by Colin Smith
For most of this time he had scraped a living teaching English while religiously attending the meetings of the Haifa Templer community’s flourishing branch of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party whose own views on Jewish immigration were decidedly mixed. For while most subscribed to the idea that Jews should be encouraged to leave Europe, and particularly Germany, they were far from agreed that they should all come to Palestine and upset their local Arabs. Among this faction was Magdalena, a young woman who had first noticed him playing goalkeeper for a Templer team that was only narrowly defeated by a Palestine Police side. Shortly after Hitler came to power they married and moved to Germany for the sake of the children they would never have. In the end, it was not Magdalena’s miscarriages that killed her. It was a reoccurrence of her childhood malaria that had been wrongly diagnosed. At the time, the Templer had been busy invading Poland and was quite unaware that she was seriously ill. He had not remarried or even come close to it.
Magdalena and his mother had got on well. Once they were in Germany, where he initially worked for a Nazi publisher before finding more full time employment with the party, they could afford to visit her in England and did so several times.By then his mother had moved in with her cousin, who was not only a widow but a long grieving mother. Neither of her sons, the boys whose schoolboy treachery had caused him such heartache, had survived the 1914-18 conflict and she had never got over it. Henry had died in flying training accident. Edward had been killed near Salonika by a Bulgarian sniper.
The women were sharing a comfortable cottage at a village between Norwich and King’s Lynn and in its well tended garden they all took lots of snaps of each other. He always carried a Leica, partly for airfield spotting because the British were rearming and the Luftwafffe wanted all the information they could get. Shortly before hostilities between Britain and Germany were renewed, he sent her a studio portrait of himself in full dress uniform with the death’s head badge on his cap.
Not long afterwards, thanks to the ability of the International Committee of the Red Cross to maintain a minimum of postal relations between warring nations, he had been able to inform his mother of her daughter-in-law’s death. They had continued a sporadic and hardly private postcard correspondence.
“Owing to certain events here there are some shortages,” she had once written. “But your aunt and I are coping nicely.”
Assuming that his reply would be made available to all interested parties he had replied: “Owing to certain other events here there is no shortage of anything!”
Afterwards, he rather regretted this, realising that he was trying to punish her for preferring her native soil to her only child whom she hoped, “would not do anything dangerous in this second terrible war between cousins”.
He wrote and told her he was desk bound in Berlin where he spent his lunch hours walking the parks to work off the excess kilos he had gained. Not long after he sent this he was posted to Athens. His English, his war record and his fervent National Socialism had made the Templer irresistible to the Sicherheitsdienst.
***
Now he toured the overgrown pathways of Haifa’s German cemetery, searching out epitaphs with the help of a small torch he had been carrying in the South African bush jacket he wore. Ah, here in the greatest marble splendour of all was the Stutz family who had made a fortune out of the manufacture of soap. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” his father used to remind him. “Just remember how Herr Stutz has prospered.”
What he remembered most was Irma, a war widowed cousin of the Stutz daughters visiting from Westphalia. During a church picnic they had kissed long and hard in a grove on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where she had suddenly got one leg behind his and begun to climb him as if he was a tree. Years later he could still feel the way she moulded her body to his.
And then there were the Becks and the Herrmans, the Wursters and the Küblers, the Wachbaurs and the Breischs. He wondered what these stiff necked old Schwabians of his childhood, half of them were born in Württemberg or Dürnam would make of him inspecting their graves at sunset wearing a uniform to which he was not entitled. It occurred to him that they would probably ask him if he was doing God’s will. Well, yes he was. Fighting for the Fatherland was always God’s will.
There were several children’s graves. Malaria, cholera, smallpox, diphtheria. The Templers had suffered the lot. But they had drained the mosquito swamps near their settlements, found fresh water, worked hard, put down what seemed to be strong roots. Both Arabs and Jews had learned from them. In a way, the Jews more so because the Arabs had always lived here and worked the land. But it was the Templers who proved that it was possible for Europeans to do it and survive and the Zionists had watched them with interest.
