Doris Lessing - Briefing for a Descent into Hell

At about midnight it was clear that the framework of ordinary life was going to make a pressure for Charles. For without it, he would not have made a move. Frederick had to go home. His decision to go brought to Charles’ notice that it was in fact midnight. He went with Frederick. It was an automatic going. He might just as well have stayed. In the street, he said to Frederick: “I’ll see you next time round.” And walked off. And that was all we knew of Charles until I got a letter from Doctor X at your hospital.

I hope that this rather inadequate account of that evening may be of assistance. I am sorry he is so ill. I have it in me to envy him. There is a good deal in my life that I would be very happy to forget. May I visit him perhaps? I would like to, if it would be helpful.

Yours sincerely,

ROSEMARY BAINES

DEAR DOCTOR X,

I am of course only too happy to help in any way possible.

I knew Charles Watkins off and on during our schooldays. We were at different schools. When the war started we both found ourselves in North Africa. Charles saw more fighting there than I did. I was in Intelligence and at that stage less active. We met from time to time, but then I went to Yugoslavia and he went to Italy. Yes he had a hard time in the war, but more in the sense that he had a steady hard slog right through it, infantry, and then tanks. We did not see each other until the end of the war. In 1945 we met again and spent some months together. We both found ourselves pretty well shaken up and needed the company of a person who understood this. Personally I do not believe that people are “changed” by stress. In my experience certain characteristics get emphasized, or brought out. In this sense I did not find Charles Watkins “changed” by the war. But he was certainly ill after it. I would like to see Charles if it is possible. I think his C.O. may help you. He was Major General Brent-Hampstead of Little Gilstead, Devon.

Yours sincerely,

MILES BOVEY

DEAR DOCTOR X,

Charles Watkins served under me for four years. He was satisfactory in every way, responsible and steady. He refused a commission for some time although I brought pressure to bear, because of friends he did not want to separate from. Understandable, but I was glad when he changed his mind, towards the end of the war. That was during the Italian affair. He ended up a lieutenant, I believe, but we are talking of twenty-five years ago. I am sorry to hear he is not too fit.

Yours truly,

PHILIP BRENT-HAMPSTEAD

DOCTOR Y: I’d like you to try something else, Professor. I’d like you to sit down and let yourself relax and try writing down anything that comes to you.

PATIENT: What sort of thing?

DOCTOR Y: Anything. Anything that might give us a lead in.

PATIENT: Ariadne’s thread.

DOCTOR Y: Exactly so. But let’s hope there is no Minotaur.

PATIENT: But perhaps he would turn out to be an old friend, too?

DOCTOR Y: Who knows? Well, will you try? A typewriter? A tape-recorder? I hear you are a very fine lecturer.

PATIENT: What a lot of talents I have that I know nothing about.

Patient’s time is up at the end of this month. See no reason why he should not be transferred as previously discussed to the North Catchment .

DOCTOR x.

As patient is very tractable and amenable and co-operative and willing to assist with other patients I suggest this improvement should be consolidated by further stay here in present conditions. There is a precedent for an extension for another three weeks .

DOCTOR Y.

DEAR DOCTOR X,

Thank you for your letter. I am so glad that my husband is so much better. Does he remember me and his family yet?

Yours sincerely,

FELICITY WATKINS

PATIENT: Yes, I am trying, but I don’t know what to write about.

DOCTOR Y: How about the war?

PATIENT: Which war?

DOCTOR Y: YOU were in the last war, in the army, in North Africa and in Italy. You were under a Major General Brent-Hampstead. You had a friend called Miles Bovey.

PATIENT: Miles. Miloš? Miloš, yes, I do think I … but he is dead.

DOCTOR Y: I can assure you that he is not.

PATIENT: They all of them were killed, in one way and another.

DOCTOR Y: I’d like to read about it. Will you try?

The briefing was in the C.O.’s tent. I did not know until I got there what to expect. I had been told that I had been chosen for a special mission, but not what the mission was. I certainly had no idea that it was in Yugoslavia.

The Allies had been supporting Michailovitch. There had been rumours for some months that Michailovitch was supporting Hitler and that Tito was the real opposition — which we should be giving all the aid we could. But Tito was a communist. Little was known about him. And things in Yugoslavia were confused, with ancient provincial and religious feuds being settled under the cover of the Tito-Michailovitch struggle.

The campaign to support Tito came first from the Left, which claimed that Britain was refusing to aid Tito because he was a communist, and that this was in line with the wider strategy of trying to remain the U.S.S.R.’s ally while containing or destroying local communist movements. Finally Churchill put in his oar, had gone over the heads of the “brass” to listen to better-informed left-wing advice about Yugoslavia. It had been decided to establish liaison with Tito’s Partisans and to make them trust us, the Allies, particularly Britain, by convincing them that we would no longer support Michailovitch or any other Nazi-oriented movement. We would offer the Partisans arms, men, equipment. But it was not at that time known exactly where the Partisans were. It had been decided to parachute in groups of us, where Partisans were thought to be.

There were twenty of us in the C.O.’s tent that night. We had been chosen for a miscellany of accomplishments. But we all spoke French or German or both. We could all ski, and in civilian life could be described as athletes. Mostly we were not known to each other. I sat next to a man who during the period of training became a close friend. His name was Miles Bovey.

During the next month we were put through our paces in every way, toughened up physically, taught parachuting, taught how to use radio equipment, and given an adequate knowledge of the history of the country, with particular reference to the regional and religious conflicts which we were bound to encounter.

The final briefing saw our number reduced to twelve. Two men had been killed in parachute jumps. Another had cracked up and was in the hands of the psychiatrists. There were other casualties, trivial enough, a sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, but sufficient to disqualify a man for the jump and the ordeal after it.

Miles Bovey and I were to be together. We were to be dropped over the Bosnian mountains, to contact the Partisans.

The final briefing was primarily to tell us how to survive if we did not immediately contact the guerrillas. Also to instruct us in the event of our capture by the Germans or by local quisling groups. These instructions were very unsophisticated compared with what we now take for granted in the way of torture, preparations to withstand torture, drugs, psychological methods. We each were given a couple of poison pills to take in the case of extreme need. But implicit in our last briefing was the idea that we were expected to resist torture if caught, to stand up to it. The idea that human beings cannot stand up to torture and psychological methods and should not be expected to, had not yet become part of general knowledge. I cannot remember this idea being expressed even by implication at any time during my war service. I would not have allowed myself to hold it, and if I had heard someone else use it I would have been shocked. And yet torture had been, was being, brought to its present height of sophistication everywhere the war had spread or might spread. We were in the condition of peasants in a technological society. We still believed in the power of heroism over any odds. I do know that men continue to resist torture against impossible odds, but frightful pressures have increased compassion: every soldier now who may have to face torture has as his property the knowledge that if he cannot stand it, if he cracks, he is not a coward and a poltroon, and that no one anywhere would think him one. Progress.