WC02 - Never Surrender

by Michael Dobbs

  "Ah!" he exclaimed, poking with his stick amongst a scattering of feathers on the grass. "Old Reynard's taken one of the ducks. But look, my black beauties are still here, every one of them. Remember?" He waved at the small flock of black swans that cruised on the larger of the two lakes. "Survivors," he whispered in awe.

  Butter-dipped primroses were still in bloom along the banks of the lakes, and a carpet of bluebells had been rolled out for inspection beneath the beeches and great oaks. Squirrels rustled, ewes grazed, moor hens and coots protested at the intrusion and scampered into the reeds. Overhead a pair of buzzards wheeled and turned like dancers in the sky.

  "Oh, how I love this place! One day, one glorious day, we shall return."

  "One day I would like to return home, too," she responded dryly.

  "Then it is agreed. We shall help each other."

  Instinctively she wanted to argue, to push against his presumption, but why else had she come if not to help?

  He sat down on a stone cairn overlooking the lake, one of his favourite spots for easel and paints. Almost reluctantly, she settled beside him.

  "You have a beautiful home, Mr. Churchill."

  "A family home. So important, is family. You must miss yours."

  "I have no family to miss any more."

  He carried on; she wasn't sure whether he had heard her. "I only wish my mother might have seen this place. She died shortly before I bought it. My father, of course ... he died long before that. He was very young."

  "Hitler expects to die young."

  "I always thought that I would, too."

  "Perhaps that's why you and he have always been in so much of a hurry."

  He refused to rise to the bait she seemed constantly to dangle before him. "I sometimes wonder whether my father knew that he would die young; if that was the reason why he seemed always to be so preoccupied, so precipitate. Tilting at every windmill. I must admit it was sometimes a struggle for a young boy to keep up with him." He squinted into the sun, pretending that it caused the new moistness in his eyes.

  If the young Winston hadn't been able to keep up, it was largely because he'd never been asked to. Lord Randolph had been a careless man, jealous of others, even his own sons, and Winston had spent his adult life trying to show his father how it might have been. That was what Chartwell had always been about. Family. Together. Not Christmases spent apart or summers spent adrift, and a child's letters from school left unanswered.

  Family!

  Suddenly he'd had enough of introspection. He sprang to his feet, setting off at a furious pace up the slope towards the house, head forward, cigar ablaze, his stick flying before him like a dueller's sword.

  "The French," he shouted over his shoulder, 'will want to make peace with Hitler."

  "They can't," she insisted, already breathless in pursuit.

  "They will, I fear. And not just the French. There are people in this country, even in my own Cabinet .. ." He slashed with his. tick at some more rising weeds. Yes, it seemed that everyone wanted to bloody well talk.

  "No, you do not understand." She grabbed his sleeve, forcing him to stop. "They cannot make peace with Hitler. Peace is not possible. You must understand .. ."

  He could see desperation in her eyes, a haunted look as if a terrible tragedy that had once overtaken her was about to catch up with her again.

  "Hitler is a man who is defined by war and only by war. Without war he is nothing. He failed at everything -as a son, as a schoolboy, as an art student, as a friend. He finished up as a penniless vagrant on the streets of Vienna. He had no home other than a shelter for tramps, one step above the gutter. Then came war and suddenly he was no longer half formed but a complete man, with a sense of purpose and the respect of his fellows, a war hero with the Iron Cross. He couldn't let it go. It was war that gave his life some sort of meaning. And only with war will Hitler's life retain any meaning. Don't you see? He can never stop."

  "Some of my colleagues argue that he will leave us alone. That he doesn't hate the English in the way he hates others."

  "That is true, he does not hate the English, but that will not save you. Look at Germany. He doesn't hate his own Volk, yet what has he done to us?"

  "Given you victory after victory."

  "You think we are victorious? Open your eyes, Mr. Churchill! We Germans were his first victims, long before Austria and Czechoslovakia and the rest."

  Abject incomprehension crept across his face.