It took him a few minutes, but eventually he found exactly what he was looking for in a quite a well lighted place by the line of palm trees which separated the British from the German dead. He shut his eyes and tested himself a couple of times. It was easy to commit to memory. The Templer was about to walk away when it occurred to him that there was something he could do to both appease the spirits of the place and posthumously confound his enemies who would certainly hang or shoot him should he ever be taken alive. He transferred the remaining two cigarettes from a packet of Players to his top pocket and flattened out the cardboard for his pencil. Before he tore off what he had written, he underlined a couple of things which would confirm to the more dedicated students of his affairs that he had written them. Then he folded the cardboard and put it in an empty matchbox as protection against the elements. But once he placed the matchbox where he wanted it to be it did not look right. Some rare visitor might just tidy it away. He looked around and on a nearby grave saw a large flat stone, the kind of thing that might have been used to keep a wreath in place on blustery days. He thought this ideal and placed it over the matchbox.
The Templer spoke rather better Arabic than he intended on his way back for he had a lot to do before he and Lang returned to Jerusalem in the morning and his mind was on other things. Both of them had found it difficult to believe what had happened during that little tattoo the army had staged at Sarafand. Lang had been furious, going on like a Prussian about British incompetence and how lucky Sir Harold MacMichael was because of it. “He was a minute away from extinction then they blow themselves up!”
Even so, MacMichael had to be lucky all the time. And when it came to luck they could hardly grumble about their own ration. Jessica was a gift beyond compare. The whole business at the Europa had been. He had gone into the city centre that night shortly after their arrival in Jerusalem from Haifa, where they had left the Siemens set in its hiding place but at the last minute, because it was so easy to carry, had brought with them the British explosive. Lang had disappeared on one of his mysterious errands and he thought it a good chance to test his disguise and see what he could discover. He had intended to go to the King David but spotted a couple of officers in its main bar wearing the same Springbok insignia as himself and decided not to risk it. Lang had told him about the Europa Café so he thought he would give it a try.
It had hardly disappointed. From his table with his back to the nearby bar he had listened to Malley’s contemptuous monologue on the military shortcomings of the goddam Limeys. This was followed by confirmation from the German Jew talking to the other newsman that the British were indeed so panic stricken they were pulling out of Cairo the German speakers they employed to monitor the Wehrmacht’s radio traffic and interpret captured documents. Then came the pièce de résistance. In swaggers the drunken Malley, at his side the gorgeous Jessica and from his lips the words, “We’re celebrating her promotion.”
And there it was. If he could make proper use of this introduction he was surely being handed Sir Harold’s head on a platter. He had, of course, very nearly ruined it by getting involved in that fight with Malley. He should have seen it coming and walked away from it or even let him hit him. It probably wouldn’t have hurt v
ery much. At the time all he was interested in was establishing some kind of relationship with Jessica. Something he could build on. Amorous? Yes, once they had begun to dance, and it was obvious she was enjoying it as much as he was, it had passed his mind. Was there a red blooded man alive who didn’t, at least for a nanosecond, think of it when he was waltzing some pretty stranger around the floor? But friend and dancing partner would have done. Then the American had taken that swing at him and he had ridiculously overreacted. Malley was far too drunk to defend himself properly. If he had seriously hurt him, if he had cracked his head on a table or something, he might have ended up under arrest, his cover blown and their operation over before it had properly begun. He would have become an historical footnote: the buffoon who was unmasked as a German agent because he got into a brawl over a woman in a nightclub. A man unworthy of the trust his country and his party had placed in him. But again his luck had held. He had found that taxi and to his surprise he had also found Jessica standing alone outside the Europa Café.
Not too long after dawn he was back with Lang, initially a very angry Lang, gun in hand, who felt much the same way about his absence as he did waiting alone in the Haifa apartment only to receive a delivery from a young man wearing a silly bowtie. His news soon calmed him down. Providing Lang’s organisation could equip them with the type of car that that would get them into that part of the Sarafand base where, at four that afternoon, MacMichael would be viewing a live fire training display there was a very good chance their mission would be completed.
