It is a happier form of warfare than any we have done before, but I find it exhibits the most unfortunate characteristics of one’s nature. I actually find this conquest and pursuit faintly enjoyable — and at last understand the fatal temptation of aggression. But nevertheless it is for the most part tedious, and I am irked by the feeling that the end ever remains the same distance from us even as we advance.
However, there came a day early in May when we were on the outskirts of Ferrara and the crowds coming out with flowers were even more ebullient than usual, and the bangs and whooshes that could be heard were of fireworks rather than grenades or Moaning Minnies; and the German trenches we were occupying were deserted except for a litter of old love letters and a smell of stale bread. And the German radio was playing Wagner — the ‘Entry of the Gods into Valhalla’, I think— and it dawned on us that our war was over. Some of those I was with said later that they almost immediately began to feel strangely at a loss: for so long the war had provided a structure for their lives; a means of getting on with things in spite of doubts and fears. This feeling seemed to persist. However, I took the opportunity to borrow a jeep and drive into Ferrara to have a look at its fourteenth-century castle — a massive turreted building with reddish walls and a moat with drawbridges. This was a monument to war now to be preserved for tourists. And as an adjunct to triumphalism, there was the promise of loot.
When the Germans began to surrender en masse on 2 May, and were rounded up and carted off to prison camps, they had to leave behind … everything. The sides of the roads were littered with both the large-scale and the personal detritus of war — tanks, trucks, heavy guns; but also, in piles, abandoned personal weapons and possessions. We searched through these for what trophies we might pick out — in particular the prized Luger pistol. I took my fill of pistols and even a shotgun or two; and then I came cross a small and pretty piano accordion — on which quite soon I learned to play the rousing and sentimental Neapolitan songs that had seemed so much part of our war. Also one’s platoon could now be fitted out with its own means of transport. I wrote to my sister –
Kennen Sie what victory means? It means I am at the moment the tempestuous possessor of three cars — a Mercedes which goes at such a horrific speed that I am terrified to take it beyond second gear; an Adler saloon which cruises at 60 without the slightest indication that it is moving; an Opel which streaks hither and thither to the desperate confusion of stray pedestrians. It means that we dine on champagne each night except when we feel leery enough to start on the brandy with the soup. It means — oh well, so much really beyond cars and wine that I suppose they are of infinitesimal significance.
The army was tolerant about such loot. Someone had to clear up the personal stuff by the road, and for a time we were allowed to keep the cars because transport was needed to get us to Austria — or to Yugoslavia, or wherever we were now heading. Rumours abounded; there were few official briefings. In Austria we might be needed to get to somewhere or other ahead of the Russians who were advancing apace from the east; for although the Russians had been our much-lauded Allies during the war, we didn’t actually trust them, did we? (What — they might carry on marching west with their vast armies till they reached the Channel ports?) About Yugoslavia the briefings were as confusing as the rumours. We had been backing Marshal Tito who had been fighting a guerrilla war for years against the occupying Germans; but Tito was a communist, and he would surely now be aligning himself with the Russians. Also he was a Serbian, and might well take the opportunity to annihilate his traditional enemies the Croatians, who had tended to side with the Germans. But the Croatians were trying to surrender to us, and so should we not prevent a massacre? But this might antagonise Tito and provoke Russia. And so on. One could begin to see how the simplicities of war might be easier to deal with than the complexities of peace.
We drove north in our motley convoy bypassing Venice and going through Udine into Austria at Villach. We hardly cared where we would end up; this was the sort of uncertainty to which we had become accustomed. The rumours gathered like dark clouds: Tito might be wanting to grab a chunk of Austria, but if we moved too many troops into Austria he might grab Trieste in Italy. There was a pro-German force somewhere in the hills which consisted of Russian anti-Bolshevik Cossacks who had been fighting for the Germans; they too said they would only surrender to the British because in the hands of anyone else they would be likely to be slaughtered. In the meantime the Irish Brigade had taken over a warehouse containing tens of thousands of bottles of the Austrian liqueur Schnapps; so that the political situation assumed an air of less importance. It was even said that someone somewhere had captured a Mint which was churning out a stream of paper money. Then a new and mythical-sounding threat was said to be on the horizon — the Bulgarians! But no one seemed quite to know on which side they had been or would be fighting.
The London Irish were sent off (though my memories of this are hazy) to make some sort of contact with the Russians. We made a dash to Wolfsberg in the eastern Austrian Alps; the Russians had got as far as Graz, some thirty miles further. We sent out scouting parties; what on earth were we supposed to do if we came across Russians? Offer them some Schnapps? I have a picture in my mind of myself and my platoon arriving in some small-town square and seeing across the road some men in strange uniforms whom we took to be Russians — unsmiling and bulging out of jackets that seemed too small for them. We eyed each other warily. Then, probably because none of us understood a word of each other’s language, we wandered into the middle of the square and nodded and made friends. In The History of the Irish Brigade it is recorded that there was a conference held at Wolfsberg in the Officers’ Mess of the London Irish Rifles, at which territorial boundaries were agreed between the British and Russian forces. This was facilitated, it is suggested, not so much by Schnapps, as by alarm about the intentions of the Bulgarians.
After a week in Wolfsberg during which some of all this must have been sorted out — or must have come to be considered not really necessary to be sorted out — we withdrew to Villach, and then to villages on the northern coast of the Ossiachersee, one of the most beautiful lakes in Carinthia, the Austrian province bordering on the frontier with Italy. And there the London Irish stayed for the rest of my time with them in Austria.
What had struck us all on our entry into Austria was not only the beauty of the place and people but the orderliness, peacefulness, the lack of signs of war. The people were neither overtly friendly nor hostile; they were dignified and courteous, and paid attention to what we required. This was especially striking to the communist Desmond Fay, who on entering a recently Nazi-dominated country had expected … what? A people arrogant and savagely embittered? Desmond could laugh and shake his head about what he in fact found; but it was something that made us all wonder, even if we could not work out exactly what. We were at first billeted in an orphanage for children whose parents had been killed in the war: there were Germans and Poles as well as Austrians. The children all seemed to have fair hair and the most beautiful manners as well as looks. The women in charge of them herded them into outlying buildings to make room for us; we found ourselves treating the women as if they were our hostesses and we were their guests. When we first arrived there was an army rule that there should be no fraternisation with local people; later this was relaxed because it was unworkable as well as senseless. There were few men except the old left in the villages; the girls and our young soldiers began to flirt not indecorously.