WC02 - Never Surrender

by Michael Dobbs

  No evacuation.

  As dawn broke, the men of Calais could see the cliffs of their homeland emerging from the sea, and nothing but clear water in between. The ships had gone. For once the British army was true to its word. There would be no evacuation.

  Every one of them knew it would be today; they couldn't hold out any longer. Sometime before nightfall, in a few hours' time, they would be dead, or wounded, or prisoners. For many, this was going to be their day to die.

  Even so, many would die unarmed. There still weren't enough weapons. In places they fought hand to hand, with grenades, bayonets, fists. The Germans were astonished to discover their positions being bombarded with smoke shells -there was nothing else to use. At every point, the British and their French comrades were pushed back remorselessly towards the sea, yet still they fought on, and on. The German army reports would later tell in awed tones of the 'most tough and ferocious manner' with which the defenders fought, and praise the 'extreme courage' with which they laid down their lives.

  As they retreated, the houses behind them were already blazing. They were forced to walk backwards into a forest of flame and exploding glass. Ash and cinder fell like the last moments of Pompeii. The heat was unbearable, their thirst worse. A cry of 'gas' went up, but it was a false alarm, nothing but the chlorine being burned away in the batteries of British tanks that had fought themselves to destruction. When they fell back to the beaches and the dunes, their guns began to clog with sand; they had to strip and clean them even as the enemy pressed down upon them. But by then the British had fallen back as far as they could. In front of them was death, and behind them nothing but an empty sea. Still they hoped, even in the last hour, that the Royal Navy would come to their salvation.

  The last hour came around four in the afternoon, although the thick, choking smoke made it seem more like nightfall. Nicholson's headquarters in the Citadel fell. The bastion built to withstand the English had, in the end, proved to be the Englishmen's last redoubt. After that it was every man for himself.

  Don and Claude had clung together during the day. Claude had wanted to fight, but there was nothing to fight with, and there was his leg. Being noncombatants did nothing to keep them from danger. They'd been buried beneath rubble, blown over by explosions, cut by flying glass. A bullet had passed through Don's upper arm as they stumbled from a building that was collapsing about them, and his hair had been singed by flames. What part of them wasn't covered by blood was mired in soot and dust.

  Sometime later that afternoon they found themselves amongst the grass tussocks and sand hills east of the docks. They watched as a small unit of riflemen retreated along the beach, pursued by German soldiers. Even as they ran, two more fell, until ahead of them, another unit of the Wehrmacht appeared. There was nowhere else to go. The English captain stumbled to a halt, his feet now heavy in the sand. He had begun that day with twice the number of men under his command; surely they had done enough? He dragged himself to attention and told his survivors to lay down their arms.

  The soldiers of the Wehrmacht approached cautiously, rifles at the ready. A nervous German officer began gesticulating, ordering the captain to give up his weapons, shouting. The Englishman started to laugh. Carelessly he produced two revolvers, blew sand from the barrels, and handed them across. The German was bewildered. They were both empty.

  As Don looked back from the beach he saw every street on fire. Calais had become a furnace, the flames reflected in the water of the docks, the outlines of buildings obliterated by a choking fog of smoke that climbed taller than the Hotel de Ville and Notre Dame. Three thousand Englishmen and eight hundred brave Frenchmen had been sacrificed here, in full view of the coast of Kent.

  "What do you think we should do?" he asked Claude.

  "My friend, there is nothing left for me in Calais,." the Frenchman responded. "Whatever has happened to my family, they are no longer here. So we have two choices. We can stay and keep the captain and his men company, or we can try to escape. To Dunkirk. It is twenty miles that way." He pointed east along the beach. "We might live to fight another day."

  "But I'm noncombatant and you've got a buggered leg and nothing to fight with."

  "So, we have half an English soldier and half a French flyer. Between us we might just scrape together one proper fighting man, do you think?"

  Don looked at his companion, the sweat-soaked hair, the oozing red eyes, the ragged and scorched uniform, knowing that he looked just as wretched. His arm hurt like hell.

