The Years Between (1939-44)

by Cecil Beaton

  Yes, he repeated, I always had a good time, and was particularly amused when, in evening class, Tregoning used to crawl along the floor and turn out the gas, so that for twenty minutes the whole room was in darkness. By the time order was regained, the hour had come for the end of the lesson. He talked of the Beaks. He remembered how Ponto (du Pontet, four feet in height) bumped into Morgan (a tall man with a squint) who said, ‘I do wish you’d, look where you’re going,’ to which Ponto replied, ‘I do wish you’d go where you’re looking.’

  What a strange life this man leads harking back to those early days, stopping people in the street — ‘A. C. Kinahan, late of Bradby’s, isn’t it? No, you wouldn’t remember me, but you did this and that in such and such a year. Do come and have lunch with me one day and meet some other Harrovians …’

  DESPONDENCY

  February 15th

  I don’t believe the morale of the country has been so low since the beginning of the war. Not even the desperate period after Dunkirk compared in gloom to this. There was something rather exciting about the appalling sequence of events that ended in the collapse of France. But nearly two years have intervened. It is the fact that, even now, we still seem to be muddling and unprepared, that has, after a dark winter with long periods of snow, ice and dirty skies, given so many people at home a feeling of cynical desperation or what’s worse — sheer apathy. I believe that for the first time the English now do seem to realize the possibility of defeat.

  Of course that possibility had always existed, but it was our great strength that we would never face the fact. Now we are beginning to lose that strength. Churchill is undoubtedly a great man, but the pendulum of popularity has swung away from him and people talk of his faults and ask, ‘Who else is there?’ From having had to admit there was nobody they now answer ‘Stafford Cripps’. Overnight, Cripps has sprung towards the top of the class. The country has built him up to be a force since his return from Moscow. His radio talk has had wide success: letters have poured into the newspapers suggesting he should lead a new Government.

  Meanwhile the news for which Churchill is responsible, and yet for which he is not to blame, gets ever worse. The Japs advance. They have occupied Malaya, they have landed in some numbers in Burma. The Russian advance on Germany seems to be held up. The Americans are talking. The German battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst and Prinz Eugen, on whose attempted destruction we have wasted many lives and, reputedly, forty-two bombing machines, have been able to leave their positions at Brest and sail undamaged along the Straits of Dover past the English Channel to the comparative safety of Heligoland Bight. This all happened on Friday the 13th — but worse on Sunday the 15th! We hear that Singapore, to which we have been sending reinforcements, and which was defended by 80,000 men, has surrendered. This is one of the most shattering blows. The country is bowed in shame, furious with indignation and impatient of further setbacks.

  Churchill has hurried to the microphone and made a speech that is strong and rallying. He has said that when Russia was being harassed, and the fall of Moscow seemed imminent, the people did not lose faith in their leaders and demand a change of Government: internal disorders were just what the Germans hoped to achieve. It is a bad period for Churchill. It is a bad period for us. Personally, I do not wish a change in Government — and one never knows what sort of a prime minister Stafford Cripps or anyone might make. Yet it is comforting to the country to realize that, at last, an alternative looms on the horizon.

  The gloom is all-pervading. Increasing restrictions — without any visible signs of results in production — the cold, the untidiness, the ugliness of people in London, a lack of smartness in our army, and, above all, the off-handedness and apathetic laziness of the people, has become a slight obsession with me.

  Now that my RAF book has been sent to the printers I am looking around for my next job. My ambition is to be sent to the Near East. Randolph Churchill, on leave, was enthusiastic and helpful. I go to see Brendan Bracken on Wednesday, and there is a chance that the Ministry of Information may send me to Cairo to take photographs and do articles for another book. It is a thrilling prospect, and there is now a star shining brightly in front of me.

  Part VII: Middle East, 1942

  CAIRO

  March 1942, Cairo

  ‘He’s away in Malta,’ said Walter Monckton’s secretary, wearing what at home we used to call a Henley Regatta dress, when I called to present myself at the office of the Minister of State. ‘Perhaps you had better see Mr Tweedy.’ She rattled the telephone exasperatedly. ‘You’ve no idea what the phone service is like here’ — and while she waited with the receiver to her ear she explained, ‘It’s a strange place, and you’ll soon find no one keeps a date on time.’

