Christopher Priest - The Separation

For an understanding of that, we have to re-examine the events leading up to the sudden armistice. It was at the beginning of May 1941 that the only recorded meeting took place between Churchill and the young British Red Cross official, J. L. Sawyer.

Little is known of Joseph Leonard Sawyer before he met Churchill. He competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, when it is believed he met the German Chancellor. Later, he was a registered conscientious objector and pacifist who worked as a volunteer ambulance driver throughout the Battle of Britain and the London Blitz. He received injuries several times during air raids, in one case suffering concussion. His conduct is known to have been exemplary: he consistently showed bravery and resourcefulness, saving the lives of many people caught up in the inferno of the Blitz, with little regard for his own safety but never risking the lives of his colleagues. Although his name was unknown to the public, his gallant behaviour under fire had already been noticed by several civil authorities.

The crucial meeting between him and Churchill came as the result of an initiative from Dr Carl Burckhardt, president of the Swiss Red Cross. Because the Society was a non-combatant recognized by both sides, the Red Cross was in a unique position to attempt to negotiate an armistice. Such proposals had been put forward at regular intervals after the outbreak of hostilities. As the fighting spread across Europe and Africa during 1940 and the early months of 1941, the war becoming more intense and violent, neither side was in any mood for a cease-fire and the Red Cross proposals were turned down at the same regular intervals.

At the beginning of May 1941, however, Churchill suddenly and unprecedentedly acceded in principle to the latest formal proposal and Sawyer was one of those who were summoned to a top-secret meeting. No public record exists of what was said or agreed during this meeting. Confidential Cabinet minutes about the armistice do not fall under the thirty-year rule and are therefore under indefinite embargo, but in recent years pressure has been increasing for them to be made public. Until then we can only conjecture as to the meeting itself.

If not much is known about Sawyer before he met Churchill, even less is known about him afterwards. That he participated in the armistice is certain, for his signature appears in the treaty document. There are also the photographs taken at the time of the signing, in which Sawyer may be glimpsed standing on the periphery of the group. After that, there is no further trace of him.

His unprecedented influence on Churchill, and to a lesser extent on the German Chancellor, is unquestioned, but also unexplained. One naturally wishes to know more, but we can be content that as a result of it the peace deal was forged. The enigma deepens because of his subsequent disappearance, the intrigue heightened by the fact that there were only two recorded sightings of him while on Red Cross business, both of which were made while he was abroad . . .

I remember exactly the moment when I came to my senses after the accident. Memory reappears like a scene in the middle of a film, an abrupt jump from blankness. I was inside a Red Cross ambulance, shocked into reality when the vehicle jolted over an uneven patch of road. I braced myself defensively against the knocks and bumps I was receiving, but my waist and legs were held gently in place with restraining straps. I was alone in the compartment with an orderly, a young Red Cross worker I knew was called Ken Wilson. It was difficult to talk in the noisy, unventilated compartment. Ken braced his arms against the overhead shelves as the vehicle swung about. He said we were well on our way in the journey, not to worry. But I was worried. Where were we going?

As awareness dawned on me, something must have changed in my manner, because Ken raised his voice over the racket of the ambulance’s engine and tyres. ‘Joe, how are you feeling? Are you OK?’

‘Yes,’ I said, realizing that I was indeed feeling all right, whereas until a few seconds before I had not been feeling anything. The world was suddenly in focus. ‘Yes, it’s starting to make sense again.’

‘You had a nasty shock, old man. Do you remember anything about that?’

‘A bang on the head, was it?’ I reached up and gently felt the top of my skull, but I could feel no sensitive areas where a wound might have been.

‘You took quite a knock,’ Ken said. ‘We’re not sure exactly what happened to you. We think you were a bit too close to a bomb going off. Blast can knock someone out without causing any obvious physical damage. The doctor said we needed to get you to a hospital.’

‘The doctor said . . . ? I’m not ill, am I? When did this happen?’

‘A week or so ago. You were down in Bermondsey. In fact, a lot of us were there that night. A big raid, one of the worst so far. At the end, when we reported back to the Wandsworth yard, we did a head count and you hadn’t returned. You were posted as missing, but the police didn’t find you until three days ago. You don’t seem to have suffered any physical damage, but the doctor who examined you said they had already come across several similar cases. Blast can cause internal damage without visible wounds. You need a proper check-up, but the hospitals in London are stretched to the limit. We thought it would be safe to take you home, so you can see your own doctor, go to your local hospital. Things aren’t too bad yet in Manchester’

After the shock of renewed self-awareness faded, I began to orientate myself. It seemed to me that my memory, as I prodded experimentally at it, was not too badly affected: I could remember the weeks in London, the endless anxious hours driving the ambulance, the scores of injured people we picked up. I vividly remembered the hundreds of fires in the narrow London streets, the ruined, gaping-windowed buildings on each side, the piles of wreckage, the flooded craters and snaking fire-hoses. I remembered Ken Wilson, too. Ken and I had always rubbed along well together. As the ambulance continued on its way, he told me more about what the people at the Red Cross thought might have happened to me, where I could have been until I managed to find my way to the men’s hostel.

Although my memory was already starting to piece itself together, behind the calm appearance I was trying to project to Ken I was terrified. Concussion creates a sense of unfilled blankness behind you, one you know in reality must have been made up of experiences which at the time were perfectly normal, but which have since become unreachable by memory. Discovering what is there in your memory, and what might not be, is a painful process.

I want to emphasize the reawakening in the ambulance (why did it occur there?, why at that exact moment?) because it is a point of certainty. My conscious life began again, there and then. What was to follow is the crucial period of my life and I want to record it in my notebook, but much of what I can say is less certain than I would like. I can only describe what happened to me in the way it seemed to happen. I am sure about that moment of awakening. It is certain and it is a sort of beginning.

Some time after midnight we took a short break from the journey in Birmingham, where there was another main Red Cross depot. I tried taking some steps without using the sticks Ken gave me. It came quite naturally, but I felt nervous without their support and was quickly short of breath. We carried on to the canteen and sat at a table with the young woman who had been driving our ambulance, Phyllida Simpson. We huddled together in the cold canteen, getting to know one another.