by Working
That is not the only instance in which Churchill’s obsession with work led him to pay no attention to the plight of those working for him. Kinna once had malaria:
I was very yellow looking… I felt terribly ill and Winston sent Sawyers along. ‘Tell Mr Kinna I want to dictate.’ I said: tell the PM I am too ill. [Churchill] never did… enquire are you feeling better today. I think he thought [it a] jolly dreadful nuisance… he wanted to dictate and [I] wasn’t well enough… [H]e wanted to get on. He didn’t want to be delayed.
As with the young lady who sprained her ankle in North Africa and Hill, who was out with an appendix attack, Churchill always asked if they could still take down dictation. A point made graphically by Cecily Gemmell in Chapter 7.
So, too, again, for Kinna:
I remember in particular in Cairo one day I was working very hard, in the mid-day sun… Typing itself is very exhausting. In the hot weather, it is even twice as exhausting especially with these old manual hand machines, not electric… General Smuts… a humanitarian who always seemed to be a little concerned about me because when we generally met in hot climates he said to Winston: ‘You’re going to kill this chap. Making him work in the heat of the day.’ And I remember the PM saying ‘yes, I am very sorry but we have got a lot of work to do.’ So we carried on working to near faint.
In addition to his lack of sensitivity to the circumstances of others when in full work mode, Churchill ‘could not really accept a mistake. Particularly if one were typing… he very much liked dictating to me… at No. 10 and the Annexe straight onto machine. I think he rather thought it was fun dictating onto a machine and there was this slave pounding away like mad.’ He wasn’t always clear, but very much disliked being interrupted. ‘If you had the temerity to ask him to repeat a word, he nearly killed you with words. It upset his train of thought. He never paused.’ Or slowed down, which created still another problem for Kinna and anyone taking dictation and typing up memoranda and minutes for Churchill.
Still another problem was the speed at which Churchill preferred to dictate. Kinna complains that he had no time to insert carbon between the paper when changing pages, so he had to ‘always have sets of paper with carbon paper in it so [I] probably had just enough time to put the new one in while he was still dictating. That was very tricky and exhausting because of one’s tension all the time. But it worked.’ Protocol usually required an original plus two carbon sets. And there was a problem of another sort for those who took Churchill’s dictation: fascination with his remarks. ‘Sometimes I just wanted to listen and not take it down,’27 Kinna told Sir Martin Gilbert in 1982. Kinna and the women who worked for Churchill were not mere mechanical typists: they understood the substance of what they were hearing and transcribing, knew these memoranda and letters were a crucial part of the prime minister’s effort to win the war, and had to discipline themselves not to merely listen, but to take down and type, often at 3 a.m., often in a car travelling at high speeds on bumpy roads, often against unreasonable deadlines. The lucky ones then got to attend the House of Commons to take down the speech as delivered.
Fortunately, there were times when the difficulties Churchill’s work habits created for Kinna took on comic, madcap proportions, more akin to a scene in a Marx Brothers film than to one in which the war to save the world from Nazism was being conducted. He travelled with two groups, one led by ‘Air Commodore Frankland’, the other by ‘Don Quixote’, the code names adopted by, respectively, Churchill and Roosevelt. FDR assigned the code name ‘Sancho Panza’ to his trusty advisor Harry Hopkins.28
‘Madcap’ also describes a post-conference work session attended by Kinna. In January 1943, after the Casablanca Conference, Churchill was in bed dictating and breakfasting at the same time, as usual. Brigadier Ian Jacob reports:
Sawyers brings the breakfast, Kinna is sent for to take something down, meanwhile the bell is rung for the Private Secretary on duty who is asked for news, and told to summon someone, then it is the candle for lighting cigars that is wanted. Then someone must get Hopkins on the phone… the PM… half sitting, half lying, in his bed surrounded by papers.29
All of this at 9 a.m. The PM was working on a joint communiqué to be issued by him and the president. Churchill wrote ‘wigs by Clarkson, his expression for what he wanted filled in and checked’. ‘Wigs by Clarkson’ was a uniquely Churchillian phrase from
the early part of the century. At the theatre, Clarkson’s seemed to have a monopoly of headdresses, wigs, etc., and in every programme the line always appeared ‘Wigs by Clarkson’, so when Churchill had approved the text of the communiqué at Casablanca, all he had to say was ‘wigs by Clarkson’, and I knew… he wanted the text… cleaned up and the necessary ancillary remarks included.30
Kinna’s second big trip, after Placentia Bay, was with Churchill to Washington DC, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Arriving in the United States with Churchill in late December 1941, he recalls ‘frequently we stayed in the White House which was always very nice… The one thing that pleased me was on Christmas morning the valet brought in my breakfast tray and with it was an outsize photograph of President and Mrs Roosevelt which they had signed.’ He and the staff worried about the possible heart attack that Churchill suffered on Boxing Day night. However, Churchill ‘was very resilient and he had a doctor† there, but we were more worried than anyone else at this critical stage of the war… without him then, what would have happened?’ Kinna is recollecting this many years later, as it is most likely that the staff did not know at the time of his possible heart attack.
