These are the first few chapters of an unpublished novel I have written based on a true story. It describes the adventures of a 26 year old conscientious objector who has a change of heart and becomes one of the most successful spies of World War II. Joey Quantock, whose nom de guerre is 'Luc', is dropped behind enemy lines north east of Paris in March 1943. Almost immediately he is pursued by the Nazis, and by one Sergeant Karl Metzger in particular....I would be very grateful for any constructive comments you may have whether it be on style, content or any other aspect of the book....Many thanks! The Secret War of Joseph Quantock © Bing Taylor
(Based on an extraordinary true story)
Somewhere over France, March 1943
Guided by the March moon a lone Lysander makes its way across the English Channel and heads for the gap in flak defences near Quend-Plage. Once through the gap the pilot turns the aircraft swiftly to avoid attracting the attention of the fighter base at Abbeville. The night skies are unusually busy with Nazi Junkers flying between Paris and points east. The Luftwaffe pilots don’t seem to notice the distinctive carrot shape of the unlit Lysander a thousand feet below.
On board the tiny plane are two secret agents on their way to be dropped inside Occupied France. The older man is Charles Decosse, head of the Lyon circuit of the French Resistance. The younger man is Joseph Quantock, a twenty-six year old American.
This is his first mission as an agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the ungentlemanly warfare department set up in great secrecy by Winston Churchill in July 1940. Its mission is sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines.
Within three days Decosse will be dead and Quantock will be a hunted man.
1
Groombridge, Kent. Nine months earlier.
I stretch, throw back the sheet, grab my cigarettes and jump out of bed to open the shutters. The Kent countryside looks idyllic in the early morning sun. Hard to believe there’s a war on. I take a satisfying drag of my post-coital cigarette. Nothing stirs on the ploughed fields. Only silence on the track that passes by the cottage on its way to the big house. A bit different from Africa...dead bodies; panic; screams; poison – Fuck Mussolini.
I catch sight of my naked body in the mirror. Fit, no sign of fat - three years of physical labour have seen to that. A scar runs from my right hip and disappears into my pubic hair. Not a botched appendectomy but the wound from a knife stab intended to emasculate me. It was a close call. Desperate for a job, I fell in with the wrong crowd in Marrakesh and almost paid for it with my life.
It’s seven a.m. The lads will be at the barn soon, awaiting their orders. I mustn’t be late.
On my bed, half covered by the sheet, Lucy Price, the red haired upstairs maid at the big house, is silently watching me.
“Come back to bed Joey. I haven’t finished with you yet.”
She pulls down the sheet and S-shapes her body seductively to show the small of her back. She knows it drives me crazy. I stub out the cigarette, walk over and gently spank her bum.
“You know we’ve got to get to work Lucy Price. It’s already late. Aren’t you ever satisfied?”
“Nope”
I lean over, pull back a wisp of hair that is sticking to her lips and give her a kiss.
“Time isn’t running out” I say, pulling on some clothes for the walk to the outdoor privy.
But I’m sure Lucy thinks it is. And she’s probably right. When I first came to work on the estate eighteen months ago they tell me she bet the other girls that she’d be the first to get me into bed – and she was. The only one in fact. She says she likes me because I’m different from the others - born in America, speaks French, has travelled a lot. “You’re not exactly good looking” she says “but not bad looking either”. We have fun, in bed and out, but she wants more. And I’m not ready for that.
I walk back into the house and put the pot on the stove for coffee. Lucy is already dressed and downstairs putting on her shoes.
“Do you want some toast Luce?”
“Not this morning Joey. I’ll get some at the big house”
She puts on her coat, gives me a quick kiss and a “see you later” and leaves.
The coffee tastes bitter but it’s good and strong. I sit down at the kitchen table to lace up my boots for the walk across the fields to the barn. Too young to serve in the army, the guys who work on the farm are a good bunch. They respect me. I respect them. We make a good team.
The people in the village are a different matter. They don’t trust me. I know that. Why am I not fighting in the war given that I’m young and fit? Especially now that the Yanks have joined in! They think I must be on the run or something. At any rate that’s the gossip. I try to ignore it. Let them avert their eyes and purse their mean little mouths all they want. I just get on with my job.
I get to the barn at 7:30. The other lads are all there. We have a quick chat while I give them their jobs for the day. One of the younger ones, fifteen year old Billy Knox, comes to work with me on the front drive where we’ve got to chop down some chestnut trees.
Billy and I chat together as we walk the mile or so up the drive. The postman rides past on his bicycle; twenty or more allotment workers follow; we take a short-cut through the woods and surprise a couple of stags who scamper off. It’s a bracing morning and I love the everydayness of things.
