Maxwell, The Outsider

by Tom Bower

  Maxwell became fond of ascribing his socialism to his mother's explanation for their extreme poverty. She blamed his father's 'unemployment', says Maxwell, upon the government in Prague and upon the world's economic system. There was of course no such thing as 'unemployment' in a peasant society. It was just that the gaps between Mechel's cattle deals had become longer, because Slatinske Doly was suffering a double crisis. There was a flood of cheap merchandise from Czechoslovakia which had undercut and bankrupted most of the Jewish artisans, with consequent effects on traders like Mechel; at the same time there was the worldwide economic depression. The people of Carpo-Ruthenia probably suffered more than most Europeans since their historical destitution left them without any resources to draw upon. All families in the village, including the Hochs, could rely upon the plethora of Jewish community charities which collected clothes and food and received a steady trickle of donations from the 6migr£s in America. But Pearl, and Hannah Hoch's cousin Lazar Schlomovitch, are convinced that Mechel was never destitute, especially after 1937 when Hannah's brother arrived from America and bought the family a three-room house. Moreover, as the village's general plight worsened there was a major source of relief - smuggling.

  Although Sziget, the nearest town to Slatinske Doly, had become Romanian, contact with its eight thousand Jews, one-third of the population, had been maintained despite the frontier and the River Tisza. Food and clothing prices, however, were never the same on both sides of the border because the Romanian government imposed different taxes. The tax on the slaughter of animals and on the sale of meat was usually higher in Romania and, as the price of meat rose, the obvious source for cheaper supplies was across the border.

  For both the Jews and the Ruthenians in Slatinske Doly smuggling was, according to Rabbi Hugo Gryn who also lived in the area, 'an honoured trade' in which the whole community was involved. The village's butchers and cattle dealers were natural suppliers. Undoubtedly Maxwell, watching how the meat smugglers negotiated with their customers, would have been enormously intrigued.

  Beneath a full moon, both horses and cattle were taken on to rafts, their hoofs wrapped in sacks and a bag of oats or other food fastened across their mouths. After the beasts had been landed on the other side, the real business began. Horse dealers, like their successors, car salesmen, are notorious for their promises, their exaggerated sales talk and their haggling. Smugglers negotiating in the moonlight would be engaged in even tougher and more ruthless dealings since their customers were well aware that the Czech Jew had little alternative but to sell his beast. The moonlit river-banks of Carpo-Ruthenia were an extraordinary site for a business school, but it was one location where Maxwell witnessed an unusual style of business.

  The second teacher was his grandfather Yaacov Schlomovitch, who in many ways substituted for Mechel as Maxwell's father. Schlomovitch was a dealer, a trader and a middle man. Whenever someone in the region had a need, he would seek to satisfy it by buying and selling the commodity in question, making his profit 'on the turn'. Watching his grandfather ceaselessly looking for business and haggling the two sides at both ends to increase the margin imbued Maxwell with the instinctive sense for dealing which refined businessmen in London and New York came to loathe and fear.

  Even if Adolf Hitler had not become Germany's Chancellor in 1933 and unleashed murderous waves of anti-semitism across the continent, it is likely that Maxwell would have employed those skills. In jest, he has suggested that had the war not erupted he would have remained in the village and have become a rabbi. In fact, as Pearl, his closest friend in 1939, says, 'We all would have left for a better life.' The Holocaust caused unparalleled misery, but for a fortunate few the Jewish nation's terrible fate accelerated their careers.

  The apprehension of the Nazi threat among the population in Carpo-Ruthenia was gradual. Slatinske Doly was so remote and the Czech government so uniquely protective that the region became a haven, albeit temporary, for Jewish refugees from Germany. By 1938, the climate had changed noticeably. Hitler was demanding the Sudetenland, the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, and the widespread attacks on Jews in Austria and in Germany caused the Czech Jews to realise the consequences if Hitler's demands were met. And met they were, under the Munich agreement that September. The following year the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia was complete. By March 1939, when Hitler drove triumphantly into Prague, only the poorer Jews, especially those in the east, remained behind. Most of the others had fled.

