The Death of the Fronsac_A Novel

by Neal Ascherson

  The days became weeks. I left Union Street and rejoined the Polish army in eastern Scotland. A month or so later, Mrs Melville sent me a postcard to say that a parcel of Canadian chocolate, tinned butter and maple syrup had come for Jackie. There was no note in it, but the parcel had been posted in Winnipeg.

  ‘In such a silence, I strained my ear’ for a voice from Canada. None called. After a while, I gave up listening.

  7

  At Greenock, in those strange months with the French navy, I had been a solo performer. Nobody else could act my part, for which I was superbly costumed. But now I became a mere extra.

  Like the thousands of men around me, I wore dull British battledress with the ‘Poland’ shoulder flash, black beret and boots and green anklets. Those shiny riding boots, like my officer’s tunic and my four-cornered cap, were stowed away in a suitcase under my bunk. They were an outfit for dying in, somewhere on the Masurian plain. They were not an outfit for living in, under the ceaseless Scottish downpour. Moreover, they caused misunderstanding among my new comrades.

  Some of the other officers welcomed me, assuming that anyone so proudly kitted out must share their traditionalist, not to say Stone Age opinions. Others drew the opposite conclusion. Our leader, General Sikorski, had only recently taken power from the discredited pre-war clique of colonels. Could a stranger in boots like mine be relied upon to support him?

  For the first week after my arrival I simply could not believe that grown-up men in uniform – high-spirited and superbly courageous men who had just emerged from one battle and expected at any moment to enter the next – could waste their time on quarrels about who might or might not have been a Freemason. It reminded me of insufferable conversations with my father’s neighbours, and of why he decided to see no more of them.

  But I told myself that I had to live with these people, even like them. Perhaps my resentment was out of place. Perhaps I had been away from my country too long. But now I was back in my touchy, disputatious nation, on the proverbial desert island where two Poles would set up three different political parties. I persuaded myself that I was feeling at home, all the more when I was tempted to take personal offence.

  How could I have been so patronising? That odious detachment of mine was precisely the proof that I really had been away too long. But it collapsed. One day in the officers’ mess, I saw pinned up on the standing-orders board a leaflet about the ‘Judaeo-Bolshevik menace’ within the army, which should be practising ‘cultural self-defence’ against the infiltrators in its ranks. Aware that stuff like this was going around, pretending falsely to come with Headquarters approval, I had never actually seen an example. On impulse, I tore it down.

  Heads turned. A lieutenant, a boy much younger than I was, strode up and informed me in a shrieking voice that I had no business to change the orders board, which was the exclusive duty of the adjutant’s office.

  ‘Have you read this? Are you suggesting that it should stay here?’

  ‘It is a matter of good order and military discipline. You must put it back at once.’

  ‘What do you think this rubbish does to order and discipline? And lieutenants do not give orders to majors!’

  ‘Everyone knows that Major Szczucki is only a captain, pretending to a rank which he was lent for temporary diplomatic reasons.’

  By now, I was at the centre of a shouting group. I was shouting too. The Colonel appeared, a calm man who had been a criminal procurator in civilian life. He picked up the leaflet, and glanced at it.

  ‘Which of you put this on the board?’

  There was deadly silence.

  The Colonel looked round the group. He said in a conversational tone: ‘Gentlemen, I have lost my reasons to respect you. There will be consequences. Major, you will come to my office to explain yourself.’

  In the office, he kept me standing at attention. ‘Are you a Jew?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then why did you pull that leaflet down?’

  ‘Because it dishonours the army, sir.’

  He looked at me with interest. Then he remarked: ‘That bunch have gone too far. They and their friends in London have been using this army as a hunting-field to catch their political enemies. But I have friends too, at the very top, and now it is my turn to go hunting.’

  The Colonel smoothed out the crumpled leaflet and put it away in his desk. A week later, I noticed that the young lieutenant and some of his comrades were no longer around. ‘Isle of Snakes,’ said somebody, with a wink. The officers’ mess was suddenly more cheerful.

