David Niven (20 page)

In 1993, Dirk Bogarde told me that he and his Army companion, Chris Greaves, were the first Allied soldiers to enter Paris the day after the liberation, driving into the city by jeep against orders and finding a bar where they drank to the liberation of Paris. It would have been fun to have been able to sit Niven and Bogarde down together and listen to their respective tales.

David returned to England in August but was back in Paris in September and embarked on an affair with French actress Yvette Lebon. I only know this because he carelessly mentioned her name while telling me how there were countless grateful girls to be picked up in Parisian bars following the liberation and that, as well as taking advantage of these, he also met a number of very grateful French actresses including one he said was called Ivette Lebón – she was better known as Yvette Lebon.

In 1982, as he was facing certain death and was regretting his many infidelities during his marriage to Primmie, David said, ‘There's nothing I can do to change the clock. But I have changed my heart, and if only Primmie could know that and that she will be waiting for me.'

Back at the front line, there was further disagreement between Patton and Montgomery when Eisenhower agreed to Monty's plan to invade Holland, capturing vital river and canal crossings, especially on the Lower Rhine where one bridge was at the Dutch town of Arnhem. Patton was furious and relations between the Allies began falling apart, so General Barker and Lieutenant Colonel David Niven had to stage-manage attempts to maintain communications between the British and American forces. The operation – codenamed ‘Market Garden' – began on 17 September 1944. By the 26th, the bridges at Veghel, Grave and Nijimegen were captured but the battle to capture the bridge at Arnhem was a disaster. Of the 10,000 troops and parachutists dropped, 1,200 had died and 6,642 were taken prisoner.

David recalled, ‘The autumn of 1944 was described by historians as a “lull”. Not to the British airborne troops who had to fight for their lives at Arnhem. The whole thing was a shambles, but it is true that if we had taken Arnhem, it would have shortened the war. Montgomery thought that instead of tackling the Siegfried Line he would skirt the northern end and aim for Berlin. As it is, the so-called “lull” was the slow progress towards the Ardennes.'

To Patton's delight, Eisenhower now accepted the ‘broad front' strategy whereby the Allies attacked in four areas in their advance on the Rhine. It rained throughout the autumn, turning the ground to mud. Niven was sent by Barker into the battle zones and came across ‘A' Squadron stationed in waterlogged fields near Geldrop. He spent a few days with them before moving onto Nijimegen where, among the Welsh Guards, he met Anthony Bushell who had been Laurence Olivier's production manager and was now a company commander.

They stood among the tanks, reminiscing, when, said David, ‘there was an appalling explosion. I dived under a tank but Bushell remained standing up, laughing. I appeared to be the only one who had bothered to take cover. I said, “What the hell was that?” He said, “The Germans have this bloody great gun, you see, in a railway tunnel across the river, and every hour they wheel it out and fire it. We're used to it.” I am constantly amazed at how human beings can become conditioned to the worst of situations and conditions that they face in war time.'

By December 1944 the Allies had made slow progress. The rain had turned to snow. On 15 December, Niven reported to the US 1st Army
headquarters at Spa in the Ardennes to liaise with Captain Bob Lowe, a one-time reporter with
Time
who was now working in 1st Army intelligence.

Captain Lowe took Niven to the map room of the intelligence section; David said he never forgot exactly what Lowe said. ‘The other side of those hills,' Captain Lowe told him, pointing through the window, ‘there is a forest and in that forest they are forming the 6th Panzer Army, and any day now the 6th Panzer Army is going to come right through this room and out the other side, cross the Neuse, then swing right and go north to Antwerp.'

‘Have you mentioned this to anyone?' Niven asked him.

‘We've been telling them for days, three times a day.'

