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War of Freedom

There is, I have to say, something obscene in looking back to the year 1942 and remembering it in glowing terms. After all, early in the year the ‘Struma’, a ship carrying Jews who had escaped from the Nazis, sank with the loss of everyone on board. They would not in any case have been allowed to get to Palestine, their destination, because of the operation of the 1939 White Paper which severely restricted Jewish immigration to that country. Even worse, towards the end of the year news of the Holocaust became known. The House of Commons stood in silent respect for the victims. Much of the news from the war fronts had been dismal for most of the time since 1939, not least in this first year of the Far East War.
These events acquired abstraction through distance. More immediately, in 1942 I reached the age of 18 and was thus liable for military service. My father had served in the Great War and my brother was already in the RAF, but we were children of the war-hating 1930s generation. Handling firearms, let alone using them, was anathema. Marching and drilling may have been suitable for the Jewish Lads’ Brigade but we belonged to Habonim. Such physical exercise as we did was to do with games and rambling and camping. There was a sort of uniform but a blue shirt and appropriate shorts (or blouse and skirt) did not provide the same robotic anonymity as did army khaki. On the other hand , I had to do my bit in the war.
And the war itself was changing’ things were getting better at last. Stalingrad was holding out. North Africa was liberated, staring with the victory at El Alamein in October. This was soon after I arrived in Cambridge where my college, the London School of Economics, was in war-time residence. I had sat and passed the Higher Schools Certificate (the ‘A’ level of those days) and had done sufficiently well to obtain exemption from the intermediate examination of my degree, in effect from the first of the three year’s course.
I was only the second person in my generation of our extended family to go to university, just eight years after the death of the last of my grandparents, my mother’s mono-lingual, Yiddish-speaking mother. So it was all new and marvellous. ‘Don’t go to too many lecture,’ said my tutor, ‘you’re free to come and go.’ The transition from school was dramatic. ‘Mr.’ I was addressed, not by surname alone. Just a few weeks, before, on the very last day of my school career - and a prefect too - I had been admonished for arriving late. The fact that, as students of the social sciences, we were permitted to go to university for only one year was only a minor drawback. We were exempt from the call-up provided we undertook military training after having joined one of the services, technically as volunteers, and been placed on the reserve. Those who opted for the army trained under NCOs from the Brigade of Guards (and other infantry regiments and specialist units) at the Cambridge University Senior Training Corps. Officially, as our shoulder tags proclaimed, we were a unit of the Home Guard. Dad’s Army was not exclusively for the elderly.
The term began, a period of excitement and confusion. I attended second-year lectures, being exempt from the first year, an absurd concession in my case, since the economics I had learned at school had been taught by a man who, I guessed, had studied it as a subsidiary subject some twenty years before. He was a little out of date. I was ill-prepared for lectures by Professor Hayek, even allowing for his Austrian accent. What could he mean? A three-dimensional diagram of the production function?
Despite my trepidation (or do I mean fear?) about taking up the military life I was quite disconcerted to find that my application to volunteer for the army was held up at the War Office. All my new friends and acquaintances were busy training but I had to wait. My father was born in England but I had given Poland as my mother’s place of birth and this was presumably suspect, too alien, even though the Poles were our allies. (Later I found that her birthplace was in what is now Belarus.) It took them a couple of weeks to agree to my joining. Would it have made any difference if I’d mentioned that she’d been brought over as a toddler? At any rate I soon experienced the novel world of the military, annoyed that I rather enjoyed marching, once I’d got the hang of it. Even with a rifle.
But I had to attest, to be sworn in, at the local recruiting office. It was a bare, desolate place, dismal even by war-time standards, Dark brown was the prevailing colour along with some green here and there. Downstairs I sat opposite the civilian woman clerk who read out the questions on the form and wrote down my answers. I took it upstairs to the recruiting officer, a Major. Across the desk from him I listened as he read out the questions and answers to which I was to assent each time.
‘N²¹³¾±ð.’
‘A²µ±ð.’
As he went through the list I began to slump in the chair and my answers deteriorated from ‘Yes’ to ‘Yeah’ to a grunt.
‘Yes what?’ shouted the officer.
‘Yes Sir,’ I said loudly, sitting up.
‘That’s right. Say Sir.’
‘Yes Sir.’
‘Good. Remember that. Call me Sir.’

A slight pause.

‘How do you address the dons at your college? Don’t you call them Sir?’

I knew better than to explain that I was not at a Cambridge college and we did not use the word ‘dons’ for lecturers. I was certainly not going to risk saying that no-one wore gowns there.

‘Well Sir,’ I said. ‘Not really. We’re rather free at our college.’

‘Free,’ he repeated.

I am sure he sniffed, or perhaps he even said ’Pah.’
Certainly his face reddened and he repeated ’Free,’ then ’Freedom.’ He stuttered.
‘That’s, that’s, that’s a kind of communism. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes Sir,’ I shouted.

He finished the interrogation. I left him and hurried to a student meeting on the subject of Indian independence. We passed a resolution in its favour and pledged to work for its implementation.

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