by David Fraser
‘It would be no better if they were British,’ thought Hilda. ‘In fact in many ways it would be worse.’ The Americans were generous and good-mannered. Individually, Hilda found them endearing. The fact remained that the heart of the house no longer beat for her and hers. She and John inhabited three rooms on the first floor, where a small washroom had been converted to a kitchen for them. Apart from the few Marvell rooms, Bargate – inner hall, drawing room, dining room, billiard room and all the rest – was part of General Eisenhower’s command. It was 31st May, 1944.
‘They’ve been up at all hours these last few days,’ said John. ‘They’ve hardly had their clothes off as far as I can see.’
It was six o’clock in the evening and he had made the same remark three times. They were sitting in their small upstairs sitting room.
‘Do you think the invasion’s about to begin, John? I’ve always thought it would happen on the anniversary of Dunkirk. The end of May, the beginning of June.’ It was a futile speculation, something to say. John shrugged –
‘I don’t think that the American Command, which must largely decide the matter, is likely to be sentimentally influenced by memories of Dunkirk!’
Everybody in England was waiting, of course. It had to be this summer.
John felt he had been snubbing to his beloved wife.
‘No, I’ve no idea, my love. These American fellows jump about such a lot, seem to be rushing to and fro all the time, one can’t tell if anything unusual is up. Nor should one, of course. Security, you know, walls have ears, all that. And these chaps are the signals outfit of a Corps Headquarters, pretty important –’
There was a knock at the door. John opened it and uttered friendly greetings.
‘Do come in. Darling, it’s Colonel Schultz.’
Schultz came into the room carrying a parcel, glasses flashing, an enthusiastic smile on his face.
‘Mrs Marvell, Mr Marvell, I wanted to call on you this evening because these days we never know when we might be called away suddenly.’
‘We understand.’
‘There could be no time for proper goodbyes. That would make me sad. Mrs Marvell, I’d like you to know how much I and my boys have appreciated being in your lovely home. Maybe I’ll get the opportunity to say this many more times and if so I’ll do just that. But just in case, I wanted to say it now. Ma’am, it’s been a wonderful experience.’
Hilda felt particularly guilty.
‘And you’ve been wonderful too, Mrs Marvell.’
More guilt. This, Hilda thought, was especially untrue. John said, ‘It’s been a great privilege for us, Colonel, to be able to do anything to help you. Personally we’ve done little, I’m afraid. But I hope you’ve found the house convenient.’
‘It’s a wonderful old place, sir. I’ll always have some great memories. And believe me, I can imagine it’s no fun having strangers tramping all over your home.’
The garden had suffered most, Hilda thought. They were assured that compensation for damage to the house would be scrupulously assessed and they had little doubt of it. The Americans appeared so lavish and to command such immense resources that the Marvells were unworried. And what does it all matter, Hilda said to herself irritably, garden, furniture, inanimate things, what do they matter? These men are going to war, going to fight our battles as well as their own, going to risk their lives, may never see their families again! And how extraordinarily, terribly nice they are! She felt confused and close to tears.
Schultz was addressing John Marvell.
‘Mr Marvell, I have here a small present. It’s rather a special whisky. I know you like Bourbon and I believe you’ll appreciate this.’
John thanked him profusely. In providing periodic benefits of this nature, the Americans had been kind well beyond the call of manners, and probably beyond the limit of regulations. They did not seem greatly concerned about the latter. Schultz looked pleased. Hilda laughed.
‘Don’t you think we ought to open it, and have a drink together? As Colonel Schultz said, he never knows when he’ll see us again. There may not be many more opportunities.’
The bottle was opened. Schultz smiled, gratified. Then he looked serious and cleared his throat.
‘Mrs Marvell, may I ask, have you had any word recently of your son?’
John shook his head. Hilda said brightly,
‘We had a letter a month ago. They can’t say much, you know, but he was alive and not, as far as one could tell, sick. Of course, we haven’t the faintest idea where he is.’
