The Speedicut Memoirs: War or Peace

By Christopher Joll

As Europe see-saws between war and peace,
Charles Speedicut finds himself involved in a series
of clandestine missions for both the British Secret
Intelligence Service and the equally secretive Brotherhood
of the Sons of Thunder. From the concentration camp at
Dachau, where Book 5 of The Speedicut Memoirs opens, via Whitehall,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bavaria, Switzerland and France,
Speedicut is involved in plots to frustrate the British government’s
policy of appeasement, assassinate Hitler, obtain an ENIGMA
machine and – as German tanks roll through the Low Countries
into France – to rescue vitally important stocks of gold
and diamonds, France’s leading scientists and the
world’s entire stock of ‘heavy water’.


“I attribute the failure of appeasement to the
interference of Charles Speedicut. In consequence,
I blame him for the Second World War”
The Rt Hon Neville Chamberlain

“Speedicut will be the death of me, unless
I eliminate him first – as I intend to.”
SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei
Reinhard Heydrich

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781728352619

Christopher Joll

After serving time at Oxford University and the RMA Sandhurst, Christopher Joll spent his formative years as an officer in The Life Guards. On leaving the Army, Joll worked first in investment banking, then as an arms salesman before moving into public relations. From his earliest days Joll has written articles, features, short stories and reportage. In addition to the Speedicut books, in 2014, Joll wrote the text for Uniquely British: A Year in the Life of the Household Cavalry, in late 2018 he published The Drum Horse in the Fountain & Other Tales of the Heroes & Rogue in the Guards and in early 2020 he will publish Spoils of War: The Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of the British Empire. Since leaving the Army in 1975, Joll has also been involved in devising and managing major charity fund-raising events including the Household Cavalry Pageant, the Royal Hospital Chelsea Pageant, the acclaimed British Military Tournament, a military tattoo in Hyde Park for the Diamond Jubilee, the Gurkha 200 Pageant, the Waterloo 200 Commemoration at St Paul’s Cathedral, the Shakespeare 400 Gala Concert and The Great War Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall for which he wrote, researched and directed the 60-minute film that accompanied the symphony. In 2019, this led to a commission to write, present and direct five short films for the Museum Prize Trust. When not writing, directing or lifting the lid on the cess pits of British history, Joll publishes a weekly Speedicut podcast and gives lectures at literary festivals, museums, clubs and on cruise ships on topics related to his books and the British Empire. www.christopherjoll.com

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© 2020 Christopher Joll. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 04/27/2020

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5262-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5263-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-5261-9 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

For

Major General Sir Stewart Menzies

CONTENTS

Notes On The Editor

Introduction

The Speedicut Family Tree

Foreword

Chapter One: Strength Through Joy

Chapter Two: Familiar Faces

Chapter Three: Ducking & Weaving

Chapter Four: Chamberlain To Wilson

Chapter Five: Pillow Talk

Chapter Six: Auf Wiedersehen, Czechoslovakia

Chapter Seven: Peace For Our Time

Chapter Eight: Beneath The Rose

Chapter Nine: Tangling A Web

Chapter Ten: Modern Times

Chapter Eleven: The End Of An Era

Chapter Twelve: In A Polish Pickle

Chapter Thirteen: Lucky For Some

Chapter Fourteen: A Sting In The Tale

Chapter Fifteen: Topsy-Turvey

Chapter Sixteen: The Hazards Of Beer

Chapter Seventeen: May’s Best Friend

Chapter Eighteen: Heavy Water Runs Deep

Chapter Nineteen: All Aboard The Broompark

Chapter Twenty: Operation Willi

NOTES ON THE EDITOR

After serving time at Oxford University and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Christopher Joll spent his formative years as an officer in The Life Guards, an experience from which he has never really recovered. On leaving the Army, Joll worked first in investment banking, but the boredom of City life led him to switch careers and become an arms salesman. After ten years of dealing with tin pot dictators in faraway countries, he moved perhaps appropriately into public relations where, in this new incarnation, he had to deal with dictators of an altogether different type.

From his earliest days, Joll has written articles, features, short stories and reportage. One such piece of writing led to an early brush with notoriety when an article he had penned anonymously in 1974 for a political journal ended up as front-page national news and resulted in a Ministerial Inquiry. In 2012 Joll wrote the text for Uniquely British: A Year in the Life of the Household Cavalry; in 2018, he published The Drum Horse in the Fountain: Tales of the Heroes & Rogues in the Guards; and, in 2020, Spoils of War: The Treasures, Trophies & Trivia of the British Empire.

