The Day Gone By (47 page)

Sometimes, having told the mess waiter more or less where I would be if anything happened, I would walk through the Nissen-hutted camp and out into the vast, unvarying plain. It was easy to stroll gently onwards, for the ground was as flat as can be imagined; never an undulation, never a bank, not even an occasional hollow. Away and away it stretched, eighty miles to Beer-Sheba, where I had never been. Could it, perhaps — legendary Beer-Sheba - be
three
shit-bins and
two
camels? It was refreshing to be in such solitude, in the scented night; but it was easy to feel homesick, too, alone under that great, unbroken hemisphere of sky. Yet precisely there lay the consolation - the stars. They were, over most of the sky at any rate, the same stars as at home, and I would look for Orion and Sirius, Leo and Gemini, Perseus and what Thomas Hardy calls ‘the great, gloomy square of Pegasus'. It reminded me of Robert Graves's poem ‘Are you awake, Gemelli?', about the soldier looking at the stars: except that that's so cold, and this was warm enough to make you sweat, even standing still among the dry, crackling haulms (for the plain had little or no grass, only tough, foot-high stalks of flowering scrub).

Now and then I managed to go to Jerusalem, where I had made Arab friends. It was a beautiful city, quiet and jasmine-scented at night; and in the morning you would wake to hear from the street outside the approaching, stylized cry of the news-vendor. ‘Fal-as-teen Po-o-ost! Fal-as-teen Po-o-ost!' I had a nice, kind-of girlfriend. I say ‘kind-of' because our meetings were inevitably infrequent and nothing ever passed between us but a kiss. Her name was Georgette Khouri (‘Khouri', I rather think, means ‘tailor' — Taylor) and her father, who was dead, had been a don at Jerusalem University. I continued writing to her for about four years.

On Christmas Eve, 1942, I went out to Bethlehem, all empty; and it snowed! (I assure you it did.)

During May 1943, a private soldier called Ron Coomber and I made an expedition to Petra by way of Amman and Ma'an. In those days, of course, Petra was far, far away and utterly desolate. We saw what Burckhardt, the ‘modern' discoverer, must have seen in 1812 - the silent, shard-strewn valley, the rose-red, maroon and sand-yellow carved façades
,
the split, pagoda-centred pediments, the flowering oleanders (though poisonous, they made good mattresses), the peacock-blue lizards on the red rock, the few scrawny Bedouin smoking camel-dung all night beside their glowing, camel-dung fire. (They seemed never to sleep.) There is a ruined Crusader castle high up on one of the hills. I wonder how the garrison used to feel in the thirteenth century?

All through this year I kept up my attempts to join Airborne Forces. It was fruitless: nobody wanted to know. I very much doubt whether my applications ever got beyond Pal. Base.

Meanwhile, Muriel Shaw (who, not hearing from me, had written to my father in England for my address) had come up from South Africa to take up a mysterious job in Cairo. We corresponded regularly and once she came to Jerusalem on leave, with her brother, who was also stationed in Egypt - at Heliopolis. So at last I met G. D. Shaw, a real, live, published Faber poet. I remember giving a dinner party, with the Shaws, some Arab friends and what wine the house could manage - several bottles of sparkling red burgundy. The visit was all too short; but it was reassuring, back on duty on the great Gromboolian plain, to know that at any rate as good a friend as Muriel was in Cairo.

All through 1943 the 8th Army continued their victorious advance: through Libya, through Tunisia; into Sicily, into Italy. And now British units were being returned to England for the Second Front. Palestine was emptying. We had a new O.C., a vain, coarse but good-natured fellow called Betton (not his name), who did no harm as long as you flattered him.

We received our orders to leave Al-Jiyah and entrain for Egypt. It so happened that Major Betton had to go into hospital for some sort of treatment; he would be rejoining us before embarkation for England. (The Med. was clear now, of course, and we would be sailing home direct, via Gibraltar.) With typical egocentricity and vulgarity, he devised a formal ‘handing over command' parade (there isn't one prescribed) in which he, of course, played the leading role. It was embarrassing: Salute: salute. Loud shout: ‘Captain MacLeod, I hand over the Unit - to YOU!' Salute: salute. Mac. hadn't been briefed on what he was supposed to do now, so he simply marched the blokes off. I expect it might have been past Betton at the salute, only he hadn't thought of that.