‘It’s been a long time, ma’am. A long time of anxiety for you. I can just imagine how this last year and a half has been. Well – let’s hope we’ll soon be getting on, finishing it.’
When Schultz left them Hilda said, ‘Do you think any of the ones with German names – like Colonel Schultz – feel any reservations about this war? I expect lots of them are only second generation Americans. They must have close relations in Germany. They can’t find it easy to regard them as automatically vile.’
John looked at her. ‘And do we? Do we regard them as automatically vile? What about that charming young man, Frido von Arzfeld, whom Anthony brought here? I know the name upsets us because of little Marcia, but he wasn’t vile. He was decent and delightful. Darling, we’ve got to fight against the temptation to lump everybody in the same pot of iniquity because we’re at war with their beastly government, we really have.’
Hilda pursed her lips. ‘I don’t think women find it easy to feel like that. That delightful young man, as you call him, may have been spending the winter of 1942 trying to kill Anthony. I think you’re too forgiving, my dear.’
They generally tried to avoid subjects of contention between them and long practice made them good at it, but the habit sometimes failed.
‘I doubt if one can be,’ said John, suddenly feeling exhausted. ‘But I know it’s all too easy to forgive injuries done to other people. Still, if Frido von Arzfeld spent the winter of 1942 trying to kill Anthony, at least he failed. I wonder if he’s alive. Arzfeld, I mean.’
‘When there’s no air raid, when the sun is shining, the Grunewald can almost persuade one there are other things than war.’ Klaus Becker, like his companion, Frido von Arzfeld, had been wounded in Russia. Disabled, one empty sleeve pinned to his jacket, he had recovered sufficiently to be posted to the staff of the Army High Command, in Berlin, Oberkommando des Heeres – OKH. He had arrived at the end of June, 1944. Frido, who had for two years been attached to the Headquarters of ‘Home Army’, was delighted. They were old friends.
‘You manage damned well with that wooden foot of yours, Arzfeld! I can hardly keep up with you.’ They were walking together on a Sunday afternoon in July, both freed for a few hours from duty.
Frido walked surprisingly fast. He was silent that afternoon. The heart had been pounded out of Berlin by Allied bombers and there were few people minded to stroll light-heartedly in the summer sunshine. When Frido at last started to speak he talked in a low voice and Becker had simultaneously to gallop to keep up and to bend his head, for he was particularly tall.
Frido said, ‘I wanted to have this talk here, outside. Outside one can speak freely if one’s careful. Indoors one never knows.
‘I’ve been told to make certain things clear to you. General von Tresckow vouched for you. We know you’re reliable.’ Von Tresckow had once been Chief of Staff to ‘Army Group Centre’ on the Eastern Front. Klaus Becker had been a promising adjutant at that Headquarters before returning to his regiment, a tall young man who radiated calm, principle and purpose. He had attracted confidence. Now he looked at Frido, listening, expressionless. He knew that von Arzfeld was, as he put it to himself, ‘All right’: but a man could not stop his heart beginning to race when conversation took this turn. What was coming? What would be required?
Frido was continuing in the same low voice –
‘You’ve heard about yesterday?’
‘You mean the false alarm? Orde
rs sent out from your people, troops started to move and then everything cancelled? Yes, of course – and there were all sorts of rumours, I can tell you! But then we heard it was an exercise, a sudden unannounced alert to test the readiness of the troops for Operation “Valkyrie”, isn’t that so?’
‘Valkyrie’ was the codename for mobilizing home forces in case of emergency – an emergency which, during Frido’s time in Berlin, had been imagined as possibly being caused by a revolt of the huge numbers of wretched, conscripted foreign workers within the Reich: by some other internal disturbance: or even by an Allied landing on the north German coast, though few people had ever thought that likely. ‘Valkyrie’ involved in the first instance the Berlin Guard battalion and all troops who could be raised from the staffs of training schools and depots near the capital. It was decreed by ‘Home Army’ that every installation must find men for operations in such an emergency, and guards were to be rushed into Berlin to secure Government offices, telephone and radio centres and other key points. While the emergency lasted, ‘Valkyrie’ placed legitimate authority firmly in military hands.
