Shadows of War

by Michael Ridpath

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  To Richenda

  And we are here as on a darkling plain

  Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

  Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  From ‘Dover Beach’ by Matthew Arnold

  Part 1

  September–November 1939

  1

  Chilton Coombe,

  Somerset

  3 September 1939

  Dear Theo,

  War was declared this morning, at eleven o’clock. I am staying with my parents on weekend leave in Somerset, and we had just got back from church when we heard the Prime Minister announcing it on the wireless. They say there have already been air-raid warnings in London. Perhaps by the time you get this the streets of London will be rubble and men will have started dying in trenches in Flanders. Again. With all the modern killing machines mankind has developed, all the aeroplanes and the tanks, this one will be worse than the last one. Millions more will die.

  You and I are at war. I can’t help thinking of the oath you made me swear that night eight years ago in my rooms in Oxford, that we would not let them tell us to go and kill each other. We were both tight on college port, but I meant it then, and I haven’t forgotten it. Yet now I am in uniform and so are you. I feel guilty that I am breaking that oath. Not exactly guilty, but regretful, and I think you deserve an explanation.

  I have seen war for myself, in Spain, and I know it is hell. I voted at the Union not to fight for King and Country. And I have done my best to avoid this war; you know that. I am British, but my mother is German, and Father is as firmly opposed to war of any kind as he has always been. Yet when I was in Berlin with you last year I saw what evil the Nazi regime can do, will do, unless it is stopped. That’s why I joined the army, and why I will probably soon find myself in France in the mud shooting at your compatriots, maybe even shooting at you. It is a cause that is worth fighting for; not just worth fighting for, it must be fought for, and I must fight for it. I hope you understand that.

  I am sending this via the safe address in Denmark you gave me. Despite that, it might not reach you, but even if it doesn’t, at least I will have tried to get in touch.

  I hope that in a year, or five years, or however long this damn war takes, we will be able to share a glass of port again. Make that a bottle.

  Yours,

  Conrad

  2

  Zutphen, Holland, 21 October 1939

  In a neutral waterlogged country on the edge of a war that was already becoming phoney, Captain Sigismund Payne Best sat in his American Lincoln Zephyr and waited. Beneath him, the broad powerful waters of the River IJssel rolled down to the North Sea. Ahead, across green damp meadows, the medieval towers of Zutphen scratched grey bellies of heavy cloud.

  This was Payne Best’s second war. He had been involved in intelligence in the last one, and made a decent fist of it, although he had lost some good agents along the way. But already, only six weeks into the rematch, he was on to something. Something big. Something that might, just might, bring this new war to a halt before it had even had a chance to get going.

  An absurdly long barge, two hundred feet at least, nosed under the bridge, its bow and its stern visible on either side, carrying raw materials upstream to feed the German war machine.

  He checked his wristwatch. They were late, over an hour. That wasn’t yet a cause for alarm; there was plenty that could delay them on the border. Payne Best tapped his fingers on the steering wheel and lit yet another cigarette. Patience was a necessity for an agent, but Payne Best had little of it. He had the languages – his Dutch and his German were perfect – he had charm, an excellent memory and people trusted him. But he hated waiting.

  Two cars approached, a Citroën followed by an Opel. The Citroën swished past, but the Opel slowed down and pulled over just on the Zutphen side of the river. A German number plate.

  Stubbing out his cigarette, Payne Best stepped out of his car and stood on the bridge. He adjusted his monocle to examine the two men approaching. One of them, Lieutenant Grosch, Payne Best recognized. The other was young, about thirty, with a chubby face bearing nicks and cuts picked up from duels in a German student corps. He, too, was wearing a monocle, Payne Best was glad to see. Cut a bit of dash, a monocle, Payne Best thought.

  Grosch greeted Payne Best and introduced his companion in German as Captain Schämmel. They shook hands, and Schämmel performed a little heel click.

  Payne Best smiled at the stranger, but disappointment and frustration nagged at him.

  He turned to Grosch. ‘And the general? We were supposed to be meeting the general.’

