How I Won the War Page 16

  “British officer, eh? Then why are you wearing Jerry uniform?”

  I looked down at myself and realized that I was still wearing the field-grey greatcoat that Plum had given me.

  “Oh! I see your point. A pardonable error, Corporal.” I unbuttoned the coat. “You see, I’ve got British shirt and battledress trousers underneath. I put on the greatcoat just to keep warm.”

  “Did you? You got any papers?”

  “No. I left them in my jacket.”

  “Where’s your jacket?”

  “As a matter of fact, it’s on top of Castle Hill. I had to take it off to … er … to attend to a personal matter. Then I fell off and captured this lot…. Single-handed, you know.”

  He sucked his teeth doubtfully.

  “I don’t know. You talk la-di-da English, I grant you, and you got half a battle dress on. But I don’t know …”

  He put a hand on the gate.

  “No!” shouted Streich. “Do not be cheated, corporal. This man is German soldier, just like us. He stole the trousers from a dead Tommy when he injured his own.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Kaporal Streich,” I said. “Tell them who I am.”

  “Aye-aye,” said the lance jack. “He knows that Jerry corporal’s name, don’t he?”

  “You got us here by tricks,” hissed Streich to me. “You not keep your promises. So you stay suffer with us.”

  Plum joined in the Judas business.

  “This man is not British officer,” he said. “He wears half a British uniform only to spy upon your positions. He is dangerous German spy.”

  “He is the worst one,” croaked Rikitz. “He is Waffen S. S. man. He kill wounded British soldiers. Many times now he plan escape in British uniform.”

  “But this is ridiculous,” I cried. “I am Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody of the Fourth Musketeers. Do I look like an S. S. man?”

  “They’re the rottenest bastards of the lot, the S. S.,” said the corporal.

  “And look at them nasty, beady eyes,” said the lance jack. “Do in his own mother if Hitler gave the say-so.”

  “He’s fatter than all the others, too. Proves he was in something special where they got the grub.”

  “I am a British officer, I tell you. Take me to …”

  “He is not British officer,” bawled Streich. “He is Waffen S. S. military spy. You leave him in here and we will deal with him ourselves.”

  My captured pack came baying around me and the corporal pushed open the gate and called in the Nigerian guards to keep the peace.

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “Everybody sit down! Sitzen-Sie! Sitzen-Sie! If you don’t want a bayonet up your jacksie. And you …” he pointed at me, “don’t be trying any more of your funny tricks. Or he’ll have the ears off you.”

  And he posted a special sentry over me and left four others to roam the compound.

  The glory of my day was gone. My triumph was trodden down to ignominy. Cassino had fallen, the battle was won, my comrades in arms were roaring up the road to Rome, and I, amid all the flames of victory, was sitting on the spikiest square foot of a P. O. W. compound, imprisoned by the British, threatened by vengeful Germans, and personally guarded by a black man obsessively anxious to blood-stain his bayonet. The Boche seated on their hunkers all around me kept up a low torrent of Teutonic curses at the man who dishonoured their passerscheins to paradise and threw surreptitious rocks at me whenever the backs of the guards were turned. Every time I moved a muscle to retaliate or opened my mouth to state my case to any sympathetic-looking passerby, my faithful Nubian made to fill it with a half a yard of bayonet. I tried whistling “God Save the King” as a general distress signal, but he took steely exception to this as well. My hand semaphore, navy fashion, of S O S also earned his disapproval and I had no option but to sit and suffer in the silent posture of a martyred Buddha.

  I was worried, not only about my own situation, but also about the plight of Twelve Platoon, pushing on towards the Eternal City without my guiding hand. Sergeant Transom was no doubt developing steadily under my tutelage, but I had not had opportunity to take him through my O. C. T. U. notes on “The Breakthrough and Pursuit.” Also I had prepared two lectures which I had intended to give when entry into the capital became a possibility. One was entitled “A Ramble in Ancient Rome” and the other was the standard talk which I always gave when the Musketeers approached any large city. “The Penalties of Promiscuity.” Sergeant Transom might possibly be able to deliver the first from the draft in my notebook, but I doubted very much whether his known weakness for foreign women would allow him to be convincing about the second.

