The Light's on at Signpost (21 page)

I can’t say he was my favourite acquaintance in the film world—but then I’m dam’ sure I wasn’t his, for after talking the thing over with Kathy and Douglas Rae
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I simply found my decision was firmer than ever, and packed the project in; in spite of Harold Hecht’s kind words, it had been time and thought wasted all round, and the sequel to
The Crimson Pirate
was yet another of those countless movies that are planned, discussed, enthused over, magnificently cast, envisioned in splendour, and never get made. I can regret never seeing it on screen, but not my decision to walk away from it. I just have to think of those “kinetic values”.

W
HOEVER SAID THAT
Russia was an enigma inside a something-or-other inside something else, was dead right. I don’t understand the place yet. When my precious, battered copy of the works of Shakespeare (bought for eleven rupees in Bangalore in 1946) went missing in the Metropole Hotel, Moscow, I addressed the light fixture in scathing terms, on the assumption that that was where the bug would be planted, and the NKVD would know what I thought of them. I then complained to the manager, forcefully, and he was appalled.

“
William
Shakespeare?” he exclaimed, and I fought back the urge to cry: “No, Mad Jack Shakespeare, and it’s my belief that some light-fingered Commie has made off with him.” Which was as well, for Russians are a sensitive lot, and I have to admit they took my loss seriously, turning the hotel upside down before I remembered I’d left the book in the Intourist office.

You’d have thought they’d have taken a dim view of the Frasers after that, but when we returned to the hotel a fortnight later after a sweep through Leningrad, Kiev, Tashkent, and Samarkand, we were astonished to be accommodated not in the kind of modest room we’d had previously, but in a magnificent white and gold suite straight out of a Fred Astaire musical of the thirties. It was like a fly in amber: high ornate ceiling, magnificent double doors through which you expected to see Edward Everett Horton hurrying
in, a piano, splendid period furniture for Ginger to recline on in a feathery white dress, and bare electric wires sticking out of the skirting-board—but that was Russia, 1972 style.

What we had done to deserve such VIP treatment we never discovered. We were undistinguished travellers, quite apart from my Shakespeare explosion, and all I can think is that we asked so many journalistic questions that the authorities became wary of us, and it was either a suite at the Metropole or the Gulag. Yes, we were inquisitive, in areas where tourists are probably not supposed to tread.

We quite upset our fair young Intourist lady in Samarkand, for example, by quizzing her on race discrimination—indeed, it was apartheid, with the white Russians and the Asiatics as segregated as you could imagine, in districts, schools, and so forth—and I’ll never forget dinner in the hotel with oriental beggars staring through the plate glass wall at the Russian smart set in their just-out-of-date finery, the men with string ties and the women with the inevitable hennaed hair.

We may also have disturbed the orthodoxy of a clever, intense little Jewish official at Tashkent who took us aside for a conversation which turned into a mutual grilling; that he was intelligence I’ve no doubt, I’ve seen the type too often. We talked of Israel and Ireland and the state of the world, and the novels of John Updike, which he admired, and my desire to visit Kashgar at the back of beyond. Kathy said, why didn’t we just hop a plane there, and the little Jew looked thoughtfully into the distance and said: “You make it sound so easy.” I hope he’s in Israel now, where I’m sure he wanted to be.

Kathy and I were unusual, I suppose, in being among the few Britons to visit Russia at that time. We were on our own, with no accompaniment except the Intourist guides, smart, bright, educated and decorative young ladies who took their work seriously. I think we won the heart of the blonde ice-maiden in Moscow by intervening
to deflect the snideries aimed at her by a party of Americans, who evidently couldn’t forget the Cold War; at the other end of the scale was the imperious young lady in Kiev who informed us that she was an officer’s daughter and proved it by striding around like Catherine the Great, barking orders at the peasantry, treating them like dirt, and giving the impression that she would produce a knout at any moment. They cringed, too, and it occurred to us that Lenin had failed not only to eliminate nationalities, but to do away with class distinction.

