Gunner
"I am not a camera. I am a dog. A brown and white terrier born somewhere
in the streets near Napoleon's palace in Fontainebleau and later adopted
by a couple of chaps in British army uniform with Royal Artillery on their
shoulder flashes. I lived in the Quartier Chataux...the name of the French
family who lived there before N.A.T.O. took it over..."
So starts "Gunner Strikes Back", being Volume V of my memoirs, and
it is the tale of a tail!
Gunner's tail was wagging the first time I met him on my way through the town
of Fontainebleau towards the Cour Henri IV, a wing of Napoleon's palace occupied
by soldiers from Britain, America, Canada, France, Belgium and one or two spare
bods from some of the other N.A.T.O countries. It was a good posting for a conscript
(the Government called it "National Service") doing two years in uniform,
because it was in my favourite country, France, and it gave, for those who wanted
to grab the opportunity, a wonderful chance to travel on leave to Spain, Italy,
Switzerland, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
Gunner trotted along with me and my oppo. Johnny Young, and waited
while we went into a shop and bought a litre of milk each as a hangover
cure from the red wine of the night before. I bought a packet of NICE
biscuits, and gave one to Gunner who was looking hopeful. He loved it.
He was my friend for life.
He was really the mascot of the men of the Royal Artillery, back then in 1954,
but he could adapt to any company, and he especially liked the Catering Corps
men who fed him as if he were a royal corgi, at the back door of the cookhouse.
He would sometimes follow the Camp Commandant, but I believe he was only trying
to see up the Black Watch kilt, being as curious with a kilt as he was with the
skirts and dresses of the French girls in the town. He knew when it was market
day and would go down to the big cement covered square in the town, (built by
the occupying Germans in 1940, along with a swimming pool, when they were trying
to be friendly to the French before it turned nasty), and get scraps from the
butcher's stall.
He had to stop and turn back as we entered the HQ where the Military Police redcap
stood saluting all day long, but he would sometimes be there, on the pavement,
when we left work to return to barracks.
His days of happiness in the sun-drenched town, nights of bullybeef snacks and
trips to the cinema were to come to an abrupt end when a big Jock with his army
belt wrapped around his fist fought a whole dancehall full of Frenchmen and was
court martialled and sent to Colchester Military Prison, because the Camp Commandant
wrote to the war office requesting a "disciplinarian" to "get
aboard" the British Army Element in the historic French town and his request
was met with -- a ramrod backed Corporal Major in the Guards, a drill instructor
who had drilled the men for the Berlin Victory Parade in 1945.
That was the end of Gunner. The Corporal Major instructed the drivers to take
him to Paris and lose him in the middle of Les Halles market when they were buying
vegetables, and that was that.
Until ten days later he walked through the gateway of the barracks, having trotted
60 kilometres from Paris.
Furthermore -- he did that three times, twice on foot, all the way, and once
when some drivers saw him trotting through Melun, about half way, and gave the
little hitch-hiker a lift back to Fontainebleau.
Gunner would go to the camp cinema, lean against a wall and bark when another
dog (or Lassie) came on the screen. Next day he would trot up two streets and
wait at the bus stop, keeping his place in the queue, and go to the American
camp, Camp Guynemer, a couple of miles away, and go into their cinema to see
the film, and come back on the bus.
He kept a weather eye out for the Corporal Major and stay out of the range of
a nasty Captain who had whacked him a couple of times with his swagger stick.
But enough of this: let Gunner tell his own story, as he does in the book, recounting
his experiences in Paris in the middle of the 20th Century:
By the time I got to Montparnasse it was late morning, what with stopping
off to see all the sights of this great city, so I headed for Le Coupole
which was a great enormous kind of cafe-bar-brasserie-restaurant and bistro
(heard Sullivan telling Shepherd that that word came from the time Russian
soldiers were in Paris and they called out 'bistro', 'bistro' to the waiters,
which was Russian for 'quick', 'quick', and the crafty French commercants
had the idea to call their cafes 'bistros' for quick service food). Le Coupole
was inhabited by artists: painters and writers, sculptors and composers
of music, and they were good for a hand-out to a hungry dog. If I'd gone
to the Tour d'Argent or one of those expensive posh restaurants, I'd have
got a kick up the arse from the doorman, or, if I'd managed to sneak into
the kitchen, an accurately thrown knife by one of the chefs.
I know where I'm not wanted
The first man I saw was an American who aid: "Hello, doggie ... here ... here, good boy", and he stroked me under the chin and on the chest and reached under and gave me a quick belly-rub, sheer ecstasy to a dog, in case you didn't know. "Sit, boy" the American gentleman said, and then he leaned down and asked: "And what's your name, little feller?" I wish I could have told him: "Gunner, sir, and I was adopted by the British soldiers living in Fontainebleau and I've been in Napoleon's palace there and seen the Emperor's hat and his little bed and his little bath, and he must have been OK because when he was returning from Italy to Paris he sent a message to his mistress, Josephine: BACK IN TEN DAYS - DON'T WASH."
The American gentleman said: "Stick around, doggie, because this could be your lucky day. I'll be ordering a rabbit casserole at mid-day and the guy I'm meeting will be ordering choucroute because he's a German, a friend, and a good guy. We used to share a studio here in Paris before the war. Why, here he is now. Hi, Rudi."
"Hi, Steve."
I heard a customer at the next table say: "That's Rudi Baerwind, the German painter."
Steve and Rudi ordered pastis and started to talk about old times. Rudi had stayed on in Paris when the German army occupied.