Billy reminds me of myself ten years ago – he’s a bit of a loner; often gets into trouble, through boredom more than anything else. He seems to have a bit of a grudge against the world. But I can see that he’s intelligent and underneath all the aggression he’s got s good heart. We set to work, separately but within shouting distance of one another.
Precisely at 7:30, Bosworth, the butler, a retired army batman, brings the morning coffee into the drawing room at the big house.
Lord Horley, government minister and local landowner, is seated at his writing table, gazing out through the ageing sash windows. He quietly surveys the view, an Arcadian vision of lawn, lake and temple, arranged, over the past fifty years, to his own design but lately transformed into something resembling an allotment owners’ convention. Such are the demands of wartime Britain. At least, he consoles himself, his position in the government has prevented the house from being requisitioned.
His regimented household - butler, estate manager, gardeners, cook, scullery maid, upstairs and downstairs maids, chauffeur, groom and stable boys plus three foresters and the inevitable lads from the village - has been severely depleted.
Fortunately for the Minister he still has Bosworth, the butler, Mrs Reed the cook of course (most of the female staff have remained in place) and Sutton, the Head Gardener. All the others have joined the military in one form or another, replaced by a motley array of those who couldn’t qualify for medical reasons, those too young to fight, a German POW and that American forester, Joseph Quantock, who, they say, refuses to serve in any army.
A colleague of Horley’s in the War Office brought Quantock to his attention. The young American had been working in Suffolk for some acquaintance of his, but really wanted a forester’s job. Especially one that came with a house. And now he is here.
“’Scuse me milord!” says the immaculately groomed Bosworth, putting down the coffee tray.
“Sorry Bosworth, I was lost in thought”
“Colonel Buckmaster has called, milord. He says he’ll be happy to stop by on his way to London this morning as you requested. He’ll be here by 10:30.”
Horley sips his coffee very slowly, satisfied that at last he is going to get to the bottom of this secret army business.
Thinking about Billy Knox gets me thinking back to my own early life and how it has ended up with Billy and me, stripped to the waist, working for some English nobleman. The same old questions keep popping up – why am I here? why am I not fighting in the war? (maybe the villagers are right after all?) am I afraid? am I just a ne’er do well loner? I’ll never be sure unless I’m put to the test.
We lived in Wilton, Connecticut just north of New York City. My Dad was a musician, a saxophonist, and a ladies’ man. He stayed somewhere in New York during the week and often didn’t come home for weeks on end. My Mom taught blind kids but more and more she turned to the gin bottle for comfort. Bertha, our black maid, was always more of a real mom to me even though she had eight children of her own.
When I was 10 years old, my parents were killed in a car crash. Bertha offered to take me in but the lawyers would have none of it. My Aunt Agatha, who lived in Philadelphia, said she couldn’t cope with me (I’d been in quite a few scrapes at school). My only other relation was an uncle I’d never met, named Sam. He was an artist and lived in France. So a week after the funerals the family lawyer and I sailed to France. I’d never been abroad and I found this new, unfamiliar country very exciting. Everywhere you looked there was something interesting and new to see. But it was frustrating not to be able to understand what the people were saying. We caught the train from Paris to the town of Paray-le-Monial. Then we got a taxi to a little hamlet about five miles away called Tollecy, near the village of Prizy in Burgundy.
Uncle Sam’s house was big with beautiful views over rolling green hills. It looked a bit like Vermont where my grandparents had lived, except here the cows were all pure white. The housekeeper’s name was Madame Joupin. She had a son about my age named François. François had a wooden leg. Uncle Sam was much older than my mother. He had a warm smile and was kind, and wise. He wore bright clothes and everyone seemed to like him.
I wanted François to be my friend so I studied hard in the French lessons which Uncle Sam arranged for me. Pretty soon my French was good enough for me to attend school. François and I walked across the fields to the school in Prizy every day. We became like brothers. The only brother each of us had ever had.
When we were old enough we went to secondary school in Paray-le-Monial. Life there was pretty good on the whole. I only really got into trouble once. The school bully, a boy called Philipe Morseau, was picking on a kid half his size. I lost my temper and punched him so hard I knocked him out. I was only suspended for a week.
When I was 18, Uncle Sam caught pneumonia and died and my world was turned upside down, again. Now seemed like a good time to move on. Uncle Sam bequeathed me the house and all its contents. As usual, I talked things through with François.
“You go Joey. See the world” said François “I’ll stay here and take care of things till you get back. I belong here. These are my people. I’ll be here when you return”
I let François live in the house rent free in return for looking after it. If he rented out rooms we agreed to share the income fifty-fifty. We opened a bank account for the purpose. Two days later I took off. My first destination was Ethiopia, which I had located on an Atlas the night before I left. It looked mysterious, different and far, far away.