Back on the railway; through Gaza, past Rafah, out of Palestine and into Egypt. My black cat, Ramadan, travelled with us. He was a great favourite with everybody and I was sorry to think that I should have to leave him in Egypt. In the event, Muriel ‘placed' him with the Yacht Club at Gezira and I learned later that, as cats do, he had settled in quite happily and forgotten all about No. 2 Petrol Depot.

It was at the Base Depot in Egypt that I at last had some good luck mixed with the bad luck about my Airborne efforts. Army-wise, it makes a rather quaint little story. The Base Depot was under the command of a certain Colonel Sinclair, a white-moustached, Great War-medalled veteran who looked very like C. Aubrey Smith in
The Four Feathers.
You knew exactly where you were with him: he was a soldier (like Marian Hayter's father: all these have I observed from my youth up). I tried my airborne spiel on Colonel Sinclair, stressing the ‘young officer fretting for action' stuff. It just so happened that a day or two later, on his rounds of the camp, the Colonel dropped in on an Army Bureau of Current Affairs session (in plain English, a talk with the men about the news), which I was taking. I gave him the old ‘Party - party
‘shun!'
Smart salute. ‘No. 2 Petrol Depot, sir. A.B.C.A. session on Japan's role in the war!' ‘Right; carry on, Mr Adams, please,' replied the Colonel, and stayed for the rest of the period, at the close of which he said a few complimentary words. He was clearly on my side.

The next day I managed to get a recreational day pass into Cairo. Once there, I telephoned Muriel and took her out to lunch. Over the coffee, I told her about Colonel Sinclair and my recent efforts.

Muriel looked very carefully all round and then, in effect, behind the curtains and under the carpet. Then she said ‘Richard, are you quite sure about this?' I assured her that I was, and asked her why she asked.

‘Because that's what we do.'

‘Who? Do what?'

Muriel came clean. Since her arrival in Egypt she had been a member of a high security organization. What they did was to train volunteers for liaison with the Resistance and for sabotage in Yugoslavia, including, of course, parachute training. Then they dropped them and kept in touch with them by radio.

‘But where do you come into it?' I asked.

‘I do the high-grade cypher: teach it to the trainee agents and then keep in touch with them after they've gone off. Until they no longer come up
on
the wireless, that is. That's why I asked whether you really wanted to do it.'

‘I still want to; although of course I realize that if you're taken prisoner you get shot.'

‘'Bit more to it than that. They - talk to you first.'

I replied that the whole idea was very frightening, but nevertheless I'd still be glad of her help. Actually, this disclosure of Muriel's had taken me unprepared. Hitherto, I had always thought in terms of joining Airborne Forces proper - the red berets. This sabotage cloak-and-dagger stuff I'd never contemplated. Yet here was the opportunity, and I felt I ought not, after all my posturing, to say ‘Well, thanks very much, but I don't think I quite meant
that.
'

I walked back with Muriel to her place of work and found myself talking to one Captain Proudfoot. (That was not his name.) I explained my situation.

‘It's a pity your unit's on the point of embarkation,' he said at length. ‘But never mind: I think I may be able to keep you in the Middle East a little longer. Leave it with me.'

Next morning, back in camp, I received a summons to the adjutant: not our adjutant — the Base Depot adjutant. I went into his office, stood to attention, saluted and remained at attention. At the other end of the room sat Colonel Sinclair, pretending to be absorbed in some papers.

‘You went to Cairo yesterday?' began the adjutant.

‘Yes, sir. I had a day pass.'

‘But while you were there you went to see - well, you saw someone called Captain Proudfoot, didn't you? Who gave you authority to do that?'

I drew breath. Ho hum.

‘Well, sir, may I explain the circumstances?'

‘Yes, do,' he replied, in the tone of someone who would be glad enough to have them explained.

I told him the tale, conscious of Colonel Sinclair silently emanating ‘not-disapproval'.

‘Yes, well,' said the adjutant finally, ‘that's the worst, of course, of doing things unofficially.'

‘I didn't plan it, sir: I simply took the opportunity.'

