Women of Courage

by Tim Vicary

  But it was not the sergeant Werner had come to see. It was the officer. Werner saw him, and knew him instantly. As he stared, the pale, hot ring widened in his eyes.

  A lean, athletic individual, the officer sat with one hand on his hip, coolly surveying the scene. He had that air of unconscious arrogance so natural to the British army, and clearly assumed that all matters in the square were completely under his control. From time to time a runner pushed his way up to him, saluted, and ran off again with fresh orders; and once the officer urged his horse forward into the crowd, pointing at something casually with his swagger stick. Immediately a file of soldiers rushed past him and made a space for two elderly ladies who were in danger of being crushed.

  That’s the man, Werner thought. That’s why I’m here. Charles Cavendish, colonel in the Ulster Volunteer Force. Once soldier of the British Empire, an officer trained at Sandhurst. And before that again, head of house at Eton, captain of cricket, senior prefect, the prototype of the English public schoolboy.

  The sort of man Werner hated now, but had once longed to become.

  Even now, as a grown man, the memories made him blush and shake with rage.

  Long ago, Werner’s father, a German diplomat, had convinced himself that the English public schools were the finest educational institutions in the world. It followed, therefore, that his son should have the benefit of going to one. So, when he was thirteen, young Werner, wearing the high top hat and stiff collar of a freshman, had walked proudly with his father through the medieval gates of Eton College, the finest public school in the world.

  And there, Werner’s hell had begun.

  In the first place, his English, although carefully nurtured by six months of private lessons from his English governess, Miss Brinton, proved woefully inadequate. His accent was ludicrous and he didn’t know the right name for anything — words like ‘tuck’ ‘fag’, ‘skive’, ‘creep’, and ‘Pop’ meant nothing to him. He had not been to a prep school, so he knew nothing of their traditions, either. He couldn’t play cricket or rugby, he had hardly even been away from home before. And, worst of all, he had an innate conviction of his own superiority.

  That conviction was both the one thing that kept him going, and also, if only he’d realised it, the main cause for all the cruelty he received. The English boys might, perhaps, have tolerated a foreigner with all Werner’s manifest shortcomings, if only that foreigner had had a sense of humour and a willingness to laugh at himself and try to learn; but Werner had none of these virtues. When the others mocked him he stiffened; when they ragged him and tried to teach him to hold a cricket bat he lashed out and hit them with it. One boy was quite badly injured and had to spend a week in the infirmary, but Werner, even when ordered to by the housemaster, failed to apologise. From that moment, his fate was sealed. He had rejected the boys’ crude attempts to teach him, insulted the English national game, and spurned the advice of authority. He was on his own, an unrepentant hyena in the lions’ den.

  It did not take him long to realise how lonely his fate was to be. It is not pleasant to get into bed at night and find that your pillow crackles and is full of snails, to feel woodlice creeping out of your nightshirt pocket as you sleep, or to get up in the morning and step in a dog turd inside your own shoe. There were other games too, such as being tossed in a blanket, roasted in front of a dormitory fire, trussed with your elbows to your knees and made to cockfight, which had a long history in the British public school. Werner suffered every one.

  There was a day when the senior prefects found young Werner, with his hands tied behind him, his head jammed in the bottom of a sash window, and his trousers around his ankles. The boy’s face was weeping bitter tears into the quadrangle, but the prefects didn’t see that, because his head was outside the room; what they saw, as they came into the room, was the boy’s smooth, wriggling buttocks. On each buttock an eye was painted — an eye with fetching long lashes. The eyes were painted so cunningly that they appeared to wink at the prefects as the owner of the buttocks struggled and strained to get free.

  And so the prefects’ first response was to laugh. That laugh mortified Werner to his core, for these were the very type of young men, only a year or so away from a commission in the army, whom Werner had so far worshipped. One day, he hoped, he would become one of those godlike figures himself. But after this . . .

  Of course, the prefects had released him, and officially disapproved, but not before one — the head of house, Cavendish — had placed his large hand on the wriggling buttocks in a casual, intimate, patronising gesture that was somehow worse than anything that had gone before. And when Werner was free, and they saw who he was, they showed scant sympathy.

  Especially when he spat at them.

  For although Werner could not prevent these things happening, his spirit was never quite broken. That was the one thing he had to hang on to, and the thing that ensured that the torments continued. He even struck back once, arranging for a dead snake to rot slowly in his principal tormentor’s mattress. But that only made things worse.

  It led to the incident, finally, when they broke his hand. The day when they pegged him out on the grass, below the bank at the far end of the cricket pitch where no one would find them, and put ants in his hair and slugs up his nose in an attempt to make him say foul things about his mother. When he would not, and insulted their own mothers instead, they brought the big cricket roller, the one that weighed half a ton, to the top of the bank and held it there, poised above him, insisting that if he defied them it would be the last thing he would ever do.

  The boys holding the roller had all been tense, sweating; it was a threat bigger than they had ever made before. Werner, pegged out on the ground below them, had realised suddenly that it was a moment of crisis. If he defied them this time they would never be able to threaten him with anything so awful again; he would have won.

