His sole job for months was to be my assistant and all he had to do was make sure the sheep did not fall into the sea. He would laze there, mostly lying on the bank of the saltings at the edge of the North Sea, dreaming and scheming and never working but to shoo the odd sheep back from danger.9
The colony provided Heath with a sufficiently easy life with the sort of public school or military structure in which he thrived.
But in the outside world, political events were conspiring to impact even on this sleepy corner of the Suffolk coast. On 30 September, Neville Chamberlain landed at Heston aerodrome and announced that war had been averted by the signing of the Munich Agreement. The increasingly acquisitive Nazi Germany had been appeased, with Britain, France and Italy agreeing to the annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland – an issue that had been causing international anxiety since Germany had annexed Austria in March of that year.
We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.10
Arriving at Downing Street later that day Chamberlain (in)famously announced that he believed that this was ‘peace for our time’.
Heath’s housemaster, Mr Macfarlane, hadn’t, at first, been impressed by his new charge. In the autumn of 1938, he worried that Heath was too conceited, showing off his superior education and culture to the scorn of the other boys who dismissed him as an affected snob. But by the following spring, McFarlane had completely revised his opinion and commented that Heath had settled into the colony’s routine extremely well.11 He was taking an active part in the community and was even appointed as captain of his house. On arriving at Hollesley Bay, the precocious Brendan Behan was introduced to Heath, noting how ‘strongly built’ he was, as well as the silver star he wore on his jacket – a badge of seniority and authority.
‘My name is Behan,’ said I.
[Heath] smiled and said in a mock Irish accent, ‘An’ it’s aisy to say where you’re from, Paddy.’
I smiled too, because it seemed to be meant as a kindness.
‘Phwart paart of Tipperary, Paddy?’
‘I’m not from Tipperary,’ said I.
‘Are you not, now?’ said Heath.12
Heath advised Behan and the new ‘receptions’ to keep their heads down and to commit themselves to scrupulous, almost military self-discipline. Violence, boisterousness, even swearing was out of order.
‘Look here, cock,’ said Heath, ‘as long as I’m here, you keep that kind of talk to yourself. I won’t wear it, and if I get you or any other filthy bloody swine talking like that he’ll know all about it.’13
It seems, as far as Behan and his contemporaries were concerned, that Heath was, if not one of the lads, certainly respected by the other borstal boys.
In February 1939, the first Anderson shelter14 was built in London. By April the WRNS had been re-established, followed in June by the creation of the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force). The Military Training Act was introduced in April,15 initiating conscription for men of twenty and twenty-one to take six months’ military training. As the country watched the international situation darken and realized that Chamberlain’s promise of peace looked more and more like naïve wishful thinking, Britain prepared for war. In May, eleven months into his sentence, Heath wondered if he might be eligible for discharge for military training, given his background in the services and his spotless behaviour since he had arrived at Hollesley Bay. He had already made it clear to Mr McFarlane that his ultimate ambition was to rejoin the RAF. McFarlane told Heath he must be patient. By now he genuinely admired Heath’s ‘persistent good humour and common-sense adjustments’ that had enabled him to fit in with the other boys like Brendan Behan, ‘without lowering his own standards’.16 More and more, Heath seemed like the model borstal boy, his time at Hollesley Bay having moulded a mature and responsible young man.
During his time at borstal, Heath acquired some very useful friends in high places. As well as gaining McFarlane’s admiration and support, he managed to catch the interest of Jack Joyce, the governor. Through him, Heath secured a meeting with Mr Scott, the Head of the Borstal Association, to discuss his future. These two friendships were to develop throughout the rest of Heath’s life with Scott and Joyce as unofficial mentors, taking a genuine interest in Heath’s progress. When he first met Mr Scott in June 1939, Heath’s ‘consuming anxiety’ was to find out if there was any hope of his being accepted by the RAF on his discharge from borstal. He argued that he had held commissioned rank as a pilot and already had 200 flying hours under his belt. Surely he’d be ideally placed to rejoin the service in a time of national emergency, even if it meant starting again in the ranks?