I hitch hiked across Italy to the port of Brindisi. There I signed on to a fishing trawler that plied its way across the Mediterranean. I jumped ship in Alexandria and walked, rode and generally finagled my way down to Ethiopia where somehow I got myself a job teaching English and sports at a secondary school in Makelle, the main town of Tigre, Ethiopia’s northernmost province.
Having lost both of my parents and my Uncle Sam, I felt free and independent and my own man for the first time in my life. The country was beautiful, the people were beautiful. But I took nothing for granted. I never would again. Which was just as well because this was 1935, Benito Mussolini was on the warpath and Tigre was very vulnerable, because it bordered on the Italian colony of Eritrea.
Tuesdays were market days in Makelle. On one particular Tuesday, in late December, several hundred people, mainly women and children, were buying and bartering in the busy market. The air was dense with the smells of eucalyptus and berbere, the hot spice that Tigreans use in sauces, if they can afford it. Flies buzzed everywhere. When resting, they formed a circle around the eyes and mouths of the children. Glaucoma was everywhere.
I went to the market that day to buy bread, as usual. Little kids dressed in rags - if that -followed me. They thought I was exotic and even tried to rub away my white skin to see if I were black underneath! The air was heavy with the smell of spices. I watched the camel trains loaded with salt, mined in the Danakil desert, wending their way into the market place. Ordinary people averted their eyes as the fearsome Danakil warriors guided the camels through the maze. Women, wearing the shamas they had slept in, sold bread, bright red berbere, cloth, hand made baskets, charcoal, roots for cooking-fires carefully dug that morning from the soil. It was all laid out on small rugs or pieces of cloth that marked the extent of each seller’s patch.
It was the busiest time of the market, around noon, upwards of five hundred people were there. Many of them walked twenty or thirty miles or more to sell or trade their wares. I bought some bread and headed for the tej bet, or beer house, near to my own house. Tej bets could be found all over town but the honey wine they sold varied in quality. I reckoned that the young widow Woizero Taitu’s was the best. Many an evening I had sampled it (along with other more personal delights when she was in a giving mood) once the old men had gone back to eat supper with their wives. Besides I liked to talk philosophy with the men who gathered there to chat and drink - while their wives and children worked.
When I got to the tej bet that day I pulled back the curtain of the mud built room. Seven or eight men were sitting inside, wrapped in their cotton cloaks or gobbis. As always, they all stood up, bowed a welcome, shook my hand and made room on the bench. They do that for everybody not just for me! Woizero Taitu brought me a birle of the rich mead. She smelled of rancid butter.
No sooner had I brought the glass bottle to my lips than the ear-splitting noise of fighter planes, flying dangerously low, forced us all to cower. None of us moved. Once the planes had passed over we stared at each other, nonplussed, unmoving.
Then we gathered our wits about us, ran out of the tej bet and searched the skies for an explanation. We didn’t have to wait long. The three planes returned, flying even lower. Each plane dropped ten bombs.
“My God, they’re bombing the market place!” someone yelled. We ran to take shelter and stared in disbelief as the planes circled once more and disappeared.
With a mixture of relief and fury, the other men and I ran to the market. The sound of wailing could be heard all over the town. Everywhere people were running, some towards the market to find their wives and children. Others away from the market clutching their blood-stained shawls about their bodies
The sight that greeted us will remain etched in my mind forever. The deafening screams of women, children and animals; live people, their bodies ripped open and their bowels lying in the dust. Dismembered limbs, blood, dirt, vomit………a terrible stench and another, unfamiliar, smell. Garlic? Horseradish?
It took twelve hours for the first signs to appear. Gradually, those that had survived the bombing in the market noticed mustard coloured blisters on their skin which quickly grew in size. Then they started to bleed, internally and externally. The gas, dropped with the high explosive shells, attacked their bronchial tubes and stripped them of their mucous membranes. The pain was unbearable. People had to be strapped down. They spoke in gasps, choking gasps. Their eyes became sore, sticky and then stuck together – permanently.
Permanent wasn’t long for many of them, but long enough. It took four or five weeks for them to die.
I left Makelle two weeks after the massacre. Horrified by the barbarism of war, loathing the unquestioned obedience to authority which made decent people do such indecent things. I had frequent, terrible, nightmares always ending with Italian pilots laughing and joking on their way back to their sweethearts after bombing Makelle’s innocents with mustard gas.
I bummed around Africa for three and a half more years. I was interested to see that, despite my new found aversion to violence, I had no qualms in fighting off Nigerian bandits trying to get hold of the vaccine I was transporting so they could sell it on the black market. I was less successful in fighting the opium smugglers in Marrakesh, who may still be looking for me now for all I know. I washed dishes in Lagos; cut down trees in the Congo; worked as a Wildlife guide in South Africa and caught the clap in Kenya.
In January 1939 I ended up coming to England to start a new life – away from Moroccan drug dealers, away from Africa and from war, away from America and from France and their memories, both good and bad. I wanted to wipe the slate clean.
