Working with Winston

by Working

  Using his leisure time to pursue his consuming interest in politics in all its forms,§ Churchill read Antony Trollope’s Phineas Finn and later The Duke’s Children, both drawing heavily on politics. One wonders why he skipped the in-between volumes; it is almost certain that he had read them all before. Holmes recalls the trip as a ‘jolly time, very jolly time, yes, terrific time’.

  During the voyage, Churchill discovered that the US servicemen on board had been granted leave, but only from the date of embarkation. Because the Queen Mary had been delayed a week to allow the prime minister and his party to arrive in Scotland and board, the soldiers would lose a week of their leave and pay. Churchill cabled FDR at once, asking that the week’s leave be made up to all. Roosevelt agreed and thanked Churchill for his ‘thoughtfulness’,42 a virtue with which Holmes and his staff were quite familiar, and all the more notable and surprising because of the pressures on the prime minister. We can only guess how Churchill learned of the plight of the servicemen. Perhaps Mrs Churchill reported to him her visit with the 400 or so blind American servicemen on board. Perhaps his natural curiosity and his concern for the plight of all servicemen led him to ask about the troops below decks, their condition and morale.

  The Queen Mary docked in Halifax on 10 September 1944 to be met by ‘a tumultuous crowd of hundreds… [T]he smiling Churchill led them in song after song up until the train pulled out.’43 Churchill and his staff of about 100 then took a train to Quebec City, where they were met by Roosevelt and his staff of about 250. Holmes’s recollections are basically in line with those of Hill, recalling the ‘massive menu’. Churchill’s Principal Private Secretary John Martin remembers a ‘10-course dinner’ on the train.44 Coming as they did from rationed Britain with ‘no lights, no white bread and rolls’, this must have been a great thrill for the British contingent. In Quebec, the president and Mrs Roosevelt, the Churchills and his personal staff stayed at the Citadel, the official residence of the Governor General of Canada. The remainder of the staffs, both British and American, stayed at the luxurious Hotel Frontenac. Holmes recalls that although she worked very long hours, she managed to find some time to shop for nylons45 and clothes, and to go dancing one night. Also time to have a mild flirtation with one of the Canadian Mounties, who promised her a flight over Niagara Falls. Alas, before she could accept, she was ordered back to The Citadel, then to go with the prime minister to Hyde Park, the president’s private home in upstate New York. She regretted not seeing the Falls, but ‘as it turned out, of course, it was far more interesting to go down’ with Churchill to Hyde Park. Once there, Holmes and Hill were put up in a hotel close to the president’s house, always ready to answer a summons to work.

  On 19 September, Holmes recalls she ‘had to read out a minute to the prime minister while he was still reclining in his bath’.46 Other secretaries who had similar experiences report that they sat outside the bathroom door, with no sightline in to the bathing prime minister. She also recalls on the train to New York to board the Queen Mary for their return to Britain: ‘the PM dictated something so funny that it reduced Mr Martin, Cmdr. [‘Tommy’] Thompson and me to tears of laughter.’47 In one of the ironies of history, as Churchill sailed home, ‘Private Henry Kissinger, by contrast, was on an overcrowded troopship, bound for the front line in Western Europe.’48

  Like others of the ladies who joined Churchill on visits to America, Holmes vividly recalls the difference between the security arrangements at Chequers, Hyde Park and on the prime minister’s trips, and the more massive and intrusive arrangements made by the Secret Service to protect President Roosevelt. There was no such group of protectors, or security measures, at Chequers, ‘when we were close to invasion by the Germans… just a few miles as the crow flew, from us, and there’d be one English bobby. The president’s security was amazing… electric fences… roads cleared and there were masses of G-men on all the running boards.’ Initially, the secretaries found the Secret Service squad rather intimidating, but later in the war became more relaxed in their gun-toting presence. In fact, at Yalta, Holmes, part of the prime minister’s large entourage, joined Layton in inviting six of the men to dinner, and a merry affair it proved to be.49

