The Last Lion

by William Manchester

  With Dill’s message in hand, Churchill boarded Commando. Box lunches had been stowed in the bomb bay; there was no space for anything resembling a galley, and no meals could be prepared. A little propane camp stove was rigged to heat water for tea or Churchill’s hot-water bottle. Tommy Thompson and Churchill’s doctor made the trip, along with Inspector Thompson, Sawyers, Ian Jacob, two secretaries, and Alexander Cadogan, who represented the Foreign Office. Eden remained in London to run the store in Churchill’s absence. Clementine motored out to the airfield and watched as the “monster bomber, throbbing, roaring & flashing blue lights,” lifted off into the night sky. Once aloft, Commando swung low over blacked-out southern England, past Land’s End and out over the Atlantic, where it climbed to 15,000 feet and ran the 1,500 miles to Gibraltar. Lest any Axis spies prowling that citadel spot him, Churchill told Brooke he intended to disguise his identity with a gray beard. He spent August 2 on the Rock, and lifted off again at dusk. Conversation on board was impossible; the plane had not been soundproofed. Just before sunrise, Churchill climbed from the bomb bay and into the copilot’s seat, from where he beheld “in the pale, glimmering dawn the endless winding silver ribbon of the Nile.”284

  He had first seen the river from horseback more than forty years earlier, and although at the time he had yet to dab a canvas with oils, he described it in painterly tones as “a thread of blue silk drawn across an enormous brown drugget; and even the blue thread is brown for half the year… the picture painted in burnt sienna is relieved by a grateful patch of green.” Now the whitewashed concrete sprawl of Cairo spilled out of the patch of green, the western edges of the city thrusting toward al Jizah and the pyramids. Rommel, after again testing Auchinleck’s lines during the preceding week, sat just 140 miles to the northwest. And here came Churchill, exhilarated to find himself “the man on the spot.”285

  He came not to praise Auchinleck, but neither had he yet decided to bury him. Of two things Churchill was certain: the Eighth Army needed a new commander (Auchinleck had taken over from Ritchie), and Auchinleck should return to Cairo from the front in order to tend to the business of his entire Middle East command, which stretched from Tehran to El Alamein. Brooke arrived firm in his belief that Auchinleck had lost the confidence of the Eighth Army, was a poor judge of character, and should be replaced. Churchill, not yet sure, had invited the general he most respected, Jan Smuts, to Cairo for consultation. Wavell also arrived, from India, in order to brief Churchill and Brooke on events in that theater. It became clear to Churchill that Wavell and especially Auchinleck were so preoccupied with the immediate threats to their fronts that all of Iraq and Iran were essentially without central command, and this with the Germans driving toward Baku and the Caucasus. Churchill proposed setting up a new command in Baghdad, to be called the Middle East command. Brooke had been advocating just such a change for weeks. Auchinleck’s old command would be renamed the Near East command, a change Churchill had long championed the self-evident reason, as he later wrote, that Egypt and the Levant “was the Near East… India, Burma, and Malaya, the East… and China and Japan, the Far East.” The name changes were fine and well, the sort of housekeeping details Churchill relished, but the obvious and as yet unasked questions were, who would command, and where.286

  Auchinleck sealed his fate by nominating Lieutenant General Thomas Corbett as the new commander of the Eighth Army. Corbett, in Brooke’s estimation, was a “small man” and clearly “totally unsuited” for that command, further proof that Auchinleck could not pick a leader. The Eighth Army was tired. The troops, Churchill told the War Cabinet, were poised to retreat to the Nile delta if an attack came. Late on the third, Churchill kept Brooke up until all hours, lecturing the CIGS on the need for Auchinleck to return to Cairo in order to tend to the business of the Middle East command while someone new took command of the Eighth Army, which led Brooke to exclaim to his diary: “Exactly what I have always told him from the start!” Churchill offered the command to Brooke, a proposal that sorely tempted the CIGS, who in France had “tasted the thrill of commanding a formation in war.” Yet he knew he was the wrong man for the job, having no experience in desert warfare, and so told the Old Man.287