  For three hours I squatted immobile and pensive under the mounting sun and I was beginning to wonder what life would be like as an Anglo-German pariah in Benghazi when I heard the voices of Aryan pedlars working round the outside of the wire.

  “Cigarettes … Chocolate … Any watches or cameras. Zigaretten and Schockoladen für Kameras oder Taschenuhrs. Cigarettes … Chocolate …”

  Apart from their super-cinema identification there was something familiar about the hawking voices, but they were away behind me and I hesitated to look round lest my black guard took impaling offence. From the corner of my eyes I could see that one of the more liberal-minded sentries was allowing prisoners up to the wire to do business. Watches and the occasional camera sailed over the wire and the hucksters sent packets of cigarettes or bars of chocolate back in return.

  “Cigarettes … Chocolates … Zigaretten … Schockoladen …”

  The three pedlars with their kitbags of stock came abreast of my bed of nails and I saw with delight that they were Corporal Dooley, Corporal Globe, and Private Clapper. Without moving a muscle of my face lest I collect a mouthful of stiletto, I threw my voice their way, cunning and stiff-lipped as a ventriloquist …

  “Corporal Dooley … Corporal Dooley. Lieutenant Good-body here … Your platoon commander speaking. Rally on me!”

  Dooley stopped in mid-barter of twenty Woodbines for a Leica, open-mouthed and petrified as a man hearing from a cloud the voice of his god.

  “Corporal Dooley,” I yoo-hooed in my sing-sing sidelong. “Twelve Platoon rally on me!”

  He dropped the camera and came up to my neck of the fence.

  “God love us all!” he said. “It’s him! Sitting there with the Jerries like a brass-bound yogi.”

  “P’raps he’s changed sides,” said Corporal Globe. “Gone over to persecute Hitler.”

  “I have been wrongfully arrested,” I crooned. “They believe me a German. Find the officer in charge and tell him who I am.”

  The two corporals conferred.

  “Just our luck,” said Dooley. “Come back here with a load of prisoners and we have to find the governor.”

  “And the boys are going to be dead pleased when we turn up with him again, ain’t they?”

  “Overjoyed, Globey boy, bleeding overjoyed.”

  “Well then,” I urged. “Get me out of here. The sooner you identify me the sooner can the men have me back in command.”

  “He’s seen us,” said Dooley. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

  “You’re right,” said Globe. “And Benghazi is a bit much, ain’t it…. Hold the sack, Clapper.”

  They went off to the commandant’s office and Clapper leaned through the fence and placated my Nigerian with a handful of cigarettes.

  “I hope you’ll excuse me, sir, now that the others have gone, if I just take the opportunity to have a private word with you. I got the domestic trouble again.”

  I was sorely tempted to tell him that it was neither time nor place for welfare matters, but I realized the duty of an officer to be ready to help his men at all times and I curbed my tongue.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, shifting my buttocks through another five degrees so that the flints made acupuncture on new flesh.

  “It’s not, I trust, Mrs. Clapper again?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. She’s get
ting laid again.”

  “But I thought we’d circumvented the passionate butcher by converting herself and your mother to vegetarianism.”

  “We did that butcher down, all right, don’t you worry, sir. He never got no more under at our house after they joined the lettuce-and-nuts brigade. It’s the Yanks this time, sir. A meat-hating mobile laundry top sergeant from Tacoma, Washington, met her at the vegetarian club. Comes round regular on his every half day, my mum says, with bunches of kohlrabi, endive, and other unusual vegetables, fills that poor little kid’s head with tales of his oil wells and orange plantations and lays her something rotten on her own bridal bed…. Now is that right, sir, that’s all I want to know, when a man’s away in a foreign country fighting for liberty, equality, and democracy, that American laundrymen should come over to England and keep having their hoggins off his wife?”

