Moon Tiger

by Penelope Lively

This is the record; this is what history comes down to in the end; this is the language of war. Not that other language – that lunatic language that lays a smokescreen of fantasy – that crazy language of generals and politicians: Plan Barbarossa, with its Wagnerian invocations; Operations Snowdrop, Hyacinth, Daffodil and Tulip dancing feyly towards Tobruk. That was the language I used to hear in Cairo, on the lips of the Eighth Army buccaneers – the laconic chat about Matildas and Honeys, coy disguise for several tons of mobile death-dealing metal, and the amiable euphemism whereby such things when hit did not explode (roasting alive their crew) but ‘brewed up’. And it was a picnic, too, of course, and men did not die but bought it, were not shot but stopped one. The eccentricity of it occurs only with hindsight; at the time it seemed normal, even acceptable. Words were my business, but it wasn’t the moment for close analysis of their implications – or at least not that kind of analysis.