I Came, I Saw Part 6

The dictator-to-be was a handsome, witty man, ready with a smile and a joke, and it did no harm to anyone to allow him to overhear a reference to his old nickname El Mulato Lindo, meaning 'the handsome mulatto'. There was no nonsense about him. In the old days when he was a sergeant, biding his time to smash the generals, he had taken up with a washerwoman. Years later she bore him a son and then became his wife, and now Doa Elisa was still to be seen most mornings doing her shopping in Havana's department store, Los Encantos.

On one occasion the Castaos arranged for me to be presented at 'The Palace', but something went wrong with the timing of the appointment. A chamberlain alerted the President-to-be to my presence, and after a while, taken by surprise, he popped his head round a door. His face was concealed by the bandages soaked in lemon juice he often wore when relaxing, in the vain hope of reducing the swarthiness of his skin. Through this covering protruded a substantial cigar. He gave a flip of the hand and slipped back out of sight, and I withdrew.

Thus life in Havana went on; a city always dressed for carnival in which the rich feasted in sedentary fas.h.i.+on and the poor danced and starved to music. On the first day by the purest of chance we had witnessed gross violence of the kind that was almost a national speciality. Thereafter, behind the mask of laughter, there were always small violences and tragic scenes in plenty, but soon we became inured to them - just as, by the coa.r.s.ening of habit, a humane man may eventually come to tolerate the spectacle of a bullfight.

All the pessimistic predictions about the outcome of this expedition so far as Ernestina was concerned went wrong, for she did not tire of the pleasures of Havana, and showed not the slightest desire to go back to England. Suddenly, in this environment, she had developed a flair for a social life she found stimulating, and was the centre of attraction at parties given not only by Spanish expatriates, but by native patrician families, gachupines (wearers of spurs) who felt themselves a cut above Cuban colonists, most of whom had a dash of Negro blood. At such gatherings she sparkled, being a lively conversationalist, better read than anyone else in the room, and fresh with tidings from Europe, in the direction of which the eyes of all Cubans of the upper cla.s.s were turned with yearning.

Suddenly we found ourselves a success, members of the Yacht and Jaimanitas Clubs, invited to country homes, and lent by somebody with a fleet of cars an enormous Cadillac in order to be able to accept such invitations.

Cuba, larger than one would suppose it to be, sprawls half across the Caribbean. Most of it remained off the beaten tourist track, and in these rural areas where the oldest inhabitants had childhood memories of the days of slavery, a strong servile whiff was still to be noticed. When we were shown the old slave-quarters of the great houses we visited, their dungeons, the fetters and the stocks, a kind of nostalgic pride was in evidence.

We stayed on a vast sugar plantation near Bayam, and the owner, displaying his trophies, drew our attention to a case identical to those in which he kept his b.u.t.terflies, containing at first what appeared to be sc.r.a.ps of shredded leather, pinned in position as the b.u.t.terflies were. He was a man with a gentle deprecatory manner, who seemed to find life itself uncivilized, and he explained with a rueful smile that these were ears cut from the bodies of revolted slaves in the days of his great-grandfather. We went on to the veranda and looked out across the ocean of ripening cane to the great purple hump of the Sierra Maestra, lying between us and the sea. 'You can blame it on those mountains,' the plantation owner said. 'They had an unsettling effect on the field labour. They used to get away and hide in the woods, and the dogs had to be sent in to ferret them out. The best dogs came from England; the problem was to get to the quarry before they ate him. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you that. That's the way it was in a slave-owning society.'

'And were they all like your great-grandfather?'

'Of course they weren't. Some people wouldn't have dreamed even of thras.h.i.+ng a slave, let alone killing him. If you were soft-hearted and one of your slaves needed correction you sent him down to Bayam where there were professional floggers to handle it. The main problem was with new arrivals, before they had settled in. Some of the estate owners had them flogged once a week. They claimed it helped them to adjust. Please don't think I feel anything but disgust for the kind of things that went on, but these are the facts.'

