Eastern Approaches (23 page)

The shops of Erivan, including the food shops, seemed, by provincial standards, well stocked. They were not overcrowded and I saw no queues. The food at the hotel was good and the clothes of the members of the privileged classes eating it, up to the highest Moscow standards. In the surrounding country the little stone houses and walled orchards and vineyards recalled Tuscany and gave me the feeling of having indeed crossed from Asia into Europe.

From Erivan I travelled by train to Tiflis and thence direct to Batum on the Black Sea, where I hoped to find a ship which would take me to Sochi, the principal seaside resort of the Soviet privileged classes, which I felt should be of considerable sociological interest. On the second morning of the train journey from Erivan I awoke to find that we had left the barren mountains of the central Caucasus and were travelling through the green hills, the orange-groves, the tea and tobacco plantations and the steaming sub-tropical swamps of Adjaristan. In the villages through which we passed the men, lean, swarthy
figures, wore strange black headgear, half way between hoods and turbans.

Batum struck me as being different from other Soviet towns. Of Turkish rule before 1878 no signs remained save a solitary mosque. Most of the town had been built between 1878 and 1914 and this fact was proclaimed by every brick of it. During the years which succeeded the British evacuation and the final occupation by the Reds, Batum seemed to have been left out of the general scheme of demolition and reconstruction. It lacked the rows of half-built and half-demolished houses and the vast incongruous modernistic buildings which gave most towns in the Soviet Union so desolate an appearance. Its streets were made up of rows of solidly built, typically bourgeois houses and shops. Along the main boulevards the well-grown rows of trees had not been rooted up to make way for imaginary traffic.

Nor had Batum been allowed to decay. According to a local inhabitant whom I met in the train, Batum, after a long period of eclipse, had during the past four or five years returned to favour. Certainly a large new hotel was being built on the sea front; the houses and shops had been freshly painted; the streets seemed in excellent repair, and, most important of all, a large number of the villas in the neighbourhood had been converted into rest-homes reserved for the members of various important State organizations, and were fulfilling their original function of a playground for the upper classes. Thus Batum had by chance retained the appearance of a fairly prosperous seaside town in a capitalist country.

Batum, I knew, produced mandarines, tea and tobacco. Having read in the local papers that a crop of several million mandarines had just been gathered, I was disappointed to find that none were for sale locally. They had all been sent off to Moscow. The population, I was told by a rather cynical young man who sold me three clandestinely, were being punished for the failure of the mandarine trees to fulfil the plan.

There seemed to be little shipping in the harbour. The only foreign vessel I could see was flying a Turkish flag. Along the sea front, to the west of the town, stood the refineries which receive the oil which comes from Baku by pipe-line.

On the wall of a factory near by, I found a large and ornamental marble plaque to the greater glory of Joseph Stalin who, in 1903, ‘provoked in the former factory of Rothschild a strike which ended in the victory of the workers’. Looking through the window of the factory, where clearly nothing had been changed since 1903, I could not help considering what would be the consequences if one of the ragged, badly paid, underfed workers were now to try to emulate the youthful exploits of the Leader of the People.

The hotel at Batum was not very clean and manifestly a survival of the old regime. So, I think, was the cook, for the
bœuf Stroganov
and the cooking generally were the best I had tasted in the Soviet Union. The dining-room was filled with a noisy delegation of collectivized peasants from Armenia and the Ukraine, who seemed for no particular reason to be making a triumphal progress through the Caucasus. Later they visited Gori, Stalin’s birthplace, whence, I read in the paper, they sent him an ecstatic telegram.

Meanwhile, I had learnt (rather to my relief, for the Black Sea looked far from inviting) that there would be no sailings from Batum for an indefinite period on account of the storms; and so there was nothing for it but to return to Tiflis.

In Tiflis a number of brand new buildings had made their appearance since my previous visit eighteen months earlier: a new Government Building; a new Stalin University, and a vast new triumphal pavilion which had sprouted on the very top of St. David’s Mountain overlooking the town. From beneath its towering cement colonnades loudspeakers blared forth continuously Georgian translations of Soviet patriotic songs. Behind it lay an ornamental garden centring round a colossal statue of Stalin.

