Cambridge Tales 5: ‘East of the Rhine’

For Andrew Tatham

I can’t unerringly recall how the ‘East of the Rhine Drinking Society’ started – and it only met three or four times – but it has left a long vapour trail across my mind.

At first, you didn’t notice Eric Smith at postgraduate gatherings, as he was slight and about five foot six. But when your eyes did light on him, he instantly stood out from the other historians: he was dapper and, well, really very handsome. He had strong black hair and close-shaven stubble visible from a distance on a slightly gaunt face, twinkling blue eyes, rather beautiful lips that curled when he spoke, as though about to stammer, and was impeccably dressed in jacket, waistcoat and dark red tie. He always seemed to be conversing with a restrained but intense humour. Nevertheless, I did not make his acquaintance at these gatherings. He stood ramrod straight and his nickname, I heard, was ‘The General’.

What I think happened is that we once found ourselves walking up the same road to our respective accommodation, he stopped until I caught up with him, and he initiated a humorous conversation. I noticed that if he found something deeply funny, his eyes would twinkle more than ever and seem to withdraw into his head. When we reached the college house I lived in, I must have invited him in to finish a bottle of vodka I had left from a party, together with the remains of some gherkins and rollmops.

I remember that he was delighted by the innovation of knocking back small glasses of chilled vodka and following them with a tiny snack. He was animated, but sat stiffly in his armchair, and I soon realised that his lower jaw was somewhat set, too. It flashed on me that, although only about twenty-five, he had some incipient neurological complaint, especially as his hand occasionally quivered.

Apart from immediate tacit agreement about the Soviet Union, the only thing I recall from this session was that Eric took a childlike pleasure in double- and triple-barrelled names. It emerged when he happened to mention his supervisor, Hugh Quabberton-Minns. He dissolved in laughter.

‘Quabberton-Minns! Qua-bber-ton Minns!’ He spoke slowly, deliberately, and his whole face beamed. ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it…how they all seem to have these mouthfuls of names… It somehow immediately gives them more “bottom”!’

He took a slow, particular drag on his long cigarette, then held it close to his face, the smoke braiding upwards.

‘When we were in Africa, my father knew Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa…’ He looked up and enunciated the name rotundly. ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ He rolled it off his tongue with twinkling eyes and a series of short laughs from his throat. ‘Or: Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam! See-woo-sagur Ram-goolam! Mind you, that’s not double barrelled. Do they have them in Russian?’

I am afraid I could think of only one. But in next to no time Eric was able to reproduce it.

‘Afan-arsy Ars-aynevich Kutoo-zov Golen-ee-shchev… Fan-tastic!’ He repeated it several times, then: ‘Did you know that Ranulph Fiennes is really Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes?’

I did not, so I practised saying it. I must admit, the fruity aristocratism of such names had always amused me, and we finished the bottle of vodka spluttering and collapsing in laughter over the increasingly concatenated and preposterous varieties Eric produced from his store.

A week or two later, I suppose, Eric buttonholed me after Hall and asked me if I would like to come to him ‘for a return match’ on a day that he named. It was possible for me to accept.

He lived in the smallest flat of his postgraduate hostel, up six flights of stairs. I entered straight into the tiny living room, which was set out: two chairs, a coffee table between them with a bowl of peanuts, two small tumblers, and in the middle a tall, unopened bottle of schnapps.

Eric was in an infectiously merry mood. He was standing fairly rigidly to welcome me, in waistcoat and red tie, but grinning all over his face and even lightly rubbing his hands. He dug his jaw forwards as he laughed his deep-throated laugh.

‘Huh-huh-huh! I thought this evening we would drink from another culture – as it were!’

We sat down immediately and he broke the seal on the bottle.

‘Let’s drink first to our finishing our theses! Prosit!’

‘Do we have to click our heels?’ I said, and raised my glass.

My main experience of spirits hitherto had been of vodka; so I may have downed too much of the glass first go. Neat schnapps was certainly a more substantial drink…

‘I saw you chatting to Maurice Dawson at Hall.’

‘Yes, he’s offering to let me read his thesis.’

