A Book of Railway Journeys Read online

  The town had been bombed by the Italians, then it had been badly damaged by an earthquake, and now it was receiving regular attention from the Luftwaffe. It was an awful mess. The Greek railway staff had run away and it was obvious that the two ammunition trains had been abandoned. I knew that we were seriously short of ammunition further down the line so I went to the Brigadier in charge of the base and asked permission to try to get one of the trains away. It was given with alacrity.

  I don’t want you to think that this action on my part was public-spirited, or anything like that. My motives were purely selfish. We wanted a job. We were a small unit which had been carrying out various irregular activities further north; but now the sort of tasks for which we were designed had become impossible, and we were in danger of becoming redundant. We felt that if we could get this train away we should be doing something useful and justifying our existence. Besides, one of us claimed that he knew how to drive an engine.

  This was Norman Johnstone, a brother officer in the Grenadier Guards. One of our jobs earlier in the campaign had been to destroy some rolling stock which could not be moved away. Norman had a splendid time blowing up about twenty valuable locomotives and a lot of trucks, but towards the end we ran out of explosives. At this stage a sergeant in the 4th Hussars turned up, who was an engine-driver in civilian life. With Norman helping him, he got steam up in the four surviving engines, drove them a quarter of a mile down the line, then sent them full tilt back into the station, where they caused further havoc of a spectacular and enjoyable kind.

  These were perhaps not ideal conditions under which to learn how to drive an engine, especially as the whole thing was carried out under shell-fire; all we knew for certain about Norman’s capabilities as an engine-driver was that every single locomotive with which he had been associated had become scrap metal in a matter of minutes. Still, he is a determined and methodical chap, and there seemed no harm in letting him have a go. So early in the morning we made our way to the railway station, just in time for the first air-raid of the day. Except for occasional parties of refugees and stragglers from the Greek army the station was deserted. There were two excellent reasons for this. First of all there were no trains running, so there was no point in anybody going there. Secondly, the station was practically the only thing left in the ruins of Larissa that was worth bombing; we had ten air raids altogether before we left in the afternoon, and they always had a go at the station.

  The first thing we had to do was to get steam up in a railway engine. There were plenty of these about but all except two had been rendered unserviceable by the Luftwaffe. We started work on the bigger of the two. After having a quick look round, Norman explained to us that one of the most popular and probably in the long run the soundest of all methods of making steam was by boiling water, but that we might have to devise some alternative formula as the water mains had been cut by bombs and there was very little coal to be found. However, in the end we got together enough of these two more or less essential ingredients, and all was going well when one of the few really large bombs that came our way blew a hole in the track just outside the shed we were working in, thus, as it were, locking the stable door before we had been able to steal the horse. Greatly disgusted, we transferred our attention to the other sound engine.

  There were more air-raids, and it came on to rain, and two Greek deserters stole my car, and altogether things did not look very hopeful, especially when somebody pointed out that there was now only one undamaged and navigable set of tracks leading out of the battered marshalling yard. But the needle on the pressure-gauge in the cabin of our engine was rising slowly, and at last, whistling excitedly, the ancient machine got under way. She was a majestic sight, and would have been even more majestic if she had not gone backwards instead of forwards.

  It was at this point that a certain gap in Norman’s education as an engine-driver became evident. The sergeant in the 4th Hussars had taught him how to start a locomotive and how to launch it on a career of self-destruction; but Norman’s early training in how to stop an engine had been confined entirely to making it run violently into a lot of other rolling stock. We trotted anxiously along the cinders, hanging, so to speak, on to Norman’s stirrup leathers. “Do you know how to stop?” we shouted. “Not yet,” replied Norman, a trifle testily. But he soon found out and presently mastered the knack of making the engine go forward as well as backwards, and we steamed rather incredulously northwards towards the siding where the ammunition trains lay.

  We chose the bigger of the two. It consisted of twenty-six trucks containing 120 tons of ammunition and 150 tons of petrol. It was not what you might call an ideally balanced cargo from our point of view, and nobody particularly wanted the petrol, but the train was made up like that and we had to lump it.