Things had tightened up, too, since my last visit. The first time I ventured outside the town I stumbled into what was apparently a forbidden zone. Before I knew where I was I was staring down the muzzle of a rifle with my hands above my head. My N.K.V.D. escort, needless to say, chose this moment to fade discreetly away. After a great deal of talk I finally persuaded my captor, a stolid character who seemed quite content to stay where he was all day, to summon help by firing his rifle off in the air. Reinforcements arrived at the double and
I was eventually marched off in the middle of a platoon of N.K.V.D. troops to their Headquarters. There I spent the rest of the day arguing about Marxism and the international situation with half a dozen N.K.V.D. officers, while the duty-officer tried vainly to get into touch with someone sufficiently senior to authorize my release. It was not until late at night that the local Commandant, a florid-looking Georgian with fiercely curling moustachios, made his appearance and, having looked at my papers, sent me back to the hotel.

I was beginning to feel that I had had enough of Tiflis and next day I was glad to find room in a lorry that was leaving for Ordzhonikidze by the Georgian Military Road. It was fine but bitterly cold and the snow already lay thick on the passes. The truck was open and everyone in it had wrapped themselves in everything they possessed. Tugged down over my ears I wore an enormous fur hat bought from a villainous old Georgian in a side-street, while disposed about my body were the entire contents of my kitbag, shirts, sweaters and socks pulled on, one on top of the other. Above us Kazbek glistened and sparkled in the sunlight against the pale blue of the sky. Constant stops to dig the truck out of the snow restored our circulation and at Pasanaur we ate a filling meal and drank as much vodka as we could hold. Then came the descent in the gathering darkness, with the high crags looming above us and below us the icy rushing waters of the Terek River. By the time we reached Ordzhonikidze I was half frozen and glad to take refuge in the comforting stuffiness of the Moscow train.

I reached Moscow late at night a couple of days later. My cook had gone off duty. The memory of those lavish meals in Delhi and Teheran had long since faded; I was tired and once again very hungry. Amongst the letters in my flats was an invitation to a supper-party that night at the Belgian Legation. The Belgian chargé d’affaires and his wife were a charming couple. They also had the best food in Moscow. There was just time to get there.

I shaved a week’s growth of beard; soaked myself briefly but luxuriously in a badly needed bath; struggled into a stiff shirt and white tie, and set out. Ten minutes later I was sitting down to a large slice
of fresh
pâté de foie gras
, specially flown from Strasbourg, a plate of endive salad and a glass of Burgundy. Soon, I felt much better.

It was a young party and I was on Christian-name terms with most of the people there, Counsellors and Military and Naval Attachés, Secretaries of Embassy and their wives and daughters. French, Americans, Germans, Italians, Persians, Roumanians, Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, Chinese and Japanese, we had all ski-ed together, ridden together, bathed together, played bridge and tennis and danced together, day after day, night after night, in the artificial isolation of Moscow diplomatic life, until international barriers had largely disappeared amid individual friendships and quarrels, jealousies and romances.

Now, I noticed, the talk was of war: Was it inevitable? Or could it still be avoided? Much had happened in Europe in that autumn of 1938, while I had been away on my travels. The professional diplomats, drinking their brandy, regarded the international scene with cold detachment, in terms of underlying motives, of objectives to be achieved and relative military potentials. And, having so regarded it, they did not share the real or affected optimism of the professional politicians.

I sat with Johnny Herwarth von Bittenfeld, my opposite number at the German Embassy and an old friend. A patriotic German, he was, I believe, strongly and genuinely anti-Nazi. Now, the news of Munich had filled him with despair. ‘After this,’ he said, ‘the Führer will think that he can get away with anything. He will be wrong, for he does not understand your mentality. He does not realize that, whatever line your Government may take, there is a limit beyond which you, as a nation, will not be prepared to let him go. This last fatal surrender of yours will embolden him to overstep this limit; it will weaken the hand of such restraining elements as still remain in Germany; it will make war inevitable, war which in the long run will bring about the destruction of Germany.’ He paused and then went on again in a lower voice: ‘If there is to be war, then there can be only one hope for Germany: an agreement with these people here. Then, at least, we should not have a war on two fronts.’

