A Solitary War (37 page)
Authors: Henry Williamson
Was it always fatal for a man of genius to become a man of action? Should genius work only in words, colour, sound, stone: never directly upon the souls of men?
If, through that psyche-distributor, the radio, a prophet of clairvoyance and the gift of tongues spoke with the authentic hopes of his being, of those of his fellow beings, each one of the millions must follow, for each man would then be following the voice of his own soul. There was no strength like that of the soul’s compulsion. The soul knew neither ease, nor apathy, nor the life of the flesh. The flesh was afraid of the soul, which was a light that the flesh would hide under a bushel measure, and so stifle its flame. But self-will was not soul. Self-will of genius
self-frustrated
would blast first the bushel measure, then the hands and body that placed it over the light.
The hare was now coming towards him, lolloping up the slope of the Scalt. It ran with the south wind from the ridge drawing across its nostrils. It stopped. Phillip now sat in half shadow. The hare sat in sunlight. It would not see him unless he moved. Fifty yards away it stopped, and sat up again, ears erect, nose twitching. Hare listening, smelling. Then it squatted low, and began to nibble green shoots of barley. Phillip felt he ought to go quietly away, not to alarm it, and return later with his .22 Winchester and shoot it from the cover of the wood. If he did not, the hare and perhaps its leverets would destroy many of the plants of
sugar-beet
on the Bustard.
Yet watching the hare, he knew how it felt, how it was happy in that sunny, wind-stroked place, feeling the intense joy of living, saddened by no sense of continuity, without regrets, without memory.
There was no purpose in thinking further of the division in the mind of European man. Like a hunted hare his own mind ran round in circles, often ending where it began. He moved slowly backwards into the wood, and went away, leaving the hare to its peace.
Every night Phillip wrote in his diary,
Grave news. Holland appears to be scuppered. Making up the accounts, I find that, when all bills are paid, I shall owe the Bank
£
400.
May
12
Horatio Bugg went to Steve my young labourer today, seeking
information
of ‘evidence’ that I am a fifth-columnist. Stories about these probably mythical objects in Belgium and Holland fill the newspapers. Steve said he told Horatio to clear out. I wonder who put Horatio up to it? I heard that last winter patrols went out from the camp to detect possible signalling by myself across the marshes. The order actually came through to one of the Fusilier officers who were my guests at shooting (that very rainy day).
May
13
Liège fell yesterday. German wireless says with the loss of about a dozen men. ‘A new method of attack’. Parachute troops on the forts, dropping explosives down the ventilator shafts and gelignite necklaces around the guns? The German army is through the Albert Line.
Feeling
very unsettled: that England will be invaded and a battle fought in Surrey, with a result I dare not contemplate. Among my books is a copy of
Hindenburg’s
March
on
London,
translation of a German bestseller novel published here in England in 1916. It forecast the Russian collapse in 1917, the battle for the Channel Ports in 1918, the crossing, the
breakthrough
, and the final battle for London on the Hogsback near
Guildford
. All happened in 1918 as written, except the taking of the Channel Ports and invasion.
May
14
Billy and I sowed small seeds on the Hanger today. Owing to my error only 15 lb. per acre were sown instead of 21. Seed-bed dry but good. Barley looks well there, even and regular. The bare-fallow last year has benefited the soil. Barley on Steep bottom looks bad. Against
orders, Luke sowed it on the furrow. No seed-bed even. I was sick about it. A ferocious talk in English from Bremen. They are going to shatter us if they can. I have looked out my old uniform.
The Dutch commander-in-chief has capitulated.
May
1
5
I bought 20 lb. rape, 60 lb. mustard, to sow again on northern four acres of the Steep—the Cold Old Land. We sowed Juliana wheat there last November, after mustard fed to sheep. It is said locally that
nothing
will ever grow there. Certainly the wheat has failed.
I enrolled at night in Crabbe anti-parachute corps, mainly old 1914—18 soldiers from the British Legion.
May
16
Germans say they have broken the Maginot Line. Here at night armed troops are watching all flat fields. Some are in the Great Bustard Wood, I hear.
May
17
Billy and I sowed 20 lb. mixed mustard and rape on the Cold Old Land. I think it is too much. 10 lb. would be enough.
Grave news. Maginot Line
is
turned.
The French and B.E.F. have been lured into the Low Countries. German radio says four
panzer
divisionen
are through at Sedan. They came through the Ardennes! (Will Hitler use rockets based on the Channel coast?) Looks as though our army in France, and the French Army, will be surrounded
a
là
Poland. I feel numbed and heavy-hearted.