‘Huh-huh-huh! It’s on Thomas Tabberer, isn’t it? Some very minor Tudor chancellor…’

‘Yurss… He’s not only finished it, it’s bound and submitted. Apparently it’s quite slim and I could read it in an evening.’

‘Huh-huh-huh, I bet you could – if you wanted to! He’s finished it two terms early and will probably go off to teach at Marlborough or somewhere. He’s a schoolmaster! Thos Cromwell is the only interesting Tudor chancellor…’

Eric poured us another glass of schnapps and expanded on Sir Thomas More, whom he considered ‘a fraud’. More was ‘a reactionary’… I expatiated on Konstantin Pobedonostsev, certainly a reactionary religious statesman under Alexander III…

Suddenly, the front door opened and a slim girl of about seventeen darted in. She had lightish hair and wore a grey dress with, however, a turquoise shirt over the top. She moved deftly round us, with her eyes downcast, but I could just see a demure smile on her mouth. She was carrying a small pile of ironed clothes. She flitted into the gyp room and quietly closed the sliding door behind her.

I looked at Eric. He twinkled his eyes and grinned at me.

‘That’s Mila.’

‘She’s, er…’

‘Yes! Her older sister is even prettier. Actually, the older sister is stunning…but already betrothed. They are twigs on the Persian royal tree, you know.’

I asked no questions. I had the impression from a few clinks that Mila was washing up.

‘Let’s have another. Good, isn’t it? Echt deutsch!’

The conversation turned to my experiences in Russia, which, unlike most people, Eric was genuinely interested in. Suddenly the gyp room door opened. Mila nipped past us into what I assumed was Eric’s bedroom, emerged with a carrier bag, and was making for the front door.

‘Thank you, Mila.’

The girl stopped, half turned to Eric, smiled, and was gone.

‘Actually, I am very interested in Prussia. I’ve been there a few times…former Prussia, you understand, as both the Americans and Adenauer wanted to abolish it. Prussia played a massive part in German history… You and I, one could say, are both East of the Rhine blokes!’

He poured us another glass of schnapps and I scooped up some peanuts.

I had known that Eric’s field was military history; now, as we slugged our way through the bottle, more emerged. He had first become interested in the German army when he did World War 1 at school. Schlieffen, the Moltkes, Falkenhayn, they were all Prussians of course…and they all failed… His focus now was World War 2 and the ‘Battle of Egypt’.

‘Churchill invented that name for it. “Not the end, nor even the beginning of the end”,’ he chuckled imitatively, ‘“but perhaps the end of the beginning”…’

The conversation got slower and slower. To an observer, the pauses would have far outweighed the words. In fact, recalling it now it seems ‘timeless’; as though Eric’s one-liners were suspended in Time.

‘He desperately needed a victory, you see… Alamein was it… The “turning point” of the War… I’m taking an ex-tremely close look at El Alamein… Day by day… And “Monty”…’

After the schnapps, I am pretty sure Eric produced a bottle of white wine, which we also drained. Between glasses and weighty utterances, we dozed where we sat, then somehow or other I negotiated all the stairs and got home around three.

About a fortnight later I was sitting deep in one of the distressed leather armchairs of the Middle Combination Room reading the paper, when Eric looked round the door, greeted, sat down next to me, and picked up the Spectator.

‘Isn’t it about time we had another meeting of the East of the Rhine Drinking Society?’ he grinned.

I knew what this meant, of course, so I prepared with lemon zest a bottle of green label Moskovskaya and put it in the freezer for a week later.

He was on sparkling form, assisted by the plates of zakuski I had laid on.

‘Since our last meeting, I’ve become a revisionist! You see, I just don’t believe the Battle of El Alamein was the turning point of World War 2 that it’s cracked up to be. Churchill ordered all the bells to be rung after it, of course, because in 1942 he desperately needed a victory. The Conservative Party were beginning to doubt his leadership! When you come down to it, Stalin was right to tell Churchill that he was scared of fighting the Germans – by attacking across the Channel.’

‘Ah, well, you can’t expect me to agree with Stalin!’

