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| ISBN-13: | 9781591140047 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Naval Institute Press |
| Publication date: | 02/13/2004 |
| Pages: | 260 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.93(d) |
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The Devil's Brigade
By Robert H. Adleman George Walton
NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS
Copyright © 1966 Robert H. Adleman and Colonel George WaltonAll right reserved.
Chapter One
PykeApril 21, 1942 The civilian concerned is a very odd-looking individual, but talks well and may have an important contribution to make. -George C. Marshall Chief of Staff
One of the most original, if unrecognized, figures of the present century. -The Times of London (February, 1948)
The following memorandum was circulated among his key staff members by General George C. Marshall, the head of the American armies:
April 21, 1942 Memorandum for the Deputy Chief of Staff, A.C. of S. Operations A.C. of S.
In London, Vice Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Chief of the newly organized Commando Forces, brought to me personally a man who is deeply interested in the development of a motorsled.
The idea is, with which Mountbatten is warmly in accord, that a considerable area in Europe, especially in Norway and certain Passes out of Italy into Germany are covered with snow for considerable periods of the year varying from 60 days up to 250.
If a snow vehicle, armored, carrying adequate guns and a small crew can be developed, it is possible that it may be used to considerable effect against critical points. They have in mind establishing a glacier base from the air in Norway, from which they could operate against the critical hydroelectric plants on which Germany depends to get out valuable ores. They have in mind the use of these vehicles in sudden raids so as to force German troop concentrations in a wasteful manner in rear of coastal garrisons.
The civilian concerned is to come to this country in the near future, and I would like arrangements to be made for taking him in charge and giving him an opportunity to explain his views and go into the matter of their possible development. He will probably be accompanied by one other civilian. Their feeling is that the development of these vehicles must be carried out in this country because of the inability of industry to manage such a matter hurriedly in England. The sleds should be available next fall. The numbers involved will be determined later but would not exceed 2,000 and probably not more than 500 or 600 as a beginning-which should not mean a serious complication of priorities.
The civilian concerned is a great admirer of Stefansson. It might be that Stefansson could take him in tow, but it is necessary that some particular officer of ours be designated to go into the matter.
The civilian concerned is a very odd-looking individual, but talks well and may have an important contribution to make. George C. Marshall Chief of Staff
The name of the man whom Lord Louis Mountbatten brought to General Marshall was Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke.
Mountbatten, a man with a deep respect for creative thinking, had assembled in his London-based headquarters for Combined Operations a coterie of eminent civilian theoreticians. When answers were needed for particularly abstract questions, he figuratively jiggled this brain-pool, and a solution was returned to him. In an amazing number of instances he received productive answers. Sometimes he received answers before he was aware of the existence of a problem.
Pyke was a heartily disliked member of the group. Brilliant but contentious, productive but so personally difficult that he would have taxed the patience of a mummy, this gawky, wild-eyed eccentric drove everyone from him with a continuing cannonade of ideas, impatient criticisms and observations. The fact that so many of Pyke's ideas later became the basis for important advances in education, finance, engineering, and several other wildly disparate fields was of little moment during the frequent periods when the dislike of his fellows flared into loathing.
His associates couldn't stand him ... not only because of the continuing onslaught on their mental processes, but also because, physically, he was noticeably less than pleasant. He rarely bathed, shaved or cut his hair. He wore spats to eliminate the need for wearing socks. He was jealous, suspicious, and dedicated to the supposition that the rest of mankind was banded against him.
He was also an important man. The Times of London later described him as "one of the most original, if unrecognized, figures of the present century." J. D. Bernal, himself considered among the most brilliant men on the faculty of London University, regarded Pyke as "one of the greatest geniuses of his time." In a two-column obituary devoted to him, Time magazine referred to Pyke as "Everybody's conscience."
Intensely literate and almost stultifyingly vocal, Pyke's powers of persuasion approached the hypnotic. On one prewar radio broadcast to the British population, he pegged the theme, "The Dynamics of Innovation," into an urgent plea that his fellow Englishmen offer less resistance to new ideas. He gave his audience a series of suggestions illustrating how a currently existing power shortage could be solved by the more intelligent use of human muscles, and the next day the British Broadcasting Company was swamped by volunteers from every part of the country. Just one broadcast in his oddly melodic voice turned this potentially pedestrian subject into a trumpet call.