Two men are pulling weeds and mud from the dykes on Teal Meadow. The Govt. grant will pay half the approved cost.
Tonight it was still and warm. A full moon rose over the marshes upon a strangely silent village. Dark old pantiles of the cottage roofs glowed with a warm mysterious red. I have noticed this phenomenon once before. A nightingale sang by the well, in the lilac bushes, to the left of my lighthouse window. I remembered these birds on the Somme, and before the Hindenburg Line in 1917.
May
18
The mangolds on the north end of Pewitts, below the searchlight camp are in a very cobbly seed-bed. Luke neglects to carry out my instructions about making the seed-bed when the land is fit, and NOT leaving it cobbly, to dry out hard and sullen, and then hoping for ‘a little dag o’ rain’ to work it down. No rain came in time and the seed was sown in the poorest of seed-beds.
May
20
France is beaten. It is only a question of a few days now. Looks as though our Expeditionary Force will be decimated.
May
21
The rout continues. The French are finished before they started. Was ever a victory so swift and overwhelming?
May
22
Germans in Boulogne. Much stuff in papers about fifth column activities. Most of it the old Fleet Street-fake-merchant’s stuff: spies in priest’s clothes or parachuting in Dutch and Belgian uniforms; lights signalled from windows at night—all the old third-rate fiction
mentality
, with new props. Talk in papers of banning Birkin’s Imperial Socialist Party. I must do something: the war should be stopped. Hitler does not want to destroy Britain, only the international financial interests in Europe. Will Chettwood publish an article in the
Crusader?
24
Dear Chettwood,
I foresee the possibility of military defeat in France, and then an offer from Hitler to call off the war. Our people will be stunned and in that moment it may be possible to crystallise an idea which may reach them and so save both country and Empire for a future on entirely new lines.
Will you allow me to write an article and show it to Otterburn, who in the event of our military collapse in France may be able to show a flash of light or clarity to the public (which includes the Government), a way of salvation. If the defeat in France comes with a colossal Tannenberg (and only IF) we shall be leaderless, and only a dominant and clear call may hold the situation. If there is a Tannenburg, then I assume that to fight in England is only prolonging, momentarily, a few days or weeks maybe, our subjugation. If we fight on, it will mean terrible suffering and material destruction of the whole of Europe.
Lord Otterburn’s long appeal—Empire isolation—WAS the only way to peace. It is a war fundamentally of economic necessity for the Germans. If they invade and shatter this island, it will mean a Twenty Years’ war; but if we realise in time that the
haves
versus the
have-nots
war is over when the military situation in France is lost (if it be lost) then we shall have a chance of deciding, swiftly, if we shall survive economically on Otterburn’s vision of Empire isolation.
Please consider this; look ahead; anticipate its possibility. Do not think I am just a misguided crank; I beg you, if you have ever thought I had once any power to use the gifts in me truly, to trust to this feeling in me. I have never been pro-Hitler in the sense of being anti-British; nor was it mere sentimentalism or pacifism; it was a feeling of urgency, with the power of imagination fortified by Birkin’s clear-thinking.
Once I wrote in your paper an article which people heeded, called THE VOICES OF THE DEAD; and if you let me write one now, ready for the possible hiatus, I think you could drive it home. You have
such a vast public, a great power; let Otterburn trust to his evangelical side, and act with the swiftness of his genius, before it is too late.
I
KNO
W
there
will
be
a
chance
to
save
Britain
and
the
Empire
intact,
even
if
the
BEF
is
captured.
Hitler
does
not
want
to
destroy
the
British
Empire.
The theme of the article will be: Save our people, Save our Empire, Save the German People further losses. The war with Germany should never have been, it was an economic war, and Britain’s destiny is in its Empire and not in Europe or European investment to secure export markets …
It was a long letter. As soon as it was corrected and revised in red ink, with further additions in brown ink—Phillip felt empty. The impulse did not extend to sending the letter. He threw it in a drawer, where lay scores of other unposted letters. Some of these letters, on the occasion of their writing, had been repeated in variation perhaps half a dozen times before the impulse had been abandoned in hopeless vacuity. Some of these multiple letters had been addressed to Lucy, but not shown to her.
*
What to do now? Ah, I must go and see Wallington Christie. I must go now. At once. It is a matter of life and death for Europe—the world. And for me, but I do not care for myself, he thought inconsequentially.