  "Twenty miles, you say? Know any short cuts?"

  It was all the fault of that wretched Mrs. Parnell. While the men kept their own counsel and carried on, the women -not just Mrs. Parnell but seemingly every other mother in the parish would miss no opportunity of grabbing his sleeve and pouring out their tales of woe. He would pretend to listen patiently, then offer a prayer. They had no idea how all the while he twisted inside until it hurt so much he thought he might split in two.

  That's what they did in the Bible, they simply fell down and split. And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.

  He felt his strength waning. "Not again," Mrs. Parnell had sobbed, and she was right. It was supposed to have been the war to end all wars, that's what they had been promised.

  But who had promised? Everyone. They'd all said it. Never again. And yet .. .

  There was never a better example in all of Christendom of collective guilt, the sort of thing that sprang out of every page of the Bible. Yet the guilt that in recent days had almost overwhelmed Henry Chichester was altogether more personal. He felt it every time he met a woman who had lost a loved one in the last war or had someone serving in this. That was the sort of pain he couldn't match. He couldn't share with the Mrs. Parnells of his world. They came to him for strength yet he had none to give. He felt his guilt so strongly he was no longer able to look them in the eye.

  Henry Chichester had lost his way. He was supposed to be a leader, a teacher, but he was nothing more than just another ageing and inadequate man. He was surrounded -almost besieged by people every waking hour, yet he'd never felt more alone. While they talked to him of their own families, their words screamed at him that he had no one, no wife, no son, nothing more than a fading photograph on the mantel shelf

  Everything was his fault, even Jennie's death. He'd tried to blame the doctors, he'd even blamed his son, but that was the most unkind accusation of all. He and Don should have been able to share Jennie, but they never had. He wouldn't allow that, it hurt too much. And perhaps he was jealous that anyone else, even his own son, should have a claim on her.

  It was all his fault.

  And if it wasn't his own fault, then it must be God's, but he refused to go any further down that path, terrified of what he might find.

  Don. His thoughts kept coming back to Don. His son had made no extraordinary demands, had asked for nothing more than to see things his own way. But a religion built around Commandments seemed to have so little room for such youthful indulgences. "Thou shalt not' didn't leave much scope for discussion over the roast potatoes.

  Henry had never understood his son. When Don had gone off to stay with Henry's sister in Sevenoaks for Registration Day so that he could receive his conscription papers at a different address, the Reverend Chichester had accused him of 'sneaking away'. But that hadn't been the point. What Don had done was to spare his father the embarrassment of his son appearing before a local appeal tribunal in Dover, so that his 'sordid little secret' oh, another wicked phrase uttered in anger! would never be known amongst his parishioners. It had taken the father months to work out what the son had realized immediately.

  Where was Don? He had no idea. Perhaps over there? He allowed his parishioners to think he was. The Reverend Chichester lifted his eyes to the pillar of fire that was Calais.

  And the sun shone upon the water, and the Moabites saw the water on the other side as red as blood.

  Things were much quiete
r now, the echoes of the bombing and shelling had faded with the evening light. It was almost too quiet. Suddenly he fell to his knees and began to pray more fervently than he could ever remember. He was afraid. He prayed that Don wasn't over there after all, that every one of his previous prayers and demands should have gone unheeded, that his son would never have to endure what he had endured, or do what he had done, or make so many of the same mistakes. Henry Chichester knew he had failed his son. He shuddered as the holy words mocked him. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?

  Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?

  And he fervently wished that Mrs. Parnell and all the others might suddenly appear, bringing with them their sorrows and open hearts so that he might share his own with them, before he fell down under the weight of his loneliness and burst in two.

  It was the third meeting of the War Cabinet that day, Sunday, and still they were no nearer the decision.