  “Decidedly not, Clapper. Not only is such lubricity bad for your marriage, but it is also ultimately damaging to Anglo-American relations. Now tell me, on what day of the week does this man have his half day to visit your wife?”

  “Every Saturday afternoon. He’s out mobile-laundering all the rest of the week.”

  “Then we must persuade your wife to find some employment in which attendance at work on Saturday afternoons is obligatory. Now let me see … what about working on the turnstile at football matches?”

  “What about the summer? The war could go on a long time.”

  “Or a bus conductress?”

  “They get every third Saturday off.”

  “She could work on a post office counter.”

  “Never no head for figures, sir. Not my little girl.”

  The Nigerian threw away his cigarette and spoke for the first time in our acquaintance.

  “’Ow abaht,” he said in purest Cockney, “the old swimming barf attendant?”

  Before Clapper and I had time to pass judgment on this suggestion, Dooley and Globe came out of the office with the key to the compound, closely followed by a provost marshal who was beating my expostulating military police corporal about the shoulders with the flat of his cap.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was during this visit that Stalin, seeing one of his marshals being carried out, dead drunk, from a banquet, asked Eden whether British generals got drunk too, and added, “I find that, the more my generals drink, the better they are.”

  MAJ. GEN. SIR JOHN KENNEDY The Business of War

  The dinner-party was great fun. Monty drank water, but produced a bottle of good claret for me. He said, “I had a spoonful of white wine the other night, but I did not like it.”

  Ibid

  A serious appeal was made to me by General Alexander for more beer for the troops in Italy…. Make sure that the beer—four pints a week—goes to the troops under the fire of the enemy before any of the parties of the rear get a drop.

  PRIME MINISTER’S MEMORANDUM TO SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR

  TOTAL WAR IN ITALY was a slow grind up the narrow trunk and the breakout from Anzio was about the only time that anybody had a chance to attack across the grain. The thrust of the beachhead force aimed across country to cut the road back from Cassino to Rome at Valmontone. From fifty miles south the German Tenth Army was in flight before the Fifth and Eighth Armies coming up the warp after breaking Cassino and the Adolf Hitler Line. Just as the beachhead force, coming across the weft, was in striking distance of Valmontone and the trap was about to close, they were suddenly ordered to change the direction of their main thrust, turn with the grain and head, in advance of the southern armies, straight for Rome.

  The minds of historians and the consciences of generals have since been greatly exercised by controversy about the cause, wisdom, lunacy, credit, or debit of this strange decision which exchanged the destruction of the Tenth Army for the glamorous liberation of Rome. But it raised no polemics at the time among the troops actually involved. They were unconcerned whether the theoretical objective of their chinagraph puppet masters was Rome, Valmontone, or Timbuctoo. They were ever prepared, in the broad interests of peace, to advance in the general direction of the enemy, but their precise objectives were defined by that private inter-Allied battle which waged the length of Italy … the Battle of the Booze.

  If it so happened that the routes of advance dreamed up by the Higher Command coincided with those required for Alcoholic Warfare, then so much the better for everyone concerned; if they did not, then too bad for the generals.

  The main supply route from the rear was the Benevento Pipeline. No matter how far north the front line went, this vital liquor link was maintained by a continued chain of fifteen-hundredweight trucks running on illegal journeys southwards, a hundred miles and more, back almost to where the invasion began. This British pilgrimage flowed unceasingly because in Benevento they made gin. They may not have been the best ginmakers in Europe but, by God, they were the fastest.

  Much against my principles, I was often sent back by Colonel Plaster down the Benevento Pipeline. I find I share many of my military views with Lord Montgomery and I am again one with him on the question of drink. If he is to think logically and act decisively, an officer must keep a clear head at all times. I therefore confined my wartime drinking to that minimum made obligatory by state occasions.

  “Sorry to keep sending you off to Benevento, Goodbody,” the colonel would say, “but you’re the only chap in the mess I can trust not to drink half the cargo on the way back.”

  When I took down the order for Captain Tablet’s birthday I was instructed to call on a recommended distiller named Caesario who had his warehouse on the riverside.

