Flight of Eagles. Jack Higgins

Two and a Half, but when your time was up, you went home to demobilization. American troops doing the same work in their sector got three medals. We got nothing!

      Back home in Leeds, as I started a succession of rather dreary jobs, I received a buff envelope from the authorities reminding me that I was a reservist for the next ten years. It suggested that I join the Territorial Army, become a weekend soldier and, when I discovered there was money to be earned, I took them up on it, particularly as I was considering going to work in London. There was a Territorial Army Regiment there, called the Artists Rifles, which the War Office turned into 21 SAS. When the Malayan Emergency started many members volunteered for the Malayan Scouts, which in 1952 became a Regular Army Unit, 22 SAS.

      When in London job-hunting, I reported to 21 SAS with my papers and was enthusiastically received as an ex-Guards NCO. I filled in various papers, had the usual medical and found myself finally in front of a Major Wilson, although in view of what happened later, I doubt it was his real name.

      ‘Just sign here, Corporal,’ he said and pushed a form across the desk.

      ‘And just what am I signing, sir?’ I asked.

      ‘The Official Secrets Act.’ He smiled beautifically. ‘This is that kind of unit, you see.’

      I hesitated, then signed.

      ‘Good.’ He took the form and blotted my signature carefully.

      ‘Shall I report Saturday, sir?’ I asked.

      ‘No, not yet. A few formalities to be gone through. We’ll be in touch.’

      He smiled again, so I left it at that and departed.

      I had a phone call from him about two weeks later at the insurance office in Leeds where I worked at that time, suggesting a meeting at Yates’ Wine Bar near City Square at lunchtime. We sat in a corner enjoying pie and peas and a light ale while he broke the bad news. I was surprised to find him in Yorkshire, but he didn’t explain.

      ‘The thing is, old son, the SAS can’t use you. The medical shows a rather indifferent left eye. Although you don’t advertise the fact, you wear glasses.’

      ‘Well, the Horse Guards didn’t object. I fired for the regimental team at Bisley. I was a crack shot. I had a sharpshooter’s badge.’

      ‘Yes, we know about that. At least two Russians on the East German side of the border could confirm your skill, or their corpses could. On the other hand, you only got in the Guards because some stupid clerk forgot to fill in the eye section on your records and, of course, the Guards never admit mistakes.’

      ‘So that’s it?’

      ‘Afraid so. Pity, really. Such an interesting background. That uncle of yours, staff sergeant at Hamburg headquarters. Remarkable record. Captured before Dunkirk, escaped from prison camp four times, sent to Auschwitz to the enclave for Allied prisoners considered bad boys. Two-thirds of them died.’

      ‘Yes, I know.’

      ‘Of course they’ve kept him at HQ Hamburg because of his excellent German. He married a German war widow, I see.’

      ‘Well, love knows no frontiers,’ I told him.

      ‘I suppose so. Interesting family though, just like you. Born in England, Irish-Scot, raised in the Shankill in Belfast. What they call an Orange Prod.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘But also raised by your mother’s Catholic cousin in Crossmaglen. Very republican down there, those people. You must have fascinating contacts.’

      ‘Look, sir,’ I said carefully. ‘Is there anything you don’t know about me?’

      ‘No.’ He smiled that beatific smile. ‘We’re very thorough.’ He stood up. ‘Must go. Sorry it turned out this way.’ He picked up his raincoat. ‘Just one thing. Do remember you signed the Official Secrets Act. Prison term for forgetting that.’

      I was genuinely bewildered. ‘But what does it matter now? I mean, your regiment doesn’t need me.’

      He started away then turned again. ‘And don’t forget you’re a serving member of the Army Reserve. You could be recalled at any time.’

      What was interesting was a German connection he hadn’t mentioned, but then I didn’t know about it myself until 1952. My uncle’s wife had a nephew named Konrad Strasser, or at least that was one of several names he used over the years. I was introduced to him in Hamburg at a party in St Pauli for my uncle’s German relatives.

      Konrad was small and dark and full of energy, always smiling. He was thirty-two, a Chief Inspector in the Hamburg Criminal Investigation Department. We stood in the corner in the midst of a noisy throng.

      ‘Was it fun on the border?’ he asked.

      ‘Not when it snowed.’

      ‘Russia was worse.’

      ‘You were in the Army there?’

      ‘No, the Gestapo. Only briefly, thank God, hunting down some crooks stealing Army supplies.’

      To say I was shaken is to put it mildly. ‘Gestapo?’

      He grinned. ‘Let me complete your education. The Gestapo needed skilled and experienced detectives so they descended on police forces all over Germany and commandeered what they wanted. That’s why more than fifty per cent of Gestapo operatives weren’t even members of the Nazi party and that included me. I was about twenty in 1940 when they hijacked me. I didn’t have a choice.’

      I believed him instantly and later, things that happened in my life proved that he was telling the truth. In any case, I liked him.

      It was 1954 when Wilson re-entered my life. I was working in Leeds, as a civil servant at the time, still writing rather indifferent novels that nobody wanted. I had a backlog of four weeks’ holiday and decided to spend a couple in Berlin because my uncle had been moved there on a temporary basis to Army headquarters.

      The phone call from Wilson was a shock. Yates’ Wine Bar again, downstairs, a booth. This time he had ham sandwiches, Yorkshire, naturally, and off the bone.

      ‘Bit boring for you, the Electricity Generating Authority.’

      ‘True,’ I said. ‘But only an hour’s work a day. I sit at my desk and write.’

      ‘Yes, but not much success there,’ he informed me brutally. There was a pause. ‘Berlin should make a nice break.’

      I said, ‘Look, what the hell is this about?’

      ‘Berlin,’ he said. ‘You’re going to stay with your uncle a week next Tuesday. We’d like you to do something for us.’

      Sitting there in the normality of Yates’ Wine Bar in Leeds with the muted roar of City Square traffic outside, this seemed the most bizarre proposition I’d ever had.

      ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I tried to join 21 SAS, you said my bad eye ruled me out, so I never joined, did I?’

      ‘Not quite as simple as that, old boy. Let me remind you, you did sign the Official Secrets Act and you are still a member of the Army Reserve.’

      ‘You mean I’ve no choice?’

      ‘I mean we own you, my son.’ He took an envelope from his briefcase. ‘When you’re in Berlin, you’ll take a trip into the Eastern Zone by bus. All the details are in there. You go to the address indicated, pick up an envelope and bring it back.’

      ‘This is crazy,’ I said. ‘For one thing, I remember from my service in Berlin that to go through on a British passport is impossible.’

      ‘But, my dear chap, your Irish antecedents earn you an Irish passport as well as a British one. You’ll find it in the envelope. People with Irish passports can go anywhere, even China, without a visa.’ He stood up and smiled. ‘It’s all in there. Quite explicit.’