The Man who Missed the War (27 page)

‘You are naturally surprised to see me,’ the figure remarked in a conversational voice. ‘But I asked permission to visit you for a special purpose. How are you getting on, Philip?’

Philip was still so astonished that he could only falter: ‘Oh—er—all right.

‘I’m glad of that because I feared you might be worried. You have no cause to be, you know.’

‘Er—thanks.’ Philip swallowed hard, then suddenly found his tongue and went on quickly: ‘When I said I was all right, though, I didn’t mean that I was at all happy about being adrift like this. The old Raft Convoy turned out a hundred per cent success, but before they could tow us in we got caught up in a storm, and now we’re God knows where.’

‘I know. I was so pleased that the Raft Convoy proved successful. But you must not worry about being unable to give the full results of your success to the Admiralty. That is quite immaterial now, as you may have already realised if you remember what I once said to you about the Great Planners.’

Philip shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.’

‘It was when we were talking of Atlantis, I think. Anyhow, I told you that the Great Ones often achieve their ends by methods which seem absurdly devious or even quite inexplicable to those who are still on earth. They have an end for you, or perhaps it would be better to call it a mission.’

‘I see,’ said Philip cautiously. ‘What do they want me to do?’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to tell you, because any foreknowledge of it would prejudice your own testing. What I
can
tell you is that your Raft Convoy idea was all part of the great design, because if you had not thought of that you would not be here or able to reach the place to which you are being sent.’

‘Oh, I say! If you know when the raft is going to be washed ashore you might at least tell me that!’

‘No, that is forbidden. All I can say is that you have a long voyage and an even longer ordeal in front of you. That is why I sought permission to come to you tonight. I wanted to urge you to meet whatever difficulties and dangers you may encounter with a stout heart. They will all be opportunities to practise fortitude and courage, and if you survive the earlier tests you will need those qualities in a very high degree when you reach your journey’s end. You are a chosen vessel, Philip, and if you prove equal to the burden that has been laid upon you no man of your generation will have done more to help bring about the defeat of Germany.’

As it finished speaking the apparition began rapidly to disintegrate.

‘One moment!’ shouted Philip. ‘Don’t go! Please don’t go!’ But the likeness of Beal-Brookman had already disappeared, and he thought that he was alone again until Gloria’s voice came from behind him with the question:

‘What is it, Boy? What are you shouting for?’

He turned to find her leaning half out of the manhole, and replied a little awkwardly: ‘Oh, nothing. I was just talking to myself.’

‘You were not,’ she said firmly. ‘You were talking to someone else. I heard you.’

He motioned to her to go in, followed her, and sitting down asked her seriously: ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

‘Indeed I do!’ She crossed herself quickly, and even by the light of the swinging oil lamps her drawn face seemed to go a shade paler as she added: ‘But don’t tell me we’ve to add a haunting to all our other troubles.’

‘No, there’s nothing to be frightened of. Of course, I may have been dreaming—walking and talking in my sleep—but I don’t
think so. Anyhow, it seemed to me that I was talking to Canon Beal-Brookman, a great friend of mine who died just on a year ago.’

‘What did he want with you?’

‘To tell me that we need not fear being drowned, but that we have a very long journey in front of us. It seems that the “Powers that Be” decreed that we should spend a long time on this raft until it eventually carries us to a place from which we may have great difficulty in getting home, but when we do I—’ He broke off suddenly and gave a not very convincing laugh. ‘Well, I shall be offered the opportunity of assassinating Hitler, or something.’

‘ ’Tis nothing to joke about,’ she said soberly. ‘Such visitations are permitted by the good God and His Blessed Saints only as a warning to us. Indeed, this one makes plain much that was hidden.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Why, look at the way we’ve missed chance after chance of bein’ rescued all these weeks. If a ship ever does come towards us sure an’ the night will be upon us before she’s near enough to see our signals. And when we did get ashore in Africa what happened then? ‘Twas chased off it we were by those lousy crabs, and in no time at all we found ourselves back on the raft adrift on the sea again.’

‘That’s quite true,’ he admitted. ‘It does look rather as if our extraordinary voyage had been ordained. It was the Canon, too, who appeared to me in a dream that saved me from Eiderman, and his voice that told me to take to the raft when the launch was sinking under us.’

