Chapter 23
CHAPTER 23: REFLECTIONS OF AN OLD SOLDIER
A JUST WAR
I never had any doubt about the our fight against Fascist aggression, whether from the Italians, the Germans, or the Japanese. If there was to be war, I wanted to serve in it. I was offered more than once the opportunity to serve as a non-combatant (in the intelligence operation at Bletchley Park) but this did not appeal to me and I do not regret my decision.
MY OWN PART IN THE WAR
My own role was to project very large numbers of high explosive shells at German soldiers and to have the same done to me, though usually on a lesser scale. I saw a lot of action, not exactly from a safe distance, but not in the face-to-face proximity of the infantry and tank regiments. In retrospect, I do feel regret that I was never exposed to the extremes of physical hazard or danger. I retain a slightly guilty feeling that I had an easy war.
Except for the Villers Bocage incident, I never had to take part in a retreat, as our forces had to in France in 1940, in Greece and Crete, in the desert in 1941 and the summer 1942. I was never - well, hardly ever - dive-bombed as our troops had been in these retreats. I missed the main battle at Alamein, having come back from the Australian front line to rejoin my regiment. After Alamein, I never caught up with the retreating Germans except briefly at Mersa Brega. I missed the end of the African campaign as I had been evacuated with jaundice. For my first invasion, the armour didn’t land at Salerno until D plus 12, by which time the worst was over. For the Normandy invasion, although we were meant to land on D-day, we didn’t get ashore until 6 a.m. on D plus One, and probably had the easiest landing of all the beaches.
IMPACT OF THE WAR ON MY LIFE
Looking first on the negative side, it is no light matter to take a slice of five and a years out of a young life. They could have been years of great enjoyment and fulfilment and continuing personal development. The interruption to academic studies brought an abrupt halt to my career as a mathematician. I was quite unable to recover the lost ground when went back to Cambridge. I might have become a distinguished mathematician or, course, not. I shall never know.
Other aspects of intellectual development also had to mark time. I read very few books in the Army: when there was time, there were no books. I could have been much better read, more cultivated in my musical and artistic appreciation, probably a better linguist. All these things are more difficult as you get older. Emotional development was also held back. Relations with women were sparse or non-existent — and this after a childhood with no sisters, education at a single-sex school, Cambridge with a woman-man ratio of one to ten.
Relations with Germans were naturally a casualty of war. I went on hating Germans for twenty-five years. Then I had to spend ten days in the country in the course of my official work. I realised that nearly everyone I was meeting was too young to bear any responsibility for the wickedness of their parents and grandparents. It was reassuring to see democracy in good working order in a country where once an evil dictatorship had held sway.
This negative side is overwhelmingly outweighed by the positive elements. I learned a lot from my military service. I had grown up, with the aid of scholarships, within a narrow circle of well-educated people who, though not particularly well-off, were strangers to poverty and unemployment. I had enjoyed a reasonable standard of domestic comfort. It was a salutary experience to serve in the Army, particularly in the ranks, with men from very different backgrounds. I became familiar with physical discomfort, and with drab and depressing surroundings. Ever since, I have been more or less immune to discomfort, and indifferent to any unpleasant environment to which my travels may take me.
I learned what the Army called the art of man-management. Service life, of course, is strictly hierarchical. An order had to be obeyed, but you respected your men and looked after their welfare as far as you could, as if they were your own family. When I joined the Civil Service after the war, I was horrified at the attitude to their staff of the old Whitehall hands. They had no idea of man-management as we understood it. I hope that my generation of Civil Servants, many of us ex-service men, changed all that.
Uppermost in my mind now is pride in my modest part in winning a just war and defeating a regime of unmitigated evil. I am grateful to have had the privilege of serving in a regiment and in a division of high and deserved reputation. I enjoyed the friendship of cheerful and gallant comrades. I had the good fortune to survive unscathed to share in a victory which seemed glorious at the time and which — in my reckoning — has not been tarnished with the years
Now, even in my eightieth year, I dream frequently of being in the Army and often of being in battle. The dreams are not of horror, but of anxiety. I do not know where the enemy is. I cannot find my revolver, or boots, or any place to bed down. I have forgotten how to order a troop of guns into action. I am puzzled to find myself in action when I am over military age. Memories, dreams.... Yes, it was a great experience.
London. May 2000