“Where have the others gone?”

She spoke a name which meant nothing to Major Gordon. “You have not heard of that place? It is twenty miles away. It is where the Germans and Ustashi made a camp. They kept the Jews and gypsies and communists and royalists there, to work on the canal. Before they left they killed what were left of the prisoners—not many. Now the partisans have found new inhabitants for it.”

They had reached the hut and Major Gordon entered to place his load in a corner near the little stove. It was the first and last time he crossed the threshold. He had a brief impression of orderly poverty and then was outside in the snow. “Listen, Mme. Kanyi,” he said. “Don’t lose heart. I am being recalled to Bari. As soon as the road is clear I shall be leaving. When I get there I promise I’ll raise Cain about this. You’ve plenty of friends there and I’ll explain the whole situation to them. We’ll get you all out, I promise.”

Major Gordon had one further transaction with Mme. Kanyi before his departure. There fell from the heavens one night a huge parcel of assorted literature—the gift of one of the more preposterous organizations which abounded in Bari. This department aimed at re-educating the Balkans by distributing Fortune, The Illustrated London News and handbooks of popular, old-fashioned agnosticism. From time to time during Major Gordon’s tour of duty bundles of this kind had arrived. He had hitherto deposited them in the empty office of the Director of Rest and Culture. On this last occasion, however, he thought of Mme. Kanyi. She had a long, lonely winter ahead of her. She might find something amusing in the pile. So he despatched it to her by one of the widows, who finding her out, left it on the step in the snow. Then within a few days the road to the coast was declared open and Major Gordon laboriously made his way to Split and so to Bari.

Bari had much besides the bones of St. Nicholas. Those who were quartered there complained but they constituted the Mont Parnasse of the Allied Armies. One met more queer old friends in its messes and clubs than anywhere else in the world at this last stage of the war, and to those on leave from the Balkans its modest amenities seemed the height of luxury. But Major Gordon, during his fortnight of “reporting to headquarters” had deeper interests than on earlier leaves. He was determined to get the Jews out of Croatia and by dint of exploring the byways of semi-official life, of visiting committees and units with noncommittal designations in obscure offices, he was in fact able to quicken interest, supply detailed information and in the end set the official machine to work which eventually resulted in a convoy of new Ford trucks making the journey from the coast to Begoy and back for the sole and specific purpose of rescuing the Jews.

By the time that they arrived in Italy Major Gordon was back in Yugoslavia for a brief appointment as liaison with a camp of escaped prisoners of war, but he got news of the move and for the first time tasted the sweet and heady cup of victory. “At least I’ve done something worthwhile in this bloody war,” he said.

When next he passed through Bari it was on his way home to England, for the military mission was being wound up and replaced by regular diplomatic and consular officials. He had not forgotten his Jews, however, and, having with difficulty located them, drove out to a camp near Lecce, in a flat country of olive and almond and white beehive huts. Here they rested, part of a collection of four or five hundred, all old and all baffled, all in army greatcoats and Balaclava helmets.

“I can’t see the point of their being here,” said the Commandant. “We feed them and doctor them and house them. That’s all we can do. No one wants them. The Zionists are only interested in the young. I suppose they’ll just sit here till they die.”

“Are they happy?”

“They complain the hell of a lot but then they’ve got quite a lot to complain about. It’s a lousy place to be stuck in.”

“I’m particularly interested in a pair called Kanyi.”

The Commandant looked down his list. “No trace of them here.”

“Good. That probably means they got off to Australia all right.”

“Not from here, old man. I’ve been here all along. No one has ever left.”

“Could you make sure? Anyone in the Begoy draft would know about them.”

The Commandant sent his interpreter to inquire while he took Major Gordon into the shed he called his mess, and gave him a drink. Presently the man returned. “All correct, sir. The Kanyis never left Begoy. They got into some kind of trouble there and were jugged.”

“May I go with the interpreter and ask about it?”

“By all means, old man. But aren’t you making rather heavy weather of it? What do two more or less matter?”

Major Gordon went into the compound with the interpreter. Some of the Jews recognized him and crowded round with complaints and petitions. All he could learn about the Kanyis was that they had been taken off the truck by the partisan police just as it was about to start.

He had one more day in Bari before his flight home. He spent it revisiting the offices where he had begun his work of liberation. But this time he received little sympathy. “We don’t really want to bother the Jugs any more. They really cooperated very well about the whole business. Besides the war’s over now in that part. There’s no particular point in moving people out. We’re busy at the moment moving people in.” This man was in fact at that moment busy despatching royalist officers to certain execution.

The Jewish office showed no interest when they understood that he had not come to sell them illicit arms. “We must first set up the State,” they said. “Then it will be a refuge for all. First things first.”

So Major Gordon returned to England unsatisfied and he might never have heard any more of the matter, had he not a cousin in the newly reopened Ministry at Belgrade. Months later he heard from him: “I’ve been to a lot of trouble and made myself quite unpopular in getting information about the couple you’re interested in. The Jugs are very close but at last I got matey with the head of the police who wants us to return some refugees we’ve got in our zone in Austria. He dug out the file for me. Both were condemned by a Peoples’ Court and executed. The man had committed sabotage on the electric light plant. The woman had been a spy for a “foreign power.” Apparently she was the mistress of a foreign agent who frequented her house while the husband was busy destroying the dynamo. A lot of foreign propaganda publications were found in her house and produced as evidence. What very unsavoury friends you seem to have.”

It so happened that this letter arrived on the day when the Allies were celebrating the end of the war in Asia. Major Gordon was back with his regiment. He did not feel inclined to go out that evening and join in the rejoicing. The mess was empty save for the misanthropic second-in-command and the chaplain (although of Highland origin the regiment was full of Glasgow Irish and had a Benedictine monk attached to them).

The second-in-command spoke as he had spoken most evenings since the General Election….. “I don’t know what they mean by ‘Victory.’ We start the bloody war for Poland. Well that’s ceased to exist. We fight it in Burma and Egypt—and you can bet your boots we shall give them up in a few months to the very fellows who’ve been against us. We spent millions knocking Germany down and now we shall spend millions building it up again…..”

“Don’t you think, perhaps, people feel better than they did in 1938?” said the chaplain.

“No,” said the second-in-command.

“They haven’t got rid of that unhealthy sense of guilt they had?”

“No,” said Major Gordon. “I never had it before. Now I have.”