Looking back, Russia is a series of snapshots:

The little old women sweeping the snowy streets of Leningrad; the grizzled doorman with his row of medals, swelling with pride when I noticed them; the female lift attendant in her worn shabby clothes and a beautiful Hermès scarf, the gift of some American matron; the black-clad
babushkas
trudging through the snow with their string bags of oranges…

The two little close-cropped Russian boys staring entranced at the two small American girls behaving disgracefully at the next table, one of them crying her depravity aloud: “I was so bad!”; the cold-eyed Russian officers viewing tourist hippies in the
chayanya
, and thinking (as I was) how they’d like to get them on the parade ground…

The Tsarskoye Selo palace, with its wonderful Cameron gallery, where craftsmen were meticulously restoring the beautiful building wrecked by Hitler’s invaders—whom our guide began by calling “Nazis” until she got carried away by her tale and they became most emphatically “Germans!”…

Our airport bus driving through a snowstorm at Kiev airport among the parked planes, with our driver shouting hopefully: “Tashkent?”; the flight itself with Genghis Khan in person sitting bald-headed and fearsome across the aisle restraining a hospitable Uzbek who was offering us a drink from his bottle, while in the seats behind us a trio of gleefully drunken Mongols, whom we
christened the Filthistan Trio, kept changing places, usually on take-off or landing…

The party of Soviet working men visiting the great cathedral at Leningrad, viewing the wonders of its splendid nave with atheistical indifference…and then gradually, one after another, the hats coming off in instinctive reverence; huge snow-covered Mongol boots tramping over priceless carpets in a Tashkent hotel; the Berlin businessman offering sweets to the Moscow Intourist girls, boasting “German chocolates!” and the pert little Georgian remarking: “That’s why they’re called After Eights”; the discovery that if you want to find someone in Russia who is sure to speak English, look for a black face; walking home from the circus through the darkened streets of Moscow, where in the days before
glasnost
and
perestroika
and (ha!) democracy, there were no gangsters or muggers, no one needed a bodyguard, and young girls could stroll in safety—and how ironic that the Russia for which we both feel such nostalgia should be the “Evil Empire” of communism…

Standing in Samarkand market, looking down the Golden Road to the distant snowy peaks of Afghanistan, seeing the hawk faces go by, and thinking “Oh, I know you from a long time ago on the other side of those mountains”; eating “white partridge and jam” in Moscow, and the wonderful bread of Central Asia in Tashkent (but avoiding at all costs Chicken Kiev in Kiev); drinking caravan tea, and wondering if there was ever such a cold, melancholy, magical land with such kindly people in it.

W
OMEN HAVE
no place in the Army, Navy, or RAF. They served magnificently in the old ATS, WRNS and WAAF, and the war effort would have been useless without them and the nursing services and those dauntless ladies who brought their tea and wads to the front line. Our armed forces are the poorer for the passing of the women’s auxiliaries, and they should be revived. But mixing men and women on the same footing is mad, bad, and damned dangerous.

I am not principally concerned with the obvious folly of putting the sexes together in ships or camps, with the inevitable consequences, or with those enterprising women who join up, get pregnant, and soak the taxpayer for compensation when they are properly dismissed the service; only an institution as traditionally brainless as the Ministry of Defence would permit this.
*
But I am positively alarmed at the folly of those who, without thinking the thing through, advocated the admission of women to those arms of the service where they may be involved in battle. Ignorant folk may suppose that they can be allowed into the sappers or the signals or the artillery in safety, but this is nonsense, as every old soldier knows.
†
All those branches of the service find themselves frequently in close combat, and that is where women simply do not belong.

Few, if any, of the advocates for women in the forces have any experience of war, but that never stopped a zealous, uninformed idiot from demanding female integration, blundering blindly along the politically correct path, no doubt delighting feminists and giving soldiers the horrors.

Admission of women to the corps was foolish enough, but the ultimate wicked and cowardly lunacy was the campaign for them as front-line infantry, now abandoned (for the moment, anyway) because tests have shown (
mirabile dictu
) that women aren’t as robust as men, and that using them in the front line would undermine Army efficiency. What kind of moron thought that tests were necessary to reach this staggering conclusion, we are not told, nor what kind of sick mind could even contemplate the employment of female infantry and tank troops in the first place.

In case anyone still thinks that women have a place in the front line (and because I’m sure the dingbats and feminists will resume their disgraceful campaign eventually), I shall restate the case, though God knows in a sane world it should not be necessary. I emphasise that I am talking not only about the infantry and tanks, but about the corps—indeed, about any military duty that may take a woman into contact with an armed enemy.