Not long after our conversation I was transferred to London and left
Moscow for good. Some months later Johnny, mobilized as a Reserve Cavalry Officer, marched into Poland; then into France; then into Russia. Later he fought on other fronts. I did not see him during the years that followed, though sometimes, as chance would have it, we were only a few miles apart. Sometimes I was on the run; sometimes he was. When, finally, after the war we met again, everything that he had foretold that evening in Moscow had come true.

W
AR
, it has been said, is diplomacy continued by other means. Certainly, to me, as I sat at my desk in the Foreign Office, my own occupation, once hostilities had begun, seemed suddenly to have lost its point. I decided to resign my commission in the Diplomatic Service and to enlist.

But this was easier said than done. No sooner had I mentioned my intention of resigning than it was pointed out to me, in no uncertain terms, that my behaviour was extremely unpatriotic. For six years, they said, I had been learning my job. Now, just as I was beginning to be of some slight use, I wanted, in order to satisfy my personal vanity, to go off and play at soldiers; I must lack all sense of responsibility. But, in any case, my resignation would not be accepted. The new Defence Regulations gave the Secretary of State full powers in this respect.

‘And what if I simply go off and enlist?’ I asked.

‘If you do that,’ they said, ‘the War Office will be asked to send you back at once. In irons, if necessary.’

They had me there. I decided to go away and think again.

I allowed some time to elapse before making my next approach. Then I asked for an interview with the Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Sir Alexander Cadogan. In the meanwhile I had made a careful study of the Foreign Office Regulations. Paragraph 22 gave me what I needed.

‘And what do you want?’ said Sir Alexander, who was a busy man, looking up from his desk.

‘I want to go into politics,’ I said.

‘In that case,’ he replied, without enthusiasm, for the idea of Party politics is repugnant to the permanent official, ‘In that case, you will have to leave the Service.’

I replied that I was prepared for that. In fact, if he liked I could let
him have my resignation at once. And, laying a neatly written letter of resignation on his desk, I escaped from the room. A few minutes later I was in a taxi and on my way to the nearest Recruiting Office. It had been simpler than I had expected.

The processes of medical examination and enlistment took their usual somewhat lengthy course. What to me was the beginning of a new phase in my life was, to the clerks and doctors who took my particulars, so much dreary routine. After swearing the Oath and filling in a number of forms, I was given the King’s Shilling and a railway warrant to Inverness. I was a Private in the Cameron Highlanders, my father’s old regiment.

I arrived at Inverness with a batch of several hundred other new recruits, for the most part nineteen-year-old youths from Glasgow. It was cold and grey and drizzling. In moist, undecided groups, we hung about the barrack square, our hands in the pockets of our civilian suits.

Then, suddenly, we were pounced on by half a dozen N.C.O.s And given numbers. And divided up into squads. And herded into bleak-looking barrack-rooms named after battles in the Peninsular War: Salamanca, Corunna and Ciudad Rodriguez. And issued with things: boot brushes, tooth brushes, knife, fork, spoon, blankets, boots, overalls (denim), bonnets (Balmoral). And told not to —ing lose them. And told to look out and look sharp and hurry up, and use our —ing initiative. And given mops and pails and scrubbing brushes and told to —ing scrub the —ing floor.

My military career had begun.

After we had scrubbed the floor, we were turned on to heaving coal and tipping rubbish and cleaning the latrines and polishing the brass and peeling potatoes for dinner. It was not for some days that our Sergeant Instructors attempted to initiate us in the arts of war in the narrower sense of the word.

When they did, it was not a success. There was the difficulty, the ever-recurring difficulty, of remembering at short notice which was your left foot and which was your right; of saying, offhand, what you did with your bren gun after it had jammed for the second time; of putting a name, when suddenly confronted with it, to this or that
apparently insignificant, but doubtless vital part of the same gun; of explaining the presence of that unaccountable but altogether shameful speck of dirt on your rifle; of finding things that had got lost; of being constantly in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. We were sadly afflicted by what has been called the total depravity of inanimate things.

Our instructors watched us gloomily. We were, they said, just terrible. In twenty years they had never seen recruits like us. All we could do was eat and sleep.