Now it was the quiet season, with the weeding done and the cane cutting still months ahead, and until work resumed no wages would be paid. Employers gave their workers occasional handouts. Our plantation owner, who made an issue of a kilo of bread a day per family, thought he was as generous as most. His negroes collected a certain amount of wild fruits, and were in his opinion accustomed to steal coffee beans from a neighbouring estate. They also, he said, chewed the b.u.t.t-ends of cigars thrown away in the main square in Bayam. For a moment I could not make up my mind whether this additional information was meant as a joke, but it was not.

We looked down on a yard surrounded by buildings in which the cane was crushed, and the juice treated. Here a few negroes in ragged cotton trousers were using up time, looking much as their ancestors must have looked before the emanc.i.p.ation in the seventies. 'This is Africa,' the plantation owner said. 'You might as well go and live there and have done with it.'

A drum was thudding somewhere out of sight. 'They've built themselves a cabildo - that's a voodoo temple - on the other side of the sheds,' the plantation owner said. 'You probably noticed the image of Santa Barbara in my study. They sacrifice white c.o.c.ks, and a goat at Christmas to her. She's the same as Chang, their old G.o.d of war. You can buy all the stuff you need for her altar in Woolworth's in Havana. They have just as many White customers as Blacks.'

We asked the plantation owner why this should be, and he said, 'We made slaves of the Blacks and now it's their turn. They've done something to our minds. Half my friends are in one or other of the cults. This is a very strange place to live in. Do you know what a bocor is? They live in the trunks of cotton trees. They can raise men from the dead.'

'And do you really believe that?' I asked.

'You can't deny the evidence of your own eyes,' the plantation owner said.

When we left, the plantation owner said that there was some talk of bad weather on the way, suggesting that it might be wise to return to Havana by the Central Highway. Radio weather forecasts were extremely unreliable, he said, and to be on the safe side he sent a negro to consult the image of St John the Baptist in a local shrine, who as Ogun, African G.o.d of drunkards, was also a meteorological expert. The negro took an offering of the plantation owner's special reserve white rum in a cough mixture bottle, returning shortly afterwards with a message of thanks from the G.o.d - or saint - and warning us that a small hurricane was on its way and might be expected to reach the north-west coast later that day. I tried to telephone Havana in the hope of getting a second opinion on this, but the lines were unaccountably busy, so we set out for Nuevitas on the north sh.o.r.e.

Nuevitas was famous for the huge variety and numbers of seabirds breeding on a large cay just off sh.o.r.e, and as an occasional bird watcher I much wanted to visit this. In about three hours we reached the town, an eighteenth-century Caribbean survival full of colour, of rickety wooden houses and wayward streets, of boatbuilding and the smell of sawn mahogany planks, of saloons with swing doors and lean horses sagging at hitching posts.

Here, there was instant confirmation that St John's - or Chang's - prediction had been accurate, for the population was engaged with saving their boats, which teams of mules were dragging over rollers up into the streets and as far as they could from the water. A dramatic change had come over the day, for although the sun shone brightly enough, there was something discoloured and yellowed about the light, as if this frantic activity around us, this manhandling of boats and nailing-up of shutters were being viewed through coloured screens.

We found an open s.p.a.ce, a hillock from which we could look down through the coloured clapboard houses to the sea. It had fallen slack, but something seemed to be on the move under its polished surface as if a shoal of whales were about to surface. The sky curdled and darkened, throwing grey veils across the sun. There was not a flicker of breeze and the only sounds to be heard were the urgent tapping of hammers and shouts of the teamsters urging on their mules. Some miles out to sea a dark cloud, dense and fleshy as a negro's hand, pressed down on the water and was now rapidly expanding, and in a far corner of the field of vision the delicate wisp of a water spout joined sea and sky.

The small town of Nuevitas stretched into a promontory pointing at the great Cay of Sabinas and within minutes a wall of water charged into it. As it struck, the cay appeared to put up a crest of white water from one end to another, and we looked up to see thousands of seabirds flying before the hurricane, like grey ash from a conflagration blown across the sky. As the shacks cl.u.s.tered on the headland caught the first lash of the wind, walls and thatches were s.n.a.t.c.hed away. The next gust pelted us with airborne debris of all kinds, rocked the car on its springs and cracked a window. The moment had come for retreat.

The hurricane followed us for ten miles, then fell back, a clean-edged frontier of night behind the s.h.i.+ning palms. Within the hour we were in Camagey, where the news was that Germany had invaded Poland. By the next day, when we arrived back in Havana, England was at war.