  Mr Tweedy said, ‘We want “might” in our propaganda here. Don’t photograph one aeroplane, photograph sixty at a time — never four tanks, but a hundred! Get them to “lay on” some important demonstration! Ask for the impossible! You’ve come at a good time. We’re prepared for the balloon going up at any moment: we’re not worrying though; Rommel’s no bogy; we made a mistake in building him up as a great figure. The Germans themselves don’t star him.’

  Wing-Commander Burn, at the RAF Public Relations Headquarters, went to a map and suggested itineraries for me to start upon in the desert. ‘Begin in the canal zone and work up here, this way, then down here, along there and then back here, on to Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Transjordania and Syria. But first you must wait for a Service identity card.’ Philip Astley at the Army PR suggested other places to visit.

  In London the Ministry of Information were baffled as to whether I, being ‘a special case’ should wear a uniform or not: if so, to which Service was I to be attached? Would I be a private or a non-commissioned officer? ‘Best to leave it till your arrival in Cairo. They’ll know what to make of you.’ But HQ were equally baffled. ‘He can’t go into the desert without a uniform. Someone, sooner or later, would be bound to shoot him for a spy.’ ‘We can’t possibly make him an officer,’ said a grey-haired group-captain, scratching his head. I was rather sad to hear this, as ever since my childhood I have suspected I would never get beyond being a private. In the end it was arranged that I should wear RAF uniform with ‘Official Photographer’ on the shoulders instead of a badge of rank.

  This morning I went to order my uniform. As I looked in the glass, trying on a cap and jacket, I felt it was a pity I was not fifteen years younger for, although no apparel is more becoming than uniform, a bare bullock face suits it best. There is altogether too much going on in my face — it reveals all sorts of nasty bits of character that I do not like at all.

  On my first few, rather tentative, outings in this uniform I was self-conscious about matters of saluting on which I had not been briefed. I caused great surprise by the smart manner in which I touched my cap to some men on leave casually buying souvenirs. I was alarmed to notice that important old men covered with tabs should look, in a somewhat bewildered manner, at my shoulders rather than at my face. Small wonder they were bewildered because I have now learnt that I was supplied with a heterogeneous collection of garments that would ordinarily have belonged either to a high-ranking officer, or to someone in the ranks, but not to both at the same time.

  Many of those in high authority have been out here for more than three years. To an outside observer like myself that seems far too long. In this war, fresh ideas come so fast that even a man capable of adapting himself to new ways of thinking is soon apt to get ‘behind the times’. Moreover, the clammy heat squanders a man’s patience and plays upon his moral fibre as relentlessly as on his physique: unless he resigns himself to running in low gear his nerves are soon frayed and the Kipling epitaph applies: ‘Here lies the fool who tried to hustle the East.’ Thus, the Cairene climate, producing a laissez aller policy, procrastination and delay, is a great ally to Hitler.

  I was bidden to 8 o’clock breakfast at ‘Air House’. This official residence of the Air Office
r Commanding-in-Chief Middle East is where he lives and entertains any distinguished RAF commanders in transit or on a visit to Headquarters. It looks like a house you would find at Godalming, and its drawing-room and dining-room suites are furnished with a strange ‘unlived-in’ formality. Park and de Crespigny, the AOCs of Egypt and Iraq respectively, had already finished breakfast when I arrived, and Tedder came down saying, ‘Shall we nibble?’ What sort of a man is this who has one of the most responsible jobs out here? He looks like a bilious schoolboy. His complexion is sallow and rather dry with very small wrinkles. Thick hair, twinkling eyes, bat’s ears and wiry body, with legs that stretch back at the calf like a bow. It is impossible to believe that this coltishness belongs to someone of fifty-two. He does not wish to impress — rather to put everyone at ease, so that talk will be at its most natural and interesting. He puffs at his pipe, smiles with his eyes, and invites you to a conspiracy of friendship. He is, you feel, always storing up impressions, and that the opinions of anyone with whom he comes in contact are grist to his mill.