  I knew what he was talking about. One of the first acts of the Polish army in Scotland had been to set up a detention camp for supposed ‘unreliables’, mostly elderly officers linked to the pre-war regime. The ‘Isle of Snakes’ was the otherwise tranquil island of Bute, in the Firth of Clyde. Soon there were two or three such camps.

  *

  The trouble was that there were too many officers. The ordinary soldiers paid little attention to politics, concentrating on sensible matters like complaining about the awful food and courting Scottish girls. My unit was quartered in a Victorian castle in Fife which had been a teacher training college, a mile or so from a small industrial town. Pitnechtan had a linoleum mill and many pubs. We were soon well known there. Preferring the company of my platoon to that of the officers’ mess, I often went into town with them. Why, they asked, do Scottish working men cram themselves into the public bar to drink, while the more comfortable lounge bar next door remained empty? Did they have no self-respect?

  Each night, some of our boys would wait outside the mill for the shifts to change and then pursue the laughing and shrieking mill-girls down the street. Others, by kissing women’s hands and using their few words of English pathetically, got their knees under Scottish family tables and developed lasting friendships. Marriage proposals often followed. Our interpreters spent more and more time on grave negotiations between our Catholic chaplain and the town’s Presbyterian ministers.

  But our first task, in late 1940, was to defend Scotland against invasion. We took it seriously. Lorries took us down to the coast where we built pill-boxes, erected concrete tank traps and mounted guard by day and night. I do not care to remember those nights, facing the sabre slash of the east wind bringing rain or snow off the North Sea. Wearing our steel helmets and long Polish capes, armed in those early months only with a few old rifles, we drank hot tea, took turns to warm our frozen hands at a coal brazier in the pill-box, and waited.

  We were waiting for the Germans because we were sure – we knew, indeed – that the Germans would come. It came as a shock to find that Scottish civilians, while appreciating our care for them, thought it less likely that the panzer divisions would start their invasion of Britain by motoring up the beach at Pittenweem.

  One day several of us were detailed to escort the Polish sector commander, a general, when he arrived to inspect the defences of a certain ancient East Neuk burgh. The provost was waiting on the quayside, wearing his best blue suit. Behind him, fishing boats bobbed in the harbour and the red pantiles of the old crow-stepped houses glowed in the winter sun. He and his bailies were laughing and joking, rubbing their hands to keep warm. When the general’s staff car arrived, with its red and white pennant, the provost himself stepped forward to open the door.

  The general wore full Polish uniform. He emerged, came to attention and gave the provost a salute. He was a short man with enormously wide shoulders; his eyes were small and sharp. He had fought against the Russians in the First World War, against the Ukrainians in 1919, against the Red Army in the Polish–Soviet war of 1920, against the Germans in the September campaign in 1939 and once more in France in 1940. Without waiting for any greeting, he set off at once at a rapid walk up the steep main street.

  We followed him to the top of the town, where the houses stopped. A grassy slope led on to the ruins of a medieval abbey, sacked during the Reformation. From here, we could see the whole town below and the
fields around it running down to the sea. A small group of men in shabby grey uniforms marked with coloured patches were digging trenches under the eye of a British sentry; they leaned on their spades to stare.

  ‘Who are these?’

  ‘German prisoners, sir,’ said the interpreter, after consulting the provost. They were a rarity at this early stage of the war. The general stiffened. He walked towards the group and a tall German, dodging the surprised sentry, strode out to meet him. They spoke for a few moments in German. Then the general removed one of his gloves, used it to slap the prisoner lightly across the face, and walked away.

  I caught up with the interpreter. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘That German – he said that he was an SS officer, that the abolition of Poland meant that the general was an illegal terrorist, that using prisoners of war for military purposes was forbidden by the Geneva Convention, and that we would all face trial in a few months’ time when Germany had won the war.’