Chapter Thirteen.

NOTHING COULD HAVE been more remote than the sound of battle in Havana. Secretly, too, nothing could have caused more joy to the small percentage of Cubans who in reality owned the country than the news that war had finally been declared. The large British community besieged their Emba.s.sy, demanding to be enrolled in any capacity in the defence of their country, and the Emba.s.sy paid tribute to their patriotism in an announcement in the Havana Post, adding a recommendation, that they carry on, while maintaining watchful calm, with whatever they happened to be doing at that time in Cuba. The posture was to be one of heroic readiness.

The dismantling of Poland occupied here, as elsewhere, the headlines for a few days, before relegation to the back pages. Apart from lack of any real interest in such a remote country, there were more important subjects for public discussion. As a general rule, the only time when countries producing raw materials can expect a good or even fair price for their production is when a major war is being fought. Cuba depended entirely on sugar, produced largely under American control and sold almost exclusively to the United States. The Americans had devised a system for keeping the Cubans under financial control, and thereby reducing prices. This was done by introducing a quota system by which Cuba had a fixed share of US sugar purchases, the rest going to other producers, and in three years alone, 1930-1933, the Cuban quota had been reduced from 50 per cent to 25 per cent.

The outbreak of war instantly and automatically put an end to this state of affairs, and even the visit to Havana of American film stars caused less excitement than the news, ten days after the German planes attacked Warsaw, that President Roosevelt had ordered the suspension of sugar quotas. Those who had pleaded to be allowed to sell even half the sugar they produced could now sit back calmly in the absolute certainty that there would be a scramble for surpluses held in warehouses. War bred shortages; armies in the field had to have sugar, and it was regarded as almost certain that Germany would enter the market. Acting as middlemen, the Americans were now prepared to take all the sugar they could get their hands on, and hardly had the bombs ceased to fall on Warsaw than the price shot up 1.5 cents a pound. Hope had returned to Cuba and the only slight remaining fear was that the Allies might come to an agreement with the Germans, causing the war to fizzle out.

Suddenly, with these rosy prospects, money had returned to circulation. The theatres were packed. Restaurant tables had to be booked days in advance, and rich men threw their half-smoked Coronas to the nearest beggar. Americans were flocking to Havana where it was forecast that the season would be the most brilliant on record. Temporary members enjoying a dip off the perfect beach at the Jaimanitas Club were served by waiters prepared to wade out into knee-depth water to bring them their drinks. The leading hotels connived with the system by which laundresses, straight from their work at such establishments as the Lavandera Tropicl, were on offer to guests, still in their working clothes and smelling of soap suds, as trabajadoras autenticas - 'genuine working girls'. ('Take a sniff of that, sir. None of your exotic perfumes there. That's nothing but pure soap.') But the gaiety palled, and the excesses wearied. I was not of the opinion that the 'phoney war' - la guerra fraudulenta, as the Cubans called it - would go on for ever. Patriotic fervour was hard to discover in 1939, and I was certainly not overendowed with it, but I had a feeling that I had placed myself in a position where great experiences might be missed. The psychological turning point for me came after reading a book on the life of Cervantes - never a one to miss an adventure.

While objecting to some aspects of life in Havana, Ernestina was on the whole happy there, while I was becoming bored. It was agreed that she should stay on with friends she had met there, but would almost certainly return to England in the spring. Such was the traffic in tourists between the United States and Cuba at that time that it was hard to get a pa.s.sage out of the country. Finally on 10 November I boarded a vessel of the Grace Line for New York, trans.h.i.+pped there without delay to the SS President Harding bound for Tilbury, and arrived in England on 29 November.

Part Four.

The Cause of War.

Chapter Fourteen.

AMAZINGLY, THE PROBLEM, AFTER I had straightened out my affairs, was how to get into the Army. Mobilization at the beginning of this war, in which few seemed to believe, proceeded slowly. In the absence of any soldierly qualifications the advice was to await the call up of one's age-group. After a winter in the extraordinary doldrums of this conflict I was contacted by an old friend Oliver Myers, whom I had first met on a train in Italy on my way back from the Arabian debcle. Oliver was an Egyptologist, director of the Sir Alfred Mond archaeological expedition to Armant from which he had been returning when I met him. He was a charming, enthusiastic man with an enormous range of interests, and spoke fluent though ungrammatical Arabic picked up from the Egyptian fellahin with whom he worked. Within minutes of our meeting on the train we had attempted to launch into a conversation in Arabic, from which we soon desisted as neither of us could understand a word of what the other said.