  Tedder has been accused of being too full of charm, of not being forceful enough. He is a man of undoubted charm, but I would not like to cross him. He can suddenly become granite, as he did when describing some of the remarkable things against heavy odds that the RAF boys had achieved out here in the desert, and in Malta, from where he had just returned.

  I was somewhat anxious lest he should give me technical instructions that would be above my head, or that he might discuss warfare in the Near East as if I were as knowledgeable as some recent American woman journalist had been. But, knowing that someone else was in charge of my programme, he showed me crayon sketches he had done of the bombing of Malta. Although quite naive in technique these little pictures gave a better impression of these war scenes than the Press photographs. Tedder always carries this small notebook in his breast-pocket, and produces it when he sees something he’d like to record as a ‘souvenir’. ‘You’re going to Syria? Well, hurry up and get there before the spring flowers are over.’ This remark surprised me pleasantly. ‘Yes, the wild flowers are a bit late already, but they’re amazing — in one square yard of rock garden I counted twenty-seven different varieties.’

  After the comparative ‘austerity’ of England, Cairo presents a luxurious façade with ultra-fashionable Egyptian, Greek and Syrian women giving lavish entertainments, servants without number, and none of the usual restrictions. The torrent of optimistic war news in the Anglo-Egyptian newspapers gives many of the English people here the complacent feeling that the war will be over in two months. Even Churchill’s speeches are not given in full if the import is not sufficiently encouraging. This policy of pap feeding is aimed, it is said, at ‘heartening’ the Egyptians. But surely we have a grim enough example from France of what happens when the newspapers refuse to face the gravity of events?

  What a joy to find good old Flick[24] out here! One would have thought him too self-effacing and elusive to find for himself any pigeon-hole in the framework of a war, yet, in his quiet way, he has become an expert on camouflage and has been disguising the Takoradi oil route. And Felix has sufficient strength of character not to allow a battle to divert him from his interests in all forms of art and architecture. Felix has become my guide, combining erudition with an appropriate frivolity on our sightseeing expeditions to medieval Arab houses in the Old City, the early Mosque of Ibn Touloun, the late-Napoleonic Palace of Mahomed Ali, and the painted Palace of Shubra.

  Yesterday, in one of the local carriages — gharries — we toured the Arab town, the largest Moslem city in the world. The gharry provides the most delightful and leisurely way of surveying the narrow, overhung lanes, with the pretty, wiry balconies of the harems almost meeting above the jostling crowds. The tarboosh and coloured turbans of the various sects, dynasties and families formed a bobbing sea below us. We sat aloft, jogging along lanes lined with brilliantly coloured sweets, or butchers’ shops, or alley ways with gold necklaces arrayed in glittering splendour.

  A whole thoroughfare given over to engraven brasswork rolled past us, followed by another of pearl inlay. The spice quarter exuded the fragrance of the Arabian Nights. In bulging, buff-coloured sacks, mint, cedar, sandalwood and innumerable varieties of curry powder comprise still life arrangements ready for the brush of Braque.

  The signs of poverty are very distressing: so many lives are devoted to the most inhuman tasks. Young men swing a large heavy shell-shaped weapon pounding the nutmeg as they sing in unison a loud and monotonous dirge, the rhythm of which helps them forget their physical agony as they heave to and fro, like Blake engravings of tormented souls writhing in purgatory. Once they give up this work their muscles contract and they are unfit for further effort. Some extremely aged men have spent their whole existence doing the same work every day of the year until now they have become human machines.

  How depressingly ugly is the Egyptian of today! The veiled women are an unfortunate, unlovable lot. On badly-balanced, high-heeled shoes, they lope along sloppily, without looking where they are going, continuously colliding with one another or stepping under the wheels of the oncoming traffic. Above their noses, which are squashed by a cotton spool keeping their veils in place and looking like a misplaced Hitler’s moustache, their eyes wear a perpetually wronged, hang-dog expression. Scanty, sagging breasts swing low, and their stomachs bulge as if about to deliver yet another unwanted brat whose eyes will be food for flies. The men are avaricious, and look it.

