by Alec Waugh
As he walked past the windows of the hut towards the mess, he could hear the sergeant’s voice raised in indignant admonition. He smiled to himself. That burst of clapping was, he supposed, their last civilian action till the war was over.
26
AUTUMN 1939
There was a strange and twilit atmosphere about it all. A sense of suspended life, a pausing between two worlds.
War was declared but war had not begun. The Polish campaign was over and there was no fighting. Behind concrete walls, from Switzerland to the Belgian frontier the two huddled armies watched and waited. There was a black-out, but there were no air raids; respirators, but no gas attacks. There was a censorship, but no news to censor. Air raid wardens out of boredom became officious. Fire-fighters threw darts and played shove ha’penny. V.A.D. nurses sat by telephones. Exasperated young men and women vainly offering themselves for service, filled in forms and called on Ministries. For half, for three-quarters of the country, that first winter was a period of maddening inaction. But in Dorchester, and in places like Dorchester, it had a curious quality of peace.
For himself certainly it brought the first real peace of mind that he had known since July 1936.
For three and a half years now he had been sitting in a draught; seeing war coming yet not convinced that it would come: knowing that something should be done, yet not knowing what there was to do, hearing on every side the contending battle cries of “left” and “right”; with the issue presented by both sides, not as ultimately it was to reveal itself, as Germany against the world but as fascism against communism; finding himself in tune with neither party; finding himself, when Nancy Cunard collected a symposium of writers’ attitudes to the Spanish war, as one of the half-dozen to declare themselves as neutral; despising his non-combatant position, yet seeing no alternative; finding it harder every month to write; with stories no longer “coming to him,” with characters and their problems no longer presented to him in terms of permanence.
Having known war once, having believed that his generation would not have been vainly sacrificed, if by that sacrifice future wars were to be made impossible: believing that another European war would be civilization’s act of Hara Kiri: refusing to believe that any nation could be so mad as to begin a war, right up to and after Munich he had been ready to approve appeasement.
In personal relations forty-nine times in fifty the final showdown was avoided. Might not the same be true of nations? So he had argued during the precarious months, when peace-line after peaceline snapped, during months when work had become daily more a struggle, with writing coming to seem in the face of this imminent disaster, a supreme futility: till finally on the Ides of March Hitler had marched on Prague. Then he had shrugged his shoulders. Let the thing come then, he had thought, with all its horrors. Life wasn’t worth living on these terms.
During those Munich days when war had seemed inevitable, it had been with a heavy, almost with a fearful heart, that he had watched the London crowds line up to draw their gas-masks. But it was with relief, that September morning, that he had heard Chamberlain’s tired voice. Thank heavens, it had come at last.
He had been nervous, yes, but it was with a mind at rest that he had sat in the train, on his way to Dorchester. Although he was entering a world of discipline, he was free from the burden of personal decisions. From now on the army would decide for him. He would go where he was posted, do what he was told. As he understood the word “career,” he had no career. He could relax for the first time in how many years: relax moreover in an atmosphere of genuinely hard work—physical and mental.
As could the others there, among whom his lot was cast—the recalled reservists, the regulars at the testing point of their careers, the A.T.S., the territorials, the girls engaged locally in war work—they were all of them knowing the relief not only of being “all out” in work that they believed in, but of having shelved, if not actually having rid themselves of personal problems, personal responsibilities.
It was a strange world, though, of which they were the inhabitants. They had braced themselves on that first Sunday for “the heavens falling.” It had been rumoured in London during the Munich scare that thirty thousand casualties were expected during the first night’s raid, that thirty thousand beds were being feverishly prepared. Idiot’s Delight, The Shape of Things to Come, novels and plays and films and speeches had prepared them for a holocaust of ruin. But night after night had passed: the air raids had not come, gradually it had been realized that they were not going to come, this winter: that for this winter at least life could be almost normal.
For those who were billeted in lonely villages, encamped on muddy plains, it was a bleak and dreary winter, but for those who were stationed in towns like Dorchester, it was to become by the middle of November almost gay. There were parties two or three times a week: simple and quiet parties for which the time and pace had been set by the officers’ mess on the last Wednesday of October with a cocktaildance at a local tea-shop—a sandwich buffet, a gramophone for a band—that had started at half-past six; that had to be over, the Colonel insisted, by half-past ten. People had to be fresh for their work next morning.
It was the cue, that party, for a whole series of other parties; at private houses, in hotels, in local drill halls; parties built, all of them, on that first pattern, an early start, an early close: a sandwich buffet, gimlets, whisky-sodas.
On the surface, to anyone listening to the gossip of the mess, to the talk of this party and the next, it would have seemed that a hectic “last-war” atmosphere had been recreated.
It hadn’t, though. Nothing could have been less dramatic. Colours were dim and outlines blurred to eyes not yet accustomed to the change of light. There was a curious anonymity about it all, with people not quite real to one another, with people still living with part of themselves in the lives they had said good-bye to, the work they had abandoned, the flats and homes they had left, the husbands and fiancées, the wives and families from whom they were cut off. They were all in a way masked figures to one another.
