Eastern Approaches (34 page)

Having sent off my telegram, I spent two agreeable days in Isfahan, making a detailed reconnaissance of the city, with special attention to the best line of withdrawal in case of an emergency, and at the same time enjoying its peerless beauty.

Isfahan is, with Peking and Bokhara, one of the few places in the world which does not belie its reputation. Gault had installed himself in a charming old Persian house, with in front a lofty veranda looking out on to a walled garden. Thence, a short walk along a poplar-lined avenue brought you to the Maidan-i-Shah, the vast main square of the city, once the royal polo ground. On one side stands the Ala Kapu, or Great Gate. This is the entrance to the royal palace, known on account of its forty pillars as the Chehel Situn. Above it there is a splendid
veranda, from which, when Isfahan was the capital, the monarch could watch polo, or wild beast shows or the arrival of foreign envoys, coming in state to pay homage to the King of Kings. At the southern end of the Maidan, near the palace, is the great royal mosque, the Masjed-i-Shah, while opposite it, on the eastern side, stands the smaller, more exquisite mosque of Sheikh Lutfullah. Within and without the dome is encrusted with glazed tiles: dazzling under the direct rays of the hot Persian sun beating down on the square; blue, cool and mysterious in the filtered light which penetrates the intricate arabesques of the narrow windows.

At the northern side of the square stands the entrance to the labyrinthine passages of the Great Bazaar. Along these, if you feel so inclined, you can wander for hours amongst piles of pomegranates, heaps of saddle-bags, prayer-mats and lamb-skins, in and out among the stalls of cobblers, rope-makers, confectioners and goldsmiths, all crying their wares at the top of their voices and at the same time bargaining noisily with each other and with their customers. Despite the hideous modern statue of the late Shah still standing there and despite his misguided attempts, fortunately abandoned by his successor, to bludgeon Persia into giving a half-hearted and entirely superficial imitation of a modern Western industrial state, Isfahan recalls the great capital city of the Middle Ages.

The arrival of an urgent message from G.H.Q. in reply to my telegram, submitting my proposals and requesting instructions, brought me back to the realities of the Second World War. My plan was approved in principle and I was instructed to go ahead with my preparations. Only one item of my highly unorthodox programme stuck in the throats of the well-trained staff officers at the other end. It was not (repeat: not) possible, they said, to authorize an officer of my age and seniority (I was a Captain) to masquerade, even for a day, as a Brigadier. Rather than allow this, they would place at my disposal, for a limited period of time, a genuine Brigadier, for use as bait, or for any other purpose within reason. Moreover this officer, for the purposes of the operation, would receive his instructions from me. For administrative purposes I was directed to report to General Anderson, the Corps Commander, at Qum, some two hundred miles
from Isfahan, who had been asked to furnish the Brigadier and also such troops, equipment and transport as I might require.

I lost no time in reporting to Corps Headquarters, where I was provided with a platoon of Seaforth Highlanders, who were told that they had been specially selected for training in commando tactics. As surprise was clearly essential to the success of our enterprise, secrecy was of the utmost importance, and at this stage practically no one except the Corps Commander and myself was aware of our real objective. The Seaforths were equipped with tommy-guns and hand-grenades and we repaired to a secluded part of the desert near Qum to rehearse our act.

I had decided that the Seaforths should only be used in case of an emergency. My plan was that on the appointed day they should arrive in Isfahan in two covered trucks, disguised as far as possible to look like civilian vehicles, shortly before I set out for the General’s house. One would draw up under the plane trees on the far side of the avenue, opposite the main entrance to the house and stay there. The other would take up a position covering the back entrance. The men, clutching their tommy-guns and hand-grenades would remain in the back of the trucks, out of sight. Only if they heard firing or a pre-arranged signal of three blasts on the whistle would they emerge from their hiding-place, overpower the guard and force an entrance, after which their task would be to cover the withdrawal of the party in the staff car, which it was hoped would include Zahidi whatever happened. If, on the other hand, all went well, the two trucks would simply wait until the staff car drove out with Zahidi in it, and then fall in behind and escort us out of Isfahan to a point in the desert where an aircraft would be waiting, ready to fly our prisoner out of the country.

