behind the safety line, his brow furrowed. "Four hundred and forty cubic yards a week is a lot, sergeant," he said. "There's no allowance there for little errors. Comers are being cut, safety precautions are not being observed, in order to reach that figure, whereas we ought to be tightening up and..."

  The sergeant said, "It's not easy, sir, but ... Look, the army's a game, see, and it's best to play the bloody game. It's not like trying to earn a living in Dipton in the depression. That's serious, see."

  Chaddock said, "We've got to win the war, sergeant."

  "Aye, we will, but it'll be a long tram. For drills we're using these twenty-five-pound jackhammers that the oldest colliery in County Durham would 'a thrown out twenty years back. Half a dozen portable hundred-cubic-foot compressors that sound like my Aunt Jane dying of the pneumony. Then the bloody Eyeties drop a bomb slap on the R.E. stores depot and bang goes half our steels, cable, pulleys, clamps.... You have to take it easy, captain, or they'll carry you out in a straitjacket."

  The sharp regular cracks of the exploding round echoed down the shaft.

  In the saloon bar of the Star & Garter the flight sergeant had a large audience of army corporals and sergeants. His RAF Harrow-and-Stepney accent filled the room. "This Jewish fellow goes to the magistrate and says he wants to have his name changed, see. The beak fixes him up and out he goes, Clarence Fauntleroy, Esquire, instead of Joe Levy. A couple of months later, back he comes and says he wants to change his name to Thompson. The beak scratches his head and says, aren't you the chap was in here a few weeks ago, changing his name to Fauntleroy? Don't you know who you are? Yes, your honner, the Jew says. Then why do you want to change your name again? And the Jew answers, Vell, your Honner, ven someone asks my name I say Thompson, and they vill look at me and my nose—he has a real Jewish conk, see—and they vill say, Ah, but vat vas your name before it was Thompson, and I shall say, Fauntleroy!"

  The soldiers laughed, the ape corporal frowned. Mr. Wardrop and old Sergeant Tamlyn stared into their glasses without expression. Chaddock took a draft from his glass. It was a filthy hot muggy Levanter day, and the beer was heavy and livery, but that was what they had at the Star & Garter, and that's what you had to drink.

  A naval petty officer said, "And now we're fighting for the Jews."

  Joe Morello behind the bar spoke, half aside, to the ape corporal. "They not fighting for Gibraltar, claro. Sometimes, before war, sometimes, maybe they ask us what we want, ask whether they can take this, blow down that. Not now. Just take. War on, they say. And no bloody civilian allowed into a service concert. They think we don't need amusement, too?" He murmured a Spanish obscenity.

  Mr. Wardrop said, "You scorpions would be on a better wicket about the service concerts if you'd ever raised a finger for the redcoats in the old days. You kept 'em out of your dances and bunfights, didn't you?"

  The petty officer said, "I'm not fighting for no fucking Jews, I tell you straight. I'm fighting for fucking England." Mr. Wardrop raised his gin glass. "That's what I like to hear—patriotism Talking of which, listen to this. This'll bring a lump to your throat, friends. Silence for Mr. Disney-Roebuck's poem, which many connoisseurs consider the worst ever written:

  'Watchful and silent, wakeful and stem

  Frowns the great fortress...

  High o'er the sea in the midst of the Rock

  Gray guns point threateningly over the bay

  Keen eyes peer into the fringe of the night

  Gunners are patiently awaiting the day.' "

  "What the hell is this?" the petty officer muttered.

  "Poem," Joe behind the bar said. "Mr. Wardrop often speak it. It's about when Devil's Gap Battery fired at a German submarine, 1917 or 1918, about then."

  "Did they sink it?"

  Mr. Wardrop paused in his declamation and said, "No. But they did at least try to, which is more than the navy did when the French fleet passed through the straits in 'forty.' The petty officer sprang to his feet. "Now, look 'ere...."

  But Mr. Wardrop was off again:

  " 'Governor's Lookout with a shattering roar Hurls its vast projectiles into the black:

  Shrieking they rush on their way overhead Woe to the target they meet in their track.' "

  "Sit down, chief," Joe said. "Mr. Wardrop don't mean any harm. He not sure what he say this time morning." Morning, Chaddock thought. What morning? How could anyone tell? He must be on the first shift, then.

  "We're the only people doing any fighting now," the petty officer said belligerently. "Us and the R.A.F."

  "It's going badly at sea," Flight said, shaking his head. "The shipping losses are much worse than we're being told, you mark my words."

  "It's going badly everywhere," Mr. W
ardrop intoned, speaking with the unnatural precision of the permanently drunk. "On land, on sea, and in the air we are being thoroughly defeated.... You were arguing just now about this war being fought for the Jews. Well, Corporal Pember here will tell you that's a damned lie. The war is being fought for the apes."

  "You will have your little joke," the corporal said sullenly. "But everyone in the world knows about that prophecy, about when the apes go, we'll lose Gib. The pack's down to ten now, and still the fucking civilians complain about them. There's this fellow..."

  "Some fucking civilians think they have more rights than fucking monkeys," Joe the owner muttered.

  The Ape Corporal swept on: …Pasarelli on Lopez's Ramp. An ape on his roof, he reports, and will we get it off because it's making messes on the roof where he collects his drinking water. So I go. To see on the roof they has to open a trapdoor and I stand on a toilet. The ape's there, it's Tony, one of the young males who's been kept off the females by Monty...."

  "Don't talk to me about females," Flight groaned. "How many are there on this bloody Rock, not counting the senoritas? Twenty-seven, to twenty thousand men. All nurses, all look like the north end of a tram going south, and all bloody military. And even with that, every time I see one I get a hard-on you could hang your hat on."

  Joe said, "Our women all sent away 1940—two years. You go back England this year, next year. Not us."

  "So Pasarelli claims I broke his toilet bowl with my hobnail boots, but I was wearing P.T. shoes, see?"

  "Wouldn't matter what Pasarelli say," Joe said. "He only bloody Gibraltarian."

  "Rock scorpion," Mr. Wardrop said. "Great name. Be proud of it. Sting!"