Oliver's news was that the War Office was eager to interview Arabic speakers, for whom it was expected there would shortly be a large demand. He himself had been interviewed, provisionally accepted for whatever the Army had in mind, and instructed to hold himself aloof from any warlike activity until sent for again. How was my Arabic these days? Oliver asked, and I told him that it was slightly better after the teacher at the School of Oriental Studies - unfortunately a Turk - had cleansed it of the worst of the Adenese barbarities. Once again we attempted to switch to Arabic but with total lack of success.

Next day I attended the War Office where an elderly lieutenant, clearly with an academic background, tested me on the basis of cla.s.sical Arabic of the kind taught in theological colleges in Cairo, which bears little relation to the language as spoken by the man in the street. He was discouraged by the result but not without hope, noted down various particulars and recommended further tuition to which I agreed. Some months later, after the war had started in earnest, with France defeated and overrun, I was called for an interview in a Mayfair flat. This time, although I was bursting with new vocabulary and had conquered the ten forms of the common Arabic verbs, there was no linguistic test. Instead the captain examined my face with interest, commented with satisfaction on the aquiline nose and dark eyes, and asked if I'd ever done any amateur theatricals. 'We might want you to dress up a bit,' he said.

The upshot of this meeting was that I agreed to be enrolled in the Intelligence Corps, with deferred embodiment. It was a safeguard, he explained, as my age-group grew near to being called up. 'We'd like to keep you on ice,' he said. For how long might that be? I asked, and he replied, 'I wish I had the faintest idea.'

Slowly the months went by. The news from Ernestina contained no mention of a return. She now seemed to have joined forces with a Guatemalan family and moved to Guatemala, from which she wrote long letters full of the most fascinating details of life in that extraordinary country.

Last week we stayed on the Echevarris' finca, which we thoroughly explored with them for the first time, and, found a previously unknown tribe of Indians living in some caves. Strange things can happen here. The current scandal is over the recent visit by General Nemisio Fuentes, the Mexican Chief of Staff. He was driving through Tapachula, the frontier town on the way home when a pretty ladino girl took his eye, and he decided to kidnap her. Five minutes later he was safe across the border. The President has heard all about it, and is said to be furious.

I stayed either with my mother or the Corvajas, who confronted the Blitz in London with their usual sangfroid. On 10 May 1941, in what was described as a thousand-bomber raid, a 1000-pound parachute bomb fell on the houses on the opposite side of the road from Number 4 Gordon Street, reducing half the street to a pile of rubble, and burying many of their occupants alive in their air-raid shelters. As the Corvajas' windows blew in, the period furniture in the front rooms was reduced to match-wood, the ceilings fell down, the part.i.tion walls collapsed, and Ernesto's decorated doors flew through the air like golden bats, he grabbed his wife and pulled her to safety under a table. The sound of the explosion was too great for the ears to encompa.s.s. 'The house shook, and there was a rumbling noise,' Ernesto said. 'It was like an earthquake.'

Fortunately Eugene was at home when this catastrophe took place, and he and his friends were able to make the house at least habitable, although the Corvajas camped out in it like gypsies until the end of the war. Eugene had registered as a conscientious objector, and I appeared to support him at the tribunal where - like the other half-dozen or so cases I heard - he was given a summary hearing and directed into the fire service. This proved to be far more arduous and - in the London Blitz - dangerous than military service, but he did what he had to do philosophically, in true Corvaja style.

Many bombs fell on Enfield, too - one fairly large quite close to my mother's house, although it did not explode. Spiritualists were under a cloud at this time because they had declared as a body, basing their confidence on information derived from the other world, that war would not break out. My mother was still in demand as a healer, though in this case too her following had fallen. Just as war lessened self-absorption and cut down the suicide rate, it also helped with bad backs, migraines and other disorders with a potentially psychosomatic content, which were highly prevalent in Enfield.

