Gavin Lyall: The Crocus List

However, the Playpen planners do not count on four thousand troops or anything like that number. The whole point of the operation is that it can be run by the minimum: Playforce, comprising just one infantry battalion and a few special units, or less than a thousand men in total. More would be wasteful of time, and probably the men themselves. In fact, the boundaries of Playpen might well be the same even if it included no barracks at all; it's just nice that it works out that way. For what really matters is that Playpen holds three easily defended helicopter Pickup Zones: Everest, Peacock and Famish.

'Easily defended' is the key when deploying a small force. The open stretches of Hyde Park would be easier for the helicopters themselves, but in the Worst Possible Case-which is what Playpen is all about-it could be rushed not only by panic-stricken mobs but interdicted by firefrom sabotage groups. Those also have to be allowed for. So the three chosen PZs all have existing defences.

Everest is the garden of Buckingham Palace, surrounded by walls and Palace buildings. Peacock is Horse Guards Parade, protected on three sides by government offices and the fourth, St James's Park, easily swept by covering fire. The grounds of the old soldiers' home at Chelsea Hospital, Famish, also have only one open side: the road and the river immediately beyond, again easily covered by defensive fire. There is a fourth, back-up Zone codenamed Tallyman: the playing fields of Westminster School in Vincent Square. But although there are two Army establishments within a hundred yards or so, the grass rectangle is only protected by a wire mesh fence and surrounded by exclusively civilian buildings. (Unless you count the Rochester Row police station, which the Army doesn't. Brenda had also been right in saying that the police had secret orders as well, but the Army politely refuses to plan on the assumption that the police can adapt to a war footing in a matter of minutes. Playpen simply ignores the existence of the police.)

The Operation is a three-stage one. When the armed services go on Alert, Playforceis automatically brought to four hours' readiness (four hours is officially the Army's maximum readiness state; in practice, Playforceis expected to be ready to move at half an hour's warning). Simultaneously, all helicopters belonging to the RAF at Odiham, the Queen's Flight at Benson, the Army Air Corps at Middle Wallop and the experimental squadron at Boscombe Down-all within sixty miles of London-will be grounded. Their fuel will be topped up, all loads and extraneous equipment (one of those phrases the planners love because it sounds so precise) slung out, and no maintenance work done except to make unserviceable machines flyable. There might then be fifty helicopters available, or as few as twenty-five: it depends on whether the emergency has built slowly enough for the formed squadrons to leave for their war stations in Germany. The Lists allow for this: some people are on Standby for survival.

If the second stage is ordered-it never has been, yet -the helicopters will take off and stage into RAF Northolt, just eleven miles from Whitehall. It is acknowledged that this, mo vewill be a 'public' one, so there will no longer be any point in keeping Playforceoff the streets. However, most troops will not actually dismount from their trucks except for the PZ control and fire support units, who are supposed to behave 'unobtrusively' or as unobtrusively as men in combat dress setting up machine-guns in top windows can behave.

At this point the Lists will be alerted. The Gold List will probably stay at their desks and telephones, since all they have to do is cross Whitehall to Peacock, which can be done by tunnel. Even the Chiefs of Staff can hardly give orders to the Purple List-Royal and political-leaving from Everest; all they can do is make sure the route from Parliament Square to the Palace is kept clear, and since it passes Wellington Barracks this shouldn't be difficult. Only the Silver List of NATO ambassadors and whoever they choose to complete their small parties will be advised to move, at orderly speeds along prearranged routes, to Famish. Playforcepatrols will assist if necessary, and inevitably in the case of the Greeks, isolated out in their Holland Park embassy; the Directorate of Crisis Relocation would be happy to see Greece carry out its annual threat to quit NATO. But in fact, the OCR doesn't take the Silver List with too much seriousness: it is just an unavoidable quid pro quo for the planned survival of British ambassadors (and their militaryattachés, of course) in Bonn, Paris, Rome and so forth.

Since there is no way in which the actual pickup can be rehearsed, the annex to Playforceorders handling this lacks something in precision. But it is really up to the officers on the spot, all of whom have completed (as Maxim recently had) helicopter direction courses in how to lay out beacons, group people into loads and emplane them, assign bump-and-straggler points… The main point the annex makes is that the Zones will continue to be defended until the last helicopter has begun its rooftop sprint for the theoretical safety that begins thirty miles away. Nobody in Playforceknows where the helicopters will go, just that they are too valuable to risk sending back.

They are well-thought-out, clearly detailed orders which a professional soldier can find pleasure in studying, even if he is one of those to stay behind in London. In a retreat, at least a successful retreat, some always have to stay behind; its success depends on them. But if one were a real nit-picking student of military orders, one might have asked: "Supposing the President of the USA is attending a memorial service in London at such a time?"

The advance party from the White House had landed on the embassy car pool like footsore locusts. Looking at the mass of dark Granadaswith their Dand X plates jamming St James's Palace courtyard, George Harbinger had commented to Ferrebee that if the ambassador himself was going anywhere today, he must be jogging there. Anticipating the crush, George himself had walked over from Defence, certainly not jogged. Like murder ("And I imagine it must bevery like murder") he believed that jogging needed means, motive and opportunity, and whenever opportunity offered, his well-rounded figure gave him an insurmountable lack of means and motive.

"Though if it wasn't for the exercise," he went on, "I can't see why on earth they wanted me over here. Didn't understand a word of it."

"You added tone, George," Ferrebee assured him.

"Hmm. Well, at least we've established the President's spending an hour with the kitchen Cabinet. Don't know how much damage you can undo in that time, but… When's the ODmeeting now?"

"Not my field, George. But I understand it's to be late Friday, after the President leaves. Papers in by first thing Wednesday."

"Why the rush?" George grumbled. "I'm the last person to invite the public into the business of governing itself, but in this case…"

"Perhaps somebody Up There wants to appear to be crisp and decisive in world affairs. D'you mind if we change the subject?"

"Putting a Little Englander inas Foreign Sec-"

"George." It was a breach of protocol to criticise another civil servant's minister quite so bluntly.

"Sorry." George stared gloomily across the cars squirming free of the pack in brief clouds of steam from their cold exhaust pipes; on the bright October morning he was already resolutely sunk in a November mood. "You managed to sound very knowledgeable about helicopters in there."

"Lucky I was, with a Presidential visit." Ferrebee was a big, loose-jointed man, with the handsomeness of art ageing cowboy film star savaged by the fire-scars on one side of his face that had ended his Naval career. "If the chopper hadn't existed, the White House would have had to invent it. I must away. "