  Screams could be heard coming from the centre of a group of Arabs who were eagerly huddled together. A small child whose head was covered with bleeding sores was having its scalp shaved. The child wriggled and screamed as it was held down by a dozen dark hands. The razor was unstayed. The blue, shaven scalp, the flash of the blade and the bleeding sores produced a ghastly effect.

  Wives of officers in Cairo were given the alternative: either to be vacuated to South Africa or to work fifty-two hours a week. There was a rush of women to General Headquarters for jobs as telephonists, typists and secretaries. Many experienced professional men were ousted from their jobs and chaos reigned. It became even more difficult to make a telephone call than before — an exasperated voice was heard bellowing, ‘I’ve tried all day to get hold of the Colonel. Is that the Colonel’s secretary? Well, I shall report you for incompetence for not giving him the message. What’s your name?’ The voice came back apologetically, ‘I’m very sorry, but this is the General’s wife speaking.’

  Today the British colony turned up in its shantung and duck at the Embassy in celebration of the visit of the Duke of Gloucester. Flags were flying from the balcony and cut flowers were wilting in the sun. A brass band played. ‘God Save the King’ was struck up, the Duke stood at the top of the steps. A pause — a silence while everyone stared. Everyone waited for His Royal Highness to move, but nothing stirred, except a fly which Her Excellency, Lady Lampson, whisked away. This whole scene could not have been more typically English, in spite of Egypt, the palm trees and the sun. The Embassy, with its shuttered windows and balustrades, might have been a country mansion near Henley, and the Nile was reduced to the Thames. Yet coming from England it all seems a little astonishing, for although the buffet could not be criticized for extravagance (orangeade and cakes were provided), the whole set-up appears so definitely removed from this epoch and certainly from this war.

  My British forces identification card, No 55561, has arrived, stamped with a photograph of myself in uniform, and I am off to the desert via Alexandria.

  ALEXANDRIA: LILIA RALLI

  Alexandria

  On Sunday, a great friend of mine, Lilia Ralli, a young Greek lady, wearing a child’s dress of bright red, with red bows in her hair and carrying a hat in her hand, took me for a walk to the canal banks. Here life cannot have altered since the days of the Pharaohs. The barges were being propelled very slowly by men in clothes dating from the sixth dynasty. Women walked past carrying a mountain of clover on their heads,
and the little mule accompanying them would be hidden, except for its delicate, bird-like hoofs, under the load it had to bear.

  Lilia has inherited from the Greeks an enviable basic simplicity, a contentment which stems from the philosophic acceptance of the immediate present. She is full of the joys of intense intimacy. To her, her family and friends are the most priceless of jewels — an apt metaphor for someone to whom jewels mean more than they do for most people — and she will remark of an expedition she made, ‘Yes, I went there with my brother Stephan,’ giving his name an ardour that others would reserve for a beloved king or poet.

  The peasant things of life are enjoyed by Lilia to whom a melon cooled in a rusty can of cold water and eaten under a tree can be the best of the year. A lunch of bread and cheese, sardines and grapes, is enjoyed as much as the truffle fondu at Giovanni’s in Milan.

  I had not met Lilia since she had escaped from Athens when Greece was overwhelmed. It had been a nightmare experience for her to see her country, after enduring so much suffering in the Italian campaign, like a savagely maimed person assaulted by a fresh foe, fighting against Germany without the necessary strength and with little outside help.

  Yet the spirit of belief in final victory had been almost mystical, and had sustained her people through the worst tragedies. Liha does not feel that same spirit here in Egypt. It makes her deeply unhappy, and she longs to be able to go back to Athens to collect food or cook communal meals. Her maid, Heleni, who had lost four stone in weight, had written describing the tumbril of their dead that passed through the streets of Athens each day, yet whenever she heard Lilia’s canaries sing she felt that her mistress would be soon returning.