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French HQ was busy. The conference had finished and I found my officers discussing it in informal groups. They looked worn and anxious but showed no trace of the defeatism which many have professed to have seen since the news of the mutinies of 1918 became common knowledge. A junior officer came up to ask my business though it was clear he had been forewarned and guessed why I was there. I replied in dregs of sixth-form French. He spoke to his Major, a few hurried phrases. The Major kept looking in my direction; he did not look pleased. When I approached him it was evident that he had been led to expect a French-speaking officer; he satisfied himself at once that that was not what he had got. He was angry but polite, terminated his interview and went back to business.
I stood alone amongst these tense men. I noticed that one of them was wearing the Medaille Militaire and was without his right arm. As I waited, at a loss to know what to do, it began to occur to me that I had been sent on the strength of my name. This I found to be the case when a French Intelligence Officer came to speak to me. Clearly he did not want to blame me for what I could not help, but it was evident that he thought French was taught in our schools and that the army staff would not send a ‘French-speaking officer’ without first finding out if he could speak French.
By this time I too felt that I might have been asked; I did not like being the evidence for one more example of the incurable frivolity of the English. With aid of pencil and paper I made clear to him and a French infantryman what my section, the right of the British line as far as Tanks were concerned, were meaning to do and the precise hours at which we meant to do it. This I knew by heart; it was the bare bones of the operation orders covering the interval
between zero hour and our rejoining the Fourth British Army – the Canadian Corps.
My impossible, ever-so-funny ‘parlez-vous’ sixth-form French meeting his, presumably, ‘baccal