Some time after this I received call-up papers directing me to an infantry training unit in Northern Ireland, and I sent a letter in reply to this, explaining the circ.u.mstances in which deferred embodiment had been arranged. This produced a reply saying that deferred embodiment had been extended for a further three months. At the end of this period - it was now in the early winter of 1941 - a further and final notice ordered me, as before, to present myself to the depot of the Royal Irish Fusiliers at Omagh, to which I accordingly reported in January 1942.

I found myself one of a body of Intelligence Corps trainees. Whatever project that had called for a knowledge of Arabic and an ability to dress up had probably evaporated, or been forgotten, or I may have simply gone into the wrong file.

The first day at Omagh involved routine questioning.

'RC or C of E?' asked the orderly sergeant. 'You'd do better on the grub stakes if you're RC. They give you an egg every Sunday after ma.s.s.'

'Can I be a Buddhist?'

'No, but you can be a Jew.'

'What's the food situation?'

'Bad. No kosher cooking here, and you do the s.h.i.+t-house fatigues on Sunday.' After the first week at Omagh religion conversion became frequent.

At Omagh we received four months' basic infantry training, much of it absurd, some farcical. Endlessly we marched, saluted to the front and named the parts of the rifle, as the armies sent to the Peninsula and the Crimea must have done. It turned out that in this respect one was worse off in the Intelligence Corps than elsewhere for, leaving Omagh as a trained infantryman, it was only to be sent to the Intelligence Corps depot at Winchester, for three months of more or less the same thing. The outstanding novelty here was being taught, Army-style, to ride a motor cycle. Whether or not one already possessed this skill, it was a course that had to be gone through, and as most of the machines were grossly defective it produced many casualties. A ward in Winchester Hospital was reserved for the victims - of which I was one - and a Chinese-speaking White Russian in our intake, who was to be sent on a mission to Chiang Kaishek, was killed in the first lesson riding a barely controllable machine on which he went under a lorry. Winchester, where the training was by the NCOs of the Grenadier Guards, was the shrine and museum of ceremonial marching, and the commanding officer in those days, 'Mad John' Rankin, prided himself on the fact that one form, invented by Frederick the Great, was practised nowhere else.

Three months at Winchester were followed by two weeks at Matlock in Derbys.h.i.+re. Here for the first time the word intelligence came up, although the only instruction we received was in lecturing 'other ranks' on security. 'It's a good thing to get off on the right foot and put them at their ease,' the officer said. 'You'll find it helps to address them as "you f.u.c.kers".' He called me in at the end of the course. 'I've given you a commendation,' he said, 'but it won't make a sc.r.a.p of difference. There's a dozen things wrong with you, including the colour of your eyes. You have to have blue eyes to get a commission. You'll go into the dustbin with the rest of them.' By the dustbin he meant the Field Security Personnel, and he was right, I did.

The letters arriving from Ernestina continued to hold the greatest interest for me, and I could not believe that any correspondent since Madame Caldern de la Barca, whose letters were published in 1843 under the t.i.tle Life in Mexico, could equal them in their lively account of that part of the world.

I can't tell you how the Indians fascinate me. In the first place they are so mysterious. They remain an absolute enigma to the whites who have lived here for centuries. Take the symbols they weave into their cloth. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred will tell you they're no more than decoration. Actually they form a potted version of a tribe's history. I long to know more about them, but who to go to? Pedro Flores, the only man left in Guatemala who could interpret all the designs, died last month, and he could never be persuaded to write anything down. So slowly, everything is being lost. I've fallen in with a trick used by quite a few people here. When they go out into the mountains they carry an ordinary, good-quality blouse and a skirt with them. If they come across an Indian woman wearing a really marvellous huipl they try to persuade her to do a swap. Usually the Indians won't accept money, but sometimes an offer of sweets for the children does the trick.

Before I forget, Pablo Ruiz, the anthropologist I told you about in my last letter, speaks Maya Quiche fluently (I'm going to have a go at it myself), and he told me that the Indians believe Whites to be ghosts. His servants refer to him as 'the man ghost', and his wife Lupe is 'the woman ghost'. Imagine that!

