The Last Lion

by William Manchester

  Eisenhower expressed his doubts about Anzio in almost the same terms Churchill used to express his concerns about Overlord. Churchill was not the only commander who feared that an undersize force thrown onto a beach faced “annihilation.” The Christmas meeting was attended by most of the military brass in the theater—Eisenhower, Air Marshal Tedder, Jumbo Wilson, and Alexander. Brooke, who never backed down when he disagreed with Churchill, had already left for London. Another man whose opinion might have carried weight, Mark Clark, had not been invited to the meeting. His Fifth Army would supply the men for Shingle. The assembled agreed that the operation should be enlarged to two reinforced divisions, and should go forward. But it could not. With the exodus of landing ships from the Mediterranean to England, the planners came up fifty-six ships short.

  Only Roosevelt could approve a change of plans regarding landing craft. Churchill sent a cable to the president: “The landing at Anzio… should decide the battle of Rome.” Yet, he told the president, eighty-eight landing ships were required, and that number could only be reached by delaying the scheduled transfer of the fifty-six ships to England for Overlord. It would “seem irrational” not to do so, Churchill wrote. To send the ships to England would result in “stagnation” or worse on the Italian front. He was angry, and he was frustrated. Between them, the Americans and British had pledged to build 1,500 ships and landing craft of all types per month, and yet in the only European theater where Anglo-American forces were fighting Germans, the fate of the Allied campaign rested with just fifty-six landing craft. Two days later, Roosevelt approved the use of the landing craft. Operation Shingle was on, and Churchill himself was planning the details, including an increase in the force from 20,000 to more than 70,000.28

  Splendid news from the polar region arrived on Boxing Day. The Royal Navy had brought the Scharnhorst to bay off the Norwegian coast. (This was especially welcome news, as Scharnhorst’s escape from Brest in February 1942 had nearly brought down Churchill’s government.) When the German battle cruiser had in the previous days attacked a convoy bound for Russia, Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, aboard the Duke of York, gave chase. Scharnhorst made for the safety of Norway, but by Christmas night, Fraser and his heavy ships had closed in on the German ship. On the twenty-sixth, surrounded, nearly out of ammunition, aflame, and crippled by torpedoes and shells, the Scharnhorst finally went under, taking all but thirty-six of her crew of two thousand to the bottom. Tirpitz, wounded in late September by Royal Navy midget submarines, still lived, but the German navy, having already lost the submarine war, now had to face a reality that Churchill had seen in early autumn: the Battle of the Atlantic was over. There had been a time when the mere threat of sorties by the German surface fleet terrorized Allied shipping and kept the Home Fleet near home. Now the German threat—its surface fleet, and much of its U-boat fleet—had vanished. Hitler ordered newer, faster, more heavily armed submarines built, but they were not due for deployment until mid-1945. As 1944 came on, the buildup for Overlord proceeded apace. With the arrival of each fresh American division, Britain was being transformed into the largest military staging area in history.

  On December 27, Churchill, under doctor’s orders, left Carthage for a two-week convalescence at Marrakech, during which time he took de facto command of the Mediterranean theater. He hinted at his intentions in a medical bulletin he wrote, which was issued from No. 10 Downing that week: “I feel a good deal better than at any time since leaving England, though of course a few weeks in the sunshine are needed to restore my physical strength…. The M and B, which I may also call Moran and Bedford, did the work most effectively…. I have not at any time had to relinquish my part in the direction of affairs, and there has been not the slightest delay in giving the decisions which were required from me. I am now able to transact business fully…. I shall not be idle.” In fact, with the British chiefs and War Cabinet in London, Churchill found himself free to plan his own war.29

