by Working
Her first interview with the prime minister was the usual affair, experienced by all other secretaries when first introduced to Churchill – more of a looking-over than what we would call an interview. Her first impression at that moment was ‘what beautiful hands he had. Beautiful hands I thought to myself,’ an observation also made by ‘Chips’ Gemmell; and decades later Jane Portal vividly remembered Churchill’s ‘beautiful hands… with the signet ring given to him, I think, by his father with the Marlborough coat of arms on it.’ Some years later, when Cecil Beaton, the famed photographer and stage designer (of My Fair Lady, among others), met ‘the great hero dethroned’ – this was December 1945 – he was taken by what he describes in his diary as Churchill’s ‘feminine hands with pointed nails and fingers’.6 Pugh also commented on his ‘lovely hands’.
Sturdee goes on to say that Churchill ‘scowled at me like anything’ when she first entered the cabinet room to take down his words directly onto the typewriter; it was either his usual, automatic reaction when faced with a new staff member, or designed to intimidate. Sturdee was nervous, but had been well enough trained by Hill to know that when ‘he dictated prime minister to CIGS… you put a heading… at the top and underline it. [I’d] been taught how to do it,’ even though she claimed she had no idea at the time what the CIGS (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) was. But now she was inside the Secret Circle, accepted by Churchill. Consequently, Sturdee’s hours increased radically as she was now part of the group that shared the massive amount of work – and secrets – the wartime prime minister generated. In addition to her work at Number 10, she alternated weekends at Chequers with Hill and Layton, where the male Principal Private Secretaries, who also worked alternate weekends there, were always present. Everyone worked round the clock to keep up with the enormous flow of incoming and outgoing memoranda, reports and other materials that flooded in to a prime minister, who also served as his own Minister of Defence, and who chose to involve himself in all the details of his government, including rationing and matters normally left to the Foreign Secretary. In this as in many other things, he was different from Chamberlain, who ‘hated to be disturbed at weekends. He never took a Private Secretary with him to Chequers, or his typist, Miss Watson. Until the outbreak of war, he had communicated with the world from a single telephone in the pantry, to be used for emergencies.’7
Working at Chequers, and at the pace set by Churchill, was not easy, in part because of the lack of adequate office space. Two ‘young ladies’ had to share a small room with the Private Secretaries, and with a large amount of equipment – typewriters, files, sacks of letters, ringing telephones, the scramblers. In addition, there was a chair by the fireplace where the prime minister would sit during his frequent drop-ins. Commander Thompson, Churchill’s principal aide, also had a desk in this cramped workroom. There might be a war on, and he might now have realized his long-held ambition of becoming prime minister, but Churchill’s routine remained what it had always been: only the scene of the action changed. One of the women was with the prime minister, taking dictation early in the morning, often in his bedroom, surrounded with papers, pets, cigars, military officers and Private Secretaries. ‘The routine at Chequers was like that at No. 10, but more so. That is to say the work and the flow of papers, telegrams, minutes, etc., was just as intense, but in addition there were the mealtimes, at which discussion could take place, and there was the night… bedtime was not often before 2.30 am.’8
Sturdee recalls: ‘he never treated us like servants… although we didn’t eat with him, we ate with Miss Lamont, [then running Chequers], but [he was] always most concerned about whether we were comfortable.’
At Downing Street the office was more spacious. Churchill’s personal secretaries – Sturdee, Layton and their ‘boss’ Hill, who was working for Mrs Churchill – worked in a very large room outside the Cabinet Room, sharing that space with the civil servants’ secretaries, all of them women. British protocol is that civil servants do not work on political (constituency) or private (family and financial) matters. Those matters were handled by his personal secretaries. Sturdee says there was little interaction between the female staffs – but certainly no animosity between them.
