The Last Enemy Richard Hillary (2 page)
I had the further advantage of having travelled. When very young I had lived abroad, and every vacation from school and the University I had utilized to visit the Continent. It is maintained by some that travel has no educational value, that a person with sensibility can gain as rich an experience of life by staying right where he is as by wandering around the world, and that a person with no sensibility may as well remain at home anyway. To me this is nonsense, for if one is a bore, I maintain that it is better to be a bore about Peshawar than Upper Tooting. I was more fortunate than some of my friends, for I knew enough French and German to be able to move about alone; whereas my friends, though they were not insular, tended to travel in organized groups, either to Switzerland for skiing in winter or to Austria for camping in summer.
It was on one of these organized trips that Frank Waldron and I went to Germany and Hungary shortly before the war. Frank was no keener on organized groups than I, but we both felt the urge to travel abroad again before it was too late, and we had worked out the cheapest way of doing so. We wrote to the German and Hungarian Governments expressing the hope that we might be allowed to row in their respective countries. They replied that they would be delighted, sent us the times of their regattas (which we very well knew), and expressed the wish that they might be allowed to pay our expenses. We wrote back with appropriate surprise and gratification, and having collected eight others, on July 3, 1938, we set forth.
Half of us went by car and half by train, but we contrived somehow to arrive in Bad Ems together, two days before the race. We were to row for General Goering’s Prize Fours. They had originally been the Kaiser Fours, and the gallant General had taken them over.
We left our things at the hotel where we were to stay and took a look at the town which, with its mass of green trees rising in a sheer sweep on either side of the river, made an enchanting picture. Down at the boathouse we had our first encounter with Popeye. He was the local coach and had been a sergeant-major in the last war. With his squat muscled body, his toothless mouth sucking a pipe, the inevitable cap over one eye, his identity was beyond dispute. Popeye was to prove our one invaluable ally. He was very proud of his English though we never discovered where he learned it. After expressing a horrified surprise that we had not brought our own boat, he was full of ideas for helping us.
‘Mr. Waldron,’ he said, ‘I fix you right up tomorrow this afternoon. You see, I get you boat.’
The next day saw the arrival of several very serious-looking crews and a host of supporters, but no boat. Again we went to Popeye.
‘Ah, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘My wife, she drunk since two years but tomorrow she come.’
We hoped he meant the boat. Fortunately he did, and while leaky and low in the water, it was still a boat and we were mighty relieved to see it. By this time we were regarded with contemptuous amusement by the elegantly turned-out German crews. They came with car-loads of supporters and set, determined faces. Shortly before the race we walked down to the changing-rooms to get ready. All five German crews were lying flat on their backs on mattresses, great brown stupid-looking giants, taking deep breaths. It was all very impressive. I was getting out of my shirt when one of them came up and spoke to me, or rather harangued me, for I had no chance to say anything. He had been watching us, he said, and could only come to the conclusion that we were thoroughly representative of a decadent race. No German crew would dream of appearing so lackadaisical if rowing in England: they would train and they would win. Losing this race might not appear very important to us, but I could rest assured that the German people would not fail to notice and learn from our defeat.
I suggested that it might be advisable to wait until after the race before shooting his mouth off, but he was not listening. It was Popeye who finally silenced him by announcing that we would win. This caused a roar of laughter and everyone was happy again. As Popeye was our one and only supporter, we taught him to shout ‘You got to go, boys, you got to go.’ He assured us that we would hear him.
