The affair was sufficiently well advanced that he had given her a present of a dress for her twenty-third birthday on 15 January. They had then stayed together with the Nawab of Rampur in late February, where they had visited his jewel house – an honour usually reserved for the Viceroy – to see his collection of 250 radio sets. ‘After dinner we sat around at the little tables in the night-club while His Highness played the trap-drums in his band, and finally forced me to do the same though I had not played the drums for over 20 years!’331
In April, he joined the Lindsays at their bungalow at Yahalatenna, eight miles outside Kandy, where they played a record of the musical Oklahoma!, until Mountbatten accidentally dropped it. The following month, Janey came to dinner to meet his nephew, David Milford Haven, ‘as I thought David might like to see some pretty girls.’332 Mountbatten felt isolated and lonely. ‘I only have one friend I can gossip with about non-serious matters and that is Jane,’ he confessed to Edwina at the beginning of May.333
Christmas Eve 1944 was again spent with Janey, together with Prince Philip, and his new chief of staff, Lieutenant General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning. ‘The cook had gone mad and started roasting the turkey a couple of hours too late,’ Mountbatten recollected, ‘so we had an inverted dinner, with the sweet, savoury, fruit, coffee and cigars before the turkey!’334
* * *
Edwina was also in love.
At the beginning of 1944, Bill Paley, who in the 1920s had developed a series of radio stations that would eventually become CBS (the Columbia Broadcasting System), arrived in London in the rank of colonel as Chief of Broadcasting within the Psychological Warfare Division at SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) and took a suite at Claridge’s complete with valet. His role was to arrange broadcasts into Germany and Occupied Europe and eventually to broadcast during the Allied invasion of France.
He had previously met Edwina when he was in London in August 1942 to see how government restrictions on news broadcasts might affect the CBS radio network, and he had taken her to dine at Beaverbrook’s country home, Cherkley Court. Now, after a brief affair with Pamela Churchill, the wife of Randolph Churchill, he took up with Edwina.335 From February they spent most of their free time together, dining out in London and spending lazy weekends at Broadlands, until the affair came to a natural end a few months later.336
‘She wasn’t in love with Bill, but she liked him, much as she liked the other boys,’ said Stuart Scheftel, one of Paley’s colleagues.337 He seems to have felt the same. Daphne Straight, a friend of the couple, wrote to Duff Cooper that ‘from his point of view anyway, this was on a strictly temporary basis, and he now appears to be coming up to breathe again’.338 The two, however, remained friends and he continued to send her presents of perfume, lipstick and other luxuries.
Meanwhile Edwina’s relationship continued with Bunny, although, now he was on Dickie’s staff in SEAC – where he too was having an affair with Janey Lindsay – they had seen little of each other.339 In July 1944, Bunny had returned and one weekend at Broadlands broke the news that she had always dreaded – he was engaged.
His new bride was Gina, the niece of Nada and daughter of Harold and Zia Wernher, and Edwina had partly been responsible for bringing them together, after she had sat them next to each other at a dinner party.340 Three times that day, Bunny came to Chester Street to explain, but neither Edwina nor Dickie, back on leave, could take in what had happened. Indeed, Dickie, who had been a close confidant of Bunny, had been on the point of offering Edwina a divorce so she could marry him. He delayed his return to Kandy and they spent his last few days at Broadlands, where it poured with rain and she took the dogs for melancholy walks.