Pyke was the preposterously unlikely sire of that group of unemotional cutthroats, The Devil's Brigade. His paternity was officially recognized in a letter from Mountbatten dated October 2, 1943, which said, in part:
You must feel proud to think that the force, the creation of which you originally suggested to me in March 1942, has become such a vital necessity in the coming stage of the war that General Eisenhower and the C-in-C of the Middle East are vying between them to try and obtain the services of this Force, probably the most bold and imaginative scheme of this war, and owing its inception to you. It is still too secret to refer to it in a letter of this nature, but one day I feel that you will be able to look with pride on this child of your imagination."
Geoffrey Pyke, at one time or another, was a foreign correspondent, the hero of a thrilling wartime escape from a German prison camp, an advertising agent, a financier, an experimental educationalist, a propagandist, a free-lance journalist, an organizer of charities, a statistician, a military tactician, an inventor, an economist, a broadcaster-and, as part of all of these things, a philosopher. He was unknown to the general public primarily because he devoted so much energy to the promotion of his ideas that he gave little thought to any promotion of himself.
Since Pyke's participation in this book ends shortly after his introduction of "Project Plough" to Lieutenant Colonel Robert T. Frederick and the American staff, it is necessary to explain that Pyke died by his own hand shortly after the end of World War II. At the time, he was attempting to rationalize problems which dealt with the basic laws of the Universe. He considered it his duty to establish a set of radical rules to govern certain concepts of time and space. He was agonized by the conviction that no study or survey which rested upon the principles of time could be accurate without an understanding of time itself. Without further detail, it must be noted that no human being, not even Albert Einstein, has been able to reduce these matters to an equation. Some learned persons who were privy to Pyke's preoccupation with this problem have inferred that his death was the result of his exasperated impatience with the infinite.
Geoffrey Nathaniel Pyke was born in 1894. His Father was Lionel Edward Pyke, a descendant of Dutch Jews who had settled in England several centuries before. His mother was a strong-minded woman who, after the death of Lionel Pyke at the age of forty-four, surprisingly announced that Geoffrey would be sent to Wellington ... a place where most of the boys were the sons of professional military officers, and which specialized in sending its graduates to Sandhurst, Britain's West Point.
A tall, gangling, painfully shy boy, his arrival struck an unpleasantly exotic note to the rest of the student body. Dressed in relics from his father's closet, and introduced to those around by his noticeably erratic mother, there was no more possibility of his being accepted and assimilated at this school than there would be later by the planners at the Pentagon. His ungainly appearance coupled with the news of his mother's catalogue of instructions to the authorities were all that his schoolmates needed to convince them that here was fair game for ruthless hazing. They made Pyke's life at Wellington pure hell ... a condition that prevailed for two years before he withdrew and entered Pembroke College at Cambridge in order to read law.
When the First World War erupted, Pyke, who felt that he had had enough of the military mentality at Wellington to last him for his lifetime, decided to become a newspaper correspondent. He began as the Copenhagen-based correspondent for Reuters, but was promptly dismissed when the German ambassador protested that his presence constituted a breach of Danish neutrality. And, besides, his reports on military movements in the area were infinitely too precise.
He returned to London and began canvassing the editorial offices on Fleet Street announcing to all who would listen that he was among the world's greatest reporters and that any journal which employed him would enjoy a commanding lead over its competitors. As proof, he cited the German ambassador's unease at his accurate Danish observations.
Finally, at the Daily Chronicle, he found a young editor who showed signs of being impressed by his theme that the best news reports could be originated directly from the enemy capital.
"Suppose you get to Berlin, Mr. Pyke," asked the editor, "how will you get your dispatches back to us?"
Pyke, without the slightest idea of how he might accomplish this, smiled so condescendingly that the editor was impressed into abandoning this line of questioning. He put Pyke on, adding that he would not be responsible for anything but Pyke's expenses, a statement which included a blanket disclaimer of responsibility for Pyke's safety.