‘You never told me that.’

‘Didn’t I? Well, it’s the sort of thing one never cares to swear to afterwards, because it seems too fantastic to be true, however real it may have seemed at the time. I didn’t see the Canon then—I only heard his voice—but it was as clear to me as the sight of him was tonight.’

Gloria nodded. ‘Let’s hope he’ll prove our Guardian Angel, then. Anyhow, the weather seems to be the better for his visit.’

There was no doubt that during the past quarter of an hour the storm had eased; so now that the raft was gyrating less frantically they settled down again to get some sleep.

On the following day a high sea was still running, but the weather had improved enough for them to be able to straighten up the disorder that always resulted from a storm. A part of the cargo had shifted, causing some breakages, the most serious of which was the radio set; but Philip unpacked the third and last one to replace it, and they could only hope that no further misadventure would rob them of it before they reached their unknown destination.

By the time that all traces of the hurricane had disappeared it was getting on for mid-March, and Philip’s observations showed that they were very slowly drifting south-westwards towards the coast of Brazil. An uneventful month followed, and they were still over a thousand miles from the South American coast when the radio gave the stupendous news that on the 9th of April Hitler had invaded Denmark and Norway.

At last, after all these months of inactivity since the conclusion of the Polish campaign, one of the great antagonists had made a move, although it was far from being the orthodox offensive that most people had expected.

The Allied military commentators were full of optimism and appeared to think that Hitler had stuck out his neck. They had ample excuse for their attitude in the pronouncements of a no less distinguished person than the Prime Minister, who was presumably the best-informed man in Britain. Mr. Neville Chamberlain told the House that Hitler had ‘missed the ‘bus’. The only conclusion to which Philip could come a few weeks later was that either the Government and its military advisers dwelt in a cloud-cuckoo land of their own and refused to accept the information that they were given, or that the much vaunted British Secret Service had fallen into decay between the two wars and was now no more good than an old rattle.

To Philip’s surprise and secret amusement the Nazi invasion of Norway brought Gloria into the war on the side of Britain, and her attitude changed from one of mildly benevolent neutrality towards the Allies to one of violent and voluble denunciation of the Germans.

For some reason that remained obscure she regarded the Czechs and Poles as troublesome, bellicose people who liked wars and therefore had no right to complain if they got hurt in
them; while, to her mind, Britain and France were senile, top-heavy states with possessions far greater than they were capable of managing efficiently. If they wanted to keep their ill-gotten gains it was only fair that they should have to fight for them every quarter of a century against some younger, more virile nation such as Germany. But Norway! And poor little Denmark! They were neutrals—
real neutrals
—people who did not want to fight and had nothing to gain by fighting. As she said in one of her early outbursts on the subject:

‘Why, it’s just terrible Hitler attacking people like that, and without warning too! It’s pretty near as bad as if he’d planned a secret landing in the United States.’

‘He would plan one,’ said Philip drily, ‘if it wasn’t for Britain in between. What’s more, if we weren’t fighting him and he did land an army in America you’d be in a pretty mess, because there’s damn’ little you’d be able to do about it.’

‘Hell! We’d do plenty!’ Gloria’s blue eyes sparkled.

‘I don’t doubt you’d want to, but you couldn’t; anyhow not until those million men of your first emergency call-up are trained and you have built up a really sizable Air Force. If Hitler landed an army in the United States before that, you’d have a pretty thin time.’

‘Don’t you worry. ‘Twouldn’t even get there! Maybe our Air Force isn’t all that hot yet—I wouldn’t know—but I do know we’ve got a mighty fine Navy.’

Philip nodded. ‘Yes. That might save your bacon—provided that the Nazis hadn’t landed in Canada or Mexico and established air bases in one or the other first. When you say you’ve got a fine Navy what you really mean is that you’ve got a lot of big ships. Well, so have we; but it still has to be proved that they are going to be worth the thousands of men and invaluable seafaring talent that is locked up in them. Just look here a minute.’