Since leaving the Army in 1975, Joll has been involved in devising and managing charity fund-raising events. This interest started in 1977 with The Silver Jubilee Royal Gifts Exhibition at St James’s Palace and The Royal Cartoons Exhibition at the Press Club. In subsequent years, he co-produced ‘José Carreras & Friends’, a one-night Royal Gala Concert at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane; ‘Serenade for a Princess’, a Royal Gala Concert at the Banqueting House, Whitehall; and ‘Concert for a Prince’, a Royal Gala Concert staged at Windsor Castle.

More recently, Joll has focused on devising, writing, directing and sometimes producing events for military and other charities. These include the Household Cavalry Pageant (2007), the Chelsea Pageant (2008), the Diamond Jubilee Parade in the Park (2012), the British Military Tournament (2010-2013), the Gurkha Bicentenary Pageant (2015), the Waterloo Bicentenary National Service of Commemoration & Parade at St Paul’s Cathedral (2015), the Shakespeare 400 Memorial Concert (2016), The Patron’s Lunch (2016), the official London event to mark The Queen’s 90th Birthday, and the premiere of The Great War Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall (2018).

When not writing and directing ‘military theatre’ or editing Speedicut family papers, Joll is a Trustee of The Art Fund Prize for Museums. He is also the Regimental Historian of the Household Cavalry and has written his yet to be published memoires, Anecdotal Evidence, an account which promises to cause considerable consternation in certain quarters.

www.christopherjoll.com

INTRODUCTION

The chance discovery in 2010 of a cache of letters written during his lifetime by Colonel Sir Jasper Speedicut to his friend Harry Flashman, led to my having the privilege of editing and then publishing The Speedicut Papers.

When I sent the last manuscript of the series to my publishers, I thought that would be the end of my involvement with Speedicut. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when shortly afterwards I received through the post the following letter and a bulky, typed manuscript:

Villa Larmes des Russes, Cimier, France, 1st April 2016

Dear Mr Joll

It has come to my attention that you are the editor of the letters of my great-grandfather, Colonel Sir Jasper Speedicut. Consequently, I thought that you might be interested to have sight of the enclosed typescript which is a salacious, probably libellous and hitherto unpublished autobiography written by his late (and illegitimate) son, Charles Speedicut, who was, by coincidence, a close friend of my father.

I inherited the enclosed document on Charles’ death in 1980 and, as he was something of a black sheep and not spoken of in my family, it has remained unread by me until recently. If you find that it is of interest to you, I might be willing to discuss the terms under which a suitably expurgated edition might be published.

Yours sincerely

Olga Lieven-Beaujambe, Duchess of Whitehall

A cursory glance at the manuscript was enough to show me that, despite the date on the letter, the covering note stated nothing less than the truth. On further reading, it quickly became clear that Charles Speedicut had been involved in as many of the intrigues and scandals of the twentieth century as had his father in the nineteenth…

Despite the Duchess’s strictures, I have limited my editing to the correction of Charles Speedicut’s grammar and spelling, and the addition of historical or explanatory footnotes.

CHRISTOPHER JOLL

www.christopherjoll.com

THE SPEEDICUT FAMILY TREE

Colonel Sir Jasper Speedicut, 1st Baronet (1821-1915) m. (1)

Lady Mary Steyne (1828-1855), only daughter of 3rd Marquess

of Steyne; (2) Lady Charlotte-Georgina FitzCharles (1825-

1917), younger daughter of the 8th Duke of Whitehall

had legitimate issue

Dorothea Charlotte Speedicut (1865-1919) m.

Prince Dimitri Lieven (1866-1919)

had legitimate issue

Princess Anastasia Lieven (1896-1919)

&

Princess Tatiana Lieven, 11th Duchess of Whitehall (1896-

1955) m. Lord Tertius Beaujambe (1898-1939)

had legitimate issue

Olga Lieven-Beaujambe, 12th Duchess of Whitehall (1938-)

…

Colonel Sir Jasper Speedicut, 1st Baronet (1821-1915)

&

Sibella Halwood (1875-1941) from 1898-1910, Mrs Lionel Holland

had illegitimate issue

Charles Lionel Jasper Holland (28th February 1899-1980)

from 28th February 1916 known as

Charles Lionel Jasper SPEEDICUT

later Major C L J Speedicut MC & Bar, Order of St

Stanislaus (2nd Class), Order of Franz Josef (4th Class)

FOREWORD

I barely learned to read at Eton, which is why I’m not much of a books man. So, it’s not surprising that I’d never heard of The Flashman Papers or Tom Brown’s School Days. But there’s bugger-all else to do in this dump except toss-off or read and as, at my age, the former holds few pleasures I asked the way to the library.