‘Valkyrie’ had been ordered, suddenly, the previous day, a Saturday, 15th July. Then, a few hours later, it had been cancelled and the troops ordered back to barracks.
‘It wasn’t an exercise,’ said Frido.
‘An alarm? I don’t believe it! Even at my humble level we in OKH would have – besides nobody could imagine England and America starting another invasion here, when they’re doing pretty well in France.’
For there were no illusions within the Army High Command. Field Marshal von Kluge’s front in Normandy might crack at any time. His signals grew more desperate daily. The Allies had landed on 6th June, 1944. The long anticipated Anglo-American invasion of the Continent had been under way for nearly six weeks. German attempts to push the invaders into the sea had utterly failed. Every soldier knew that when the British and Americans finally broke out from the expanding beachhead in which they were precariously hemmed, there would be little organized defence feasible between the Channel and the Rhine.
Frido began talking, quietly, flatly. He had been ordered to brief Becker. Becker listened with a heart half-troubled, half-exalted.
On the previous day, Frido said, the Commander-in-Chief of Home Army, General Fromm, and his Chief of Staff, Colonel von Stauffenberg, had flown to Hitler’s Supreme Headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. They had been ordered to attend a conference with the Führer himself, to describe the progress made with weeding out men within the home and training establishments in order to man new divisions. This operation had been largely entrusted to Fromm.
‘We don’t think it’s going to work miracles,’ interrupted Becker conversationally. ‘They’re pretty sceptical in OKH. The barrel’s been well scraped.’
Frido ignored him, and went on in his matter-of-fact voice. Becker listened with a curious feeling in his stomach.
In Colonel von Stauffenberg’s briefcase had been a bomb. The bomb was to be set off by a time fuse. The fuse depended on the breaking of a capsule which would spill acid on, and snap, a tiny wire. This, in turn, would release a striker on to a detonator cap and the fuse would be ignited. A ten minute fuse.
‘It’s an English fuse. The Abzvehr have plenty of them and it was easy to get them until Canaris went.’ Admiral Canaris, head of the German counter-espionage service, Abwehr, had been dismissed five months earlier. He was, Frido said, ‘reliable’. The function of the bomb was to kill Hitler.
Thereafter ‘Valkyrie’ was immediately to be ordered. But instead of securing Government offices and communications against some internal threat or some revolution, the purpose of ‘Valkyrie’, Frido explained, was to get control of the machinery of government for a new, anti-Nazi administration, dedicated to making peace.
‘All of which is organized. General Beck will be Head of State. Dr Goerdeler, Lord Mayor of Leipzig, is to be Chancellor. Field Marshal von Witzleben, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. And so on.’
‘What happened?’
‘We heard Stauffenberg had landed at Rastenburg, with Fromm. We ordered “Valkyrie” straight away. We knew he’d not fail – he’s been the life and soul of the whole business and it all turns on him. The General – Fromm – sits on the fence. He’ll emerge as his Chief of Staffs benevolent patron if all goes right – assuming he survives. If it doesn’t –’
‘But it didn’t!’
‘No, it didn’t. At the last moment Hitler left the conference room. So, of course, no bomb.’
‘And meanwhile “Valkyrie” had been ordered!”
‘Yes. Fromm, of course, was with Stauffenberg in East Prussia. When they got back and we learned what had happened – or not happened – at Rastenburg we had to cook up a story about a practice alert, an exercise. I don’t think Fromm believed a word of it but it suits him to pretend. He’s been trying to have it both ways for over a year.’
They walked on, more slowly now. Becker said,
‘One heard rumours – earlier attempts –’
‘There were indeed earlier attempts. Something always went wrong. It never came to the point – although, to be accurate, a bomb was actually put on his aircraft once, flying back from Russia. It didn’t go off. But now everybody’s absolutely determined – it’s got to happen. There can be no more waiting. It’s got to happen – by one means or another.’
