F T ERTHOUGHT

Brien: Evasions of Cowardice-1943-45

The extracts have been taken without a struggle and under heavy anaesthetic, from the diaries of Dr Cretan. Dr Cretan became Brien's medical adviser in 1943 as the curtain was rising on one of the greatest dramas in Brien's history—his plot to avoid being called up for the Royal Air Force. They continue throughout Brien's undistinguished war career. This is hardly an epic story, certainly not the way Dr Cretan tells it, but it may help to keep in warm storage for future generations the memory of this pathetic figure who more than anyone else embodied in himself the cowardly in- stincts of a scared nation.

March 12, 1943

Alan Brien is eighteen today. He has just re- ceived the long-delayed call to arms from His Majesty the King in the almost honorary rank of Aircraftman Second Class. And I have become his doctor—not because he wanted one but be- cause various members of his family have decided that somebody should keep an eye on him and I am the only one-eyed GP in the neighbourhood.

Slopping off at W. H. Smiths to buy a foolscap diary, I hurried to the jerry-built council house in Sunderland which he then occupied. Though it was three in the afternoon, he was still in bed reading D. N. Pritt's Must the War Spread? A half-empty bottle of light ale stood on a chair near the door and Brien was smoking one of those exotic Woodbines which were later to become such a familiar attachment to his lower lip. He was unshaven and there were tell-tale traces of a substance which I, as a medical man, immediately identified as dried egg around his colourless lips.

'Get up, you lily-livered coward' I observed in m. kindliest bedside manner. 'Your country needs you.' And I tore off six layers of eiderdown, a small carpet, a First War greatcoat, a quire of clandestine copies of the Daily Worker and a stone hot water bottle wrapped in a dirty sock, only to discover he was fully dressed in purple corduroys and a yellow fair isle sweater.

'Imperialist lackey,' he screamed, as the arctic cold hit his unprotected clothing. 'There's nothing wrong with me that the sight of you in uniform would not cure. Except that I am suffering from TB like Keats, syphilis like Maupassant, and elephantiasis like Gauguin. But I would not ex- pect a philistine like you to understand the agonies of an artist.'

I pointed out that I was certainly not a member of that, or indeed any other Jewish tribe, though some of my best friends are Philistines.

'On second thoughts, you look more like a bad Samaritan' he sneered. 'The only thing wrong with me is frustration, and a mild case of fear.' I wonder if Winston Churchill is on any doctor's panel at the moment?

January 1. 1944 Today I called at Brien's house and the man at the door said the Dowager Mrs Brien wanted to see me before I saw the Aircraftman First Class. She said he was going to Stranraer.

'When?'

'Yesterday. It is quite chilly up there and he has a slight cold in the head. You must stop him.'

I went up to his room. Though it was three in the afternoon, he was still in bed. The usual light ale and inevitable Woodbine were much in evi- dence and with my clinical insight I recognised

the remnants of a snook sandwich resting on his battledress jacket which he was naturally still wearing. Will I ever examine him undressed?

'They are trying to kill me,' he said soberly, or as soberly as he could manage while enduring an attack of what I diagnosed at once as a severe case of light-ale allergy. I took out my diary sur- reptitiously. 'Nazi agents on a secret mission?' I asked, 'I heard Lord Haw Haw had dropped some near the Town Hall."No, you doddering old draft-dodger,' he shouted. 'The Royal Bloody Air Force.'

I examined him as well as I could through a uniform worn over six layers of aircrew under- wear and gave him a certificate authorising two days extra leave due to 'Influenza.' He read my handwriting with some difficulty then his face lit up.

'Typhus,' he crowed happily. 'I ought to be able to stretch out a month on that. You couldn't add "and secondary leprosy," could you?'

I have a feeling he is using me for his own ends but I must have something to put in the diary.

February 1, 1944

Brien is still in town and is continually seen around in beard and sandals chalking up 'Open Up A Second Front' all over the public library. Thank heavens, the censorship will not allow such activities to be reported in the Sunderland Echo.

This afternoon I found him in my surgery, sleeping on a mound of almost new pre-war magazines. He wants me to give him another cer- tificate for rheumatic fever, alcoholism, paranoia and fallen arches.

'If I stay here long enough, they'll win the war without me was how he phrased it.

March 1, 1944 The RAF have sent a guard of honour in the shape of two police corporals to escort Brien back to camp. I gather I will be allowed to follow by goods train in the frozen fish van. Before he left he recited 'Eskimo Nell' to me in its entirety. His version contains several unscholarly and doubtful variants and he became quite red in the face when I pointed this out to him.

January 2, 1945

I begin to suspect that he finds me an unwel- come accessory on his travels. Once he wedged the door of the toilet as we were passing through Bletchley for the third time and I was unable to extricate myself until four days later in Grange- mouth. He ignores all my lectures, illustrated with colour photographs, on the dangers of scrap- ing an acquaintance with low-class female per- sons in shop doors. All he says is—'You don't need to worry, you can have the one with the glasses.' He has not taken a bath to my know- ledge since D-Day and sometimes I think he is galloping into middle-age. When I tentatively hinted to him that his kitbag (which I am always obliged to carry) had a peculiar smell, he riposted wittily—'So would you if six Canadian Flight- Sergeants had just been sick in you. Belt up and go back to being a civilian poisoner.'

VE Day, 1945

Brien cannot wait to get out of uniform. He asked me today for a certificate which would pre- vent him being posted to the Far East. So far he has won no medals, nor been mentioned in dis- patches. It seems unlikely that he will even be- come a warrant officer. In the long dark watches of the night I ask myself—have I been keeping a diary on the wrong chap? Hear Churchill is not entirely happy with his medical man.

ALAN BRIEN