by Rosie Harris
The news surprised Kate. Her father was not gregarious and generally resented any kind of intrusion into his home. She even felt suspicious about his motives when on the Friday evening two Majors and a very young Captain arrived. After introductions had been made and drinks served, Sir Henry cornered the two majors and settled down to discuss the different strategies employed by Eisenhower, Marshall and Montgomery and the effect the exchanges between Churchill and Roosevelt would have on the outcome of the war, leaving Kate to entertain the Captain.
Marvin Greenberg had a round baby face and a soft southern drawl. He told Kate he had been a musician before he’d joined up. His supple hands, with their long slender fingers, looked as though they had never known hard physical work. There was a dreamy look about his pale blue eyes and his soft brown hair was a shade longer than even the American Army permitted. When she took him through to the drawing room and suggested he might like to play the baby grand he was as delighted as a child receiving an unexpected treat. He played beautifully and she listened entranced even though she didn’t recognise any of the tunes. When she mentioned this afterwards he smiled shyly as he told her he had composed them himself.
‘I had just begun to have my work published when the Japs attacked Pearl Harbour.’
‘And publishing stopped?’
‘Life stopped, or at any rate, changed completely.’
‘You abandoned your career to fight for your country!’
‘I had no real choice. My mother claims to be a distant cousin of Lieutenant-General Joseph Stilwell, so there is family honour at stake.’
‘And when the war ends you’ll go back to composing music?’
‘Who knows,’ he shrugged expressively. ‘I might even stay on here in England.’ He closed the lid down on the piano. ‘For the moment,’ he said gravely, ‘all that matters is winning the war.’
The next evening, four different officers came to the house. One of them, Major Potac, a thick-set man with compelling dark eyes and jet black hair professed an interest in horticulture and asked Kate to show him the garden. Once they were away from the house he grabbed her by the shoulders, spinning her round and crushing her to him in a bear hug. Although she was taken completely by surprise, Kate had no intention of giving in without a fight. As his mouth came down over hers, his breath so redolent with tobacco that it almost made her gag, Kate found her army training stood her in good stead.
She might look feminine and slim in her light pink silk dress and high-heeled shoes but her leg muscles were like steel. Months of ‘square-bashing’ gave power to the heel she brought cracking down on his instep. The moment his grip slackened, she sped light-footed, leaving him to find his own way back to the house.
After that, she regarded American visitors with suspicion. Her father recognised the signs and tactfully conceded defeat.
When they next met in London for dinner, he told her that he had located Robert Campbell.
‘For security reasons I am unable to say where he is,’ he told her, watching her reaction from under hooded lids.
‘Does that mean he will be sent to North Africa?’
General Sir Henry Russell looked round anxiously, then leaned closer, lowering his voice to barely a whisper. ‘I don’t think so. A new offensive is being planned, he will probably go on that.’
‘You mean he’s still in this country?’ she breathed excitedly.
‘Somewhere in the South,’ he said in clipped tones. ‘I have no idea where. This is highly confidential …’
‘I understand. Don’t worry.’
Her heart was dancing at the news. For the rest of the evening she hardly heard what her father was saying. She was far too busy trying to work out how she could find Robert. She felt wonderfully optimistic. As long as he was still in England nothing else mattered.
Chapter 5
August became September, the leaves turned yellow then golden or red and finally, before they fluttered to the ground, became a crisp crunchy brown. Hidden away in the densely wooded countryside, somewhere in the south of England, Lieutenant Robert Campbell of the Guards Armoured Division fretted and fumed, irked by the seeming futility of the endless drills and field exercises. They went on relentlessly, often under cover of darkness, until men and officers finally achieved the superb precision and efficiency demanded of the Guards.
To ensure complete dedication, leave had been cancelled and all letters were censored. It was the nearest to being in limbo that Robert could imagine. There were times when he longed for the comfortable niche of his old job, driving General Sir Henry Russell to and from the War Office.
Remembering the imposing figure, with his receding grey hair and aristocratic features, only served to remind him why he was having to put up with mud and discomfort rather than the cocooned luxury of a staff car. Proving to Sir Henry that he would make a suitable son-in-law was a daunting task. Wearing the right uniform and sporting a pip on his shoulder, was only the framework.
It had not taken him long to realise that the other Guards officers were well aware that he was a fake. His accent, his behaviour pattern, and everything else about him was a giveaway. He lacked their aplomb and their specific brand of bantering humour. His voice was not authoritative when he issued orders and he found it difficult to accept services rendered in a nonchalant manner. He was too ready to do things himself instead of ordering someone of lower rank to do it; and automatically he treated the men under him as equals. As a result, the men, NCO’s and fellow officers all regarded him with varying degrees of contempt.
He constantly reminded himself of Kate’s spirited confrontation with her father, when she had said that war was a great leveller. It made him determined to master the nuances and prove himself to the General and everyone else.
Spit and polish became almost a fetish with him. No one could fault him on that score. His argument was that it kept the men alert and in a constant state of readiness. For what purpose he didn’t really know. The most popular rumour was that they were destined for Operation Overlord, the cross-channel invasion that would seal Hitler’s fate and bring an end to the war. He wished fervently that they would get on with it.