The military treat them rather badly and we hear heart-rending stories of men being taken from their families, who are left to starve, and sent to forced-labour on the roads or the plantations.

There was no talk in this letter of any forthcoming return.

I had spent seven and a half months at Omagh, Winchester and Matlock, cutting the lawns with a table knife, marching ceremonially and falling off motor cycles, while the great battles in the East determined the outcome of the war. Now, ready at last, I was sent to join a section on active service at Ellesmere Port. It would be tedious to record absurdities of the kind shared by the soldiers of all armies, but duty at Ellesmere Port provoked frustrations of a special kind. For centuries the meaning of the word 'intelligence' had been changing, slowly a.s.suming overtones of intellectuality it never originally possessed. Even the Army had fallen into the error of upgrading the mundane task of gathering information, suspected now of breeding a kind of sinister power. Plain NCOs who had gone through the mill as I had, with nothing more than a green flash to distinguish them on the sleeves of their uniform, were seen as knowing more than was good for them, of being too clever by half, potentially dangerous, and therefore to be kept under constant supervision. To ensure this, the preferred Field Security Officer in charge of a section had sporting qualifications, and the senior NCOs who wielded the real power were plain soldiers brought into the Corps, chosen for reliability (it was hoped) rather than imagination.

In line with this policy, the ten junior NCOs of 91 Section, of which I was one, found themselves under the orders of Sergeant-Major Fitch, who had looked after the boiler of a Liverpool cinema until September 1939 when, after the attack on Poland, and being convinced that Australia, where he had been born, was likely to be invaded next, he had instantly enlisted. 'They put me here to keep an eye on your spry b.u.g.g.e.rs,' he admitted. Our duty in theory was to carry out a thorough search of every vessel entering Ellesmere Port, but even Sergeant-Major Fitch could see that this was a task to occupy a thousand men. 'Forget it, lads,' he said. 'There's nowt we can do.' He lived at home near the Nissen hut in which we were housed, and spent much of the time in bed, getting up in the evening to stagger through the blackout to the local for a half-dozen pints of porter. This man was strangely obsessed with coal, for which he had come to develop an affection while working in the cinema, and he always begged us when we went out to patrol the docks to take a haversack in which we could smuggle out a few 'cobs' from the various deposits in the dock area. He kept his treasure stacked in glistening black pyramids and ziggurats in his back garden. 'Take a look at this, you f.u.c.kers,' he used to say in a hushed voice. 'That's coal. That's a real f.u.c.king security. Better than having your money in the Bank of England.' So far as we knew, none of it was ever burned.

Having coped for some weeks as best we could with Sergeant-Major Fitch and his l.u.s.t for coal, we were delivered over to Captain Merrylees, who had been appointed Field Security Officer of our section, now to be kitted out for service overseas. The captain seemed at first glance to be all that the Intelligence Corps expected of an officer, tall, ruddy, fair-haired, with a ready - if slightly aggressive - smile and eyes of the most intense blue. As a rowing blue at Cambridge, the selection board must have seen him as a prize indeed, but what seems to have been overlooked was that he had taken a degree in languages (Old Norse), and had actually translated a saga - an unimaginably rare combination of physical and intellectual achievement.

We were called in to Winchester, where he a.s.sembled us for a thoughtful chat about our shared future, which he expected to be adventurous. We were going on an invasion, although he had no idea where. He laughed and frowned alternately, in either case without evident excuse. Then he made what could have been a highly significant remark, and one to be frequently repeated. 'It's all rather unreal, isn't it? Play-acting. Each man in his life plays many parts, and now it seems we're soldiers. Ah well.'

Captain Merrylees was accompanied by a Sergeant-Major Leopold with whom he seemed in some indefinable way ill at ease. The sergeant-major, although a young man, was an old soldier who could be a.s.sumed to know all the tricks, and there was. something in his handling of the captain that reminded me of a snake-charmer at work. He was a tall man, with a long nose and an exceptionally small head, and his manner seemed to contain both ingratiation and menace. Later, he too wanted to talk to us, receiving us in his quarters where we found him in the act of shaving off his pubic hair to rid himself of some infestation. This operation, only suspended while Leopold addressed us, razor in hand, may have possessed a symbolical intent. He was probably showing us in his own quiet way that he was very much down to earth. In the course of his remarks he mentioned that he had been at Dunkirk, from which - although he did not tell us why - he had been brought back to England in chains. These were the two men who would dominate our lives for many months to come.