  Despite the omnipresence of the president’s security detail, Hyde Park was ‘very relaxed’, Mrs Roosevelt unassuming and bustling and with ‘a thing about picnics’,50 which of course suited Churchill.51 Much to her excitement, Holmes spied a luncheon guest invited by the Roosevelts, possibly at Churchill’s request: the former Prince of Wales, now the Duke of Windsor, whom Churchill had loyally defended – and at considerable political cost – during the abdication crisis, only later to be rewarded by the Windsors’ flirtation with Hitler. To Holmes’s regret, the duchess did not accompany her husband. Holmes also saw the president, who, she delightedly noted, smiled at her. A regretful Churchill, too absorbed in other matters to tend to the needs of his staff, realized only too late that an introduction to the American president would have been a highlight of Holmes’s trip; he later apologized to her for not introducing her personally to the president,52 a treat Harry Hopkins had conferred on a flustered Layton the previous year.53

  A day later they were off to the Queen Mary, with ‘high security and all the traffic stopped everywhere’.54 On the return voyage to Britain, Holmes’s diary records:

  PM dictated a further two thousand words of his speech [to be delivered in the House of Commons, reporting on the Quebec summit]. I got the best view of his behind that I have ever had. He stepped out of bed still dictating, and oblivious of his all-too-short bed jacket. Anyway, he was in a kind and conciliatory mood and I felt waves of his approval.55

  ‘Oblivious’ is a word well chosen by Holmes. Churchill, when focused on his work, could be impervious to his surroundings or the people around him or to his current state of dress. But as Holmes reports, not always: while dictating in bed early one morning, ‘an enormous fly started buzzing around his bedroom. He asked me to ring for Sawyers and said: “Get hold of that bloody fly and wring its neck.”’56 Churchill hated any noises like whistling or buzzing or, as we shall see, the clanging of cow bells, when he was concentrating on his work.

  Later, working on the same speech, she recalls: ‘When I told him that he had repeated himself, he said “All right, all right. Don’t break your heart about it – I can always cross it out,” rather snappishly.’ Then off he went to play bezique¶ with Jock Colville until 3 a.m.57 The impatience that resulted in all those ‘Action This Day’ memoranda would contribute so much to the efficient execution of the war, but at times was not appreciated by his overworked but loyal staff.

  On 26 September the Queen Mary docked at Greenock. Although he had been away for three weeks, Churchill did not pause for a detailed briefing on happenings in his absence. Instead, he went directly to the House of Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions, and a few days later reported to the House on the Quebec Summit, demonstrating his respect for his beloved House of Commons, his understanding of the need to keep its members informed, and an energy, drive and work ethic unusual in those days for a man close to seventy years old.

  Barely two weeks later, Holmes learned that she was to pack again, this time to head for Moscow, where Churchill would be meeting with Stalin. Holmes and Joan Bright flew out in advance of Churchill and his delegation, along with Elizabeth Layton, stopping in Teheran for refuelling for forty-eight hours before proceeding to Moscow. The pair were in Moscow when the prime minister landed on 9 October 1944. Asked why she and Bright had travelled out earlier, Holmes explained that Churchill ‘did like to see a familiar face whenever he went… he liked his own.’ And he relied on Bright to ‘arrange the accommodation for the British delegation’,58 which of course meant she had to arrive in advance of the delegation.

  Churchill and his staff were driven directly to Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov’s dacha, where Churchill indulged himself in one of his favourite pastimes: he took a bath. Holmes and Bright stayed
at a guest house on the grounds of the dacha in order to be on call should Churchill require secretarial help. The ‘hospitality was amazing… caviar and vodka for breakfast… huge buffets… we were entirely spoiled’. She also reports that Soviet women would insist on staying in the bathroom when she took a bath and that they would scrub her back and dry her – it was not easy for her to get used to. She compared her own important war work with that of the women who were attending her and showed them photos of British women working in factories and in uniform. We have no report of the reaction of the Soviet women.

