Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘That’s my point, de Lancey. You haven’t been found guilty. In fact it has been decided to let you go. Provided you stay with your unit and don’t come back to London asking foolish questions.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Yes,’ said McCaigue. He turned to look at Conrad, his blue eyes steady. ‘That was the official bit. I trust you understood it?’
Conrad didn’t answer. Just stared across the river to the Houses of Parliament, that historic symbol of liberty, where politicians through the ages had conspired to bury awkward information.
‘Now the unofficial bit,’ McCaigue said. ‘Speaking personally, I’m not convinced that you are a Soviet spy.’
‘Well, that’s awfully big of you,’ said Conrad.
‘There is some debate within the service about the loyalties of the Duke of Windsor. We have uncovered evidence over the last few years that has brought those loyalties into question, and more has come to light since the outbreak of war. Actually “come to light” isn’t strictly accurate, since such evidence is kept firmly in the dark, but you know what I mean. Not enough to prove anything conclusively, and with the duke, we need conclusive proof before we can even begin asking him questions. So if you do happen to stumble across something, let me know, won’t you?’
‘On the off chance I’m not a Russian spy?’
McCaigue’s small eyes twinkled. ‘On the off chance.’
‘You did tell the British general staff that the Germans know about the weaknesses in the French line at Sedan?’ Conrad said.
‘I did,’ said McCaigue.
‘That’s good.’ That seemed to be what most concerned Theo, and if the Allies plugged that gap, then Conrad’s efforts would have been worthwhile.
‘Keep in touch,’ said McCaigue, handing Conrad a card.
Conrad snorted and turned on his heel back to the station. He had missed his train and couldn’t catch another until six o’clock. He didn’t get to barracks until eleven.
It was tempting just to forget all that had happened over the previous fortnight and concentrate on practising how to kill Germans.
But his sister had died and he didn’t know why. And his former sovereign was telling the enemy how to defeat the country they both shared.
Those two facts he could not forget.
May 1940
Extracts from Lieutenant Dieter von Hertenberg’s Diary
2 May 1940
I nearly died this afternoon.
We have spent a week planning the exercise, and by and large it went very well. We used a stretch of the Moselle which is supposed to look a lot like the Meuse near Sedan, our objective in the first week of the offensive. It’s a fast-flowing river, especially now with the snow melting so late this year, and there are steep banks on the western side. The exercise started at 1000 with artillery bombardment, air assaults from Stukas, and infantry crossing the river in dinghies. They established a bridgehead and then the engineers set up a pontoon bridge. It was quite a sight to see them constructing it in such difficult circumstances. Of course it will be infinitely worse under enemy fire, but our engineers are brave men who know what they are doing.
Once the bridge was constructed the first of our Panzers rolled across.
Just as the exercise was coming to the end, I drove out on to the middle of the bridge with General Guderian. I was having a cigarette and watching the infantry’s dinghies make their way back to the eastern shore, when I heard a shout, and a splash. A man had fallen in. The current was swift and he was quickly swept down towards the bridge. He clearly couldn’t swim.
I can swim. Without thinking very hard I dropped my belt, kicked off my boots and jumped off the bridge to intercept him.
The cold was extraordinary. I’ve swum in what I thought were cold lakes before, but nothing like this. The breath seemed to leave my body instantly, and I was numb. I forced myself to focus on the soldier, who was only metres away. His arms were flailing and he was going under.
I just managed to reach him, and tried to get him to keep still while I kept his head above water. I was already thirty metres downstream from the pontoon, but his colleagues were paddling furiously with the current after us.
The man wouldn’t stop struggling. I don’t think he knew what he was doing, but he pushed me underwater so that he could try to keep his own head high. I went down, and fought for air. The bastard was going to drown me!
I took in one gulp of freezing water, forced my head up for air, and then he pushed me down again. I tried to keep my mouth shut, but there was water in my lungs and I knew I couldn’t hold out any longer. Then arms grabbed my shoulders and dragged me upwards. A moment later I was in the dinghy, choking.
