Having settled down with Maditta to coffee and weinbrand (German firewater replacing Cognac) we went about the difficult business of discovering a common denominator for our talk. We had spent a whole war on opposite sides and nine years had passed since we had parted, so hurriedly, when I was running for my life. Events, experiences, impressions and emotions of colossal dimensions had rolled over us. We certainly were two strangers that morning but, as we were groping for a breakthrough in that strange atmosphere, we knew we would find some common ground.
During the two hours we spent talking we could do no more than lay the groundwork for future meetings. We very wisely stayed clear of any suggestion that we pick up where we left off. We were going to see each other again. Years of mind-boggling events could not be catalogued in two hours.
Maditta came to Nuremberg several times thereafter and I saw her in Munich often. However too much had happened to us. No matter how clearly we understood that we had gone through it all on opposite sides of the lines without being opponents, our emotions and feelings for each other had been affected. We had both had many lovers during the intervening years. That didn’t come between us; not in the least. What did matter, though, were the new gestures, the new expressions, the new actions and new behaviour that stemmed from those affairs – in other words the new and strange way of making love. None of this might have mattered without the impact of the war, we might have overcome its memories had we been able to go back to our emotional beginning. But it was too much and we finally admitted to it and parted the best of friends. Soon afterwards Maditta married a pre-war Canadian boy-friend and having been told, by German doctors, that she could never have children she presented him with no less than five. And they lived happily ever after.
How emotionally charged those two days had been, I reflected, as finally and irrevocably my driver and I resumed our journey. What, I wondered, was in store for me regarding my outrageous breach of discipline in leaving my assigned path to Nuremberg?
There were approving and disapproving looks when I eventually reported to the courthouse – The Palace of Justice – that afternoon. The approving ones came from those who knew of the mission to which I had assigned myself. The punishing glares came from the new faces that had arrived in Nuremberg together with my new CO, Colonel Hugh Turrell.
Amongst this new lot I discovered one Captain Wormser, a fat slob and a servile character I had known in the Pioneer Corps. He had tail-wagged his way into a promotion to major, which was due any day, and he was clearly miffed by the fact that there I was, promoted to a staff captain and in a fine regiment. Wormser took great pleasure in informing me that Colonel Turrell, who had gone to London for a few days, was only waiting to hear my story before court-martialling me.
Immediate action was called for. I did some asking around and discovered that the highest-ranking member of the British contingent at Nuremberg was Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.[2] I made straight for his office. I had heard nothing but the highest praise for him whenever his name was mentioned. Formally, there was no excuse for what I had done, but perhaps Sir David would listen to the human aspect of my story. He did, and although he thought the matter was serious, he could see why I broke the rules to see my mother. He couldn’t and wouldn’t say what disciplinary action I would have to face, but he would have a word with the colonel when he returned to see if my obvious linguistic contribution to the task on hand could be maintained.
Predictably, he succeeded. I got a dressing-down when Turrell returned which included the moot question of what would happen if everybody were to act like me, there being a war on. My in-born tact prevented me from enlightening the colonel to the fact that there wasn’t a war, not anymore, except between him and me. Our mutual dislike for each other was blatant from the first moment we met and it survived until he went home to be de-mobbed. Hardly anybody liked Turrell. He was out of his depth among our lot. There were ex PoWs, including some real heroes, like Airey Neave,[3] intelligence agents, historians, language teachers and writers and we were all very much through with ‘soldiering’ as Hugh Turrell knew it. (The situation is best summed up by his departure. He had given a party and, sadly, only a few of us had been able to attend. He walked up to me and another officer to bid us farewell. ‘Goodbye, Sir,’ I forced myself to say, successfully supressing the ‘good luck’ part of it. ‘Goodbye, Sir,’ said my companion, Captain Peter Fraser, ‘it’s nice to see you go’).
I could see as I left Turrell’s office after having been castigated that barring a miracle, my staff captain’s rank was now safe forever – in other words, I didn’t need to worry about promotion. I didn’t try, and I didn’t get it.
Turrell had no say regarding our assignments, our offices or our duty hours. The military nonsense was being performed by non-specialists among the officers and men, and the few occasions when we acted like soldiers involved the running of our billets – villas in a suburb of Nuremberg – drawing rations, being carried in Army vehicles, applying for leave and picking up the paycheque. The latter item was somewhat undersized compared to what our American hosts were hauling down. I discovered, for instance, that my pay including extras was considerably less than that of an American sergeant!
27. THE NUREMBERG SCENE
ONCE AT NUREMBERG WE WERE HOUSED and fed by the US Army, on rations that made our British Army fare look like a starvation diet. We had our liquor allowance, which was substantial, we drank in the US officers’ clubs for very little money, and we could not, of course, spend money on the German economy – firstly because this was strictly ‘verboten’ and, secondly, because there was nothing to buy. There was however a lot to be traded and our American hosts, outside the trial staff, were deeply involved in these activities from the word go. Anyone involved in the trial was under such strict orders to keep away from the Germans that obedience was only one option, at least for a while.
The degree to which the rules were broken, as time went on, depended on the individual. As a rule of thumb, I would say that in the British contingent fat slob Wormser broke none and I broke the lot. We will come to that in due course.
I was assigned accommodation, a share in a batman and a desk in an office where Leslie Hill and I were to crank out translations. The Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) was buzzing with excitement, rumours and guesses as to when the trial would start. I obviously wanted to see the show. So did everybody else. Inevitably, it became apparent that only a miracle would get us into the courtroom that would have, we were told, only thirty to fifty seats for spectators. Clearly, we couldn’t expect to see the show unless we were doing a job involving our presence in court – and translators were not involved. But for me the miracle happened. I owed it to the same voluminous personal history form that had made me the most successful machine-gun instructor in French, of my regiment, the Northumberland Fusiliers. Here is what occurred.
2
Sir David Maxwell Fyfe (1900-1967) was a Member of Parliament, lawyer and judge who variously held the offices of Solicitor General, Attorney General, Home Secretary and Lord High Chancellor. He later became the Earl of Kilmuir. At Nuremberg he was Britain’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor and his cross-examination of Hermann Goering, which was translated by Wolfe Frank, is regarded as having been one of the most noted in history. At the time he was preparing to go underground in Soviet-occupied East Germany to write his ‘
3
Airey Middleton Neave (1916-1979) was the first British officer to successfully escape from the prisoner-of-war camp at Colditz Castle and later worked for MI9. A well-qualified lawyer, he spoke fluent German and at the IMT in Nuremberg he read the indictments to the Nazi war criminals on trial and was an investigator for the Krupp trial. He was elected MP for Abingdon in 1953 and was assassinated in March 1979 when an IRA bomb was exploded under his car as he drove out of the Palace of Westminster car park.