Becker was silent. Frido was not sure whether his companion’s lack of response implied dissent.
‘You agree, I hope?’
‘Yes – but the urgency –’
‘My God,’ said Frido, his voice for the first time a little louder, ‘we can’t go on like this! It’s obvious the war is lost. Within months the Red Army will be in East Prussia. We’re certainly not going to push the English and Americans into the sea. We’re just about holding on in Italy. Germany is being systematically destroyed by these air raids. Of course we can’t wait.’ He stopped, wheeled and stared at Becker.
‘And it’s far worse than that – far, far worse. There are worse things even than defeat if it’s defeat in a decent cause. But look at the things that have been done by these swine – in our name! That are being done all the time! One can’t breathe until –’
He stumped on.
‘Until the principal swine is dead?’ said Becker, near inaudibly.
‘Of course. That’s the key to everything. Without that nobody will be moved. They’ll be stifled, hesitant, mutter about the oath –’
‘I think many soldiers feel strongly about the oath. Germans are serious about such things.’
‘Then they had better,’ said Frido, ‘enquire in their hearts whether they can reconcile it with the creed many of them recite conscientiously on Sundays. Germans have the name of being serious about such things too.’
The moral issue was not new to Klaus Becker, and the strength of feeling he shared. His temperament was to provoke antithesis in an argument. There was one practical point he had secretly felt for a long time from his own observation, that these people (and he felt both proud and nervous to be of their number) disregarded. He put it to Frido.
‘Whatever orders are given by generals, I don’t believe the ordinary German soldier is ready to go against – him. That’s the problem, in my view.’
‘When he’s disappeared they’ll change, start opening their minds to the truth. They’re fine fellows, after all, they’ve simply been mesmerized.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Becker. ‘The ordinary soldiers, the young ones anyway, believe in Hitler. They think he rescued Germany from the old gang with their disaster-laden policies – that’s how they see it. We must face the fact that to most young Germans, not all, this – Goerdeler, Beck, von Witzleben – will simply look like a step into a gloomy conservative past from which Hitler rescued them.’
‘There are also young idealists in Germany, young people who have discovered enough of what National Socialism is doing and are revolted by
it.’
‘Some, perhaps. But the young people I’m chiefly concerned with are in the ranks of the Wehrmacht. And I think most of them are – loyal to the Führer.’ Becker said the last words with an ironic inflexion, wryly. He shrugged his shoulders. What of it, he seemed to say. If we have consciences we must obey them, however lonely the road.
‘We can’t think too much of that,’ said Frido abruptly, who shared the same anxiety, ‘we mustn’t worry about that. We’ve got to have faith. We’ve got to light a torch. Then men will rub their eyes and feel they’ve emerged from darkness, as Stauffenberg says.’
‘And your part in all this?’
‘A humble transmitter of commands and information, knowing nothing and obeying orders. A captain at a desk in an office in the Bendlerstrasse. But placed where another might question certain orders, be dismayed at certain information. And in the light of yesterday’s events, it’s been decided an extra link is desirable between the Bendlerstrasse and OKH. We knew your name, of course, and I was able to speak about you personally. Now here’s what you’ve got to do …’
‘Becker? Arzfeld here. Supper this evening? Seven o’clock?’
‘Thank you.’
It was three days later. 19th July. That evening they sat in a cellar-restaurant that had survived air raids, not far from the Tiergartenstrasse. They sipped wine and Frido said quietly, conversationally,
‘Thursday. Tomorrow.’
‘Same plan?’
‘Precisely. Same conference, reconvened. Same object, same method. He’ll send word when it’s done. We won’t act till then.’
‘You mean he’ll wait to telephone –?’
‘No. The Chief Wehrmacht communications man is a friend. He’ll do it while – my master – is on his way back to Berlin.’ Frido lifted his glass. His smile was exultant.
‘To Thursday!’
They walked away from the restaurant an hour later. It was a warm night. There was no air raid. Their footsteps echoed. They had the narrow, moonlit side street to themselves.