I can't remember the rest, but apart from anything else, of course, the adjutant was in the position of dealing with someone who was seeking - well, excitement - while he himself was not. (No doubt he had a wife and children: I entirely applaud him.) I emerged with testicles intact.

Later, like Falstaff - or rather, not like Falstaff - I was sent for soon, at night. Colonel Sinclair said he was very sorry that they couldn't help me. They had tried. No way but I must go back with my unit. But he would write a letter for me to take with me.

Such a letter! It was everything that such a letter can be: gentlemanly, respectful (never know who it might get to), ‘in my opinion', ‘in my experience' (very wide, implied), warm, avuncular: implied reference to the Prime Minister's policy of encouraging people who wanted to pursue the war actively. ‘Have observed on duty and talked to this young officer', etc., etc. ‘I reckon you've cooked your goose all right,' said Captain MacLeod, with whom I'd always got on well.

The voyage home was uneventful. All I can really remember about it is that over Christmas - for we had Christmas 1943 at sea - I sang tenor in the drummed-up carol choir. To this day I can never hear what Laurie Lee calls ‘Wild Shepherds' without remembering that Christmas.

We disembarked in England and were sent to another depot at Bridgend in south Wales. All I can remember about Bridgend is a church with an eighteenth-century memorial stone to a blacksmith, and an epitaph verse (by the then Vicar, perhaps?) which labours the farrier metaphor in memorable style. ‘My iron is cold, my bellows is
(sic)
decayed -' Blacksmiths are, somehow or other, endearing people. ‘Felix Randal' is one of my favourite poems, and a lot of other people's too, I suspect.

A day or two after we got to Bridgend, Captain MacLeod strolled into my billet. ‘There's a posting in for you, to C.R.A.S.C., 1st Airborne Division. You leave us tomorrow, for Lincolnshire.'

At this point, reader, there should be something in the nature of a caesura: an induction in the text, an arsis in the voice of the narrator. What is that proximate glow in the sky ahead? No, you need not suspend disbelief. We are, in cold truth and with no hyperbole of my making, approaching great excellence and splendour, common as sunrise, greater than Alexander and his hosts, more glorious, tragic and terrible than Troy or Byzantium: the fury and the mire of human veins.

When George Orwell wrote that in America in the mid-nineteenth century human beings were free as they had never been before, he meant precisely that. And I am about to write of the bravest men who ever lived. But at that rate, I suppose, I cannot avoid antagonizing readers who have themselves served with men whom they believe - know - to have been unsurpassed. So I will simply call the British Airborne Forces
as
brave,
as
great-hearted as any men who have ever lived. Some — I suppose - may have been as valiant, but none more so. I never heard them spoken ill of.

I was not one of those valiant: but I was with them in a subordinate capacity; I wore their uniform and - largely because criteria were not exacting in all the exigency, haste and commotion of the war - was never sent packing. My leaky, ill-trimmed little craft fell in with the most heroic and glorious fleet that ever sailed, and for two years it was granted me to limp along with them, at least tolerated and undismissed. You should have known them. I have never felt more proud, fulfilled or happy before or since.

‘There's a posting in for you, to C.R.A.S.C., 1st Airborne Division.' When MacLeod said this, my heart turned over in real apprehension. They had taken me at my word! I had for long insisted that I wanted to do it and at last someone had said ‘Very well.' This was real. There was no going back on it now. The roller coaster had started and I was on it.

My trembling resolution was saved by two things, both of which I now know to have been illusions. First, at this time in my life, graded physically A1 as I was, I genuinely believed that what one man could do, another man, given the determination, could also do. Granted the physique, it was all a matter of purpose, will and intent. And I was determined all right.

Secondly, I supposed, with an inward qualm, that the discipline would be a prop and support. Presumably I was now on my way to a division in which firm discipline was the order of the day. I'd been in the Army for three and a half years, but no doubt I'd seen nothing yet.

I couldn't have been more mistaken. There was unbounded group morale but very little formal discipline in Airborne Forces. If they didn't like you, they didn't waste time in discipline: they didn't have to. They just got rid of you. They could pick and choose - officers and N.C.O.s anyway, and all parachutists, for they were volunteers. What I was going to find out was whether they wanted to keep me.