  It really was rather a proud moment when we steamed back through Larissa with this enormous train clattering along behind us, and out into the broad plain of Thessaly. Norman drove, the stoker was Oliver Barstow—a young officer in the Royal Horse Artillery who was killed a few days later—and Guardsman Loveday and I, armed with our only tommy-gun, prepared to engage any hostile aircraft who might be so foolhardy as to come within range. It was a lovely evening, and we all felt tremendously pleased with ourselves. Driving a train, once you have got the beastly thing started, seemed to be extraordinarily easy. No steering, no gear-changing, no problems of navigation, no flat tyres, none of those uncomfortable suspicions that perhaps after all you ought to have taken that last turning to the left. There’s nothing in it, we told each other.

  Almost as soon as we had left Larissa we had begun to climb up a long, gentle slope; and we had only done about five miles when the needle on the pressure gauge began slowly but firmly to fall. We stoked like mad. Norman pulled, pushed and twiddled the various devices on what we incorrectly called the dashboard. Pressure continued to fall, and the train went slower and slower. At last it stopped altogether. “We’d better get out,” said Norman, “and have a look at the injector-sprockets.” He may not actually have said “injector-sprockets” but anyhow it was some technical term which meant nothing to us and may not have meant a very great deal to him. It was at this point that we realized that the train had not merely stopped but was beginning to run slowly backwards down the hill. The thought of free-wheeling backwards into Larissa was distasteful to all of us. In the hurry of departure we had had no time to organize our ten brakesmen, who were all confined in the guards’ van instead of being dispersed along the train so that they could operate the brakes on individual goods wagons. There was only one thing to do. I leapt off the engine and ran back down the train as fast as I could, like an old lady running for a bus: jumped on the back of the nearest goods van, swarmed up a little ladder on to its roof and feverishly turned the wheel which put the brake on. The train continued to go backwards, but it seemed to be losing speed and at last, after I had repeated this operation several times, it came reluctantly to a stop.

  We were really having a great deal of fun with this train. We had got a tremendous kick out of starting it, and now we were scarcely less elated at having brought it to a standstill. But we had to face the facts, and the main fact was that as engine-drivers, though we had no doubt some excellent qualities—originality, determination, cheerfulness, and so on—we were open to the serious criticism that we did not seem to be able to drive our engine very far. A run of five miles, with a small discount for going backwards unexpectedly, is not much to show for a hard day’s work. At this point, moreover, it suddenly began to look as if we were going to lose our precious train altogether. As we tinkered away at the engine, the air grew loud with an expected but none the less unwelcome noise, and a number of enemy bombers could be seen marching through the sky towards us. We were a conspicuous object in the middle of that empty plain and I quickly gave orders for the ten soldiers in the guard’s van to go and take cover 500 yards from the train. In point of fact there was no cover to take, but they trotted off with alac
rity and sat down round a small tree about the size of a big gooseberry bush in the middle distance. We ourselves couldn’t very well leave the engine because the fire might have gone out (or anyhow we thought it might) and we should have had to start all over again.

  But if we had our troubles, the enemy, as so often happens, had his too. The bombers were obviously interested in us, but it soon became equally obvious that they had no bombs, having wasted all theirs on the ruins of Larissa earlier in the day. They still, however, had their machine-guns and three or four of the aircraft proceeded to attack us, coming in very low one after the other. But they all made the same mistake, which they might not have made if we ourselves had taken evasive action and left the train. They all attacked the engine, round which they could see signs of life, instead of flying up and down the twenty-odd wagons full of petrol and high explosive and spraying them with bullets, which could hardly have failed to produce results of some sort. They concentrated on putting the engine out of action; and the engine, as we ourselves were just beginning to realize, was out of action already, all the water in the boiler having somehow disappeared.

