WC02 - Never Surrender

by Michael Dobbs

  Trust him?" The dark eyebrows arched. "No, never trust him."

  And it was enough for Churchill.

  "Gentlemen, the hour grows late and we all have other duties. I believe a sense of this meeting is beginning to emerge. We take the point made so persuasively by the Foreign Secretary that we should not refuse to countenance talks with the Italians' he nodded at Halifax in grudging appreciation of his excellent fight 'but we should approach any such talks with the greatest of care. Might I ask the Foreign Secretary to prepare a paper setting out the detailed grounds we should consider before making any opening to the Italians?"

  Ah, the devil of the detail. Halifax was a master of the bureaucratic game and it wouldn't take him long to respond to such instruction, but it had to be enough for Churchill. The men around the table were all exhausted, content to leave it for another day. It had bought him a little time, just as had those brave men in Calais. But time for what? Churchill didn't know.

  Sunday 26 May. It was 18.57 when the order came through. Vice Admiral Ramsay was hovering over the teleprinter in his underground kingdom, held there by impatience but still more by frustration.

  He was a quiet and most methodical man, some said lacking in emotion, even cold, yet he couldn't help snatching at the paper as it squeezed from the Admiralty machine.

  Operation Dynamo is to commence.

  Dynamo. It had been named by one of his junior officers after the room in which they had conducted all the planning deep within the chalk cliffs. During the last war the room had been filled with electrical plant; now it held a long polished table across which they could spread every sort of chart, and a couple of cots where some of them slept. No one would sleep tonight, nor for the nights to come.

  The evacuation was to begin.

  The plan was simple it had been put together so hurriedly that there had been no scope for complications. The soldiers of the BEF had formed a pocket or, more accurately, had been pushed by the advancing panzers into a pocket for several miles around Dunkirk. There were also many French troops in that pocket. Together they would try to hold the perimeter while Ramsay's boats snatched away as many as possible. As troops were taken off, the perimeter of the pocket could be slowly withdrawn, ever closer to Dunkirk, until .. .

  Until they ran out of time.

  They should have begun days ago, but until yesterday they'd still been arguing about breaking out to the south, not retreating. Now they had been left with no other option, and no one even knew for certain whether retreat was still an option. The burden of it all was revealed in orders Ramsay had received earlier that day. "It is imperative," the Admiralty had instructed, 'for "Dynamo" to be implemented with the greatest vigour, with a view to lifting up to 45,000 of the BEF within two days." Because after that the enemy was going to spoil the whole show.

  Two days! Why, oh why, had they waited so long? A few days earlier they'd had three harbours to work from, but now Boulogne and Calais had gone, leaving Ramsay with nothing but the port of Dunkirk to work with. Dunkirk. An ancient seaport tucked up against the Belgian frontier, ringed with medieval ramparts and hemmed in by sand dunes with their coarse, tufted sea grass. The beaches that stretched either side were long and shallow, and gave little protection from the savage weather that swept up the Channel or down from the North Sea. The dunes often shifted during violent storms and so did the offshore sandbanks. These seas looked evil, and were often more evil than they looked. Over the centuries the treacherous, shifting banks had become a museum of maritime tragedy, filled with the bones of boats that hadn't made it.

  For the boats that did make it, Dunkirk had been a haven of safety. But that was last week. This week, Dunkirk had become all but unrecognizable beneath the pounding of enemy bombs. Its once fine harbour had been crippled and choked by sunken shipping, its docks had been rendered unusable by the ferocious heat from the burning oil tanks and waterfront buildings, it had no water supplies, no electricity, and in places the panzers were now less than five miles away. Fire, sea, violence. Dunkirk was being squeezed to death.

  Ramsay didn't have enough ships for the job and far too few destroyers. It wasn't much of an armada, but they had to try, otherwise defeat would turn to annihilation.

  At 21.16 the first ship, Mono, 's Isle, an Isle of Man packet, sailed out of Dover for that smudge of smoke on the horizon that was Dunkirk.

