The Fall of Fortresses: The Classic Account of One of the Most Daring and Deadly Air Battles of WWII by Bendiner Elmer

Author:Bendiner, Elmer [Bendiner, Elmer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silvertail Books
Published: 2020-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

9

At St. James's Palace a guard in battle dress emerged from his box, clattered, walloped and banged his rifle, flipped it here, flipped it there, stamped about and presented arms. I was the lone witness to the perfor­mance; he could have carried it out only in my honor. I was as embarrassed as if I had broken wind in West­minster Abbey. I saluted smilingly. Unsmiling, he re­versed the process, unwinding himself rhythmically to his original position.

As clearly as I beheld that guard on solitary parade, I saw Charles I ride down Whitehall past the Admiralty building with its bare-branched forest of aerials to lay his head on a black-draped block. There were ducks and governesses and seedy men with stained mustaches sipping their morning tea in the park across the road from Charles’s Scaffold.

A yellow August haze cloaks these recollections of London during the frantic twenty-four-hour passes which we snatched between battles. From the Victoria Embankment near the monument to abolitionists with its playful gimcrackery I watched the shaggy tugs, snorting like buffaloes. And I looked longingly at Amer­ican tankers. On these vessels, available to airmen who could talk their way on board, were sumptuous steaks topped with eggs, such as were found nowhere else in England or in any army mess except the rear-echelon, top-Brass hostelries at Wing or SHAEF.

I watched Hogarth draw gin-soaked whores on Beth­nal Green. I saw Love for Love with Pepys at the Hay market, and called, “Author.” Just off Berkeley Square, at No. 4 Charles Street, there stood a narrow gray stone house that is a delicious memory. Its archi­tecture had the tired elegance and subdued good man­ners of its neighbors, many of which were boarded up, their owners gone to war or to the country. It had mullioned bay windows, a brass knocker and a cast-iron gate.

Inside, all pretensions were dropped. The carpeting was worn. The hat rack and umbrella stand, com­monplace and rickety, no longer expected to be used. A man stepped out to take one’s coat, but he was more host than doorman. He wore a light pullover, as I recall. Down the stairwell of an evening drifted a blend of beef stew, Bovril, tobacco, gin and the tinkling of a piano.

There was an undeniable touch of snobbery in the excessive casualness of the place, like a duchess in denim, but I do not think it spoiled the stew or flattened the whiskey. It was called—pointlessly, so far as I know—the Brevet Club, reserved for flyers only. Though restricted to airmen, it was open to all ranks of all countries. The membership fee was negligible. The privileges: admission to the bar and restaurant, where despite your card you had to pay your way; and a bed in a dorm for three or four at a modest price, with tea brought up in the morning by the barmaid. Actually what the Brevet offered above all else was admission to a circle of warming reassurance, which is the raison d'être for all exclusive clubs.

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