‘Certainly, certainly, but it was the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk that really turned the tide against Hitler. Look: the death toll at Alamein was infinitesimal, compared with the half a million men the Germans and Russians each lost during the Stalingrad campaign!’

‘But Montgomery defeated Rommel, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. Yes, he did. In the summer of 1942 Churchill shouted at his War Cabinet: “Rommel, Rommel, Rommel, Rommel! What matters but defeating him?” The Eighth Army pushed the Panzer Army Africa back to Tunis, it surrendered, but Rommel – the “Desert Fox”! – escaped. He is by far the most interesting, original and innovative general. Montgomery was a set-battle man. You can’t imagine him downing a schnapps or smoking! He was a dry old stick…there’s something cold and peculiar about Monty. He was ascetic, you know, almost Edwardian.’

Eric continued to expound his ‘revisionist’ view of the Battle of El Alamein through three or four more vodkas, then turned to asking me about Russian women. But I also discovered something startling about him. He revealed that a year earlier he had joined the Territorial Army, having held some superior rank in the Combined Cadet Force at school. I could imagine his TA uniform hanging in his wardrobe, as immaculate as his usual state of dress, but wondered how his hand tremor might affect his markmanship.

The third meeting of the East of the Rhine Drinking Society was a significant deterioration. Entering Eric’s room, I saw a short, goblet-like glass set out on either side of the table, with a bottle of beer and a tall glass beside each. This combination, Eric explained, was a Herrengedeck (drinker’s set). Into the small glass he poured a clear liquid called Korn. You could down this in one like vodka, but it was probably best not to, huh-huh-huh; the real point of the Herrengedeck was to ‘chase’ it down with the beer (which was also German). I am glad he warned me about the Korn, because it was absolutely disgusting. It somehow tasted as though it was raw rye grain, it immediately hollowed out my mouth, and when it hit my stomach I wanted to vomit. The beer on top was certainly a relief.

After relating with many a witty dig and radiant smile that he was feeling more and more ‘alienated’ from the other college historians, Eric took up again the character of Bernard Montgomery.

‘He was boring! You only have to look at him… Always wearing sack and that ridiculous black beret! Then look at Rommel – ’ He went to his desk and showed me a framed photo. ‘The full suavity of a German field marshal, with his embossed shoulder boards, stars, the eagle on his breast pocket, and the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords at his throat…’

‘Quite the Kurt Steiner from The Eagle Has Landed.’

‘Well, Caine certainly knew how to wear that uniform…’

‘But someone in Russia once told me that when Monty appeared at a reception in the Kremlin, everyone was amazed that he was wearing only one medal – perhaps the Order of Merit or something. Zhukov’s chest, for instance, looked like an iconostasis. At first everyone found it ridiculous that Monty was wearing only one medal, but then, apparently, they respected him for it. It was the sort of thing only Stalin could have done.’

‘Hm – huh, huh, huh – Mongomery saw himself as a “Christian soldier”. He had no charisma!’

Eric poured us each another Korn and opened two more bottles of beer. He loosened his tie, undid his shirt collar, and lit a long cigarette. I continued my line:

‘But I thought Monty’s troops adored him, didn’t they? And that was a big part of his success…’

‘Just imitating Rommel! Not only his own troops adored Rommel, the Italians did, and even the Arabs and colonial troops. He always led from the front, you see, he would get stuck in with his men hauling vehicles out of rivers, he – ’

Mila appeared, with a pile of ironed clothes, and darted into the gyp room.

Eric was off. He explained, to my scepticism, that Rommel believed in Krieg ohne Haß (war without hatred). Rommel had refused to hand over Jews in North Africa for the Final Solution. Rommel would not poison wells when he retreated from territory he had won. Rommel loathed the Gestapo. Rommel was a ‘chivalrous’ and completely professional soldier…

Eric poured us more Korn and beer (there was absolutely nothing to eat with it) and got going on how Israeli commanders like Moshe Dayan regarded Rommel as superior to Montgomery and even a ‘model’ for themselves.

Mila finished her washing up and retrieved another plastic carrier bag from Eric’s bedroom.