  (Sunday 26 May 1940. William L. Shirer, CBS.)

  Good evening. This is Berlin.

  Calais has fallen. That great French Channel port, familiar to many Americans who have crossed from London to Paris, fell into German hands today after a hard fight.. .

  Dunkirk, the last of the three great French Channel ports, apparently is still in the hands of the French, though its harbour works, say the Germans, have been continually bombed from the air by Stukas in the last few days.

  But Calais was the gateway from France to England, the port through which most of the supplies passed for the British Expeditionary Army in France. Its capture by the Germans practically completes the cutting off of Great Britain from its ally on the continent. Moreover, Calais is only twenty-five miles across the Channel from Dover, on the English coast. The massive, mechanized German army is that close to England tonight twenty-five miles the first time, unless I'm mistaken, that a hostile army has been that close to England's shores since the days of Napoleon more than a century ago .. .

  She found him on the bridge, guided by the glow of the cigar. It was desperately late, gone three, with the dark shadows of the clock tower of Big Ben looming against the night sky. A figure she assumed to be Inspector Thompson lurked across the carriage way otherwise they were alone in the damp river air.

  Thank you for coming," Churchill said. He was different. Courteous. Without a drink in his hand. She wondered if the two conditions were connected.

  "Had to get out," he continued. "Couldn't stand the atmosphere inside. Needed to find some free English air."

  The tide was running fast; she could hear it slapping against the granite piers of the bridge and saw tiny water sprites dancing in the moonlight. She said nothing; she'd let him reach his destination by his chosen route.

  "Had a friend at Harrow school. Jack Milbanke." A pause for smoke. I didn't have many friends; seem to have had trouble with that all my life. But Jack was special. Two years my senior. Unremarkable in many respects, either at games or lessons. Much like me. Although immaculately dressed, much unlike me. You see, he had a style, a distinction, that set him above the rest, and a maturity that I found utterly exceptional. We were always getting into scrapes, that was our nature, but he was always there to restrain me from going too far, or to haul me out when I did. To save me from myself, he said, the prerequisite of any friend of mine. I used to wonder what he meant by that .. . When my father passed through Harrow, he might come to visit, and he would take both Jack and me to luncheon at the King's Head Hotel. Roast beef and rhubarb, I seem to remember. And how they would talk, Jack and my father, as if they were equals, man to man. Oh, how much I wanted to be part of it, to share what Jack shared with my father, but ... I was a mere backward schoolboy and every time I tried to enter upon their conversation I was always awkward or foolish. Yet it heartened me to know that my father could share such confidences with someone of my age, almost as much as I was saddened that it was not with me. I was able to hope that one day it might be my turn." He glanced at her. "You're shivering. Where's your coat?"

  "I don't have a coat."

  Churchill fell silent for a moment, as though struggling with a problem of higher algebra, then motioned to Thompson. A moment later, she was wearing the inspector's raincoat. There was the harsh clanging of a bell near at hand; a police car sped out from the gates of New Scotland Yard on the Embankment and disappeared in the direction of St. Paul's.

  "I remember them building that place," he muttered abstractedly, gazing towards the dark mass of masonry. "Used convict labour. Straight out of Dickens. Seems so very long ago."


  His mind was wandering, exhausted. "You were talking about your father," she prompted.

  "No, not at all, why do you say that? I was talking about Jack Milbanke. The firmest friend I ever had. Got into all sorts of scrapes together, always teetering on the edge of disaster, did I say that? Saved me from a thousand thrashings. Went into the army, the Hussars, and off to South Africa. Won a Victoria Cross for rescuing a colleague under heavy enemy fire. Brave, brave man and gallant friend."

  "What happened to him?"

  "I killed him."

  A startled silence. "I don't understand."

  "Gallipoli. He died leading an attack in that awful battle of Suvla Bay."

  "Ah, your battle."

  "Not mine, not in that sense, but they blamed me for it. Twenty-five years ago and still they haven't forgotten. Or forgiven."

