John Masters

by The Rock

  After a time she led impatiently out of the cemetery and back onto Martin's Path. They walked one behind the other around the slope, past the deserted, ancient gun of the Levant Battery, past tangles of rusty barbed wire, past empty sentry posts and unoccupied machine-gun positions, dandelions and coarse grass growing in the tom sandbags.

  "It looks as if they think it's all over," he said to her back, "but it may be a long time yet."

  She said, "Last Tuesday the matron asked me whether I wanted to go on repat. I'm past due, if I want to take it."

  He said, "I'm going home."

  "Oh ... You didn't tell me."

  "They only told me this morning.... On the next boat The day after tomorrow, perhaps."

  She led up the narrow ledge to Martin's Cave and turned. Her face was deep red. She said, "What do you mean, you're going home? Isn't Gibraltar your home? Aren't your people here?"

  He said, "No, Joan, but—"

  She said, "I ... I ... said I'd stay on in Gib ... because ... oh, damn ... because of you ... and now, and now you're going away. I might have... expected it from a, a, a ... dirty Jew!"

  He said, "Will you marry me, Joan?"

  She turned her back violently. He took her shoulders, holding her gently and making no attempt to turn her to face him. "Look, darling," he said, "if I've learned anything inside this Rock the last three and a half years, it is that if you're going to stay human, you have to hold onto what's good, even if it's stupid and isn't working out right, and you have to reject what's evil, however well it works, however easy it is to take it or let it take over. I think we love each other, or can, and that's good. I think we have had, and still have, fears and prejudices, and that's bad. Let's work out the good."

  He swung her round gently and lifted her chin. She was a big woman, and he knew she was surrendering because he couldn't have pulled her round or lifted her chin if she hadn't wanted him to. She looked past him at the vertiginous eight-hundred-foot drop at his heels and jerked him to her, snapping, "Come back, Sam!"

  He turned and looked down. There was the mouth of Arow Street, and there, just inside, was the end of the tunnel he'd been working in all the war; or should he say trapped in all his life?

  They kissed, long and delicately. She was warm and experienced. He released her and gave her the letter from his pocket. "Read it."

  She read it, holding it up to the light; and again. "I don't understand," she said. "Are you or not?"

  "Probably not. Does it matter?"

  "Not the way it used to, but everyone ought to know who he is. I suppose that first letter you told us about, from your father, just didn't exist? It was part of your nervous breakdown?"

  He pulled her to him and said, "If that was a nervous breakdown, then any time we look at misery and evil and say, 'That's them,' not 'That's us,' then it'll be time to have another one."

  She hugged him with a bone-breaking eagerness that made him laugh, and they went slowly back to Jews' Gate.

  BOOK THIRTEEN

  FOREIGN FORTRESS? PUPPET COLONY? FREE PEOPLE?

  The Jewish years 5700-5730

  AUC 2693-2723

  A.D. 1940-1970

  A.H. 1359-1390

  During World War II the military tunnels in the Rock were increased from a total length of 4 miles to over 25 miles. The biggest single work was the driving of the Great North Road, which runs the length of the Rock from northwest to southeast, about 400 feet above sea level. It is, like all the recent work, a vehicular tunnel with passing places, light, power cables, and water pipes. It is the spine of Gibraltar, with other tunnels (adits, winzes, raises, and galleries, in the delightful mining jargon) taking off on both sides, some to the open air, some to other tunnels at upper or lower levels, some to form great or small bays.

  The object of these works, of course, was to enable Gibraltar to withstand a siege by modem weapons. To that end the engineers excavated sites for barracks, storehouses, magazines, power stations, headquarters, hospitals, offices—everything that would be needed under full siege conditions. The hardness of the limestone enabled very large galleries to be excavated without roof supports. One, containing vehicle workshops, is some 400 feet long by 80 feet wide. Inside these places it is hard to believe one is in a cave, because the engineers found that it paid to put up conventional walls, roof, and floor inside the tunnel—to keep out the damp and to enable all the wiring, plumbing, lights, power outlets, and so on to be hung, put, or fastened on something easier to work than the rock.

