Killing Rommel (27 page)

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Epilogue
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CHAP'S MEMOIR ENDS with that sentence. What he characteristically omitted to mention was the DSO he won for the operation described in these pages. Chap was awarded the Military Cross at Monte Cassino in Italy, May 1944; this honor joined his mention in dispatches from the Gazala campaign, so that the identification line in his obituary in
The Times
of London and the
Guardian
on December 27, 2004, read:

Chapman, Maj. R. L., DSO, MC, m-i-d.

This was the least likely encapsulation that Chap would have chosen for himself in summing up his life, yet I feel certain that his spirit, looking down from heaven, would be warmed to see that “attrib line,” as he would have called it as an editor.

Chap's memorial service was held, as I said, in the chapel at Magdalen College, Oxford. You enter Magdalen through a porter's gate off High Street. The chapel stands on the right in the first quadrangle. On that morning the space overflowed with mourners lapping round into the adjacent cloister.

The day was dry with a sharp, cold wind. Rose no longer walked well; her son Patrick and a grandson had to support her to her seat. When the service was over, someone produced a wheelchair, from which Rose greeted guests afterwards at the reception, in a pub called the Head of the River. I had flown over alone from California, as my wife had been detained at home by an emergency in her own family; I found myself standing apart for a portion of the evening, just observing.

The guests seemed for the most part to be family, friends, literary colleagues; in other words, those who knew Chap postwar. I watched several elderly gentlemen make their way to Rose. Were any of them old soldiers? Chap and Rose's daughters Alexandra and Jessica greeted those who approached and introduced them to their brothers, who then handed them down to Rose in her chair. Rose must have been tired, but she held up like a trooper. You could see her pleasure and gratitude at the words of condolence.

At one point Alexandra presented me to an older gentleman named Guy Bourghart, who was missing his right arm but at eighty years plus still possessed a bone-crunching grip when he shook hands with his left. “Guy published Dad's first book.”

Bourghart explained that he and Chap had served in North Africa at the same time.

“Chap sold me the book in a casualty clearing station at Sfax in Tunisia, waiting for a hospital ship to take us back to Cairo. They had the sick and wounded stacked on litters, out-of-doors, in the sharpest gale you can imagine. All we could do was bleed and yarn with one another.”

First book. Did he mean Stein's?

“Chap had the manuscript with him. Incredible. Of course I couldn't read the damn thing. It was all I could do to draw the next breath. But I thought: This young officer is either bloody mad or a hell of a champion for his writers.”

A few minutes later I met the widow of the young lieutenant with the Iron Cross, whose life Chap had saved at the Tebaga Gap. Chap, the lady told me, had tracked her husband down in Frankfurt in the early fifties; apparently there were organizations at that time which provided such services. The couples became friends; they visited each other every summer. “Now Rose and I,” said the lady, “shall have one more bond.”

I found Jock, Chap's dear friend and brother-in-law. Jock had given the eulogy. I kept a copy, from which comes this passage:

Chap published, as many of you know, not only serious young writers in English, but also foreign authors. Books in translation. This is rare. Chap was no religious man; I have never seen him inside a church until this day. Literature was his religion. He believed in the written word, in the soul-to-soul communion between writer and reader that takes place in the silence between the covers of a book.

Chap venerated the novel. To him fiction was not merely a medium of amusement or diversion, though he set considerable store by those, but a field upon which the experience of a single individual could be made accessible to others with a power and immediacy that no other medium could reproduce. Chap saw in the novel a universality—a level pitch upon which disparate human beings, entering via the imagination into the experiences and consciousnesses of others, could discover a commonality across the divisions of tribe, race, nation, even time.

Universality. Empathy. These were the qualities Chap worshipped. These were his gods and, if I may declare it of him, he embodied their virtues in his own person in finer and fuller measure than any man I have ever known.