Even Kate’s letters often disturbed him. When she had mentioned that some American officers had visited her home while she had been on leave he had seethed with jealousy. Why should they be enjoying her company when he could not! His reply had been so recriminatory that she had stopped mentioning such incidents, which only made him worry more.
If only they could meet once in a while and spend an hour or so in each other’s arms. He wanted to hear from her own lips, not just from words on paper, that she still cared as much about him as he did about her.
Christmas 1943 came and went and he was still in England. The huts they were living in were heated by coal stoves which smoked erratically and emitted choking gaseous fumes. Even the officers’ quarters were primitive and colds and bronchitis were rampant.
In late January, Robert went down with a dose of flu. He was so ill that he was moved into the sick bay. As soon as he was feeling a little better he began scheming how he might find out precisely where he was. The night nurse was young, not very pretty but amiable and approachable.
‘We’re not allowed to say,’ she murmured uneasily.
‘I’m not asking you to tell me, just to let a friend of mine know,’ he pleaded.
‘No! I can’t even do that,’ she told him shaking her head. ‘I’m being moved from here tomorrow,’ she explained.
‘All the better! If I give you her name and telephone number you could get in touch with her. Please! It means so much to both of us. I’ll pay for the call.’
He reached for his wallet and drew out five £1 notes and pushed them into her hand.
‘I don’t need that much!’ she gasped, colouring.
‘Now you know how much it matters to me,’ he grinned.
When he returned to his unit at the end of the week he lived in a state of suspense. He didn�
�t know just how Kate could contact him but he was confident that she would.
The news that an ENSA concert party was to visit their camp revived everyone’s spirits. Some jokingly said that it was only a propaganda stunt to make up for the fact that their mail had been held up for the past month. As junior officer it fell to Robert to be responsible for organising the seating.
There was no lack of volunteers to help and the men were all in their places almost an hour before the curtain was due to go up. The first two rows were reserved for officers but even these filled up early and Robert had difficulty in keeping an end seat reserved for the concert party organiser who, he’d been told, wished to sit out front.
The chair next to him was still vacant when the impromptu lights were dimmed and the curtain went up. When someone came and sat down alongside him he didn’t even look round. His attention was fixed on the stage where six girls in skimpy costumes were dancing.
‘Enjoying it?’
For a moment he froze, wondering if his mind was playing tricks.
‘It is me!’ came the whisper as a hand slid across his knee and took his.
Unable to believe his ears he glanced sideways, and then doubted even his eyes. Kate was sitting there, prim and efficient in her khaki uniform, a clipboard on her knee.
They had an hour together before the ENSA concert party was ready for the road again. Afterwards, he wondered if it had all been a figment of his imagination.
Knowing everyone was at the concert he took her back to the Mess. Even when she was in his arms, her love-filled dark brown eyes gazing into his, her slightly parted lips waiting invitingly for his kiss, he still couldn’t believe that she was actually there.
They made love, urgently, primitively, unaware of the cold hardness of the bare wooden floor their need for each other was so great.
Afterwards, breathlessly, Kate explained how she had influenced the ENSA concert party to arrange a show and then had persuaded them to let her come along as well.
‘Can’t you stay … just for a few days. I’m sure I could manage to get out of camp,’ he begged, his green eyes pleading.
‘It’s not possible, darling.’ Her fingers tenderly traced the firm outline of his face. ‘The security checks are too stringent. As it was they didn’t want me along because it meant getting special clearance.’
‘When am I going to see you again then?’
‘Soon. Now that I know where you are, I’ll come back. On my own, though, without involving anyone else,’ she assured him, her brown eyes dark with love.
He accepted her promise, confident that what she had achieved once she would manage again.
Only it was not to be. Two days later his division was suddenly ordered to move out. Hours of tedious convoy driving, and just where their final destination was, Robert had no idea, except that it must be near the coast because he could smell salt in the air.
Again came the interminable wait, with only drills and exercise to relieve the monotony. Spring turned to early summer and although he continued to hope, Kate didn’t manage another visit and once again he found himself engulfed by loneliness. Apart from Kate, no one else wrote to him. And, although he was surrounded, day and night, by other men, there were none of them that he regarded as a close friend, no one he confided in.
When he was not on duty, Robert spent hours lying on his bed reading, thinking or scheming. He brooded about the past … his past and how everything had changed so abruptly when he was fourteen and his father had died.
They had been so close. His father had always treated him as an equal, talking to him about everything he planned to do on the farm, even asking his opinion. When they had ridden side by side on the horse-drawn wagon his father would hand over the reins to him, showing him the right way to control the great animals. On his fourteenth birthday, his father had even let him drive the tractor! Within a few weeks, Robert’s whole world had crumbled. A shotgun accident and his father was dead.
Without even telling him what she intended to do his mother had sold the farm and moved back to Liverpool where she had grown up. Within a few months she had re-married and they moved to New Brighton, on the other side of the Mersey, to a big Victorian house near the promenade where they took in summer visitors.