  ‘My God!’ I glanced back at the group of prisoners. One of them, the man closest to me, had turned his back on us and seemed to be hiding among the others as they tried to gather round the SS officer. The sentry, clumsily waving his rifle with its fixed bayonet, was shouting and pushing them back to work.

  The general had gone on ahead. He was standing by the abbey ruin, surveying the landscape.

  ‘They will come from here,’ he told the provost. He pointed to a low hill. ‘They make first attack down the main road behind us. But it will be trick, a feint. The tanks will mass behind hill, then come suddenly on flank. I know. I have seen it many times.’

  He considered. ‘Our main anti-tank defence will be here. This must be removed, of course.’ He nodded at the abbey.

  ‘The abbey?’ The provost was pale.

  ‘Obviously. We need clear field of fire.’

  ‘But... we canny dae that, sir. It’s stood for hundreds of years. What would the town be without it? Oh, no, sir. After all, surely the chances of invasion here have, well, just a bittie...’

  ‘Have what?’

  ‘Diminished,’ said the provost in a small voice. The general gave him a pitying look, shrugged and continued his inspection. It turned out that the spire of the Episcopal chapel would have to go too, and several of the oldest houses obscuring the approach to the harbour, and all the new council houses out along the Crail road. The herring boats were to be filled with concrete and sunk to block the harbour entrance.

  The general saluted again, climbed back into his car and left. The provost, after staring blankly at the rest of us, made his way back into the Town House, tripping on one of the steps. No doubt he began to telephone.

  In the end, nothing was done. The Germans dug some more trenches, which filled up with water. The abbey is still there. The general fought in Normandy under that mighty commander Stanisław Maczek, liberated Dutch cities which still have streets named after him, and entered Germany as a conqueror. After the war, he refused to return to an ‘unfree’ Poland or to accept a pension from the British government, which he considered to have betrayed his country. He came back to Scotland and, like General Maczek, lived quietly and austerely in Edinburgh until his death.

  8

  By now, I was no longer a mere ‘extra’. My Colonel, more friendly to me after the quarrel over the poster, had put me in command of the Intelligence Section. Once again, I had an office, a metal table, a window with a view of the rain.

  Intelligence, at first, meant listening to the BBC, writing down what seemed important to me, and having it typed up and translated for the camp news board. Less public information about the war avoided me, passing straight from the London office of our Supreme Leader to the Colonel. Occasionally, he would tell me about the latest exile-government intrigue in the Hotel Rubens, or pass on a rumour about executions and deportations in the German-held ‘General-Government’. Mostly, he kept the coded telegrams to himself.

  Then an intelligence colleague from another unit took pity on me. ‘You don’t know that wonderful Jew at Ladybank? He is an agitator, but he’s informed about everything. Come on, I will introduce you.’

  Ladybank was a camp quite close to us, not exactly penal but providing segregation for individuals suspected of Marxism, disloyalty or just indifference to discipline. When we drove up there, I found that the commandant was the same lieutenant who had screamed at me in the mess over the anti-Semitic poster. A few months on the Isle of Snakes had done wonders for him. He smiled at me as if we had been old friends. ‘Just don’t take my Jew away. He is marvellous, he is organising all the camp education courses, he is running this place for me.’

  A small exuberant corporal came in, carrying an English dictionary. ‘I let him read it on guard duty,’ said the lieutenant fondly. The corporal gave us a benevolent flick of his fingers, more like a professor greeting two promising students than a soldier saluting officers. Then he took off his pince-nez, sat down uninvited in a chair and in twenty minutes told us more about the background and prospects of the war than I had learned since it began. He informed us that Hitler would invade Soviet Russia in the next few months, before the harvest. Stalin – here he pursed his lips – would then become Churchill’s favourite ally and defeat Hitler for him. He assured us that both Japan and America would be dragged into the war, sooner or later. If America joined the coming British–Soviet alliance, there would probably be a Second Front invasion of western Europe, across the English Channel.

  Much of this seemed outlandish, fantastic. ‘How will Poland return to independence?’