So Pyke, taking the preliminary precaution of buying a forged American passport to facilitate his entry through Sweden, went to Germany. He was captured by the police six days after reaching Berlin because of his airy unconcern with the need to hide the purpose of his visit. The Germans obviously didn't know what to make of this strange young man who persisted in lecturing his warders on military tactics, so he spent the next four months in solitary confinement.
Pyke made the most of his time. Denied writing materials, he devoted his days to mentally solving mathematical problems and to sharpening his powers of deductive reasoning ... a skill which later became the basis for his entire existence.
Finally, in 1915, he was taken to Ruhleben, an immense civilian internment camp, where, with 300 other men, he shared a stable.
That winter was a grueling physical one for Pyke. He contracted blood poisoning and, on several occasions, food poisoning. He almost died after a bout with double pneumonia. Medical attention was withheld from him during all these sicknesses. But he pulled through. Although the physical privations left him gaunt and wasted, his mind was sharper than ever.
He began to think of escape.
His first step was to recruit a German-speaking fellow prisoner named Edward Falk. He told Falk that he had made a detailed study of the prison-camp schedule and had evolved the perfect escape plan. Since, invariably, all breakouts were attempted at night, he and Falk would simply stroll away in the bright sunlight, walk the 140 miles to the seacoast, there get a boat and row to safety.
Falk's first reaction was that he was insane, but he was no more immune to Pyke's powers of persuasion than any of the businessmen, high governmental officials and generals who later came under his spell.
So, one day, Pyke and Falk, walked through the compound engaged in a conversation which was apparently so absorbing that they took no notice of the desultorily growled commands by the guards that they get back to their own quarters. Walking and talking with deep animation, the very tall Pyke and the very short Falk reached the barbed wire fence which enclosed the camp grounds. They continued the conversation until satisfied that the guards were taking no further notice of them. In a flash, they fell to the ground and squeezed under the wire to the outside.
After their escape, they put the next phase of Pyke's plan into operation. Just as he had reasoned that little attention would be paid to anyone who might have the effrontery to break out of jail in the daytime, so he had also reasoned that no one ever pays attention to a peasant. The two men stole a cow, some rough clothing and proceeded to drive their animal toward safety.
And no one noticed anything alien about them.
Of the seventy-two escape attempts from Ruhleben throughout the war, only three were successful. Pyke later admitted, "Ours was the dullest ... but it was the most scientific!"
The postwar years of Geoffrey Pyke were marked by marriage, the birth of a son, an entry upon the career of stockbroker, and, finally, the creation of a school for young people based upon principles so radically advanced that it attracted international attention.
But none of these events brought success or contentment. His marriage became a stormy and broken affair and he was reduced to receiving only infrequent visits from the son he had come to adore. His career as a financier ended abruptly when he persisted in siphoning off all the profits in order to support the school.
Without a source of funds, the school closed its doors. Despite the efforts of many of Britain's leading educators to save it by a general public appeal, Pyke's essay into the production of improved childhood behavior patterns was abandoned. But it is worth noting that the conclusions he secured during this brief period are the basis for many of today's commonly accepted educational theories.
Pyke was thrown into bankruptcy. His physical condition, never good since his experiences in the German prison camp, deteriorated rapidly. Emotionally, he was a complete wreck. He left his wife and took a small cottage in the country and withdrew from the society he felt had rejected him.
Continues...
Excerpted from The Devil's Brigade by Robert H. Adleman George Walton Copyright © 1966 by Robert H. Adleman and Colonel George Walton. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
| Preface | vi | |
| I | Pyke | 1 |
| II | Frederick | 19 |
| III | That Summer of 1942 | 59 |
| IV | The Gate Swings Both Ways | 75 |
| V | The Dry Run | 97 |
| VI | The Six Bloody Days | 111 |
| VII | The Meat Grinder | 147 |
| VIII | The Black Devils of Anzio | 166 |
| IX | The Breakout, the Road to Rome ... and Beyond | 200 |
| X | The Champagne Campaign and the End of the Trail | 226 |
| Epilogue | 243 | |
| Index | 250 |