  The names bestowed on these works often give a clue to their history: Jock's Balcony—built by the Black Watch: Jellalabad Tunnel—built by the Somerset Light Infantry (Jellalabad is their chief battle honor): A row Street— which is not a misprint but is named after an engineer officer, Lieutenant Colonel A. R. O. Williams, who is also commemorated in Williams' Way.

  Together with the water tunnels the Admiralty tunnel, and the old North Face galleries, these works make Gibraltar the most formidably honeycombed place on earth. And these are only the works of man. The number of natural caves seem to be without limit, and the only boundary to the discovery of new ones is the number of man-hours Gibraltarians are disposed to put into the task. One of the finest was revealed by chance in 1940, when it was planned to use St. Michael's Cave as an emergency hospital. A new operating theater with its own exit tunnel had to be blasted out below. While making the tunnel, the engineers found that they had blown in the roof of another huge cave system, hitherto unknown. The new cave, Lower St. Michael's, is a miracle of softly tinted limestone, shaped into a thousand forms. At the far end there is a pool of soft, still water. The rock walls plunge sheer into the water, but just below the surface there is a hidden ledge of rimrock extending around the pool, by means of which one can reach the last secret grotto. It is a marvelous place, both in itself and to see one's companions walking on the water!

  A recently formed Cave Research Group of the Gibraltar Society is setting about its task with considerable scientific skill and boundless enthusiasm. It is systematically mapping, exploring, and recording full details of the caves, categorizing them as Cavers' Caves, Archaeologists' Caves, or Anyone's Caves (meaning anyone who wants them is welcome). The full report on each cave is pages long, with plans, elevations, and detailed descriptions of the cave's geology, and history; but the brief notes are racy, to the point, and tell the interested person as much as he initially wants to know, thus:

  Boathoist Cave. At sea level, and just north of Governor's Beach. Access from Boathoist Tunnel, Arow Street. Explored. Small. High roof-hole needs looking at. [This cave was prepared for use as a launching place for VIP's in case they needed to get into or out of Gibraltar by submarine.]

  Diesel's Pot. Behind the fuel storage tanks in Glen Rocky Distillery. Explored. Large and Deep. [Deep indeed ... it has been explored to 100 feet below sea level: the mouth is about 250 feet above sea level! Glen Rocky Distillery, alas, distils nothing healthier than fresh water from seawater.]

  Devil's Dustbin. In the foot of the North Front Face. Extension in West Chamber. West wall not explored.

  The Cave Researchers achieved their finest hour so far on May 30, 1966, when they went to have another look at Cave S, first scientifically explored by the archaeologist W. H. Duckworth in 1910. The cave is now extremely difficult to get at, being under a cliff at the head of the east face catchment area, but the group's surveyor, George Palao, managed to climb up and found prehistoric engravings on the cave wall. There were representations of men, fish, boars, and other living things, some covered by a thin layer of sinter. Precise dating of this art has not yet been done, but it has been tentatively assigned to between 30,000 and 40,000 B.C.

  Perhaps one day the spelunkers will discover a bone statuette of a naked woman....

  But the Cave Research Group and its activities were still in the future while Hitler's war raged. The raging was mostly at a long distance from Gibraltar, although the Germans had an invasion plan, Felix, wh
ich depended on Franco's cooperation; he never gave it. Gibraltar's war role was as a way and staging station and a headquarters for task forces, such as Force H. This small carrier-battleship-cruiser group was the force which relocated and crippled the Bismarck in April, 1941. When the old Swordfish, torpedo biplanes took off and landed on that operation, the Ark Royal's flight deck was rising and falling 60 feet in heavy seas.

  General Eisenhower's headquarters for the assault on Vichy-held North Africa on November 8, 1942, was at Gibraltar. In return Gibraltar suffered three air raids, two by the Vichy French and one by the Italians. In anticipation of air raids a little booklet was prepared, giving both the English and Spanish names of streets, for use by fire wardens and others (few Gibraltarians had much English at the time). The booklet shows not only different names, but different ways of thinking. City Mill Lane is the Calle de los Siete Revueltos (Street of the Seven Turns), Flat Bastion Road is La Cuesta de Mr. Bourne (Mr. Bourne's Ramp), Fraser's Ramp is Escalera de Benoliel (Benoliel's Steps), New Passage is Calle del Peligro (Street of Danger), and Castle Steps is Calle de Comedias (Street of Comedies)—these last two were the brothel areas!