I got a job working on a farm near the Suffolk town of Dunwich, on the North Sea coast. I made friends with the daughter of the publican of ‘The Ship Inn’. At night she and I would wander down to the beach and make love and listen out for the bells that the locals swore they could hear tolling from the sixty or so churches buried beneath the sea. On wet afternoons the fellows who cut the hay would gather in the barn and talk about old times and impart advice on the intricacies of farming, and the rights and wrongs of war. As with the Ethiopian peasants in the beer house in Makelle, I found myself drawn to the unschooled, natural wisdom of these so-called ‘simple’ people. Ours was an egalitarian community.
We talked long and hard about communism, which I argued made a lot of sense. If workers all belonged to Trades Unions and accepted fraternal discipline then wars could not take place. Every ill could be sorted by thought, care and love. If man can produce the beauties of this world – Dante, Cervantes, Bach, Mozart – then how can he destroy himself. At least that is what I believed then. Now I’m not so sure. I spent a lot of time with one fellow in particular, a young teacher, a Quaker named Eric Evans.
When war finally broke out that September, Eric went before a tribunal and explained his pacifist beliefs. He argued, successfully, for his right to be given the status of conscientious objector and was directed into agricultural work, which is how he ended up working alongside me on the farm.
Over the next year or so we became good friends. Eric was bright and always won arguments. We spent many long evenings together at ‘The Ship’ putting the world to rights. He was five years older than me and well read. He introduced me to the writings of Thoreau and Jefferson, Machiavelli and Spinoza all of which I read by the light of the gas lamp in my blackened out rented room on the Suffolk coast. Our conversations and those books were my substitute for a university education.
During the day, and many nights, I had duties as a shepherd. I sometimes had to help out at the birth of lambs in the morning and maybe butcher their mother in the evening. It had a big impact on me. Castrating lambs (with knife and teeth) toughened my nature.
The only people I kept in contact with were big black Bertha who sent me Christmas and Birthday cards, religiously – of course! - and François Joupin.
Since the German invasion of France, I hadn’t heard from François. But in December 1940, a man called me up in Suffolk and said that he had a letter addressed to me from François. The man, a M. Dupré, arranged to meet me the following day at The French House Pub in London, a well known haunt of the Free French and a rendezvous for anyone recently arrived from Nazi-occupied France.
I took the train down to London.
I found the French House Pub and made for the bartender. We had a friendly chat and he gave me a beer. Despite the number of people in the smoke-filled room, there was hardly a soul whose name the bartender didn’t know – especially the newcomers. He made it his business to find out. When Dupré came in the bartender gave me the nod.
He was an unsavoury little man with a puffy face and deeply stained brown teeth. He handed me the letter and made a quick exit. I bought another beer and sat down in a corner to read.
Maison de Tollecy
Prizy
Bourgogne
26 decembre, 1940
Joey, mon frêre,
It is not easy for me to get letters to you these days. Even though we are in the Zone Unoccupee (only by a kilometre or two!) all our letters are read by the foul Petainists and if people say things against the “beloved Marechal” they are sent to Germany to work in the factories to make weapons to be used against their own families.
Already it is becoming difficult to find food even here. The butchers left town a long while ago. People fight like animals for a few litres of petrol. The peasants are barricading themselves against the refugees from the north who try to steal their food and are ready to kill for it.
In the letter you sent via Mme. Fournier last year you said you were working on the farm in England. I hope you are still there and healthy.
Do you recall that bully Philippe Morseau? The one you knocked unconscious? Well now he has found his natural metier. He is the local Police Chief in Paray. He and his friends are more German than the Germans. He is using his position to settle old scores. I am surprised he has not come for me yet!
A few of the lads and I are living in your house. We look after it as best we can. I am not charging them rent because they have no money and I knew you would not mind. It is for a good cause. We have formed a group – there are maybe twenty five of us in all – from Prizy and the surrounding villages. We are training each other how to live rough and to use weapons and organise bits of sabotage to disrupt the Germans. I have found a newspaper that is published in Lyon that tells us what is really happening in the war. It is called COMBAT. Do you see it over in England? It is very good.
We have plans to blow up the police station in Paray-Le-Monial one day, if Philippe doesn’t get to me first! We are all dedicated to getting rid of the Boche from our French soil.
I wish you were here with us my brother. We would make a good team like we always did, did we not? Are you well? What is it like working on the farm? I know you will not be able to answer me but I like to ask the questions anyway.
I hope it will not be very long before we see each other again – in a Free France! I will look after the house for you. We repaired the broken window in the attic last week. We listen to La Beeb when we can.
Take care
Your brother,
François
I folded up the letter and put it in my jacket pocket. It got me thinking. I knew it would.
