by Cecil Beaton
At last the crowd of fellow would-be passengers moved excitedly. The aeroplane had now left Chengtu, would be here in an hour. Meanwhile, the clouds were darker and lower as the rain fell like string. Soon we could hear, but not see, an aircraft as it circled above the cloud-enveloped mountains. The roar of engines became deafening as we watched one of the most spectacular landings ever attempted. A vast pale-grey shadow suddenly appeared through the mist between the mountain gorges and the wires stretching across the river. Within fifty feet of the landing strip the shadow turned to substance as, with a torrential splashing, the aircraft landed dead straight on the runway. The passengers and pilot came out bland and smiling, but I should have needed hospital aid if I had been parti to such a dangerous feat. As it was, the take-off was not going to be much fun, although informers said it would be less perilous than the arrival.
Grateful to Stanley for all his help, his patience and enthusiasm, I bid him good-bye. In the downpour about thirty of us made our way towards the aircraft. At the take-off my hands trembled. Soon our heads were bumped on the metal ceiling, then we were sprawling on the floor. A pink-faced American next to me said, ‘Oh boy, I wish we’d bump some more. Oh boy, it’s exciting.’ The Chinese were immediately sick. I tried to take my mind off my terror by eating an egg sandwich, but this became sawdust in my mouth. I tried to read — couldn’t: tried to sleep — couldn’t.
As if a lantern slide were quickly changed outside the porthole, the blank of blind flying ceased, and we were over harsh, clear mountains. Then the lantern slide changed to a scene of gentian blue, yellow and silver clouds with a jagged mountain floor below. The ‘Hump’, treacherous and merciless as it was, has a grandiose, Wagnerian beauty.
Nevertheless, it was with a sense of relief that we arrived at Din Jan for refuelling and sandwiches. The Indian atmosphere, foetid and tropical, soothed one: the smells, so peppery, curry-flavoured and spiced, were enticing.
Evening had turned to night when the aircraft took off again. We flew for an unconscionable time. All the passengers were almost crying with exhaustion when, at longest last, we flew towards some distant lights, and we realized the pilot had located our goal. At last we were back in Calcutta: as we drove along familiar roads to my home from home, I felt I had come out of jail or was freed from the Gestapo. India! Civilization! Comfort!
CONVERSATIONS IN INDIA
Thursday, June 29th, Calcutta
At dinner Casey told us of a letter he’d had from General Ismay describing the suspense in England before ‘D Day’. At the last moment they’d had to postpone the invasion on account of the weather. This was a terrible thing to have had to do. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said the men, all keyed up to go. But, even after the delay, the enemy had been taken by surprise, and the casualties were fifteen per cent less than expected. On the night before the great day everyone terribly strung up — some facetious — but ‘one person — you can guess who!’ — was particularly surly and difficult. I could visualize Churchill’s mood.
Sunday, July 9th, Delhi
The great heat: everyone wringing out their handkerchiefs: everything dead-looking: the gardens dried up. The Viceroy’s house was half-shut, and all Europeans who remained appeared pale and much thinner. The heat, it seems, has been like a plague. Sat next the Viceroy at dinner: this rather a strain as small talk comes to Wavell with difficulty. I feel sorry for the good man not being able to converse, for he is apt to be as awkward and floundering when with his son (than whom there is no one in the world he loves more) as he is with idiotic strangers. Wavell said he thought the invasion in Normandy had gone well in spite of appalling luck of having one month of foul weather since ‘D Day’; that after a slow start there might be a run forward any time now. The flying bombs on London were causing minor havoc. One bomb fell on the Guards’ chapel during a Sunday morning service and killed most of the congregation. One of the dead was Boy le Bas’s sister. Gwen, an enchanting, flower-like girl, with periwinkle eyes, was a star of prettiness and sweetness during my Harrow and Cambridge days.
