Be British, be Brave by Rhona Gorringe
Warnings were that it could lead to unrest or even a war but everyone thought it would blow over.
But that day we sat in stunned disbelief listening to the crackling radio. Interspersed with discordant martial music hysterical announcers reported American and British bombing raids. Finally an official announcement was made that the country was at war and had severed all relations with Britain and the US. Then the radio went dead. We stared at each other in bewilderment.
I could not follow the politics in this heavily bureaucratic police state and couldn’t make sense of what was happening. War? It couldn‘t be true. We phoned the British Embassy who said to sit tight and await plans for evacuation. In my naiveté I thought we would have a few days’ notice but then a British friend telephoned to say the Americans had burned all their files and evacuated their Embassy. Their well-stocked and air conditioned coach had already left. The last British convoy was leaving that night. We had three hours to report to the Embassy.
My Canadian employer, a university exchange professor took me, on the back of his motorbike, to my digs. We careered through the pot-holed streets where clusters of surly-looking men were gathering like stray cats round fish stalls. I grabbed a handful of possessions and we hurtled back to his house. He, too, stuffed what he could into a bag and gave the motor bike to his neighbour. All papers relating to his precious ‘work in progress’, a book on the History of Art, were left behind.
Confusion reigned at the assembly point. Men were checking lists, desperate women clutched bags and bundles, white faced children were crying and, in true British fashion, we were offered cups of tea and aspirins. Eventually we were herded onto buses and packed into cars and the convoy set off. Escorted by armoured cars it took four hours to cover the sixty miles to the border. It was a cold and desolate site with a heavy clinging smell of fear. Suspicious officials poked and prodded us, ripping open our bags. We were tired, hungry, smelly and very frightened. I suddenly realised that I was a displaced person. But how? Why? I was a British citizen: Harold Wilson, our Prime Minister offered his guests beer and sandwiches and the Beatles ruled the world.
Still in convoy it took another four hours to reach the airport of a friendly country.
Like the cavalry in a Wild West film, an American truck appeared offering us hot dogs and Coca Cola. A Canadian official came round with packets of Players cigarettes. This added to the unreality of it all. Sleepwalking, I fell into a line with other Brits and boarded a plane. My last sight was the professor waving and shouting “See you soon.” But I never did.
Weeks later I received a letter from him. He had made it back to Canada.
I like the allusion to the abandoning of the book on the history of art – symbolic of the abandonment of civilisation implied by war.
From Simon: This piece has the immediacy of real events. The slightly detached tone of the narrative echoes the title. The British pride themselves on their unflappability and that is reflected in this eye-witness account. There is also a sense of security and entitlement in a foreign posting, a confidence that the British Embassy would sort things out. What I like about the piece is the gradation from that confidence to well-suppressed panic. The urgency is expressed in telling details. The fact that the narrator’s boss ‘gave his motor bike to his neighbour’ is a throwaway line which encapsulated the seriousness of the situation. I also like the contrast between the Americans’ ‘well-stocked and air conditioned coach’ and the UK transport provision – also, the narrator’s shock at realising she (I’m assuming it’s a ‘she’) is a ‘displaced person’. The matter-of-fact tone of the story-telling puts into relief telling phrases like ‘a heavy clinging smell of fear’ and ‘the unreality of it all’. The restraint of the piece is a particularly good example of that advice which should be applied to all writing, that ‘less is more’. I am pretty confident, from the events described and the references of Harold Wilson and the Beatles, that I know when this narrative was set, but I’ll be interested to hear the views of others.