The Day Gone By (56 page)

There was another good-bye at about this time which hit me hard. I lost Jennifer. I'm told that nowadays things have changed and I'm glad to hear it; but in those days, as a rule, if an unmarried girl became the lover of an unmarried man, the relationship didn't remain on an even keel indefinitely. The girl would not allow it to: she would press the man to marry her and if he wouldn't she would break off the relationship. (There was no question of two unmarried people living together openly, you see: they'd have been ostracized, unless perhaps they were very rich or else members of the comparatively enclosed world of the stage. Throughout my entire ‘teens and twenties during the ‘thirties and ‘forties, I personally never knew - or even knew of - a single unmarried couple living together.)

Yet how could I possibly marry Jennifer? I loved her all right, but from my point of view it simply wasn't on. I was twenty-four, stuck in the Army indefinitely - not just till Hitler was finished - when? - but until the Japs were finished, too - and more than likely to be sent on further service overseas, and to the Far East at that. I had no capital - no money apart from my pay - and if and when I did eventually get out of the army, obviously my first priority would be to go back to Oxford and get my degree. And then what? I had no idea. To marry would have been folly, and my circumstances gave me no confidence in the idea. Jennifer, however, brushed all this aside. If I loved her why couldn't I marry her? So we parted, and very sorry I felt about it, too. It wasn't all that long - about four and a half years - since we had climbed the copper beech in Wadham, but a great deal had happened in the time, and we had both grown up.

Having returned from Ringway, with wings if not halo, I was asked by John Gifford to take over command of what was left of Paddy's parachute platoon. I didn't fancy the job; it was like being asked to drive a large, fast car that you know you're not really up to. And anyway, how the hell was I supposed to step into the shoes of Paddy?

The men, like children under a stress they are not altogether conscious of, were more difficult than they knew or intended. I don't blame them, either. Without setting out to be, they were sullen and resentful. What on earth were we all supposed to be doing, anyway? Training? But they were already trained, and who if not they? And in all their minds hung the unspoken question ‘Are we going to be sent on something like that again?' (To which the answer was ‘Quite probably, yes.') And were they, who had been at Arnhem, supposed to have the faith in me that they had had in Paddy?

The long and short of it was that I couldn't really succeed in getting that job off the ground; and frankly, I'd like to have seen the man who could (though I suppose somebody must have, eventually). John — ‘the right man in the right job' - could see how things were going, but there wasn't another appointment for a captain in the company. And at this very time the appointment fell vacant for a Brigade R.A.S.C. Officer (they called it ‘Brasco') at 1st Parachute Brigade headquarters. A Brasco's job was liaison between the divisional R.A.S.C. and the units of the brigade - getting them what they wanted or, alternatively, telling them that they couldn't have it; and in general, ironing out problems between the battalions on the one side and Colonel Packe and his people on the other.

It was hard to leave 250 Company and John Gifford, after what had turned out the most eventful year of my life. John and I parted in his usual way: he said he thought I'd done very well with C Platoon (I hadn't been one of those who'd quietly disappeared, anyway) and wished me luck for the future. I thanked him very sincerely ‘for everything', saluted and went away. I was also, of course, re-wound and pointed in my new direction by Colonel Packe.

I remained a little over five months at 1st para. Brigade H.Q. I wish I could say I enjoyed it. I've already explained the principal reason why not. The truth is that we were all of us not really on top form - and can you wonder? - from the Brigadier downwards; or so it struck me.

Brigadier Gerald Lathbury was one hell of a man - one of the most heroic and notable people in the Division. Physically, he was immense, overwhelming; the tallest and biggest man I have ever known, I think. He had very little warmth of manner and a customary facial expression which always seemed to me haughty and detached. He didn't talk much in the mess. I'm sure he wasn't cold to everyone, but that was the way he struck relatively junior officers. I was in awe of him, and felt constrained.