Scott was impressed by Heath’s passion, his excellent physique and superior intelligence and promised to help. In Mr Scott, Heath had secured a very influential champion. Later that month, Heath’s father also visited Scott at the Borstal Association offices in Victoria Street to discuss his son’s future. Again, the two men became very friendly, united in their desire to try and help young Neville fulfil his potential. Like the Heaths, Scott also lived in Wimbledon, so he began visiting them socially in Merton Hall Road, always curious to know how their son was getting on.
True to his word, throughout the summer, Mr Scott made a series of enquiries at the Air Ministry on Heath’s behalf to see if there might be some chance of his rejoining the RAF. These appeals were all rejected. This can’t have been surprising as Heath had been dismissed from the service only two years previously and since then had been in court twice, thereafter spending most of his time in borstal. There was also a rush by hundreds of thousands of young men to enlist. The RAF neither wanted nor needed him back.
From the end of the summer, Britain galvanized herself for war. On 23 August, the Soviets and the Germans signed their mutual treaty of non-aggression, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. A week later, the Royal Navy manned their war stations and the evacuation began to remove children from major British cities to the countryside. On 1 September, the Germans invaded Poland. The British army was then mobilized and a blackout imposed across the British Isles. The international crisis had an impact even at Hollesley Bay; on 2 September, Heath was discharged under emergency regulations and sent home to Wimbledon. This wasn’t special treatment, though, as approximately 1,750 borstal boys were similarly discharged on the same day. And though Heath had been released, he would remain on licence for another three years.
The day after Heath was released from borstal, the National Service Act was passed, introducing mass conscription for all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one. The following day, Heath called to see Mr Scott at the Borstal Association offices in a frenzy of excitement. He burst into Scott’s office with his arms waving and his eyes blazing, shouting, ‘My God, sir, they’re up and I’m not with them.’ Knowing the boy and his history, Scott could understand Heath’s passion, but he felt at the time that ‘Heath’s manner, appearance and expression disclosed lack of control and an excitability far from normal’.
Making full allowance for the excitement prevailing throughout the country on that day and for this ex-pilot’s feelings of frustration and impatience, he displayed unnatural excitement and loss of self-control. His eyes were wild, his whole body shook with emotion and he could not sit down.17
For Heath the outbreak of war was both an opportunity to put the past behind him, but also a fulfilment of his destiny. There was no sense that he wanted to fight for King and Country with the old Rutlish rallying cry, ‘arming for the fight, pressing on with all our might’. His objective seems to have been a personal one – to embark on a great adventure which at this point he felt was being blocked by various authority figures for mistakes he had made in his youth. He seems to have had no anxieties about actively pursuing a role in a war in which he might forfeit his life. This is very much the Boy’s Own attitude to mortality enshrined in Biggles: ‘He knew he had to die
sometime and had long ago ceased to worry about it.’ This became Heath’s maxim for life.
Heath trudged from one RAF recruiting office to another, but was rejected by all of them. In a letter to Mr Scott, his sense of frustration is palpable.
Life is full of disappointments. I was ready, packed and preparing to depart yesterday morning when I received a letter from the Recruiting Centre at Croydon telling me not to go. Apparently Uxbridge is so full (5000 over number) that yesterday’s and today’s draft of recruits had to be stopped.
However, in spite of the letter, I went to Croydon complete with case, just in case there was an off chance of getting away. The Recruiting Officer was awfully sympathetic but said there was nothing he could possibly do.18
Despite his efforts and his obvious commitment, the RAF would not take him. He was ‘horribly disappointed’, but, with some tenacity, refused to be defeated. With his favoured options closed to him, he enlisted as a private in the army, volunteering for the Royal Army Service Corps. His admission to the RASC was in stark contrast to his former status as an RAF pilot – glamorous, heroic, daring, modern. The RASC was a much more mundane facilitating corps providing services and support staff. Heath joined them as a driver. This role could not have underlined more clearly the downward trajectory he had been on since being dismissed from the air force. A modern Icarus, his was a literal as well as figurative grounding; from flying a fighter to driving a truck.
