Writing for Fun
Grandfather's Diary - Pete Norman
September 2014
I never really knew my grandfather . . . well, I suppose that must sound a bit of a crazy thing to say as he lived with us for his last few years. It was just that then I was approaching my teens and he was a pensioner; I was very young and he was very old – not just old in body, but old in mind as well. I always thought of my grandfather as the sort of man who was born old and just kept on getting older. He was never interested in anything vaguely modern, all he ever harped on about was the 'good old days' and how things had been so much better then. He was one of those people who thought that children should be 'seen and not heard', so I suppose I never really stood a chance with him.
As a typical boy of the age I was heavily into cowboys and Indians and war films and I have lost track of the number of times I asked him what he did in the war, but he would never say a word about it, his answer was always the same, 'Son, just count yourself lucky you were born when you were.'
And so eventually I stopped asking . . .
. . . and then, one day, he was no longer there to ask.
I helped dad to clear out his room – to put all his things into two piles: the 'keep it' pile and the 'bin it' pile. While dad sorted out all his clothes and things in the wardrobe, braving the overwhelming smell of mothballs, I gathered together all the loose stuff. Under the bed, pushed right back so far that I nearly didn't spot it, was a battered old shoe box. It was full of paper: at one end a thick pile of odd paper scraps, every inch covered with tiny pencil writing and beside it a stack of letters tied together with a piece of old string.
I was just starting to undo the first envelope when dad caught me and snatched it from my hand. 'That is not the sort of thing a young boy should be looking at, Tom,' he said, riffling quickly through the papers before he jammed the lid back on the box and carried it out of the room.
He never told me where he had put the box; sometimes when he was at work I did search for it, but I never found it, and eventually I suppose I just forgot about it completely . . . that is, until my dad died and I had to sort through all of his stuff just as we had done together with his father. At the bottom of a large pile of old blankets and towels in the loft I found the shoe box. I opened it, full of excitement and anticipation, but the letters had all gone; either dad had hidden them away where I could never hope to find them or he had burned the lot. It didn't matter which now, for he had clearly carried their secret to the grave.
The strange pile of papers were still there, however, although they made little sense to me. They were bits and pieces of every kind of paper imaginable: sheets of notepaper, torn brown paper envelopes, even scraps of newspaper, but every sheet, on both sides, from top to bottom, from edge to edge, was covered with the same tiny, meticulous, pencil script . . . in some form of code. I studied sheet after sheet, but could read nothing.
Now, I am not suggesting this was as good as 'Enigma', but neither was I a Bletchley Park boffin and for days I struggled to decrypt it without success until finally I turned to the Internet for help. It turned out that the cipher was quite easy to break and word by word, sheet by sheet I began to reveal my grandfather's innermost, most intimate thoughts. It seemed a strange irony that it was not until I had reached middle age myself that I could finally experience my grandfather as a young man. And young man he certainly was, because the diary started on the troopship out of Portsmouth and continued as a personal account of the Normandy landings and the Allied advance across Europe.
At first I wondered why the diary was encoded; of course the war-time slogans had said, 'Walls have ears' and all letters home were heavily censored to prevent the movement of troops falling into enemy hands, but would Hitler really have been that interested in my grandfather's little diary?
I was so caught up in the unbelievable chaos and trauma of the events that I forgot to eat, I forgot to sleep, I just had to keep de-coding and absorbing the incredible story as it unfolded.
It seems that at first the Germans had resisted furiously and every inch of ground had been hard won; his diary contained list after painful list of names – the names of men near and dear to him who would never return from the war, who would never grow old. The sheer number of names was heartbreaking, that he should witness the loss of so many good friends and comrades in arms.
However, the tide of the war turned and the Germans were on the run. Day by day the diary recorded their progress, their headlong flight through Belgium, the long push down through France and finally along the Riviera coast and into Monaco.
At the very bottom of the box was a casino chip, large and white with a purple band around the rim and the figure F100 in the centre. The only reference to the chip I could find was one cryptic comment, which called it: 'A souvenir of Monte Carlo.' When the 11th Armoured Division had liberated Monaco, had my grandfather actually played the tables in the casino and won, or had he simply picked it up from the devastation the Germans had left behind? I would never know the answer, but the question was an intriguing one.
I knew that the whole story had the makings of a good book so I devoted the next few months to researching the history and geography of the campaign as recorded in the diary. When I could do no more from the comfort of my armchair there was only one thing left for me to do – I had to make the pilgrimage myself and retrace his steps. I was able to time my holiday from work to coincide with the Monaco Liberation Day Festival on the 3rd of September – I would actually enter the Principality on the same day as my grandfather had all those years ago, in my own personal tribute to his courage.
The trip was long and circuitous, as the troops had taken over half of 1944 to meander through the country as the Germans retreated. I had just three weeks to accomplish the same, but at least I did not have to fight my way through the French countryside, and the roads today were surely a vast improvement on the ones my grandfather had been forced to travel.