Every day, every week, the same people were constantly in each other’s company. They lived and played in groups. With petrol rationed, transport had to be organized with care. Not a spare seat could be left vacant in any car. No one was ever alone with anyone. Coal was scarce and it was a bitter winter. There were no small, warmed sitting-out rooms. In a war-time lastminute atmosphere you would have expected hasty, improvident engagements. None came, however, none seemed imminent. There were preferences, yes. Certain people would be asked if others were coming too. “But you must come, Diana’ll be there,” so would the invitations go. There were preferences; but nothing more. It was all rather pre-collegiate.
It could not last; in the nature of things, it could not last. A few days, weeks, months, and this half-light would be dispersed, would have become night or dawn, with the air loud with Messerschmitts, and guns thundering in northern France, with the officers of the depot posted to service units, with preferences no doubt becoming either something less or something more.
Thinking over a party at a party’s end, in the drowsy precedence of sleep, he remembered how Galsworthy had written of first love, of the first stages of first love, a state of heart and attitude that was not without its relation to this atmosphere of twilight preferences, a state of heart that must, so Galsworthy had said—he recalled from memory—change in time “into a fragrant memory, a humdrum mateship, a searing passion or once in many times a vintage full and sweet, with sunset colour on the grapes.”
In what way, he wondered, in the light of the inevitable dramas that were waiting them, would these young men and women find themselves in the autumn of 1943, looking back to this first setting of their stage.
27
DORCHESTER, OCTOBER 1939—APRIL 1940
A twilight world, days fading into weeks, weeks into months: a passage of time that had no landmarks, that in retrospect he saw in pictures; a series of pictu
res that would return to him at unlikely moments, with a sense always of nostalgia pictures of the life there and the place: the Georgian town whose widetreed avenues followed the outline of the old Roman wall; the long, straight Roman roads; the rounded pre-Roman ramparts whose shape you could see outlined on the sides of hills; the treeclustered tumuli whose roots protected the bones of pre-Roman chieftains; the tremendous terraces of Maiden Castle; the bleak expanse of moors; the jarring jolt of Bren-gun carriers as the recruits that he was training swung and slithered through mud and frost.
The routine of regimental life: the gatherings in the ante-room at one; the paying for one’s sherry with slips of paper; the hurried lunch so as to be back at one’s work by two; the agreeable laziness that followed tea; the knowledge that one’s day’s work was over except for the casual half-hour in one’s office that one only put in if one really felt like it.
The orderlies fitting huge wooden black-out frames over windows; the parade-ground atmosphere of the mess in January when an Army Order permitted again the wearing of blue patrols; the ritual of guest-night; the band playing the regimental march, “Mr. Vice the King”; the evenings when the Colonel dined in mess; the clinking of one’s heels to attention when one came in; the loyalty and affection and respect in which one held the Colonel.
Kit inspection and the hours of waiting outside the billet. One’s round as orderly officer through the blacked-out streets, the flashing of one’s torch to see that the windows had been opened at the top, that the men were sleeping alternately head to feet.
The sound of reveille across the square, the barracks waking to life after the black-out, the wooden-frames coming down one by one so that the long, red brick row became a building with eyes again.
Fridays and pay parade and the endless counting of half-crowns. The C.O.’s Parade on Saturdays and the long inspection first; the march up the hill from billets, the fear that one was going too fast, that one’s men would be ten yards behind one; the taut feeling as the companies formed up in line for the march past; one’s fear lest one shouldn’t get one’s men off on the right foot; the timing of one’s distance as the platoon in front went ahead; one’s thrill of relief when one found that one was off in step with it; then a second later the fear of not timing one’s eyes right with one’s salute.
The hurried lunch on Saturdays before week-end leave; the waiting for the London train that came up on a side line from the coast, that had to back into the station; Sunday nights at Waterloo, the throng round the barrier, its memories of 1917.
Pictures of the parties, of the accessories of those parties: cars moving slowly between high hedges with hooded lights; a tall girl with a deep contralto voice who always held her sherry glass between both hands. The Georgian façade of Weymouth in the moonlight. The faces of his men. Their problems that became his problems.
It could not last—in the nature of things, it could not last.
28
9 APRIL 1940
He had left the mess early, before the papers had arrived. He had long since ceased to listen to the wireless. It was from one of his corporals that he learnt the news that Germany had invaded Norway. “So,” he thought, and the day that he had planned out so happily that morning as he shaved, became of a sudden empty.
“What do you think of it, sir?” the corporal asked. “How do you think it’s going to affect us. They’ll be sending out a lot of troops, sir, won’t they? They’ll be calling up a lot more men.”
“It’ll mean working a great deal harder. I’ll have a talk about it to the men this evening.”