Opening the atlas, he pointed to the Skagerrak. ‘See that nice piece of open water there between Norway and Denmark. It is nowhere much less than a hundred miles wide. The Germans have to send all their reinforcements and supplies across that to maintain their armies in Norway. Now, the British and French Navies together are at least four times as strong in capital ships as the German Navy. Yet they dare not go in and cut the German
supply route. The simple fact is that, for the first time in this war, apart from its basic function of blockade, the Navy has been given the opportunity to play a major strategic rôle, but finds itself incapable of taking it.

‘In Nelson’s time it was different. He swept those waters and sailed his fleet right round through the narrower Kattegat to bombard Copenhagen. In his day a British battle squadron would have cruised there for weeks, or months, if need be, until the German Armies in Norway, entirely cut off from their bases and denied all warlike supplies, were compelled to throw in their hand. But it can’t be done in Nineteen Forty. The poor old Admirals still go on building their big ships, but at least they have the sense to know that one little aircraft sneaking out of a cloud with one armour-piercing bomb may prove a match for the biggest of them at any time. And as for sending the British Fleet to cruise in the Skagerrak in the face of the Luftwaffe—well, by the end of the week there wouldn’t be any British Fleet.’

By early May they were within a few degrees of the Equator and there, to their dismay, they became becalmed. It seemed that they had entered a tract of ocean uninfluenced by any current, and hardly a breath of wind came to ruffle the blue waters that shimmered faintly under the blazing sun.

Then on May the 10th came the news that the Germans had at last launched their attack against Holland and Belgium. To Philip it seemed that this great battle might prove the crux of the whole war, and it irked him bitterly to be away from home and so utterly helpless to aid his country’s cause at such a time. Gloria heard him the night the big news came through angrily stamping up and down the deck quoting Shakespeare’s ‘King Henry V.’

Looking up from the well where she was sitting, Gloria asked: ‘Would it be Saint Crispin’s Day tomorrow, then?’ Philip suddenly stopped his dramatic pacing and laughed.
‘Good Lord no! At least, I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, I haven’t the faintest idea when it is.’

Gloria was now taking a real interest in the war, and during the desperate days that followed they pored over the atlas together every time a fresh news bulletin came in. But Holland was forced out of the war in four days, and the Belgian Army, after displaying great gallantry, was compelled to surrender after seventeen. Through incompetence in the French High Command and a widespread lack of will to fight among their troops, a long sector of the Allied front collapsed at Sedan, the German armour was forced through the gap at breathtaking speed to the Channel coast, and the British, with another French Army, were cut off in the north.

‘Surely they’ll break through?’ said Gloria one night towards the end of May. ‘From the map there, it looks quite simple. Why don’t they, Boy?’

Philip grimaced unhappily. ‘Perhaps they will. There must be half a million men in that pocket, and you’d think that if they all went hell-for-leather at the German corridor they’d cut clean through it like butter. But the trouble is that in modern war so much depends on weapons. The British have practically no armour, and the tanks we have got don’t even mount as big a gun as our tanks had in the last war, so they’re chickenfeed for the Germans. Even the arms of the infantry are a quarter of a century behind the times. They have no automatic rifles and there’s not a single sub-machine gun owned by the British Army. As for parachute troops or flame-throwers—our Generals consider things like that to be comic opera! “Our Archers did darn’ well at Crècy, you know, but a jolly good new weapon called the Bayonet was brought in during the Seventeenth Century!”—and that’s just about as far as our Staff College at Camberley has got.’

‘Oh, come now! They can’t all be fools,’ Gloria protested. ‘And you say there’s no graft in England, so what’s the real reason for this?’

‘It’s the system. Nobody is ever held responsible now when they have occupied a high appointment and either made a mess of things or just drawn their pay and done as little as possible. There is never any inquiry held as to why even the most elementary things are overlooked or shelved. There are at least a score
of men who have held very high positions, and by either their stupidity or neglect have largely contributed to bringing Britain into her present danger. But they will never be tried and publicly disgraced. The Service Ministers will say that it was the fault of the Service Chiefs and will be given opportunities to make further muddles elsewhere; and the Generals and Admirals, who either had not the sense to understand the requirements of their Services for a modern war or else lacked the guts to fight the politicians for them, will drift happily into retirement with good pensions and K.C.B.s.’