The following week I got a call from some man in the Ministry saying there was a need for a forester in Kent. The job came with a house. I took the train down to Kent the next day.
And that’s how I’ve ended up here chopping wood with Billy Knox on Lord Horley’s front drive as a large, black, chauffeur driven car drives by on its way to the big house.
2
Bosworth, the butler, escorts Colonel Buckmaster to the drawing room.
“Good morning Lord Horley. All well I trust?”
“Fine Buck, thank you. Have a cup of coffee? I think it’s still warm.”
Horley walks over, closes and, slightly to Buckmaster’s surprise, locks the door.
The two men sit down. Both had attended Eton and Oxford. They’ve met before. The protocol comes naturally. They are immediately at ease with one another.
Buckmaster is tall with a military bearing, outsized ears, sharpened vowels and an overhanging lip.
Horley is short but every inch an aristocrat. He wears thick glasses and has a brain as sharp as his tongue when fully engaged.
Horley isn’t even certain what Buckmaster does. All he knows is that he was one of the last people to be shipped out of Dunkirk and that he now works for some secret department in the Ministry of Economic Warfare that the PM and Hugh Dalton cooked up together; that it is entirely independent; responsible to no one but Winston Churchill personally and that it eats up a lot of money which, in Horley’s view, would be better off going to the official, and therefore accountable, armed forces instead.
He is about to find out more.
“Now Buck, as Minister responsible for funding your organization, among others, the PM has, at my request, agreed that you should explain to me exactly what it is you chaps are up to. All totally confidential of course.”
Anticipating Buckmaster’s reluctance to break his word of absolute secrecy, Horley shows him a letter from the PM to Sir Charles Hambro, head of something calling itself the SOE, authorising Buckmaster to tell all.
Buckmaster shifts uncomfortably in his armchair. He has never uttered a word about his work before – not even to his wife. But there is no avoiding it now.
“Very well, sir. A little bit of history first. As I understand it, the PM was frustrated by his predecessor’s insistence on always playing by the Queensbury Rules which Churchill believed had resulted in ignominious acts of appeasement. He therefore ordered the creation of the SOE or Special Operations Executive. It was designed to be a clandestine department charged with the express objective of sabotaging the enemy’s efforts in every way conceivable and aiding, arming and training Resistance movements in enemy-occupied territories.”
Horley frowns. “What is Dalton’s involvement?”
Buckmaster, aware of professional jealousies among ministers, treads cautiously.
“I believe, sir, that Mr Dalton, as Minister of Economic Warfare, recommended to the PM that the organisation should be set up entirely independent of the War office machine. The PM was in agreement but the received wisdom is that he didn’t want Dalton to be the man to run it.”
“Very understandable” said Horley, as he pours himself another cup of coffee.
Buckmaster continues “However Clement Atlee is a great Dalton supporter and as he was Leader of the Labour Party and a member of the coalition government, the PM was forced to listen to him. As a result on July 16th, 1940 Hugh Dalton was charged by the PM to, in his words, ‘Set Europe Ablaze’.
Horley looks despairingly at the ceiling.
“What’s more the PM decreed that the activities of the SOE must never be mentioned in Parliament. Dalton was given absolute powers, subject only to the PM’s approval.”
“Dangerous stuff, Buck. It’s got to be wound up as soon as the war is over. I’ll see to that. Go on”
“Well, as you can imagine, Dalton had a real struggle to get support for his case. The Military were viscerally opposed to the idea of a ‘private army’, particularly when they would have to compete with it for funding, as you would know better than anyone”
“Quite so”
“But the fall of France concentrated everyone’s minds on matters at hand and diverted scrutiny from Dalton – thereby releasing him to set up the SOE relatively unencumbered”
“What about those other shadowy Whitehall organizations. Don’t the Foreign Office and the War Office have similar departments?”
“They did sir, yes. Section D and MI(R) were both folded under the SOE umbrella.”
“Well at least there’s a saving there presumably?”
“Originally SOE was divided into two sections” he continued “a cloak and dagger unit and a psychological warfare and propaganda unit, but eventually they were combined into a single body”
“And where are they headquartered? In some secret bunker somewhere I suppose”
“No sir. In Baker Street. Number 64, formerly the Marks and Spencer headquarters. But it is expanding quite rapidly”
“Inevitably. It all sounds very fishy and open to misuse to me, Buck. Still I suppose it’s all for a good cause. Thank you for explaining it to me. I’d like to come and pay a visit one day”
“That would be a pleasure, sir” said Buckmaster, determined that no such thing will happen. “I hope it helps to explain why we so desperately need funding”
“I’ll do my best, Buck, but I can’t promise anything. The armed forces will also fight tooth and nail for that money” He walks Buckmaster to the front door.