Sometimes, Sturdee recalls, one of the shorthand typists would be called into the Cabinet Room to take dictation straight onto the Remington noiseless typewriter with special large print, which was kept there in case ‘it was wanted in a crisis’. The machine had been imported from America, because Churchill ‘insisted on a quiet working environment’.9 The typewriter was so heavy that one of the male Private Secretaries would have to carry it across the room and place it on the Cabinet Room table, opposite the prime minister, who traditionally sat with his back to the fireplace, in the only chair with arms. Sturdee often used the silent typewriter in that room – decades later she bought one, perhaps as a reminder of her days with Churchill. While Churchill dictated, there might be cabinet members in the room, telephones ringing and Private Secretaries bringing in notes and files. It must have been difficult to hear the prime minister’s words and concentrate on typing – especially since news and events during 1941 were so important, so riveting and changing every minute.
When there were air raids, work continued, but in the Annexe. ‘We had terrible bombings in London… and air raids… and several weeks on end when Security knew that the Germans were going to concentrate on bombing London.’ On those nights, Churchill could ‘be persuaded to sleep over at the Annexe’. The Annexe contained a complete duplicate office for the entire staff, and all the needed papers were transported back and forth in large black boxes between Downing Street and the Annexe, depending on the Germans’ bombing schedule. Even Mrs Landemare, the long-time cook for Churchill and his family, ‘had to trundle over with her kitchen maid and staff and her 26 pounds of butter and whatever’. The staff, Sturdee included, ate in ‘the Cabinet Office canteen in the Annexe’.
Sturdee recalls that some time during the war, President Roosevelt sent two very early model electric typewriters as a gift to the prime minister for use by his staff. ‘All of us found them most difficult [to use] when you were taking dictation straight onto the typewriter. Even the prime minister saw that it was impossible… and they were noisy… I am sorry to say we didn’t use them very much. I trust the President never knew.’10 So far as we know, neither Churchill nor any member of his staff shared the secret of the unusability of the president’s generous gift with FDR.
Another gift, this one from the film director Alexander Korda, was a Dictaphone, which was installed at Chartwell. Jane Portal tells us that ‘after a night of fun, I was suddenly summoned to Churchill’s room. Upon entering he said to me, “Take it away. I don’t like it. I can never work like this. I must be able to dictate to hear the English language as I speak it and not to a machine” – so it was removed.’11
When Sturdee accompanied Churchill to his meeting in Quebec with President Roosevelt (Octagon, September 1944), she benefitted from advice from two veterans of such international conferences. Both Hamblin, who by then was working for Mrs Churchill, and Layton had been at the first Quebec conference (Quadrant, August 1943). They were able to tell Sturdee what to expect, both during the trip to Canada aboard the Queen Mary† and at the conference itself. Since all those oral histories mention teamwork frequently, and competitive back-biting never, we can assume the advice was offered. Since Sturdee was extraordinarily bright, we can also assume that it was gratefully taken.
Four secretaries (Hill, Holmes, Layton and Sturdee) travelled with the prime minister and Mrs Churchill, along with ‘hundreds [of] service staff, chiefs of staff, coders and decipherers’. Many of the female service staff and cypherenes suffered from seasickness, so Sturdee says she had to step in and ‘type their [the chiefs of staff] things’. Work was incessant. Just as the transfers from Downing Street to the Annexe and back were not allowed to interrupt the work flow, neither was the transfer from Downing Street to the Queen Mar
y (nicknamed ‘The Grey Ghost’) and to Quebec, leaving little time for socializing.
In fact, the only social life on the boat, amidst all the work, was at meals. And what meals they were. ‘We had a compartment set aside for us,’ reports Sturdee and, as reported by Jock Colville, ‘the meals were gargantuan in scale and epicurean in quality, rather shamingly so’.12 And the feast continued after the Queen Mary docked and the party moved on to the train from Halifax to Quebec. Sturdee recalls the ‘enormous steaks’ served on board the train. Fond remembrances of meals past, even decades after they were consumed, should come as no surprise, since they were served to British travellers who had lived under rationing for some three years. Sturdee recalls that some crew members left on their plates more food than she would have had under rationing. There is no mention in her oral history of worries about German U-boats, although that threat must have been real.
On board the ship, Sturdee shared a cabin and bathroom with Layton. Holmes and Hill shared another cabin‡ – they must have decided among themselves who would room with whom, as they often decided among themselves who would work weekends and who would be off. Moving from cabin to work, Sturdee had to run the gauntlet of 4,000 homeward-bound, wounded American troops to the accompaniment of ‘wolf whistles galore’, although in recounting the memory she does not sound at all aggrieved by these attentions. Both Churchills, of course, had outside cabins; the staff were allocated inside.