Was arranging to leave for Simla when a chit arrived saying the Viceroy wanted to see me to talk about China. Went to his almost freezing study with a few pencilled notes. Wavell asked me to show him our route on the map. After that he was not interested in my gabbling, for it all came under the same heading — hopelessness. He said, ‘I’ve been under no delusion about China for the last three years, but couldn’t say anything.’ Wavell told me he was getting his staff to work out a comparison between the resources of India and China: he feels that India is much the better bet as a proposition. Had hoped for a long and illuminating discourse from HE: but he was busy and, after a slight reference to the Generalissimo’s love affair (Wavell said a meeting was called at which it was decided that all mention of it must be censored, and that the two Chiangs agree on one point — they both deny the existence of a romance), I was out of the room and back in an atmosphere that, in comparison, felt like the orchid house.
Finished the day in an air-conditioned cinema where the temperature was too great a contrast to the appalling heat of the day. This was my first visit to the pictures since being away, and I was very moved by the newsreels of ‘D Day’ and overcome with nostalgia for home. The smiles of the men taken before the start of the invasion were charming, spontaneous and moving. One young man screwed up his nose as he smiled — one’s heart missed a beat. Subsequently, the real horror of the undertaking was most graphically shown.
A telegram from home saying Pelham Place had been knocked about by a flying bomb.
Thursday, July 13th, Simla
When we woke there was a hurry to get out of the train which had arrived at the base of the mountains. Here we must change to the motor rail — a toy train that would chug its way in coils up the mountainside. First stop at 2,000 feet, another at 4,000 and, eventually, at 6,000 feet we were at the foot of the Viceregal Lodge and garden, and were welcomed by rickshaw attendants dressed in scarlet and indigo blue. How pleasant, after the drab dustiness of Delhi, to breathe in the crisp mountain air and the smell of healthy moss, ferns and palms. A brisk canter up steep asphalt drives and we were presented with the surprising spectacle of a huge, grey stone castle. It was, I believe, built by a former viceroy, Lord Minto, in the Scottish style by an Indian architect who had never left his country. The result is most bizarre. We were back among the faded snapshots of 1895: house-party groups on the porch steps and croquet on the lawn. Even the vegetation with Virginia creepers winding up stone pillars and iron staircases, and cascades of Dorothy Perkins’ ramblers gambolling high among the tallest pine trees, seemed to belong to the past. The well-trimmed garden beds were planted with stiff, formal salvias in formations of military precision. Old-fashioned, starch-white wooden garden seats were set against vast hillocks of harsh pink hydrangeas. Everything was damp, lush and flourishing (the rain pours gently most nights of this month). Against this green the towering, blue Himalayas looked rather Scottish.
Inside the castle all styles were incorporated in a series of rooms that gave out of a vast baronial, balconied hall; each room was panelled and well appointed, but all the proportions were at fault, and so, too, the texture of furniture and furnishing. The eye was assailed by jaundice colours. This was a quaint monument to near-luxury that counted little in taste and charm.
Yet the comfort was almost unique in the war-torn world today: fires were crackling healthily in the grates, flowers stood stiffly arranged in ugly vases on occasional tables, and desks were well stocked with thick, crested writing paper. With as many servants and as much food and drink as we could contend with, no one, except the servants, was impressed.
Most of those enjoying the amenities of the viceregal hydro were recuperating from long ordeals in the jungle, or were recently discharged from hospital to start life again, minus a limb or a sound body. For Simla is not only a retreat from the heat of the plains but has become a great resuscitation and leave-centre, and most of its
population is now wearing hospital clothes. Wandering about the garden with Peter Coats, the comptroller, he eulogized Wavell’s campaign in North Africa; with totally inadequate forces and only a few tanks and small supplies at his disposal, the brilliance of his feat would be appreciated by historians.
We lamented Churchill’s dislike of Wavell: this had started with Churchill’s jealousy after the Sidi Barrani campaign. Churchill said Wavell was like the president of a seaside golf club, and criticized him harshly in front of President Roosevelt in Washington.