  Under an agreement with Hitler, that part of Carpo-Ruthenia which included Slatinske Doly was returned to Hungary, and a company of Hungarian soldiers marched into the village on 17 March. Although the Hungarian government would be generally more tolerant than other Nazi-puppet states, the Jews were nevertheless targeted by new, virulently anti-semitic laws which included immediate conscription into labour battalions for most Jews of military age. The fate of those recruited was easy to imagine and the Hoch family, like many of their neighbours, recognised that there was no future for their sixteen-year-old son in the village. After the Passover holiday in April, Mechel and Hannah agreed that their son should look for work in Budapest. There was no heartbreak about his departure since everyone believed he would return for weekend visits. Both Maxwell and Alex Pearl were given money to buy a train ticket and they arrived in the Hungarian capital after a ten-hour journey. 'We were amazed,' recalls Pearl. 'We had never seen paved roads, street cars, big houses or anything like it. It was terribly exciting.' Maxwell was overwhelmed by the wealth he saw. They looked for a room to rent, then found jobs as delivery boys for shops. Soon they were set on breaking with their past. 'We took off our "cuples" and cut our hair so we didn't look so Jewish,' says Pearl. 'After all, when in Rome . . .' Maxwell had abandoned Orthodoxy and Slatinske Doly for ever and was looking at the prizes which the big city could offer.

  Maxwell and Pearl were together almost daily until Maxwell suddenly disappeared. Pearl says that he discovered 'days later' that Maxwell had secretly left the city. In the version which Maxwell told Pearl in 1945, he had met a group of Czech soldiers in Budapest who intended to make their way to France. Maxwell lied that he was nineteen years old and, since he looked that age, they agreed that he might join them, on condition that he did not say farewell to his friends. In absolute secrecy, he travelled by train with the Czechs to Zagreb in Yugoslavia and continued on to Palestine.

  In the 1960s, another version was issued in a press release on Maxwell's behalf: 'The 16 year old Hoch/Maxwell joined the Czech army, fought the Germans and the Russians in eastern Europe, made a fighting retreat across Europe to the Black Sea with the Czech forces and back to France via Bulgaria and Greece, in time for another crack at the Germans, was wounded and captured by the Nazis in Orleans and then escaped.'

  In 1969, Maxwell told the Sunday Times that in December 1939 he had been 'tapped on the shoulder at a street corner' in Budapest after he had helped some Czech refugees who were escaping to Yugoslavia. He suggested that at the time he was part of the resistance and escaped a shooting squad for committing treason only because he was under eighteen.

  Many other accounts were issued over the following years, until in July 1987 he was the guest on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. He explained, ‘I led Czech volunteers out of what was Czechoslovakia across Hungary into Yugoslavia on their way to joining the voluntary Czech army in France.' He said that he was arrested, 'tortured and beaten up and sentenced to death as a spy' but escaped the death penalty thanks to the intervention of the French ambassador and subsequently escaped imprisonment because his guard was handicapped with only one arm. Maxwell then escaped 'into Yugoslavia, then Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria and Palestine to France and into the Czech army'.

  The differing accounts are confusing. First, there was no Czech resistance in 1939 fighting the Germans in Ruthenia or Budapest. In fact, there were no German soldiers at that time stationed in Hungary. Secondly, it is hard to understand why a sixteen-year-old Ruthe
nian who had never previously travelled through Hungary should have been involved in facilitating escapes since in 1939 many Czechs were paying to leave their homeland and travelled through Hungary. It was a favoured route for many Jews heading for the safety of Palestine. Thirdly, since the train journey south from Budapest was legitimate, it is puzzling that adults should need a sixteen-year-old to 'guide them by train'. Fourthly, by recently adding that he actually arrived in France via Palestine, it suggests that Maxwell followed the well-established route of thousands of Czechs who wanted to join the Czech Legion and eventually sailed for France, under British auspices, as an organised army. Fifthly, his latest version conflicts with the account he gave his best friend Pearl in 1945.