  At Marrakech, as after Casablanca, he again took over the Villa Taylor, surrounding himself with a diminished troop of family and friends—Beaverbrook was summoned for companionship—and a skeletal staff of typists, private secretaries, and military advisers. Randolph and Sarah joined their father, the son, as usual, tending toward bellicosity and drunkenness, which inevitably led to “a bickering match” between himself and Winston. Randolph was especially poisonous toward de Gaulle, whom he advised his father to dump, in part because de Gaulle had just arrested five former Vichy leaders for treason. Three of the five had aided the Allies during Torch, and their safety had been spoken for by Roosevelt and Churchill. Henri Giraud opposed the arrests, but de Gaulle was forcing him out as co-president of the FCNL. De Gaulle was now the state, such as it was. To Harold Macmillan’s chagrin, Churchill listened to his son, who was feeding Winston numerous reports on de Gaulle that were “mostly invented.” “Randolph was the cause of the trouble,” Macmillan told his diary. “It is really too bad for the boy to worry his father. But Winston is pathetically devoted to him.” After witnessing several such scenes, Colville wrote, “Randolph is causing considerable strife in the family,” and when Randolph again went off on de Gaulle, Colville noted, “Winston almost had apoplexy and Lord Moran was seriously perturbed.” Randolph’s commanding officer, Fitzroy Maclean, assured Colville that Randolph’s behavior would change once they joined Tito in Yugoslavia, “owing to the absence of whisky and a diet of cabbage soup.” Years later, Evelyn Waugh, who served with Randolph in Yugoslavia, was told that Randolph, a heavy smoker, had undergone a biopsy for a suspected cancerous growth in his lung. To everyone’s surprise, including Randolph’s, the biopsy came back negative. “A typical triumph of modern science,” Waugh offered, “to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.”30

  Yet Randolph, in his own insufferable manner, brought into clearer focus the trouble that was brewing with de Gaulle. De Gaulle, not Randolph, was the real source of the difficulty. To address it, Churchill sent his York aircraft to Algiers in order to retrieve his old friends Alfred Duff Cooper and his wife, Lady Diana Cooper. He was in his new position of HMG’s minister to the French Committee of National Liberation, and Lady Diana was a notable in her own right, at fifty-one still one of England’s great beauties. Her portrait had graced a Time magazine cover in 1926; she was a respected actress and one of England’s best-known hostesses. Over men, including Churchill, she exerted a certain power, as Lord Moran witnessed at dinner one evening in Marrakech. “There,” Moran whispered to Colville, “you have the historic spectacle of a professional siren vamping an elder statesman.” Duff Cooper, who loved France and the French, could only hope that he could exert such sway over de Gaulle. Cooper’s new assignment—to make peace with de Gaulle, or at least to avoid more trouble—proved difficult from the start.31

  When Roosevelt telegraphed orders directly to Eisenhower to not allow the Gaullists to prosecute three of the arrested Vichy luminaries, Macmillan—now resident minister for the entire Mediterranean—feared a complete collapse of relations between the French and the British and Americans. Roosevelt added a handwritten postscript to his cable: “It seems to me that this is the proper time effectively to eliminate the Jeanne d’Arc complex and return to realism.” Upon learning of the cable, Macmillan told his diary, “The president hates de Gaulle and the French National Committee…. He would seize on any excuse to overthrow them and restore Giraud.” De Gaulle delayed a showdown when he announced that the three Vichy leaders would not be tried until a French government was in place. Still, Roosevelt wanted de Gaulle out, and Churchill was leaning that way.32

  The antics of Randolph and de Gaulle were distractions for Churchill, who wanted to focus his attention on only Italy. He summoned Captain Pim and his entire map room staff to Marrakech in order to better plot his Anzio campaign. Montgomery, on his way to London to assume his new command, flew in for New Year’s. Eisenhower, about to leave for a two-week vacation in the States before reporting for duty
in London, was summoned by Churchill to discuss Anzio; again Eisenhower expressed his fears about the gambit—too small a force thrown against too powerful an enemy. On New Year’s Eve, Churchill asked Montgomery to look over the plans for the Normandy campaign. Montgomery at first protested that since the Combined Chiefs of Staff had approved the plans, it was not his place to second-guess them. Churchill insisted. Montgomery (never a man for celebrations anyway) cut short his New Year’s Eve dinner with Churchill and Clementine to take up the task. In deference to Monty, the rest of the party celebrated the New Year before the midnight hour. Punch was served, and orderlies and typists wandered into the room to partake of the festivities. After a brief speech by Churchill, everyone linked arms and formed a circle to sing “Auld Lang Syne.”33