The next morning, 16 December, David went on to Marche, and the Germans launched their offensive in the Ardennes; the Battle of the Bulge had begun. Although Niven wasn't caught up in the fighting, he was nevertheless in danger, even from the Americans, as he recalled,

There was an SS colonel called Otto Skorzney who was attached to the 6th Panzer Army. He could speak with an American accent and, with his men in American uniforms, he succeeded in infiltrating American lines and causing various acts of sabotage. They were called the Grief Commandos, and rumours of these commandos in American uniform ran wild and it was assumed they were on a mission to assassinate General Eisenhower at his headquarters in Versailles. This led to the interrogation of many real GIs and anyone else purporting to be an ally.

The GIs used every trick question, like, ‘What's the name of the president's dog?' I had quite a few anxious moments in the Ardennes in my British uniform and jeep with 21st Army Group markings. They'd stop me and tell me to put my hands above my head, pointing their guns at me and asking my name.

I told them I was David Niven and said, ‘The actor, you must have seen some of my films.'

But they said, ‘Anyone can claim to be David Niven. Who won the World Series in 1940?'

I told them I had no idea but I had made a picture with Ginger Rogers. That satisfied them I was the
real
David Niven.

There was some respite for Niven when he was allowed back home again and moved his family to a new house, a 15th-century cottage near Windsor. He was home for Christmas which he, Primmie and the baby spent with the Trees at Ditchley Park.

David always maintained that he was not a hero. He was able to talk about some of his wartime experiences with humour in 1970, but in 1978
he acknowledged that there were times when his nerves where certainly put on edge if not shredded. ‘People were dying all around me,' he told me. ‘They didn't have to be firing a gun. German planes could zero in on us at any time, or a shell could land among us. There were plenty of times when I wanted to fight back, but I hardly ever saw the enemy to be able to aim at him. I was kept busy trying to keep the British and the Americans from each other's throats, and really, you know, there were times when I could have easily throttled one or two generals on both sides.'

In January 1945 Niven was back in Paris, continuing his affair with Yvette Lebon, and then he headed back to the front line. When he was home on leave in March, Primmie became pregnant again.

After the Battle of the Bulge was won by the Allies, the move to the Rhine was swift, and during the first week of March they reached the Rhine which was about the time Niven caught up with them. The greatest surprise to the Allies was that the bridge at Remagen had not been destroyed by the Germans in their retreat, and this was so unexpected that Montgomery was not ready to cross because he first needed a build-up of strength. David said,

The depths of idiocy were surely reached when Patton telephoned Bradley and said, ‘I want the world to know the Third Army made it before Monty starts across.' So Patton crossed where he was at Oppenheim [on 22 March] and Montgomery waited until the next day at Wesel. I crossed in Monty's wake.

I had never seen such destruction – the smoking town of Wesel had ceased to exist. I really had to say to myself, there but for the grace of God go I. I thought of what could have happened to England, to the house where my wife and child were, if the Germans had ever breached our defences. I wasn't much of a believer in God, but I had to wonder if Good and Evil really did exist side by side, and that Good would always overcome Evil. If the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor – if the Germans had not attacked Russia – we would have lost the war. Was that Good over Evil, or just the complete and utter madness of one man in Berlin who thought he was invincible and could take on the world but in the end the odds were against him?

When we got to Münster, the only thing I saw standing was a bronze statue of a horse. Hanover was also in ruins. The burgomaster there told me that at least 60,000 bodies lay under the rubble.

In each town a handful of Allied soldiers were posted, and I wondered what good they could do now that Germany was on the run. I thought there was no more fight left in them. But when I arrived in a
village outside of Hanover I heard rifle fire. I was told to get down, and I took cover and saw that a group of British soldiers were firing at a building that was still standing but with no roof. From an upstairs window someone was firing. The sergeant said to me, ‘We've got a sniper up there,' but it only took me a few seconds to realise that the person inside was firing wide and was unable to hit anything. I said, ‘That's no sniper, stop firing and pull back.' The sergeant began to argue with me that someone was trying to kill them and they weren't about to let him get away. Then I finally lost my temper and yelled, ‘Pull back and that's an order.'

