The Over-the-Hill Mob

By R.Z. Sheppard

THE TRAIN ROBBERS by Piers Paul Read; Lippincott; 320 pages; $10.95

As Casey Stengel used to say, "You could look it up." Says the Guinness Book of World Records: "The greatest recorded train robbery occurred between 3:03 a.m. and 3:27 a.m. on August 8, 1963, when a General Post Office mail train from Glasgow, Scotland, was ambushed at Sears Crossing and robbed at Bridego Bridge at Mentmore, near Cheddington, Buckinghamshire, England. The gang escaped with about 120 mailbags containing -L-2,631,784 worth of bank notes being taken to London for pulping. Only -L- 343,448 had been recovered by December 9, 1966."

There have been a number of books about this famous "tickle," the London underworld's euphemism for unlawfully separating the owner from his property. Malcolm Fewtrell, the Buckinghamshire detective superintendent assigned to the case, was the first to title his account of the crime The Train Robbers. The principal distinction of Piers Paul Read's similarly named book is that its author is also a record holder of sorts. In 1974 the paperback rights to Alive, his bestseller about the Andes plane crash victims who survived on protein obtained from their dead comrades, sold for $1.2 million. It was, at the time, the most ever known to be paid for a new book.

Read, son of the late art historian Sir Herbert Read, was previously known as a novelist (Monk Dawson, The Professor's Daughter, The Upstart). His new book is difficult to accept as either fact or fiction. First, there are the project's origins, described in Read's introduction: "Toward the end of April, 1976, a tall, well-dressed South African walked into the offices of the London publishers W.H. Allen and Co. and offered to sell them the confessions of the celebrated Great Train Robbers ... Reluctant to sign up the thieves without an author to write their story, the publishers invited me to come to London and discuss the project with all concerned." Out of the meeting, attended by seven of the original 15 bandits, came a startling claim: the so-called crime of the century had been financed by ODESSA, the secret international organization of ex-Nazis who were eager to channel their war loot into venture capital. The reputed leader of ODESSA was Otto Skorzeny, famous as the Waffen SS officer in charge of the 1943 raid on an Apennine ski resort that freed the deposed Mussolini from his captors. Skorzeny died of cancer in 1975.

Read treats this new wrinkle in an otherwise familiar story as fact--until, in a final section oddly called "Corroboration," he suggests that the Nazi connection was another tickle, a hoax designed to hook the publisher. Read then exits rather sheepishly with the classic copout, "Let each reader decide upon its veracity for himself." In an era of recycled journalism and package publishers who may be soon calling books "entertainment systems," everybody aboard The Train Robbers appears to have it both ways. Even the reader, who can spook himself with the thought that the SS rides again or ignore this specter and still get a doughty account of a daring exploit.

Though it occurred only about 15 years ago, the Great Train Robbery belongs to another age. In accordance with longstanding though sadly eroding British tradition, the gang did not use firearms. Their basic field weapon was the cosh or blackjack. For other occasions the arsenal included ax handles, umbrellas reinforced with iron rods, and a gadget that would spray a blinding cloud of flour and pepper from compressed air cylinders.

Preparing for the job required a sizable outlay of cash. Vehicles had to be bought, bribes paid to railroad workers for information. A farmhouse had to be purchased not too far from Sears Crossing, where the mob could hide out and split their spoils--approximately -L- 150,000 per yegg.

Read demonstrates a restrained enthusiasm for bringing these criminals to life on the page. But he also avoids romanticizing them with a league-of-gentlemen myth. Mostly, the sources of his book are an unsavory lot, greedy and loutish. One, however, had a taste for Flaubert and Wittgenstein, another the skill and nerve to become a professional racing-car driver, and a third possessed a spontaneously poetic soul. He greeted the dawn after the successful holdup with lines from Omar Khayyam: "Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night/ Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight."

Such exhilarations were short-lived.

Though the job had been well planned and executed, too many people were involved to ensure escape and retirement to the good, respectable life. The major slip-up occurred when the man hired to clean up the evidence at the farmhouse did not get there before the police. An alert detective rightly interpreted the gang's parting warning to their victims ("Don't move for half an hour") as meaning that the robbers and the unwieldy sacks of cash were concealed in the vicinity.

Old-fashioned fingerprint work did the rest. Though the bandits were supposed to wear gloves, some of them slipped up. A clear print was found on a Monopoly set, another on a bathtub rail.

Most of the gang who were caught soon after the robbery received up to 30-year sentences. Those apprehended after the public excitement faded were given lesser terms. The money that was not recovered drained away in legal fees, brief good times and family support. Thousands of pounds stashed with friends evaporated for miscellaneous "expenses."

Despite its impeachable sources, The Train Robbers II is at least a real story about small-time overreachers whose moment of glory rapidly dimmed into a life time of despair, anxiety, prison tedium and the need to peddle their questionable confessions. Their literary accessory after the dubious facts tries to keep his end of the bargain. But he finally falters, at tempting to balance his conscience and his contract. --R.Z. Sheppard

Excerpt

"They waited, but nothing happened. Farther back down the track, Roy and Bill darted under the coupling between the second and third coaches, waiting for a signal to start Buster went forward to see what had happened at the cab, and as he did so he saw the fireman, David Whitby, returning from the telephone on the left-hand side of the track.

"What's up, mate?" he asked Buster.

Buster beckoned.

Whitby crossed the two tracks that separated them. When he reached the side Buster grabbed him, dragged him to the edge of the embankment, and flung him down to where Alf and Bob were waiting.

"Hold him," said Buster.

Bob grabbed him by the legs and then leaped on him, gripping him around the neck with one arm and threatening him with a blackjack in the other. "If you make a noise, son, you're f----dead," he said.

"All right, mate," said Whitby.

"I'm on your side."

"Good boy," said Bob. Then:

"Where are you from?"

"Crewe," said Whitby.

"Well, when this is over, we'll send you some money."

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