  "In Germany today there is no hiding place from him," she continued, her words tumbling over each other in their determination to escape. "No private life, no corner that you can claim as your own. You think you can see and understand what is going on, that your eyes are wide open, but then you blink and someone has disappeared. A public figure, perhaps, a writer, an actor, yet no one knows where. You shrug, you do not know them personally, they must have done something wrong, else why would they disappear? There has to be a reason for such things. Then you blink again and someone else has disappeared, but this time someone close to you, a neighbour, a friend, even family. For why? You ask what has happened, you demand to know, but then you discover that it has become an offence even to ask, and you realize that soon it may be your turn to disappear. And that is the reason it happens. Everything is broken down, every friendship, every loyalty. You still greet your neighbours, but Wie geht's and Guten Tag has suddenly been replaced by Heil Hitler and Perish the Jews. You want to keep breathing, but there is no air left any more, you are suffocating, and the only place you can get oxygen is from the Party. So you do as you are told. You stop asking questions. You think only what you are allowed to think, you admire only what you are authorized to admire and you love only with permission." Some memory had brought her close to tears. "Mr. Churchill, you say we Germans are victorious but we have become less than slaves, for even slaves can live in hope that one day they will be given their freedom. Under Hitler, there is no hope."

  "Nevertheless, there are those who will insist that we talk with him."

  "You said the other day that your purpose was nothing less than victory. At all costs, in spite of all terror, because without victory there is no survival. Were they just words, Mr. Churchill?"

  "I also asked that we should go forward together with our united strength. Yet we are not united. Better a poor peace than a terrible war, perhaps."

  "You are being ridiculous. You cannot have peace!"

  Churchill bristled.

  "Do you think you can get away with inviting Hitler over for a ride up the Mall alongside the King?" she continued. "That's not what this war is about. It's about' her arms flew wide 'all this. Your island. England. What makes you different. And if you are willing to give that up then you don't understand the privilege of being English."

  "But if I try to fight on, I might end up destroying everything England, the Empire, all I have ever loved. Is that what you would have?"

  "You stupid Englishman! You don't have any choice!"

  That was enough too much, in fact. Churchill was fond of both women and strong argument, but he had always found their combination irritating and Frau Mueller exceptionally so. German tanks were slashing their way across Europe; somehow he simply couldn't conceive of the Germans inside them as helpless victims and frankly he didn't care to try. If that was getting to know his enemy, he might as well call a halt here and now. And he felt suddenly exhausted. Nine days into the job; it hadn't been a lot of fun being Prime Minister so far.

  "I understand your passion, Frau Mueller, and your personal experience commands all my sympathies," the words echoed with disdain 'but I think it has rather coloured your conclusions. You will have to allow we Englishmen to make up our own minds."

  She stood close to him, clenched her fists. Tell me, Mr. Churchill, what would your father have done?"

  Churchill winced, lost in momentary confusion at this unexpected alliance between Frau Mueller and his father.

  She answered her own question
with contempt in her tone. "He would have fought, of course. But then they said he was mad."

  They stood glaring at each other, neither willing to give ground, her slim frame lost against Churchill's awesome shadow, until the moment was broken for them by an approaching figure. Thompson was running down the slope towards them.

  Telephone," they heard him cry. They want you back, sir. They say it's very urgent."

  It was part of Don's duties to clear up, even the bodies. He helped bury the dead soldier, along with several others, in the field behind the farmhouse. It turned out he had been an officer, a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, and some idiot had even started an argument that he should be buried apart from the other ranks. The padre had suggested that as they had died together there couldn't be too much harm in burying them together. If it was good enough for God, it should satisfy the War Office. And so it had been done.