“Thank you, sir. I know I can count on you.” Buckmaster pauses. “By the way sir, if you don’t mind my asking, who is that young forester you’ve got working in the drive? Shouldn’t he be serving his country? Looks pretty fit to me.”
“Joey? Well he’s an American actually. Some sort of pacifist too. Surprising fellow. Speaks fluent French would you believe. Very popular here I’m told. Good worker”
Buckmaster gets into the passenger seat of his car and indicates to the driver that they should go.
“Thank you sir. Good luck with the PM”
Horley waves good bye.
But Buckmaster’s mind is already on young Joey, the forester. Bright, strong and speaks fluent French. Couldn’t be better.
He leans forward to speak to the chauffeur. “Perkins, if that young chap is still working on the trees in the drive I want you to let me out while I have a word. You can drive on and wait for me at the gate.”
Billy and I are still sawing when the military vehicle we noticed before draws up beside us and stops. I amble over to the vehicle, pulling on my shirt as I go.
“Need some help?”
A man in uniform gets out of the car. His car then drives off. Strange?
“Are you Joseph?” inquires the uniform.
“Yup. How can I help?”
“I’d like a word if I may – in private?”
“And who are you, sir?”
“My name is Buckmaster, Colonel Buckmaster”
“OK – we could walk up the drive a bit.”
“That will be fine. Excuse us young man” he says to Billy “we won’t be long”
“That’s OK” I say, as we start to walk “he needs a rest anyway. What’s this about then?”
“Well, I can’t say a lot I’m afraid. It’s all very secret – but I understand you are a French speaker?”
“Yes”
“How so?”
“My mother’s family were French originally, before the Revolution. My uncle lived there and I lived at his house for eight years when I was growing up”
“Excellent. You are obviously fit and Lord Horley tells me you are intelligent and well-liked – in short you’re just the sort of person we’re looking for?”
“And who are ‘we’ exactly?” I ask “the Army? If so you’re barking up the wrong tree. There’s no way I’m going to join the army – British or American - if that’s what you’re thinking. I had my fill of war in Ethiopia.”
“You’re jumping to conclusions very quickly young man”
“Sorry sir, just don’t want you wasting our time”
“I’ll try to answer your question as best I can. Who are ‘we’? – well, officially we don’t exist. Despite my uniform I am now only nominally part of the Army, although ultimately we get our funding from the same place – which is why I came to see Lord Horley today.”
“Does he know you’re talking to me?”
“No – not yet. But of course I will tell him if we can come to an agreement.”
I say nothing.
“My organization is composed of people such as yourself. Men and women who all want to contribute to the war effort but don’t want to join the Armed Forces. Individuals mainly – experts, ordinary citizens, school teachers, housewives, labourers – pretty much anyone as long as they are strong, both physically and mentally. And, in the case of my section, speak good French”
“What makes you think I want to contribute to the war effort sir?”
“You don’t?”
“I know what war does to people. I’ve seen it. It stinks. I want no part of it.”
“Well I’m prepared to offer you the chance to help prevent that sort of war ever happening again. No need to make a decision now. Think it through. When you’re ready to talk give me a call. Here’s my card”
He opens a silver case and extracts a small visiting card.
Colonel Maurice J. Buckmaster
Inter-Services Research Bureau
83 Baker Street
London
Telephone Welbeck 2929
I glance at the card and put it in my pocket. “OK, thanks. So long Colonel”
“Good bye Joseph” Buckmaster walks up the drive to his waiting car.
Colonel Buckmaster starts me thinking. It’s a mixture of frustration, maybe a little guilt but it has a strange effect on me. Over the next two days I become broody and sullen. The sex with Lucy is perfunctory – she tells me she feels as though she could be anyone. We sleep together but we might as well sleep apart for all the good I do her.
“You’re shutting me out Joey”
“I’m sorry” is all I can say.
Eventually she stops coming around. I can’t blame her
The war is killing tens of thousands and now, with Hitler’s invasion of Russia, that’s turning into millions. Starvation and disaster are everywhere. I still believe in my pacifist principles but I am finding it more and more uncomfortable living a quiet life while others are dying for the likes of me. The stories about Nazi atrocities make my blood boil.
For a while I stop reading the newspapers altogether. I don’t even turn on the radio. But that makes me feel even more of an outsider. I know it can’t go on. I need to find my way of taking part in this struggle that’s gripping the whole world. How can I face others, how can I face myself, if I don’t?
One afternoon after work I come home, take off my boots and put them onto an opened spread of The Times of the previous day’s date – September 21st, 1942, in order to clean them.
I make myself a cup of tea and put it down on the newspaper. As I pick up a boot to start polishing I uncover an article in the newspaper. The words ‘Paray-le-Monial’ catch my eye. I clear the newspaper of boots and tea and read the short piece:
Following the explosion that destroyed the Headquarters of the French Police in Paray-Le-Monial last week a house to house search was conducted to find the culprits. No one was found. As a result severe reprisals have been meted out by the local commander. Disregarding the ‘border’ Commander Philipe Morseau broadened his search to the unoccupied zone. Among those shot were five suspected terrorists, one of whom had a wooden leg, from the neighbouring village of Prizy. The house they shared was razed to the ground as an example to others.
