Greeenmantle (Kara Gubek)

 

     Kara Gubek was the point of interest.  It stood on a rib of land between two peaks, which from the contour lines rose very steep.   So long as it was held it was clear that no invader could move down the Euphrates glen.  Stumm had appended a note to the peaks—“not fortified”; and about two miles to the north-east there was a red cross and the name “Prjevalsky.”  I assumed that to be the farthest point yet reached by the right wing of the Russian attack.

     Then I turned to the paper from which Stumm had copied the jottings on to his map.  It was typewritten, and consisted of notes on different points.  One was headed “Kara Gubek” and read: “No time to fortify adjacent peaks.  Difficult for enemy to get batteries there, but not impossible. This is the real point of danger, for if Prjevalsky wins the peaks Kara Gubek and Tafta must fall, and enemy will be on the left rear of Deve Boyun main position.”

 

     I was soldier enough to see the tremendous importance of this note.  On Kara Gubek depended the defence of Erzerum, and it was a broken reed if one knew where the weakness lay.  Yet, searching the map again, I could not believe that any mortal commander would see any chance in the adjacent peaks, even if he thought them unfortified.  That was information confined to the Turkish and German staffs.

NOTE:  


I haven't read Greenmantle in a long time, but I remember first turning its pages under Los Cabos, Baja Sur, sun with hawks wheeling overhead and whales breaking the Sea of Cortez surface and spouting very close offshore.


The paragraphs quoted above are atmospheric, but don’t convey the breadth, sweep, and moral depth and focus of John Buchan's trans-Caucasian World War I espionage-adventure novel.


I'm not the world's biggest Steven Spielberg fan, but I can't understand why he hasn't yet attacked Greenmantle.  It is tailor-made for him. I think he could make a commanding and moving success of it and The Three Hostages also (since sequel-itis seems to be a disease with no known cure).  He could transfer Mr Standfast to the care of Peter Jackson.

 

 John Buchan (1875-1940)

V For ______ (The Island Of Sheep 2)

   

        “Then I thought I’d better make his acquaintance.  You know Charles Lamancha’s taste for freak parties?  Well, I got him to give a dinner at the club  -- himself, Christopher Stannix, an Under-Secretary, a couple of bankers, and Ned Leithen, and I had myself placed next to Barralty.  Of course by this time he knew all about me, for the Laverlaw party had begun, and his friends had discovered the way we have tied up Harraldsen’s fortune, so naturally I was considered the villain of the piece.  He made no mistakes that night.  He was very polite to me, and talked intelligently about my Far East Commission and foreign affairs generally, and even condescended to be enthusiastic about this Border country in which he said he often motored. He did not attempt to pump me, but behaved as if I were an ordinary guest of whom he had heard and whom he was quite glad to meet.  There was some pretty good talk, for Stannix always manages to put life into a dinner table, and Barralty kept his end up.  He had a wrangle with one of the bankers over some financial point, and I thought he put his case uncommonly well.   So did the others, for he was listened to with respect.  There’s no doubt that he has a pretty solid footing in the world, and there’s no mistake about his brains.  He’s as quick as lightning on a point, and I can see him spinning an immense web and keeping an eye on every thread in it.” 

 

  “I told you that several weeks ago,” said Lombard.  “Barralty is as clever as the devil.  But what about the rest of him – besides his mind?”

      

          “I’m coming to that.”

The Summons Comes For Mr Standfast

       

    

     They took Peter from the wreckage with scarcely a scar except his twisted leg.  Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and had left his face much as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills.  In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim’s Progress.  It lies before me as I write, as beside it, for I was his only legatee – the little case which came to him weeks later, containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.

 

  

        It was from the Pilgrim’s Progress that I read next morning, when in the lee of an apple orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave.  And what I read was the tale of the end, not of Mr Standfast who he had singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate.  I set down the words as a salute and a farewell:

 

         “Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it.  My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder.’

 

        “So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.” 

John Buchan, Mr Standfast (Chapter 54).  London, Hodder & Stoughton (1919)