Looking back, this race was really a surprisingly accurate pointer to the course of the war. We were quite untrained, lacked any form of organization and were really quite hopelessly casual. We even arrived late at the start, where all five German crews were lined up, eager to go. It was explained to us that we would be started in the usual manner; the starter would call out ‘Are you ready?’ and if nobody shouted or raised his hand he would fire a gun and we would be off. We made it clear that we understood and came forward expectantly. ‘Are you ready?’ called the starter. Beside us there was a flurry of oars and all five German crews were several lengths up the river. We got off to a very shaky start and I can’t ever remember hearing that gun fired. The car-loads of German supporters were driving slowly along either bank yelling out encouragement to their respective crews in a regulated chant while we rowed in silence, till about quarter-way up the course and above all the roaring and shouting on the banks I heard Popeye: ‘You got to go, boys, you got to go. All my dough she is on you.’ I looked up to see Popeye hanging from a branch on the side of the river, his anxious face almost touching the water. When Frank took one hand off his oar and waved to him, I really thought the little man was going to fall in. As we came up to the bridge that was the half-way mark we must have been five lengths behind; but it was at that moment that somebody spat on us. It was a tactical error. Sammy Stockton, who was stroking the boat, took us up the next half of the course as though pursued by all the fiends in hell and we won the race by two-fifths of a second. General Goering had to surrender his cup and we took it back with us to England. It was a gold shell-case mounted with the German eagle and disgraced our rooms in Oxford for nearly a year until we could stand it no longer and sent it back through the German Embassy. I always regret that we didn’t put it to the use which its shape suggested. It was certainly an unpopular win. Had we shown any sort of enthusiasm or given any impression that we had trained they would have tolerated it, but as it was they showed merely a sullen resentment.
Two days later we went on to Budapest. Popeye, faithful to the end, collected a dog-cart and took all our luggage to the station. We shook the old man’s hand and thanked him for all he had done.
‘Promise me one thing, Popeye,’ said Frank, ‘when the war comes you won’t shoot any of us.’
‘Ah, Mr. Waldron,’ he replied, ‘you must not joke of these things. I never shoot you, we are brothers. It is those Frenchies we must shoot. The Tommies, they are good fellows, I remember. We must never fight again.’
As the train drew out of the station he stood, a tiny stocky figure, waving his cap until we finally steamed round the bend. We wrote to him later, but he never replied.
We were greeted at Budapest by a delegation. As I stepped on to the platform, a grey-haired man came forward and shook my hand.
‘My dear sir,’ he said, ‘we are very happy to welcome you to our country. Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye,’ I said, introducing him rapidly to the others, half of whom were already climbing back into the train.
We were put up at the Palatinus Hotel on St. Margaret’s Island where Frank’s antiquated Alvis created a sensation. Members of our party had been dropping off all the way across Europe and it was only by a constant stream of cables and a large measure of luck that we finally mustered eight people in Budapest, where we found to our horror that we had been billed all over town as the Oxford University Crew. Our frame of mind was not improved by the discovery that we had two eights races in the same day, the length of the Henley course, and that we were to be opposed by four Olympic crews. It was so hot it was only possible to row very early in the morning or in the cool of the evening. The Hungarians made sure we had so many official dinners that evening rowing was impossible, and the food was so good and the wines so potent that early-morning exercise was out of the question. Further, the Danube, far from being blue, turned out to be a turbulent brown torrent that made the Tideway seem like a mill-pond in comparison. Out in midstream half-naked giants, leaning over the side of anchored barges, hung on to the rudder to prevent us being carried off downstream before the start. We had to keep our blades above the water until they let go for fear that the stream would tear them out of our hands. Then at the last moment, Sammy Stockton, the one member of our rather temperamental crew who could be relied upon never to show any temperament, turned pale-green. A combination of heat, goulash, and Tokay had proved too much for him and he came up to the start a very sick man. Once again we were pinning all our faith on our Four, as the eight in the bows had an air of uncoordinated individualism. We were three-quarters of the way down the course and still in front, when John Garton, who was steering, ran into the boat on our left. There was an immediate uproar of which we understood not one word, but it was, alas, impossible to misconstrue the meaning of the umpire’s arm pointing firmly back towards the start. Once again we battled upstream and turned around with a sense of foreboding. Again we were off, half-way down the course and still ahead: a faint hope began to flutter in my agonized stomach, but it was not to be. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. Behind me I heard Sammy let out a whistling sigh like a pricked balloon and the race was over. The jubilation of the Hungarians was tempered by the fact that our defeat nearly caused a crisis, for at the Mayor’s banquet that night we were to be presented with medals struck in honour of our victory, and it was doubtful whether any others could be manufactured in time. But they were. The evening passed off admirably. Frank rose to his feet and delivered a speech in fluent if ungrammatical German. He congratulated the Hungarians on their victory, apologized for, but did not excuse our defeat and thanked them for their excellent hospitality. There were, fortunately, no repercussions apart from a cartoon in the Pesti Hirlap, showing eight people in a boat looking over their left shoulders at a naked girl in a skiff with the caption underneath: ‘Why Oxford Lost?’