  The nine days of long meetings with Stalin, Molotov and Soviet generals and their British and American colleagues exhausted Churchill. Holmes says

  he wandered into the office [in their Moscow town house] very sleepy-eyed in his dressing gown… I followed him back to the bedroom with some telegrams. He asked if I were going to the ballet tonight… and then [I] poured him another a cup of tea, [unusual for Churchill to drink tea]… [He said] The hand that rocks the cradle ought to be able to pour me a cup of tea. He had been eating chicken with his fingers. Sawyers brought him a finger bowl. What’s this? [he asked] To wash your hands, Sir [he answered]. [Churchill] cried out Good heavens! I’m going to wash me [sic] whole body in a minute.59

  Holmes records that Stalin arranged for a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet, which both he and the prime minister were to attend. With the Soviet leader intent on spreading ‘a carpet of goodwill’, Joan Bright ‘put in demands for tickets to opera and ballet; if I asked for double I usually got the number I wanted,’ making it possible for Churchill’s staff and some embassy and mission staffs (‘who seldom got seats’) to attend several performances.60 Although it is not certain that even Bright could cadge all the tickets she wanted for the gala to be attended by Churchill and Stalin. Churchill, however, made certain that Holmes could attend the gala, saying to her: ‘ “You’re going. Oh, you must go.” It’s not true that he wasn’t concerned about one enjoying things also… Churchill was very kind. He wanted very much for us to see the ballet and to participate.’ The programme began with the ‘first act of the ballet Giselle, then two hours of Red Army singing and dancing… with the PM thoroughly enjoying the martial songs… and beating time to them with his hands.’61 Churchill also loved music-hall songs, was not shy about singing and knew many songs by heart. After two consecutive showings of the film The Mikado at Chequers, Holmes describes Churchill as being ‘in a highly entertaining mood… sat in the office singing The Mikado songs – he seems to know all the lyrics by heart.’62 His prodigious memory for people and politics extended to poetry and songs.

  Soviet security was even more pervasive than what Holmes had experienced during Churchill’s visit to FDR at Hyde Park. When the secretaries travelled between the dacha grounds and the ballet it was in armoured cars. When she returned late at night, there were guards and checkpoints everywhere. When she went for a walk in the surrounding pine forest, ‘one of the trees would move and you’d realize it was a soldier… dressed in grey’.

  When the nine-day meeting with Stalin ended on 18 October, Churchill held a press conference at the British Embassy for American, British and Russian correspondents. Sitting behind the prime minister and Anthony Eden, both Layton and Holmes were to take down in shorthand everything said. Holmes recalls ‘afterwards, Churchill said to us “You didn’t take down all that tripe, did you?”’63

  In her book, Elizabeth Layton, who was also on this trip, gives us an insight into Churchill’s unexpected, impish humour. The flight out of Moscow had to make an overnight stop at Simferopol, in the centre of the Crimea. At a dinner that night, Churchill insisted that Layton, Sawyers and Inspector Hughes# join the main group as there was no other dining room. Layton and the two men

  found a small table and sat together… There was a toast to the King, then to Marshal Stalin… Then I saw Mr Churchill looking at me with a wicked twinkle and wondered what was going to happen. He rose to his feet and proposed the health of ‘Miss Layton, the only lady present’, at which all that grand company got good-naturedly to its feet, laughing… General Yermetchenko [one of the guests/minders] seized the flowers out of a bowl on the table, and dumped them dripping, into my lap… and then the company called for a speech. Feeling fairly idiotic, and scarlet-faced, I stood up and said ‘Thank you very much. I feel greatly honoured.’

  She knew Churchill was teasing, singling her out for attention. Holmes had flown home in another aircraft.64

  A little more than two months later, a few days before Christmas 1944, Holmes (and Layton) were working late at Chequers. For once, Holmes was unhappy to be on call – it would be her first Christmas away from her family. Then everything changed, as it so often did for people working for Churchill: the prime minister decided that – Christmas Eve or not – he had to fly to Athens to try to broker a peace in the civil war raging in Greece and in which British soldiers were heavily involved in street fighting. Typically, he felt that his personal intervention might make a difference, bringing the warring factions to some compromise solution. He asked Holmes and Layton, ‘the PM’s two most attractive typists’,65 to handle the secretarial chores on that journey. ‘Tremendously exciting, yes, because it was totally unexpected… we work up until 8 o’clock that night [Christmas Eve] and we had to sort of rapidly pack… we were all slightly merry… whisked off to Northolt for our first flight on this marvellous new aircraft, the C-54… a beautifully appointed aircraft’ given by President Roosevelt.66 Or as Pierson Dixon, Eden’s Principal Private Secretary, disparagingly described the Skymaster, ‘alas American’.67 Pierson, recalls Holmes, ‘had his hat on the back of his head… I thought perhaps he had had quite a bit of brandy or something.’