Lady Pamela Hicks remembered:
My mother took the news very badly and there were times in the ensuing weeks, as she took endless dismal walks alone down the river path, when my father and my sister feared she might drown herself. It was no good bringing up Bunny’s departure with her directly – she was never open to any conversation about relationships or feelings and had trained herself as a child to be self-sufficient.341
Dickie did his best to comfort his distraught wife:
I must tell you again how deeply and sincerely I feel for you at this moment when, however unselfish you may be about A’s engagement, the fact that it is bound to alter their relationship – though I feel convinced not the friendship – which has existed between you, is bound to upset you emotionally and make you feel unhappy. You have however still got the love and genuine affection of two chaps – A and me – and the support of all your many friends. You have only one more bad patch in front of you – the week A gets married. After that they will presumably live a year or two abroad, and when next you meet I feel the difficulties will have disappeared & you will find a new firm and lasting friendship based on your 11 years’ happiness . . . A always knew that I had accepted the fact that after the war you were at liberty to get married and I could not let either of you get the impression that anything I had ever done had stood in the way.342
Edwina was touched. ‘As well as helping so tremendously at what must be a difficult time in my life,’ she wrote, ‘it has made me realise more than ever before how deeply devoted I am to you and what very real and true affection as well as immense admiration I have for you.’343
She continued, ‘I know it is all for the best and hard though it is bound to be temporarily to readjust one’s ideas and one’s life, I have always felt that Bunny needed so much his own little home and family, and if I wouldn’t give it to him, it was so important for him to find someone sweet like Gina who would.’344
‘I shall not be gloomy and silly I promise you – I have my ups and downs!! But the latter are on the ascendant – and even though as you say there will be another trying time when Bunny comes over next I think I can now cope with that too! . . . It was wonderful to have you holding my hand just at the bad time . . . I have an angelic family and such marvellous friends and what more can one want?’345
Bunny’s marriage had brought Edwina closer to her eldest daughter, Patricia. After spending time together at Broadlands, she had written to her father, ‘the first really heart to heart I have ever had with Mummy.’346 Rather tactlessly, Pamela had been asked to be a bridesmaid, ‘but my mother told me firmly, without looking at her diary, that I would be at school that day and it would not be possible.’347
In her grief, Edwina threw herself into her work. In September, she joined a Medical Civilian Relief Unit in France, having travelled over in a converted bomber sent by Eisenhower. Accompanied by Joe Weld, part of the SEAC Rear Link in London, she inspected Ambulance Columns and Red Cross stores and visited welfare workers, doing her best to deal with the homeless, hungry and POWs awaiting repatriation.
In Paris, she checked that Peter Murphy’s flat had not been damaged, dined with Bill Paley, saw the Duff Coopers at the Embassy and picked up some gold earrings she had ordered at the jeweller Boucheron in 1939. There had been no news of Yola since 1941, so discovering she was now at Beauvais, 50 miles north of Paris, Edwina set off in a car, provided by Eisenhower, for a reunion. ‘All quite unchanged and as enchanting as ever,’ she wrote to Dickie.348
By the next month, Dickie had arranged for her to come out to SEAC as the official representative of the Joint War Organisation to inspect hospitals, casualty clearing stations and welfare centres. Her hosts had suggested she visit one establishment a day, but she insisted that by starting early and working late she could manage two. ‘It was here she was first to exhibit the personal approach to vast numbers of wounded men that was to seal her fame,’ wrote one of her biographers:
She was not just another distinguished visitor. Every man as he lay in his cot became convinced of her burning interest in his personal welfare. Tirelessly she went from ward to ward, shaking hands, murmuring the appropriate word of encouragement, perhaps changing a dressing, undertaking to forward some message to his home. She performed the astonis
hing feat of speaking to every patient, every nursing orderly and every doctor in every hospital she visited . . . There was an abiding impression of personal interest and warmth and a positive electric charge of encouragement.349
The last day of the year was spent packing. ‘Delighted to see the end of the old one!’ she wrote in her diary.350
CHAPTER 15
Relief Work
Edwina set off at the beginning of 1945 on a three-month inspection tour, which would take in Cairo, Baghdad and India. She was accompanied by Nancie Lees, the former assistant of Stella Underhill, and Major Bryan Hunter from Dickie’s staff. Hunter had ambitiously brought his golf clubs in the belief there would be some downtime. He should have known Edwina better.
After a long day inspecting medical and welfare establishments, the party would then write thank-you letters, compile reports of the day’s activities, chase up issues that had arisen during the day (such as missing drugs or equipment), and even make new visits not already part of the programme. Edwina met the heads of medical services, Lady Wavell, who ran the Red Cross, and various generals. No issue was too small to be addressed, from the right food for patients with jaw injuries to army boots that chafed the feet of Indian and African troops.
