EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Volume 27, Number 3 Winter 1993

BARD IA MARTIN STANNARD'S MILITARY MUDDLE By Donat Gallagher (James Cook University, Australia) When reading Martin Stannard's No Abiding City [entitled Evelyn Waugh, The Later Years in the USA], for review, I was struck by what seemed an exceptionally large number of factual errors, unsupported claims, imputations of motive, overstatements and misreadings. The inaccuracy seemed so pervasive as to undermine the book's value as a work of record. In order to test this impression, I decided to examine a short neutral passage that would serve as a fair sample. The passage chosen for scrutiny had to be brief, and about an easily researched subject. The subject also had to be incapable of having stirred the prejudices of the biographer or the reviewer, or of awakening those of the readers of the book or review. Pages 28-31 of No Abiding City were selected because they dealt with a very minor military operation, viz. a Commando raid on Bardia, and with a humdrum article Waugh wrote about it. No issue of class, religion, politics, literary theory or internal military squabbling arises. Nor does the spectre of professional rivalry, for no one, I imagine, seeks the bubble reputation in a war of words about Bardia. The three pages narrate the events of the raid, using information drawn from Waugh's article and diaries. In addition, criticisms are made of Waugh on the basis of real and purported discrepancies between the article and the diaries. Little is said about the genesis of the article or about the administrative difficulties attending its publication. This is what I found. Use and Misuse of Sources The documentary sources of information about the raid on Bardia are few, complete and accessible. They comprise: 1. Waugh's "Memorandum on Layforce," printed in The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Michael Davie. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976, pp. 495-96. This is a cryptic summary of the operation, written after the event, and fully intelligible only in the light of more comprehensive reports. It is critical but rather overstated. (DIARIES) 2. Waugh's article, "Commando Raid on Bardia," printed in somewhat different forms in the Evening Standard and Life. 2 The Life version is reprinted in The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh, ed. Donat Gallagher. London: Methuen, 1983, pp. 263-68. (EAR) 3. Layforce HQ War Diary for 19/20 April 1941: with Appendix VIII (a), "Operation Order No.2" and Appendix Vlll(i), "Report in Raid on Bardia." "The Report," which is a detailed critical analysis of the operation, is corrected in Waugh's hand and was probably drafted by him. (W0218/166) (HQ War Diary) 4. Layforce "A" Battalion War Diary for 19/20 April 1941, with Appendices. This is another full account of the operation, considerably less critical of its conduct than the HQ Report. (W0218/168) ("A"BN War Diary) 5. The few pages about the raid contained in the published histories of the Commandos and of Combined Operations: e.g. Charles Messenger, The Commandos 1940-1946 (London: William Kimber 1991) and Bernard Fergusson, The Watery Maze: The Story of Combined Operations (London: Collins, 1961 ). Stannard uses only two of these sources, viz. Waugh's cryptic "Memorandum" and his "Commando Raid on Bardia," which, like most popular wartime journalism, adjusts facts to create atmosphere and to satisfy the censorship. This limited use of sources would not matter if Stannard had exercised critical caution and followed a standard biographical practice. He was fully entitled either to confine his treatment to the circumstances surrounding Waugh's participation in the raid and the writing of the article; or to present Waugh's version of the events-as Waugh's; or virtually to ignore the incident. Instead he relates the events found in Waugh's text on his own authority: "The Commandos, discovering no opposition, ran about freely. There was no transportation centre, but there was a dump of new lyres. They set light to this, blew up a trestle bridge ... " (p. 30). A paraphrase of Waugh's text thus becomes Stannard's narrative. This practice leads Stannard into two traps. The first is to repeat Waugh's errors. Thus Waugh writes: Our parent force had another job on that night- 250 men in a destroyer raiding further up the