For our rehearsals I chose a ruined fort in the desert. Again and again the two trucks took up their positions outside; the staff car drove in; the whistle sounded; the Seaforths poured out of the trucks and into the fort; an imaginary victim was bundled unceremoniously into the car, and all three vehicles drove off in triumph, the occupants tossing dummy hand-grenades out of the back at imaginary pursuers, as they went. The Seaforths gave a splendidly realistic performance. Indeed their enthusiasm was such that my only anxiety was lest on the day
itself they would emerge from their place of concealment, whether things went well or badly, and massacre a number of harmless Persians out of sheer ebullience.

It now only remained to fix the day. This was done after a further exchange of signals with G.H.Q. Baghdad and with the Foreign Office via Teheran. I also extracted from the authorities, not without difficulty, permission to shoot General Zahidi, should he be armed and resist capture.

Our D-Day was fixed, and, on D minus one, we set out from Qum. I had decided that the Seaforths should spend the night well out of sight in the desert about ten miles from Isfahan. Next day, while the main party entered the town in the two trucks, smaller parties were detailed to cut the telegraph wires connecting Isfahan with the neighbouring Persian garrisons. Meanwhile I collected the Brigadier, a distinguished officer whose well-developed sense of humour caused him to enter completely into the spirit of the somewhat equivocal role that had been allotted to him, and set out for the British Consulate.

On our arrival there a telephone call was put through to the General’s house and an appointment duly made for the same afternoon. After a copious lunch we took our places in the staff car which was flying a large Union Jack. A reliable N.C.O., armed to the teeth, occupied the seat next the driver, while Guardsman Duncan and a Seaforth Highlander, both carrying tommy-guns, crouched in the luggage compartment at the back, under a tarpaulin. Gault followed in his own car. As we approached Zahidi’s house, I was relieved to see our two trucks, their tarpaulin covers concealing the battle-hungry Seaforths, drawn up in their appointed places. At the gate the Persian sentry was deep in conversation with Laurence Lockhart, a Persian linguist from the R.A.F. Intelligence, whose services I had enlisted for the occasion. So far everything had gone according to plan.

On our appearance, the sentry at the gate reluctantly put out the cigarette which Lockhart had given him, broke off his conversation, and presented arms. We drove on up the drive and drew up in front of the house immediately outside a large pair of open French windows. A servant ushered us in through these and went off to fetch the General.

When, a couple of minutes later, General Zahidi, a dapper figure in
a tight-fitting grey uniform and highly polished boots, entered the room, he found himself looking down the barrel of my Colt automatic. There was no advantage in prolonging a scene which might easily become embarrassing. Without further ado, I invited the General to put his hands up and informed him that I had instructions to arrest him and that, if he made any noise or attempt at resistance, he would be shot. Then I took away his pistol and hustled him through the window into the car which was waiting outside with the engine running. To my relief there was no sign of the much-advertised bodyguard. As we passed the guardroom, the sentry once again interrupted his conversation to present arms, and the General, sitting bolt upright, with my pistol pressed against his ribs and Duncan breathing menacingly down his neck, duly returned the salute. The two ‘plain vans’, with their occupants now bitterly disappointed, fell in behind; and the whole convoy swept at a brisk pace over the bridge and into the main avenue leading out of Isfahan.

Some miles outside the town we passed a large barracks, full of General Zahidi’s troops, but the telephone wire from the town had duly been cut by the wire-cutting party, and there was no sign of the alarm having been given. Meanwhile Zahidi continued to sit bolt upright and to assure me that there was a very good explanation of any aspects of his conduct which might at first sight have seemed at all suspicious. Soon we reached the point in the desert where we had spent the night and here I handed over my captive to an officer and six men who were standing by to take him by car to the nearest landing-ground where an aeroplane was waiting to fly him to Palestine. This was the last I saw of General Zahidi, but, reading my newspaper recently, nearly five years after his ‘liquidation’, I was amused to see an announcement that he had returned to Persia and once again been placed in command of the south Persian military district.

Having said goodbye to the Brigadier, whose duties were now at an end, and sent a signal to General Wilson announcing the completion of Operation
PONGO
, I went back into the town to clear up any outstanding points, taking a few Seaforths with me. My first objective was Zahidi’s Headquarters, which I entered at the head of six Seaforths carrying tommy-guns. Gault had told me that Zahidi’s Chief of
Staff was also very hostile to the Allies, and, in addition to this, extremely truculent in manner. The exaggerated amiability with which this dignitary now greeted me accordingly left me in no doubt that news of what had occurred had already got out. Taking him with me, I next returned to Zahidi’s house which I proceeded to search methodically. In the General’s bedroom I found a collection of automatic weapons of German manufacture, a good deal of silk underwear, some opium, an illustrated register of the prostitutes of Isfahan and a large number of letters and papers which I took back with me to the Consulate.

