Free Life Without Armour by Alan; Sillitoe Page A

network of towns and cities the more certain were they to lose, as had Napoleon over a hundred years before, but such vigorously gritty place-names on the map as Novograd Volynsk, Riga, Byelaya Tserkov, Vorishilovgrad and Dniepropetrovsk were a pleasure to hunt for, pencil and rubber in frequent use as the line shifted east across the map.
    The accumulation of books no longer inflamed my father. Being in work, they didn’t seem a waste of money, especially since during the war there wasn’t much else you could buy. I even persuaded him to get me the six volumes of Practical Knowledge for All , for thirty-six shillings to be paid for by instalments, though he failed to meet the last few, and I settled the debt on starting work. The books covered every subject, but I concentrated most on surveying, geography, French and, later, aviation, losing myself night after night in this detached treasure-house of information.
    At school I wrote an essay on the possible strategic aims of the German offensive in the direction of Rostov-on-Don, explaining how the push must then continue south-east towards the Caucasus so as to gain control of oil wells at Grozny and Mozdok – both places shown on the map – which were needed for their industries and war effort.
    Such comments had obviously been heard on the wireless but, written several times in rough form, then copied in my best hand into a clean exercise book, I showed the essay to Percy Rowe, hoping perhaps for a word of praise. After looking at it, he told me to stand before the class and read it – an embarrassing performance. Perhaps he was impressed, because the following week he lent me G.D.H. Cole’s Post War Europe , a book too long and closely written for me to take in.
    Sorting more assiduously through Frank Wore’s basement, I formed an obsessive liking for Baedeker’s little red guidebooks, and volumes of the Guides Bleus series. These increased my geographical knowledge, as well as French, and delighted me with their coloured maps. In the street plans of German cities one could pick out industrial areas said to be targets of the RAF, but those often dilapidated publications from a not too bygone age, with their descriptions of places in countries of western and southern Europe, also indicated a stable and desirable world beyond the one in which I was all too firmly fixed.
    From the library I took what books there were about travelling in Russia, though their topographical information was too often unsatisfactory. In a collection of Russian folk tales I liked one which told of the Devil, suitably disguised, who came to a village and said to the assembled people that whatever ground any of them could walk around in a day they would own. In the burning month of August those who decide to get as much free land as possible set off into the blue for a dozen or so versts before turning ninety degrees to continue the square. All fall dead or exhausted by the afternoon, and accomplish nothing. The only person to end with a piece of land was a Jewish man, who walked a few hundred yards one way and completed the square in an hour or so which, I thought, on finishing the story, and realizing what an intelligent person he was, is exactly what I would have done.
    Other books taken from the library were those of the ‘Ten Pounds’ series: France on Ten Pounds, Italy on Ten Pounds etc, indicating that after the war, whenever that would be, it might be possible to visit such countries on what could be saved out of my wages.
    On Saturday afternoon, either before or after the usual browse at Frank Wore’s, I would call at a travel agency up an alley in the middle of town and beg, buy or talk the elderly and now underemployed clerk into parting with travel brochures on France, Belgium and Switzerland. Most contained maps, plans and pictures, as well as interesting advertisements for spas and hotels. This did not go on too long, because after a while he