Philidor started in Finn’s room, from where I conducted him to a general of highish status — to be regarded, for example, as distinctly pre-eminent to the one in charge of our own Directorate — who was to act as it were as mediator between Philidor and the all but supreme figure. This mediating general was a brusque officer, quickly mounting the rungs of a successful military career and rather given to snapping at his subordinates. After he and Philidor had exchanged conventional army courtesies, all three of us set off down the passage to the great man’s room. In the antechamber, the Personal Assistant indicated that his master was momentarily engaged. The British general, lacking small talk, drummed his heels awaiting the summons. I myself should remain in the ante-chamber during the interview. There was a few seconds delay. Then a most unfortunate thing happened. The general acting as midwife to the birth of the parley, misinterpreting a too welcoming gesture or change of facial expression on the part of the PA, guardian of the door, who had up to now been holding us in check, motioned General Philidor to follow him, and advanced boldly into the sanctuary. This reckless incursion produced a really alarming result. Somebody — if it were, indeed, a human being — let out a frightful roar. Whoever it was seemed to have lost all control of himself.
‘I thought I told you to wait outside — get out…’
From where our little group stood, it was not possible to peep within, but the volume of sound almost made one doubt human agency. Even the CIGS saying good-morning was nothing to it. This was the howl of an angry animal, consumed with rage or pain, probably a mixture of both. Considered merely as a rebuke, it would have struck an exceptionally peremptory note addressed to a lance-corporal.
‘Sorry, sir …’
Diminished greatness is always a painful spectacle. The humility expressed in those muttered words, uttered by so relatively exalted an officer, was disturbing to me. General Philidor, on the other hand, seemed to feel more detachment. Appreciative, like most Frenchmen, of situations to be associated with light comedy — not to say farce — he fixed me with his sharp little eyes, allowing them to glint slightly, though neither of us prejudiced the frontiers of discipline and rank by the smallest modification of expression. Nevertheless, entirely to avoid all danger of doing any such thing, I was forced to look away.
This incident provoked reflections later on the whole question of senior officers, their relations with each other and with those of subordinate rank. There could be no doubt, so I was finally forced to decide, that the longer one dealt with them, the more one developed the habit of treating generals like members of the opposite sex; specifically, like ladies no longer young, who therefore deserve extra courtesy and attention; indeed, whose every whim must be given thought. This was particularly applicable if one were out in the open with a general.
‘Come on, sir, you have the last sandwich,’ one would say, or ‘Sit on my mackintosh, sir, the grass is quite wet.’
Perhaps the cumulative effect of such treatment helped to account for the highly strung temperament so many generals developed. They needed constant looking after. I remembered despising Cocksidge, a horrible little captain at the Division Headquarters on which I had served, for behaving so obsequiously to his superiors in rank. In the end, it had to be admitted one was almost equally deferential, though one hoped less slavish.
‘They’re like a lot of ballerinas,’ agreed Pennistone. ‘Ballerinas in Borneo, because their behaviour, even as ballerinas, is quite remote from everyday life.’
Meanwhile the V.1’s continued to arrive sporadically, their launchers making a habit of sending three of them across Chelsea between seven and eight in the morning, usually a few minutes before one had decided to get up. They would roar towards the flats — so it always sounded — then switch off a second or two before you expected them to pass the window. One would roll over in bed and face the wall, in case the window came in at the explosion. In point of fact it never did. This would happen perhaps two or three times a week. Kucherman described himself as taking cover in just the same way.
‘Nevertheless,’ he said, ‘I must insist that things are taking a very interesting turn from the news in this morning’s papers.’
‘Insist’ was a favourite word of Kucherman’s. He used it without the absolute imperative the verb usually implied in English. He was referring to what afterwards became known as the Officers’ Plot, the action of the group of German generals and others who had unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate Hitler. They had failed, but even the fact that they had tried was encouraging.
‘Colonel von Stauffenberg sounds a brave man.’
‘I have met him several times,’ said Kucherman.
‘The right ideas?’
‘I should insist, certainly. We last talked at a shooting party in the Pripet marshes. Prince Theodoric was also staying in the house, as it happened. Our Polish host is now buried in a communal grave not so many miles north of our sport. The Prince is an exile whose chance of getting back to his own country looks very remote. I sit in Eaton Square wondering what is happening to my business affairs.’
‘You think Prince Theodoric’s situation is hopeless?’
‘Your people will have to make a decision soon between his Resistance elements and the Partisans.’
‘And we’ll come down on the side of the Partisans?’
‘That’s what it looks increasingly like.’
‘Not too pleasant an affair.’
‘There’s going to be a lot of unpleasantness before we’ve finished,’ said Kucherman. ‘Perhaps in my own country too.’
When we had done our business Kucherman came to the top of the stairs. The news had made him restless. Although quiet in manner, he gave the impression at the same time of having bottled up inside him immense reserves of nervous energy. It was, in any case, impossible not to feel excitement about the way events were moving.
‘This caving in of the German military caste — that is the significant thing. An attempt to assassinate the Head of the State on the part of a military group is a serious matter in any country — but in Germany how unthinkable. After all, the German army, its officer corps, is almost a family affair.’
Kucherman listened to this conventional enough summary of the situation, then suddenly became very serious.
‘That’s something you always exaggerate over here,’ he said.
‘What, Germans and the army? Surely there must be four or five hundred families, the members of which, whatever their individual potentialities, can only adopt the army as a career? Anyway that was true before the Treaty of Versailles. Where they might be successful, say at the Law or in business, they became soldiers. There was no question of the German army not getting the pick. At least that is what one was always told.’
Kucherman remained grave.
‘I don’t mean what you say isn’t true of the Germans,’ he said. ‘Of course it is — anyway up to a point, even in the last twenty years. What you underestimate is the same element in your own country.’
‘Not to any comparable degree.’
Kucherman remained obdurate.
‘I speak of something I have thought about and noticed,’ he said. ‘Your fathers were in the War Office too.’
For the moment — such are the pitfalls of an alien language and alien typifications, however familiar, for Kucherman spoke English and knew England well — it seemed he could only be facetious. I laughed, assuming he was teasing. He had not done so before, but so much optimism in the air may have made him feel a joke was required. He could scarcely be ignorant that nowhere — least of all within the professional army — was the phrase ‘War Office’ one for anything but raillery. Perhaps he had indeed known that and disregarded the fact, because a joke was certainly not intended. Kucherman was a man to make up his own mind. He did not take his ideas second-hand. Possibly, thinking it over that night on Fire Duty, there was even something to be said for his theory; only our incurable national levity made the remark at that moment sound satirical. A grain of truth, not necessarily derogatory, was to be traced in the opinion.