Based at Buller Barracks in Aldershot, Heath’s strategy at this stage – and it certainly seems like a careful and deliberate plan – was to join up as a lower-status private and then to pursue his goals from within the service. He may well have been starting at the bottom again but he was determined not to stay there.
By December of 1939, though there had been attacks at sea, there had been no significant offensives by the major powers in the war. Heath was at home in Wimbledon, visiting his parents for Christmas. While at a dance at the Dog and Fox on Wimbledon Hill, he bumped into Peggy Dixon, a 24-year-old girl from Loxley Road in nearby Wandsworth. They had been introduced some years before at a twenty-first birthday party. Peggy remembered that Heath had been in the RAF at the time, or was just about to join. Heath told her that he was an army cadet now and Peggy told him about her work as a civil servant. The pair got on well, arranging to meet again. Peggy visited Merton Hall Road and was introduced to William and Bessie Heath and Heath was introduced to Peggy’s parents, too. The couple had a lot in common and it seemed a very sensible match. Given Heath’s recent history, his parents must have been relieved that their son was settling down at last, with a job, a girlfriend – a future. Everything was looking up for him.19
Early in 1940, Heath joined the Officer Cadet Training Unit, passing out on 23 March as a 2nd Lieutenant. He visited Mr Scott and proudly showed off his uniform. He had passed ninth out of thirty-four cadets. He told Scott that he had discussed his past history with his company commander who was ‘awfully understanding and terribly nice about everything’. Neville Heath the rakish playboy seemed to have turned prodigal. Not only was he prospering in the RASC, but he was confronting his past mistakes, being upfront and honest about them. His commanding officer had approached the RAF on his behalf and had arranged for a transfer. He was to be drafted to the Middle East soon as a reconnaissance pilot attached to the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on a ‘special job’.
Mr Scott was hugely impressed by the extraordinary turnaround in Heath’s fortunes. But little of the information he gave Scott was actually true. Though he was certainly scheduled to travel out to Palestine and might have hoped for some sort of flying role, there is no indication from Heath’s War Office records that he was offered one.20
Like many romances of the time, the overseas posting intensified Heath’s relationship with Peggy. He asked her to marry him and she accepted. On Saturday 13 April 1940, Heath and Peggy celebrated their engagement with a family party at her parents’ home in Wandsworth.
The heroic young subaltern was waved off to war on the 18 April, leaving his sweetheart and his family at home, all bursting with pride.
On 10 June 1940, just as Heath arrived in Palestine, Italy declared war on Britain and France.
Mussolini had designs on the French and British colonies in North Africa with the intention of expanding Italian territories in the area, seizing the Arabian oil fields and controlling the Suez Canal. Italian forces would first have to drive through Egypt, which, though officially neutral, had agreed by treaty to allow British occupation forces if the Suez Canal was threatened. Almost immediately, the Italian air forces started bombing the strategic port of Tel Aviv and the oil terminal and refinery at Haifa.