  On August 6, after visiting the front with Auchinleck and meeting Corbett, who Churchill found to be agreeable but without personality, Churchill made the decision to ease the Auk out of Cairo and into the new command in Baghdad. Then the plans collapsed. Churchill offered Auchinleck’s job to Brooke, who, like Marshall, was greedy for just such a theater command but was also honest enough to acknowledge (again, as he had three days earlier when offered the Eighth Army) his lack of desert warfare experience. More important, Brooke was selfless enough to not wish the job of working with Churchill on anyone else. The CIGS concluded (but did not inform Churchill in so many words) that the best service he could render England was to stick with Churchill, for better or for worse. Churchill cabled the War Cabinet that Harold Alexander, an obvious choice, be sent at once to replace Auchinleck. Yet Alexander had just been appointed to lead the British forces in Torch, and he had already begun planning that mission with Eisenhower. As for the Eighth Army, Brooke favored Montgomery, whose career he had nurtured for years. Churchill was inclined toward William (“Strafer”) Gott, the man who, along with the Fighting French, had in May delayed Rommel for a week, thus saving Ritchie’s army, and perhaps Cairo. Brooke thought Gott tired and in need of rest rather than a new command. Churchill, having spent part of the day with Gott, thought otherwise. The P.M. prevailed. The command of the Eighth Army went to Strafer Gott. Bernard Montgomery was chosen to replace Alexander in Torch, and Eisenhower was duly notified of the changes by London.288

  By lunchtime the next day, Gott was dead, his flying boat shot out of the sky by a rogue German fighter as the general flew from the front to Cairo for a hot bath and few days of rest. Churchill and Brooke, stunned by Gott’s loss, shuffled their dwindling deck and produced Bernard Montgomery. Lest Eisenhower conclude that his British allies could not make up their minds, Churchill sent a cable to London asking that Eisenhower not be informed of Montgomery’s promotion. But Montgomery had already reported for duty at Eisenhower’s headquarters. It fell to Ismay to inform Eisenhower that Montgomery, too, was being posted to Egypt, and that yet a third British general would be assigned to Torch. Eisenhower, taking in the news, told Ismay, “You seem to have a lot of Wellingtons in your army. Tell me, frankly, are the British serious about Torch?”289

  Churchill was serious. On August 8 he relieved Auchinleck of command, offering the general the consolation prize of the new Middle East command at Baghdad. It was a posting, Churchill admitted, that would be much smaller than Cairo, given that HMG could spare few troops in Iraq and Persia, but a theater nonetheless that “may in a few months become the scene of decisive operations.” Given his and Brooke’s lack of confidence in Auchinleck in combination with their fears of Hitler punching through to Iraq from the Caucasus, it is ironic that Churchill offered Auchinleck the Iraq command. But after pondering the offer for a few days, the Auk declined. Brooke thought Auchinleck behaved “like an offended film star” rather than putting duty first and taking the command, where he might “restore his reputation as active operations are more than probable.” But as Brooke well knew, the Tenth Army in Iraq was woefully unprepared to rebut a German attack, and, with Britain’s armed forces stretched to the limit, no reserves could be spared to boost its fighting strength. Were Hitler to break through to Iraq, the Tenth Army would not so much assume a role as suffer a fate. Knowing this, Auchinleck instead departed for India and retirement. Churchill, relieved at having made his decision, took himself off to the beach, where, as he later related to Harold Nicolson, “I then took off all of my clothes and rolled in the surf. Never have I had such a bathing.”290

  In a letter to Clementine informing her of the command changes, Churchill credited Smuts, who “fortified me where I am inclined to be tender hearted, namely in using severe mea
sure against people I like.” He used much the same language three months later when he told Harold Nicolson that sacking Auchinleck was “a terrible thing to have to do. He took it like a gentleman.” Churchill may have truly liked Auchinleck, but he had conducted this unfortunate piece of business with the general not in person, but by letter.291

