A New Kind of War (17 page)

‘What was the food in Greece like?’
(The other officer
—
Philip? Philip the Pedant? Or Philip the Gourmet?)
‘It was quite deplorable when I was there in ’41. In fact, the one good thing about being comprehensively defeated by the Germans on that occasion was that at least they delivered us from the horrors of Greek cuisine. I only had one halfways decent meal the whole time I was there.‘

‘Yes?’
(Gourmet, for sure: gourmet if that was his chief memory of Greece; and gourmet equally from his reverence with Otto’s wildschweinrücken.)
‘Everyone’s pretty hungry in Greece just now.’
(Food was a safe topic, evidently.) ‘I
was anticipating much the same here, to be honest.’
(God! The potatoes were sheer heaven.)

‘Oh aye.’
(Crocodilian chuckle, friendly-sardonic-smug.)
‘Well, the natives are on rather short commons, as a matter of fact.’
(The Crocodile piled potato on an impaled slice of boar, and then topped the edifice with peas.)
‘In fact—’
(more peas) ‘
—
in fact I was talking to one of those AMGOT fellas in Trier, the other day—economist fella, fresh out of Whitehall—London University and Whitehall … never done an honest day’s work in his life, nor heard a shot fired in anger—shitting bricks, he was.’
(The Crocodile opened his jaws to full stretch, gold-filled teeth glinting in the candlelight.)

‘What was that, Alec?’
(De Souza again, from down the table; but all hostility forgotten now.)

‘Economist chap, Amos. Colonel’s rank … but he looked like a tramp in his ill-fitting uniform … one of those clever blighters who told us there wouldn’t be any food problems, back in March.’
(The Crocodile munched happily, glancing round the table as he did so, sure of his audience.)
‘“Geairrman industrial base destroyed by Allied bombing … agricultural set-up intact. No problem.”’
(Munch, munch, munch.)
‘“Don’t want any more tanks, jet-planes, U-boats—just a bit of coal … Take over Nazi food distribution system—minus the Nazis of course. Put them all in jail.”’

(The Crocodile’s knife and fork were busy again, assembling another mountain.)
‘All bloody nonsense, of course.’

‘How so?’
(Fred spoke before he could stop himself.)

‘Huh! Wish-fulfilment—the old, old story!’
(In goes the mountain.)
‘Industrial base
not
destroyed … If we want the best tanks, the most advanced aircraft, then they could soon start making them for us … Only problem is the transport system, which
has
been blown to smithereens. But that can be restored effectively enough, and quite quickly, given a few competent engineer units, and pioneer battalions—
you
should know that, of all men, Freddie—having done that halfway across Europe, in the wake of extremely efficient demolition by your Geairrman opposite numbers—eh?’

‘Yes.’
(Very true. But there was heresy here, somewhere.)
‘But the bombing—I thought their factories were destroyed?’

‘Propaganda. We knocked down their cities—flattened ’em. And latterly the transport system. But the industrial base is still there, most of it. Minus spare parts and fuel, of course … but that’s mostly a transport problem.‘
(The Crocodile actually put down his knife for a moment, in order to wag a finger at Fred.)
’But their agriculture’s gone to hell, so the farmers are hoarding what they’ve got … which isn’t much. And their distribution system was never very efficient. And we’ve clapped most of the petty civil servants who knew what little there was to know in jail, anyway—‘

‘Nazis, Alec.’
(Mouth full of wild boar now, Audley swallowed urgently.)
‘Only Nazis, Alec.’

‘“Nazis, Alec—only Nazis, Alec”? Oh aye!’
(The Crocodile mimicked Audley exactly.)
‘“Wicked bluidy Geairrmans” is it?’

‘You should know, Alec.’
(Audley wasn’t scared of his elders and betters, evidently. And unwisely.)
‘You were in Belsen ahead of most of us.’

‘So I was. But that doesna make me a fool, by God!’
(Pause. And then the finger wagged again, this time at Audley.)
‘You know where I was, in the winter of ’39?‘

(Pause.)
‘You were in on the poison gas trials in the Sahara, Alec. You’ve told us.’
(The boy’s voice fell just short of disrespect.)

‘So I was. And on the anthrax trials, on that wee island—that wee island where no man nor beast will step in our lifetime, and live to tell the tale. So what would that make me, if the Geairrmans had won, eh?’

(Pause.)
‘A war criminal, Alec. You told us.’

‘A war criminal. And they would have stretched my neck for it. And me just a slip of a lad, obeying orders.’
(Contempt.)
‘Nazis!’

