WC02 - Never Surrender

by Michael Dobbs

  As he struggled with these thoughts, Colville found Butler holding up his index finger, bidding them to silence. From the neighbouring booth floated a familiar voice.

  "He's rotten, totally rotten," the voice insisted, 'the greatest menace this country's ever had. Why, the entire Empire could be sacrificed on the altar to his egomania."

  The look of exquisite delight that played around Butler's lips gave Colville no doubt that this intervention was entirely fortuitous. Words such as 'monstrous obstinacy' and 'monumental wrong-headedness' spilled across the wooden partition. "In just two weeks we've lost Holland and most of Belgium, the French have all but given up and we've got a million men trapped in Flanders. That man's as dangerous as Caligula," the voice concluded. "Should have his throat cut."

  There was a scraping of a chair. An immensely tall figure passed by, then paused. It took a step back.

  "Oh, God," Colville screamed inside.

  It was Sir John Reith, formerly the Director-General of the BBC, in which post he had been both respected and feared in equal degree. More recently and until two weeks ago he had been a member of the Cabinet as the Minister of Information. He towered over the table, his dark eyebrows knitted together in their habitual scowl, the sniper's scar on his cheek more vivid than ever.

  Even Churchill would admit that the circumstances around Reith's sacking had been unfortunate. The two men had loathed each other for years. When he became Prime Minister, Churchill's immediate instinct was to have him out. Unfortunately, during that first chaotic weekend, no one at 10 Downing Street knew of Sir John's whereabouts, so there had been no softening word, no exchange of courtesies, simply a formal letter of dismissal from the Cabinet sent to wait for him at his club. It was barely excusable in the dire circumstances of upheaval and war, but to Reith it was deliberate insult. He had found little consolation when as an afterthought he was given the consolation post of Minister of Transport. It didn't carry Cabinet rank. It was like asking a duke to eat in the kitchen.

  Reith was a Scotsman, built of granite with a subtlety to match, and given to outbursts of extreme emotion and irrationality. Two dark and furious eyes now glared at Colville.

  "How can you work for that man?" Reith demanded.

  With that, he strode off.

  Butler was struggling hard to contain his mirth. Chips hurriedly ordered another bottle of the claret to celebrate.

  "He's quite mad," Colville breathed, shocked.

  "Of course he is," Butler agreed, 'but the relevant thing, Jock, is not that madmen like Reith should hold such opinions about Winston, but that he should feel sufficiently comfortable to voice them in public. Turning tides, that sort of thing."

  Colville swallowed another glass to quell his unease. How could he still work for Churchill? You didn't need to be a madman like Reith to ask the question. Why, even the King's mother, Queen Mary, had written to Colville's own mother, one of her ladies-in-waiting, asking exactly the same thing.

  Some time later he stumbled out into St. James's, confused, disorientated, and not simply through the drink.

  He didn't seem to notice her intrusion. Perhaps he didn't hear: a gramophone was playing, scratching out some comic opera. He was sitting in a dark corner before the portrait, half-heartedly conducting the orchestra with a tumbler, gently weeping.

  But if patriotic sentiment is wanted,

  I've patriotic banners cut and dried;

  For where'er our country's banner may be planted,

  All other local banners are defied!

  Our warriors, in serried ranks assembled,

  Never quail or they conceal it if they do And I shouldn't be surprised if nations trembled

  Before the mighty troops, the troops of Titipu!

  He looked up, not bothering to hide his tears. His tie was askew, his thin, faded red hair adrift.

  "The Mikado. Gilbert and Sullivan. Very English. You wouldn't understand."

  He waved her to a chair and continued a melancholy humming.

  "Victorian, you know. So much simpler, those times. You fought, you lost, you won .. . But mostly you won. And there was always the next time." He mumbled along to the record for a moment in a voice sodden with alcohol and remorse.

  "My father took me and my brother Jack once. To the Doily Cart. Oh, an evening to remember. They all turned their heads to look at us in our box and whispered behind their programmes. Jack and I were so proud. I talk about my father a lot, don't I?"

  She didn't bother to answer.

