G. Heath to be the most capable officer I met in any department during the four years in which I had command,’ wrote Major Tyrell, when recommending Heath for a military MBE. ‘He had personality, drive and ability of the highest order. He was quick to grasp essentials and to formulate plans and his determination, energy and enthusiasm guarantee that they shall not miscarry. I find it difficult to present a fair picture of a man in whom I could detect no weakness of character, whose intellectual scope and integrity I could but admire and for whom I feel nothing but respect and affection.’ Colonel Chadd, who was to become a lifelong friend and make Heath godfather to his son, was equally complimentary. ‘At his interview,’ Chadd wrote, Heath told him that after the war, ‘he hoped to go into politics. Within a very short space of time Ted was held in the highest possible esteem by all of us – officers and other ranks alike – and we were quite sure that one day he could be prime minister.’ (Given that this was written in 1946 the officers and other ranks in question were remarkably perceptive.)12
Not everyone was so ecstatic. Tony Race, his site commander when he was posted near Liverpool, found him ‘mature and confident’ and admired his ‘stamina and efficiency’, but felt him to be ‘a little withdrawn. He hadn’t a warm personality.’ But even this accusation – which was to become all too familiar over the years – was denied by his admirers. ‘The men liked him,’ claimed Chadd. ‘He was never impatient with dullards or arrogant to people not so bright as himself.’ When he took over a battery from a major who had commanded it for several years, he was viewed with some suspicion. ‘We were none too happy,’ remembered the orderly room sergeant, James Hyde:
Up to then he had been an administrator. He hadn’t done any fighting worth speaking of…But I think it’s right to say that within a fortnight or three weeks he exercised such a persuading influence…that one found Heath was first class. So far as administration was concerned, he was perfect. The other reason he was first class – and this was to my surprise – was that he rapidly understood the men and their reactions…Within a month or two it was Heath’s battery. The men liked him because they thought he was a fair man.13
He became adjutant of his regiment in March 1942. ‘I imagine life as an Adjutant must suit you down to the ground,’ wrote Kay Raven. She wrote to him regularly throughout the war; letters beginning ‘Darling Teddy’ but rarely venturing beyond the chatty or the gossipy. She was now an officer in the WAAF and in 1944 Heath sent her a photograph. ‘My batwoman asked me if “that was my steady – he looks just like a film star”! Knowing her tastes, you must be a cross between Charles Boyer and Bob Hope. So now you reside on my mantelpiece and greet me in my waking and sleeping.’14 Whether he was her steady was a question which even he would have found it hard to answer. In a letter to Tim Bligh, a Balliol friend who was later to become principal private secretary to Harold Macmillan, he had evidently envisaged the possibility of marriage. ‘I would like to point out,’ replied Bligh, ‘that there are more convenient methods of experiencing the grand passion, and as you should know we can justly claim the title of lady-killers par excellence.’15 The reputation of lady-killer was not one to which Heath aspired, but even if he had considered marrying Kay it would have been a long-term project, not to be contemplated until the war was over. They met rarely, and when they did the meetings, for Kay, generally ended in frustration. ‘I’m awfully sorry about spoiling it the other night,’ she wrote after their leaves had for once coincided. ‘It was the horror of months of going by and hearing nothing of you…Perhaps it won’t be so long before you are back again.’16
By that time Heath had already spent nearly a year in Europe. His last months in England had been marred by a gangrenous appendix, which should have been operated on months before and nearly cost him his life. By the time it was removed he was convinced he was going to die. He wrote, in high emotion, to his parents, ‘It is not possible to thank you for all you have done, for your love, for my schooling, my career, and for the sacrifices which you have all the time made. Everything I have done I have owed largely to my early training and the standards you taught me.’ The tribute was most sincerely meant. Fortunately it never needed to be dispatched. The appendix was successfully removed, though its condition was so revolting that the hospital had it pickled and put on exhibition as a reminder of what should never happen.17
Heath and his regiment crossed the Channel a month after D-Day and fought their way towards Belgium, taking part, on the way, in the bombardment of Caen and the battle of the Falaise Gap. For a time they lingered in Antwerp, then in September 1944 moved on to support the allied forces trying to relieve the airborne troops at Arnhem. Their most serious action, wrote John Campbell in his biography, was keeping open the vital bridge at Nijmegen. ‘Nonsense!’ Heath scrawled in the margin; it is hard to understand why he took exception to the comment, because the action was indeed both bloody and of critical importance.18 The level of casualties among the gunners is usually lower than that in the infantry, but in the advance into Germany Heath frequently saw men die within a few yards of him and was constantly in danger. He never wavered. This officer, said his citation, ‘showed outstanding initiative and devotion to duty…His work was of a very high order and contributed largely to the success achieved.’
His last year as a soldier was spent in Germany. For three months he was in charge of a prisoner-of-war camp near Hanover. ‘I hope my experience and knowledge of the German people helped me to run the show with understanding and fairness,’ he told Professor Winckler.19 He was put in charge of the reconstruction of the city and gave the rebuilding of the opera house top priority. Whether the German population was entirely in accord with his scale of values is uncertain. Since the Brigade Commander was equally insistent that the racecourse should be reopened rapidly it is possible that they felt their housing needs were being unreasonably overlooked.
In his memoirs Heath records in moving detail the execution by firing squad of a Pole found guilty by court martial of aggravated rape and murder. He was in charge and had to give the order to fire. ‘I believe’, he wrote, ‘this made a mark on my mind which later crystallised the view to which I have adhered for nearly four decades of my political career, as to the justification for abolishing the death penalty in peace time.’ He is never known to have referred to this incident until work on the memoirs was almost completed. Rupert Allason in his as yet unpublished biography of Heath casts doubt on the story. He points out that no record of such an execution exists in the files kept by the Court Martial Centre. Since the war was four months over when the incident is alleged to have taken place, the guilty man would have been hanged rather than shot. A major would not normally have commanded a firing squad. The situation is not as clear-cut as Allason suggests. A few executions by firing squad did in fact take place after the end of the war. There are no records of executions of soldiers of Polish origin serving in the British Army at the time in question but, given the situation in Germany at the time, the Ministry of Defence believes that the victim could have been a member of the Polish land forces serving under allied command. Another possibility is that the executed Pole was incorrectly described as a soldier. One Polish national, Piotr Kuczerawy, was executed in Hanover at a time when Heath’s regiment was based in the city and it is possible that he found himself charged with this grisly task. Heath was in general a scrupulously truthful man and he had nothing to gain by inventing such a story. On the whole it seems likely that his story is substantially correct. Certainly the result was as he indicated; in the course of his political career he was consistent in his opposition to the death penalty.20
He might have been in a position to vote on the issue even before the supposed incident took place. Early in 1945 an Army Council Instruction invited anyone interested in fighting the anticipated general election to fill in a form requesting the necessary three weeks’ leave. Heath applied for a copy of the form. Andrew Roth, one of Heath’s