Now I must tell you one final story, of my sister Rose and this man who adored her his whole life long. Many of you have heard of the row Chap and I got into here at university, on the High Street just round the corner, when I caught him with Rose in circumstances that in today's world would be so innocent as to be laughable but in those days were extravagantly flagrant. I seized my sister by the arm and demanded that she come away at once—to which she replied “Piss off, Jock!” and, breaking free, stalked to Chap's side. I can still see him, setting his arm firmly round her waist and looking me dead in the eye. “Your sister's with me, Jock,” he said. “That's it.”

And so she has been for over sixty years. And shall be, I'm sure, for ever.

The reception was ending. I drifted back to the bar. I was looking around, hoping to spot some military emblem, a lapel pin or insignia perhaps, that would indicate an old campaigner. I noticed a toy truck—one of those Matchbox miniatures—sitting on the polished wood in front of a gentleman who appeared to be in his eighties. I crossed to him and asked what type of truck it was.

“'Forty-two Chev 30-hundredweight,” the man said, sliding the toy over so I could see it. At once I recognized the workhorse of the Long Range Desert Group. The truck was flawless in detail, down to the sun compass and sand-channels; roofless, doorless, windshieldless. I introduced myself.

“May I ask your name, sir?”

“Collier,” he said.

“Sergeant Collier? ‘Collie'?”

Night had fallen; a stiff breeze had got up off the river. Collier and I repaired outdoors to the terrace where we could talk. I was electrified. I told him about Chap's manuscript, which was absolutely fresh in my mind from having read it three times in the last several days, and how intimately I felt I had come to know its events, places, and characters—including him, Collie. “I've got the typed pages in my room; would you like me to make a copy for you?”

“I don't need to read nothing,” said the New Zealander. “I was there.”

He was a tallish man with a full head of white hair. Though age had whittled his bulk, you could see from the meat of his hands that he still retained a respectable measure of power. He carried himself like a stockman, which is what he was. His pipe was a Sherlock Holmes type, just as in Chap's pages.

Collier had been visiting his daughter in British Columbia, when his wife had phoned from home with the news of Chap's death. The Kiwis who had served with the LRDG were national heroes; an item about any of them, or anyone associated with their wartime service, automatically received featured play in the New Zealand press, particularly in recent years as the surviving veterans grew fewer and fewer. Collie had reserved a flight at once from Vancouver to Heathrow. He had flown in yesterday and was heading back tomorrow. I asked if he had spoken to Rose.

“She's got more important people to talk to.”

It felt strangely exhilarating being in Collie's presence, as if I'd bumped into a favorite character from a film or a book—which in a sense, of course, I had. He felt this, I think. It made him uncomfortable. I was hoping he would open up after a couple of pints. But the old soldier had no such agenda. I asked whether he would be returning to the hotel. The party was beginning to assemble for the drive to the inn where the family was staying, in which a suite had been reserved for a late gathering.

“This here's enough,” Collier said.

I could not let his reticence stand. “If you'll forgive me for asking, Mr. Collier, how could you fly all this way, at such expense”—clearly he was no wealthy man—“and not…”

“I came to see off a mate.”

Collie met my eyes. As far as he was concerned, that said it all.

I was not ready to let it go. “Collie,” I said. “I'm going to call you that whether you like it or not, because I feel I know you.” I told him of Chap's initial reluctance to show me his manuscript and his even graver disinclination to have it published. I related Chap's feeling that, because his tenure with the LRDG had been so brief and had been officially Detached Service, he was not a true member of the outfit. “More to the point,” I said, “Chap felt that certain actions of his…decisions he took or didn't take…cost the lives of several good men. He was tormented by that. It was why he—”

“Balls!” For the first time the old man's eyes struck sparks and his voice rang with emotion. “By Christ, if it wasn't for Mr. Chapman we'd have all copped it—not once but half a dozen times. I know he never felt part of the club because he was only with us for that one ride, but so were plenty of others, and they didn't hesitate to grab the glory with both hands. Who earned it more than Mr. Chapman? He was just a kid, but he was as thorough a desert hand as any I've seen. And I'll tell you something else…”

Collie drew up.