At the White House one morning Kinna was taking down, while Churchill
was in his lovely bath and kept submerging and coming up rather like a lovely fish… saying a few more words and then submerging and coming up… [H]e wanted to get out of the tub, so the valet had these outsized bathrobes all twisted around him… walking back to his adjoining bedroom… I was trailing behind listening and taking down like mad… walking up and down this huge bedroom [chosen by Churchill for its proximity to the President’s]… eventually the bathrobe fell off and he was completely nude… quite unconcerned, he continued pacing the room and dictating all the time… there was a rat-ta-ta-ta on the door, the door opened and there was President Roosevelt in his wheelchair. And Winston never being lost for words as we all know said, ‘You see, Mr President, I have nothing to hide from you.’ And I think that was very funny.31
That story has been told and retold and is so amusing that its points are often lost. First, in the bath or striding around in the nude, for Churchill all that mattered was the work and having someone there to ensure it got done. If that meant pacing naked in front of staff while dictating, so be it. (No young ladies would have been present!) Second, the speed at which Churchill could convert a possible embarrassment into a winning moment was amazing: in the nude, in a surprise confrontation with the most powerful man in the world, Churchill continued his wooing of Roosevelt. One wonders whether the alliance would have survived had the person on the other side of the door been Mrs Roosevelt, who had little use for a fully clothed Winston Churchill and the British Empire he represented – and she resented his ability to keep her husband from bed until the early hours of many mornings.
There were, of course, advantages that more than offset the frustrations of working with Churchill. There was the opportunity ‘to have a place in the thrice-blessed crowd who went on trips! – to eat American food!!… to wander around the shops… buying little reminders of better times for those at home,’32 noted Layton, who accompanied Kinna on one of the prime minister’s trips to Washington aboard the Queen Mary to confer with President Roosevelt. Churchill also delivered another address to Congress, which he dictated from 9.30 a.m. until 4.30 p.m. without a stop, then resumed from midnight until 2.30 a.m., according to Layton.33 One had to work hard to earn the right to feast on American food.
In January 1942 Churchill and his entourage took time off from planning the strategy
that would eventually win the war. For a few days he stayed at ‘a very nice villa’ near Miami. Time off meant Churchill could swim in the ocean a few times a day – in the nude, as ‘it was very much an all-male party… the staff took this opportunity for a little bit of rest but we were more proper, we put on swim suits’. As was to prove true during the rest of the war and thereafter, a Churchill vacation included more than a bit of work: couriers went back and forth daily from both the prime minister and the president’s office in Washington.