  Gibraltar's most interesting war was that fought in secret, under water, between the Italian and British navies, personified by Prince Valerio Borghese on one side and Commander Lionel Crabb on the other. Three times between October, 1940, and September, 1941, Borghese took his submarine into Gibraltar Bay and from it launched piloted torpedoes. One of the torpedoes narrowly failed to get the battleship Barham inside the inner harbor, and later efforts did sink three ships, including a large armed motor ship. From mid-1942 Italian frogmen launched from submarines or from Spain placed limpet charges on the bottoms of merchant ships marshaling into convoys in the bay. Several ships were sunk. When the Italians swam ashore in Spain, to be captured by the Spanish police, they were at once released to repeat their gallant but not precisely "neutral" feats.

  The previous year the epic of the Olterra had begun. She was a small Italian tanker scuttled in Gibraltar Harbor at the outbreak of war, later raised, bought by a Spanish firm or "front," towed across the bay, sold to an Italian firm, and moored alongside the long outer mole of Algeciras. The Italian Navy, with great ingenuity, now turned her into a fitting-out basin and home port for their midget submarines. On December 6, 1941—one day before Pearl Harbor—the Olterra's midgets set out for Gibraltar, where the battleship Nelson and the fleet carriers Formidable and Furious were in harbor. But Crabb had devised a system of random firing of depth charges into the harbor approaches twenty-four hours a day. One of them hit a piloted torpedo, killing the crew; the other attackers ran into bad luck; and the operation was an expensive failure for the Italians.

  Midget attacks were made from the Olterra through August, 1943; all this time, Crabb and his small team were also fighting the frogmen and their limpet charges. Then Marshal Pietro Badoglio took Italy over to the Allied side. The underwater team in Algeciras, like their countrymen at home, were split down the middle in their loyalties and broke up. By then Crabb and Intelligence had guessed that the derelict Olterra, apparently manned by a watch and ward crew of half a dozen scruffy Italian merchant seamen, was really the headquarters of the operations which had been carried out under the noses of the Spanish authorities. Those noses began to be a little more aware of bad smells after Alamein and Stalingrad, but by then the worst was over. (Crabb died as he had lived. He vanished mysteriously on April 19, 1956. He was last seen swimming in Portsmouth Harbor near the Russian cruiser Ordzhonikidze, which had brought Khrushchev and Bulganin on a state visit to England.)

  In 1945 the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, and the war ended. Britain had already started to repatriate the civilian population of Gibraltar, but so slowly that the people began to stage mass protest meetings for the return of their families. The snail's pace of the repatriation was probably due to the British government's need for time to reassess its attitude to Gibraltar in the light of new conditions. It was not only the weapons of war that were changing. Britain led the way in a worldwide process of decolonialization. Gibraltar had been one of a number of strongpoints and fleet bases guarding the route to India, Australasia, and the Far East. But now India became independent, Australasia turned toward America, and China dominated the far East. England was still a great power, but clearly she was less powerful relative to others than she had been, and a combination of economic and political factors was hastening her decline. She had to consider whether she still needed Gibraltar, whether she could still afford it.

  The first consideration was strictly military. What was Gibraltar's worth in the atomic age? In case of actual nuclear attack, the Rock must surely have been classified as "livable but unusable." Men and installations could probably survive inside the limestone, and rockets could be fired out; but no ship or aircraft could survive. This, as we have seen, was the situation even with conventional weapons, that is, that Gibraltar could be held, but not used, against the enmity of Spain or some other power holding the Ceuta-Tangier area. To use Gibraltar a large area of Spain and Morocco would have to be cleared.

  Provided Spain were neutral or friendly, then, Gibraltar still had a role. By electronic gadgetry it was possible for Gibraltar to detect and prevent all sea passage, both submarine and surface, through the strait. Modem aircraft could fly comfortably from Gibraltar to, say, Israel or Turkey, thus enabling Gibraltar to be used as a staging in the Canaries-Azores-Morocco area, which has always been a focal point of world shipping lanes.

