The Years Between (1939-44)

by Cecil Beaton

  Siwa

  To arrive by the caravan route taken by Alexander the Great 330 years before Christ and, after an infinity of desert, to come upon the oasis of Siwa is to witness a miracle.

  Suddenly your eyes are refreshed by the sight of bubbling emerald pools, streams, date-palms, limes, grapes, olives and other trees of feathery richness; the small hills, minarets and towers are like illustrations from a fairy story. Siwa casts a spell on all who behold it. Most of the tall pinnacles of white mud in the old city built thousands of years before Christ still remain intact, though others are but lately fallen. The new city, moulded of the same white mud, is an extraordinary honeycomb of terraces built into the hillside. The Ammonium or Temple of Jupiter Ammon, where Alexander consulted the oracle, is a noble pile of masonry as incomprehensible in its way as Stonehenge and its white stones are almost on the same scale. A painted cornice frieze of the Ptolemaic period is still in good condition and the effect is startling against the intense blue of the afternoon sky.

  The inhabitants are so secretive and furtive that I had the impression that the town was completely deserted. A child running out of a doorway, immediately to retreat in alarm, was the only sign of life to be seen. Occasionally a bulkily laden white mule, attended by its owner wearing white egg-shell cap and draperies, trod delicately along the bleached rocks, past the streams and trees that throw a dark pattern of fanlike shadows on the white ground.

  The late afternoon sun was casting elaborate patterns through fronds of palm-trees when a group of soldiers arrived from a long trek in the desert. Imagine their surprise and delight! Here were natural bubbling springs for bathing! Immediately they stripped off all their clothes. In a small pool they soaped and scrubbed themselves, scrubbed and soaped one another, lathered their dust-covered heads, and shouting and smacking each other with joy they ran headlong over the sides of a huge circular pool. Surfacing a moment later, they were entirely transformed, hair and bodies a different colour: they laughed and spluttered and performed aquabatics in the warm water: again and again they dived in every attitude, and swam for sheer exultation until, tired, they unconsciously created a living classical frieze as, letting the sun dry their apricot-coloured bodies, they sat against the silver palm-trees along the side of the pool in which Cleopatra is said to have bathed.

  Cairo demands too little of a man, and the desert too much. Existence in the desert is, in its way, as unnatural as that of Cairo for a false reality prevails. The desert is an unnatural habitat for the average human being. It may be possible to dominate your surroundings for a certain length of time. But after a long spell you may, though physically healthy, grow mentally lax.

  Yet although there can be no more wasteful, heartless and purposeless theatre of war than the desert, still it possesses advantages. It is a healthy battleground, unlike the disease-spreading mud and miasmas of the 1914 trenches: most men are physically fitter than ever before in civilian life. Life here is primeval, and from this very simplicity seems to spring a new contentment. Often the men become so contented that they are said to be ‘sand happy’.

  Geoffrey Nares, the son of Owen Nares, the matinée idol, whom I knew in theatrical circles, suddenly appeared as if from nowhere. He is much changed from the elf-like boy I used to know. He is now captain of an armoured car. He told me that in the desert he was continuously frightened. During a patrol, through all the hours of daylight, he must watch the enemy through field glasses. Sometimes during an entire day he would be lucky if he could snatch a cup of tea. Perhaps if the order came through on their wireless set to advance farther, the strain became almost unbearable. Yet an indication of fright is the one thing that must never be seen. A man showing alarm can contaminate a whole group. If, to his officer, one of the men says quickly, ‘What’s that over there?’ the officer must never open an eye just that little much wider that indicates shock. He must maintain a complete calm. If one of his men says, ‘I can’t go on,’ Geoffrey must answer incredulously, ‘What do you mean?’ He must pretend that it takes him some little time before he even understands the man’s plight. Geoffrey said that a certain type of man, often brawny and tough in appearance, when frightened, becomes absolutely hysterical. When a man whimpers, ‘My nerve’s gone, sir,’ nothing remains but to send him away.

