A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
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ERMAN Generals are having a thin time today, compared at least to their counterparts in the British or French or American armies. Two cases, one of which interests me particularly, are mentioned in Brigadier Desmond Young's singular readable volume on Rommel, which has attracted so much atten- tion this week. Brigadier Young speaks of General von Esebeck, "a quiet elderly man, living alone in a small bed-sitting-room on the top floor" and of General von Ravenstein, who between the wars (being out of military employment) had become head of a news agency in Duisburg till he was thrown out by the Nazis. After the Second War, in which he fought with Rommel in North Africa, he was captured, went as a prisoner of war to Canada, and now, according to Brigadier Young, is once again head. of his news agency in Duisburg. I wonder if that is quite right. When I was in Duisburg last year I was introduced to the General, who, I understood, was working in some sort of clerical capacity at the Town Halt- The Black Watch, which is quartered in Duisburg, came across him and showed him some friendly aourtesy, inviting him, I fancy, to dinner in the officers' mess and to attend the regimental sports. He did not look as if life had been kindly to him.
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