And, indeed, eating and sleeping bulked large in our scheme of things. From the moment when the first piercing notes of the pipes dragged us forcibly from our slumbers, as from a well of treacle, until the last post sounded and the lights were put out in a barrack-room half of whose occupants were already asleep and snoring, we were perpetually hungry and sleepy. At meal-times we threw ourselves upon our food like a pack of wolves; and whenever we were given a chance we slept, indoors, out of doors, in broad daylight, in the middle of a room full of men, shouting, singing and swearing.

Then bit by bit life became less bewildering and took on a new interest. We made friends amongst our fellow recruits. Even the N.C.O.s assumed the proportions of ordinary mortals. On occasion some of them would even try to explain to us what it was all about. ‘You and me,’ our own Sergeant Instructor would observe philosophically from time to time, ‘You and me are nothing but —ing cogs in this gigantic — organization.’

Slowly the purpose of many of the seemingly incomprehensible things that we were required to do became apparent. The mere task of existing became less formidable. The bren gun ceased to be a meaningless conglomeration of oddly shaped bits of steel and became a weapon which some day one might conceivably use in action. Yelling hoarsely, we plunged our bayonets with ever greater conviction into the straw-stuffed entrails of the defenceless targets. One by one our fellow recruits assumed particular characteristics, developed particular aptitudes, stood out from the mass. As inmates of one hut or barrack-room we acquired a corporate existence. We helped each other out of difficulties; we lent each other missing bits of equipment;
we did each other’s fatigues; we told lies on each other’s behalf to those in authority; we showed each other snapshots of our families, and went together to the pictures.

My own closest associate was Eddie McIntosh, a compact, smiling, sensible young man from Edinburgh, whose father, like mine, had been a Cameron. We were first thrown together because our names came next to each other on the list, but I soon came to like him for his natural friendliness, his abundant good nature and his quiet enthusiasm for whatever he happened to be doing. Poor Eddie, he was to be killed a couple of years later in Burma with the 1st Battalion.

Physically, as well as mentally, we were undergoing a change. On the barrack square we stamped and wheeled and turned about with ever greater precision under the supervision of a Regimental Sergeant Major with the gift of projecting his voice from one side of the square to the other and bringing it down on an offender with the deadly accuracy of a stock whip. Week by week the training became more arduous and the distances greater, until, plodding along the road behind the pipes, or ranging over the moors in sleet and snow and rain, we seemed to have covered most of the north of Scotland. We felt fitter than ever before. The pale, spotty, narrow-chested corner boys changed as though by magic into robust men who before the war was over would give a good account of themselves on many different fronts. However senseless much of it might seem, nobody could deny that recruits’ training served its purpose.

By now, too, our initial bewilderment and exhaustion had worn off. We discovered that there were ways out of every difficulty. It was simply, as we had been told on our arrival, a question of using your —ing initiative. We began to find our way round. We discovered the value of contacts in the cookhouse, in the armoury, in the Company Office, in the Quartermaster’s store. We found that there were other ways out of the barracks than past the guard at the main gate. We discovered a hundred and one more or less ingenious methods of avoiding unnecessary exertion, of avoiding detection, of acquiring merit, of escaping punishment. We ceased to be recruits and became trained soldiers. Effortlessly, we fell into the linguistic habits of the army; every other word in our conversation was the
same meaningless and monotonous, yet somehow satisfying expletive.

For me, this new existence had not come a moment too early. Very soon I found that it possessed unsuspected tonic qualities. Despite, perhaps because of, its limitations, it had a stimulating, a humanizing, a rejuvenating effect. All of a sudden, I felt very much younger, both physically and mentally. For years, I had led my own life, seeing my own circle of friends and following my own tastes and inclinations; doing on the whole what I felt like doing. In detached fashion, I had dealt with ideas and ideologies, tendencies and trends, situations and relationships. Now, plunged suddenly into this new life, among companions assembled by the hazards of conscription, I was dealing at close quarters with people and things. And I was thoroughly enjoying it.