In Madras, she visited the Joint War Charities Supply Depot, reviewed a parade of 600 St John Ambulance members and toured several hospitals. In Bombay, there were inspections of five hospitals, WRNS quarters, an ambulance train and a hospital ship. In Poona, she saw some eye, ear, nose and throat wards, blood plasma centres and a centre that fitted artificial limbs. The comedienne and actress Joyce Grenfell, in India entertaining the troops, remembered:
Edwina Mountbatten was among us for two days and I took my hat off to her. She looks chic and attractive and never stops working. Hospitals all day, Indian and British, meals in messes with sisters, and one night she came to No 17 officers’ ward to watch us do our stuff and the next night saw her at the BORS’ dance where we all took the floor solidly for three hours . . .351
In Delhi, Edwina visited the Viceroy’s House which, she told Patricia and Pamela, ‘is immense with endless marble floored corridors and rooms so huge one is exhausted walking to one’s bath and Lulu next door. Not my cup of tea at all . . . All rather stately and pompous.’352
From there it was north-east India and the Burma coast. She returned with a series of conclusions. Nursing staff was under strength, there were huge pay differentials between British and Indian nurses, and practices varied considerably between hospitals.
At the end of February, she embarked for the front, which gave her a thrill. ‘Drove out to forward areas to within 500 yds of Jap positions with stench and debris of yesterday’s fighting . . . Live shells and booby traps still strewn around,’ she wrote.353 In China, she paid visits to hospitals, orphanages, the Institute of Health, a blood bank and delousing station. She insisted on travelling third class on a leave train to see conditions for herself, travelling in the luggage rack. From there it was Ceylon, where she saw convalescent depots, clubs, dental surgeries, hospital ships, inspected parades and addressed the WRNS, VADs and various hospital and canteen workers.
By mid-April she was back in Britain, reporting to the Joint War Organisation, lobbying the War Office, Ministry of Health and India Office. She lunched with Churchill in an attempt to persuade him to send out more VADs and trained nurses, and saw the King and Queen. A month later she left on a month’s tour of Italy, Greece and the Middle East, visiting sick and wounded troops. One of her biographers later wrote:
Nothing pleased her more than to be invited to a party. She would have one drink; if she could get her favourite, rum and orange, she might have two. But she would talk to everybody and talk their heads off. If there was dancing, she would dance with every man at the party.
She was an immediate success with the Americans in Burma. Entering wards in their hospitals, she would be greeted by wolf whistles. At Bhamo she autographed the plaster cast on a GI’s leg and caused a riot.354
General Sir Philip Christison, one of Mountbatten’s generals, remembered how she ‘flew over to Sumatra where she hobnobbed with some Communist republicans and visited refugee camps and gained much intelligence from the Japanese. Dickie was exceedingly angry at the risks she had taken and the political implications that might follow. But her brave actions could not have been done by a man. He would have been murdered on the spot.’355
* * *
Mountbatten’s affair with Janey continued throughout 1945. Edwina was well aware of it and did not mind. In March, she had arranged a lunch party for her husband and included Janey and Teddy Heywood-Lonsdale, and the following month Teddy and Peter Murphy had given a small party with dancing and Janey had been invited. As soon as Edwina returned to Britain, Mountbatten joined Janey for a weekend at her bungalow at Yahalatenna. Edwina seemed accepting of Janey. ‘I am so glad that you felt as happy as I did about our new-found relationship,’ wrote Dickie.
