Free Dearest Jane... by Roger Mortimer Page A

splendid friends who were killed in the last war, I wonder if they would reckon they had been swindled if they could see England as it is today. Incompetent politicians, corrupt trade unions, punks, muggers – charming. The only good result of the last war was getting rid of that dangerous lunatic Hitler. For a short time I looked after some odious war criminals in a house in Kensington Palace Gardens. One, a general, was almost illiterate and simply had no idea of how to spell quite easy German words. He was just a crude thug. Far worse was a former Bavarian priest who gave me a feeling of acute nausea whenever I saw him. He was really cruel in an oily, odious way. Cruel war criminals were seldom Prussian; nearly always Bavarian or Austrian. The nicest man we had in London was Field Marshal von Runstedt, far more agreeable and amusing than many English senior officers, certainly more so than American top-ranking officers. I used to take him in a drink in the evening and we had a good gossip together. No one ever pinned any war crimes on him. A man turned up there, Hauptmann Ebse, who had punished one of his own sentries for failing to shoot me dead when he had the opportunity to do so in 1943. I soon had him scrubbing the cookhouse floor and peeling potatoes with a blunt knife.
    I also had to look after a lot of English officers awaiting trial by court martial for various offences. They were quite a jolly lot and I got up a successful little bridge tournament among them to help them pass the time.
    Best love,
    xx D
    As an avid reader of twentieth-century military history, he was perpetually re-examining the events of the two wars that reshaped our world
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The Crumblings
4 August [1970s]
    My Dearest Jane,
    The date, August 4th, always makes my blood run chilly. I can hardly bear to think of the appalling slaughter, all to no purpose. In the first few months of the war the French suffered more casualties than this country did in 4 years. They had been trained to attack come what may, and wearing blue coats and red trousers (the officers in white gloves) they advanced shoulder to shoulder with standards flying and trumpets blaring. The Germans sat tight and mowed them down with little loss to themselves. Gestures, like the dying French officer who called to his men ‘Debout les morts!’ were not much use. By Christmas the officer class had been destroyed. Even now I cannot read the staid official account of the Battle of the Somme without tears coming to my eyes. The British Army that attacked the Germans that day was an army of volunteers, the flower of the nation (the regular Army was wiped out at Ypres in 1914). At the Somme, the infantry, half trained, attacked Germans in deep shelters protected by uncut wire. They lost 55,000 killed on the first day, few of them ever setting eyes on a German. Some divisions were completely obliterated. Most battalions went into action with about 24 officers; few emerged with even half a dozen. That is why the left-wing actors in ‘Oh! What a Lovely War’ were so despicable, the whole attitude being that the officers shirked their duty and left everything to the other ranks. The average lifespan of the 2nd/Lt in the front line was about three weeks. Richard Attenborough’s malice in ‘A Bridge Too Far’ against certain senior officers (dead, conveniently for him) was contemptible. Less serious is that really there has not been much ‘douceur de vivre’ for the middle classes since 1914. World War II destroyed it all together.
    Love,
    xx D
    This chapter is dedicated to my father and his trusted friends and comrades, both those who died and those to whom he remained close for many more years
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    As ever, I give the last word to my father:
     
The Olde Nuthouse
20 March 1982 [on his pink pig paper]
    A good lunch party given by Desmond P. for ex POW chums. All healthy (bar me) and materially successful (except me). Two with dubiously earned knighthoods. One guest had a sexual slip up