  We used the engine in much the same way as one uses a grouse-butt. Whichever side the attack was coming from, we got the other side. The flying-machine, making a terrible noise and blazing away with its machine-guns, swept down on us, and as it roared overhead—much bigger, much more malevolent but not really very much higher than the average grouse—we pooped off at it with our tommy-gun, to which the German rear-gunner replied with a burst that kicked up the dust a hundred yards away or more. It got rather silly after a bit. I am quite sure we never hit the Luftwaffe, and the only damage the Luftwaffe did to us was to make a hole in a map somebody had left in the cab. And one of the things about driving a train is that you don’t need a map to do it with. They gave it up quite soon—it was getting late anyhow—and went home to Bulgaria. We climbed back into our engine again and as I looked at our only casualty—the map, torn by an explosive bullet and covered with coal dust—I couldn’t help rather envying the Luftwaffe, who almost certainly believed that they had succeeded in doing what they set out to do. It was only too obvious that we had not. Night fell, and it was fairly cold.

  Then, all of a sudden, out of the darkness, another train appeared. It was full of Australian gunners whose guns were supposed to have come on by road. They towed us back to the next station. Here we picked up a good engine with a Greek driver and set off for the south. It was ideal weather all next day—pouring rain and low cloud—and we never saw a German aeroplane at all. Forty-eight hours after we had started work on this unlikely project we reached our—or rather the ammunition’s—destination. It was a place called Amphykleion and here I formally handed over the train—twenty-six coaches, 150 tons of petrol, 120 tons of ammunition—to the supply people. Everyone was delighted with it. “This really will make a difference,” they said. We felt childishly pleased. The sun shone, it was a lovely morning. And this marked improvement in the weather made it comparatively easy for a small force of German dive-bombers, a few hours later, to dispose of the train and all its contents with a terrible finality.

  So you see this is not a success story. Nor is it a story which can have—from me, at any rate—a moral; for the only possible moral anyone can draw from it is that human endeavour is always likely to be futile, that it is better to leave ammunition trains in their sidings. And I hope the nonsense I have talked has not included anything as nonsensical as that.

  PETER FLEMING,

  With the Guards to Mexico

  An English girl in Hitler’s Germany

  In 1934 Christabel Burton, a niece of Lord Northcliffe, married Peter Bielenberg, a Hamburg lawyer. She was in Germany throughout the war, and in this excerpt from her book The Past Is Myself, she describes a train journey out of Berlin late in 1944. The “Adam” and “Carl” referred to are Adam von Trott and Carl Langbehn, both friends who were executed by the Nazis for their part in the German Resistance. While waiting for the train, Christabel Bielenberg is befriended by a Herr Lemke, who helps find her a seat.

  We sat together in the deathly quiet which always seemed to descend before an air-raid; an involuntary, almost reverent silence, a tribute, a fleeting prayer for those who were about to die. An occasional dull booming was the only sound to be heard, and Herr Lemke whispered out of the darkness that he thought it was not anti-aircraft as yet, but the Russian guns from the Eastern front. My countrymen were taking longer than usual to arrive this time, I thought vaguely; sometimes they did seem to wait around for a bit before coming in to the kill. Slowly then, one after another, the searchlights soared up into the darkness and began their ritual dance across the clear starlit sky; the reception committee—it could not be long now.

  Then, quietly, without warning the train began to move, slowly, almost hesitantly at first, clanking over the points, out from under the domed roof it began to gather speed. Herr Lemke was jubilant. “What did I say, you see, Gnä’ Frau, what did I say? A combination of German planning and English calm and Irish luck could run the world. Oh dear, I must laugh. How pleased Mutti will be when I tell her this story. ‘Papi,’ she will say, ‘I knew you would get home somehow.’ But this calls for a little celebration. Wait now, I must find the glasses.”

  He was on his feet, fussing about, feeling for his suitcases, seemingly quite oblivious of the fact that we were still in the target area. He seemed to be taking off his boots and I could almost imagine him putting on his bedroom slippers—carpet slippers, I’d be bound. A rustle of paper, either the promised glasses or a neat packet of sandwiches—a smell of smoked ham—it was sandwiches.