That women are physically weaker than men (as even a New Labour minister might have deduced from their absence from the England rugby team and their failure to win the Wimbledon men’s singles or the world heavyweight title) is only the first of their military handicaps. They cannot march as far or as fast as men, or
endure the front-line ordeal as well, or drive a bayonet into an enemy with the same force, or tackle bare-handed an opponent far more muscular and brutal than they are. Some may be trained to shoot as well, but whether they will do so in action with male callousness (and eagerness) is doubtful. Courage doesn’t come into it. Women are if anything braver than men, but the notion of a female teenager fighting hand-to-hand with a Panzer Grenadier or a Japanese White Tiger—or a Royal Marine—is ludicrous.
*

Soldiers have to do all these things, do them well, and keep on doing them. Modern enlightened opinion prefers not to dwell on the realities of war, but thinks of peace-keeping and policing and protecting helpless civilians, or at worst in terms of “smart bombs” and air strikes against some vague, distant enemy (preferably one of the Kosovan or Afghan variety, who can’t hit back), and of press conferences at which defence spokesmen point at maps and talk (and frequently lie) in official jargon.

War isn’t like that. War is men killing each other, often at close quarters, and doing their damnedest to stay alive. And until you have done that, against a capable enemy, you don’t have any idea of what it’s like, honestly. Mr Spielberg may splash the screen with gore, and publicists may declare: “You are there!”, but you’re not. You’re snug in a cinema watching a load of crap performed by actors. Hand-to-hand fighting is different, and it’s no place for a woman. (It’s no place for anyone, including me, but for a woman least of all.)

And not only for the obvious reason that she is more likely, by reason of physical weakness, to get killed. I say nothing of supposed feminine delicacy or squeamishness, which would handicap some, if not all; there are some tough, callous bitches around—but they are still not as tough or prone to slaughter as men. Their instinct is different, and anyone who doubts this might have learned something from the sight of two of my grandsons rushing about blasting imaginary targets with their space-guns, while my tiny granddaughter raced ahead of them scooping up her dolls and crying: “Save dee babees!”

Another excellent reason for not allowing women anywhere near the front line is that they will certainly get men killed; they will cause casualties by their very presence. This is the opinion of one who, from personal experience shared by millions of his generation, knows what he is talking about. The feminists don’t, the government don’t. Not all that many senior officers do, for that matter. I do, and concern for the lives of British soldiers who would undoubtedly die for the selfish vanity of feminists and the wilful folly of ignorant politicians, commands me to say so.

You see, it’s a question of male instinct. When you’re in there, with the shot flying and grenades exploding, and ruthless and valiant enemies trying to shoot, stab, disembowel, or blow you up, you have to concentrate something wonderful, with as few distractions as possible. Certainly you have a care for the safety and survival of your comrades, but you know they can look after themselves, and can devote yourself to your own immediate concerns. The point is that you don’t have to worry unduly about them. They are as capable as you are.

But if one of them is a woman, however well trained and fit and fierce and formidable, you are going to worry about her whether you like it or not, just because she’s female, and it’s ingrained in you since the Stone Age that it’s up to you to look out for her and protect her. And if you do—if you give that split second to her which you wouldn’t give to a man, it’s like taking your eye off the ball if only for an instant, and you’re liable to end up dead. “Is she okay?” is always going to be in your mind, and it’s a question you can’t afford when survival is on a knife edge. And it isn’t fair that
a soldier should have to carry that extra, unnecessary burden just because a pack of cranks got imbecile ideas about equality and “women’s rights”. The right to get killed? And to get their male comrades killed?

Feminist fools and their supporters will say that men must be “educated” out of their protective attitude,
*
and trained to regard a woman as one of the boys (who needs privacy, and has a monthly period, and is liable to cystitis in cold and wet). How childish can you get? Men are the way they are, and you can no more train them not to have a care of women (or train women not to
expect
masculine care, maybe?) than you can train the sun not to rise. You can’t change that, and anyone fool enough to try knows as little of human nature as Hoon and Robertson do of war.

But the whole business is too stupid for words. I think back to Burma, and the filth and the ghastly country, the leeches and malaria and dysentery and jungle sores, the ceaseless downpour of the monsoon, the permanent sodden state of clothing and gear and puckered skin, the blistered feet and the sheer pain of trying to stay awake, or keep going when every muscle seemed to be on fire—and I haven’t got to the bloody Japanese yet, with their poisoned stakes and booby traps and nasty habit of using prisoners for bayonet practice and no-surrender valour and fighting ability to match our own…almost.

Take that as an honest description of infantry campaigning, and ask yourself: do you really want women going through that? Or have you swallowed the tale told by the women-into-battle brigade (who know nothing of war, remember) that it can never happen again, that a soldier’s function is now limited to feeding hungry refugees and keeping a fatherly eye on piccaninnies, because the “smart bombs” and technical wizardry have changed the ultimate face of war, and the rifle and bayonet and grenade are things of the past?