“The Jerry armored car that hit the Teller mine.” He met my eyes. “Did the skipper write about that?”

“At the Mareth Line, you mean? When you all came back and found the Germans burned and wounded?”

The door opened behind us from the pub's rear room; Chap's son Patrick stuck his head out, calling to tell us that the cars were outside, waiting to take the party to the hotel for brandy. I thanked him and said we'd be with them in a moment. Patrick closed the door; the pub sounds cut off. I asked Collie if he wanted to go back inside.

He was staring out over the frigid river.

“We had an old Vickers .303 on the back of my truck. With fist grips and a thumb trigger.” His hands indicated the posture; he glanced to me to see if I understood. I could picture Collie on his feet in the truckbed with the German armored car on its side in front of him and the enemy soldiers, grievously but still in possession of their weapons, in various postures before his muzzle. “I was this close,” he said, “to blowing those bastards to kingdom come. Believe me, I wanted to. We all did.”

I asked him what Chap had said. Did he give a specific order not to shoot?

“Mr. Chapman didn't say a thing. Didn't have to. We knew what kind of man he was. We knew he'd help the Jerries. And we knew we'd back him up.”

Horns were honking out front on the street. Patrick came back and tapped on the pane. I signed that we were coming, then turned back to Collier.

“There ain't a day goes by,” Collie said, “that I don't thank Mr. Chapman for that.”

I convinced Collie to come back to the family gathering. The most gratifying moment was seeing him and Rose engrossed in private conversation. Afterwards I drove him back to where he was staying. Collie didn't want a copy of Chap's manuscript, not even if it were mailed to him in New Zealand. I couldn't convince him even to glance at the parts that singled him out for praise. In the cold outside his hotel—a B&B which Collie said his granddaughter had booked for him on the Internet—the old soldier looked worn and frail, but a warrior still. I held out my hand. I told him I considered it an honor to have met him.

He took my hand. “God speed, mate.”

The next day Rose and the family drove back to London. I stayed on in Oxford for the morning. I had breakfast by myself in my hotel, then walked down to Blackwell's to see if they had Stein's novel. I had never actually seen it. They did, a single copy, in a section called University Authors. The volume I bought was a third edition with the original dust jacket. Stein's photo was inside the back flap. He was a dashing-looking fellow, dark and intense, with the same Ronald Colman mustache that every young sport seemed to fancy in those days. I bought the book to set as a parting token at the base of Chap's headstone.

A lecture at one of the colleges was just letting out when I stepped again into the street. The students surged to the great pile of bicycles that sprawled against the side of the building. I watched them wedge their notebooks and texts into the cargo baskets between the handlebars. Apparently bicycles in England don't have kickstands, or maybe leaning them against a wall is just the Oxford style. In any event the mob yanked their bikes upright and in an instant were pedaling away in their dark jackets like some swift flight of crows.

The turf over Chap's grave had been staked down with wire mesh to protect it from burrowing animals until the grass had had time to root itself. A number of bouquets lay in a colorful heap at the base of the headstone, alongside candles and beaded strands, seashells, ribbons, handwritten notes. Atop the stone itself, unit patches and combat decorations were lined up like a platoon awaiting inspection; I recognized one DSO, several Military Medals and a German Iron Cross. I searched the site, seeking the proper niche for Stein's book. Among the flowers, someone had set a brand-new bowler hat with a white carnation in its brim. That looked like the spot. I was just settling Stein's book in place, when my eye was caught by a bright metallic glint.

On the shelf supporting the headstone sat a tiny toy truck painted in desert camouflage—a '42 Chevrolet 30-hundredweight. I picked it up and held it for a moment in the winter light. I could see the miniature sun compass and radiator condenser, the Browning and the twin Vickers Ks. Three soldiers in desert garb manned the vehicle: a driver, a gunner, and—standing, with his binoculars pressed to his eyes—a patrol commander.