The others returned to England shortly afterwards, but I stayed on an extra month with some people I knew who had an estate at Vecses about twelve miles out of Budapest. They were Jews, and even then very careful about holding large parties or being in any way publicized for fear of giving a handle to the Nazi sympathizers in the Government. With them I travelled all around Hungary and found everywhere an atmosphere of medieval feudalism: most of the small towns and villages were peopled entirely by peasants, apart from a bored army garrison. In Budapest there was a sincere liking for the English tempered by an ever-present memory of the Treaty of Trianon, and a very genuine dislike of the Germans; but there was a general resignation to the inevitability of a Nazi affiance for geographical reasons. Any suggestion that there was still time for a United Balkans to put up a solid front as a counter to German Influence was waved aside. The Hungarians were a proud race; what had they in common with the upstart barbarians who surrounded them and who had so cynically carved up their country?
I left with a genuine regret and advice from the British Embassy not to leave the train anywhere on the way through Germany.
Before the outbreak of the war I made two more trips abroad, each to France. As soon as I got back from Hungary I collected the car and motored through Brittany. My main object was, I must admit, food. I saw before me possibly years of cold mutton, boiled potatoes, and Brussels sprouts, and the lure of one final diet of cognac at fourpence a glass, oysters, coq-au-vin, and souffles drew me like a magnet. I motored out through Abbeville, Rouen, Rennes, and Quimper and ended up at Beg Meil, a small fishing village on the east coast, where between rich meals of impossible cheapness and nights of indigestion and remorse I talked with the people. Everywhere there was the same resignation, the same it’s-on-the-way-but-what-the-hell attitude. I was in Rouen on the night of Hitler’s final speech before Munich. The hysterical ‘Sieg Heils!’ of his audience were picked up by the loud-speakers throughout the streets, and sounded strangely unreal in the quiet evening of the cathedral city. The French said nothing, merely listening in silence and then dispersing with a shrug of their shoulders. The walls were plastered with calling-up notices and the stations crowded with uniforms. There was no excitement. It was as though a very tired old man was bestirring himself for a long-expected and unwelcome appointment.
I got back to England on the day of the Munich Conference; the boat was crowded and several cars were broken as they were hauled on board. The French seemed to resent our going.
During ‘peace in our time’ I made my final trip. The Oxford and Cambridge crews were invited to Cannes to row on the bay and I had the enviable position of spare man. Caf? society was there in force; there were fireworks, banquets at Juan-les-Pins, battles of flowers at Nice, and a general air of all being for the best in the best of all possible worlds. We stayed at the Carlton, bathed at Eden Rock and spent most of the night in the Casino. We gave a dinner for the Mayor which ended with Frank and the guest of honour rolled together in the tablecloth singing quite un-intelligible ditties, much to the surprise of the more sober diners. We emerged from some night club at seven o’clock on the morning of our departure with a bare half-hour left to catch our plane. Over the doorway a Union Jack and a Tricolor embraced each other in a rather tired entente cordiale. Frank seized the Tricolor and waved it gaily above his head. At that moment the smallest Frenchman I’ve ever seen rushed after us and clutched hold of Frank’s retreating coat-tails.
‘Mais, non, non, non!’ he screeched.
‘Mais, oui, oui, oui, my little man,’ said Frank, and, disengaging himself, he belaboured the fellow over the head with the emblem of his Fatherland and cantered off down the road, to appear twenty minutes later on the airport, a sponge bag in one hand and the Tricolor still firmly clasped in the other.