  They .. . ?"

  "The Conservative Party. They have long memories. Blamed me for Jack's death and all the rest. More than forty thousand dead at Gallipoli. It's why they won't trust my judgement, always think I am unreliable." He chewed the word to pieces. "Actually, they think I'm mad. Like my father." The cigar flamed once more and then flew in a sad tumbling arc down to the dark water below, where it expired with a sigh. "That's why I wanted to see you. To find someone who would tell me that I am not going mad."

  "You have many qualities, Mr. Churchill, but madness is not amongst them."

  "You may yet change your mind, Frau Mueller." His tone had grown suddenly taut. "You see, two things happened this evening. First, it became clear that my War Cabinet wants to open peace talks. I may not be able to prevent it. And then we heard that Calais is abandoned. All evening we've been dropping supplies and ammunition to the garrison there, straight into the arms of the grateful Wehrmacht. You see, the British and French are gone. Nearly four thousand of our bravest young men, captured or killed. By my personal order. And for what? For nothing!" The old Churchill was back, the hunched shoulders, the clenched fists that were now beating upon the cast-iron parapet of the bridge. "Lord Halifax and his like insist that we make contact with the enemy. The enemy! Why, if that's what was required, all I would need to do is to open my window in the Admiralty and holler."

  "Then you have learnt something since first we met."

  "Jack Milbanke always said I was my own worst enemy. Something else I have learnt. But too late, I fear."

  "Not if you stop the talks."

  "I cannot."

  "You are the most powerful man in the country," she protested.

  "Even so, I am not that powerful. Something called the constitution."

  "We had one of those, too. Hitler got himself elected and then nailed it to the forehead of the nearest Jew."

  "Ours is unwritten. It cannot so easily be discarded."

  "Oh, it will take Hitler less than five minutes once he gets here. But that's the difference, perhaps, between you and him."

  "Ah, at last she finds some means of differentiating me from That Man," he muttered, matching her scorn.

  "He cares more. Has more passion, apparently."

  "No one cares more than I!"

  "I don't know you very well, Mr, Churchill, but I do know Hitler. He wouldn't be standing in the middle of a misty bridge wringing his hands."

  "And what, pray, would you suggest that I do?"

  "Do? Whatever it takes! He would. Bend the constitution. Break it if you must. Because it will be no good to you if you don't."

  "Ridiculous."

  She grabbed his sleeve; he could feel she was still trembling. "It was only a little time after Hitler had come to power. In some ways so much seemed the same. The post was still delivered, the coffee houses still open, the trams still ran along the same tracks. Then red posters began to appear. We found them on every street corner, on every bridge, just like the one we're standing on now. The posters went up alongside all the other everyday things like programmes for the theatre or announcements about a new restaurant. Notices of executions, Mr. Churchill. When they first happened we read them with surprise and alarm, even disgust, but they kept appearing and soon, like all the other announcements, they began to be taken for granted, read scarcely at all. Each one became just another notice. You heard of bodies washing up along the shores of the Spee, and so you would find yourself setting out a little later than usual when you took the children for a walk along the river on a Sunday morning, just to give the authorities a little time to make sure that everything was .. . tidy. Or you would hear about yet another of those strange people called Communists oh, it was astonishing how many of them chose to rant and to rave, and to be shot while trying to escape. But if they were trying to escape, they must have done something wrong, deserved it in some way, or so you thought. And then he started on the Jews and before long you wanted your Jewish friends to what? To go sick. To break down. To hit or insult you so they would no longer be your friend; even better to leave and emigrate. Anything to get them out of the way. To relieve you of the responsibility of being their friend. Mr. Churchill, I don't know what is happening to the Jews in Germany right now there are too many of them to put on lists at street corners but whatever is happening and wherever it is happening, the rest of Germany will be looking elsewhere."

  "What is your point?"