Christie was the editor of
The
New
Horizon,
a quarterly with a literary-pacifist policy. Since the outbreak of war Christie had started a community farm near Chelmsford. What was the name of the village? Where are my maps? Oh, these piles of forms, letters, catalogues. No time to find maps. Or wait for Lucy’s sandwiches.
“I must leave at once. Flag me out, stop any traffic. Arm high, hand firm! Let them know a car is coming out blind, but for you!”
Away south, speeding over empty roads; signposts torn up,
place-names
on war memorials daubed thick with paint, or struck off by cold chisels. Windscreen flat. Flying-helmet, goggles, black leather coat. South wind stroking waves on barley behind hedges. Air roaring in empty head-phone flaps. Ha ha, life is stranger than fiction,
The
Man
in
Black,
German spy-film, Conrad Veight the hero. German eagle on bonnet. Village. Slow down. Constable by elm at cross-ways. Better stop and ask the time.
Not
the
way.
War medals on tunic.
“Too bad it’s come again, officer. We thought we’d finished it for good, last time.”
“We’re still on the wrong side, sir, in my opinion.”
“We may yet not be, officer.”
“I hope you’re right, sir.”
“Goodbye, old soldier.”
*
Christie was an ex-famous literary critic. His fame had waned since the death of D. H. Lawrence in 1930. It was Christie who had invented the term
creative
criticism.
He had known Hardy and other giants of the literary world. To him had come inscribed copies, from the author of the early novels in the sequence
À
la
recherche
du
temps
perdu.
A young bank clerk called T. S. Eliot had sent Christie the first collections of his poems. Christie, one of the earliest friends of D. H. Lawrence, had lived to see himself
described
as ‘a great black bug sucking away the life’ of D. H. Lawrence in the
Collected
Letters
of that harassed and lacerating writer now dead.
Phillip, just before he was married to Lucy, had wanted to make himself known to Christie, who had a London Office up some ricketty stairs in the Adelphi. He had gone to the famous
littérateur,
as the term was in the early ’twenties, to say, I am the Unknown Soldier, in my keeping is the spirit and ethos of the Great War. I am the writer foretold in your essay
The
Lost
Legions,
which I read in
The
Athenaeum.
But when a voice behind the door called ‘Come in’ he had gone away, saying he would come again.
It had been too tremulous an idea, in 1924, to confide to anyone.
Christie was one of the founders, with the Rev. ‘Dick’ Shepperd, vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, of the
Peace
Pledge
Union,
a company of wraiths and traumaturgists which were not of this world. He had left London when the war had come again; and now, on the borders of Suffolk and Essex, occupied a largish Victorian house standing within a dozen acres of semi-parklike land. Now it was filled by evacuated families from London.
Several hundred men, women, and children were sitting quietly at trestle-tables when Phillip arrived. I am not hungry, thank you, but yes, thank you, I would like some coffee. He followed Christie, accompanied by wife and lady secretary, to their wing. There, while coffee was being made, he explained his difficulties.
“Come with me,” said Christie.
They went to see the Community Farm manager who suggested, with a smile, that all Phillip’s difficulties would be solved if the Farm Community transferred its live and dead stock to Deepwater Farm.
“You see, our house and cottages here are to be taken over by the Government, for evacuees. And we have very little land to farm here. Only the garden, and what you see.”
“What is your live stock?”
“Not much at present. A couple of cows, some goats, and hens.”
Phillip, imaging the faces of Luke and Matt on beholding the goats, tried not to laugh. He said he would think it over; and when Christie returned to his study, went with the manager to see what he called the Communiteers.
“We’ve got some good lads.”
The afternoon was calm and sunny. The German army had gone straight through Ypres. The old Somme battlefields occupied without a fight. Soon they would have the Channel ports. O God.
“We run the farm here on a profit-sharing basis. So far there aren’t any profits, but we get our keep and ten bob a week for pocket money.”
“Ah.”
Young men in town clothes were lounging about. They appeared to be superior to the situation in France. When Phillip asked what was the latest news from the B.B.C. a fat young man with red hair and round face fringed with beard said scoffingly, “Oh, the British Army is running away, as usual.”
Resisting a reply of, Why aren’t you there to help, Phillip said, “I rather fancy that Hitler will make a peace offer to Great Britain and France. Europe’s real enemy is Stalinism, which doesn’t mean the Russian people. Let them build with their great resources, but east of the Ukraine. Then let Europe build a United States, under the combined resources of Germany and France. Our sphere of resurgence is in the Empire. If we build, rather than frustrate, there will be peace and work for all, for generations.”