I have always wanted to have you as my principal confidante and friend, but so long as A was yours – it made it literally impossible for me. I hope you didn’t mind my mentioning about my girl-friends – it was only to show you that they never have meant to me what A means to you, and so can never come between us, provided you no longer make difficulties about my seeing them, within reason, as you were apt to do in the old days.356
In May, Janey, after spending her last two days with Dickie, returned to Britain. She left him her Siamese cat, Sikri. ‘Your going has left a horrible hole in my life,’ he wrote to her in October:
I have so many memories under every sort of condition & they’re very pleasant & happy. Sikri is a constant reminder of you, sweet and affectionate. When you left she produced a load of kittens and I kept one . . . I miss you more than I would have thought possible. My sweet and lovely Janey, Bless you & much love, darling, Dickie.357
On 7 May 1945 Germany surrendered, but the war continued in the Far East. In March, Mandalay had been captured, and in May, Allied amphibious forces had entered Rangoon to discover the Japanese had already left, but Malaya, Singapore, Siam, Sumatra, the Dutch East Indies, Borneo and Indo–China remained under Japanese occupation. Now that landing craft, shipping and aircraft were available, a huge amphibious operation – Operation Zipper – was being planned to recapture Malaya and Singapore.
In July, Mountbatten was back in Britain as the Labour election win – forecast by Peter Murphy – was announced. Edwina was delighted. She was now more tolerant of Dickie’s girlfriends. ‘The sweetest change,’ he wrote to her, ‘is the way you have conquered what we all thought was an unreasoning jealousy . . . You can feel easy in your mind that there is real safety in numbers & that I won’t do anything silly.’358
Later that month, Mountbatten attended the last of the Inter-Allied Conferences at Potsdam, en route to being reunited for the first time since the beginning of the war with Yola. At Potsdam he met the new American president, Harry S. Truman – Roosevelt had unexpectedly died in April – and was let into the secret that the atomic bomb was about to be dropped on Japan. On 15 August, six days after the second bomb was dropped, the Japanese surrendered. Operation Zipper was cancelled.
On 5 September 1945, Allied Forces retook Singapore. A week later, Mountbatten accepted the surrender of 680,879 Japanese men in South East Asia, insisting that senior commanders hand over their swords in a public loss of face. He described the event in his diary as ‘the greatest day of my life’.359
How does Mountbatten’s record at SEAC stand up? His instructions had been to wage war with landings by sea, but none took place. His efforts were constantly rebuffed or frustrated and he was frequently denied requested troops and supplies, because of demands in other theatres of war, or because the Americans wanted to minimise British influence in the region.
The Chiefs of Staff thought a proposal to cut Japanese communications in eastern Burma was premature. Operation Culverin, a plan first mooted at the Quebec Conference, to
recapture the northern tip of Sumatra, was continually delayed and then abandoned. It was replaced by Operation Buccaneer, an amphibious attack on the Andaman Islands, which held important Japanese naval bases and airfields, but that was abandoned in the summer of 1945 as the war drew to an end. Operation Zipper had to be cut back after the British Government, for domestic political reasons, speeded up demobilisation.
Mountbatten did not handle his generals well, but then many were difficult and temperamental, suspicious of a man much younger and hitherto more junior to them. The demotion of General William Slim as commander of the Fourteenth Army by Oliver Leese, the Commander, Allied Land Forces South East Asia, and the subsequent replacement of Leese by Slim on Sir Alan Brooke’s orders was an embarrassment showing the weakness of his authority.360
Personality differences between Mountbatten and Joe Stilwell, Mountbatten and James Somerville, the breakdown of the relationship between Chiang Kai-shek and Stilwell and differing views over wartime goals and post-war plans made SEAC less effective than it might have been. The British wanted to restore the British Empire, with self-determination to follow, whilst the United States’ focus was on China. The fact that most of the money and resources came from America meant their objectives, especially the emphasis on the Burma Road supply line to China, took precedence.
What, then, were his achievements? Firstly, the improvement in morale, which contributed to the new military success. Though Slim and other generals should take credit for the victories from 1944, it was Mountbatten who created the framework and support that allowed them. Success at Arakan and Imphal was in large part due to his persuading the Americans to release aircraft from their trips over the ‘Hump’ to China to bring in extra troops and supplies. Perhaps, most importantly, and in difficult circumstances, Mountbatten largely kept the various competing factions in check.
The Mountbattens Page 15
