Eastern Approaches (64 page)

The end was now in sight. It had been decided that Ralph Stevenson, who for nearly two years had been our Ambassador to successive Royal Jugoslav Governments in exile, should, as soon as a united Government (also technically Royal) was formed, simply transfer himself to Belgrade, thus tacitly emphasizing the continuity of the monarchic principle. Preparations were made to fly him in as soon as the new Government was in being, and I got ready to leave.

Shortly before I left Belgrade, Field-Marshal Alexander, who had recently succeeded Field-Marshal Wilson as Supreme Allied Commander, came over on a visit. It was a great success. Tito, who knew something of Alexander’s record in both wars, had taken a liking to him when they first met at 15th Army Group Headquarters, while the Field-Marshal, for his part, genuinely admired Tito as a guerrilla leader and recognized his undoubted services to the Allied cause. The visit was made the occasion of a series of entertainments of unparalleled magnificence culminating in a ball given by Tito at the White Palace, which incidentally also served as a farewell party for myself.

From Belgrade the Field-Marshal, taking me with him, went on to visit his Soviet opposite number, Marshal Tolbukhin, commanding the Third Ukrainian Front, which was then thrusting a victorious spearhead far into eastern Europe. For three days we lived in a haze of vodka in a nameless village in Hungary from which all the inhabitants appeared to have been removed and their place taken by high-ranking officers of the Red Army. But, although a great deal of very intensive banqueting and toast drinking was done, very little military
information was exchanged, the Russians remaining cordial but evasive.

One small incident sticks in my memory, a reminder of earlier years. Sweet Crimean champagne had succeeded the vodka and had in turn been replaced by sticky brandy from the Caucasus. Enormous sturgeon, roast turkeys and whole stuffed sucking-pigs, gaping hideously, followed closely on a great bowl of iced caviar and a formidable array of hot and cold
zakuski
. Now an elaborate iced cake, surmounted by allegorical statuettes and patriotic symbols worked in pink sugar, had made its appearance and yet more bottles and glasses. Practically no one in the room except the clumsy white-coated waiters was under the rank of General. Everyone was feeling happy and relaxed and expansive. Toasts were being bandied back and forth, and the high-ranking officers present, fresh from their victories, were beginning to laugh out loud and shout merrily to each other across the long, heavily laden table. How different, I reflected, from Moscow before the war.

My neighbour, a solid-looking man of indeterminate age, with a sallow complexion and square, grey, closely cropped head, wearing on his stiff gold epaulettes the four stars of a full General of the Red Army, turned affably towards me. As he turned, the glittering rows of medals and decorations on his tunic clinked impressively. I noticed that he was wearing the insignia of the Order of the Bath, negligently clamped to his stomach.

‘And where, Comrade General,’ he asked amiably, ‘did you acquire your present grasp of the Russian language?’ I told him: in the Soviet Union, before the war. This surprised him. He repeated his question; I repeated my answer. There was no getting away from it. He paused to consider the strange phenomenon of a foreigner who had actually lived in the Soviet Union. Then he asked, for how long? In which years? I told him 1937, 1938, 1939.

Suddenly a constrained look clouded his large, friendly face, a look that I remembered seeing on faces in Moscow in the old days. Even now, in the midst of all this jollity, the memory of the great purge was very much of a reality.

‘They must,’ he said, ‘have been difficult years for a foreigner to understand,’ and turned hastily to his neighbour on the other side.

On my return to Belgrade, everything was in the air again. Tito, King Peter and Šubašić were back at their old game of arguing about the Regents. Unhappily I resigned myself to further delays. Again I spent long hours closeted alternately with Tito in the White Palace and with Šubašić in the Hotel Majestic. Again I exchanged frantic telegrams with London. Then, suddenly, at the beginning of March, something happened in London; the King’s latest objections to Tito’s latest candidate were withdrawn; it was announced that agreement had been reached. Everything was over bar the shouting. It only remained to swear in the Regents and to form and swear in the new united Government.

It took less than a week to complete these formalities. The swearing in of the Regents was done in style, the Orthodox Metropolitan administering the oath to the Serb Regent and the Roman Catholic Archbishop to the Croat and the Slovene. The dignitaries of the two rival Churches vied with each other in the splendour of their vestments. Their respective acolytes bobbed and crossed themselves, and intoned the responses. Fragrant clouds of incense billowed up to the elaborate plasterwork of the ceiling. All three Regents, I noticed, swore loyalty to King Peter without batting an eyelid. Afterwards Šubašić and Kardelj asked me what I had thought of the ceremony. I replied that, as a ceremony, it left nothing to be desired.

Two days later, on March 7th, Tito, having resigned his post as Chairman of the National Committee, announced that he had been successful in forming a new united Government, with Dr. Šubašić as his Minister for Foreign Affairs, and six other members of the former Royal Government holding office in it.

As soon as the news was out, I dispatched a telegram to the Foreign Office, and Ralph Stevenson, who had been standing by to leave for weeks, started for Belgrade, where he arrived on March 12th. It had been decided that my military functions should be taken over by an airman, Air Vice-Marshal Lee, who arrived in Belgrade at about the same time.

On the day after the Ambassador’s arrival, a couple of days after my thirty-fourth birthday, I left Jugoslavia.

On my way to the aerodrome, I drove to the White Palace to say
goodbye to Tito. It was a friendly meeting, as nearly all our meetings had been since the evening a year and a half before, when we had first met under the trees in the ruined castle in Bosnia. He thanked me for what I had done to help the Partisans during the war and said that he was sorry I was going. I thanked him for the high decoration which he had awarded me a few days before. Then we said goodbye.

I was glad to be going. Glad to be going while relations were still cordial, while the comradeship at arms built up during the war had not yet been swept away in the jealousies and misunderstandings of the peace, in the clash of conflicting ideologies.

At the aerodrome the Ambassador and the Air Vice-Marshal, various Jugoslav notabilities and what remained of my own staff had come to see me off. It was a fine sunny day. A strong wind drove big white clouds across the blue sky. By my aeroplane a guard of honour of the new Jugoslav Army was drawn up for me to inspect, resplendent in Soviet-type uniforms, with Soviet badges and carrying Soviet sub-machine guns.

The face of the right-hand man seemed familiar. I looked at him again. He grinned, still holding himself very upright. It was the Economist. I had not seen him since Bosnia. I noticed that he was now a warrant officer. ‘You see, Comrade General,’ he said as I greeted him,’ I have become a real soldier at last.’

There was no doubt about it. He had.

But a Jugoslav soldier, or a Russian soldier? Externally, the transformation was complete. In appearance he was practically indistinguishable from the N.C.O.s of the Red Army who were still to be seen in the streets of Belgrade. But did that mean that he had lost that natural Balkan turbulence and independence, that insurgent spirit which for centuries had made his countrymen such a thorn in the flesh for any foreign invader? I wondered.

Then, followed by Sergeant Duncan, I climbed up into the aeroplane. The friends who had come to see us off waved. The guard of honour presented arms. I saluted. Sergeant Duncan grinned. The doors were shut. The engine roared, and we jolted away towards the take off.

Soon we were circling high above Belgrade. Looking out, I could see the road stretching away southwards to Avala and to the green, rolling country round Valjevo and Arandjelovac. Then we turned in the direction of the coast. Below, the snow was still lying on the mountains of Bosnia. The little paths wound in and out along the ridges. Dense forests reached down into the valleys. Here and there smoke went up from a cluster of huts. Then came the barren crags of Dalmatia, and the islands, bathed in sunshine; and before long we were flying far out over the Adriatic. Westwards.