Once there I realised that I had a problem: where the hell was I going to start? Most of the library sections’ labels looked as though the contents of their shelves would be better than a sleeping pill: who the fuck wants to read about Philosophy, Law, Economics, Geography, Needlework or Home Improvement? I was about to give up the whole idea of whiling away my time with an intellectual pursuit when my eye caught a sign saying Biography.

As there was a sporting chance that on these shelves there would be a book or two about some of the people I’ve known - such as Philip ‘his baroque’s worse than his bite’ Sassoon, Dickie the upwardly mobile semi-royal Mountbatten, his millionaire bisexual wife Eddie, or David ‘suck my dick’ Windsor - I sauntered over for a closer look. What I found was shelf after shelf of unread tomes about people I’d never heard of who’d probably led worthy but infinitely dull lives: a bulky biography of someone called Benjamin Britten being a case in point.¹

Then my eye caught a gaudy set of spines. I pulled out the first book on the left, which was entitled Flashman. I confess that I chose it because I assumed it was about a fellow who exposed himself: it wasn’t, as I quickly discovered when I leafed through it. What it was, in fact, was the memoirs of an elderly Victorian General with a vivid imagination and a perpetually restless middle leg. I was about to put the book back on the shelf and head for the section that was sign-posted Adult Fiction when I tripped over the name Jack Speedicut.

Well, I knew I didn’t have any relations called Jack, but ours is an unusual surname so I started to read - and I carried on reading for the next half-dozen or so weeks until I’d finished the sixth and last book on the shelf.² It was good stuff and a lot of it had the ring of truth; it was even possible that the Jack Speedicut mentioned from time-to-time in the books was my Papa, thinly disguised with a new Christian name. This was a possibility that turned to a certainty when I glanced briefly through the utterly unreadable pages of Tom Brown’s School Days. However, from what I have gleaned over the years about my Papa, many of the events Flashman credited to himself were actually those of my forebear.

With the six volumes of The Flashman Papers under my belt, so to speak, I then searched for something else to while away the time but, unless one enjoyed reading about hypocritical parlour-pink Socialists or transvestite Tories, which I don’t, there was nothing further of interest under Biography. So, I turned to the Fiction section and there I found a series of books about carryings-on in high places called Alms for Oblivion by a disgraced ex-soldier called Simon Raven.³ It was clearly fact disguised as fiction and I even recognised several of the coves in it.

Anyway, the whole experience set me to thinking that my own adult experiences might make interesting reading, so I started to write. God knows if what follows will ever be published or if I’ll live to finish it. One thing is certain, however: thanks to the libel laws it won’t reach the reading public whilst any of those I’ve portrayed remain ‘above the sod’ – and there’s an appropriate turn of phrase if ever there was one…

Charles Speedicut

HM Prison Ford

CHAPTER ONE: STRENGTH THROUGH JOY

Of all the slogans dreamed-up by the flatulent Führer and the murderous morons who did his bidding,⁴ that of Arbeit Mach Frei – roughly translated as ‘work sets you free’ – had at least the virtue of being true: providing you believe that death is the ultimate freedom, which I most definitely do not. Sadly, six million or more Jews, gypsies, commies and other political ‘enemies of the State’, POWs, Resistance fighters, thieves, murderers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, faggots, ‘idiots’ and assorted untermenschen were, by 1945 and with the help of death wagons, firing squads, the noose, gas chambers, medical experiments, disease and starvation at more than forty-two thousand camps, ‘freed’ in this way by the ever methodical Germans using – as is their wont and for the most part – the latest industrial production techniques. If you find this assertion hard to believe, or even to comprehend, trust me: it’s all true.

Whilst on the subject of slogans, rather than industrialised mass murder, it’s also worth mentioning that several of the Nazis’ other mantras should have been taken at face value, including: ‘if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a whopper’ and ‘there’s no point in looting, unless it’s done properly’. But I anticipate.