  ‘I am sorry the general could not be here,’ said Schämmel. ‘As you can imagine, it is very difficult for a serving general in the Wehrmacht to travel to a neutral country without permission. But he and I are close colleagues. He has asked me to open discussions on his behalf.’

  Payne Best studied the German captain. Large brown eyes, a ready smile; his words were soft and precise. An intelligent man, not some lackey.

  ‘And what do you wish to discuss?’

  The German scanned the bridge and the road beyond it, empty now apart from their two vehicles, and then fixed Payne Best with those sharp eyes.

  ‘Our plans to remove Hitler. And what peace settlement your government will agree to when we do.’

  3

  Wiltshire, 5 November

  ‘Chin chin.’

  ‘Cheers.’ Second Lieutenant Conrad de Lancey raised his glass to his company second-in-command and knocked back half his scotch and soda. ‘I needed that.’ They were alone in the ante-room of the mess in armchairs around a blazing fire.

  ‘Your men did well, de Lancey,’ Captain Burkett said.

  ‘I heard the CO calling it a shambles.’

  ‘Everything is a shambles to him,’ said Burkett. ‘It was raining; the visibility was perfectly bloody. We’re getting better. You did a bloody good job considering you’ve only been with us a couple of months.’

  They had spent the last thirty-six hours on exercise on Salisbury Plain with a cavalry regiment that to Conrad’s eye had yet to grasp the difference between a Matilda tank and a horse. Conrad’s battalion, however, had become adept at jumping in and out of lorries, as befitted its ‘motorized’ status, and Conrad himself could read a map and a compass and readily identify fields of fire and dead ground. He had spent enough time with his face pressed into Spanish dirt with live bullets whizzing over his head to get a feel for that kind of thing.

  ‘We’ll be doing it for real soon,’ Burkett said.

  Conrad’s ears pricked up. ‘Are we going to France? Have you heard something?’

  ‘No, nothing specific. But they’ll send us sooner or later. Probably sooner.’

  ‘Good,’ Conrad said.

  Burkett’s eyes darted up to Conrad and then away. ‘Absolutely.’ Despite being the senior officer, the recently promoted Burkett was three or four years younger than Conrad, probably in his mid twenties. He was a broad man, squat with a trim moustache and a pugnacious chin, but his eyes never stayed still. His father and grandfather had been in the regiment, and he had joined up himself straight from public school.

  They drank their whiskies, thinking of France. Conrad genuinely wanted to go, not out of some kind of innocent gung-ho patriotism, but out of a desire to do his bit to stop Hitler. When Poland had been invaded and war declared, the whole country, Conrad included, had been grimly prepared for modern wholesale slaughter. Sirens had sounded, but no bombs had fallen on London or anywhere else. No Ger
man boots or tank tracks had crossed the French and Belgian borders. Given the lacklustre way the ‘phoney war’ was progressing, Conrad might just as well be drinking in a mess in Wiltshire as in northern France.

  ‘Are they anything like real battle?’ Burkett asked with a hint of anxiety. ‘The exercises?’

  Conrad was surprised by the question. He had spent eighteen months fighting for the International Brigade in Spain, a subject that his fellow officers usually avoided. On the one hand, the idea that one of their number had fought for the socialists was awkward; on the other, Conrad had experience of real fighting and they realized that could come in handy in a war.

  ‘No,’ Conrad said. ‘Nothing at all.’ He thought of Madrid, Jarama Valley, Guadalajara and of the final nightmare on the slopes of Mosquito Hill. It was nothing like sitting on a damp knoll in the middle of England deciding when to order a brew-up. But he couldn’t explain all that to Burkett, so he tried to reassure him. ‘The training will help, especially when we first go into battle.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Burkett looked into his whisky. He was nervous, thought Conrad. Scared even. Well, that was fair enough. Rational.

  ‘Got any plans for next weekend?’ Conrad asked.

  Burkett straightened up. ‘Meeting Angela in Winchester. We’re going to the pictures. She wants to see Gone with the Wind, although I rather think she’s been twice before.’