  "You talk to me about your rules, but this isn't some quaint English game where you do your best and then go off to your country home for tea and wait for the pendulum to swing back in your direction. That's what you like, isn't it, you English? A little give and take, play the game, all gentlemen together and hooray for the underdog. But you can forget the swing of the pendulum once Hitler is here, because all you will encounter is the swinging of his axe. If you fail, Mr. Churchill, you will have far more on your conscience than Jack Milbanke and those who died at Calais. You will have to cope with the death of your country and of reason itself. So don't you dare preach to me about your wretched gentleman's rules. They simply won't apply."

  "You seem to hate him so very much."

  "More than you will ever imagine."

  "Why?"

  "How many ways are there to hate someone? I hate him as a German for what he has destroyed. I hate him as a Christian for expropriating my God. I hate him as a neighbour because I will never again feel trusted by those I live with, and I hate him as a schoolteacher for ripping children from my arms and poisoning every value I tried to teach them. I hate him for his red posters, for the fear he has created, for the friends I have lost, for the times I looked the other way, for the guilt I feel because I was part of it." She pulled the coat more closely around her. "But above all I hate him because I am a woman and a mother. A woman's love is like an ocean, endless, yet he took that ocean and drained it dry. I hate him for that moment in my life when I looked at those I loved most in the world and realized that I no longer knew them."

  She was shivering violently. Churchill turned in the direction of Thompson and waved to him. "You must go home, Frau Mueller. I have kept you too long."

  She could hear the coughing of a car engine as it approached from the end of the bridge. It stopped and Thompson opened the door.

  "Don't you dare give up, Mr. Churchill."

  "I will do everything I can," he said, climbing in and lowering the window. A grey dawn was streaking the sky. "I would happily give my life if that were the price for saving my country as doubtless would Hitler. But unlike him, I have family. You know what I think of family, Frau Mueller. And I have my only son serving in the armed forces, willing to give up his life in this war."

  "As I have, too," she whispered, watching the car drive away.

  ELEVEN

  Ramsay watched Mona's Isle return. A destroyer had guarded her until she had reached the gates of the harbour, and now two tugs guided her through. She was without a rudder and there were gaping holes in several parts of her superstructure. Even from a distance he could see that her decks were crowded with wounded. She was the last of the once-proud ships to limp back th
at morning; several of the others he had sent would never return. She had been shelled by shore guns and hammered by bullets from half a dozen Messerschmitts. Of the 1420 troops who had embarked upon her from Dunkirk, twenty-three were already dead and sixty wounded. The three-hour trip that Ramsay had planned had taken Mona's Isle almost twelve.

  Very late the previous night, Ramsay had snatched a moment to write a short note to his wife, Mag. "I have on at the moment one of the most difficult and hazardous operations ever conceived," he said, 'and unless le bon Dieu is very kind there are certain to be many tragedies attached to it. I hardly dare think about it, or what the day is going to bring."

  As he feared, the day brought its many tragedies. It also brought back a total of 7669 English soldiers from Dunkirk.

  At that rate it would take Ramsay more than forty days to evacuate the BEF.

  King George could see from the impatient stride and prominent scowl that his Prime Minister had arrived on usual form. And in his usual time.

  "Your Majesty, pray forgive my tardiness," Churchill offered, bowing deeply.

  It had become standard practice. The phone call ten minutes before he was supposed to arrive to inform the Palace that he would be half an hour late, then leaving the King to hang upon his own devices for another stretch of time. It would be followed by an audience carried out with as much speed and as little dignity as the King's sister-in-law reputedly displayed in bed. Not that George knew for certain, of course, he could never entirely trust the intelligence reports, but there were so many stories about her; some of them had to be true.

  There were stories about Winston, too. About his temper, about his drinking, his constant interfering, his unpredictability, his ... well, the word had been used. His madness. George had tried to sail in formation with his Prime Minister. He studied his papers, wrote the letters, offered advice, tried not to be a burden, indeed did everything he could to support. But every time he drew alongside, Churchill took off at full speed again, leaving the King twisting in his turbulent wake.

  "May I be allowed to congratulate you on your broadcast, sir?"