Anyway, Arbeit Mach Frei were the words that I saw worked into the wrought iron gates that marked the entrance to the Dachau Concentration Camp,⁵ where I was sent forcibly on 22nd October 1937 by that devil incarnate, Reinhard Heydrich.⁶ He had accused me – rightly as it happens – of ‘spying’ on the Windsors,⁷ whilst the appalling couple of semi-royal (he was, she wasn’t) freeloaders were on a private (for which read semi-State) visit to Germany,⁸ which was scheduled to end with a tea party at Hitler’s mountain hideaway; this was the hideously ugly concrete-and-glass Berghof, which was perched above Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps.

For those of my readers suffering from dementia, or who have been too tight-wadded to buy my previous tome, it may be worth explaining that, although ostensibly the official British ‘observer’ on this high-profile visit, I was in fact working for both Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) and another secret organisation calling itself the Brotherhood of the Sons of Thunder: the reins of the former being in the firm grip of Colonel Stewart Menzies,⁹ who was also the head of the latter. In pursuit of my joint task for these two organisations, which was to report on the Windsors’ movements, contacts and conversations whilst in Germany, I had – somewhat unwisely in the event – bribed a German government official and a Nazi newspaper photographer to help me, both of which acts had – unsurprisingly, with the benefit of hindsight – been reported to the Krauts’ secret police.

The upshot was that, after a brief interrogation by Heydrich at the Berghof, I was un-ceremonially bundled into the back of a Mercedes by armed SS men and driven to Dachau, whilst my erstwhile employer-and-King was taking tea with Corporal Adolf. To her fury, for she had arranged the meeting, the ghastly Wallis was closeted not with the halitosis-ridden Charlie Chaplin-lookalike but with the swivel-eyed and barking mad Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess.¹⁰ In consequence, and thanks also to the fact that neither spoke the other’s language, she had a perfectly dreadful time: it served the silly bitch right. Worse still, for me that is, Heydrich had said before consigning me to incarceration vile that I would be held at Dachau until Menzies offered an exchange and that, if he did not, I would be shot.

So what was I thinking as the car pulled up at the gloomy camp, which was also a munitions factory? The answer is, not much. You see, I was confident that Menzies would soon learn of my arrest – and then secure my rapid release – long before Heydrich could arrange for me to be used for target practice. Accordingly, I submitted tamely to the admittance procedure at Dachau, which involved stripping and handing over all my possessions before being given a set of striped prison pyjamas (on which was a red badge)¹¹ and forced to undergo a close head shave: it was really no different to what goes on here, although done in a deliberately brutal way.

As for the camp, which at that point still only held about five hundred prisoners, it was Spartan but not yet so foul that it posed a chronic health hazard, although we were packed-in to the barrack’s wooden-hutted dormitories like sardines; the food and the ‘heads’ were indescribable, so I won’t attempt to describe them; most of the other inmates, with the exception of a pink-badged lad called Hans in the bunk below mine, were sullen to the point of being virtually catatonic; and the work, making shell cases, was repetitive but not unduly arduous. The worst aspect of Dachau, which in many ways was no different to the sort of boarding school depicted by Dickens, were the punishments which were inflicted for trivial and often imaginary transgressions of the rules, most of which the SS guards made up when they wanted to have some fun. Beatings were the least of these episodes and the rest depended upon the sick brains of our gaolers.

Needless to say, I did my level best to stay out of trouble and be a model prisoner in every regard, but I did not emerge from Dachau without a permanent reminder of the brutality of the regime in the shape of a scarred back. I got this souvenir, inflicted by an SS man with a barbed-wire-covered stick, for being a second or two late at the evening roll call by reason of having being detained in the bog with a bad dose of the trots.

In the aftermath of my punishment, I refrained from demanding to see the Governor, the British Consul and/or a lawyer as I knew that would be pointless and just invite another beating. Of more immediate concern to me than my release was the very real danger, as there were no medical facilities for the prisoners, that the wounds would turn septic and I would die from blood poisoning. That is what could well have happened, had it not been for the kindness and expertise of Hans, my chatty neighbour. He had been a nurse in a Catholic hospital-for-the-bewildered in Munich and had been rounded up and sent to Dachau, following a raid on a male brothel in the city where he had been relaxing after a hard day performing colonic irrigations on patients suffering from depression. He said it worked a treat: well it would, wouldn’t it?