  The confusion ends at Agde, west of Marseille. In all the versions, it is clear that he landed or arrived in France in early 1940. He told the Sunday Times that it was only then that he formally joined the Second Regiment of the Czech Legion in the name of Ludvik Hoch, but clearly if he sailed from Palestine he was already a member of the Legion. At all events, the Legion fought an undistinguished campaign before evacuating from Sete in May 1940 and sailing to Liverpool on an Egyptian ship, the Mers el Kebir.

  Jan Horal, a Czech air force pilot, met the young Maxwell soon after his arrival in Britain at the Legion's base outside Dover. Horal was recruiting mechanics and was approached by Maxwell who explained that he was desperate to escape from the dreary camp life. According to Horal, Maxwell had every reason for trying to leave: 'His fellow Czechs were chauvinist and anti-semitic and had instinctively little fondness for an uneducated Ruthenian who looked like a ruffian and spoke a smattering of bad Czech.' Horal, who saw Maxwell in Czech clubs several times subsequently during the war, had no doubt that Maxwell was 'deeply disliked but was also not very likeable'. When he turned down Maxwell's application 'because you know nothing about engines', Maxwell persisted: ‘I can learn very fast.' But Horal was adamant. The youth's chutzpah was disagreeable.

  It is the first recorded instance of Maxwell's ambition and self-confidence.

  Horal's impressions are confirmed by a Legionnaire who told the Sunday Times in 1969 that the scarcely literate Maxwell seemed like 'a wild young man from the mountains . . . quite unruly, like a young bull'. Another remembered his astonishing curiosity: 'He used to drive everyone wild, because he would follow you like a dog - trying to do anything one had just done, and to do it slightly better. If you jumped over a ditch, he would do so. He has this talent for taking what someone else has conceived and improving it slightly. It's a basic trait.'

  In 1941 Maxwell, realising that his future with the Legion was limited, took the exceptional decision of applying to join the Pioneer Corps, known throughout the military as the 'British army's coolies' because there was nothing lower. It was a gamble because the Corps offered only frustrating chores and no chance of fighting, yet it was Maxwell's only opportunity to escape from prejudice and insularity. Posted to a camp in Sutton Coldfield, Maxwell said that he learned English from a local woman in six weeks. Certainly by the end of two years, he had perfected the British mannerisms which he displayed from then on. Unlike many refugees, he had consciously and completely discarded his background and had become a student of the British way of life. His reward, in October 1943, was a posting to the Sixth Battalion of the North Staffs Regiment which was then based in Cliftonville on the south coast of England.

  For a Czech national to be admitted as a private to a British regiment, even in wartime, was unusual. The Sixth was preparing for the Normandy landings and needed German-speaking officers to translate the enemy's intercepted radio messages. Maxwell had volunteered on the basis of his languages for precisely that duty but he had also, during the previous two years, become a fully trained soldier and, in particular, a marksman. Brigadier Gary Carthew-Yourston, the individualistic commanding officer of the 176th Infantry Brigade, which included the North Staffs, took an instant liking to the reformed ruffian and approved his recruitment to the battalion's Intelligence or ‘I section.

  Carthew-Yourston's decision opened the way for Maxwell's subsequent career.

  Maxwell arrived in Cliftonville as Private Leslie du Maurier, a name he had chosen from the brand of cigarettes, to disguise his true identity from the Germans. His serial number was 13051410. Most of the privates and NCOs in the battalion were potters and miners who lived around Stoke-on-Trent and were types with whom Maxwell could strike friendly rapport since their limited education and narrow horizons mirrored his own. Major Albert Mitchell remembers du Maurier's arrival well: 'He looked dark and slim just like his sons now. He spoke nearly fluent English and was assigned to the sniper section. We watched him very carefully in practice sessions and he showed great initiative, moving with agility.' Recollections of the young du Maurier among the ranks are typified by Walter Smith, a sniper. He remembers Maxwell's interesting lectures about escaping from Europe, his keen interest in football and his regular wrestling bouts: 'He was as strong as an ox.' Maxwell acclimatised quickly and, unlike most of the battalion, used his weekend leave to travel regularly to London, earning himself a reputation, according to Mitchell, as 'a great socialiser'.