  Geoffrey told me how for months his men had perched on a little hill facing the enemy. They had come to think of it as ‘their’ hill, but one day the Germans brought up a big gun and forced them to retreat. In the excitement one of Geoffrey’s men left behind an enamel plate. When later the fortunes of war changed and they were able to throw the Germans back from the hillock, they found a little pile of German magazines, on which was the plate bearing the message: ‘You left this behind you — Fritz.’

  RETURN TO CAIRO

  Cairo

  For my part it is pleasant to be alone again: to rediscover my own individuality. Certainly to become part of a unit frees one of responsibility, gives an escape from many personal troubles, but I have always been my own master. It is a habit of mine. So it is good to get back sole charge of my days. There is a great deal of work to wade through — thousands of captions, some articles to write, censors and many people to see.

  Looking at the enormous batches of photographs I took in the desert I sometimes feel disappointment. Before these pictures were developed they represented a limitless set of vivid memories which could be conjured up at any moment in the mind; but, as soon as the results are produced in black and white they banish the fleeting, but more real, memories.

  Geoffrey is here on leave, and I have seen a lot of him. He does not seem to know what to do with his days — the days to which he has looked forward all those months in the desert. Maybe Geoffrey has always been a sad, striving, rudderless young man. I knew him at first when, dabbling on the stage, he appeared with my friend Caroline Paget. They struck up a romantic friendship. However, the moment war was declared, though hating the idea, he joined the army. He did well. He is now a grand officer in a grand regiment. Yet he still seems to be lost.

  While we sat at a café or restaurant table Geoffrey, with his attractive, sallow, tired baby’s face and dark, melting eyes, talked obsessionally of his life in the desert. Most men there pass the time wondering what it is they most look forward to on their leave: luxury, comfort, food, sex life, or drink. Yet whenever Geoffrey heard the troops discussing their future, their one desire, no matter how poor their conditions had been, was that life after the war should be exactly the same as it used to be. They don’t want a ‘better world’; they dream only of the old days.

  Geoffrey considers the ordinary German soldier is no less frightened and no more efficient than ours. ‘But, until last month, we felt the Germans were bogies and couldn’t be beaten. In the great retreat we couldn’t get out fast enough, and there was a certain amount of pandemonium. One officer had got so lost that he had to ask a quarter master where he was.’ Geoffrey smiled. ‘Now things are different. We all believe this time it’ll be non-stop to Benghazi, and the most encouraging sign of all is the number of young men occupying important positions in the army.’

  The night before his leave was up Geoffrey and I dined together: he looked particularly poignant, his large brown eyes deep pools of sadness. As we got into the hotel lift to go to our rooms he appalled me by saying, ‘Good night! I shall never see you again — give my love to Caroline and all those people.’[26]

  Perhaps not until this moment did I realize how different is it for me being here merely as a visitor. Geoffrey is a real part of the war: he knows that a major campaign may be launched at any moment, and that casualties are likely to be heavy.

  Thursday, May 21st

  Two months by the calendar since I left home yet none of the literally thousands of photographs I’ve taken have yet been sent back! Can’t imagine why there are such delays. The organization at HQ is frustrating beyond endurance. Bray excuses himself saying he wants to wait until all my stuff can be sent off in o
ne vast wad, but I know it would be used much more advantageously if it didn’t arrive like an avalanche.

  I get to my office to start work soon after 8 o’clock each morning but even now there is another solid week’s work of cutting, sorting, and giving the last of my pictures the most uninspired captions. Then there are articles still to be buffed to their final polish. Bray is obviously not interested in my work, makes me realize my tremendous unimportance, and even seems unable to bring himself to choose pictures for a propaganda book that is to be produced locally.