Unexpectedly, we came across George Abell, Wavell’s Second Secretary. He said what a great man his master was. There was nothing small in his brain: he couldn’t take in petty details, and only thought in broad terms: it was wonderful to work with someone like that. He said Wavell had a great gift for writing simple English, and that his letter, written to the King after he had been out here six months, was one of the most illuminating, informed, spontaneous and vital documents the monarch could ever have received.
Discussing Gandhi’s latest proposals, Abell said they were just a further attempt to blackmail his enemies, and that Wavell considers his latest utterances are those of a dying man. Gandhi was only released from prison because they did not wish him to die in captivity, but the doctor’s reports seem to have been unnecessarily pessimistic, and many people now said there was little chance of his dying soon. Yet his recent behaviour had been so pettifogging that even his supporters were slightly ashamed. Abell said that Gandhi with his people was like a clergyman with spinsters.
Returning to the front of the house we joined the Wavells playing golf-croquet. Lady Wavell full of smiles, sighs, tired, untidy, and wearing a pair of really bad shoes, was coy at successfully holing out with two long putts. Sycophantic laughter from the entourage. The Viceroy, gauche and clumsy, pivoted like a top when he missed a shot.
At dinner I got HE again. Drew him on to talk of the theatre, and for a while his enthusiasm was kindled. He laughed rather wryly about certain anachronisms in plays and films, and told me about an American movie of Mary, Queen of Scots, in which a warder entered, saying, ‘You’re for the block, Madam.’ Praising Herbert Tree, he said that he was responsible for putting Shakespeare back on the stage. He liked Tree’s wit. Returning an appallingly bad play submitted by some amateur, he wrote, ‘My dear sir, I have only just now found time to read your play. My dear sir!’ At a rehearsal Tree, directing, had said, ‘Now, ladies — a little more virginity.’ I remarked that it was sad that his brother, Max Beerbohm, had become recently such a querulous old man, complaining on the radio of today’s vulgarity and the way the world was going. Wavell said, ‘I expect in thirty or forty years you will be deploring the lowering of standards. I can hear you, as a man of seventy, regretting these old times when you sat having dinner here in a panelled room.’
The radio news told us of more flying bombs on London, and of deep shelters being opened; I felt how remote, and how horribly safe, we were here; yet, in spite of the Victorian comforts, this life is stifling and inhibiting except for the shortest of rest cures. I know that all of us are imagining the horrors that are taking place at home, and yet we can do nothing about it except to be busy on the job. Early bed (10 o’clock) a solace for the entire household.
AMERICAN STORM TROOPERS
Saturday, July 22nd
Four American storm troopers, Merrills Marauders, came to my sitting-room to be interviewed. Before the war one was a truck driver, another a pin-setter in a bowling alley, a third would have become a farmer only he was too young. They have just been flown out of Mytchima after four and a half months behind the lines. The battalion had fought sixteen engagements, but they had kept up the pace too long. They lost quite a lot of men, mostly through typhus: only those with a strong enough will to live had pulled through. Meanwhile, they were not fit to be sent back yet, were enjoying their leave — quietly — not overdoing things, preferring to talk leisurely ‘like gentlemen’, enjoying just a drink or two.
They were startlingly frank, without mental reservations or shyness, describing how frightened they had been. ‘When a dog got loose behind the bushes I thought it was a Jap, and was much more scared then than, when crossing a river, a sniper was after me.’ At night, if a bird whistled, a monkey screamed or the slightest sound was made, they were all wide awake. They never expected more than four hours of sleep; the first thing to do each morning, before eating, was to pack belongings, to be able to take off at a second’s notice.
I asked if they felt apprehensive of getting ill and being a liability to their fellows. ‘No, there’s a lot of things that could happen you don’t think about. But you think about killing Japs. It’s important to kill them because, if you kill them, they can’t kill you; and, incidentally, we fill them plenty full of bullets.’ A cheery, apple-faced boy re-enacted, in graphic mime, an unexpected encounter with a Jap, who poked his head around a tree only five yards away. The Jap’s rifle was hanging upside down under his raincoat. ‘It would have taken him half an hour to get it into position, so he just smiled at me while I threw a grenade at him.’