When they arrived in Quebec, Sturdee and the secretaries stayed at the Hotel Chateau Frontenac, while the Churchills and the military chiefs of staff were housed at The Citadel, a military installation and the official residence of the Governor General of Canada. Cars were arranged to shuttle the secretaries back and forth between their hotel and The Citadel daily.
While in Quebec, Sturdee celebrated her twenty-first birthday with a party – even now it is difficult to imagine what these experiences must have been like for one so young – arranged by Hill, for what she called the ‘serfs club’, meaning all the ‘underlings… [the personal secretaries], the detectives and the photographers… people like that… I’ve still got the menu signed by them all with little messages.’ As we shall see with Holmes and others, in Quebec and elsewhere, there were some moments for fun. Although in this case not for one of the secretaries, who undoubtedly had to miss the party in order to remain on duty should the prime minister need her.
Sturdee not only helped when needed by the chiefs of staff – the lines between Churchill’s personal staff (paid by him) and the civil servants (paid by the government) were often crossed in the interests of getting done whatever had to be done for him and in the country’s interests – but also had some chores to do for Mrs Churchill, of which typing was the least of Sturdee’s problems. The added difficulty stemmed from the fact that Mrs Churchill was travelling without a maid, which was unusual for her. So Sturdee, the junior, was warned that she would be asked to go ‘through the dresses to see if anything needed pressing’. She recalls: ‘Anyway, I went with Mrs Churchill to the second [Quebec] conference and as long as I didn’t mind, as well as doing any typing which she may need or anything like that, as long as I didn’t mind doing her ladies mending as well, I said “Crumbs! I can’t even iron the handkerchief.”’ ‘Oh yes you can,’ Mrs Hill told her when the roster for the trip was being compiled. ‘ “You[’ll] do perfectly well. She wants you to do that; otherwise you can’t go.” So I said, “I will try!”’
Sturdee goes on to explain that Mrs Churchill wore ‘those stays with long laces… must have been ten feet long. And every day those stay-laces had to come out of her stays and be ironed… she had clean… laces in those stays every day.’ Sturdee goes on to say that
everything Mrs Churchill wore had to pressed… pressing her beautiful modern new clothes. I was petrified. I took some lessons… you have to iron them on the wrong side… with a damp cloth. I never knew that… I was never told don’t press velvet… she had one of those lovely long black velvet tea gowns [with] tomato red cuffs. I thought it needed ironing… and of course you got the mark of the iron.
She sought out Layton for advice. The two repaired to their shared cabin and hung the gown up in the bathroom in order to stream out the ironing indentations. She says ‘everyone was so sweet… dear General Ismay… you had to have someone to confide in… [He was] always on one’s side. Always helpful.’ So easy to confide in that she told him about her near disaster with the velvet dress. Of course, ‘it was all around all the men… Yes [the mark] came out… And all the people were looking because it was behind you see… They all said that’s all right. Got away with that one, Jo.’
Accompanied by Holmes and Hill, the Churchills went on to Hyde Park, the Roosevelt family’s long-time home north of New York City, to visit the Roosevelts. The entire party then reconvened for the trip home on the Queen Mary, carrying more than 15,000 American and Canadian troops back to the European war. On that homeward voyage Churchill continued his usual practice of speaking to the American and Allied soldiers aboard the ship just before docking, soldiers arriving to fight in Europe, sensibly nervous about their futures, and who certainly could benefit from a Churchillian pep talk.
