The coming week will see the last major commemoration of a second world war anniversary – 80 years since VE-Day – which a handful of surviving veterans will attend. It is unjust that VJ-Day in August will attract much less attention, but so did the Far East campaigns, much to the contemporary chagrin of the ‘Forgotten Army’ in Burma. One of Bill Slim’s soldiers was George MacDonald Fraser, whom I knew and adored, as did millions of fans of his Flashman books. In his fine memoir Quartered Safe Out Here, George described how one May day in 1945, as his company lined out to attack a Japanese-held village, a green young officer ran out in front of them and cried ecstatically: ‘Men! The war in Europe is over!’ This was received in silence, which the lieutenant tried to break by waving his hat and shouting: ‘Hip, hip hooray!’ Then somebody laughed, and ‘a great torrent of mirth’ swept the line, ‘punctuated by cries of “Git the boogers oot here!” and “Ev ye told Tojo, like?” and “Hey, son, is it awreet if we a’gan yam?”’ This was the Border Regiment, and the author explained that ‘Gan yam’ is Carlisle dialect for ‘Go home’. Then they fixed bayonets and attacked even as, back home, crowds danced in Piccadilly. George thought our generations wimps. In old age he wrote to me from his eyrie on the Isle of Man, expressing scorn for British soldiers in Afghanistan, who could not run fast enough to keep up with the Taliban, because they were burdened with body armour. He enclosed a wartime photo of himself, saying: ‘This is what we wore to chase Johnny Jap’ – shorts, boots, bush hat, sten gun.
My new book, Sword, explores one corner of D-Day, not to retell the ‘big picture’, but rather to describe the sensations of virgin soldiers plunged into action for the first time, mostly after four years in Britain training relentlessly and bored out of their minds. Evelyn Waugh had a fictional commando officer saying ruefully in 1941 ‘war seems to be mostly hanging about’, and so it jolly well was. When those novices were at last confronted by shot and shell, they experienced contrasting triumphs and failures of leadership. Courageous officers sometimes leapt to their feet and said, ‘Come on chaps, up and at ’em!’, only to find – a few with their last breaths – that nobody was behind them. In the book I cite the experience of a commando, wounded on D-Day, who found a colonel in the next English hospital bed to himself. This officer told him that his father and grandfather had, in former times, commanded the very battalion which he himself led ashore. But his men had declined to follow him towards the enemy. One morning the commando awoke to find that, though the colonel had not seemed badly wounded, he was dead. He wrote of this tragic figure: ‘I think he died of shame.’
Netflix’s sudden surge of quality includes The Leopard, in which every literate Spectator reader will have delighted, and The Children’s Train, another Italian triumph which you might have missed. Can anybody explain why There’s Still Tomorrow, which was big box office in Italy in 2023, hasn’t been streamed in Britain? Loving all things Italian, we sob about missing it.
Inoffensive travellers, including a number of academics, have been turned back from the frontier of Trump’s America. I have denounced Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians – indeed, given some money for humanitarian relief in Gaza. In the Times, I have described the President and his people as ignorant brutes. Should I be perverse enough to attempt to visit the US, these modest gestures should suffice to ensure that I am denied entry. Do let’s hurry up and get firm dates for the state visit. I have not attended a demo for 60 years, but we hicks want to write ‘Trump in London’ in our diaries, to be sure we are out there with our placards.
Good to see the scandal of vets’ extortionate charges receiving ever more publicity. A visiting grandchild dropped half a bread-and-butter pudding on the floor, only to have it wolfed by our spaniel. Raisins are death to dogs, and thus we felt obliged to dash to the vet, make him sick and retrieve the raisins. That little outing cost £160, and when our old Labrador had a funny turn the following week, an overnight at the surgery added another £367. Charges have ballooned since private equity – wicked words, pernicious activity – got its claws into animal welfare, as several vets have written to me to testify. In Europe, comparable fees are 25 per cent of what most British vets now demand.
To book tickets for The Book Club Live: an evening with Max Hastings on 15 May, go to www.spectator.co.uk/maxhastings.
Comments