His record was impressive by any standards. He was a regular soldier, and as a Lt.-Col. had been in on Airborne Forces from the start, having taken command of 3rd Parachute Battalion in autumn 1941, when 1st Parachute Brigade was originally formed. From there he had gone for a time to the War Office, but had rejoined his battalion in Tunisia - where they saw much action – in 1942; and while there had taken over command of 1st Brigade. He led the airborne attack on Sicily in 1943. At Arnhem he was Urquhart's senior brigadier, but never got into the action, as he was among those badly wounded on the second day, paralysed and unable to walk. With Dutch help he escaped from the German-controlled hospital and was brought to a private house in Ede. I was told that the Brigadier finally got back with eighteen splinters of shrapnel in his body, and I believe it. He was a man I enormously admired, although quite honestly he never did much, as far as I personally was concerned, to make me take kindly to him - as General Urquhart had. I think I was beneath his notice, really. But he was cheesed off: we all were.

I did make one very good friend at Brigade H.Q. - Captain John Smith, the Signals officer. John had been at Arnhem all right. The Signals had had almost the worst time of anyone. He was a very gentle, kindly person - ‘wouldn't hurt a fly', as they say. Yet of all the hundreds of parachutists I used to know, I think he and Paddy were the only two whom I honestly believed weren't afraid of jumping. Even the Brigadier didn't like jumping: he was much too big, for a start. It must have been a job for him to get out of the door at all.

In the event, John Smith and I were to remain mates through the liberation of Copenhagen; our subsequent transfer, via Bulford, to 5th Parachute Brigade; through that brigade's journey to India and thence to the Malayan coast and the liberation of Singapore.

John, of course, could read Morse as easily as he could read English. I remember, the first night when we were in liberated Singapore, our leaning over the ship's rail and chatting; enjoying the scene, the whole harbour and the city beyond ablaze with lights. Suddenly, John broke off what he was saying and exclaimed ‘Good Lord!'

‘What is it?' I asked rather apprehensively.

‘D'you see that flashing light?
⁵
replied John. ‘It's sending “Singapore” in clear. And that is literally the only time, Dick, that I've seen a light sending anything in clear since I joined up five and a half years ago.'

Peace had broken out.

To return to 1st Brigade H.Q.: we were stationed at Syston Old Hall, a beautiful house at a village a little way out of Grantham. People at H.Q. were given to practical jokes, which at least helped to raise the spirits a bit during that dismal winter. For example, someone would unobtrusively put a blank round on the hob and then slip back to his desk. After a bit the round would go off: the thing was not to jump - not to bat an eyelid.

One of the commodities I had to deal in as part of my Brasco's stock-in-trade was canisters of coloured smoke - red, blue, green, yellow. They were used for marking dropping zones and rendezvous points — different colours for the various battalions. The canisters were flat, and about twice the size of an ordinary tin of boot polish. You set them off with a striker like a big match. The smoke was copious, brilliantly coloured, very thick and went on a long time. It was, after all, meant to.

One dull afternoon, while the Brigadier was out for a run with one or two other officers, I put a canister of blue smoke well up one of the chimneys and lit it. I had never imagined what it would be like in that confined space. It was choking thick and seemed to go on for ever. Aghast, I went outside. It looked even worse, and nothing could stop it.

Brigadier Lathbury, a mile away in his running shorts, suddenly saw a whelming plume of peacock-hued smoke ascending to the sky. I learned
of
his reaction from one of the officers who was with him: but I never heard any more about it.

Although 1st Airborne Division was too much depleted to take part in the crossing of the Rhine, which began on 24 March, nevertheless it did come within half a plank of once more going into action against the Germans. As the ultimate catastrophe fell upon the Third Reich and the Russians poured across Poland and into Prussia, the German armies, forced almost literally back to back, retained one last aim; to hold the line of the Elbe facing east, in order to enable the streams of west-bound refugees to cross it and thus to come under British and American rather than Russian domination. Far more than any other enemy, the Germans feared the Russians. This was why they fought on for eight days after the death of Hitler on 30 April 1945.