  “I want,” I read from my list, “twenty litres of gin, twelve litres of whisky, and eight bottles of brandy.”

  “O. K. chief. You wanta all this stuff today.”

  “Yes. I’ve got to start straight back.”

  “Very sorry, chief. I giva you the gin, the whisky, pronto, right away. But I can give you no brandy till tomorrow.”

  “Why not?”

  He wiggled his humpback apologetically.

  “Gin, whisky … I maka right away. But it taka me twenty-four hours to maka brandy.”

  I asked to see his instant distillery and he took me into his shed. As far as I could see, his total equipment was a hundred-gallon drum of industrial alcohol, a bottle of oil of juniper, a jar of burnt sugar, a packet of ground ginger and a witches-cruet of sundry herbs. He held up the juniper bottle.

  “Maka gin, pronto.” Then he displayed the sugar and ginger. “Maka whisky, pronto…. Buta the brandy, not so easy. The brandy I hava to boil all night.”

  Feeling faint for the linings of my comrades’ stomachs, I cancelled the brandy and took on whisky in its place. Grateful for my gift of abstinence I watched in fascination as Captain Tablet’s good-wishers downed every last drop of Caesario’s lightning liquors. And wondrously enough, it didn’t seem to affect them unduly at all. If anything, they broke slightly less furniture than usual.

  The Benevento Pipeline only supplied the basic, spirituous rations of the forward troops. For their finer drinking they lived off the country, for their share of Italian ambrosia they fought the Battle of the Booze. There were two sets of operational maps; one marked obediently with the boundaries, axes, and objectives of the generals; the other noted with the location of every vineyard, château, bodega, palazzo, castello, hotel, tavern, or sawdust bar within striking distance. In this secret battle every man’s hand was against every man. Americans, British, Poles, Canadians, New Zealanders, and Frenchmen, all schemed and maneuvered one against the other to capture the citadels of Bacchus. No holds were barred, no boundaries recognized and the only limit on the length of poaching was the brazenry of a commander’s neck.

  Colonel Plaster was a keen connoisseur of anything alcoholic and he carried a copy of The Wine-Lover’s Guide to Italy to ensure that nothing drinkable slipped his notice. He was bred to believe that niggers began at Calais and the only time he ever spoke to a
n Italian was to ask him if there were any good caches of vino in the vicinity. I plumbed the depths of his dedication to the Battle soon after the fall of the Hitler Line when the Musketeers were pushing on north of Arce. C Company was leading with Twelve Platoon out on the right flank charged with reconnoitering the village of Dolmino, and occupying it if it were abandoned by the retreating enemy. I kept the chaps going at good speed and when we arrived in the late afternoon we found Dolmino completely deserted.

  “Lovely grub,” said Sergeant Transom. “Made our bound by tea time. Jerry’ll be away up the road and blowing the bridge at Pasto. We can get a decent meal going and have a night’s kip under cover for a change.”

  I did not attempt to conceal my disappointment at his attitude.

  “We must advance at once and reestablish contact with the enemy. Remember the colonel’s closing words at every order group…. ‘When in doubt, the Boche seek out!’”

  “But if we push on too fast we’ll leave the right flank exposed.”

  I smiled acidly and pointed to the dust clouds rising a mile or so to our right.

  “The New Zealanders are already ahead of us.”

  We pushed on another two miles to the river Caroni and dug in for the night on the mud bank commanding the stumps of the blown bridge. It may not have been comfortable but our tactical siting was superb. I was happy to receive a message next morning requiring me to meet the colonel at company headquarters.

  I saluted smartly, confident of his congratulations.

  “Goodbody reporting, sir. Twelve Platoon is established on the line of the Caroni and commands a bridging site for the sappers.”

  “Why the hell aren’t you back at Dolmino?”

  “We took it early yesterday, sir, and pushed on…. You know, sir … ‘When in doubt, the Boche seek out.’”

  “Don’t speak bloody poetry at me. I told you to occupy Dolmino, not win the blasted war. D’you know what’s happened back there while you’ve been swanning up the road?”

  “No, sir.”