That night the Seaforths camped in the Consulate garden in case there was trouble, and Gault and I sat down to examine Zahidi’s correspondence. One of the first letters that caught our eye was a recent communication from a gentleman styling himself ‘German Consul-General for south Persia’, and apparently resident in the hills somewhere to the south. He spoke of Zahidi’s activities in terms of general approval and asked for more supplies. His letter left no doubt that the General’s arrest had not come a moment too soon.

A
FTER
the kidnapping of General Zahidi, I settled down to the more orthodox task of assembling my new detachment and training them in S.A.S. methods. As a training area we were allotted Isfahan and the surrounding country, in the hope, I was told, that, by showing the flag there, we might act as a deterrent to any other Persians who might be contemplating rebellion or co-operation with the Germans. As there were only about one hundred and fifty of us all told with no other British troops for several hundred miles, it seems doubtful whether we counted for very much in the calculations of any potential fifth-columnists, but we nevertheless did our best with the material at our disposal to convey the impression that we were a large and well-equipped force.

Sandy Scratchley and Bill Cumper brought over a load of high explosives and a convoy of fully fitted jeeps as a present from David Stirling. The unaccustomed sight of these nimble little vehicles, bristling with machine guns fore and aft, would we hoped, strike terror into the hearts of General Zahidi’s late accomplices. In addition to my original volunteers ‘Operation
PONGO
’ had brought me in a number of Seaforths, including a piper, whose spirited performances were no doubt equally disconcerting to such Persians as heard them. Another valuable acquisition was Sergeant Charlie Button from Sandy Scratchley’s regiment the Fourth County of London Yeomanry, a rubicund and uniformly cheerful character, who after serving in the First World War and winning a very good Military Medal in the Western Desert in the Second, had now decided, on reaching the late forties, that it was time he learned to parachute. He was soon installed as Quartermaster Sergeant, and, by the time we started our training programme, had accumulated by methods which, if not strictly orthodox, were remarkably effective, a magnificent collection of weapons, equipment, vehicles, clothing, tentage and rations. We
laid out an impressive camp some twenty miles from Isfahan and the next two months were spent training arduously amidst the ice and snow of the hill country of southern Persia.

Meanwhile, further west, the battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad had checked the German advance, and by the end of 1942 it had become clear that the threat to Persia had been removed. I accordingly flew to Baghdad to try to find out what plans were being made for our future. When I got there, I found General Wilson on the point of leaving for Cairo to take up the appointment of Commander-in-Chief, Middle East. This meant that the eastern Mediterranean, an area with unrivalled opportunities for small-scale raiding, would come under his operational control. It was too good a chance to miss. Before he left, I extracted from him a promise that we should be transferred to Middle East Command forthwith. With any luck, the training in mountain warfare which we had acquired on the Iranian plateau would be put into practice amongst the hills and valleys of southern and eastern Europe. I took the first aeroplane back to Persia, and a week or two later we had struck our camp and were moving as fast as our vehicles would take us back across Persia and Iraq to our new scene of activities.

In Middle East Command there had been many changes since Duncan and I had set out for Persia in the autumn. Eighth Army was now at the other end of North Africa, preparing for the landings in Sicily. The Middle East, for so long almost the only active theatre of war, was being converted into a gigantic jumping-off place and supply base for the invasion of southern Europe.

In the S.A.S. there had also been changes. David Stirling, after so many miraculous escapes, had at last been taken prisoner in Tunisia while operating hundreds of miles ahead of Eighth Army. With the end of the war in the desert, too, the S.A.S. had lost a medium ideally suited to their type of warfare. The desert had played a vital part in their operations. Now they would have to adapt themselves to completely new conditions, to use completely new methods, if they were to achieve the same successes on the continent of Europe. I wished that David, so quick to grasp the potentialities of the desert for irregular warfare, had been there to help evolve a new ‘continental’ technique.