It was 7.30am. They had seven hours maximum to do it. Oh, and they would need a British Army small pack as well. They did it in five. The car was an Austin 10 Cambridge staff saloon stolen by a young man in British Army uniform daringly close to the Russian compound at ten o’clock. It was delivered at noon after its unit insignia stencils had been replaced by South African ones and the number plates changed. On the back seat there had been two canvas small packs though they only needed one.
The Templer had been impressed. Putting something like that together at such short notice demonstrated an unexpected competence and he felt they had failed them. Failed them by about three minutes. And to a certain extent he blamed himself. He was the one who planted the bomb. He should have done it earlier. Found a parking space sooner. Worked out exactly where MacMichael was faster. Well over half their plastic explosive had been used. Lang had said he would be able to supplement what was left with some of the guncotton British sappers used and perhaps a bit of gelignite but neither of them were as good.
At least they had returned the car intact for use elsewhere and made their way back to Haifa by train. Tomorrow they would go back to Jerusalem the same way and this time the wireless transmitter was coming with them. Suitcases went better with rail travel; luggage in a car was much more likely to attract attention at a roadblock. They would remain in Jerusalem until they had killed MacMichael or died in the attempt. The Templer was determined on that and he sensed that Lang felt the same way. After all, they had an enormous plus. They had Jessica’s innocent knowledge of the High Commissioner’s appointments’ diary and the Templer’s ability to get it out of her. Lang had already seen that an apartment was arranged for them in the Bethlehem Road quite near the railway station. Not that he expected to be spending much time there. He knew Jessica was looking forward to the company of Maurice de Wet again and so was he.
15 - The Widow Jessica
Jessica was still in the habit of getting to work a good fifteen minutes before her eight o’ clock start. Now in her third week as Sir Harold’s appointment secretary, she was determined to keep the job because she was determined to stay in Palestine and without it she would be sent home.
Sometimes Jessica felt so guilty about not wanting to go home, about liking it out here. And she knew she was damn right to feel guilty because she was not behaving well. It had been over a year now since Bob was killed. For the first three months he had been missing in action. Then once it had been established beyond all reasonable doubt that the Vichy French were no longer holding any British prisoners he became "missing believed killed". Jessica had always been certain that she was a widow and no doubt many thought that her proper place was back home with her family poised, after a decent interval, to take a new husband. But that was not what she wanted. She had loved Bob well enough and never felt the need to be unfaithful but she did not, in the foreseeable future, want another husband. What she wanted was a good time – while stocks lasted and let the future take care of itself. She had not quite got around to admitting this to herself. All she would own up to was that she would be thirty next birthday.
Palestine was considered to be an active war zone but really it was soldiers without war. When Jewish friends fretted that the Germans were now only five hundred miles away from Tel Aviv Jessica liked to remind them they had been twenty-three miles away from Dover for the last two years. But it was undoubtedly getting closer. Recently trains had started to bring some of the wounded from Egypt’s western desert directly to Palestine rather than Alexandria and Cairo. At least once a week Jessica, along with some of the other young women from the Secretariat, spent an evening working as an auxiliary nurse at the new hospital the army had established in Jerusalem. Auxiliaries were menials, the bedpan brigade, though sometimes she was allowed to try and wash hair matted with oil and sand and occasionally wrote postcards or telegrams home for those reduced to dictation by wounds or illiteracy.
“Except when they’re dying, when they sometimes like to see a padre, you’ll find it takes three things keep them quiet,” advised the business-like Sister in charge of the auxiliaries. “A nice cup of tea, don’t stint on the sugar; a fag, watch out for the ones who’ll need to have it lit for them, and the kind of smile that says for two pins you’d hop into bed with what’s left of them. But don’t. Their stitches might come undone.”