  Suddenly a blinding light filled the carriage. A searchlight sweeping upwards from just beside the track, shone for a few fleeting seconds straight through our window and threw our small world into brilliant relief; every detail stood out as in a flashlight photograph. Papi Lemke’s stockinged feet resting neatly side by side on a folded newspaper, next door to his opened suitcase. My rucksack, and above it hanging from the rack, the usual yellow and black notice, “Achtung Feind hört mit”—“Beware an enemy may be listening.” Helmuth Moltke had had such a warning hanging in his library, Freya had pinched it from somewhere and given it to him as a joke. On the rack to the right of this one, though, lay a black peaked army cap, decorated with the skull and crossbones, a Sam Browne belt too, and in the corner next to the window opposite, staring straight at me, sat a tall figure in black uniform, motionless as a statue. I had time to register fair short-clipped hair, a pale long rather handsome face, even a curious twitch in one cheek, once—twice, it forced him to wink with one eye and it was the only sign he gave of being alive.

  Then the searchlight swung away from the train and the picture faded slowly into darkness. I slid back along the seat and nudged Herr Lemke, and told him perhaps we should tidy our luggage as we were not alone in the compartment. In case he should not have seen the cap on the rack opposite, I drew the sign of the Swastika on his knee with my finger. I need not have bothered. Poor Herr Lemke, he had seen it all right and, no doubt, the forked lightning insignia on the uniform as well. He kept clearing his throat and I could almost sense his sitting to attention. “Gestatten Sie, excuse me—Sir—would you allow me to offer you a sandwich?” “No—I would not,” the answer came in a slow, insulting drawl. “A little cognac perhaps?” “No.” This was terrible, I could hear my friend shuffling about in his corner—finally “But you, Fräulein, Gnädige Frau, perhaps you would give me the pleasure?” I would have liked to come to his rescue, as I knew he was suffering, wondering desperately if he had said anything he shouldn’t have, and wishing to goodness that he had closed his suitcase with the forbidden brandy. But I dared not help him out. I had eaten practically nothing all day and something told me I might need a clear head. “I’m sorry, Herr Lemke, but I don’t think I will just now.” That settled it. He cleared his throat again and murmured something about having left his bedroom slippers in t
he hotel. I heard him fold up his sandwich paper and his suitcase clicked shut. Then he slid open the door to the corridor and shut it firmly behind him. He returned some minutes later to grab his other suitcase, moving so quietly that I supposed he must be carrying even his carpet slippers. In his agitation he even forgot to say goodbye.

  The silence was broken by a short laugh from the opposite bench. “A brave little fellow, our erstwhile travelling companion.” The voice was quiet and cultivated, with an accent I could not locate. “I expect he wanted to stretch out in a carriage to himself.” In truth I felt a bit deserted, but it seemed only fair to try and rustle up some remnant of loyalty.

  “With his bottles of loot, no doubt.”

  I did not answer, hoping that he would leave it at that, but no—“You are travelling far, Gnädige Frau?” “Far? Well, not so far really, it all depends what one calls far—” the old technique, an answer and no answer.

  “It’s very cold in this compartment isn’t it? Would you care to have my army coat over your knees? I don’t need it as I have my sheepskin affair.”

  “That’s very nice of you, but actually I have on my skiing clothes and I am fairly all right as yet.”

  How I wished he would leave me alone; I was so tired, I was finding it so hard to concentrate, but his next question had me wishing sincerely that I had followed Herr Lemke’s good example and left the carriage.

  “Would you mind my asking where you come from?”

  I supposed I had made some mistake with my German, but there was a chance that the question was put quite innocently, so I told him I didn’t mind his asking a bit, but wondered could he guess. After a moment’s pause he said he did not know. Sweden? Holland, perhaps? But then a little while back I had made some remark in unmistakable Black Forest dialect. “I am living in the Black Forest at present, with my children,” I said. “I am neither Swedish nor Dutch. By the way, where do you come from?” In order to evade a straight answer I knew that I was getting drawn into a wretched conversation, but I was too tired to think up a way out.