  "I feel so lost. What would he have done?" Churchill rose and stood as close as he could to the portrait, looking up. "What would you do, Papa? I want to strike south, to get our army to fight. But they won't." For a moment his memories seemed to have taken him to another place; the glass waved in his hand as he mumbled in poor tune: '"Our warriors, in serried ranks assembled, Never quail or they conceal it if they do ... "' Suddenly he stopped and began to sob. "Damn you, Gilbert. And damn you, Sullivan!"

  It was like watching a great ship breaking up on rocks. Soon there would be only fragments and a fading echo.

  "I decided to sack my leading general today. Not up to the job. None of them are, but I can't sack them all." More tears. "But withdraw? Sneak away like a thief in the night?" He jabbed a finger at the portrait. "He never showed weakness. He went into exile rather than bow low, even to the King."

  Ah, that old Aylesford nonsense. She'd read about it only that afternoon. Seventy years ago; she'd gone back that far. And so had he. If his father wouldn't bow it was only because dead wood didn't bend, it simply broke. And it wasn't the King but the Prince of Wales, long before he came to the throne.

  "But I am not as he was," the son whispered mournfully.

  "I agree," she offered, deciding it was time for her to play a part.

  And if you call for a song of the sea,

  We'll heave the capstan round,

  With a yeo heave ho, for the wind is free,

  Her anchor's a-trip and her helm's a-lee,

  Hurrah for the homeward bound!

  Hurrah for the homeward bound .. .

  the homeward bound .. .

  the homeward bound .. .

  the homeward bound ... the homeward ... The record was stuck, mocking him. He snatched the needle away to silence it.

  "Has it come to that?" she continued. The entire British army dragged back across the sea?"

  "Oh, if only that were possible! If only we could bring them back. I'm told we might gather in a tenth of their number thirty-five, maybe forty thousand. But no more. And if they will not fight, the British army will be smashed. Our young men will die in vast numbers within sight of the white cliffs of England, of their home."

  "So what will you do?"

  "Wait. That's all we can do."

  "For what?"

  He turned on her. "For him. That Man! Bloody Hitler! Wait for him to choose. To decide whether he wants to be in Paris first, or in London. Either way, I can only pray they will have shot me before that moment comes."

  "Who?" she pressed, puzzled.

  "Hah! There is no shortage of volunteers; they flock like starlings in autumn. Any number of my Cabinet. Half the General Staff. Perhaps the general I decided to fire today, or the Member of Parliament I had arrested this afternoon."

  "What had he done?"

  "Done? Nothing, absolutely nothing." His arm flailed the air, stretching for his argument. "Not yet, at least. But he would have, I know it. He has suspicious friends. He hates me. They all hate me. They are polishing their muskets even now and arguing who will have the honour of the first shot."

  She was irritated with this outpouring of self-pity. It was as if the great ship had already broken apart and there was nothing left but the wailing of those who claimed it wasn't their fault.

  "So you think you will be alone when they put you up against the wall?"

  "Perhaps not. But I shall be the first!" It sounded almost like a mournful boast.

  "All dicta
tors perish with such delusions."

  "What?"

  "When you are gone, do you think the world will remember you as a martyr for freedom? A man who died fighting for liberty like your Admiral Nelson? Mr. Churchill, let me tell you something. You are no Nelson, you are nothing but another in a long line of autocrats, a man whose first instinct in office has been to grab for himself all sorts of powers over others even to imprison them for doing nothing. To force them to do exactly what he wants."

  "In the service of a higher cause."

  "Straight out of Mein Kampf. At least Hitler had the decency to get himself elected before he turned himself into a tyrant."

  "That is a disgraceful'

  "And you say yon will be first up against the wall," she continued, cutting straight across him. "But I don't think so. Do you know who will make it first? The Jews and the other refugees the ones you have been rounding up under your Emergency Powers. Oh, you argue it is only for troublemakers like Mosley and the others, but what about the thousands of people you have arrested for no greater crime than fleeing from Hitler?"

