you go to see the Sword of Stalingrad? I went when it was first on view at the Goldsmiths’ Hall. I think it is a very lovely gesture of your king’s but there was a feature no one could explain to me – the escutcheon on the scabbard will be upside down when it is worn on a baldric.’
‘I don’t suppose Stalin will wear it on a baldric.’
‘Maybe not. But I was certainly surprised at your College of Arms passing it. Well I’ll be seeing you around.’
‘Around’ was the right word.
‘Pretty fair cheek that young American finding fault with the sword,’ said Jumbo as they left the restaurant. ‘What’s more
he
didn’t discover the mistake. There was a letter about it in
The Times
weeks ago. I’ll drop you back at your office. Can’t have you using public transport on your birthday. I haven’t anything much on this afternoon. That was the best lunch I’ve had for three years. I may take a little nap.’
In the autumn of 1943 Hazardous Offensive Operations Headquarters was a very different organization from the modest offices which Guy had visited in the winter of 1940. The original three flats remained part of their property – an important part, for they housed Ian Kilbannock’s busy Press service – as did numerous mansions from Hendon to Clapham in which small bands of experts in untroubled privacy made researches into fortifying drugs, invisible maps, noiseless explosives, and other projects near to the heart of the healthy schoolboy. There was a Swahili witch-doctor in rooms off the Edgware Road who had been engaged to cast spells on the Nazi leaders.
‘D’you know, Charles, I sometimes think that black fellow’s something of a charlatan,’ General Whale once remarked to Major Albright in a moment of confidence. ‘He indents for the most extraordinary stores. But we know Hitler’s superstitions and there’s a good deal of evidence that with superstitious people these curses do sometimes work.’
Even Dr Glendening-Rees, fully recovered from the privations of Mugg, had a dietary team in Upper Norwood, from whose experiments batches of emaciated ‘conscientious objectors’ were from time to time removed to hospital. But the ostensible authority of these activities resided in the Venetian-Gothic brick edifice of the Royal Victorian Institute, a museum nobly planned but little frequented in the parish of Brompton. Its few valuable exhibits had been removed to safe storage. Other less portable objects had been left to the risks of bombardment and still stood amid the labyrinth of ply-board partitions with which the halls were divided.
The compartment assigned to the Special Service Forces Liaison Office – Guy’s – was larger than most but there was little floor space for he shared it with the plaster reconstruction of a megalosaurus, under whose huge flanks his trestle table was invisible from the door. This table carried three wire trays ‘In’, ‘Out’, and ‘Pending’, all empty that afternoon – a telephone, and a jig-saw puzzle. For the first few days of his occupancy he had had an AT secretary but she had been removed by a newly installed civilian efficiency-expert. Guy did not repine, but to fill his time, he prosecuted a controversy on the subject. Tommy had said he did not know what the liaison office was supposed to do; nor did Guy.
A captain of Marines peered round the giant carnivore and presented him with a file marked:
Operation Hoopla. Most Secret. By Hand of Officer only.
‘Will you minute this and pass it on to “Beaches”?’
‘I thought “Hoopla” had been cancelled.’
‘Postponed,’ said the Marine. ‘The party we had in training was sent to Burma. But we’re still working on it.’
The intention of ‘Hoopla’ was to attack some prodigious bomb-proof submarine-pens in Brittany. A peremptory demand for Immediate Action against these strongholds had been received from the War Cabinet. ‘If the Air Force can’t destroy the ships, we can
‘I don’t suppose Stalin will wear it on a baldric.’
‘Maybe not. But I was certainly surprised at your College of Arms passing it. Well I’ll be seeing you around.’
‘Around’ was the right word.
‘Pretty fair cheek that young American finding fault with the sword,’ said Jumbo as they left the restaurant. ‘What’s more
he
didn’t discover the mistake. There was a letter about it in
The Times
weeks ago. I’ll drop you back at your office. Can’t have you using public transport on your birthday. I haven’t anything much on this afternoon. That was the best lunch I’ve had for three years. I may take a little nap.’
In the autumn of 1943 Hazardous Offensive Operations Headquarters was a very different organization from the modest offices which Guy had visited in the winter of 1940. The original three flats remained part of their property – an important part, for they housed Ian Kilbannock’s busy Press service – as did numerous mansions from Hendon to Clapham in which small bands of experts in untroubled privacy made researches into fortifying drugs, invisible maps, noiseless explosives, and other projects near to the heart of the healthy schoolboy. There was a Swahili witch-doctor in rooms off the Edgware Road who had been engaged to cast spells on the Nazi leaders.
‘D’you know, Charles, I sometimes think that black fellow’s something of a charlatan,’ General Whale once remarked to Major Albright in a moment of confidence. ‘He indents for the most extraordinary stores. But we know Hitler’s superstitions and there’s a good deal of evidence that with superstitious people these curses do sometimes work.’
Even Dr Glendening-Rees, fully recovered from the privations of Mugg, had a dietary team in Upper Norwood, from whose experiments batches of emaciated ‘conscientious objectors’ were from time to time removed to hospital. But the ostensible authority of these activities resided in the Venetian-Gothic brick edifice of the Royal Victorian Institute, a museum nobly planned but little frequented in the parish of Brompton. Its few valuable exhibits had been removed to safe storage. Other less portable objects had been left to the risks of bombardment and still stood amid the labyrinth of ply-board partitions with which the halls were divided.
The compartment assigned to the Special Service Forces Liaison Office – Guy’s – was larger than most but there was little floor space for he shared it with the plaster reconstruction of a megalosaurus, under whose huge flanks his trestle table was invisible from the door. This table carried three wire trays ‘In’, ‘Out’, and ‘Pending’, all empty that afternoon – a telephone, and a jig-saw puzzle. For the first few days of his occupancy he had had an AT secretary but she had been removed by a newly installed civilian efficiency-expert. Guy did not repine, but to fill his time, he prosecuted a controversy on the subject. Tommy had said he did not know what the liaison office was supposed to do; nor did Guy.
A captain of Marines peered round the giant carnivore and presented him with a file marked:
Operation Hoopla. Most Secret. By Hand of Officer only.
‘Will you minute this and pass it on to “Beaches”?’
‘I thought “Hoopla” had been cancelled.’
‘Postponed,’ said the Marine. ‘The party we had in training was sent to Burma. But we’re still working on it.’
The intention of ‘Hoopla’ was to attack some prodigious bomb-proof submarine-pens in Brittany. A peremptory demand for Immediate Action against these strongholds had been received from the War Cabinet. ‘If the Air Force can’t destroy the ships, we can
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