Richard Gordon: THE INVISIBLE VICTORY

It was a modern Luftwaffe hospital, serving the airfields scattered thickly across north-western Germany. Like everything else provided for Hitler's Forces, down to their boots and braces, it was of better quality than afforded German civilians. A corporal on duty told me that Colonel Mellors was in the wards. I sent my name, with a message that my visit was urgent. Within a few minutes David appeared, in battledress and carrying a stethoscope, bubbling as usual.

'Can I have a private word with you?' I asked tensely.

'You've chosen a fine moment, boy, We've just got a couple of cases of typhus, which is putting the DDMS into a fine flap, typhus having been officially eradicated in this part of the world. I expect they're sitting up there saying I'm a bloody fool who's made the wrong diagnosis.'

He led me down a long low-ceilinged corridor into a room with his name on the door, containing a desk, a pair of metal and canvas chairs, some filing cabinets and a refrigerator.

'Got the clap?' he asked amiably.

'Certainly not!'

'I imagined that to be the case, from the secretiveness of your approach.'

'You remember, I worked out here in Wuppertal before the war? I stayed a year with a German family, the father was a doctor.' I told him quickly the story of Gerda, and of her present suffering.

'You say she's got puerperal? Just like your wife?' I nodded. David began to look uneasy. 'What do you want me to do about it, boy? Is she being treated properly? I know a squadron-leader who's a gynae man looking after the WAAFS at Celle, up near Hanover. I could get him on the phone.'

'I want some penicillin.'

I wondered if David would be angry, but he just said resignedly, 'Look, boy-'

'I'm sorry. I've put you on a spot.'

'I'm continually getting these pleas, you know. From the men, who've been fratting with girls. It's always the old father or mother who are dying. To tell the truth, I don't believe one of these heart-rending stories is true. The girls want to sell it on the black market. I can't get enough for my own patients.' He jerked his thumb towards the refrigerator. 'That's half full of penicillin, but I could use twice as much if I had it.'

Feeling deflated, embarrassed, and foolish, I asked, 'You can't spare an ampoule, even for me?'

He shook his head slowly. 'I just can't break the rules, can I?'

'I didn't really expect that you would.'

'That's flattering, I suppose.'

'I shouldn't have come here. It was all on an impulse.'

'This woman's pretty sick?'

'The doctor said she'd developed septicaemia.'

'She's likely to be a goner, then?'

'You'd know better than me.'

David sighed. 'It's her bad luck to be born a German, isn't it? But we didn't start the war. And we didn't lose it, either. No, I'm sorry, Jim. I'm sorry.' He got to his feet. 'I must get back to those typhus cases.'

'And I'm sorry to make a nuisance of myself.'

'Not a bit. You'd every right to bring me your problem. It's the Army which doesn't allow me to help.'

We exchanged a few commonplaces. At the door, David jerked his head and said, 'I've got to go in this direction. Can you find your own way out?'

I nodded. 'Shall I see you in London over Christmas?'

'Yes, let's make a night of it.'

David hurried round the corner. I waited ten seconds or so. I went back to the office and switched on the light. Inside the refrigerator were cardboard packs like cartons of American cigarettes. Each was labelled, 'Penicillin-50 Doses'. For the second time in my life, I stole.

Paris after Germany was as delightful as Offenbach after Wagner. Its smell was unquenchable. It still reeked of coffee and Gauloise cigarettes, though both were hard enough to come by. The breath of the Mйtro stations still blew as dry as a biscuit. There were GIs everywhere. Good Americans, having escaped death, went to Paris.

FIAT had first gone into action in Paris. Our vanguard of eleven scientists, with an escort of three armed American officers, landed in France just after D-day. They had entered Paris in a pair of jeeps with the leading tanks of General Leclerc's liberating division. There was good reason for the rush. They wanted to question Professor Joliot-Curie. He was married to the daughter of Madame Marie Curie, and the couple had shared the Nobel Prize for studies in radioactivity. FIAT wanted to know if the Nazis had the atomic bomb.

I had a room in a commandeered hotel on the rue de Rivoli, previously occupied by the Gestapo. I shared with two ebullient American officers, who promised to show me the delights of Pig Alley'-Pigalle. I had orders to report without delay to an office near the Place d'Etoile. But as often happens with military arrangements, the officer in charge had no news of my coming, no knowledge of me in his life and no interest in me whatever. As I had travelled overnight, I was in the street well before midday, at a loose end. At the next corner, I found the road crossed by a narrower avenue, Pierre Premier de Serbie. It was the home of the only man during the entire war to threaten me with a gun. I strolled to the block of flats, and saw with some excitement LAMARTINE against one of the numbers displayed in the hall. The lift was out of order, like most in Paris. I walked upstairs, full of curiosity.

My ring was answered by a plump, middle-aged woman in black, sleeves rolled back on pink arms, unwelcoming, alarmed at confrontation with a stranger in British battle-dress. She said in reply to my enquiry, _'Je suis madame Lamartine'._ So this was the wife he had deserted for the talkative Madame Chalmar. I had taken her for the maid. 'Are you a British officer? I speak some English.'

'I met Dr Lamartine during the war. I have a friendly interest in his whereabouts, that's all.'

'Dr Lamartine is dead,' she told me curtly.

I exclaimed, 'What happened?'

'My husband was killed in the big air raid by the RAF on March 3, 1942. He was living across at Montmartre. He had sent me and the children away from Paris when the war started.'

'I'm very sorry, madame,' I consoled her.

_'C'est la guerre,'_ she said briefly. 'When did you last see him, monsieur?'

'In Bordeaux, during the summer of 1940.'

She looked at me suspiciously. 'What was your business with my late husband?'

'You've heard of penicillin, I expect?' She nodded. 'Dr Lamartine had a specimen of penicillin mould, which I was sent from England to recover before the Germans could get their hands on it.'

'Henri would not have given it to the Boches,' she said promptly. 'He was not a collaborator, whatever people say. But there's no use talking about it now.' She started to shut the door. 'You knew Madame Chalmar? She was killed by the same bomb,' Madame Lamartine added with satisfaction. 'To be exact, the firemen found her with my husband's body, very hysterical. She died suddenly shortly after. I do not think she was a very healthy woman.'

'You knew her well?'

'No. I would not have wished to meet her.'

I walked slowly back to the street. I never had any liking for Lamartine. But I thought him stupid rather than sinister. For him to be killed by a British bomb struck me as a rather unnecessary exaggeration of irony. My experience stimulated my curiosity to call on Professor Piйry, his house being not far away by the Bois.

He had the same maid, puzzled at being unable to place me. He was at home, and received me in the dining-room with the same lurid colour photograph of his son, the fleeing lieutenant. He looked much older and even thinner. His cook's art had become the most pointless in France.

'My dear Mr Elgar-' He shook hands powerfully but solemnly, holding mine in both his. 'What terrible experiences we have suffered, since you last left this house. With the young Miss Tiplady