‘Nazis—yes.’
(Amos de Souza, smooth as ever from down the table.)
‘Get to your point Alec.’

‘My point? Why, I’m there, man: none of ye understand what the Nazis were all about … and how the Geairrmans didna understand the man Hitler, until he had them in the palm of his hand—how the Right saw the man as something temporary, which they could cut down to size. And the Left—the Socialists and the Communists both … they didna understand him either:
they
thought he was parrt of the Right. Whereas in fact he was
sui generis
.“

(Longer pause, while ‘sui generis’ echoed in the dark, above the candle-light in the wet-smell, faint-alcoholic-tobacco-soap-and-underarm-sweat-and-khaki-smell
…
British-Army-smell, not so different from Greece
—
Germany-now-smell; but what was different now was that this man was in an altogether different officers’ mess from anything Fred had experienced before: it was bloody weird
—
)

‘Alec, my dear fellow … regardless of your quaint theories about Hitler himself—’
(Now it was Colonel Colbourne himself at last, equal-to-equal, and slightly cautious.)
‘—to pursue Amos’s point … Nazis—?’

(Pause.)
‘Aye, sir—Gus … We’ve been arresting the wrong men, is what I’m saying—it’s a bluidy nonsense, is what it is.’
(Pause.)
‘And I don’t mean just us, of course … But it’s beginning to be our problem, with nobody to talk to, who can give us answers.’
(Pause.)
‘Och … I mean, they’ve been taking in the police inspectors, and their sergeants … and the wee bluidy postman, and the station-master, and the schoolmaster … never mind the mayor, and the little civil servants … And I’m fed up, and sick, and
bluidy
tired of getting “don’t know” from what’s left, when I ask what you want me to ask.’

‘So what are you suggesting, then?’

(Pause.)
‘What I am suggesting, sirrr—
Gus
… is that we do like the Russians and the French have already done: we either shoot them out of hand, if we don’t like them. Or we leave them where they are, to do our work, which needs to be done.’
(Pause.)
‘And we get back all the middle rank servants too, from the camps—all young David’s Nazis, who had to join Corporal Hitler’s democratically-elected Party, or lose their jobs … They’re the ones who’ll do our work for us now, much better then we can do. And then we can always shoot them afterwards, if someone tells us to do so.’
(Pause.)
‘Because, having won the war, that’s our privilege—right? But, in the meantime, we have to make this country work, do you see?’

(Pause.)
‘We see what you mean, Alec—and we have heard it all before, actually.’
(Major Macallister’s voice was calm and donnish now that his plate was empty.)
‘And … I do agree that
our
work would be a lot easier if our people—ours and the Americans’—behaved more pragmatically, as the Russians and the French are doing … I would
agree there
. But—’

‘But it isn’t our job to run this country.’
(Amos de Souza’s tone poured oil on troubled waters, in default of imposing ‘mess rules’ on his brother officers in a more generalized grey area of argument.)
’Our job … is to obey our orders as best we can, with things as they are.‘

(Pause.)
‘And there are still people who can help us, you know, Alec.’
(Audley sounded eager and very young suddenly, and ingratiating with it; but that might be to keep the Crocodile away from Sergeant Devenish and Driver Hewitt!)
‘I found a super policeman, just the other day. And he said—’

‘Shut up, David!’
(Colonel Colbourne’s sharp command belied its own ‘mess rules’ friendliness
.) ’That’s enough.‘

‘You were saying, Alec—’
(De Souza moved in smoothly behind his commanding officer, to obliterate Audley’s gaffe.)
‘—you met this AMGOT fellow, who was shitting bricks … so what did he have to say, then?’

‘Eh?’
(The Crocodile struggled with de Souza’s direct question for a moment, unable to avoid it.)
‘Listen to the rain, man—do ye no hear it?’

(For another moment they all listened to the sound of the rain splashing distantly over brimming gutters.)
‘So it’s raining?’
(Amos de Souza smiled.)
‘According to Gus’s American friend, Major Austin, it’s raining all the way from here to London—and Land’s End in Cornwall … So what?’

‘Aye. And that’s the sound of Europe starving this winter, man.’
(The Crocodile had forgotten his Nazis, and Sergeant Devenish and Driver Hewitt with them. But suddenly he was looking at Fred now.)
‘Was it England ye flew from this day, man—?’

‘What—?’
(The memory of the hair-raising flight was equally best-forgotten!.)
‘No. It was … ’
(Best forgotten!)