"I was in the Dome, across the street there, when the soldiers surrounded it, ready for the Gestapo to go in and check papers, looking for German Jews who had escaped to France. There were lots of Jewish girls in the place, students, working girls and escapees, and one of them, that I took to be an escapee, looked terrified, so I said to her: 'We are going out. Hold on to my arm and do not let go, no matter what happens'. I went with her up to the cordon where a soldier tried to push us back. but I yelled: 'Ich bin Deutch. Das ist mein Frau.' He let us go through and I advised her to go south immediately and try to get to England through Spain or Portugal."
"And you got called up," said Steve.
"Sent to the Russian front as a war artist. We had to write our last will and testament in our pay-books, so I wrote: 'I leave my paintings, my studio in Paris and any money in my bank account to the French State' The officer screamed at me: 'You can not do this. They are the ENEMY! I insisted so he put me to work pitch-forking a hundred bodies of soldiers into a trench and a bulldozer covered them. When I reported to the Captain he said: 'Where are the dog-tags?' 'Shit!' 'Right. I said if we have to dig them up again I am going to make sketches of the whole operation..."
"What happened next, Rudi?"
"When we were totally surrounded by the Russians, the General ordered me to paint his portrait 'before we all die', he said. But I ran out of paint. 'I have no more colours, mein General,' I said. ''Where can you get colours?' he asked. 'The only place is Paris,' I replied. 'Take my private 'plane and fly to Paris, buy the paints, and come back -- and hurry.' So I did, and finished the portrait. A good lesson is: always stay near the General in a war and you won't get killed. But as the Russians closed in Hitler ordered the General out. He did not want to lose a panzer General to the Russian hordes, so we flew out, the General, his portrait, his staff and me, and that is why I am still here, Steve, my friend."
"That was General von Manteuffel, the one Hitler ordered out of Stalingrad, right? But what happened to the painting?"
"Lost, bombed, burnt, destroyed - who knows?"
I had a great time, because the American kept passing down morsels of rabbit to me. I heard them discussing a tough looking little guy in a black leather jerkin who was standing in the door with a muscular young man, I heard Steve say to Rudi that he was the kind of aggressive homosexual he disliked, showing off, full of his own importance and looking around everywhere on the qui vive. Then another American stopped at their table and Steve asked who the man in the doorway was, and he said he was Jean Genet, the writer. Just after he said this the American was joined by a little pop-eyed black American, and said: 'OK, Jimmy', and when Rudi asked who he was, Steve said: 'Jimmy Baldwin. He's writing a book. Needs some advice.'
They went on talking about Steve's best friend, Jackson Pollock. Then Steve said: 'Rothko and de Kooning are going strong but poor little Arshile Gorky died in '48. He wanted to help the war effort and said to me: 'Steve - what is camouflage?' I explained to him and a couple of years ago I was looking in a second hand bookshop in New York and I found a slim volume called "The Art of Camouflage" by Arshile Gorky. I had to laugh. The poor little guy was doing his best to help the war effort, I suppose..."
It looked like Steve would be drinking cognac all day, so I left and trotted down to St. Germain de Pres, and the cafe Napoleon which had a nice terrace and a view of the lovely little church in the square, and there, lo and behold, was the famous philosopher himself, Jean-Paul Sartre, and he was with a lady he called Simone, and they were arguing about her signing a form for the Germans saying she had no Jewish blood in her family so that she could teach and he was telling her that by signing she had collaborated and played into their hands because it was part of their policy of hatred, and she said: 'Stop saying that. I survived. You survived. We're lucky we weren't sent to concentration camps -- both of us...'
I decided to move on because they were getting angry. It seemed like people just could not forget the war and it ended nine years ago, and maybe they just couldn't ever recover from what had happened. Just before I left I saw an old tramp coming past the terrace. He held his hand out. Nobody gave him anything, but when he stopped at Monsieur Sartre's table, I saw the great philosopher secretly give him a great bundle of franc notes, and nobody else saw but me, and maybe Simone, but she was probably too angry to notice...
Gunner the wonder dog stayed on in Fontainebleau after I left for demobilisation in England after two long years in the British army, ticking off the days until I could become a civilian again and get back into journalism. Before I left, someone showed me a French magazine with a double page photo spread about Gunner with pictures of him waiting in the queue, going through the gates of Quartier Chataux, and the gates of Camp Guynemer at the end of the Avon road. I recently tried to find this magazine by advertising and had a response from the Fontainebleau Veterans Association which is mainly R.A.F. men who hold reunions and march down the Champs Elysees once a year, and two members, a Gunner and an R.A.F man sent me photos of him -- but no magazine. Most of Gunner's story is in my book Gunner Strikes Back, but I caught up with what happened to him after 1955: He was attacked and badly injured by a group of French youths, taken to a vet. by R.A.F. men, patched up,nursed back to health, and he lived in their rented houses or in barracks until the 1960's.
When Gunner, who had gone on parade with the lads, ran alongside them on training runs, watched and barked at the rugby matches and football matches, rode around in their cars or on the backs of mo-peds or just trotted back and forth between Camp Guynemer (named after the famous French pilot) and Fontainebleau town, visited the cinema and the American PX (Post Exchange) and had taken to barking at Frenchmen when they came too close, reached a happy old age and died, his friends were distraught, and many tears were shed.
Gunner was buried with full military honours in a corner of Camp Guynemer, and in 2006, which just happens to be the Chinese Year of the Dog, a plaque will be placed on Gunner's grave by the members of the Fontainebleau Veterans Association (www.fontainebleauveteransassociation.com) during their annual visit to France in September.
We will remember him.