THE ONE-LEGGED PARACHUTIST
Patrick Leigh Fermor remembers
`Andrew Kennedy', who died last month
THE waning of last year was further darkened by the death of Andrew Ken- nedy. He died in Munich on 1 December, aged 76.
He was neither Scottish, of course, nor 'Andrew Kennedy' at all, but Polish and Andrzej Kowerski, and his name was always linked with that of 'Christine Gran- ville'. She started life as Countess Krystina Skarbek, and her mother was Jewish. She and Andrew both belonged to the land- owning szlachta with its fluent French and its vast tangle of cousins; the SS had killed most of Andrew's long after he escaped from Poland in 1941. His mother and uncle and all his cousins down to an eight-year- old girl were murdered at a wedding at Zbydniow in Galicia, perhaps in reprisal for his service with the Nazis' enemy. One of his legs was a metal one from a pre-war shooting accident, but this did not stop him winning the Virtutr Militari, their highest award for valour, in Poland's only mecha- nised brigade when the Germans invaded in 1939.
Andrew and Christine, as they must be called — he was then 28, she a bit younger — escaped and made their way separately into still-uninvaded Hungary, where they joined forces and quickly became a double Scarlet Pimpernel team, spiriting away fellow-countrymen bent on escape and, later on, much-needed British pilots who had been shot down over Poland. Follow- ing frontier tracks she had explored as an amateur smuggler for fun before the war, Christine led them on skis and through blizzards over the High Tatra chain of the Carpathians, and Andrew slipped them across the Serbian border in a small car under the noses of the steadily mounting numbers of Gestapo agents. They became lovers and, though they never married and neither was strictly faithful, the bond re- mained indestructible for the rest of their lives. Arrested by Slovak guards, they got away with their well rehearsed cover-story; but it no longer convinced the Germans. Sadly, a last journey to save her mother had to be called off. They escaped in the nick of time, Andrew at the wheel of his Opel, Christine hidden in the boot of the British Ambassador's car. (It was Sir Owen O'Reilly who gave them their new names with their British passports and they were Christine and Andrew — or Andy — ever after.) Safely over the border of Yugosla- via, they drove on to Bulgaria and then to Turkey just in time. In Constantinople they handed over to Aidan Crawley, the air attaché, the microfilms they had taken of the German armour assembling on the Russian border. Then they pressed on to Syria and Palestine and Cairo. Their careers became enmeshed for a while in Polish émigré rivalries; and it was here, in Rustam Buildings and the Ghezira and at 'Tara' that they began to dawn on us all.
There was something unusual and inspir- ing about them. Her beautiful looks (which had caused her to be crowned 'Miss Po- land' before the war) were gentle and unobvious; the charm lay in the quietness; patriotism and a sense of pity, backed by a love of adventure, were the mainsprings of her courage and her flair. Andrew's style and panache, his strong frame, hot blue eyes and a head-voice timbre which made his utterances seem to emerge with com- pressed force, were an arresting mixture; zest for life, humour, and the gift of catching laughter made him a treasured companion. He loved food, drink, talk and late nights. His English became fluent, but it never lost its engaging Polish or French foibles. 'I vas studying at Cracow Universi- ty sree years vizout taking a degree, and living only on vodka and raw meat.'
When things were cleared up, he was commissioned in the British Army and became the first one-legged parachutist in SOE; but, because of this handicap and to his fury, he was barred from dropping 'in the field'. They moved west with the war and to Italy, where he trained his compat- riots for secret work in Poland. A bit later, Christine was parachuted to the French maquis in the Vercors, where, learning that Francis Cammaerts and Xan Fielding had been caught by the Germans, she headed straight to Digne prison, and, by a combination of bribery, threats about the swift Allied advance up the Rhone valley and saying she was Montgomery's niece, she got the guard to desert with the prisoners the day before they were to be shot, and drove them off to freedom.
In the weeks before D-Day, Andy (who had managed to get the parachute veto lifted) and about 30 others, including me, were involved in a strange unit: small teams standing by at Sunningdale golf course to be dropped on prison camps in Germany. The idea was to prevent the POWs being carried off as hostages to a shadowy Bavarian or Tyrolese redoubt until our advancing troops could liberate them. It was not a very practical scheme; thank heavens things went too fast for it, and, in the end, our planes tamely landed us on Luneburg Heath and we ended the war in Europe together by swanning into Hamburg, Flensburg and Kiel and then, deliriously, into liberated Denmark.
After the war Andrew moved about between England and Germany and ended up running some companies there. But, in 1952, his life was dashed by a tragic event. Christine, out of restlessness, independ- ence and need, and at a loss suddenly with nobody to rescue, sailed away from her rather thoughtless adopted country with a temporary job as a transatlantic stewar- dess. Her fatal gift of inspiring love impel- led a jealous and rejected fellow-steward to follow her ashore and trace her to her hotel in London, where he stabbed her to death. (He was tried for murder and hanged.) It was a shattering knock. As we learnt two weeks ago, Andy asked for his ashes to be placed in Christine's grave in north London.
Xan and I went to see him in Munich two years ago. He was totally unchanged. At our request, he gave us a vivid account of a battle during the German invasion of Poland. 'Venn ze bloody German armour clanked avay', he concluded, `zere vas I viz my metal leg jammed under a knocked-out tank. Somevun started shouting, "Fetch ze doctor!" "I don't vant a doctor, you blizzering idiot," I shouted at him.' Andy's voice rang through the Weinstube as he remembered it — —1 vant a blacksmith!"'
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