  But if Spain were neutral or friendly, all these operations, and more, could be better carried out from Spanish bases. The key phrase was thus Spain friendly.

  The dominant Spanish concern with Gibraltar was not military but, as always, political. As Britain had gone relatively downhill, so Spain had come up. She could hardly have moved in any other direction. From the start of her own war in 1936 to the end of World War II in 1945 she had for practical purposes been without external trade or aid. Her materiel was falling to pieces, her morale was shattered. Francisco Franco was able to begin at the bottom, with no opposition. Although antagonism to his regime gradually strengthened as the years passed, the Spanish people at first accepted him and his policies without question. They would have accepted anything rather than face even the faintest chance of such another trauma as the Civil War. The United States' need for air bases out of reach of Russia's then rocket capacity, plus tourism attracted by Spain's starvation-level prices, plus this imposed stability, enabled Spain to climb from a shattered and bankrupt wreck to a reasonably powerful and austerely solvent power of the second class.

  In due course Franco decided to tackle the Gibraltar question. Given England's weariness, Spain's desire, the Rock's dubious strategic significance, and the powerful commercial ties between the two countries, there is no doubt that the return of Gibraltar to Spain could have been negotiated but for the intrusion of a third factor into the equation: the people, the Rock Scorpions, the Gibraltarians.

  They had had a bad war. The summary evacuations had brought home to them what a century of peace had made them forget: that they were chattels of the military, slaves of the fortress; but it had also given them a new sense of unity and identity.

  Gibraltar had changed. We had seen the growth of the civilian population—first the families of the military and the craftsmen and tradesmen to service their needs; then the burgeoning of other industries and trades; a steady increase in numbers; servicing and trading not only for the military, but with each other and outside—until a part of the colony did not depend economically upon the fortress. The form of government had changed correspondingly, though more slowly. In the last resort the Governor retained his autocratic power to do almost anything he judged necessary for the safety of the fortress. In practice his nonmilitary powers had for years been gradually passing to various forms of council, at first wholly nominated, later wholly elected; and today only a nuclear emergency could cause a Gov
ernor to use his full powers without reference to his council or to London.

  When at last given the chance, the Gibraltarians showed a considerable political maturity. Not many towns with a 95 percent Roman Catholic Italian and Spanish majority would elect and reelect a Jew as Mayor and Chief Minister, as they did Sir Joshua Hassan. (Incidentally, there were only two Queen's Counsel—senior attorneys—in Gibraltar: Both were Jews.)

  Demilitarization had extended into every area. There were fewer soldiers, and those much less visible. Gun salutes to visiting warships and foreign admirals were no longer fired from King's Bastion, right behind City Hall, but from a battery at a discreet distance. The admiral still lived in a big house with acres of beautiful gardens, but more and more War Department land was being given, leased, or sold to the elected government, which kept clamoring for still more and for the cession of still more military facilities ... and for Britain to continue responsible for the defense of the Rock.

  And the Gibraltarians? Who were they, now? At the last census (1961), the civil population comprised 19,044 Roman Catholics, 1,632 Protestants, 654 Jews, and small numbers of other religions. Most of the Roman Catholics were ultimately of Italian origin, though with a very strong Spanish strain, since for generations Gibraltarian males had been marrying Spanish girls. Most of the Protestants were of British origin. The Jews had come—or come back—from Barbary, Minorca, and Genoa and other parts of Italy.

  The ordinary language was Spanish, strongly Andalusian-accented (indeed, there was to the expert a recognizable Gibraltar accent called llanito). The language as actually spoken might be called Enganol or Esplish, for one heard things like "Faltan tres quarts de engine oil" or "He perdido un six-inch bastard file en la casa del water commissioner." The use of English was increasing greatly, aided by snob value and growing anti-Spanish resentment. Nor was the Gibraltarian "spirit" at all Spanish. It was considerably more tortuous, more darkly "Italian," less alegre, than the Spanish.