To Jessica’s annoyance she was rarely assigned to one of the officers’ wards where she imagined herself stumbling on some lightly wounded acquaintance like the scene from Gone with the Wind where Scarlet O’Hara searches for Rhett among the litters of Confederate wounded. Not that the other ranks were loath to flirt with her. It was just that some were such unlikely heroes: small and weedy looking with bad teeth. Sometimes they would ask, “So what brings a beautiful girl like you out here Miss? (or Luv or Sugar or Sweetheart).”
“I was here before the war,” she would say, her accent descending like a portcullis. “My husband was RAF.”
“Was?” the more alert would reply, and contrive to look guilty at being alive and safe and attended by this hoity-toity smasher however painful admission had been.
When Jessica got to her cubbyhole at the Secretariat an Arab messenger from the post room was delivering mail to the desks of her superiors. He saw her and came over and gave her a blue envelope on which her name and address had been written in the italic looking script favoured by her younger sister Davina. She had recently arranged for her mail to be forwarded to the Secretariat from her old married quarters’ address. Lots of people did the same. It got sorted faster.
The letter must have come by ship for it had taken over two months. The date on the Guilford postmark was indecipherable but even before she opened it Jessica knew it had been written around the first of May. On the back of the envelope, where the soldiers wrote SWALK which meant “sealed with a loving kiss” or ITALY, “I trust and love you”, Davina had written: HUFOM. This was their private joke, an acronym for a rhyme Jessica had learned from an older friend when her little sister was still in her mid teens and been unable to resist passing on for the sheer pleasure of seeing first the shock then the incredulous delight in which it was received.
Even so when she saw it Jessica frowned and pursed her lips for a second, then quickly stopped and stretched a rictus smile in the opposite direction for fear of permanent disfigurement. This time, she vowed, she really must play the Big Sister and tell Davina not to do it again. She must have put
it on her first letter of spring ever since she came out to Palestine in ‘37, a new bride on the arm of a new Squadron Leader some ten years her senior. Apart from being childish - my God, she was twenty next birthday - it was also very rude, very rude indeed. HUFOM was half an acronym. It stood for: “Hurrah, Hurrah the First of May.” The rest, which thank God Davina always left out, went: “OFBT - Outdoor Fucking Begins Today.”
She opened it and there it was, Davina’s May Day offering, full of tales of how impossible Mummy and Daddy were getting and how they coped. There was a farmer down near Petersfield selling pork sausages under the table. Everybody used the black market. Davina had started painting her legs with this new copper brown make-up solution “because you can only get nylons for love not money and I’m not THAT sort of girl”. You could even do seams! “Gives a chap a shock when they discover it’s YOU they’re touching!!”
What chaps, wondered Jessica? What touching? Outdoors fucking? Surely not? Not her little sister? Horrid word. She mustn’t even think of it as that. She wasn’t a tart. Oh here they were. There was Colin, the son of a friend of their parents, who had almost finished a flying training course. Colin was cute but a bit too polite if she knew what she meant. Jessica thought she knew exactly what she meant and found herself pursing her lips again. Then there was Dan, a Canadian lieutenant from British Columbia. Dan was divine and had been home to supper.
Davina went on to say that she had met the Divine Dan at a house party for young people to which a lot of Canadian officers from... The rest of the sentence and possibly the one after it was obliterated by thick blue crayon. For the first time Jessica noticed that the top left hand corner of the page bore a rubber stamp declaring that, according to the Emergency Powers Act, the letter had been read by the military censor. Of course Jessica was aware that in theory all overseas mail was subject to censorship just in case it somehow fell into enemy hands. Yet she felt oddly indignant about it. It was almost as if Davina had been violated. What innocent revelation had aroused this brute? Jessica held the letter up to the light but the thick blue crayon, appeared to be one of Britain’s better war weapons. She was amazed HUFOM had survived or, dreadful thought, did the Censor know what it meant? And if he didn’t, even more dreadful thought, had men in long raincoats driven down to Guilford from Scotland Yard and forced Davina in front of Mummy and Daddy to explain exactly what this code was? Aaaggghhh! She would get the blame she knew she would. In a mailbag somewhere, stowed on a ship or winging her way towards her in one of those big flying boats, there was a very angry letter from Daddy.