Months passed and the time came when some of us were given a Lance Corporal’s stripe, Eddie McIntosh and myself included. The position of Lance Corporal was one of considerable influence. We doled out the food at meal-times; we directed the peeling of potatoes; we put people on charges. As Orderly Corporal we walked round the messes behind the Officer of the Day, hissing ‘That’ll do from you,’ at any hint of a complaint about the food. Occasionally, when the Sergeant could not be bothered to do it himself, we gave instruction in the use of the rifle, the bren gun and the two-inch mortar. Followed obediently, though uncomprehendingly, by our Sections, we led midnight attacks on waterworks and sewage farms and became hopelessly and irretrievably lost in the all-enveloping confusion of Company and Battalion exercises. There was an improvement, too, in our social standing. Instead of being hailed as ‘Jock’ by all and sundry, we were now addressed as ‘Corporal’ by the young ladies in the shops and behind the bars. We were even admitted to the company of some of the more easy-going Sergeants. It was an agreeable, relatively carefree existence.

Then one day, I was summoned to the Orderly Room and given unexpected news that I had been given an immediate commission and posted as a subaltern to the 1st Battalion.

This sudden advancement was not regarded by my companions as a matter for congratulation. ‘Poor old Corporal,’ they said pityingly,
‘he’s away to the 1st Battalion to be a —ing officer.’ ‘But cheer up, Corporal,’ they said consolingly, ‘all you’ll be needing is bags and bags of —ing patter.’

And indeed, it did not take me long to adapt myself to the life and duties of a Platoon Commander. There was no very great difference between it and the life I had just left. My chief preoccupation was still with bren, rifle and two-inch mortar; with boots, webbing equipment, cap badges and greatcoat buttons; seeing they were not lost, seeing they were properly cleaned, seeing that they and their owners were in the right place at the right time performing their proper functions. The burden of responsibility was heavier, but still not overwhelming.

From time to time came rumours that the Battalion was going overseas. But the prospect of going into action, of really using those carefully preserved weapons, that carefully checked ammunition, still seemed oddly remote.

There were other rumours too, disquieting hints from friends in London that my failure to enter politics had not passed unobserved; that steps were being taken to secure my return to the Foreign Office, at that time painfully under-staffed. It began to look very much as though, after a promising start, my military career might be brought to a premature end.

Only one thing could save me; early election to Parliament. I had already been in touch with Conservative Central Office. I returned to the attack with renewed vigour. I was told that there was to be a by-election at Lancaster; a Conservative candidate had not yet been adopted. If I liked, I could go up there and see what the local Association thought of me. I applied to the Colonel for a few days’ leave and went.

Diffidently I presented myself at the local Party Headquarters. It was my first experience of politics. I did not know the answer to half the questions I was asked; it was no good pretending I did. With a sinking heart I admitted my ignorance. The Executive Committee adjourned to discuss the rival merits of the various potential candidates. Surprisingly, when they came back, I was told that I had been adopted. All the more surprisingly, since I had made it clear that, if I was elected,
my military duties would have to come first and my political duties second.

There was about a month before the poll. I applied for a month’s leave and started electioneering. I had hardly ever attended a political meeting. I had never made a speech in my life. By the end of a week, I was making three a night. By the end of a fortnight I was almost enjoying it. Not only my supporters, but everyone I met, took me in hand. They fed me; they stood me drinks; they gave me advice; they told me what to do and what not to do; they told me, with characteristic North Country frankness, what they thought of my speeches. Dazed but happy, I drank gallons of beer and shook thousands of hands. Perpetually late for my next appointment, I walked or drove from house to house and street to street and village to village.

Wherever I went, among supporters or opponents, I met with the same forthrightness, the same friendliness. I had hardly ever set foot inside the House of Commons and I had no means of telling whether the life of a parliamentarian would suit me or not. But of one thing I was quite sure: that, if I was to be a politician, these were the sort of people I should like to represent.

Then came the eve of the poll: packed, noisy meetings; polling day; a tour of the constituency decked with rosettes and favours like a prize bull; the count; hushed suspense in the Town Hall; the result: I was in: M.P. for Lancaster.

Member of Parliament, or Platoon Commander?

As things turned out, I was not called upon to try to play this dual role for long. One night after a long day’s training on the moors, I was roused from my sleep by a dispatch rider and told to report at once to Battalion Headquarters. There I was shown a signal from the War Office. I was to proceed forthwith on embarkation leave. I had told my constituents repeatedly that, if ordered abroad, I should go. And so, leaving them in the able and experienced hands of Jim Thomas, an old friend from Foreign Office days, I went.