In August 1942 Churchill went to Moscow, avoiding flying over the area near where the Battle of Stalingrad was still raging. The prime minister’s purpose was to tell Stalin that there would be no second front in 1942, but that the Atlantic convoys would continue to get through with supplies for the Red Army, and convince the Soviet leader that the upcoming Operation Torch in North Africa would provide great relief for the Red Army. Kinna was assigned a ‘lovely bedroom and beautiful bathroom but it was lacking in one thing, it did not have a bath. It had a wash basin and enormous bottles of perfumes and things but no bath.’ Churchill’s accommodations must have had a bath, because as he later wrote of State Villa No. 7, where he stayed:
The hot and cold water gushed. I longed for a hot bath after the length and heat of the journey. All was instantly prepared. I noticed that the basins were not fed by separate hot and cold water taps and that they had no plugs. Hot and cold turned on at once through a single spout, mingled to exactly the temperature one desired… In a modest way, I have adopted this system at home [at Chartwell]. If there is no scarcity of water it is far the best.34
Presumably at Chartwell he could afford plugs. This recollection of what for many would have been a forgettable minor experience immediately before a first face-to-face meeting with Stalin, shows the importance Churchill attached to his bathing rituals, to his personal comforts, and to even minor innovations.
While the prime minister was meeting Stalin, Kinna asked if he might tour Moscow with General Sir Ian Jacob, assistant military secretary to the war cabinet under General Ismay. A car and driver were provided, as well as the usual security people. He found Moscow ‘stark… evacuated, roads lined with soldiers… miles-long queues trying to get food’. Certainly no female secretary would have imposed on a general with a request of this or of any kind.
Soon Churchill was back from his meeting with Stalin and Kinna went to work taking down a telegram to deputy prime minister Clement Attlee
talking about this rude dreadful man Stalin who has no appreciation for what we were sending him, all the men we were losing… harping on why we have not started the Second Front?… Suddenly [Ambassador] Clark Kerr said prime minister I must remind you that this will be [bugged] like all the rooms in Moscow so I think you’d better be careful. This had the opposite effect and Winston became more vitriolic against Stalin… I’m not going to stay here!
It is conceivable that Churchill was well aware that he was being spied upon and intended his remarks for Stalin’s ears. Churchill’s willingness to make such seemingly indiscreet remarks in the presence of Kinna shows his confidence in his secretary’s discretion. As with all other secretaries, at all levels, confidentiality was essential – there were never any leaks from Churchill’s private office.
That may be the reason, as Kinna reports, that
next day there was a meeting with Stalin all charm… The last night we were in Moscow, the small British party was invited to the farewell banquet at the Kremlin. … We were received by Molotov which was a disappointment… I would like to [have been] received by this ghastly man Stalin. Winston was in his siren suit… Stalin was in what I call his boiler suit and the evening became very convivial… The meal went on, course after course, the waiters all looked terrified in their eyes and almost starving. And I felt like saying, look, you sit down, you have this… it was terrible to see these poor obviously hungry men seeing this wonderful czarist-type banquet in war time. At the end of the evening we were taken to the door by Stalin… and [he] shook our hands.
Certainly no females, military or civilian, would have been included at this dinner.
The ‘siren suit’ that Kinna mentions was a 1940 invention of Churchill’s, ‘a garment based on his bricklaying boiler suit… with a full-length zip up the front’.35 Much like a pilot’s flying suit today. It is sometimes also called his ‘zip suit’ or ridiculed as his ‘rompers’. The colours and fabrics varied, with velvet the favourite material, and Royal Air Force blue among his favourite colours. Ben Macintyre describes the siren suit as ‘a military-style one-piece boiler suit that would not become fashionable again for another seventy years until the invention of the “onesie”.’36
Kinna’s next trip was to Quebec in August 1943 for the meeting with Roosevelt and the Canadians (known as Quadrant) to begin planning for the invasion of Europe. On board the Queen Mary were Mrs Churchill and their daughter Mary, in addition to a number of WRNS, cypher officers (called ‘cypherenes’ if female) and clerks. Because there was too much work for one person, staff cohesion was taken to its limits. Despite the added workload, there was time for romance. Kinna mentions that a ‘particularly attractive cypher clerk named Judy Love’ fell in love with Leslie Rowan, one of Churchill’s Private Secretaries, and later married him. The Rowans remained fast friends with the Churchill family even after Winston died. Sir Leslie was one of only five non-family members at Churchill’s interment.37 Much later, Lady Rowan continued to visit Kinna, who was then living in retirement in Brighton.
