Waiting for Orders Read Free Page A

just after midnight, a man used to come by selling early editions of the morning papers. So, that night, that was how we heard the awful news of the signing of the Molotov–von Ribbentrop non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
    I can still recall the shock of that moment, and the pang of fear that came with it. I was a man of the Popular Front, that shortlived coalition of the European Left against the spread of Axis Fascism that was jumping the frontiers of Versailles Treaty Europe with the remorseless ease of a medieval plague. I believed, with many others, that the Munich Agreement of the year before had been a humiliating disaster, but I had also believed, also with others, that the Soviet Union would in the end join with the French and British democracies to confrontand contain the common enemy. Now, suddenly, there was light on the stage and the hero could be seen climbing into bed with the villain. We did not know then, of course, that the pact signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop had, as well as giving the Nazis a free hand to take anything they wanted of the pre-1914 German territories, secretly partitioned Poland and ceded the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the Soviet Union; but the fact that Stalin and Hitler had done a deal of any sort was enough. The war, for long inevitable, would now certainly be total.
    A few days later we went to London. Our plan was to get married as soon as British law allowed. Louise would then have dual nationality and, if she wanted them, two passports. But several weeks would elapse before the marriage could take place. It was time to think about fighting the war. I was thirty then and if I waited to be called up with my age group I would end up in the army somewhere near the blunt end. Best to volunteer, I thought, and decided to consult a friend who, I was sure, would have contacts in high places. He had indeed, and soon got my name onto a priority list of volunteers for the Navy. All I had to do then was what everyone else on those lists was doing – wait for orders to report for an interview. Everyone, it seemed, was waiting for orders.
    Everyone except my publishers, that is. They had orders from the City of London to compile and produce with all speed a celebratory book. It would be for sale throughout the British Empire and its purpose would be to raise money quickly for the Red Cross. The result was
The Queen’s Book of the Red Cross
, a small-quarto volume of three hundred pages or so with a facsimile message from Her Majesty on Buckingham Palace paper and contributions from fifty authors and artists. It was an expensive book, with colour litho and photogravure illustrations to supplement the letter press text and a fine cloth board binding. Among the authors who contributed stories were Hugh Walpole, Daphne du Maurier and A. A. Milne; among the poets were T.S. Eliot and John Masefield; the artists included Laura Knight, Rex Whistler and Mabel Lucie Atwell. The most remarkable thing about it, however, was the speed with which the work was done. The whole process from editorial start to finished copies from the binders was accomplishedin two months. The dogs of war can start some unusual runners.
    The story I contributed, old resolutions forgotten, was
The Army of the Shadows.
I wrote it steadily, cutting and revising as I went as usual, but I wrote with few of the usual hesitations. I had something to say that would soon, I knew, become more difficult to say aloud or plainly: that our enemy was not the German People but the Nazi tyranny to which too many of them had submitted. Where better to say it than in a book that was going forth with a royal blessing?

The Army of the Shadows
    I T is three years since Llewellyn removed my appendix; but we still meet occasionally. I am dimly related to his wife: that, at least, is the pretext for the acquaintanceship.
    The truth is that, during my convalescence, we happened to discover that we both