Briefing for a Descent Into Hell - Doris May Lessing [90]
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