Kinna was burdened with responsibilities that Churchill would assign to very few. After intense meetings in Quebec (Quadrant) and at Hyde Park in August 1943, Churchill and his entourage decided to have a fishing vacation and rest on the shore of Lac des Neiges in the Laurentian Mountains. Kinna was charged with a file labelled ‘TA’, which meant nothing to him at the time. TA stood for Tube Alloys, code for the work on the atom bomb, and Kinna had to keep this essential file with him at all times.
[W]e couldn’t even let our trusty and well-known marine orderlies… carry this. I had to carry it. When we got to the side of the lake we were put in… little skiffs without outboard motors… to go to some attractive log cabins. And we’re swaying from side to side and I thought at any moment now this is going to turn over… don’t worry about yourself. Keep hold of the TA file.
He didn’t know the reason for the importance of the file, but did as he was ordered, holding it close during his stay in the cabins, along with ‘one or two mice going along the logs’.
Later that year, at the Big Three meeting in Teheran in November, arranged so that Roosevelt could meet Stalin for the first time, Kinna was charged with the responsibility of taking care of the Sword of Stalingrad.38 King George VI had commanded that a four-foot ceremonial sword be forged, inscribed and presented to Marshal Stalin as a tribute from the British people to the Soviet victors at the Battle of Stalingrad, some ten months earlier. Amid an almost balletic ceremony at the Russian legation, Kinna handed the sword to a British lieutenant, who then handed it to Churchill. The prime minister then presented it in its red Morocco-leather scabbard to Stalin, who took it, kissed it, and then showed it to the American president in his wheelchair. Roosevelt, not one to be upstaged by the leaders of Great Britain and the Soviet Union, ceremoniously drew the sword from its scabbard, as Kinna watched. Kinna had been trusted enough to have charge of the sword all the time before the ceremony, but was not of sufficient rank or standing to be the one to offer it to Churchill to start the ceremony. Still, he had been involved and was present, a testimonial to the importance Churchill attached to him.
After the meetings in Teheran, at which May 1944 was agreed as the date for the invasion of Europe (Operation Overlord), Churchill flew to Cairo for more meetings and planning sessions. ‘At no time since the war began had he [Churchill] been so exhausted.’39 After meetings in Cairo he flew to Tunisia, taking Kinna with him, to meet with some of his commanders and General Eisenhower
at his villa (called the White House) overlooking the sea near Carthage.40 Two of Churchill’s children, Randolph and Sarah, were there, as guests of the American military, Sarah reading Pride and Prejudice to her exhausted, enervated father. By mid-December Churchill was more than tired. He had developed pneumonia. According to medical reports, ‘It was characterized by fever that lasted six days, left lower lobe pneumonia and two episodes of atrial fibrillation.’41 It was a serious enough matter to require the continued attendance of Lord Moran, Churchill’s doctor, assisted by two (in one report three) nurses and a pathologist called in from Cairo. ‘It is remarkable,’ noted Drs Vale and Scadding, ‘that, despite the severity of his illness, he continued to direct the affairs of State from his bed’.42 This, with an ailment commonly referred to as ‘the old man’s friend’, because it was seen as a swift, relatively painless way to die.
Kinna recalls ‘we were all very worried and in fact Lady Churchill came out [from London] with Grace Hamblin’ and Jock Colville. Despite the medical emergency, Churchill continued to dictate to Kinna, against doctors’ orders, which were ‘to no avail’.43
When well enough to travel, Churchill proceeded to Marrakesh for a period of recuperation, although not for a complete rest. That was hardly possible, since accompanying Churchill were most of the military leaders, their staff, plus some medical advisors to keep an eye on the prime minister, and Churchill’s usual secretarial staff. Planning for the assault on Anzio was being debated, as were the initial plans for Overlord, so it cannot have been a moment for recuperation. However, work slowed enough for Kinna to be able to find some time off.