At that very moment a woman suddenly came running out of a door of the building screaming ‘Stop! He's my son. Stop!' The soldiers simply reacted and shot her dead. The boy at the window stood up and called, ‘Mama!' and he was shot dead too. I told the sergeant to get the boy's body, and they brought him out and I saw he could only have been no more than 12. He was one of the Hitler Youth and had somehow managed to get hold of a real gun, probably off a dead German soldier.

I just couldn't make sense of it all. None of it. I still can't.

I moved on with the American 1 Unit and on the road to Osnabrück I saw a hastily erected POW camp to house the captured Germans. There must have been a hundred thousand men already inside. The German defences were falling apart quickly now, and you could sense the end wasn't too far off. I thought about how Hitler had begun all this but now that the chickens had come home to roost, I couldn't find it within myself to gloat.

At that point in the war, David felt, he said, as though he had seen ‘every horror imaginable'. But worse was to come. He tried to tell me what it was like in the concentration camps he came across. ‘You cannot begin to describe the revulsion. The sights and sounds that stay with you, the stench – all those things that you can never forget because they play like a film back in your mind from time to time – were more than even those of us who had seen all the other horrors of the war could stand.

‘I was sick. Physically sick. Even now, I sometimes fancy that I can catch a hint of that stench in my nostrils, and my stomach heaves. I feel like it will never leave me.'

At Liebenau, David came across a labour camp. ‘The workers were from all over Europe – from Russia, Italy, France, Poland, Holland, Germany. The gates to the camp were open but there was nowhere for them to go. I have never seen such hopelessness. They just wandered about in a trance
around the camp and outside of it. There were prisoners from a concentration camp who shuffled among them, standing gaunt and lifeless, and barely alive, none of them knowing which way was home, just wandering aimlessly. It is a memory that comes to me like a snapshot, a scene frozen in time.'

He told me one particularly harrowing story which he said he had long repressed. Near the gates of the labour camp he was approached by a man carrying another in his arms.

Both men looked as light as feathers, they were so emaciated. But somehow, one of them found the strength to carry the other. The man walking was saying, ‘Tommy, Tommy!' He didn't put the man down. He just stood there, holding him, and they were looking at me through eyes that barely sat in sunken holes. The man who was carrying the other said in French, ‘My brother wants to thank you before dying.'

I said, ‘Look, old man, we're here now and you won't die.' Then the man who was being carried seemed to smile and died. Just like that. At that moment his brother seemed to wilt, and I tried to hold him, but the best I could do was help him and his dead brother to the ground, and he said, ‘Thank you, Tommy,' and died too.

I can't forget their eyes. It isn't like in a film where somebody runs a hand over a dead man's eyes and they close, because the eyes don't close. They stay open, and the memory of those men's eyes haunts me.

After Germany surrendered, David Niven found himself driving along a road near Brunswick in a jeep. Welded to the jeep's radiator were sharpened iron stanchions to break through piano wire that had been stretched across many of the roads by a band of young Nazi zealots known as ‘Werewolves'. David told me,

Too many of our men had been decapitated by piano wire laid by the Werewolves, and so you took what precautions you could. The war was over, but your life was still at risk.

On the road to Brunswick I saw two men in typical farm clothes on a one-horse wagon. But the man at the reins was wearing field boots. I got out of the jeep, drew my revolver and told the corporal with me to cover me. I walked over to the wagon and motioned for the men to put their hands on their heads and in rather bad German told them to produce their papers.

The one who was wearing the field boots said, ‘I speak English. This man has papers, I do not.' I asked him who he was and he told me his
name and that he was a general. He said they were not armed. I saluted him and told them to lower their hands and said, ‘Where are you coming from, sir?'

He said, ‘Berlin.' He looked entirely dejected, totally despairing. I asked him where he was going, and he said, ‘Home.' He said he was almost there. He looked to the village I had just come through. We just stared at each other for what seemed a long time.

Then I said, ‘Go home,' and then I added, rather ridiculously I suppose, ‘but cover your bloody boots.' He just closed his eyes, breathed a huge sigh that was almost a sob, covered his face with both hands, and then they drove on.