From then on, he had felt an outsider. He hated the broad-vowelled boisterous Lancashire mill-workers who came there on holiday and escaped whenever he could, spending hours messing about on the shore alone. He didn’t particularly like the sea and longed to be back farming.
When he left school, he managed to get a job delivering milk. The horse that pulled the float was old and weary but he groomed it and cared for it as his father had taught him. When it died between the shafts, he wept. A week later he left the dairy. He was nineteen. There was talk of war so he joined the army.
‘You must be mad, Robert, to go before you are drafted,’ his mother snapped when he told her what he had done.
‘Good riddance to bad rubbish, I’d say,’ his step-father grunted. ‘He never does a hand’s turn around here so we won’t miss him.’
‘It means we’ll have another room to let,’ his mother agreed thoughtfully, her face suddenly brightening.
He cleared out his room, burning all his childhood books and games. The only thing he kept was a photograph of him and his dad, sitting on top of a haystack, the Welsh mountains a dark smudge in the background.
As he caught the train from Liverpool’s Lime Street, he vowed to himself he would never return to New Brighton. It was going to be a new life as far as he was concerned. Someday, he vowed, he’d even have his own farm.
He never had much time for girls. The bright-eyed young women with their made-up faces, who hung round the camp, reminded him too much of his mother, shallow and out for all they could get, he thought cynically.
Kate had been different. Right from the very first time he had seen her he had been impressed by her calm quiet manner. He was curious as to why she was dating someone as old and pompous as General Sir Henry Russell. He was puzzled by her manner. She was so very much at ease as she sat chatting with the General in the back of the Staff Humber. And their outings always followed the same pattern. Dinner at the Savoy then straight back to her Barracks with just a brief kiss on the cheek as they parted.
He made discreet enquiries, and was startled to learn that she was the General’s daughter. After that he took an even greater interest in her, daydreaming of what it would be like to know her, to date her, to take her out, even. Not that there was the remotest chance of that ever happening, or of even speaking to her. As far as she and the General were concerned he was just an extension of the Humber, a robot who took instructions and carried them out without question.
The night General Russell had been recalled to the War Office and left him to drive Kate back to her Barracks, had been like the hand of Fate intervening. Afterwards, whenever he thought about it, Robert wondered what would have happened if she had reported him for insubordination … or worse. But she hadn’t. She had reacted just as he had always dreamed she would.
Things had gone so well for him from then on, that he was confident all his other dreams would also be fulfilled. He accepted that Sir Henry didn’t intend letting him run Home Farm at Walford Grange but he still hoped he might find him another farm close by.
Kate was his trump card. From conversations he had overheard when he had been driving them both he knew how fond the General was of his daughter. Everything would eventually work in his favour, of that Robert was quite sure. Meanwhile, he watched and waited, learning all he could from his fellow officers, so that when the day finally arrived he could take his place alongside Kate with confidence and aplomb.
When he learned that along with the rest of the Guards 8th Armoured Brigade they were to join up with the 43rd Wessex and several other Divisions, to become XXX Corps in readiness for ‘D-Day’, Robert felt fresh hope. They would be under the command of Lieutenant-General Horrocks and he was sure th
at General Sir Henry Russell would know about this through his job at the War Office and must surely mention it to Kate.
Despite their exhaustive training, the crossing to France for the invasion proved to be something of a fiasco, it was so disorganised. Once they landed on the Normandy beaches, however, the months of drilling and survival exercises began to pay dividends.
In their first major battle, Robert’s unit faced fierce machine-gun fire and short range mortar attack. German tanks milled around on all sides and casualties were heavy. They moved on through extensive minefields to Mont Pincon, the ‘Little Switzerland’ of Normandy; his sense of achievement when they finally gained the crest of the hill was intense.
With Caen in ruins, they pushed deeper into France, and Robert found that his energies were so taken up in fighting and surviving that he no longer noticed the passage of days. When he did sleep, it was from sheer exhaustion; dreamless hours from which he wakened still unrefreshed.
By late August, XXX Corps, now the spearhead of the British Second Army, was crossing the Seine. They established a bridgehead on the east brink, jubilant in the knowledge that their disruption of the German armies was a tremendous success.
They moved on through Belgium, heading an army that stretched back over 250 miles to the Normandy beaches, where men and supplies were still being landed. The fighting was spasmodic. It was like ‘Indian Country’, Robert thought grimly, it contained more German than Allied troops. Then came the bold drive north into Holland, dividing the country in two and taking possession of the Northern gateway into Germany.
As they drove through Eindhoven and reached the bridge at Nijmegen they became involved in difficult fighting over open boggy country. The situation seemed to deteriorate, pockets of Germans seemed to be everywhere and the entire enterprise seemed to be fraught with difficulties. There were problems with supply trucks and Robert found his work cut out trying to bolster the spirits of his men. It left him no time for his own worries, not even after they’d won Operation ‘Market Garden’ at Nijmegen by mid-September.