  There had also been a discussion about two dead Germans. In the end, with the agreement of the handful of other German wounded, it was agreed that they should be buried with a few prayers in their own language. So the German dead were given their own ceremony, which, with seemingly comic irony, had been interrupted by the arrival of the Luftwaffe, two Me-109s that strafed the farmhouse and began turning for a second pass. Don found himself dragging a Wehrmacht soldier with a badly lacerated leg into a ditch, landing on top of him and instinctively trying to protect him from the attack. When it was over, Don was shaking, but despite his pain the German began to laugh. Too many bullets, eh, Tommy? Yesterday English bullets, today German. War is bloody dangerous, eh?"

  When he clambered out of the ditch, Don found a new body by the graveside. It was the dental surgeon.

  Suddenly Don began screaming at the disappearing Messerschmitts, hurling after them all his anger and frustration at a war that was so unjust, until the German limped over and stood in front of him.

  "No point, Tommy. No one listens."

  Artillery shells began to fall, very close. Time to move on once more. But there were too many casualties to transport in the few ambulances that had survived the attack. There was nothing else for it the most seriously wounded would have to be left behind, along with all the Germans. And some of the medical staff.

  "So, some of us are going to have to stay, lad," the sergeant explained. "Your war might be over even before it's got going."

  They cut cards, everyone, right up to the lieutenant colonel. Don's was a jack, but the sergeant drew a deuce. As he turned the card over, he forced a grim smile. "It's an honour, that's what it is. A bleedin' honour. Just pray for me that it's all over by Christmas, eh?"

  But if prayers got answered, this would never have started ... Don carried the German on a stretcher to lay him in the open outside one of the outhouses. It had been decided that the advancing Wehrmacht should meet the German casualties first. They could report on their good treatment. And if by chance the Luftwaffe came back and started shooting the place up once again well, it seemed only fair they should have a German target rather than a British one. The hazards of war.

  Don laid his patient down in the sun and offered him a cigarette. The German nodded his thanks.

  "We win this one, eh, Tommy?"

  "Don't be bloody stupid," Don snapped, suddenly and surprisingly angry. "This is just the away match. You wait till the return game. We'll have home advantage then, just you see."

  As the remnants of the 6th Field Ambulance Unit drove off into the gathering dusk, Don knew more clearly than ever that war was unjust and evil. The trouble was, he knew that running from it didn't work any more.

  Bracken rushed in as soon as he heard raised voices or, in truth, one raised voice. There was rarely more than one raised voice in this room.

  Churchill was behind his desk, surrounded by a snowdrift of papers that had been swept aside. In front of him stood Colville. The civil servant was writhing in discomfort. Bracken had an appetite for blood sports, particularly when it involved over-elevated bureaucrats and place lings but there was nothing sporting in this. Churchill had lost control. His temples were swollen and purple with rage, his knuckles showed white, and he had hurled his reading glasses into one corner. As Bracken approached, he hurled a cigar into another.

  "Am I to fight this war single-handed, denied help from any quarter?" Churchill stormed.

  "Winston, you're making enough noise for an entire army. Calm down. And give me a clue." Bracken was calling on almost twenty years of friendship and shared adversity, but the flash of temper in the old man's eye suggested that even Bracken had overdrawn his credit.

  Churchill struggled to respond with anything less than volcanic intensity. "The French," he spat, 'have dissolved. The slightest rumble of mechanical thunder and they have disappeared into the night like bats driven from their belfry."

  "Paris has fallen?"

  "No!" Churchill pounded the table. "The panzers have swung north. North! North! They are no longer heading for Paris but for the Channel ports. That Bloody Man means to encircle the entire British Expeditionary Force and strangle it to death."

  "Damn. That's not what we expected."

  "Who knows what to expect any more? And while the French generals disappear, our own generals dicker and disobey. I have given them orders to strike south. South! So that we may join up once more with the French and cut the panzers off. But instead of doing as he's told, Gort has demanded that he be allowed to withdraw. Retreat. We've suffered fewer than five hundred casualties in the entire campaign and yet our leading commander wants us to run away with our tails between our legs. And those bloody Yankees .. . !" He slumped back into his chair and reached for another cigar. "We asked for destroyers. Only old destroyers they did not want and would've scrapped. But for us, they might be a lifeline. Yet they put us off and why? Tell him, Mr. Colville."