  Montgomery wrote fondly of the evening in his memoirs, noting that it marked the beginning of a friendship between himself and Churchill and Clementine that only deepened over the next two decades. That was true; Montgomery signed the guest book at Chartwell forty-six times, second only to the Prof’s eighty-six. Yet the friendship almost sputtered at the start when Clementine invited Monty’s aide-de-camp, Noel Chavasse, to the New Year’s Eve dinner. “My ADC’s don’t dine with the Prime Minister,” Montgomery replied tartly. “In my house, General Montgomery,” said Clementine, “I invite who I wish and I don’t require your advice.” Chavasse dined.34

  The next morning, New Year’s Day 1944, Churchill marched into Clementine’s room and announced, “I am so happy. I feel so much better.” Later in the day, the Old Man and his party, including Montgomery, motored to an olive grove in the countryside for a picnic, one of many during his days of recuperation. There, Monty delivered to Churchill his first, unfavorable, impressions of the Overlord plan. “This will not do,” Monty declared. “I must have more in the initial punch.” He had earlier offered his opinion to Eisenhower, who told him to recommend any and all changes he thought appropriate when they next met in London. But Eisenhower had Italy, not Normandy, on his mind. He departed Marrakech that morning with the unsettling feeling that “the insistence of the P.M. indicated he had practically taken tactical command of the Mediterranean.” He had. Eisenhower’s staff began referring to Shingle as “the P.M.’s pet project.” It was. Marrakech picnics were “sacrificed to stern duty,” Moran wrote. “Councils of war” were held in the gardens of the Villa Taylor. When Moran pointed out to Churchill that Hitler not only made war policy but even planned the details, Churchill replied, “Yes, that’s just what I do.” With all the brass having departed, he found himself alone in Marrakech, happily so, prompting Lord Moran to tell his diary, “As the P.M. grows in strength his appetite for war comes back.”35

  In early January 1944, RAF and American bomber crews sailed off on a series of secret missions over France that their superiors were closemouthed about. Normally, the flyers’ commanders briefed flight crews on intended targets—a particular factory, for example, or rail yard in a particular city. But now the flight crews were given only coordinates, and told not to miss. The airmen were not privy to the fact that throughout the late autumn, British reconnaissance flights had snapped photos of dozens of strange-looking wooden and concrete structures scattered from Normandy to the Pas de Calais. The structures looked like Alpine ski jumps—narrow and about five hundred feet long. Some sat upon concrete foundations. Heavy electrical cables and winches implied that the structures might serve as some sort of catapult. When analysts marked the sites on maps, they reached an unsettling conclusion: each was positioned such that its axis pointed toward London. It was left to one sharp-eyed WAAF (Woman’s Auxiliary Air Force) analyst to spot a propellerless aircraft near one of the sites. Another analyst recalled similar buildings being photographed at Peenemünde the previous May. The analysts could only conclude that they were looking at German launch sites. Exactly what manner of device was to be launched remained unknown. RAF and American bomb crews now flew in the service of Crossbow, Duncan Sandys’s operation to destroy the mysterious sites. But accuracy, as usual, left much to be desired. “The bombing of the launching emplacements,” Brooke confided to his diary on January 11, “is not going well.” The bombing, in fact, continued to not go well for seven more months.36