After David Stirling’s capture the S.A.S. had split up into a number
of parts. On our arrival from Persia my party joined up with George Jellicoe who was training with canoes and rubber dinghies on the coast of Palestine at Athlit, romantically situated at the foot of Mount Carmel, where the ruins of a vast Crusader’s castle, complete with dungeons and banqueting hall, tower above the blue waters and sandy beach of a little Mediterranean bay. After some weeks of this I moved my detachment northwards up the coast to the Lebanon to complete our training in mountain warfare. For this purpose we were based on the village of Zahle high up in the mountains behind Beirut.

Situated in a typical Alpine valley, with rushing past its half-French-provincial, half-Arab houses, a mountain stream, which the inhabitants used for cooling bottles of delicious wine from the neighbouring vineyards, Zahle sticks in my memory as one of the most agreeable places to which my travels have taken me. We had, however, by now all had enough of training, however agreeable the surroundings might be. We had also had enough of the Middle East. Our objective now was Europe, to which prolonged inaccessibility had lent an entirely new glamour. Eighth Army were preparing to land in Sicily. We did not see why we should be left behind.

A few weeks after our arrival from Persia, I was summoned to Cairo and told to select a small party of officers and N.C.O.s with which to attack a German fighter base on Crete. We were to be landed by night on a secluded part of the coast; make our way across the island to our target; blow up any aircraft there might be on it and then find our way back to the coast to be taken off again. Large-scale maps and air photographs were procured, and we settled down to the detailed planning. We soon felt as if we had known that aerodrome and the rocky gullies by which we should have to approach it since our earliest childhood. We drew our operational rations from Sergeant Button, discussing the relative merits on a long march of dates or raisins, biscuits or oatmeal, bully or bacon. We made up and packed our explosives and oiled and cleaned our weapons.

As we were preparing to leave for Beirut to go on board the motor launch which was to drop us, I was once again summoned to Cairo, to receive, I assumed, some last-minute instructions. But on arriving there, I was told that the latest air photographs showed that the
Germans were no longer using the aerodrome for which we were bound and that our operation had therefore been cancelled.

I left G.H.Q. feeling quite unwarrantably aggrieved. Things, it seemed to me, were going from bad to worse. Twelve months earlier the Germans would never have behaved like this. In the desert, if you stuck around long enough, something always turned up; you didn’t have to fabricate operations.

It was in this frame of mind that I went to see Rex Leeper, an old friend from Foreign Office days, and now His Majesty’s Ambassador to the Greek Government then in exile in Cairo. Looking back to our first attempt at parachute training I had a dim recollection of mysterious figures who had passed through our hands and who were, as far as we knew, preparing to be dropped into enemy-occupied Greece, not to perform a single operation, but to stay there indefinitely, just as Bob Melot had lived for months at a time behind the enemy lines in the desert. It seemed to me that a job of this kind might meet my requirements. Presumably, if one lived permanently in enemy-occupied territory, there would be no need to go out of one’s way to find excitement.

I found the Ambassador in a pleasant flat in Zamalek, overlooking the grounds of the Gezira Sporting Club, with a long drink waiting for me that was most welcome after a frustrating morning in the sweltering offices of G.H.Q. Better still, there was, it appeared, every prospect of a job on the lines I had in mind. He would make inquiries and let me know the result. Being blessed with a fairly lively imagination, I started on my return journey in a much better frame of mind, already picturing myself in any number of fascinating and agreeably spectacular situations amongst the thyme-scented mountains of Greece. When I got back, I asked Duncan and Sergeant Button whether they would like to come to Greece with me. They replied that they didn’t mind if they did.

The response to Rex Leeper’s inquiries came sooner than I had expected. I had hardly got back to Zahle when I received a message from him, asking me to return to Cairo without delay. On my arrival he showed me a telegram from London, saying that I was needed; but not in Greece. I was to be dropped in Jugoslavia. I was to fly to
London forthwith and report to the Prime Minister himself, who would tell me what was required of me.

I did not have long to think out the implications of this telegram. An aircraft was leaving for England the same night. There was barely time to notify G.H.Q. and get the necessary movement order. I had not been home for nearly two years and to be going back was, in itself, exciting enough.

I knew little of the situation in Jugoslavia. I had never been there before the war and, since the German occupation, the only news of Jugoslavia which I remembered reading in the occasional copies of the
Egyptian Mail
which had happened to come my way, concerned the activities of General Mihajlović, who, by all accounts, was conducting a spirited resistance movement in the mountains. In so far as I speculated at all about the future, my guess was that I should in some way be associated with this legendary figure.