Hans may have been a queer left-footer with an anal fixation, but he was also a brave one for – at massive risk to himself and with no expectation of any reward (not even a surreptitious hand-job) – he stole some salt from the camp kitchen where he worked, cleaned up my back with salted water and told me to ignore the cold and sleep topless on my stomach every night for a week, in order to let the air dry out the wounds. Fortunately, that did the trick.

In the meantime, whilst my physical condition deteriorated to the point where I was becoming a shadow of my former stalwart self, day succeeded dreary day with no sign that Menzies was even aware of my imprisonment. From time-to-time, one of my fellow inmates would be called to the Kommandant’s office and wouldn’t then re-appear in the dormitory or on the factory floor. In those days, these lucky ones would be given back their possessions and set free. It was only after my time at Dachau that liberation via the Kommandantur came in the form of a bullet in the camp courtyard or a volley of shots after a short march to the rifle range. From which, and from the fact that I’m still alive to write this drivel, you will gather that I was released; its manner, however, was in no way straightforward.

Before moving on to this next part of my personal Odyssey, I want to put it on the record that Dachau, which was massively expanded in early 1938, was always a forced labour camp and munitions works. It was never a death factory, in that it didn’t have a gas chamber. It did, however, have an extensive medical experiments section, about which I don’t care to dwell – nor will you, dear reader, if you want to sleep soundly. But, despite the lack of a gas chamber, the SS troops manning Dachau still managed to account for the deaths of about thirty-two thousand souls between 1933 and 1945.

Now back to my story…

It was probably early February 1938 when, one morning, I was bent over my work bench trying to ensure that the shell case I was working on would blow up in the face of whoever tried to use it, when I felt the barrel of a rifle pressed into the small of the back. This was not an unusual occurrence and usually heralded a torrent of abuse or worse.

"Kommandatur, schnell!" barked the guard behind me.

A few minutes later I found myself standing in front of the Kommandant,¹² a piggy-eyed brute with the smudge of a small moustache under his nose. Behind him in the stark office, which was sparsely furnished and decorated only with a Nazi flag and a framed photograph of Adolf, stood another SS man whom I knew to be the camp’s Adjutant. Neither spoke any English, so I will translate the conversation that followed:

English spy, the Kommandant snarled, I have orders here for your release from Dachau. I let out an involuntary sigh of relief. … and instructions for you to undergo, and his snarl turned to a sneer, a further all-expenses paid holiday as the guest of the German Reich.

What? I spluttered, as I wondered what the bastards were going to do with me: only a rat-infested dungeon or the salt mines could be worse than my present situation.

If you are puzzled by this reaction, dear reader, you need to remember that I was in the iron grip of the Germany that had suckled Wagner and Bismarck from its rancid tit, not the kindly Mutter Germania that had given birth to Bach and Beethoven.

Relax, Englishman. I meant what I said. You are going on a holiday.

Why? I asked in disbelief.

We would not wish you to report to your authorities that you had been treated with anything but kindness and consideration during your stay with us… he smirked, whilst I was dumbstruck by this outrageous statement. Immediately after this interview, one of my colleagues will escort you to Bremen… Christ, I thought, forget ‘a holiday’: I’m being sent to a prison hulk, "… where you will join a Krafte durch Freude ship, which is about to start an extended cruise around the Mediterranean."

What the hell was he talking about? Then I remembered. Surely, Krafte durch Freude was the Nazi’s oddly-named ‘Strength through Joy’ programme designed to show the plebs that State socialism was better than capitalism, because it could provide the great unwashed with bourgeois-standard leisure on the cheap?¹³

But when will I return to England? I asked.

Once you are physically fully recovered… and depending upon how quickly you respond to the programme of psychological realignment, which is an important part of your recovery.

Psychological realignment? What the hell’s that?

A scientifically advanced course of treatment designed to ensure your full mental recovery. I believe that some people actually enjoy the electro-shock therapy… and, should it be necessary, I am told that the operation is quite painless and the results are excellent.¹⁴

I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about but, whatever it was, it didn’t sound too bad. Anyway, hadn’t I enjoyed the electrical therapy that I’d been given for a sprained ankle by a Harley Street quack the previous year? Whatever was in store, providing that it didn’t involve prison and led to my eventual release, it was preferable to Dachau.

You will be taken from here to the showers, the Kommandant continued, where you will wash and change into your own clothes, he pointed to a pile of garments on an adjacent bench, "and from