But his heart was not in the talk. To be here, while they were there; to be eating one’s dinner in a mess, to be sleeping in comfort and safety. At this very moment there were troops in action.
29
THE WEEK OF RUMOURS
Every day, every hour, a fresh rumour started. The Bremen sunk. The Bismarck sunk; five destroyers; a fleet of troopships. At last Hitler had made his big mistake. His lesson was coming now. Rumour after rumour of new victories. He was besieged with questions by the men. Had he heard this. Was that really true. They imagined that because he was an officer he had access to information that was denied to them. He shook his head. He told them that he knew no more than they did, that he had only the papers and the wireless to guess from. He was sure, though, that they did not believe him.
30
13 APRIL 1940
Another period of four months was over. Another draft was to be posted to another unit. The twenty or so men for whom he was personally responsible were formed up in front of the platoon billet. He had inspected them. They were waiting now for the order to be marched up to join the other sections on the parade ground. For two months these men had been his constant charge. He knew them, from one angle at least, as well as he had known any group of people in his life. Now that they were his charges no longer, they were laughing and talking together in a relaxed way that had not been possible while he was “their officer.”
“But I suppose you really do know where we’re going, sir, only you mayn’t tell us.”
He shook his head. He had no idea where they were going; whether to France, to a holding battalion, to a service unit or straight out to Norway.
“If only one had more idea of what it’s going to be like,” they said. “This war must be so different from the last war—what with tanks and aeroplanes. If only someone could give us an idea of what it is like.”
Yes, he thought, that’s what they want, that’s what they need here in an I.T.C. That’s what they’ll soon be getting, too—officers who’ve seen what this new kind of fighting’s like, who can tell these young fellows what they’re in for, who can prepare them for what they’ve got to face, fit them for what they’ve got to overcome. They don’t want fellows like me here any more.
They had served their purpose, he and the last war reservists. They had filled a gap. They had experience of fighting and of war conditions. They were used to handling men. They had a sense of discipline. For these first months they had been able to train these young militiamen better than men who had no frontline experience. They had known, he and the others, the kind of things that these recruits would need.
But now that the war had really started, recruits at an I.T.C. would need officers with fresh, first-hand experience. “I’ve got to find something different to do,” he thought.
31
20 APRIL 1940. SUMMONS TO THE WAR OFFICE
It came with a surprising suddenness. He did not know, he never was to learn quite how it came about. The telephone message from the War Office was, so the adjutant informed him, extremely vague. There were two serving officers, apparently with the same initials. They wanted, they said, the one who had written novels. If the one who was in the Wessex Regiment was the one who had written novels, would he report at the War Office, Room 1372A, on the Monday at 15.30 hours.
It was with mixed, with very mixed feelings, that he received the message. He was excited at the thought of change, at the idea of being summoned for an interview. He had already made up his mind that it was time he moved. But the fact that they wanted him as a writer made him suspicious. He had last-war views about propaganda. In the last war he had written bitterly about the propagandists who had stayed at home writing about “the cup of sacrifice” while others did the fighting for them. He had resolved that if war came he would serve in it as a soldier, not as a writer. He did not know in what capacity the War Office might intend to employ him. But the fact that they wanted him as a writer worried him.
“If it’s something I don’t want to do, have I the right to refuse,” he asked the Colonel.
The Colonel pursed his lips. “You could if you wanted to, I suppose. They’d never force a man to take up a staff appointment against his will. They’d know that he’d do it badly. But if you did refuse, it would be probably the last staff appointment you’d be ever offered.”
But that in itself was a matter of indifference to him. He
had last-war views about staff appointments, about the red-tabs and the brass-hats, about the men who, at the bottom of dug-outs, moved pins on maps, while men struggled forward through mud to the line that was marked in chinagraph on celluloid. It was in a belligerent mood that he went up to London.
32
THE INTERVIEW, 22 APRIL 1940
The section of the War Office that he was to interview was housed in the Hotel Metropole. The first person that he saw inside its set of rooms was a Middlesex professional cricketer, a slow bowler, now a corporal, with whom for the last six years he had played four or five times a year in casual matches against the smaller public schools. A grin of welcome came over the “professor’s” face.
“So they’ve got you up here at last, sir, have they? They’ve been trying to find you for the last ten days. You’re for France, you know, sir.”
France, the B.E.F. In that case there could be no question of refusing an appointment. One couldn’t refuse a posting to the B.E.F.
33
FAREWELL TO THE P.B.I. 22 APRIL 1940
It was the first time he had been inside the War Office. He had pictured it in terms of studious solemnity. Nothing could have been less like the preconception. After the calm of the depot, it was like being transplanted to an aviary. Telephones were ringing. Doors were slamming. Clerks were hurrying in files. Trays were being emptied yet were never empty. It was as animated as a New York publisher’s. The G.3 by whom he was to be interviewed, proved, as from the name he had suspected that he would, to be a man whom he had met fourteen years before in Mürren during winter sports. The interview lasted ninety seconds.
