The French army granted leave to those in its service who had a relative released from German imprisonment, so Anita was able to go home to see Jack. En route to Glaslough, she stayed with Rose, who was working her way steadily – or, perhaps, unsteadily – through a phalanx of fighter pilots. The latest one was Pete Gardner. He had escaped from a prison camp and, on meeting Rose at one of her favourite nightclubs said, immediately, ‘You’re going to marry me.’ Unlike Anita, Rose seemed able to get divorced at whim. She and Pete married before the end of the year.
The raf, ‘always at Rose’s beck and call’, flew Anita to Belfast, where Jack met her and drove her to Glaslough in the familiar horsedrawn brougham. After this reunion Anita made her way to Berlin by an adventurous route, which included a stopover, near Frankfurt, at Schloss Friedrichshof, once the home of Queen Victoria’s favourite daughter, Vicky. Army discipline was unravelling. Nobody seemed to know where anyone else was or how they got there, which led to some surprising encounters and equally surprising absences. On 19 July Peter Wilson, having had no news of Anita for a while, wrote to her, asking where she was. Peter was part of the British delegation in Potsdam, the last of the Second World War conferences, held from 16 July until 2 August and attended by Churchill (whose place was taken by Attlee after the British General Election), Truman and Stalin. The conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin, nine weeks after the German surrender. Its aim was to impose order on the new post-war world. What was to become East Germany was given to Russia; the south of the country became the American zone, and the north was given to Great Britain. After some deliberation, France was given part of west Germany, carved out of the us and British zones. In popular parlance, the us got the scenery, the French the wine and the Brits the ruins.
And Anita? She was in Potsdam too. On the same day that Peter was writing to her, she was writing to Winston, boasting at having arrived there: ‘My division – General Soudre’s first armoured – is the only one here.’ Somehow, the other ambulancières had been left behind. Peter found her a day or so later and they explored the smashed Tiergarten and the ruins of Berlin. Peter had a new plan for their future, one that didn’t involve a gypsy life in the wild. He had been sounded out about the job of military adviser to the Syrian government and was convinced that Anita would be prepared to leave Europe and go back to the Middle East, perhaps forgetting that she hated the climate, had been wild with misery for much of her time there and thankful to have been posted to Italy.
From Berlin, on 22 July, Anita wrote to Marjorie on writing paper headed with a swastika and eagle, filched from Hitler’s bombed-out chancellery. A Russian officer had plied her with souvenirs from the building: a piece of brocade from Hitler’s chair and a bronze Motherhood Cross of the kind awarded to mothers of four children. Silver crosses were given to mothers of six and gold ones to mothers of eight. The crosses had been awarded every year on 8 August, the birthday of Hitler’s mother. Anita was very excited: ‘Darling Ma! The climax of my military career has now arrived!’ She had lodged with her beloved 11th Hussars, the reconnaissance regiment of the Desert Rats. She had taken part in a grand parade watched by Winston, Alex, Monty and other wartime leaders. She had lunched with Winston and his daughter Mary at their villa in Potsdam, where she had sat between Winston and Anthony Eden. Her friends in the 11th Hussars had sent Winston ‘a huge red Iron Cross decoration which he fancied greatly’. In a few days’ time she would have to trek back to the Rhine to rejoin her ambulance unit but meanwhile, ‘I’ve certainly had the most spectacular end of a war.’
But it wasn’t quite the end. On 11 August, the day that the war in Japan ended, Anita travelled to Wittlich, the Rhineland city on the Moselle, where, a few days later, she and Geneviève were told to be ready at 6 am in ironed skirts (cut out of gi trousers), polished boots, neatly turned-down white socks and white gloves to join a parade at which decorations were to be presented. A band played the Marseillaise as a general pinned the Croix de Guerre on Anita’s shirt. She had been awarded it for dragging wounded men out of the snow on the battlefields of Colmar. It was 15 August, the Feast of the Assumption, Napoleon’s birthday and the anniversary of the Marseilles landing; a perfect day to have one’s valour recognized and to experience the ecstasy of achievement.
The result of the British general election had been declared on 26 July, showing a Labour landslide with a majority of 145 seats. Labour’s campaign slogan had been ‘Let us face the future’, an appealing exhortation to a people longing to forget the nightmare of the recent past. Anita wrote to Winston: ‘We were all wild the Socialists got in till news came that you were in terrific form and going to lead the Opposition.’ She then painted a picture of a drab, dull Britain of ‘hideous little tin houses’, which would be no fun at all to govern. A comforting letter for an old warhorse. Shane also wrote to his defeated cousin, in his usual mixture of pomposity and supplication. He asked Winston if he would have Jack down for a day at Chartwell: ‘He was the only soldier a blood relation of yours in German power and they never found out!’ Jack was staying at the Guards Club in London, while having ‘medical treatments’, which Shane doesn’t specify.
In September Anita was demobilized via Paris. Thereafter things get a bit confused. Train to Nowhere ends in London where, thanks to Peter, although she doesn’t mention him, she manages to get hold of the pink wool from Winston’s map room, which had been used for marking the advance of armies, to send to her friend Monique in France, who was expecting a baby. A Story Half Told, the later version of her wartime life, ends at Glaslough, where Bill King proposes to her. She gives the impression that Bill’s lakeside proposal took place in 1946 but, in fact, Anita suffered some years of emotional turbulence before Bill rescued her from chaos. Agnes’s memoir describes things differently:
Whenever my sister-in-law, Anita came to town, it was like a minor invasion of a major army. She was about to be demobbed and would arrive at South Lodge with kitbags, army boots, horse-blankets and gentlemen whom she referred to as her beaux. Beaux A and B [Philip and Peter] were semi-demobbed by then and, uncertain of their future whereabouts, they too brought their army gear and dumped it with us. Beau C [Bill] had not yet been released from his submarine duty and did not appear on the scene until much later, with spectacular results.
That Christmas, Desmond, Agnes and Anita were all at Glaslough. ‘Anita looked incredibly beautiful in a tea-gown of cream-coloured lace,’ Agnes wrote. At Castle Leslie, there were still eight indoor servants, four gardeners, meals served by a footman in livery and, if you so desired, breakfast in bed. But it wasn’t enough.