That lie has been nailed in Afghanistan, where we see that when all the vaunted sophisticated weaponry has been hurled at the enemy, and his territory is a smoking ruin, he is still there, as he has been since Caesar’s day and will be in the future, in the cellar or the bunker or the cave, and has to be winkled out, which is a bloody horrible, dangerous, often fatal business. Do you want your daughter or sister or sweetheart doing it—or rather, trying to do it? She may look smashing on parade—but do you really want her coming home in a body bag? Can you live with the thought of her falling prisoner to some of the less civilised Balkan guerrillas, or to an African simba who may be HIV positive? That’s what putting women in the front line means, and I have to ask: have British men, at Westminster and elsewhere, so degenerated that they would be content to sit safe at home while their womenfolk did their fighting for them? Would Mr Blair really be prepared to do a Queen Victoria and wave our young women off to war?

I think, I hope, that British men would think twice. The feminists I’m not sure of, because they’re so bloody irrational in their crazed quest for what they think is equality (when the silly cows have got the upper hand to start with, as their non-feminist sisters know full well) that one cannot read their minds with confidence. I’m appealing to the sane, humane majority when I say: “Don’t send your daughter up the line, Mrs Worthington.” It’s no place for her.

Unfortunately some young women, deceived by propaganda, will think it is, and learn their dreadful error only when they find themselves in the thick of it, as I pray to God they never do. They
may believe the nonsense that exercises on Salisbury Plain and careful testing have indicated that women are fit to be, if not infantry, at least sappers and gunners and signallers. Well, I’ve been to battle school and done more assault courses than I can count, and I can assure them beyond peradventure that training exercises bear no meaningful relation to battle, and are absolutely no test of anyone’s fitness for combat, male or female. And that the young lady who blithely supposed that “anyone can learn to fire a rifle, can’t they?” as though that were all there is to it, has much to learn.

Nor should they be taken in by the argument that the Russians and Vietcong used fighting women. Of course women
can
fight, and do, magnificently, when their country’s back is to the wall; one of my earliest lessons in Border history told how the women of Carlisle had fought hand to hand with Bruce’s besiegers seven hundred years ago. But a fight for sheer survival is one thing; a politically correct policy inspired by the ignorant is quite another. Yes, women can fight; the point is, should they, and I think I have advanced unanswerable reasons why they should not. It is worth noting that Israel, whose history is one long struggle for existence, and which needs every fighter it can get, does not use its female soldiers in the front line.

There is a note of despair in the cry that women are needed because of a shortage of male recruits. When the real need arises men will join up, and if meanwhile the shortage becomes desperate, the old policy of offering convicted felons the choice between jail and the Army (which has been seriously suggested) can be revived. I speak once more from experience: criminals can make good soldiers.

But the most curious argument I have seen aired is that while opposition to female soldiers is common among us old sweats, young officers of today, who have served with women and, being mostly graduates, have been educated in an atmosphere of liberal, progressive tolerance, etc., are all for them. I’ll bet, but the point is that they haven’t served with them in battle, and the obvious
attractions of shepherding some pretty miss through a firing exercise or over an assault course will vanish altogether when she’s lying alongside, shot in the stomach or bleeding to death with a severed artery. Sorry to be brutal, but that is the end result of a policy which is just sheer cruel bloody madness.

How curious, that a liberal intelligentsia who are usually so critical of the military, should be perfectly prepared to do for Jane and Jill, as well as Harry and Jack, with their plan of attack.

If it were not so certain to lead to tragedy, there would be a richly comic side to female soldiering. Some of the changes recommended and already made as a result of turning the fair sex into brutal if not licentious soldiery are simply beyond sanity; they read like a send-up even as I write them, but I’m assured that they are true.

For example, no male soldier may touch a female soldier without first saying: “I am going to touch you.” One female soldier has been quoted as saying she fell about laughing, as well she might. “It’s more sexual than saying nothing,” was her comment—and indeed one can imagine what it would sound like when spoken in the smooth murmur of a Leslie Phillips or the lecherous chuckle of a Sid James. In the Army of fifty years ago, incidentally, touching a soldier, even tapping a finger on a dirty button, was forbidden, taboo, for the obvious reason that the difference between a casual touch and a stronger one which may be anything from a shove to an assaulting blow, is a matter of degree—and opinion. I shall not soon forget the outraged scream of RSM Bradley, Coldstream Guards, when a drill sergeant grasped a soldier’s arm to correct the slope of a rifle. The Army of the forties took no chances.