  Not so Churchill’s Moroccan holiday. He worked mornings, picnicked in the afternoons, and dined splendidly by candlelight each night. Late in the evening, dressed in his dragon robe, he sang along to Gilbert and Sullivan recordings sent to him for Christmas by Mary, “the best present I ever gave him.” Eduard Beneš, on his way home from Moscow, where he had signed a friendship treaty with Stalin, stopped by for dinner, during which Beneš expressed his belief that “we must be ready for a German collapse any day after May 1.” Again, as he had in Cairo, Churchill polled his dinner companions as to whether they believed Hitler would still be in power on September 3, 1944. Answering no were Sarah, Commander Tommy Thompson, John Martin, Beneš, and Major General Leslie Hollis. Hollis’s pronouncement carried weight; he was Ismay’s deputy and attended many of the overseas conferences and most of the military planning sessions throughout the war. Churchill and Beaverbrook answered yes.37

  On January 12, Charles de Gaulle, after a month of what Duff Cooper termed “boorish” refusals to meet with Churchill, agreed to dine with the prime minister. Still offended by Churchill’s not seeing him while en route to Tehran, and furious over Roosevelt’s intervention in his plan to try the three Vichy loyalists, the general arrived in Marrakech in a “difficult and unhelpful” mood. Churchill, too, was in a low mood, having been shocked that day to learn that Count Ciano and the other conspirators who had ousted Mussolini had been shot. As Churchill waited for de Gaulle, Duff Cooper later wrote, he pondered ridding the alliance of the Frenchman once and for all, not only because Roosevelt sought to but because, as Churchill told Cooper, “You like the man, I don’t.” As the hour of the meeting approached, Cooper and Clementine advised Churchill to act with civility toward de Gaulle. “I hope there will be no explosions,” Clementine wrote in a letter to Mary. There were not. After a cool start (de Gaulle “talked as if he were Stalin and Roosevelt combined”) the two leaders “parted friends” two hours later. Churchill even agreed to attend a review of French troops the following day. The review, where Churchill and de Gaulle stood side by side, “was a great success,” Cooper wrote, and Churchill was “much moved by the cries of ‘Vive Churchill,’ which predominated over the cries of ‘Vive de Gaulle’ as the Spahis and Zouaves marched past.” Years later Cooper wrote of Churchill, “After spending more than a half century in the de-humanising profession of politics, Winston Churchill remains as human as a school-boy.” The words were written in appreciation of Churchill’s willingness to stick with de Gaulle—despite de Gaulle’s misdeeds—for the greater good of France and Europe.38

  A picnic in the mountains (without de Gaulle) followed the review of troops. Such outings were not simple affairs to bring off. American troops guarded the surrounding area, which included a deep gorge through which a river ran. Churchill’s orderlies laid out long trestle tables, white tablecloths, folding chairs, Berber carpets, and large wicker baskets containing oranges, olives, grilled lamb, and chilled liquid refreshments, “the whole caboodle,” recalled Lady Diana Cooper. So luscious were the oranges that Montgomery, who was leaving for London later in the day, ordered that an aircraft be procured, loaded with oranges, and sent ahead to England. As with any meal with Churchill, the picnic began on an uncertain note. Lady Cooper, a friend of three decades, had long known how to best approach Churchill at the dinner table. “He was always grumpy before dinner,” she recalled, “then after a couple of drinks, became funny and more witty.” After his first glass of brandy Churchill leaned in toward Lady Diana and whispered, “Lord Moran says I am to have another glass of brandy.” Yet Moran had said no such thing. “Well,” Lady Diana recalled, “three times he had another glass of brandy with the result that I saw it coming.” What she saw coming was an excursion by Churchill
and several aides down to the river in the gorge, where he scrambled about on the boulders in the streambed. When it came time to ascend from the ravine, the Old Man found he lacked the mobility. Lady Diana lowered a long white tablecloth, into which Churchill was wrapped like a baby in a bundle. With two aides pulling, two pushing, and another carrying the Old Man’s cigar, they regained the high ground.39