On 15 November 1942 we went aboard the Maloca in Ellesmere Port to join the convoy a.s.sembled there for the invasion of North Africa. This eventually steamed westwards deep into the Atlantic before completing a great arc to enter the Straits of Gibraltar. Rough seas were with us throughout this voyage, and many men were seasick for days on end. We travelled in the hold in enormous compartments housing many hundreds of men. As many as could be crowded in slept on the floor, and above them had been constructed tiers of bunks. The occupants of these were forced to vomit over those beneath, and by the first night, as the s.h.i.+p ploughed into a heavy sea, the floor had become a lake of vomit, sluicing round islands of retching, groaning men and, whenever the s.h.i.+p gave a great slow roll to one side, pouring down to spill over the bedding of those placed at the edge of the hold.

When, many days later, we pa.s.sed through the Straits, relief took on an almost religious fervour. All those on deck joined in singing 'Tomorrow Is Another Day', which was the nearest that the English could get to a thanksgiving hymn, after which a party of Welsh sang 'Rock of Ages'. On 5 December we reached Algiers, the terminal of the convoy for all but three s.h.i.+ps. At Bougie our two companion s.h.i.+ps left us, whereupon the corvette escorting us to Bne repeatedly attacked a U-boat that was d.o.g.g.i.ng us, with apparent success, for after the corvette had released a number of depth charges the excitement was at an end.

We kept close in to sh.o.r.e, eyes fixed longingly on a rapturous pre-Raphaelite landscape, spring-like in winter, of fields sloping up to green hills through the deep, mossy shade of oaks. Among them glistened small white domes that marked the tombs of saints - a saint for every five or six square miles. Following the example of many others, I slept on deck that night, hoping to be able to swim ash.o.r.e if we were struck by a torpedo. Next morning, shortly after dawn, we entered the harbour of Bne. My first impressions of Africa at war are conveyed perhaps more vividly by a diary kept at that time than by resorting to memory.

7TH DECEMBER 1941.

Bne at last. Viewed from a mile or so, and at sea, a beautiful town with Islamic domes and minarets, although disfigured by several columns of black smoke, suggesting all is not well.

We soon learn that these are the result of a raid by German Stukas that has taken place at first light. We tie up and begin the immensely slow process of disembarkation of over two thousand men laden with their gear, down a steep and narrow gangplank to the dock, far below. Soldiers belonging to a docker company shout a warning to us to hurry as the bombers are expected back within the hour. There are great, smoking craters in the quay, and we see the bodies of several soldiers killed in the last bombing which have been tossed over the seawall. We stand in the great crowd of men pressing towards the top of the gangplank. Sergeant-Major Leopold seems in his element. He spent hours last evening preparing his equipment and now, his leather and bra.s.s starred with reflections, and blanco-ed to the eyes, he shows himself as the model soldier, equal to any situation.

After a wait of about two hours we are finally ash.o.r.e, get our equipment together, place a guard over it and set out to see the sights. Although buildings here and there have been taken clean out of a street by a bomb, we find many shops open, the impression being that Bne cannot bring itself to believe it is at war. After three alcohol-free weeks we make for a wine shop, and are quite astounded when an unperturbed saleslady actually gives us all the bottles we can carry, thrusting away the few francs proffered. No more bombing but some rifle-fire, due - as explained later - to a member of the docker company going mad and sniping away at anyone within sight. Some of the men unloading the s.h.i.+p are in a state of abject terror, and understandably so, having just seen comrades blown to pieces. One rushes up as we are about to move off, and grabs me. 'Please, please, please,' he says. 'I have to get away from here.'

8TH DECEMBER.

Night spent in a tobacco factory, like an enormous Kew Gardens greenhouse - all gla.s.s and likely to shatter into a million pieces if a bomb falls within a few hundred yards. In the morning collect motor bikes and set out for Philippeville where we are to take over the security of the port. Most section members drunk, and there are a number of spills - almost miraculously with no casualties.