‘Here, Mila – meet Gerald!’

The girl gave me a nod, then tightened her little mouth, glared briefly at Eric, and was gone.

‘Rommel wasn’t Prussian, was he?’

‘No. And that’s the whole point. He was able to view that whole military tradition and its failures from outside, and innovate. That, of course, is what interests me. Even in World War 1 as a lieutenant he would attack from unexpected directions – even behind enemy lines – and always take the initiative to mount an assault. These tactics were behind his bestseller Infantry Attack, which Hitler read. But I’m particularly interested in his last, unfinished book Tank Attack. Where is the manuscript of that? I’ve decided now to make Rommel the subject of my thesis.’

I was delighted that in the second year of his Ph.D. Eric had finally decided on its theme. ‘Rommel’ seemed rather a large subject to me, but I assumed he would be concentrating on the military theory side.

We finished the Korn and all the beer, then Eric fetched some cans of lager from his fridge. I fell asleep.

This must have been in the winter of 1995. I definitely met Eric at least once more before I left for Moscow in late March, but I am sure that it wasn’t at a session of the East of the Rhine Drinking Society. I fancy I’d decided to avoid any more of those, but it was my turn and I think I deflected him into a Berni Inn, where we could not share any bottles of spirits. I clearly remember him being elated, and wearing a brand new jacket.

‘I am going to Germany!’ he announced. ‘Just after you leave for Russia. I’m going for six weeks, to work in the Rommel archive, and a professor in Stuttgart – who rejoices in the name Heinrich von und zu Stebbling-Zechstein – is going to introduce me to the Rommel family.’ Eric beamed with retracted eyes and rubbed his hands.

‘Excellent. Well here’s to it!’ I said, raising a schooner of sherry. ‘What exactly will you be working on?’

‘The bits and pieces of Tank Attack, but also Erwin’s relationship with Hitler.’

‘Rommel was politically naive, wasn’t he?’

‘Goodness no. By 1944 he had his own plan for ending the war.’

‘How far did it get?’

‘Well, of course, he joined the 20 July plot and it cost him his life.’

‘But he can’t have understood much about totalitarianism, if he actually attended meetings of conspirators. Lots of Russian generals hated Stalin’s guts, but they would never have proceeded so openly; they knew they would practically have to communicate by telepathy, or act as a lone assassin.’

‘Ha! Maybe that’s why there was no attempted coup in Russia, but there was in Germany! I can see that you don’t like Rommel, Gerald. I’ve come to the conclusion he is the exemplar of a military leader.’

Eric paused. The humour slid from his face, he looked down at the tablecloth, then spoke emphatically.

‘A great commander of men…brilliant tactician…an uncanny feel for the battlefield…apolitical, and a victim of Nazism.’

This was the last time I saw Eric. I had been in Moscow four months when I received an airmail envelope through the Embassy post which contained a photograph of him in uniform sitting at a makeshift table in a wood, with some British officers and soldiers whose uniform I didn’t recognise. They were all holding aloft small glasses and there were several bottles on the table. Eric was grinning broadly and had written on the back:

Vitez, 25 June. The East of the Rhine D.S. lives! This is the real thing. Slivovitz all round! These Serbs are fine fighting men. Back in October. Keep drinking. Eric

I concluded that somehow Eric was in Yugoslavia with the Territorial Army and would be back in Cambridge for the start of the Michaelmas Term. I myself returned in August. Over lunch, one of the historians told me that Eric had volunteered in June to go to Bosnia with the Territorials as part of the logistics staff of the British presence there, and ‘because of his, you know, bonhomie and ability to get on with foreigners, he’s even acquired some role in Army Intelligence’. The same chap told me in September that Eric had come back to Britain for a week at the beginning of the month, then ‘cleared off back to Yugoslavia in civvies, apparently’. This person was himself just off to the Bibliothèque Nationale for three months, so my information dried up. Eric didn’t appear for the start of the Michaelmas Term, but I thought nothing of it. I admit that at some level I was relieved. But he had not turned up by the middle of November, either.

(To be concluded next week)

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.