  “That was how he did it,” recalled Bob Boothby, “in writing, ‘You are dismissed,’ signed in red ink, WSC typed in red ink under the signature. When he sacked somebody he never thanked them. I don’t remember any occasion when he thanked anyone for doing anything.” Around Whitehall, a sacking by Churchill was known as “the awarding of the Order of the Boot.” Boothby is partially correct, his recollection colored by his own exit from HMG. Early in 1941, he was accused of extorting commissions from Czech citizens who sought his help in reclaiming Czech assets seized by HMG after Munich. Boothby, who in the early 1930s had been touted as a possible future prime minister, had made many Tory enemies for his role as an anti-Chamberlain rebel. In 1941, with the Czech banking irregularities offered as their raison d’être, those enemies maneuvered to bring Boothby down. Boothby defended himself admirably in the House against the kickback charges, and sought Churchill’s help on the matter. Returning from the House that day, Churchill told Colville that “if there was one thing in the world he found odious, it was a man-hunt.” Yet he let Boothby go it alone, with the result that although Boothby managed to keep his seat in the Commons, he lost his position at the Ministry of Food. “I never forgave Churchill for that,” Boothby later recalled. “He ruined my wartime career.”292

  Yet there is an element in Boothby’s tale that is common to the recollections of many who ran afoul of Churchill. Boothby never forgave Churchill for that incident, but he understood that Churchill’s “ruthlessness and aloofness may have helped to make him a great leader.” Churchill had his own awkward way of thanking those who served him. After the war he arranged for Boothby, an ardent European unionist, to go as one of the first five British delegates to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Later, Churchill sponsored Boothby for knighthood. The two dined together on occasion for the remainder of Churchill’s life.

  Auchinleck had joined Boothby, Margesson, Wavell, Dill, Dowding, General Alan Cunningham, Dr. Tizard, and Admiral Dudley North on Churchill’s roll call of those he found wanting. Churchill believed that most of his admirals and many of his generals lacked spirit, and he succeeded in sacking several, vested as he was with great powers and an unforgiving temperament when he sensed a lack of aggressiveness. The Royal Navy’s admirals, Churchill once told Pound, “seem quite incapable of action.” Worse, some—including, Churchill believed, Andrew Cunningham at Crete—displayed a tendency to fear “severe losses” rather than to throw themselves and their ships into the teeth of the enemy. They “shirked” their tasks, Churchill told Colville. Churchill was said to be so autocratic that Hitler told his own generals that they were fortunate to work for such a reasonable leader as himself rather than for the mercurial Churchill.293

  Bob Boothby believed that Churchill’s ruthlessness toward subordinates was prompted not by any latent, mean-spirited inclination, but solely by the need to defeat Hitler. Churchill himself saw things that way; in his letter to Clementine recounting Auchinleck’s downfall, he offered that the changes made in Cairo “were necessary to victory.” As for Bernard Montgomery, who by August 10 was hastening to his new command in Egypt, Churchill told Clementine: “In Montgomery… we have a competent daring and energetic soldier” who “if he is disagreeable to those about him he is also disagreeable to the enemy.”294

  While Churchill wrapped up his business with Auchinleck, great events transpired on a South Pacific island that few in London or Washington had heard of. Early on August 7, almost ten thousand U.S. Marines from the 1st and 5th regiments, First Marine Division, slogged ashore on the stinking, hot island of Guadalcanal, where the Japanese had almost completed an airfield from which they intended to sever the American shipping lanes that sustained Australia. Most of the leathernecks carried World War One Springfield bolt-action rifles and wore World War One–era leggings. They secured the beachhead with ease, and the next day they took the airfield. Much of their equipment and almost all of their rations failed to follow them ashore when on August 8, Admiral Frank (“Jack”) Fletcher, who had already had two aircraft carriers sunk from under him, turned his ships for home with the meager excuse that he needed to refuel (just as he had when he steamed away from the relief of Wake Island in December), thus earning him the everlasting antipathy of Marines and the moniker Frank “Always Fueling” Fletcher. Still, the Marines meant to hold their ground. America had taken the first step in the journey to Tokyo. For Churchill, the American action on Guadalcanal again raised the concern that had dogged him since January: Would the Americans proceed on that journey at the expense of the European front?295