  He looked at us for a moment in silence. ‘As a socialist democracy, allied to a new socialist Germany.’ The lieutenant winked at us, and tapped his head. The soldier added: ‘I can see you want to ask me: in what frontiers. Well, as the Tsar once said to the Poles, “Messieurs, pas de rêveries!” The Soviet Union will hold what it holds. The eastern provinces will never be under Polish control again.’

  We all felt that he was becoming insolent. I found myself understanding why this man had been sent to Ladybank. But I gave him a tin of Gold Flake cigarettes which I had brought along as a reward, and we left in silence. As we drove through Fife, my colleague said: ‘He is charming, terribly intelligent. But in the end, just another Jewish exaggerator.’

  When he dropped me off at my office, he said: ‘Tomorrow, something else interesting. The British are going to interrogate an SS officer, and they are letting us in on it. Want to come along?’ He got out of the car, and stood beside me for a moment, brooding. ‘The Bolsheviks liberating a Red Warsaw? No, it’s koszmarny – a nightmare.’ That evening, I wrote down what I had heard, but put none of it into our camp bulletin.

  Next day, we found our way to a police station on the outskirts of Kirkcaldy. The prisoner turned out to be the same tall officer whose face our general had slapped. He sat on a chair facing us, two Poles and two uniformed British captains, and asked for a cigarette. The British refused. One of them, who spoke good German, invited the prisoner to confirm his name, rank and number. He remained silent.

  ‘Don’t waste our time. Your paybook says that you are Obersturmbannführer Wuttke, Franz, born in Danzig in 1910.’

  ‘Who are these men?’ He gestured at me and my companion.

  ‘As you can see, they are officers in the Polish army.’

  ‘There is no such army. Poland was a whore-bastard country, which no longer exists. You are illegal terrorists, and have no right to question me.’

  The British pair glanced at one another. One of them rose and suggested that we should go and have a cup of tea; there was a canteen in the police station.

  On the way to the canteen, I noticed the other German prisoners, sitting on the pavement by a lorry some distance down the street. It was raining heavily, and their guards were keeping dry by sitting in the back of the lorry, their legs dangling over the tailboard. Some of the Germans glanced at us, the others kept their heads down. They were very wet.

  After half
an hour, we went back to the interrogation. Several military policemen were now in the room. The prisoner’s hair was disarranged, and there was a bead of dried blood under his nose.

  ‘Let’s begin again. Name, rank and number?’

  No reply.

  ‘I’ll ask you another question. Three weeks ago, when you were being moved here, a civilian saw a man leave the lorry and run away. Yet ten men started the journey and ten men arrived the other end. How do you explain that?’

  ‘How do you explain that you have broken the Geneva Convention three times by using prisoners for military purposes, by torturing a prisoner of war, and by allowing a German officer to be interrogated by terrorists?’

  After another hour of this, we left. The British did not hit him again, but decided to try the soft tactic – tea, cigarettes, sympathy. For that, they suggested to us, they needed the ‘terrorists’ out of the way. We did not think this would work, and disliked the feeling that we were handing victory to an SS man. But, politely, we left.

  Outside, our driver came up to me. He saluted nervously. ‘Sir, one of the Germans wants to speak to you.’

  ‘To me?’

  ‘He knows your name. I think he was speaking in English, not German, but I don’t understand either. Only your name, sir, he kept trying to say it.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I think he went for a piss, sir, in the police station. He made signs like that.’

  At first the dank little room seemed silent and empty. Two urinals with rusty stains, a blackened cold-water tap on the wall, a puddle on the stone floor. Then I noticed that the stall door was shut. At the sound of my feet, the door opened and a man came slowly out.

  From time to time in my life, but more often as I grow older, I have met people I know to be dead. It goes like this: the instant of recognition, the recollection that this person is dead, then – naturally – the second glance which shows that this is someone else. What interests me is the moment between the recollection and the second glance. It’s a moment of powerful and yet pleasant surprise, not at all a shock of hair-risen horror. So he or she is dead and yet wonderfully present, ready to reconnect where we broke off...