I take the next day off, catch the Eridge train to Victoria and make my way to Soho and The French House pub where I greet the bartender, buy a beer and ask for the phone.
I pull the crumpled visiting card out of my pocket and dial the number.
“Inter-Services Research Bureau. How can I help?”
“I’d like to speak to Colonel Buckmaster please. Tell him Joey is calling.”
“Joey? Just Joey?”
“Yeah, or Joseph.. He’ll know”
“I see. Thank you, sir. I’ll come back to you shortly.”
A series of clicks and silences are followed a few minutes later by a man’s voice.
“Hello. Joey?”
“Yeah, is that Colonel Buckmaster?”
“It is. How are you Joey?”
“OK. You suggested we meet. I’d like to do that”
“Where are you Joey?”
“The French House Pub in Soho.”
“Good. I’ll meet you and we can walk over and talk at my club – it’s quieter there”
“OK – I’ll wait here for you”
“Won’t be long” and he rung off.
I go back into the bar to drink my beer.
Twenty minutes later a tall, beak-nosed man in a crumpled grey suit walks in. He looks out of place and yet quite a few people seem to know him. He speaks perfect French. It takes a few minutes for me to recognize Colonel Buckmaster.
Moving through the bodies crowded around the bar, I make my way over to him, but he ignores me. I wait, unsure of what’s going on. Then Buckmaster abruptly leaves the pub. I decide to follow him. He is waiting at the street corner.
“Colonel?”
“Hello Joey. Sorry not to speak to you in there. Too many people. Could be some who don’t need to know that we know each other. Let’s go to my club. It’s not far.”
Five minutes later we enter one of those ‘Gentlemen’s Clubs’. Buckmaster has a word with a man called Richard who guards the door. A tie materializes and I am asked, well told, to put it on – the first tie I’ve worn in years.
The place smells like rotting flesh. I follow Buckmaster up the creaky grand staircase. Hundreds of dull looking men stare self-importantly down at me from their picture frames. At the top of the stairs there is a writing room with heraldic shields on the wall. An overfed club member is asleep in an armchair, snoring. Who the hell are these people?
Buckmaster beckons me into a little ante-room, rings a bell by the fireplace and then we sit down on matching red leather chairs. It feels like a stage-set.
A bartender, named Harry, comes in to take our order.
“Joseph, what’ll it be?”
“Beer, please” I say. Why does Buckmaster keep calling me Joseph instead of Joey?
I decide it must be one of the House Rules.
“One G&T and one Beer, Harry, thank you. And Harry, please close the door.”
We talk about this and that until Harry comes back with the drinks.
Once Harry leaves, closing the door behind him just as he was told, Buckmaster asks me why I’ve contacted him.
“I’ve had a change of heart. I’ve made up my mind. I want to be involved. I need to be involved. But I don’t want anything to do with armies, or Authority.”
Buckmaster takes a sip of his G&T. I can see that he’s pleased he’s ‘won’.
“I can’t tell you exactly what it is that we do, Joseph” he says, with his practiced nonchalance, “at least not until we’re further down the line so to speak. But what I can tell you is that, if you pass muster, you will be in a responsible position, responsible for recruiting and training others. You will be independent, to all intents and purposes. And the pay isn’t bad, and it’s tax free.”
I am more interested now.
“Oh, and it’s dangerous, very. There will be no one to support you except whoever you organise by yourself. There are roughly four hundred of us. There used to be more. Chances of survival are under fifty percent. Even less for the women.”
I listen carefully as Buckmaster talks on. I’m trying to figure him out. Do I trust him? I’m not sure. He doesn’t give much away. He tells me I’d be helping to end the war early; save thousands of lives. But he has to say that doesn’t he?
We finish our drinks. I guess the interview is over.
“Let me know when you make your mind up, Joseph” says Buckmaster as he stands up to leave.
But he knows that I already have.
3
Three weeks later
Captain Selwyn Jepson, civilised, meticulous, diminutive, prods thoughtfully at his pipe as he contemplates the young man sitting opposite him.
Joseph Quantock, 6’4” tall, striking looking, and very fit following his period of involuntary labour, is on the face of it an unlikely candidate for the role of secret agent where an ability to melt into the background is a virtual pre-requisite.
Nevertheless Jepson, a popular novelist adept at understanding characters, senses something special about the young man. He decides to see how he fares at the SOE training school in Wanborough, near the Hog’s Back in Surrey, and approves his attendance at the three week course. From the moment he is accepted for training, Joey is given a codename. Henceforth he would be known only as Luke, or more accurately ‘Luc’. No one, except Buckmaster, Selwyn Jepson and a very few members of the top staff at SOE’s headquarters in London, knew his real identity.