During March and April a certain anxiety was felt among the Allies that some of the hard-core Nazi forces might make a kind of fortress out of Denmark and, as part of the process, set up a defence line along the Kiel Canal. 1st Airborne were at one time put into preparation to fly from England and drop to prevent this. None of the men was told: they could hardly have been expected to take to the idea, just as the war was ending. I myself never learned any details - they were too secret to get down as far as a mere Brasco - but I do very well recall waiting among others on the tarmac at Barkston Heath airfield, parachutes on, all ready to emplane. As a stick commander I had been given an envelope of sealed orders ‘not to be opened until airborne'. (We had been told that it was ‘an airborne exercise'.) In the event these sealed orders were re-collected by Captain ‘Shirley' Temple, our G.3 Ops., before take-off. Whatever grisly task they had enjoined (for all I know, it may have been nothing to do with the Kiel Canal at all) there was now no more need for it. Nazi Denmark, like everywhere else in Europe, had capitulated. Copenhagen, therefore, needed to be occupied forthwith.

Since 1st Parachute Brigade were now all set for take-off, they were obviously the most convenient lot to send. We flew in to Kastrop airport and landed among scenes of rejoicing no less wild than those which had taken place in Brussels eight months earlier. This time, however, the triumph and jubilation were, if anything, even nearer to Cloud Nine, since this was - for the Danish people at all events — the end of the entire war. And there were, perhaps, two or three subsidiary reasons. First, during the Nazi occupation the Danes had suffered relatively little in the way of shortages. In fact, they themselves told us that the only thing they had really missed had been chocolate. So there were plenty of bottles of Schnapps, plenty of caviare, beef steaks and smoked salmon for the brave English (who had done nothing to save Denmark except to fly from England). Secondly, the Danes have a close ethnic affinity with English people. About fifty per cent. of us
are
Danish, by descent: it wasn't hard to make sincere friends. Thirdly, however, most Danes are, by contrast with the English, light-hearted and pleasure-loving, good at merriment and without the self-consciousness and rather chilly disposition of so many English people. To most of British Airborne, this encounter with Copenhagen was the most delightful surprise of their lives. I have myself remained in love with the place ever since, and go there often.

One marked aspect of the surprise was the drinking capacity of the Danish girls. They didn't at first glance strike one as seasoned drinkers. Danish girls are most of them very pretty, and the ubiquity of bicycles and long, woolly socks (no petrol, see) enhanced not only their charm but also the engaging impression of adolescence. My general experience of British soldiers during the war was that for all their talk of what they would do once they got to Belfast/Tel Aviv/Brussels
et al.,
when it actually came down to brass tacks, a pint or two was usually enough to throw them off balance. Here and there you came across a Corporal Bater, but not very often. The Danish girls, even those no more than nineteen or twenty years old, were quite accustomed to ‘one lager, one schnapps; one lager, one schnapps' in almost indefinite succession. This rattled our men, who found they simply could not do it. All the same, the girls were co-operative, sympathetic and understanding: indeed, they were all those things.

Another surprise I recall was the Wonder Bar. Brigade Headquarters was set up in the Dagmarhoos, one of the big public buildings in the centre of Copenhagen, situated on a square. Not far away, on the other side of the square, was a well-known fun haunt — to whit, the Wonder Bar. In appearance and decor the Wonder Bar was similar to many such places all over the Euro-American world. It was luxuriously appointed, thick-carpeted, white-coat-attendanted, discreetly piano-ghosted. In the centre was a free-standing, oval bar, perhaps thirty-five to forty feet long, surrounded by high stools. Upon these stools, if you dropped in of an evening, would be sitting unaccompanied girls. These girls were young and nearly all strikingly pretty. They were stylishly and quietly dressed, beautifully behaved and spoke fluent English (German, too, I dare say). They knew how to converse and were not ill-educated. You could, without the least embarrassment, have taken any one of them home to meet your mother. They were courtesans. We had never before encountered ladies of the town in the least resembling these. They were not ill-regarded or treated contemptuously, like their counterparts in England: and neither was the Wonder Bar regarded as anything but a sort of joke. ‘You don't take your wife there,' one of my Resistance friends said with a chuckle, ‘in case all the bad girls say “Hullo! Hullo!'”