Heath was stationed at Sarafand in Palestine and in July of 1940, he sent letters to Mr Scott saying that he was now with the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, ‘longing to have a crack at the Italians’.21 He had also written to his parents indicating that he had been promoted to the rank of captain, but there’s no mention of this appointment in his service records. These advancements and his tales of the war from the centre of the action were all fantasy. The reality was rather different. Despite the entry of Italy into the war, if Heath had been expecting to be thrown right into a Biggles-style adventure, he was to be extremely disappointed. As he wrote later in his life story in the press:
I was very bored of the enforced inactivity [at Sarafand]. We would wear civvies and everything was just like peacetime. When Italy entered the war I applied dozens of times for a posting to the Western Desert but this was consistently refused.22
Norbert Gaffrey, an orderly room clerk with the RASC, noted that when Heath first arrived at Sarafand he had carried out his duties well. Working in the office, Gaffrey was also aware that Heath had applied for a transfer to the RAF. Gaffrey typed a copy of Heath’s application and dispatched it with a letter from the commanding officer to the Supplies and Transport Force Headquarters in Jerusalem. According to Gaffrey, the application was refused and this had a marked effect on Heath’s behaviour. He now became ‘unmindful and careless’.23
On 13 September, Italian forces crossed into Egypt from their base in Cyrenaica in Libya, outnumbering British forces four to one. But the Italians only made it as far as Siddi Barrani, a town near the Mediterranean. By the end of the year, the Western Desert Force under General Wavell had launched a counter-attack, Operation Compass. This resulted in the defeat of the Italian Tenth Army and the repossession of all the Italian gains in Egypt and most of Cyrenaica. British forces took 130,000 Italian prisoners of war. Frustratingly for Heath, all the action seemed to be happening nearby, but beyond his reach. Despite this, he wrote letters home telling a very different story – placing himself at the centre of the action, ‘giving the Italians hell and it’s just too easy’. In reality, he was more likely to have been playing football on the beach at Sarafand.
On 20 February 1941 he wrote to Mr Scott claiming that his transfer to the RAF had been approved and that he would soon be with a fighter squadron. Again, this is a fantasy, Heath’s application having been rejected. But he does seem to have seen some action in the Middle East, during the little-remembered Anglo-Iraqi war.
Rashid Ali, the former anti-British prime minister of Iraq, launched a coup d’etat against the Iraqi Regent. Once in power, he threatened two British air bases in Iraq, much to Churchill’s chagrin. But after British forces launched a pre-emptive strike against the Iraqis, Rashid Ali fled to Persia and the pro-British monarchy was restored.
Heath claimed to have played a subsidiary role in this war, which lasted for twenty-nine days in 1941. He was stationed away from the fighting at H4, the pumping station on the Haifa-Baghdad road that was a potential target for sabotage. But during the ongoing conflict, Fort Rutbah near to H4 had been seized by the Iraqis. Heath heard of a British raiding party that was to attempt to re-take the fort – and, like a Beau Geste fantasy, he was determined to be part of it. It’s certainly true that Blenheim Bombers from Squadron
203 did attack the Iraqis at Rutbah on 9 May and they did fly from H4. But, as ever, it’s difficult to know with Heath what is true and what isn’t. But he was certainly not the sort of man to hang around when there was action to be had in the immediate vicinity. It’s also true that many servicemen keen to see active service did join in raids without the permission of their commanding officer.24
Heath claimed that after the raid on Fort Rutbah, when he returned to H4, his commanding officer had noted his absence and ordered him back to Sarafand for deserting his post. Shortly afterwards he claimed that he had more trouble with his superior officers when he was working on convoy duty. He had sent 200 trucks to Syria, but by the time they reached Beirut, there were two trucks missing. A furious superior officer upbraided Heath. An argument ensued between the two men and Heath was again sent back to Sarafand – this time, under arrest. Heath’s stories about his time in Palestine conform to a particular pattern: headstrong young man seeks adventure. Though there’s probably some truth in his stories of insubordination in Palestine, records from the War Office give a much more prosaic reason for his arrest.
Heath had been in financial difficulties for some time – to such an extent that in April his commanding officer devised a scheme for the supervision of his financial affairs. Heath agreed not to cash any cheques without the consent of his commanding officer or adjutant until all his debts were repaid. But despite this, he carried on writing cheques that continued to bounce. However, all the time, he had been drawing money from the field cashier with a second Advance Pay Book that he had stolen – which effectively enabled him to cash twice as much money as any officer of his rank. Certainly, off duty, Heath would have enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle – sumptuous dinners in smart hotels and free-flowing alcohol. But given that he was living in a war zone, with most of his needs provided by the army, how had he got into debt so quickly and what was he spending his money on?
Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Page 16