Afterwards, the infantryman thanked me. But he was embarrassed. We both knew he had nearly killed me.
The exercise was a success according to the general, and I think he is right. We are ready now. After the exercises in the Eifel Mountains, we know we can organize ourselves to cross the Ardennes forests and hills, and we can bridge the Meuse at Sedan when we get there. Morale is high; we have faith in Guderian’s leadership, and in our own tactics. Keep moving. Keep the enemy off balance. Concentrate our armour. Those are his mottos and I think they will work.
The trouble is, we will be sitting ducks. Both when we are in long columns of vehicles on mountain roads, and when we try to cross the rivers. Will speed and boldness really protect us? I think they will. I have to trust they will.
It all depends on whether the French army we will be facing really will be as weak as the High Command seems to think it will be. I know Theo is behind our intelligence on that, and if there is one person I trust on that kind of thing, it is Theo. Now we are at war, politics are behind us. I am willing to fight for the Fatherland and die for it if necessary, just like my ancestors before me. It’s good Theo finally seems to feel the same way, and is doing his bit to help us. It’s just a shame he can’t be out here at the front fighting with us.
3 May
Got in big trouble this morning. A group of us decided to take a couple of dinghies out on the river and paddle about. We hadn’t had the chance yesterday. After my ducking I thought it was important to overcome any fear and get back on the water, a bit like falling off a bicycle.
It was a peaceful, misty morning, and everything was quiet compared to the din of the exercise yesterday. The Moselle really is a beautiful river, at least on this stretch. But when we returned to shore, the chief was waiting for us. He was furious, and went into one of his highest gears of temper tantrums, which is pretty high. ‘Joyriding on the river is strictly forbidden!’ I think he overreacted, especially with me.
That bothered me afterwards, but Gustav said the chief was only angry with me because he had been so shaken by nearly losing me yesterday.
I wonder if that is true. I hope it is.
There is nothing I wouldn’t do for General Guderian.
Liverpool Street Station, London, 4 May 1940
Conrad lit yet another cigarette and watched the steam-smeared iron, steel and blackened brick jolt and judder past the train window. The train was just outside Liverpool Street Station and had been for a quarter of an hour. The journey from Ipswich had taken two hours longer than it should, with an hour spent stationary in Chelmsford, and Conrad had stood all the way.
If the soldiers of the British Army had been trained in one skill during the long phoney war, it was patience. But even with so much practice, Conrad found it hard to maintain his. He couldn’t wait to get to London. He hadn’t been to the capital since November – indeed he had scarcely been away on leave. A couple of days down to Somerset for Millie’s funeral in December, another three days at Christmas. Then nothing.
Part of the reason was that the battalion had been despatched to Galloway in January, shivering on a frozen hillside in one of the coldest winters on record.
The other reason was that Conrad’s CO, Colonel Rydal, had been told by ‘the powers that be’ not to let his lieutenant take leave in London. The colonel never spoke to Conrad about this directly, and Conrad didn’t ask him. Until, one afternoon at the beginning of April, when the colonel summoned Conrad to join him on a recce to plan an exercise for the following week.
They drove up into the hills and then Colonel Rydal consulted his map and set off at a rapid pace up a slope beside a burn, swollen with spring meltwater. There was sunshine, and the snow had almost disappeared from the hills. After half an hour’s strenuous climb, they reached the top of a crag, with a dramatic view to the north of moors and lochs and to the south of a patchwork of fields glistening in the spring sunlight, dotted with barrel-shaped sheep on the brink of giving birth, and the white-belted local cows.
The colonel sat down and pulled out his pipe. Conrad lit a cigarette, and began to examine his map for likely rallying points for the exercise.
‘Sod the exercise, Conrad. I already know what we are going to do.’
Conrad smiled. ‘Very good, sir.’
‘You are a damned good officer, Conrad.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘If I ask you something will you give me an honest answer?’
Conrad mulled over the colonel’s question before replying. One of the things he liked about his unit was the trust between the officers. And the men, for that matter. They were all very different – some of them didn’t even like each other – but they trusted one another. And they all trusted Colonel Rydal. He led by example.