  ‘I thought Angela was Dodds’s girl? Or is that a different Angela?’ Dodds was a young subaltern in Baker Company.

  ‘Same Angela. He might think she is his girl, but she never was.’ Burkett grinned. ‘At least, not according to her. But he did introduce us. Which was very decent of him. All’s fair in love and war, eh?’ The captain winked.

  Conrad didn’t answer. He wasn’t yet completely au fait with all the traditions of his regiment, but he was pretty sure that captains pinching second lieutenants’ girlfriends wasn’t one of them.

  Burkett indicated that the mess orderly refill their glasses. ‘What about you? Are you married?’

  ‘Divorced,’ said Conrad.

  ‘Sorry to hear that, old man.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s for the best,’ said Conrad. Veronica running off with a racing driver while Conrad was getting shot at in Spain had not been pleasant, but the divorce, when he had finally agreed to it, had been a relief.

  ‘Do you have a girl?’

  Conrad hesitated. Then smiled. He didn’t want to keep her a secret. ‘I do actually. In London.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Anneliese.’

  ‘Pretty name,’ Burkett said, and then frowned. ‘Isn’t it...’

  ‘German?’ Conrad said. ‘Yes, it is. She got kicked out of Germany last year.’

  ‘Jewish, is she?’

  Conrad glanced at his fellow officer. The question was posed innocently enough. One eyebrow was slightly raised, but Burkett’s face registered only mild curiosity. Yet Conrad realized he was being judged. Burkett knew Conrad was a leftie who had fought for the Bolshies in Spain. He knew Conrad spoke fluent German, although he didn’t yet know that Conrad’s mother was German herself. And now he had discovered that Conrad had a girlfriend who was not only German but possibly Jewish.

  Conrad could deal with Burkett’s ill-informed judgements about himself, but not about Anneliese. Anneliese and people like her were why Conrad had joined the army. Conrad knew, because he had seen it, that Anneliese had courage. For her, the war against Hitler had been going for years, and it was a war in which there had already been thousands of casualties.

  ‘Sort of,’ he answered.

  Burkett thought better of asking what that meant and took another slug of whisky.

  ‘There you are!’ Conrad and Burkett turned to see a tall, lanky figure with fair hair and a flushed red face standing at the door of the ante-room. The figure moved towards them, his eyes on fire.

  ‘Dodds! You are improperly dressed,’ Burkett barked. ‘We do not bring weapons into the mess. Go and hand it in to the armoury!’ Second Lieutenant Dodds was indeed still wearing his Sam Browne and service revolver.

  Burkett squinted at Dodds more closely. ‘Are you drunk?’

  At first Conrad thought Dodds was going to slug Burkett, or at least try to, but then he came to a halt in the middle of the room.

  ‘I might be drunk. But you are dead.’ He whipped out the revolver and pointed it at Burkett.

  Colour drained from the captain’s face. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

  ‘Put the gun down, Matthew,’ said Conrad, getting to his feet. The end of the barrel of the revolver was unsteady, but not unsteady enough that it would miss at a range of five yards.

  ‘Move out of the way, de Lancey. This has nothing to do with you.’

  ‘If you press that trigger you will be court-martialled,’ Conrad said. ‘Your life will be over.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said the young subaltern. ‘My life is over anyway.’

  Dodds was only nineteen. Conrad rather liked him. His father was a vicar in a rural parish in Lincolnshire. Although naive, he was enthusiastic, good under pressure and he had a kind of innocent charm that won over fellow officers and his men alike. Conrad had seen him reading and rereading letters from Angela, and he knew the boy was smitten. But this?

  He glanced at Burkett, whose face was now white. The mess orderly, a lance corporal and the only other man in the room, was rooted to the spot.

  Conrad took a step forward.

  ‘Stop, de Lancey! Or I’ll shoot you and then I’ll shoot Burkett.’

  Conrad took a step to the left. He was as tall as Dodds, but had broader shoulders, so he hid Burkett from Dodds’s view. ‘Put the gun down now, Matthew.’