They talked about the monotony of the rations, dropped with great precision. But sometimes they were too near the Japs for their positions to be given away by a dropping, and then they went three days on end without food. Occasionally their greatest delicacy, doughnuts, were dropped: generally they were as hard as grenades, even after being soaked a day in water. ‘But they were good enough to eat!’ These little-more-than-boys had outwalked their Missouri mules with sixty-five-pound packs on their back: the animals fell flat on their stomachs, with outstretched legs — ‘Then we had to shoot ‘em, and before leaving, we’d cut off a lump of flesh and cook it later. It was good enough until someone mentioned that we were eating horseflesh, then I’d have to spit it out, and later start over again.’
One, a pale, green-faced young man, seemed slightly jittery; he confided that the sight of some of his friends bayoneted by the Japs had left an indelible mark upon him. He had left his buddy in a trench for only a few moments; when he came back, ‘he saw something he didn’t like seeing’. ‘My buddy had been bayoneted in the chest, and he hadn’t a shirt on.’ He seemed quite cynical about the people at home. ‘They are not interested in us out here; they can’t be bothered with the war in Burma — it’s too remote — they are busy making fifteen dollars a day, and that’s enough for them.’
The driver talked about prayer. ‘I never believed in that stuff before — but I do now.’ The pin-setter said he had prayed in every fox-hole, and that most of the guys he knew prayed for hours on end.
These chaps from the Middle West fitted into this Kiplingesque scene here with great ease of manner. They were extraordinarily easy to converse with, and much more communicative than the equivalent BORS. America can certainly produce a good brand of democracy.
I was greedily availing myself of the secretarial services of Mr Bannergee, and trying to finish some articles before leaving, when Peter Coats sent up a note saying word had come through that, as I had requested, it will be possible for me to go home via the United States: moreover, I can leave as soon as possible. The blood ran quicker in my veins: suddenly I became restless and excitable. Is it possible that, after all, I shall see my New York friends again?
GOOD-BYE TO WAVELL
Have just bid good-bye to Wavell. It was rather a moving little scene. This fine man is incapable of glib sentences. But somehow he wanted to show that, although we are so many poles apart, there is something in each of us that responds to the other. We have a mutual admiration for one another, and the fact that he approves of me makes me inordinately proud. I find Wavell has a genius for cutting through the façades, and seeing people as they really are, in spite of their shyness, their alibis, and their sometimes false presentation of themselves.
As for him, although his personality is not particularly vivid or spell-binding, he is deeply impressive. He never tries to charm or hypnotize, but cannot h
elp emanating integrity of mind, directness of purpose and unaffected simplicity of style. Indians, who are always quick to note the dominant characteristics of Englishmen, are the first to appreciate the golden goodness of Wavell. They know that he is entirely devoid of malice, deceit or guile, that he is eminently fair, and, above all things, sincere.
To be complimented by him is a reward well worthwhile. For in his dry and somewhat melancholy voice, and talking quietly, without moving his lips, and in a tone that is deep and easy to listen to, he says nothing that is banal. His thoughts are never ready-made, and his conversation is carefully chosen. Literature and poetry mean much to him. At dinner at Emerald Cunard’s one night he recited extemporaneously Browning and Dowson at great length.
He is a taciturn man, and can be as silent in the mess as on purely social occasions. But his silences are completely unself-conscious. He has extraordinary powers of concentration: when he is thinking it is a full-time, absorbing occupation, and he is oblivious of the world. I have sometimes tried to interrupt his thoughts, and only succeeded in realizing how foolish was the attempt. Occasionally the wife of some wretched official, sitting next to him at a meal, tries frantically, but in vain, to trap him into a conversation. The woman becomes distraught. Yet, if he is interested, he can become voluble.