  So he had looked up at them, shadowy figures blocking out the sun at the top of the bank, and sneered; and the sneer had driven them wild. They realised what it meant, just as he did.

  Now, or never again.

  Their leader, Rickman, had screamed: ‘I warned you, Kraut!’ and told the others to let go. Perhaps he meant, as he afterwards said, that only those at his end should let go, so that the roller should go near Werner’s head and give him a fright; or perhaps he thought he could let it roll a few yards and then stop it.

  Whatever Rickman thought, he was wrong. Once released, the roller was unstoppable. Standing in the doorway of the small Ulster town of Newtownards, Werner saw it again now as he did in nightmares; the sheer vast metal bulk of it trundling slowly but with inexorably increasing speed down the bank towards his head . . .

  He always woke up then, in dreams. At the time he had shut his eyes. So he was never quite sure how Rickman and the others had managed to lug the lumbering monster to the side, so that the ton of smooth iron missed the thin bones of his skull, and only crushed the bones of his right arm instead, pegged out as it was above his head.

  His right hand had never worked properly again. He flexed it now in front of him. Shrivelled, weakened fingers that could never fully bend or straighten, a thumb that could not be persuaded to touch his palm. The legacy of an English public school.

  But at least his broken hand had been the last of the torments. There had, of course, been a scandal. Rickman and two other boys had been expelled. When Werner had returned from hospital, he had found himself treated with a wary caution. Most of the boys had heard the story of how Werner had defied his tormentors, and that gained him some respect, even among those who disliked him. And the whole school had had some very strong warnings from the headmaster. Werner was placed under the specific protection of the head of his house, Charles Cavendish.

  That, for a while, had been Werner’s dream. Cavendish then seemed just the type of English gentleman he himself longed to become. Tall, slim, good-looking, with a casual grace that made him naturally good at all sports. The sch
ool had an army cadet corps, and Cavendish was a leading light in that — a marksman in the shooting team, a skilled horseman, clearly officer material. Werner became his personal fag, shining his shoes, cooking his toast, lighting his fire, cleaning his study — duties he would have resented doing for anyone he had not so admired.

  At first Cavendish was kind to him. He took an interest in the boy’s welfare, made sure he was bullied no more. He helped him with his Latin, watched him encouragingly as he painstakingly practised the skill of writing with his undamaged left hand. Werner glowed as the tall young man leant over him, his hand on the back of his chair, passing friendly comments as the clumsy letters formed. Sometimes Cavendish would put his hand on Werner’s shoulder. Once he held his hand to help him shape the letters.

  One evening, when he had locked and bolted the study door, Cavendish ran his hands through Werner’s hair, and kissed him . . .

  It became a nightmare for Werner, worse even than what had gone before. Because he liked and admired Cavendish, he did, at first, the things that the elder boy wanted. They were not painful, they were done and asked for in a friendly way, they seemed to give pleasure. But the more Werner agreed the more Cavendish demanded, and so the study came to seem to him like a trap, in which his former hero lurked with soft, insistent lips and hands that stripped off his clothes and touched him everywhere, in places that no one should ever want to go, and . . .

  Werner had been terrified. He had felt dirty and powerless and utterly invaded, and still he smiled at Cavendish and consented because the elder boy to him represented power and protection. He knew what they were doing was wrong, but he thought that if he complained to the Headmaster he would be disbelieved and sent back to Cavendish to be caned. Either that, or the Head would believe him. And then they would both be expelled, and Werner would be sent home to his father with a letter that said . . . Great God, he would endure anything in the world other than that! So he went every night smiling to the Spartan study of his casual English sporting hero, and shut his mind and allowed his body to do things and have things done to it that he never, ever, wanted to remember again.

  Until the summer came and he returned to Germany. There, for the first time, the father saw the full extent of what had happened to his son’s hand and was stricken with guilt. If he had not sent the boy to such a school, he thought, it would never have happened. He praised his son for his courage in the face of adversity and tried to make it up to him in any way he could. He bought the boy a pony — which Wemer’s hand made it hard for him to ride — took him everywhere with him to military revues, let him fly in one of Zeppelin’s new balloons. But all the time he saw the grief in the boy’s eyes. So when he asked Werner what he really wanted and the boy said simply ‘to leave that school’, the old man was uncharacteristically sympathetic. Werner was enrolled in a Prussian military academy near his home, and for the next five years, forgot all about England.

  Until, at the age of eighteen, he tried and failed to achieve his lifelong ambition — a commission in the Imperial German Army. Predictably, he was turned down because of his hand. But then, a wise general had offered him a chance to put his education to some use, in gaining revenge on the society which had maimed him.

  Officially, he had been appointed a foreign correspondent for a Swiss newspaper, the Neue Zuricher Zeitung. Secretly, he had also been awarded a commission as a lieutenant in the Army Intelligence Service. It was not what he had hoped for, but at least it was in the service of the Kaiser, with military status of a sort. And it was something at which, to his surprise, he had proved unusually good.

  So good, in fact, that a couple of weeks ago he had been invited to meet two of the most powerful men in Germany.

