Michael Ridpath: Shadows of War

Wiltshire, 6 November

‘What happened last night, Mr de Lancey?’

Lieutenant Colonel Rydal sat back in the chair behind his desk, his fingers steepled. Despite his grey hair, Rydal had a smooth face and an energetic air that suggested more youth than you would expect from a regular army colonel who had fought in the Great War.

‘Lieutenant Dodds and Captain Burkett had an argument,’ Conrad replied. ‘Over a girl. It blew over.’

‘Blew over?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I understand that Lieutenant Dodds drew his weapon?’

Conrad was silent. He wondered how the colonel had found out what had happened. Both Burkett and Lance Corporal O’Leary had promised to keep quiet. Conrad wasn’t sure he could trust Burkett. And O’Leary might have told his fellow NCOs. Either way, it hadn’t taken long to get back to the colonel.

‘What happened, Mr de Lancey?’

‘Lieutenant Dodds is a good officer, sir. It’s my belief that he will turn into a very good officer.’

‘Good officers don’t get drunk and wave weapons around in the mess.’

‘No, sir. But it’s likely we are all going to be in France soon. And I know that I would rather have Mr Dodds behind me, or next to me, or leading a platoon coming to relieve me. Men like him are valuable.’

‘Rather than Captain Burkett, you mean?’

That was what Conrad had meant but he couldn’t admit it. ‘In Spain I learned whom I could trust and whom I couldn’t. There were men like Lieutenant Dodds in Spain who fought bravely; many of them died bravely. And yes some of them got drunk and behaved badly. But I spoke to Lieutenant Dodds for a long time last night. I really don’t think he will cause trouble again.’

‘You don’t expect me to overlook this, Mr de Lancey? Without discipline this battalion would become a shambles.’

‘That’s right, sir. But with young officers like Lieutenant Dodds, this battalion will be able to fight and fight well.’

The colonel paused briefly, but only briefly. He was a decisive man.

‘I can’t risk Lieutenant Dodds and Captain Burkett being in the same company, can I?’

‘No, sir. But perhaps Mr Dodds could be transferred to another company?’

The colonel reached into his in tray and pulled out a sheet of paper. ‘I have a request here for the secondment of regular army officers to training camps for new recruits.’

‘Lieutenant Dodds isn’t experienced enough for that, though, is he, sir?’

‘No. But Captain Burkett is.’

Conrad tried to repress a smile. ‘I think Captain Burkett would be an excellent choice, sir.’ Conrad considered his next words carefully. ‘While I am sure that Captain Burkett would miss the opportunity for active duty, he would relish the chance to lick new recruits into shape.’

‘My thoughts exactly.’ The colonel tossed the sheet of paper on to his desk. ‘You know I was fifteen when the last war started, nineteen when it finished? I served six months in the trenches.’

‘Sir.’

Rydal examined Conrad. He saw a tall, fit officer in his late twenties, with fair hair and athletic build; the sort of man who could take care of himself and his men. ‘You and I are the only two officers in the battalion with experience of real war.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The first two regiments Conrad had attempted to join had turned him down, almost certainly because of his time in the International Brigade. He had wondered why Colonel Rydal had been different.

‘Once the last war got going, promotions accelerated, and I am sure it will be the same with this one. You haven’t been with us long, Mr de Lancey, but I like what I have seen of you so far. I need men like you as my company commanders.’

Conrad gave up repressing his smile. ‘I won’t let you down, sir.’

‘I’m sure you won’t. Now, there’s something else.’ The colonel pulled out another sheet of paper and examined it. ‘You have been ordered to report to Sir Robert Vansittart at the Foreign Office immediately.’

‘Immediately?’

‘Today,’ said the colonel. ‘I’ve no idea what it is about. Have you?’

‘No idea at all, sir. Although I did come in contact with Sir Robert last year.’

The colonel frowned. ‘Really? You have a shadowy past, Mr de Lancey.’

Whitehall, London

Conrad decided to walk from Waterloo Station to Whitehall. London was entering its third month of war, and Conrad did not feel at all out of place in his uniform. For over a year the city had been preparing, but now that war had actually arrived, there were some changes. Motor cars’ bumps and prangs in the all-encompassing blackout had demonstrated a need for white stripes on lamp-posts, kerbs and crossings. Tops of pillar boxes were daubed with yellow paint which would supposedly detect poison gas. Brown paper strips criss-crossed shop windows to minimize blast damage. And up in the sky, over the Thames, barrage balloons dipped and bobbed, now daubed a murky green rather than the silver they had sported when they were first hoisted.

Conrad was pleased with his conversation with the CO. He knew that in most other regiments, Dodds would be up for a court martial. He was convinced that he was right: Dodds would make a better officer under fire than Burkett, and he was impressed that the colonel had agreed. But he was worried that Dodds had lost his head. Conrad’s instinct was that the young lieutenant would come into his own when under the pressure of battle, but what if he was wrong?

Still, he was damned sure they would all be better off without Captain Burkett. And from what the colonel had said, Conrad might be commanding his own company in a year or two. If the war lasted that long, which Conrad feared it would.

He passed through Parliament Square and strode up Whitehall, glancing at the Cenotaph with its reminder of all those hundreds of thousands of young men, like Conrad, who had perished in the last diplomatic balls-up twenty years before. He turned left into Downing Street and, opposite Number 10, entered the grand palace that was the Foreign Office.

Conrad had met Sir Robert Vansittart, Chief Diplomatic Adviser, several times before, mostly over dinner at his parents’ house. ‘Van’, as he was known, was a friend of Conrad’s father from their school days at Eton. He was tall, almost as tall as Conrad, with square shoulders and a square jaw. He was known for his forthright opinions, especially on the subject of appeasement of Germany, and for that reason he had been shuffled out of his former position of Permanent Under-Secretary a couple of years before, although he still maintained the impressive office with its view over St James’s Park.

‘Ah, de Lancey, take a seat.’ Van indicated one of the ornate chairs in front of his desk. ‘Good to see you in uniform. How is soldiering?’

‘I’m enjoying it, Sir Robert,’ said Conrad. ‘I seem to have a facility for it.’

‘Well, let us hope you will not be called upon to fire a shot in anger.’

‘Actually, I rather hoped I would. That was the point of joining up, after all.’

Van smiled. ‘I trust your father hasn’t heard you say that?’

Conrad admired his father both for his courage and for the strength of his convictions. Viscount Oakford’s pacifism was well known. During the Great War, as Captain the Hon. Arthur de Lancey, he had won a Victoria Cross, lost an arm, and honed a determination to prevent his country’s return to such wholesale slaughter ever again. Conrad’s mother was from Hamburg. So the declaration of war two months before had been a personal disaster for Conrad’s family.

But for Conrad it was a grim necessity. He smiled. ‘Father and I differ on the subject of war and peace.’