  Monday, May 25th

  It is a nice thing to start the day at 6 o’clock before the sun has dried out the cool of the night from the streets and trees. Everything was so fresh and clean when Lady Russell, wearing an Edwardian picture hat, took me to see the gardens of the zoo, where there are particularly good varieties of flowering trees. The gardeners had just appeared with their brooms to do a little pretence at tidying before the opening of the gardens to the public. Zebras and pelicans were given their breakfasts, and when a keeper thrust his arm and a bunch of dried clover way down the glutinous gullet of the hippopotamus, with its foot-long teeth protruding from the blubber, I recognized that the animal looks just as ugly as I feel at my worst moments.

  By 8 o’clock Lady Russell had shown me flamingos, pelicans, the absurd-looking secretary birds, and all the animals of Piero di Cosimo. We had admired the huge grotto built overnight in honour of the Empress Eugenie’s visit to the Suez Canal, then returned to the Russell home where a marvellous English breakfast with eighteenth-century coffee pot and sausages and bacon in sizzling silver dishes was served under the white flowering oleanders.

  While Lady Russell dispensed this charming hospitality, her husband, Russell Pasha, stroked his particular favourite parrot on his shoulder, and regretted having to hurry off to some camel trials. I wondered, but fortunately did not ask, if they race camels here. (Do they jump hurdles?) The Pasha, as head of the police, has almost succeeded in stamping out the drug traffic, but explained that there is still one way of smuggling opium and hashish across the frontier from Syria. This is done by filling a metal container with drugs and thrusting it deep down the camel’s throat. Recently a sort of radio-location contraption has been invented by which it is possible to detect the presence of these containers. The Pasha, of whom it has been said, somewhat cryptically, ‘He has spent his life making camels sick’, was off to watch the reaction of this machine to three suspected camels.

  Friday, May 29th

  At last a wad of my stuff, as large as the pyramids, was put into the bag for England! The Ministry of Information will be deluged at the other end. There are so many, so many, too many pictures: yet I am sick of them all by now.

  Dudley Barker asked excitedly, ‘Do you want to take some action pictures?’

  ‘Then it has started in the desert?’

  ‘Yes, this morning.’

  This was how I heard that Rommel had attacked. One of the Anglo-Egyptian secretaries squeaked up, ‘Oh, I can’t get a thrill out of the desert any longer. It’s always a case of someone going backwards or forwards.’

  Dudley Barker again: ‘Will you help us out by taking a picture at Heliopolis of the arrival of an important prisoner.’

  Top speed to the aerodrome to arrive simultaneously with the unnamed prisoner. Fun if it would be Rommel. But no. It was his second-in-command, his General Officer Commanding, General Cruewell, a good name for a German general. He had been shot down by ack-ack as he was circling over the battlefield in an aircraft with some Italian staff officers.

  Wearing a florid uniform covered with red tabs and buttons like an old-fashioned Tyrolean beater, a good-looking old man with white hair sat smoking a cigarette in a car, and looking like something stuffed in a cage. But maybe this was because we knew that here was Exhibit (A).

  The whole air station was in high spirits. Barker, full of enthusiasm, said it was like the old days of Fleet Street journalism when a news story broke. The Army Film Unit sent a sergeant to take a movie of the prisoner, but this young sergeant, so as not to appear too encroaching, hid himself shyly in an oleander tree. It is extraordinary how the English behave to their prey. This man, our deadly enemy, had by chance, been delivered into our hands. What do we do? We treat him like royalty. In the forward areas of the desert where rations are extremely scarce, as soon as our men take a prisoner they offer him their rations of cigarettes and beer.

  An officer who had escorted General Cruewell here by air had received a signal that the pilot must be well protected, but the officer said he found it embarrassing to show his revolver and had, therefore, sat on it the whole way. When they had taken off in the air, the General had buried his face in his hands and remained bowed in despair, then shook his head from side to side and clubbed the air with his fist.

  The General said his wife had died a week ago, and that it was hard that his marital life and military career should be at an end within the same week. But are we becoming sorry for the old brute? It is alleged it was he who had ordered the execution of 2,000 citizens of the town of Jogordina in Yugoslavia when the civilians mined a bridge to hamper his advance to Belgrade.