  By his twenty-first birthday in June 1944, Maxwell had been promoted to corporal with responsibility over seven men in a sniper unit; it was unusual for a Czech to be in command of British soldiers. Smith noticed how he relished the insignia of authority and the dispensation of power: 'Commanding people seemed to come naturally to him.' The battalion was denied the excitement of the D-Day landings that June. Delayed by storms in the Channel, the battalion sailed in two groups on D + 16 from Margate and Tilbury, landing near Arromanches.

  RSM Norman Champ travelled with Maxwell via Douvres towards the 59th Division, which was located opposite the German lines north of Caen. For the Staffordshire professional soldier, du Maurier was an 'unusual character', especially because he took 'quite unnecessary risks' as a field intelligence NCO. Champ recalls that most nights Maxwell disappeared across the German lines and reappeared at daybreak, often in a German uniform. ‘I told him’ says Champ, 'that he'd get himself shot. And then I became suspicious. I went to Colonel McWilkins [the battalion commander] and asked him straight out: "This du Maurier, is he one of them or one of us?'" McWilkins agreed to 'keep an eye on du Maurier' and promoted him shortly afterwards to sergeant.

  At 4.20 a.m. on 8 July, the battalion launched its first attack against the German lines at La Bijoud. The fighting against dug-in Tiger tanks and 75mm anti-tank guns was bitter and confused, and it remained intense over the following four weeks. After skirting Caen to the west, the division fought against the German Panzers at Thury-Harcourt before heading south-east towards the Falaise Gap. Throughout the battle, the various reported sightings of Maxwell reveal an impassioned and energetic soldier. Jimmy Warrington spotted him in a dip organising the salvage of a Wehrmacht truck; Walter Smith witnessed his fury when he discovered that a group of captured enemy troops whom he was interrogating were Czechs in German uniform; while RSM Champ saw Maxwell, occasionally using the name of 'Jones', working directly for the ‘I chief Captain Terry, 'constantly disappearing across the lines'. In the battle for Falaise, the casualties were enormous. 'Apart from facing every known form of German weapon,' says Champ, 'we were also rocketed by our own Thunderbolts, machine-gunned from the air and were unpleasantly close to 5001b bombs dropped on the wrong target.' Champ was soon badly wounded, and both Colonel McWilkins and Terry were killed outright when a lorry filled with mines exploded. Maxwell fortunately survived unscathed and arrived in Paris soon after its liberation in September, renamed by then 'Private Leslie Jones'.

  Few Allied soldiers who passed through the French capital en route to the Rhine left the city without lifelong memories of romance and splendour. Unlike London, the city was barely scarred by bombs, and everyone there, both liberators and liberated, was overwhelmed by emotion. For Maxwell, there was a happy reunion. Brigadier Carthew-Yourston, who had been relieved of his
command of 176th Brigade, arrived in Paris to take command of British troops in the capital. Maxwell reintroduced himself and once again endeared himself to his mentor, who recommended that the young NCO should seek companionship from a French group called the Welcome Committee for Allied Personnel. Among the French personnel, acting as an interpreter, was Elisabeth (Betty) Meynard, the twenty-three-year-old daughter of a Protestant silk manufacturer from Lyon who during the war had traded in vegetables. Reminiscing about the circumstances of their meeting, Betty described the encounter-as 'love at first sight'. During the weeks Maxwell remained ' in Paris, they made plans for the future. 'When we realised that we were attracted to each other,' recalled Betty, 'one of the first things he ever said to me was that if anything ever happened out of our romance, it would happen in England.' Then aged just twenty-one, Maxwell expounded his ambitions to his future wife. 'The very first thing he told me was that he wanted to work in England, for England.' His strategy was bold: ‘I want to make my fortune,' he told Betty, 'and then I want to go into Parliament.' Thirty years later, Mrs Maxwell was still astonished that the impoverished refugee had the determination to conceive and realise those ambitions.