The Reminiscences of Zafrulla Khan — Page 123
123 REMINISCENCES OF SIR MUHAMMAD ZAFRULLA KHAN years ago? You were First Lord of the Admiralty then. " He said, "Well, in a way it is striking, the same enemy, the same problems, the same preparations and arrangements. " He was at his best, as I was told he always was, about midnight. When we were in the map room, he explained to us the whole organization whereby they knew the exact position of every vessel, Naval and mercantile, and how it was being escorted and protected. At one stage he turned to me and enquired, "What do you think of all this?" I said, "It is reassuring. " "That's the word, that's the word; it's reassuring," he observed. Colonel Reitz, the South African Minister, said to Mr. Churchill towards the end, "I have been thinking how fortunate it was that our people did not shoot you when you were trying to escape from Ladysmith!" Churchill's eyes twinkled with pleasure. We attended meetings and we met people. Then we made discreet inquiries: "Would we be able to go to the front at all?" We were told there would be no possibility of that. Colonel Reitz was very upset. I might mention that he had fought in the Boer War against the British and later he had written about his experiences in that war and called the book Commando. It became a best seller and subsequently wrote another book called Out Span as a sequel to Commando. He sent me copies of both later. Subsequent to our association in the Dominion Ministers' Conference, he was appointed High Commissioner of South Africa in London. He fumed, "I dare not go back home without going to the front. My boys will say to me, 'Daddy, you funked it!' I would not be able to show my face to them. " He manoeuvred, and finally it was decided that we would be taken over to the front, but that only the ministers would go; their secretaries would not accompany them. We were put in the charge of Mr. Eden, who was at that time Dominions Secretary. We crossed over to Paris, and during our first night in the Crillon Hotel; we had our first experience of an alert. My reaction was that it was too much of a bother to go down to the cellars which were supposed to be the air raid shelter, and I just turned over in bed and fell asleep again. The next morning we were told that Mr. Eden had gone down to the cellars among the ladies in his silk pajama suit! Obviously, the occasion left no time to bother about sartorial details. We were bidden to lunch at Vincennes, which was the military headquarters of the French, and the lunch was presided over by a Field