‘Oh aye! From Greece, it was—?’
(Pause.)
‘Are they starving there?’
(Pause.)
‘If it goes on raining, and the harvest fails … then the Americans will be feeding us by the autumn—aye, and feeding the Geairrmans too, if they’re lucky—the Nazis and all the rest, as well as Number 21 in the picture tonight—’

‘Alec!’
(Colbourne didn’t say ‘Shut up!’ to Major McCorquodale, but he came close to doing so.)

‘I was in England not so long ago, actually.’
(A new voice came from down the table, almost as lazy as de Souza’s, from one of the faceless officers outside Fred’s direct range of vision.)
‘In London … it was quite dreadfully … threadbare, you know. So I thought about Paris. But, apparently, it’s just as bad there—the fellow at the Embassy I spoke to said that you had to bow and scrape to head waiters to get any sort of decent meal … and as I wasn’t going to do that I ended up going down to our place in the country, where my wife is … where I thought I might at least get a square meal—away from the rationing with no bowing and scraping—?’

‘Oh aye?’
(The Crocodile leant forward to fix an insulting eye on the interrupter.)
‘And, of course, your family does own half of Wiltshire, doesn’t it, Johnnie. Or is it Berkshire? So they wouldn’t be starving, then.’

‘Starving—?’

They say—‘
(Amos overbore the beginnings of Johnnie’s outrage diplomatically, like the good adjutant he was.)
’—they do say that the hunting in the shires will be exceptionally good this autumn. Is that true, Johnnie?‘

‘Is that a fact?’
(The Crocodile got in first.)
‘And how do they eat the foxes down in Wiltshire? Da they roast them over a slow fire? I’d have thought fox-meat would be a wee bit tough, and stringy … Maybe you should ask Otto how he cooks foxes, man? That is, unless Oscar Wilde knew what he was talking about—“the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”, didn’t he say?’

(Christ! The Colonel must do something now! Because that was as naked an insult as might be imagined in this company
—
not even Amos de Souza’s diplomacy could gloss over the Crocodile’s deliberate scorn!)
‘

‘Eh—?’
(Down among the candles and the silver and the glasses ‘Johnnie’ wasn’t quite sure he’d heard what the Crocodile had said.)
‘Who—?’

‘My ancestors ate rats,’ said de Souza. ‘The rats ate the ship’s biscuits—and then they ate the rats. But that was in Nelson’s time, in the navy. But they used to say that a biscuit-fed rat was as good as a rabbit. So maybe rabbit-fed fox isn’t so bad, perhaps?’

That’s a most interesting proposition, you know.‘
(The mention of food enlivened Philip Macallister’s otherwise dry, academic delivery.)
’Dog, which I ate in Shanghai …
dog
is perfectly edible—even potentially delicious. And rat certainly has a long and honourable history of consumption in the extremities of siege-warfare.‘
(Now the voice was gourmet-academic.)
’Human flesh is preferable to both, I’m told. But I’ve never been reduced to that extremity.‘
(Horribly, the voice was characterized by faint regret, rather than distaste.)
’I believe that sailors ate it often enough in the old days. But as it was usually uncooked; they left no recipes for it.‘

‘Oh aye?’
(The favourite Crocodilian-Scottish interruption.)
‘Well, there’ll be Gearrimans able to satisfy your curiosity there, Philip, before this time next year, I shouldna wonder. So dinna give up hope, man.’

(Pause
—
pause elongating into embarrassed and horrified silence as those who had not finished their wild boar suddenly contemplated it with wilder doubt for an instant, and then with distaste.)

‘I see.’
(Amos coughed politely.)
‘What you’re saying, Alec … is that the Germans will be starving soon—is that all?’

(Fred swallowed his last mouthful of boar with an effort, feeling it go down insufficiently chewed, to join the deer ham which was churning up in his guts.)

‘What I have been saying, Amos—’
(The Crocodile pushed his empty plate away and reached for a toothpick with which to dislodge a morsel of meat from between his teeth.)
‘—is that the wee foolish men who are supposed to be making policy for us do not know what they are doing. They are starving the Geairrmans by accident, not by design. While the Russians, they have no such problems because they have no romantic notions about their roles as conquerors. So, with them, the Geairrmans know exactly where they are … Whereas, with us—why man, they know us for the fools we are! So the clever ones among them … they are neither scairt of us, nor do they trust us.’
(The Crocodile reached for his glass, and held it up to the candles’
light for an instant, and then drained it in one swallow, knowing that he had the whole table hanging on his next pronouncement.)
‘Waiter!’
(He waited while the one-eyed Otto refilled his glass and then raised it mockingly to the Colonel.)
‘Which may well be why this unit is having such little success, I’m thinking—eh, Colonel sirrr? Or may we hope for better luck tonight—?’