  ‘Out of the way!’ Dodds cried. He took a step back away from Conrad, his gun pointing straight at him. Conrad held Dodds’s eyes. They were bright blue, glittering through moisture.

  ‘Captain Burkett, I’m going to step twice to the left,’ Conrad said. ‘You stay behind me and then back off towards the door.’ There was a door at the back of the ante-room, which led through to the dining room. ‘Corporal O’Leary, stand back!’ he called to the mess orderly.

  Conrad took two slow steps to the left. Dodds’s revolver followed him. Conrad could hear Burkett moving behind him.

  ‘I will shoot you, de Lancey,’ Dodds said.

  ‘No you won’t,’ said Conrad. ‘You might want to shoot Captain Burkett, but you don’t want to shoot me.’ He took a step forward.

  He could see indecision replace anger for a moment in Dodds’s eyes, but only for a moment, before it was replaced in turn by a new decision. In that instant Conrad knew what would happen next, but before he could move, Dodds had whipped the pistol round and pointed it at his own temple.

  ‘Stop!’ Conrad shouted. ‘Don’t do it, Matthew!’

  ‘Why not?’ said Dodds. ‘I was going to kill myself after I had killed Burkett. I’m going to be court-martialled anyway – you said it. And now I’ve lost Angela, I may as well be dead.’

  Conrad saw the boy’s terrible logic. ‘All right, Matthew, so you’re going to die. You’ve lost Angela. But why don’t you take a couple of the Hun with you? You’re a good officer. We’ll all be in France some time soon. You want to die, at least die fighting. Killing yourself now is the coward’s way out. And you’re no coward, Matthew. You are a soldier. A good soldier.’

  Dodds was listening. ‘But after this, they won’t let me fight.’

  ‘I won’t say anything. Neither will Captain Burkett – will you, Captain Burkett?’ Silence. ‘Captain Burkett?’

  ‘No.’ Conrad heard a croak from behind him.

  ‘And Corporal O’Leary didn’t see anything, either, did you, O’Leary?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Conrad took another step forward and held out his hand. A tear crept down Dodds’s cheek. He let the gun fall to his side, and Conrad gently eased it out of his fingers.

  4

  Wi
ltshire, 6 November

  ‘What happened last night, Mr de Lancey?’

  Lieutenant Colonel Rydal sat back in the chair behind his desk, his fingers steepled. Despite his grey hair, Rydal had a smooth face and an energetic air that suggested more youth than you would expect from a regular army colonel who had fought in the Great War.

  ‘Lieutenant Dodds and Captain Burkett had an argument,’ Conrad replied. ‘Over a girl. It blew over.’

  ‘Blew over?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I understand that Lieutenant Dodds drew his weapon?’

  Conrad was silent. He wondered how the colonel had found out what had happened. Both Burkett and Lance Corporal O’Leary had promised to keep quiet. Conrad wasn’t sure he could trust Burkett. And O’Leary might have told his fellow NCOs. Either way, it hadn’t taken long to get back to the colonel.

  ‘What happened, Mr de Lancey?’

  ‘Lieutenant Dodds is a good officer, sir. It’s my belief that he will turn into a very good officer.’

  ‘Good officers don’t get drunk and wave weapons around in the mess.’

  ‘No, sir. But it’s likely we are all going to be in France soon. And I know that I would rather have Mr Dodds behind me, or next to me, or leading a platoon coming to relieve me. Men like him are valuable.’

  ‘Rather than Captain Burkett, you mean?’

  That was what Conrad had meant but he couldn’t admit it. ‘In Spain I learned whom I could trust and whom I couldn’t. There were men like Lieutenant Dodds in Spain who fought bravely; many of them died bravely. And yes some of them got drunk and behaved badly. But I spoke to Lieutenant Dodds for a long time last night. I really don’t think he will cause trouble again.’

  ‘You don’t expect me to overlook this, Mr de Lancey? Without discipline this battalion would become a shambles.’