‘I won’t give you a dishonest answer,’ said Conrad. ‘I might say I can’t answer the question. Depends what it is, obviously.’
Rydal frowned. ‘I suppose that will have to do.’ He puffed at his pipe. ‘Conrad, are you a Soviet spy?’
‘No, sir,’ said Conrad firmly. But he appreciated the directness of the question.
‘Thought not,’ said Rydal. ‘But there are some people who think you are. You clearly got yourself into some hot water when you were away on Sir Robert Vansittart’s business last autumn.’
‘I did. I discovered some things that some people with power would rather I hadn’t.’
‘I gathered something like that might be going on. Look here, it’s not right you’ve been stuck up here without any leave for so many months. If you give me your word not to cause trouble and ask difficult questions, I’ll grant you some leave. Will you give me your word?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.’
‘Why the devil not?’
Conrad explained. If Rydal trusted him, then he should trust Rydal. He told him about Millie’s murder and about Theo’s allegations that the Duke of Windsor had been indirectly providing information about the French deployment to the Germans.
Colonel Rydal listened, his frown deepening as Conrad’s story progressed. ‘Is this true, de Lancey?’
‘Absolutely true, sir.’
Rydal examined his lieutenant closely. ‘Well, I can see why they want to keep you stuck up here.’
‘So can I, sir.’
‘Leave it with me, de Lancey.’
Two days later Rydal told Conrad he could have seven days’ leave the following week, during which time he could ask all the questions he damn well wanted, but he should ask them as unobtrusively as possible.
But then Germany invaded Norway. All leave was cancelled, and the battalion loaded up on to their lorries and spent several days driving erratically around the north-east of England and Scotland. The general staff couldn’t seem to decide whether a motorized battalion was an asset or a liability in the Norwegian mountains. In the end half the battalion embarked on a ship at Newcastle without their vehicles, and steamed out into the North Sea. They were given maps of the countryside around the small town of Namsos. But they never made it. Within sight of the coast of Norway, the ship was given orders to turn around and steam back to England.
After a further week loitering in the Northumberland countryside, they were sent down to Suffolk to protect East Anglia from a German invasion, and Conrad was finally granted a weekend’s leave.
During his time in Scotland Anneliese had sent him perhaps half a dozen letters. They spoke obliquely about ‘their friends in Kensington’; although Anneliese didn’t mention the Russian Tea Rooms by name, she did mention Constance. It was clear that she was becoming friendly with the woman, but it didn’t sound as if she had learned much of interest. Conrad was very pleased to see her trying so hard to help him, especially dealing with such hateful people, although reading between the lines it was clear that Anneliese enjoyed the cloak-and-dagger aspect of her endeavour. He replied with carefully constructed letters, encouraging her, telling her he was thinking about her but not scaring her off with too much sentiment.
The truth was he
was
thinking about her. It would be odd if stuck in a frozen hut in Scotland with a group of fellow soldiers he hadn’t thought about the woman he had fallen in love with in Berlin: so spirited, so sensual, so enchanting. He wondered whether the month or so they had spent entwined with each other back then was all that there ever would be. In his more disheartened moments, when it was particularly dark and cold, and the boredom was reaching extremes, he feared that might be the case.
Was it just the old Anneliese he had been in love with? Had the Nazis changed her permanently with their callous brutality, their concentration camps, their murders? They had trampled on her soul, injured it perhaps beyond repair. He knew he could still love her. But could she love him? And if she couldn’t, shouldn’t he just let her go?
Then, just a few days after the invasion of Norway, he had received an excited letter from her saying she had learned some gossip from their Kensington friends that she simply must tell him in person. That was three weeks ago, and it was only now that he had managed to arrange to see her: she had promised to meet him at Liverpool Street Station that afternoon. Conrad hoped she would still be there, despite the lateness of his train. Knowing Anneliese, she wouldn’t give up unless she had to, but then a shift at the hospital might force her.