  General Eric von Falkenhayn was Minister of War to His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. General Helmuth von Moltke was Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Werner had been summoned to see them to discuss a report he had written about the possibility of civil war in Ireland.

  Werner’s report explained the British government’s intention to radically alter the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, by establishing a Home Rule Parliament in Dublin. This parliament would take over responsibility for most Irish affairs and would, inevitably, be dominated by Roman Catholics. The majority of Irishmen supported this idea but a vociferous minority, particularly concentrated among the Protestants of Ulster, vehemently opposed it. Home Rule, they said, would mean Rome Rule. No Protestant could be expected to accept that.

  So their leader, Sir Edward Carson, had stated publicly that if the Home Rule Bill were passed, the Unionists of Ulster would not accept it. They would form their own Provisional Government of Ulster, loyal to the King, but not to his Liberal government, which, they said, was betraying the Union. They would defend themselves with their own army, the Ulster Volunteer Force. 237,368 of them had signed a Covenant to this effect, several cutting a vein in their arm to sign so that they could sign in their own blood.

  ‘Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we … men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V … do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant … to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.’

  Andrew Bonar Law, the leader of the Conservative Party, had spoken in support of this Covenant, and General Wilson, the Chief of Military Operations at the War Office, had signed it, as had many other prominent members of the British Establishment, including Lord Milner, Rudyard Kipling, and Edward Elgar. The commander-in-chief of the Ulster Volunteer Force had been recommended to Sir Edward Carson by one of Britain’s greatest military heroes, Field-Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar.

  An even larger number of Ulster women had signed a shorter covenant, in support of their men:

  ‘We … women of Ulster … desire to associate ourselves with the men of Ulster in their uncompromising opposition to the Home Rule Bill now before Parliament, whereby it is proposed to drive Ulster out of her cherished place in the Constitution of the United Kingdom, and to place her under the domination of a Parliament in Ireland.’

  ‘So when the Home Rule Bill is passed through Parliament later this year,’ Werner had told the two generals, ‘it is quite likely that there will be civil war.’

  ‘So I understand,’ von Falkenhayn had answered smoothly, staring thoughtfully at the pale blue eyes of his intelligence officer. ‘But, Major von Weichsaker, I am less clear about the timing of this civil war, and its likely outcome. You state in your report that it will come soon, I believe?’

  Werner nodded. ‘Within the next few months, Herr General. The Home Rule Bill has been through the Commons and rejected by the Lords twice; it is due to be introduced in the Commons for the third time in the next few weeks. The Government of the Realm Act states that the Lords can only reject a Bill twice. So unless the government loses its nerve, the Bill will become law before the summer.’

  ‘And the government shows no sign of losing its nerve?’

  ‘Not at present, Herr General. On the contrary, they are becoming more aggressive. The day before I left, the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, spoke in Bradford. He called the Unionists “sinister revolutionaries”, and “anarchists”, as I recall. He is believed to speak on behalf of the Prime Minister.’

  Falkenhayn smiled. ‘I read that speech. It seems Mr Churchill has a longing for war, and if he cannot fight Admiral Tirpitz, he will fight the Ulstermen instead. But . . . do you really believe this Ulster Volunteer Force can offer serious resistance?’

  ‘I believe so, Herr General, because of the moral force on their side. They are, so far as I have seen, very well disciplined, but lacking in military equipment. Many of them drill with sporting rifles and shotguns, even wooden guns. I saw one machine-gun only. So in any fu
ll-scale conflict they would undoubtedly be defeated. But equally, there is great reluctance among the British Army to fight them, and they have enormous support among the Protestant population in their province. So I believe that the regular army will fight half-heartedly and the Ulstermen will resist with passion, making the struggle a more equal one.’

  ‘And how long will it last?’

  ‘That is much harder to say. It depends on moral as well as military force, as I said. If the Ulstermen were better armed, it would last several weeks. A month even.’

  Von Moltke had spoken for the first time. Ten years older than von Falkenhayn, he was a blunt, crusty soldier of the old school. Werner had the impression that he regarded undercover intelligence work as an unnecessary evil, and wondered if he had even bothered to read the entire report.

  Moltke scowled. ‘Surely we can arm the rebels, Major? Isn’t that what one normally does in situations of this kind? Ask Tirpitz to organise a shipload of machine guns? A few free gifts to friendly natives — why don’t you go ahead and organise it, man?’

  Werner smiled. ‘I have indeed thought of that, Herr General. It is mentioned in my report. A consignment of 25,000 rifles and two and a half million rounds of ammunition is due to leave Hamburg within the next week. The Ulstermen believe, of course, that they have organised this all on their own, but with General von Falkenhayn’s consent, my colleagues and I have, er, taken a few steps to clear the way.’

  Moltke beamed; he was genuinely delighted. ‘Excellent! Excellent! And are there more on the way?’

  ‘Not so far, Herr General. This is the maximum the Ulstermen believe they can handle at present. And it remains to be seen how they can land them. After all, we cannot be seen to help them openly. They may behave like rebels, but they regard themselves as loyalists; they distrust Germany as much as the Liberal government does. As I say in my report, any suggestion that we were openly involved would be likely to unite both sides against us.’