A few months after returning from Quebec in September 1944, Sturdee was asked to travel with the prime minister to the Yalta Conference in February 1945, along with Layton, Holmes and Kinna. On 3 February 1945 Churchill and his party, after a seven-hour flight, landed at Saki Field on the Crimean Peninsula with President Roosevelt’s plane landing shortly thereafter. Each leader’s plane was escorted by six fighter planes apiece.13 Churchill wired Mrs Churchill, ‘My friend has arrived in the best of health and spirits.’14 ‘No one else who saw the President that day described him as “in the best of health”,’15 Sturdee recalls. ‘Oh, he [Roosevelt] was so ill, it was sad.’ And Holmes, also present when Churchill greeted the president, recorded in her diary that the president ‘seems to have lost so much weight, has dark circles under his eyes, looks altogether frail and he is hardly in this world at all’.16 Twelve days later, at his last meeting with Roosevelt, and after seeing him in action for several days at Yalta, the prime minister revised his opinion: ‘I felt he had a slender contact with life.’17 Less than two months later, on 12 April, Roosevelt died.
Two limousines and numerous other vehicles had been transported from Britain and ferried to the nearest port, Sevastopol, along with civil service drivers employed at Number 10 to transport the prime ministerial entourage to the conference site. Roosevelt and the Americans brought their own vehicles. Because of the primitive condition of the snowy mountain roads and numerous switchbacks, that ninety-mile trip took six or seven hours. Joan Bright says that forty-three army motorcars plus some RAF trucks ‘containing wireless equipment’ arrived early by ship. They were frozen to the deck and everything had to be unscrambled by Bright and moved to the meeting site.18
The British team recalls with delight the enormous banquets of foods laid out by the Russians at every stop for the visiting dignitaries. The president’s group by-passed the feasts, with Anna Roosevelt along to look after her frail father’s health and eager for him to have some rest, making their apologies to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov’s interpreter.19
Once in Yalta, the vehicles imported from Britain were used to transport the personal secretaries between their rooms in what was then unromantically called Sanatorium B Corpus 1§ and the prime minister’s office and residence, the Vorontsov Palace.
Joining him in that vast 150-room palace (only two bathrooms) were his daughter Sarah, two Private Secretaries, Commander Thompson, Patrick Kinna and Churchill’s valet Sawyers, as well as many senior military officers. There were clearly not enough bathrooms to accommodate all who wished to bathe. The women had a ‘bathhouse in the garden with a Russian girl standing by to scrub bathers of either sex… [one officer] drew up a roster of bath-times.’20 Sturdee and Layton describe the bathrooms having
great big sinks… with one cold tap
over each, a row of loos… and men and women had to wash [there]… it’s sometimes rather difficult as you could not strip down… the men trying to shave in front of you and you trying to make yourself up… in your nighty and the men in their pyjamas… no hot water tap [at all].
All these men were senior military officers fighting a war, advising Churchill on how to deal with Stalin on very weighty matters, and usually assigned private toilet and bathing facilities. Cramped though some of the members of the British delegation were, ‘we are much better off than many of the delegates, for instance the sixteen American colonels who shared a single bedroom.’21 An added problem was the plague of bed bugs, which were everywhere until the Americans sprayed DDT, not only in the quarters of the US delegation, but in the facilities assigned to their very grateful British allies. One British squadron leader is quoted as having come to regard the bed bugs as ‘part of the normal flora [sic] of the Russian bedroom’.22
Meals for staff were in the communal dining room known as Sanatorium A Corpus 1. Breakfast was an ‘Enormous spread of the most delectable cold meats and cheeses and champagne if you wanted it… [plus] tisanes [herbal teas] in long glasses and lovely rye bread and delicious butter,’23 all in contrast to the rations on which the British team survived at home and, presumably, to what was available to the average citizen of the Soviet Union.
And, of course, the travelling office had to be set up so that the women could be completely self-sufficient and ready to work the minute the prime minister arrived. Each secretary had to bring her own typewriter: Sturdee describes ‘the civil-service-[made] wooden boxes… covered in black material with a great handle on the top so that our typewriters [fit precisely] and didn’t wiggle about… And the black tin boxes full of headed paper and carbon paper and copy paper and tags and klops and labels and whatever we’d need.’ At the conference, the Allies had agreed to what Churchill and Roosevelt thought would be the structure of the post-war world: Roosevelt’s (undetailed) plan for a United Nations and a conference to prepare its charter; Churchill’s proposed deal on Poland with which he professed to be ‘content’, although fearful of the reaction of parliament.24 Then the packing up began. The goal was to leave nothing behind lest it prove of use to the Soviet security services.