  Late on the tenth, Churchill departed Cairo for Tehran, the first leg of his journey to Moscow and “his visit to the Ogre in his den,” as Clementine had put it in a letter earlier that week. He later noted the irony of the pilgrimage to “this sullen, sinister, Bolshevik state I had once tried so hard to strangle at birth.” Had Hitler kept his bond with Stalin, the Soviets “would have watched us being swept out of existence with indifference and gleefully divided with Hitler our Empire in the East.” What, Churchill wondered, did he owe the Soviets? Wavell gave the answer in a poem of many verses, the last line of each being: “No second front in nineteen forty-two.” Brooke offered his opinions about Moscow to his diary, and they were not conciliatory: “Personally I feel our policy with the Russians has been wrong from the very start, and as begun by Beaverbrook. We have bowed and scraped to them” without ever asking in return for information on Soviet “production, strength, dispositions, etc. As a result they despise us and have no use for us except what they can get out of us.”296

  Three B-24 Liberators were needed to ferry the entire party to Moscow, including Brooke, Air Marshal Tedder, Cadogan from the Foreign Office, and Archie Wavell, who spoke Russian. It was an unnecessarily large party, Brooke wrote, made so because Churchill felt such a retinue of generals, admirals, and air marshals “increased his dignity.”297

  Harriman had arrived in Tehran two days before Churchill, and he used the time to inspect the British-run Iranian railroad system, which he found to be “the worst mess I have ever seen.” He would know; railroading was in his blood. When Churchill arrived on the eleventh, Harriman proposed that the U.S. Army take over the railroad in order to expedite the delivery of Lend-Lease goods to Stalin. Churchill, dubious, agreed to discuss the matter in the autumn. Harriman then joined Churchill on Commando for the run to Moscow. The plane was routed east of the Caspian in order to avoid any stray German fighters. The din in the aircraft was such that the two men passed written notes between themselves whenever they had something to say.298

  Brooke and his party followed in his B-24, but when one of the engines flared out, they had to return to Tehran for the night. The next day the Brooke contingent climbed into an American DC-3, a Lend-Lease offering that the Russians had lavishly outfitted with thick seats and Persian carpets. They flew north by west to Baku to refuel. To Brooke’s delight, the plane scared up thousands of water birds as it came in low over the Volga delta. From there they flew north along the Caspian coast, with the Caucasus just twenty miles to the west. The plain below, between the sea and the mountains, was the main line of advance from Russia into Iran. With the Germans driving from the north, Brooke expected to see trenches and anti-tank traps and concrete fortifications in numbers to match the Volga birds. He saw none. “The back door seemed to be wide open for the Germans to walk through for an attack on the Russian southern supply route,” he wrote, “and more important still, the vital Middle East Oil supplies of Persia and Iraq!”299

  On his way to Moscow, Churchill learned that an eleven-ship relief convoy bound from Gibraltar to Malta had lost eight ships and an escort
ing aircraft carrier to German submarines and aircraft. The three remaining ships brought 12,000 tons of food and petrol to Malta, relief, but at a terrible price. Churchill was not pleased, not only because of the losses, but because he knew that Stalin would demand a resumption of the Arctic convoys, and there were just not enough ships.300

  After a ten-hour flight from Tehran, Churchill arrived in Moscow late in the afternoon of August 12. Greeted by Molotov, he climbed into a bulletproof car and set off at high speed for a dacha about a dozen miles outside Moscow. There, after availing himself of a hot bath, Churchill found that everything in the guesthouse had been “prepared with totalitarian lavishness.” Three hours later he was escorted into the blacked-out Kremlin. Stalin was attired in a gray rough-cloth peasant’s blouse and trousers of the same material, tucked into high boots. A handsome handworked leather belt was cinched around his blouse. His eyes had a yellow cast, his face was pocked, his teeth discolored, and his mustache scrawny and streaked. Harriman thought he looked noticeably older and grayer than he had the year before. The marshal and Churchill were close to the same height, around five foot seven, with Churchill an inch or so taller. Where Churchill was given to looking directly into the eyes of his conversation partners, Stalin gazed away into the distance as if he were not listening. But he was. Harriman described the three meetings that took place over the next three days as running “hot and cold”—very hot, and very cold.301

  The first, which lasted three hours, began on a somber note when Churchill, getting right to the point, announced that there would be no second front in France that year. Any attempt to do so would be so paltry as to offer no help to Russia, and would likely result in the annihilation of the forces on the beaches. But in 1943, Churchill offered, the Allies were prepared to throw twenty-seven divisions ashore, half of them armored.