As I wound my way down through the vast country I could see little evidence of the war still remaining. One or two old disused buildings and the occasional antique barn still bore the scars, but these were few and far between; it might have all been but a tragic folk tale had it not been for the blow-by-blow account I carried with me.
At midday on September 3rd I finally arrived in the picturesque harbour at Monaco. It was even more beautiful than the Internet images could possibly show – the town nestled against an amphitheatre of towering hills curled around a bay of azure blue water. I had to remind myself that in my grandfather's day there would have been none of the grand yachts bobbing in the harbour and none of the skyscrapers which rose as gleaming buttresses in the hot Mediterranean sun. But there, on a hillside overlooking the bay stood one magnificent, grandiose building which most definitely would have been there: the Casino at Monte Carlo.
It looked more like a palace than a gambling house, with ornate twin towers and porticoed windows; even the act of entering through the great doors was a humbling experience – I felt like a pauper in the house of a prince.
The interior was equally splendid and rich and I gazed in awe at the lavish décor surrounding the enticing gaming tables, though they were truly money pits each and every one of them. I stood back from the Roulette wheel, watching as the rich and, no doubt, famous, scattered dozens of obscenely high value chips across the green baize. At any one time there must have been more money on that table than I would ever see in my lifetime.
I took out my grandfather's chip and turned it slowly through my fingers. I could never hazard such a priceless treasure on the vagaries of chance, but I might just risk a few very small chips of my own, if only to say that I had done it.
A soft and cultured voice behind me said, 'Monsieur, I am afraid your money is no good here.'
I spun around and there stood a man, tall and tanned with perfectly manicured black hair, wearing an expensive suit and a million dollar smile. I looked puzzled. He gestured at my chip. 'I am afraid this piece is no good, monsieur. It is a Franc chip. You cannot use it – we only use Euro chips in this house now.'
I laughed. 'Of course, I'm sorry. Besides, this one is far too valuable to me to ever part with.' I briefly explained to him the history of the piece and of my grandfather's diary. With every word the professional countenance slipped a little further until the man was staring open mouthed in amazement.
Finally, when my story was told, he held out his hand. 'May I?'
I let him hold the chip, turn it over and over in his fingers, an expression of perfect adoration on his face. 'Monsieur, there are so few chips which survived that dreadful time and with the provenance of this one it could be worth a lot . . . a very, very lot of money. Might I suggest you have it valued? I am certain the casino would be honoured to arrange that for you.'
I gently wrested the chip from his eager fingers and smiled. 'I would, of course, be most interested to find out, but I'm afraid there is no way I could ever part with it.'
The man smiled. 'Give me a few moments, monsieur,' and he stepped back from the table. I could hear a faint murmuring before he rejoined me.
'Monsieur, the Casino Director would be honoured if later you would join him for cocktails and permit him the honour of viewing this piece and hearing your story directly.'
My head was spinning. I never knew quite what I had expected to find in Monte Carlo, but this was becoming surreal. All I could manage was, 'Of course.'
'Ah, but now you must forgive me, you have travelled halfway across Europe to be here today; you simply must first play the tables a little, yes?' He gestured to the croupier who deftly slid a small pile of chips across the baize towards me. Five shiny new plastic discs, each marked with €20. 'Please accept these on behalf of the management.'
I was dumbfounded. For a moment I did not know what I should do, especially as all conversation around our table had ceased, all ears soaking up my story, all eyes watching for my next move. I stared at the table; there was a confusing array of choice . . . but I knew that grandfather had been 18 when he entered Monaco, so without further thought I slid all five chips onto No. 18. The silence was instantly broken by whispered conversations as the wheel spun. As the ball bounced and sang across the diamonds the words, 'Rien ne va plus,' silenced the voices . . .
. . . until the ball bounced once, bounced twice and then dropped into red 18. The table erupted with a communal gasp of amazement. Even the man permitted himself an ironic chuckle as he patted me on the shoulder in congratulation. The croupier slid my winnings alongside my meagre bet. I stared uneasily at three huge piles of chips - €3,700 all sitting on the 18.
'Monsieur, you are no gambler. Perhaps you might quit while you are ahead?'
I turned to the man and smiled. He was right, I was no gambler, and neither was my grandfather, but I could still hear his voice loud and clear, 'Son, just count yourself lucky you were born when you were.' All those years ago, as a young man in Monte Carlo, he had gambled everything – his very life – to win the freedom for me to be here today.
I looked again at the piles of chips obscuring the number 18 on the green baize. 'Let it ride,' I said.
The table gasped.
The man said, 'Monsieur, the odds against the same number two times are astronomical.'
I smiled. 'But surely, mathematically, every time the wheel spins the odds against each number are still only 36-1, aren't they?'
The wheel spun.
The ball bounced.
'Rien ne va plus.'