  Colville stood silent.

  "Tell him!"

  "Prime Minister, I am not a squaddie. If I am to be yelled at like one, then I request permission for a transfer to armed service."

  "What? You want to fight?" Churchill growled from behind a huge flame. Bracken began silently laughing.

  "Yes, sir."

  A hesitation; a pall of blue smoke. "Excellent!" Churchill snapped, but both the tone and volume had softened. "At last, someone who wants to fight this wretched war with me. But for the moment, Mr. Colville, carry on." Churchill spat out a fleck of tobacco. "Please."

  Colville stiffened to attention. He understood that he had come as close to an apology as he was ever likely to get with this man. For the moment, it had to be enough. In his blue suit with toe caps polished to perfection, he turned smartly towards Bracken. "Mr. Kennedy has advised the President that it would be unwise to offer us any assistance at this point. He says that in his opinion either England will fall, or some new government will be installed which will conclude a peace treaty. Either way, anything that America sends is likely to end up in the hands of the Germans."

  "Bastard."

  "So Joe ensures we get no help and does his damnedest to make sure his own dire prediction comes true," Churchill seethed. "Meanwhile I'm left to pretend to the world that I am at one with America, that I believe in the French and that my generals are doing what I bloody well tell them. And piled upon that there's the most monstrous pretence of all, that my government is united behind me. Makes you wonder who the hell the real enemy is."

  "Winston, stop being so stinkingly miserable. You're not fighting this war on your own. There's me, and Jock here."

  "If only your undoubted martial enthusiasm were matched with any shred of experience."

  "Not to mention millions of ordinary Englishmen."

  It was offered, and taken, as justified rebuke. The old man's tempers were thunderous, yet could disappear as quickly as a flash of lightning. He began to collect himself. It wasn't Colville's fault that he was so young, or Bracken's fault that the only military experience in his family was traceable to his father, an ardent Irish republican who had b
een in the habit of blowing up buildings owned by Englishmen.

  "And, come to think of it, there's a peculiarly irritating German woman, too," Churchill mused, sucking at the cigar. "She wants me to fight. In fact, insists upon it, says I've got no option."

  "But what shall we fight with if Roosevelt won't give us the destroyers?" Colville enquired.

  The passion was back, but this time channelled and sustained. "Why, we shall fight them from rowing boats and paddle steamers if necessary. We can't give in, never, never! At least, I shan't. So this is what we'll do. We shall confirm our order to General Gort to advance south towards the French. We shall offer the French more aircraft and encourage them to advance north. And we shall telegram to President Roosevelt yet again. If he cannot give us old destroyers, then let us ask for some new fighters. I won't let him sleep with an easy conscience. So summon them all, Mr. Colville, the Chiefs of Staff and my War Cabinet. Instruct them to bring their fighting boots, and inform them that if any of those boots arrive without the mud of Flanders clinging to their welts, there will be hell to pay!"

  As Colville bent to retrieve the old man's reading glasses, Bracken smiled, content that the master was restored.

  "Tell me, Winston, how the hell did you find out about what Kennedy was telling the President?"

  "Ah!" Churchill looked up, a gleam of mischief in his eye. "For that I must thank Providence. And Mr. Chamberlain. Do you remember me telling you about the phone taps he had forgotten to cancel? Well, by some extraordinary oversight, I appear to have forgotten to cancel his tap on Mr. Kennedy's phone."

  "We are bugging the American ambassador?"

  "I shall do more than bug him! You know, if ever I had any doubts about this war, Brendan, the fact that he's such an unquenchable defeatist makes me sweep aside all hesitation. I have no idea how our cause will progress, but I vow on my father's grave that if I am to be dragged down to the gates of hell, I shall take Joe Kennedy with me. Then I can die a happy man."

  Churchill was to live. Yet he was still to be pushed to the gates of hell, with Joe Kennedy lighting fires all the way.