  Sunday, May 30th

  The news of the moment is that the two armies are locked in combat: a mêlée of tanks in this heat must be like an Armageddon. Barker thinks the campaign will fizzle out: others consider it will be decisive one way or the other. A crazy photographer here, known as ‘Glorious Devon’, said it would not surprise him if Rommel soon appeared marching down Solman Pacha Street.

  Stacy, the pilot who has been flying the Duke of Gloucester around, told me he had to go and identify the crew of an aircraft that burnt out at Heliopolis this morning. He said a well-cooked body is not too bad to look at — it’s quite unrecognizable; it’s when it’s partially cooked, as these were, that you feel weak.

  Saturday, June 6th

  The news from the desert still is that we are locked in a death struggle with the enemy. The losses in men and machinery must be colossal, but this seems quite remote from the war that the Egyptians see. They only take the war seriously if it means they are able to do just a bit more profiteering.

  Monday, June 1st

  Rabbits. We are told at the office that the battle in the desert is not going well. That instead of retreating down the gaps in the minefield the enemy has dug its toes in, has become solidly reinforced, and is now impossible to attack. There, at the moment, the situation remains.

  I was restless throughout the night with the prospect of an early rise. I was to be called at 4 o’clock, but my anxiety was caused by a fear lest the night porter should ignore my instructions; that I should miss my aeroplane to Iran, via Iraq.

  The hotel staff is unreliable. I visualized having to complain to the concierge while he laughed at my plight. I have seen him unable to contain his mirth at so many irate young officers who, on account of him, have missed their trains. However, all was well. It was still dark while we waited to be taken to Heliopolis — two Russians and myself.

  The Russians were travelling with diplomatic passports, and looked like characters out of the film Ninotchka. One, swarthy, uncouth, rugged, with a heavy cold. The other, entirely globular with rose-red cheeks, pince-nez and a sweet smile. Both were neatly, if badly, dressed.

  They had recently visited England and were impressed by the spirit. Splendid, if surprising.

  I asked them where they stayed in London.

  ‘Oh! The Ritz.’

  ‘How was the food?’

  ‘Hmm! Yes, it was good — but not much of it.’

  Teheran

  The city of Teheran rises against a purple screen of the snowcapped mountain range. The water from Mount Demavend gushes down through the streets: in this torrent the inhabitants wash, throw their slops, and collect their drinking water. Many of them, as a result, are victims of an appalling boil that takes a year to subside and leaves a scar for life.

  After the gloomy ugliness
of modern Cairenes in their drab draperies, the Irani people in their brightly coloured clothes are a delight to the eye. The men of Aryan stock, with olive complexion and regular features, are lean and ferocious-looking. The women, heavily painted, with eyebrows elongated to join on the bridge of the nose and carrying a turkey, the elephant bird, under each arm, strike us as being rather too plump; but the Persian poet, in a panegyric note on feminine beauty, wrote: ‘Her face is like the full moon, and she waddles like a goose...’

  I went off expectantly with the RAF chaps, to take pictures of the latest arrival of American bombers. The aerodrome at Teheran presents a heartening sight. Phalanxes of newly-arrived American bombers were standing ready to be wheeled into line for the final ‘take off’ to Russia. The Russian ground crew, with shaven heads, Slav cheekbones and khaki blouses, had meticulously gone over every screw and cog before signing the acceptance sheet for these latest deliveries and covering the American white star with red paint. At this time, over forty aircraft of different types were arriving here each week; even as we watched, yet another couple of bombers circled and landed. Repetition of almost anything on a large-scale is generally impressive to the eye. These rows of identical aircraft were most imposing. I was pleased with the designs created in the camera viewfinder. But I had not taken more than half a dozen pictures before a Russian guard came up and asked me to accompany him to the police. The American captain and some of the RAF men argued on my behalf for twenty minutes. Out of the blue appeared a serious young woman with a bun and dry lips, wearing sandals, a cotton dress and a topi. She was the Russian interpreter.