Once I reached London, I was soon put in the picture. Information reaching the British Government from a variety of sources had caused them to doubt whether the resistance of General Mihajlović and his Četniks to the enemy was all that it was made out to be. There were indications that at least as much was being done by armed bands bearing the name of Partisans and led by a shadowy figure known as Tito. Hitherto such support as we had been able to give had gone exclusively to Mihajlović. Now doubts as to the wisdom of this policy were beginning to creep in, and the task which I had been allotted was to form an estimate on the spot of the relative value of the Partisans’ contribution to the Allied cause and the best means of helping them to increase it. For this purpose I was to be dropped into Jugoslavia by parachute as head of a Military Mission accredited to Tito, or whoever I found to be in command of the Partisans.

My inquiries revealed that in fact little or nothing was known of the Partisans in Whitehall. Three or four British officers had been dropped in to them by parachute a few weeks before, but there had been fierce fighting in Jugoslavia since their arrival and no comprehensive report of the situation from them had reached London. It was, however, believed that the Partisans were under Communist leadership and that they were causing the Germans considerable inconvenience (an impression
that was principally derived from German sources). Their principal sphere of activity was thought to be in Bosnia and it was there that I was to be dropped.

As to Tito, there were various theories concerning his identity. One school of thought refused to believe that he existed at all. The name, they said, stood for
Tajna Internacionalna Teroristička Organizacija
, or Secret International Terrorist Organization, and not for any individual leader. Another theory was that it was simply an appointment, and that a new Tito was nominated at frequent intervals. Finally, the more romantically inclined claimed that Tito was not a man, but a young woman of startling beauty and great force of character.

A day or two after I arrived in England I was rung up from No. 10 Downing Street and told that Mr. Churchill wanted me to come down to Chequers for a weekend so that he could himself explain to me what he had in mind.

When I reached Chequers, I wondered if the Prime Minister would ever find time to talk to me about Jugoslavia. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff was there, and Air-Marshal Harris, of Bomber Command, and an American General, and an expert on landing-craft, and any number of other people, all of whom clearly had matters of the utmost importance to discuss with Mr. Churchill. Red leather dispatch boxes, full of telegrams and signals from every theatre of war, kept arriving by dispatch rider from London.

Then there were the films; long films, short films, comic films and serious films, sandwiched in at all hours of the day and night. The great men stood by, waiting their turn, hoping that it would not come in the early hours of the morning, a time when the ordinary mortal does not feel at his brightest, especially if he has seen three or four films in succession, but when the Prime Minister, on the contrary, seemed filled with renewed vigour of mind and body.

Towards midnight, in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, a memorable interruption took place. A message was brought in to Mr. Churchill, who gave an exclamation of surprise. Then there was a scuffle and the film was stopped. As the squawking of Donald Duck and the baying of Pluto died away, the Prime Minister rose to his feet. ‘I have just,’ he said, ‘received some very important news. Signor
Mussolini has resigned.’ Then the film was switched on again.

As we went downstairs, I reflected that in view of this startling new development it was now more unlikely than ever that the Prime Minister would find time to attend to my affairs. But I was mistaken. ‘This,’ he said, turning to me, ‘makes your job more important than ever. The German position in Italy is crumbling. We must now put all the pressure we can on them on the other side of the Adriatic. You must go in without delay.’ Mr. Churchill then went on to give me a splendidly lucid and at the same time vivid account of the strategic situation and of what he wanted me to try and do in Jugoslavia. I was amazed, as so often afterwards I was to be amazed, by his extraordinary grasp of detail in regard to what was, after all, only one of the innumerable problems confronting him.

After he had finished, there was only one point which, it seemed to me, still required clearing up. The years that I had spent in the Soviet Union had made me deeply and lastingly conscious of the expansionist tendencies of international Communism and of its intimate connection with Soviet foreign policy; after all, in my day, the Communist International had sported a brass plate in one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares and had numbered Stalin and several other leading Soviet public figures amongst the members of its Executive Committee. If, as I had been told, the Partisans were under Communist leadership, they might easily be fighting very well for the Allied cause, but their ultimate aim would undoubtedly be to establish in Jugoslavia a Communist regime closely linked to Moscow. How did His Majesty’s Government view such an eventuality? Was it at this stage their policy to obstruct Soviet expansion in the Balkans? If so, my task looked like being a ticklish one.