Robert Forrest-Webb - Chieftains

And what now? Would the GRU officer just question him again, and then pass him back through the lines until he ended up in some POW camp? There were bound to be other prisoners, he couldn’t be the only one! There would be other officers, taken in similar situations along the front… the Russians would get them all together somewhere. God, he felt miserable! It would be bad for Jane, too. Her husband dead, and her lover a prisoner… and Paul, her son… trapped in West Berlin with very little hope of escaping. Damn Berlin. Damn the little red train that was its military artery. And damn Tempelhof, a vulnerable airport which a dozen rockets could put out of action. Christ, it would be bad in Berlin now; surrounded, impossible to defend against missile attacks, and too isolated to break out from. A Stalingrad, perhaps.

Escape. Perhaps that was what should be done? It was wrong to sit around waiting for the worst to happen… escape… it might be possible. But what about his leg wound? He could walk, even though his calf muscle was stiff and aching. Plenty of men had done it before. He remembered talking to someone who had escaped after Dunkirk. ‘Take the very first opportunity you get,’ the man had advised. ‘If you wait for the second, then it’s too late… the second chance may never come.’ Studley could remember the man clearly. He limped badly, broke his thigh when he jumped from a train, crawled several miles at night hiding in daytime in ditches full of water and mud. He had spent weeks in some French farmhouse before returning to England on a fishing boat. But he’d made it. He hadn’t fought again, but he’d done a useful training job for the remainder of the war. He had survived

Survival. That was what Studley was going to do… survive. One way and another… any way, he’d survive. Jane would need him; they’d need each other.

Jane… God, dear Jane. For twelve years they’d loved each other. It was hard to know exactly when it had all begun, or even how it had started. There wasn’t a particular hour or even day when he’d suddenly thought he loved her, wanted her. There had been mess dinners, mess balls; the three of them always seemed to to together. Sometimes he took a lady guest with him, but it wasn’t too easy to meet single women as you got older. Sometime during the evening he would find himself dancing with Jane; Max preferred to remain near a bar. The number of dances seemed to grow… the number of times she was in his arms. Even then, neither of them had said anything nor made a positive move. It was just that somehow over the years it changed; the way they held each other while they danced… the way their arms had linked as they walked from the floor.

One night they had stood together on the mess terrace; it had become too hot inside, after midnight. It had been the summer ball, and quite a grand affair… three bars, a disco for the younger officers, the regimental band in the main hall. He and Jane were close enough for their bodies to be touching and he had automatically put his arm around her waist. He felt at the time it had been a protective movement, not suggestive. She moved even closer and he had felt the firmness of her hip against his thigh, and known at that second they both wanted each other desperately. Jane had felt the same, he knew, for instinctively their eyes had met and he had seen her quickly hide the emotion.

‘Let’s go and have a drink. I’m very thirsty… something long and cool.’ Her voice was over-flippant, sounding very young, uncertain. He noticed she avoided his eyes now and shook her dark hair back over her shoulders, nervously. She and Max had married young. Paul had been born before she was twenty, he was seven only a few weeks before the ball.

‘I don’t know if I can face the crowd for a few minutes.’ He intended it as an excuse to delay her, but she had misunderstood him.

‘I can’t either.’ Her voice had been flat, weary. ‘Sometimes I think they’re watching us… their eyes following us everywhere. Sometimes I think they can read my mind.’ She became angry. ‘I hate these evenings. I hate the dressing up, all the gold braid, the artificial camaraderie and the inane conversations… I hate anaesthetizing myself with gin and tonics so I’ve got the guts to dance with you all night in front of them, and the courage to let you leave me at the end.’ She had turned away from him and stared across the dark lawns and rose beds. She was gripping his hand tightly.

‘What can we do?’ Her outburst had startled him, forcing him to acknowledge his own feelings.

‘Nothing! If I’d once loved Max and now I hated him, it would be easy; I’d be strong enough to leave him. But I never loved him, so my feelings haven’t changed. I’ve always liked him, and I still do. And you can’t hurt someone you like so much.’

They avoided each other during the following weeks, until it became obvious to Max. ‘You and Jane had a fight?’

‘Jane? Good heavens, no!’

‘We haven’t seen much of you.’

Studley had lied. ‘It’s not been deliberate, Max. I just don’t seem to have got around to socializing lately.’

‘Dinner, Saturday evening then? Drinks about eight. Bozy and Felicity will be along. Jane and I thought we should invite Challace, introduce his wife to some of the other ladies of the regiment. It’s never easy for a new officer’s missus.’

Max, always friendly, concerned and dependable. He wasn’t even built like a soldier, stocky, rounded. Gieves and Hawkes found it difficult to get a military cut to his suits. In civvies he always managed to look like a contented country vicar; perhaps he should have been, it would have suited his easy-going temperament. ‘Thanks, I’ll be along.’

There was another evening, later, in the mess. He and Max were alone. ‘Ever think of getting married, James?’

‘Thought, once or twice.’ He had attempted to change the subject, but Max persisted; he had downed several drinks.

‘You should look around.’

‘It’s hardly possible here in Germany.’

‘When we’re in Ireland then. Daughter of a wealthy Irish landowner.’

‘For God’s sake, Max… what opportunity do we get for socializing in Ireland?’

‘The Queen Alexander’s Nursing Corps; there are some smashers amongst the nurses. Point one out to me and I’ll get Jane to invite her to dinner. Being a batchelor is no life for you, James.’

‘It suits me.’

‘It’ll make you sour. You need a wife and a couple of kids.’

‘Something I wanted to mention; the MT, sheds… there’s a hold-up with…’

‘Have you ever met Charlesworth’s daughter? I know she’s quite young, but…’

‘Max!’

It had been a full year after the incident at the ball before he and Jane had become lovers. It hadn’t been planned. Again, it was summer… long and dry, the grass scorching brown and the leaves becoming dusted on the trees near the roadsides. Max had suggested the trip into the mountains south of Hildesheim; it was an easy run down the autobahn. ‘Find ourselves an inn and stay overnight. Get some good food and a breath of fresh mountain air. Take a rod, James, there may be a decent trout stream.’

It had been too tempting to refuse; not the thought of being with Jane, but the chance to get away from the barracks and the countryside around Bergen.

Saturday morning came and with it the unexpected arrival of a friend of Max’s from the Royal Tank Regiment at Herford, passing through on his way to a NATO posting in Denmark.

Max’s apologies. ‘Go on ahead. I’ll have lunch with him here in the mess, and we can meet this evening at Salzdetfurth. Take rooms at the gasthof, and I’ll be there in time for drinks.’

‘It doesn’t matter, we’ll wait… well travel together later. Or we can put the whole thing off until another weekend.’