  Sir Martin Gilbert describes the Skymaster: ‘There are bunks for eight besides the PM and a dining salon and six of the bunks turn into three Pullman seats during the day, for the lower members of the staff… The whole aircraft is most sumptuously fitted up, swivel chairs and satin curtains, carpets etc.’68 At the back of the plane was a simple bedroom where Churchill continued to work, his pens, klop and tags laid out beside the bed. He would dictate to the two women, ‘anywhere really and everywhere’, or as we noted from Holmes’s earlier statement, ‘wherever we were: in cars, on trains, on planes, on ships everywhere’.

  Once airborne, it being almost midnight on Christmas Eve, the staff were all served ‘whiskys and sodas’, leading to massive headaches due to lack of oxygen when the C-54 landed in Naples, en route to Athens. Probably for security reasons, the Skymaster had to fly at high altitudes, but only Churchill was supplied with oxygen. ‘A breakfast under battle conditions’ was served at a military airport outside Naples.

  Then back on the plane and on to Athens. As they flew over the Greek islands Churchill shared with Holmes and Layton his joy at being in – or in this case, thousands of feet above – an historically important part of the world. He pointed out the islands: ‘There we [Holmes and Layton] were, lying across the bed, looking out… at these Greek Islands.’ The prime minister’s enthusiasm and his desire to share it were infectious and overcame his fatigue and that of Holmes and Layton. Holmes was learning that Churchill’s curiosity about the places to which his management of the war and his search for peace took him, his delight at discovering historically significant places, was never far below the surface, even on dangerous journeys to convene or attend fraught meetings. She was learning, too, of Churchill’s special delight at sharing with his staff his knowledge of the history of the places to which they would travel together. Much like his delight and pleasure at arranging to show President Roosevelt his favourite sunset view of the Atlas Mountains after the Casablanca Conference.

  The party landed in ‘freezing cold’ Athens at lunchtime on Christmas Day in the middle of the civil war, a shooting war at that time. Churchill had hopes of bringing that civil war to an end. But Churchill’s work habits never changed. Sitting on the runway in Athens, still aboard the Skymast
er, he continued to dictate in his bedroom at the tail end of the plane. Holmes said Layton ‘found it very hard to type because her hands were so cold’.

  General Scobie (British Army Commander in Greece) and Harold Macmillan (Resident Minister in the Middle East) came aboard the plane for meetings, after which the team transferred to HMS Ajax, waiting in Piraeus Harbour, where Churchill, Holmes and others would live throughout their Greek stay. Holmes recalls they were advised to transfer to HMS Ajax as it would be much safer, warmer and a functioning office could be set up there for them. The Spectator reported that ‘German agents were known to abound [in Athens]’.69

  Later that day, at 6 p.m., back aboard the Ajax, a Christmas Day costume party was in full swing and carols were being sung, a Royal Navy tradition. Churchill had arranged separate meetings in separate cabins with representatives of two of the factions warring, literally, for control of Greece, which Stalin had conceded to Britain during his meeting with Churchill in return for concessions from Churchill. As these representatives came aboard for their separate meetings, they must have been surprised to see British naval personnel outfitted in dresses and beards, with ‘glasses of gin in each hand… I think the Captain just moved [the Archbishop, who had a real black beard] away in time to save [him from] a beard-pulling contest.’70

  Holmes and Layton shared a cabin, and both had to share a bathroom with the admiral whose flagship the Ajax was. Holmes records, ‘It was a wonderful time there. And [Layton] and I were sort of entertained and we had our meals in the ward room where the officers were.’ When the two women exercised on deck, an American destroyer saw them and signalled the Ajax ‘How many have you got?’ and Ajax replied, ‘We’ve got two but they’re ours’, thereby passing up an opportunity to cement the Anglo-American naval special relationship. ‘It was great enormous fun.’ This amidst gunfire and shelling. Colville says the ship was ‘straddled by shells’.71