  He was stretching for the argument once more, less confidently, his whisky slopping over the side of his glass. "It is so very difficult with these enemy aliens," he protested, 'some may be fifth columnists, quislings, enemy agents, all sorts of undesirables."

  "In Germany they call us Untermenschen. But tell me: what is our crime? We are people who fled in fear from Hitler. Now you send round your police to lock us up."

  "Only the men. As a precautionary measure," he insisted, beginning to splutter and sound feeble.

  So, he didn't think that women could be troublemakers?

  "They disappear overnight, and no one asks questions she whispered, remembering.

  "It is not like that," he insisted.

  "You're putting so many of us in camps that Hitler won't even have to go looking for us when he gets here. Don't you see? You have done his job for him."

  "Is that what they will think of me?"

  Oh, this pathetic man! Her tone was contemptuous. "They will think of you much as they did your father, except less kindly. He did less harm."

  Churchill clutched his chest. Never had he been lashed so cruelly, or hurt so deeply, by a woman.

  She was pointing at the portrait like a prosecutor in accusation. "Look at your father. He told you to know your enemy. The trouble with you, Mr. Churchill, is you have no idea who your enemy is. You stand there like a spoilt child blaming the rest of the world for your miseries. Half the young men of this country are fighting flame-throwers while you hide here in the dark, fighting ghosts."

  He gasped as if he had been slapped in the face.

  "And while we are discussing your father, let us get the record straight. He didn't march proudly off into exile. He was banished. Thrown out. Is that the path you want to follow, Mr. Churchill?"

  "What would you have me do?" His anger was returning.

  "Don't you dare ask me how to fight your wretched war. I know nothing about war. But I do know men, Mr. Churchill. So stop wallowing. Stand up, even if it's only to be put up against a wall. Don't let them drag you away as they did your father." She sprang to her feet to confront him. "And if you're going to lose, doesn't it matter how you lose? Don't you think it matters to those men on the beaches in Calais and Dunkirk? If they're going to die, let it be for something they believe in, and for someone who believes in them." Tears had sprung to her cheeks now. "Don't .. . don't let them die in vain, least of all for one man's vanity, like young German boys. Give them something to die for or better still, give them something to live for!"

  They stared at each other through their tears, like parting lovers.

  "And if they end up dragging you away, Mr. Churchill, put up a struggle. Don't go meekly into the darkness. Shout! Cry!

  Make a good end of it. For God's sake, don't be like your father."

  "Get out! Get out!" he stormed, stamping across the room until he was leaning on his desk for support. He was breathing heavily, trying to cope with the pain. "Get out," he insisted once again, though more quietly. "I've got a damned war to fight."

  She left, relieved. She had refloated the ship and it was sailing back into the storm.

  NINE

  Shortly after four, Bertram Ramsay stepped out onto his balcony and sniffed the damp air of dawn with a naval man's caution. Ramsay hadn't seen his bed the previous night, nor the night before. Not the best way to plan a military campaign, without sleep, but as he had told his staff, sleep was for the righteous and the ready. And they weren't ready.

  Be prepared, he had been instructed. Just in case. But be prepared for what?

  Vice Admiral Bertram Home Ramsay was a quiet but single-minded individual too single-minded for some of his superiors in the Royal Navy. A couple of years previously, he'd grown frustrated at some of their archaic methods and had been rash enough to let it show. They'd thrown him out, aged fifty-five, put him on the retired list to make way for an older man.

  They'd not found any further use for him until the war had broken out, and then he'd not been given charge of anything more manoeuvrable than a desk buried inside deep tunnels although, in truth, the desk was not without its powers, and the tunnels were unique.

  Ramsay was something of an expert on the Dover Straits, so at the outbreak of hostilities he had been recalled and given the role of Flag Officer Commanding, Dover. The headquarters for this task were located in huge vaulting tunnels: interlocking brick-lined galleries that had been hacked out of the east cliffs by French prisoners during an earlier war against Napoleon. In those days they had been used as underground barracks for thousands of troops, complete with fireplaces, a water well, and a young lady of arguable virtue called Mary Ford, whose name was kept alive in the graffiti left embedded in the soft chalk walls. But war this time around offered no such gentle distractions. There was barely enough time to scribble a short note home. Ramsay and his small team worked constantly, ate occasionally and rarely slept.