On arrival at Philippeville go straight to Mairie where the FSO calls a meeting of all the authorities and addresses them in Latin. Ted Kingham, who is bilingual, is subsequently asked to translate, and produces a spirited version of his own which is loudly cheered by the a.s.sembled notables, who pretend not to notice that two section members have slid to the floor and gone to sleep. When the speeches are over we sing the two national anthems, and the French bring out more wine, which is gratefully accepted. After that we are escorted in triumph to the headquarters provided for us, a handsome seaside mansion, the Villa Portelli, on the route de la Corniche.

9TH DECEMBER.

The FSO calls a meeting to allocate jobs. He is smiling and twinkling, and well turned-out as usual, but in some way remote, an actor in a play in which he does not fit the part. Leopold is at his right, boots clamped together, stick under his arm, regimental fas.h.i.+on, a churchy expression on his face. He does most of the talking.

Only two of us, Kingham and Brown, whose fathers are French, are bilingual. Their jobs will be to liaise with the French authorities. Three junior NCOs are sentenced to the boring sinecure of patrolling the port, two are a.s.signed to visit the military units, one will run the office, one quickly jumps in to claim vehicle maintenance and ration collecting. This leaves one who will have to talk to the Arabs when necessary. Leopold's eye falls on me, and the FSO nods. 'Would that be just the Arabs in this town?' I enquire, and Leopold says no. He means the department. A wall map is unrolled which shows it to be a sizeable area, including the mountain range in Kabylie.

From seven in the morning when most of us are still dreadfully hung-over, French civilians are thronging at the door. It turns out that most of them are informers, and that they are drawn from all social cla.s.ses, from Monsieur Gaudinot, chef de cabinet at the Mairie, down to a man who has a tobacco kiosk in the main square. Their message in the main, when someone can be found to listen to them, is that the town is a nest of spies. In the absence of our French speakers they hang about for most of the day in a morose fas.h.i.+on, seizing upon anyone in uniform who comes within range to pour denunciations into his ear. Monsieur Gaudinot speaks enough English to make it clear what it is all about. The population of Philippeville, with the exception of himself and a small band of devoted patriots, are all pro-Vichy, and therefore pro-German, and he is in a position to produce doc.u.mentary evidence that about every person of substance, including his own brother - whom he particularly wishes to denounce - are in league with the enemy. He can also show evidence, often supported by photographs, that all these men are adulterers as well as notorious cuckolds.

One of our visitors, a smallish man with a red, polished face, sharp eyes and a severe expression, seems in some way invested with urgency and importance, and will have no truck with anyone but what he calls le chef de l'equipe. The FSO tries his Latin on him, and when this produces no results, orders an interpreter to be found. It transpires that the man is an executioner, who offers his services, complete with guillotine, to deal with any sentences of death pa.s.sed on civilians who, he understands, cannot under military law be shot.

Later in the day there is a chance reference to him when Sergeant Brown confirms much of what Gaudinot has already told us about the persecution inflicted by the pro-Vichy majority upon the few heroic supporters of General de Gaulle, all of whom - barring our timely arrival upon the scene - would certainly have been wiped out.

Brown has spent some hours at the prison securing the release of Gaullists held there under an a.s.sortment of trumped-up charges. One of the martyrs to the Allied cause had had a close shave indeed, for through some fearful miscarriage of justice he had been sentenced to death, and the executioner from Algiers (as we knew) had already arrived. Brown tells us that this man, Michel Fortuna, asks to be allowed the honour of organizing a civic dinner to welcome us. It is becoming clear how little we know about French politics. Several of our team, including the sergeant-major, had never heard of Vichy or its government until we landed in Algeria, and whatever they say in praise of General de Gaulle, it is hard to forget that orders were pa.s.sed to us at Ellesmere Port to arrest him if he ever attempted to leave the country.

The only other item of interest today was a visit to the FSO by the vice-prefect, accompanied by Captain Bouchard, head of the Gendarmerie, both of them speaking excellent English, at which security measures applicable to the civilian population were under discussion. Afterwards the sergeant-major tells us that it has been agreed that where arrests of French civilians or the search of their premises is deemed necessary, previous notice of such action should be lodged with the Sous-Prefecture. A face-saving formula, Leopold said, that does not apply in the case of Arabs, with whom we are to deal as we think fit.