I feel foolish walking down Notting Hill in a prickly battle dress with a red pip on the shoulder and an odd side cap on my head. A young soldier passes me on the street and salutes. I wonder what the hell he’s doing for a moment and then I awkwardly salute back. I am officially a Second Lieutenant on a salary of £500 per year, tax free, and on my way to a training camp at some remote manor house near Guildford in Surrey.
My pass says “First Class to Guildford”. Sitting in a first class train carriage for the first time in my life feels even more uncomfortable than this uniform. At Guildford station a group of us wait around to be met by someone form the camp. We stare at each other like dogs or cats sniffing tails with our eyes. A military vehicle draws up and we all hop in. No clicking of heels or overdone saluting.
For the next three weeks we are hived off into groups for physical fitness and runs on the hog’s back; we learn Morse Code which we tap out on a simulated radio transmitter; we play at unarmed combat and, more excitingly, learn about detonators, primers and various explosives. I almost end my military career, and everyone else’s, by placing my charge on a piece of angle iron with the iron lying on top of the charge. Everything explodes as it should but three or four pounds of angle iron shoots up 50 feet or more into the air and seems to hover there as if selecting whose flesh it wants to dive into. After what seems like an anxious three or four minutes it buries itself in the quarry where we are standing. The sergeant instructor balls me out, quite rightly. I am ashamed.
We still don’t know what’s in store for us but it’s clear that we are being sorted out and judged. Some visitors come down from London, two majors and a woman officer of some sort, and take a meal with us. We think that maybe one of them is a psychiatrist. Although officially none of us knows what we are being trained for it is pretty clear that it must be something to do with espionage and, as we are all French speakers, presumably in France. But no official is saying anything. At the end of the three weeks we are given leave and told to expect a summons from HQ.
In the sparsely furnished bedroom number 238 of the Hotel Victoria, an enormous building in Northumberland Avenue that serves as his temporary ‘office’, Selwyn Jepson fingers the dossier that lies on the green baize covered trestle table in front of him. Its contents are not encouraging.
The Wanborough reports state that Luc ‘is a loner’ ‘taciturn’ ‘likely to be disruptive’ ‘enigmatic’ ‘would not take kindly to authority, even at a distance’ and, albeit reluctantly, recommends failing him.
On the other hand the Wanborough staff also remark that Luc is a man of ‘considerable intelligence coupled with remarkable integrity’; ‘sensitive, with few illusions.’ ‘Very much his own man’ ends the report.
‘Quite so’ thinks Jepson, after all, being ‘very much his own man’ was not a bad quality for an agent who would have to rely entirely on himself in the field, with only a dangerous, secret, radio link with headquarters – if it worked.
“Cigarette?” Jepson opens a tin of Russian cigarettes and offers me one.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll keep it till later”
“Now I’ll be honest with you, Luc” says Jepson, standing up “The team at Wanborough has serious reservations about your ability to serve in the field.”
He pauses. I wait. I think I can hear a “But…” coming.
Jepson walks over to the window to see more clearly into the bowl of his pipe. Apparently satisfied with his tobacco packing he gazes down onto the street below.
Just like a bloody schoolteacher
“But” he continues “I am willing to have them proven wrong. I am relying on you to do that. What do you say?” He turns sharply and looks directly at me.
“I say that’s the right decision sir”.
He smiles and hands me a train pass. “Very well Luc. You’re booked on the night sleeper to Glasgow. The train stops at Fort William. From there you will take the local train to Arisaig. You will be met at the station. The course you will be taking is very vigorous, both physically and mentally demanding, and designed to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Students learn a number of useful skills ranging from elementary Morse code and sabotage techniques, to how to kill a man with their bare hands within a matter of seconds. It lasts three months.”
Jepson sits down and takes a deep drag on his pipe.
“From the local inhabitants’ point of view it is a military establishment and you will, I’m afraid, have to wear uniform at all times that you are in public view. If all goes well we will meet again briefly before you become operational. If it doesn’t, we won’t, and you will be detained at an isolated holding camp for an indefinite period before being released back into the outside world. Is that all clear?”
“Perfectly, sir”
“Well as you’ll see you have a return ticket so I’m taking a positive view. Off you go then Luc. You’ve a train to catch. Good luck”
I walk out of the front door and join the rush hour crowds on Northumberland Avenue. The dusk and fog cocoon the slow-moving cars. I take the Underground to my temporary digs in Notting Hill Gate. My heart is beating fast. Even if I may have doubts mentally, my body is telling me physically that I’ve made the right decision. The adrenalin is propelling me forward.
