by Norman Lewis
Three months at Winchester were followed by two weeks at Matlock in Derbyshire. 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 fuckers”.’ He called me in at the end of the course. ‘I’ve given you a commendation,’ he said, ‘but it won’t make a scrap 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 Calderón de la Barca, whose letters were published in 1843 under the title 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 huipíl 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 Quiché 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 assuming 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 buggers,’ 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 fuckers,’ he used to say in a hushed voice. ‘That’s coal. That’s a real fucking 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 lust 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 assembled 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 assumed 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 assembled 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 ship ploughed into a heavy sea, the floor had become a lake of vomit, sluicing round islands of retching, groaning men and, whenever the ship 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 passed through the Stra
its, 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 ships. At Bougie our two companion ships left us, whereupon the corvette escorting us to Bône repeatedly attacked a U-boat that was dogging 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 shore, 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 ashore if we were struck by a torpedo. Next morning, shortly after dawn, we entered the harbour of Bône. 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
Bône 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 brass 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 ashore, 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 Bône 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 ship 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 glass 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 assembled 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 fashion, 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 assigned 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 classes, 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 fashion, 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 documentary 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’équipe. 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 passed 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 assortment 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 passed 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-Préf
ecture. 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.
Chapter Fifteen
AS THE DAYS WENT by, we slowly began to grasp the realities of the situation. The friendly, expansive Algerian French appeared as wholly pleasure-loving opportunists, supporters at the bottom neither of Pétain nor de Gaulle, concerned neither with a collaborationist France nor an independent one. There was no intellectual life, nothing of the spirit to be discovered in Philippeville. No one picked up a book, listened to music, read poetry, or found entertainment in anything but the most mediocre Western films. The Algerians ate too much rich food, drank too much, slept too much, indulged in too much sex. Chronic complaints of the liver and stomach plagued them. They suffered from gout, hypertension, giddiness and worn-out hearts, and their life expectancy was in the neighbourhood of fifty-five years. It was the good life carried almost to its fatal conclusion. The preferred drink, for example, of Philippeville was anisette made instantly by dissolving a chemical supplied by any pharmacist in pure alcohol. Under the brief rule of the Vichy government this nefarious beverage had been outlawed, but with the restoration of democracy it was back, with dozens of glasses of it lined up on the counter of every bar. In the first weeks of our presence cases were reported of citizens going into a bar and drinking anisette until they died.
The full-blooded climate and the way of life took their toll of the character of all Frenchmen who had been born or settled in Algeria. They lost control of their passions, were prone to a kind of hysteria which drove them into mutually antagonistic feuding groups. Nowadays they were pro-Vichy, or pro-de Gaulle, taking furious sides in causes which were only old quarrels under a new name. The Algerians had become irrational. This was a country where ripe fruit hung for the picking on every tree and if a man wanted a woman there was always an unpaid Arab girl around about the house to be pulled into a quiet corner. The Algerian had grown to expect the instant satisfaction of his slightest desire. With all this, and perhaps inseparable from it — because in this interminable underground civil war every man was on the look-out for an ally — went a tremendous drive towards camaraderie. There was no more generous and firmer friend than the Algerian. He was willing to give, as well as take, on a scale no metropolitan Frenchman would have understood. There was something infectious in the atmosphere of this country, leading to a loss of Nordic restraint. Likes and dislikes tended to become coloured with love and hatred. I wondered how long it took to turn a man into an Algerian, always ready to hug someone or reach for a gun.