  Some days earlier they had been instructed to prepare a contingency plan just in case. The war had been drawing closer; at first the battle front had been spread across several countries, but with every passing day it was being squeezed into a smaller corner of France. There were now only two ports left open to the British army: Calais and Dunkirk. Ramsay had spent the last few days shuttling anxiously between the maps on his desk and the brick-and-iron-railing balcony that formed the end of his tunnel where it emerged from the cliffs. From that balcony he could see it all. He had watched as Boulogne had disappeared in an evil smudge of shell-bursts and ash that had stained the horizon on what had been a cloudless day. Calais would shortly follow; he could see it with his bare eyes. All night long the flames had fought against the darkness, gaining ground, and first light revealed plumes of foul smoke rising high into the air. Through his binoculars he could see the clock tower on the Hotel de Ville staring at him through the smoke; automatically, he checked it against his pocket watch. The clock was still running. If only time would slow, run back for just a little, give them a few extra hours to prepare for whatever lay ahead.

  But what did lie ahead? No one could tell him. Would the long-awaited advance upon the enemy begin, when they would be expected to ferry across vast quantities of new supplies to help the BEF on its way? Or would it be that other option retreat, rout when they would try to salvage as much as they could from the chaos of defeat?

  Which would it be, what should they plan for? he had asked. Everything, they had replied. Just in case.

  In case of what? They couldn't tell him. But as he looked through his binoculars at the carnage across the water and the first wave of dive-bombers going in for their attack, he knew without any measure of doubt what they were facing.

  Disaster.

  Don rubbed his eyes. He was having difficulty believing what he saw.

  He had woken to find burnt paper and cinders falling around him like autumn leaves. Down one gutter of the st
reet crept a tide of burning oil, while on the other side rushed water from a broken main. Fires blazed everywhere, smoke filtered out the early sun. A violence had been hurled upon Calais with such compelling force that nothing seemed to have survived intact.

  And yet there was the owner of a cafe, setting out his tables on the pavement as if it were an ordinary day. He was elderly, stooped, the Croix de Guerre dangling from his waistcoat. Crazy, perhaps, but what else did he have to do, how else could he find distraction from what was happening around him? A body lay on the street corner, a civilian, amidst a scattering of rubble. When the cafe owner had finished laying out his tables he sat down with a bottle of cognac, raised a glass to his dead neighbour, and drank.

  A far more extraordinary sight was that of the defenders of Calais. So far as Don could see, they consisted mostly of members of the 1st Searchlight Regiment. The principal task of a Searchlight unit was, as their name implied, to operate large searchlights in the hope of dazzling and blinding any low-flying and dive-bombing aircraft. They had practically no infantry training and were never expected to engage the enemy with anything other than giant torches. Yet here they were, manning positions against panzers, bloodied but not yet beaten.

  Then a sight still more impossible. Infantrymen were amongst the Searchlights; at first Don assumed that they were perhaps training the Searchlights in the use of the Bren guns and the Boys anti-tank rifles that were being passed back and forth between them. But no, it was the other way round. It was the infantrymen who were taking instruction, soldiers of the Queen Victoria's Rifles .. .

  Don and Claude had no more time to wonder at the extraordinary sights of Calais before the war caught up with them again. A single-engined Fieseler Storch spotter plane flew overhead, leaving a trail of white smoke to indicate the front of the British line. It had barely disappeared before the barrage began. Suddenly it seemed personal. The Stukas appeared to know precisely where Don and Claude were cowering and launched wave after wave upon them. Paving stones were tossed through the air, shards of glass formed themselves into terrifying volleys of missiles, and on all sides fragments of broken buildings tried to reach out and bury them. But this was merely the overture. The panzers picked up the score and began hurling flaming shells that bounced along the street, leaving trails of sparks as they ricocheted along the cobbles. The noise was so intense that it became impossible to speak; even when they tried, the dust filled their lungs and made them choke.