  "Let us consider the matter from a different perspective .. ." "From whichever perspective you wish, Prime Minister,

  "But it will not change the basic problem," Halifax insisted. The events of the day had unsettled them all. Reynaud the French Prime Minister had flown over brave but hapless fellow to explain that his government was irrevocably split. There were those who blamed the British, and some who didn't, those who wanted to fight on, and many who did not, and an overwhelming majority who wanted to open negotiations with the Germans. Reynaud himself would not agree to any peace imposed upon France, but he was in a minority and would probably have to go. It may cost me my life," he explained to Churchill, 'but compared with that of my country it is of little matter." Indeed a brave fellow, and hapless.

  Other happenings across the Channel were equally depressing. There was no news from Calais their last message, from a lieutenant begging for artillery support, was now several hours old and Dunkirk was said to be a cauldron of disorder, while barely an hour passed without some political secretary or military aide rushing in to interrupt them with news that Belgian resistance was ever nearer the point of collapse.

  Halifax was still talking about the Italian option: getting to Hitler through Mussolini. And the Chiefs of Staff had brought forward an analysis about British options in the event of what they ambiguously termed a 'certain eventuality'. Ironically, that eventuality, of France falling out of the struggle, was looking ever more certain even as the paper was being circulated. The military men concluded that Britain might survive without French support, but only if she could replace it with American. Yet France was no more than twenty miles away, while America was on the other side of the world with its head, as Joe Kennedy had apparently told Beaverbrook, 'stuck firmly up its non-interventionist end'.

  The day had begun with rainfall and grown darker with every passing hour. Throughout it, they had argued. Halifax wanted to negotiate, Churchill did not. And neither would give way.

  "I believe the events of the day have made the case for a constructive dialogue all the more persuasive," Halifax contended once again. "What will happen if the French fail to continue the fight? We shall be left on our own. Without an army'

  "We shall get our boys back!" Churchill intervened.

  "I pray fervently that we shall get some of them back, but how many? Even the most optimistic estimates suggest only thirty-five or forty thousand." Halifax waved the relevant paper; he seemed to have all the arguments at his fingertips. "Not enough. Not enough to fight. So I believe we must talk. The French have faced the same dilemma and they, too, seem determined that they should talk."

  Halifax didn't mention that this would happen only over the political corpse of their Prime Minister; he refused to be that cheap.

  "The French believe they will get better terms if they talk while they still have an army," he concluded.

  "And I believe we will get the best terms if, while we still have our army, we fight," Churchill began again, an edge to his voice.

  "Even so .. ." Halifax was struggling to retain his emotions. He didn't enjoy such bruising encounters, he was an intellectual, not a street fighter, but he was also a patriot. He had to pursue the point. "Once France falls, the Germans no longer need to pour their resources into their land armies. They can switch to air power. We will never be able to keep up. Which is why we will get the best deal now, but not if we wait. This whole concept of .. ." he hesitated while trying to paraphrase the Churchill argument without becoming too acerbic 'the noble struggle to the bitter end .. . may be the stuff of romantic histories." Attlee winced; it was a shaft too far, dragging in Churchill's writings. "But it is not an acceptable argument in conditions of modern warfare when that end will be nothing short of disastrous."

  It was heavy pounding of Winston's position. Those around the table paused to catch their breath, but Halifax wasn't finished yet.

  "To fight against overwhelming odds, and to lose, would be to throw away our nation's future."

  "And becoming entangled in the Nazi net would be to achieve precisely that!"

  "I was thinking of the lives of our young men," Halifax responded, anguished. "We will not be forgiven if we turn the whole of these islands into a landscape like that of Calais."

  This was not a battle between two proud men although both were. It was a battle of worlds, of Halifax's tradition set against Churchill's radicalism, of one's profound belief in God and the other's equally profound belief in himself, of intellect set against passion, of the power of reason against that of the will, of consensus against commitment, of gradualism against overarching leaps of faith, of trust in the ultimate sanity of man against a view that malevolence and evil lurked in every corner and must be burnt out with fire. They were not enemies, these two men, but they were committed to fighting to the finish of this argument as though they were. They couldn't both win. Perhaps neither would.

  "Let us be clear about where we stand. Are you suggesting, Prime Minister, that you would refuse to talk, no matter what the circumstance, no matter how reasonable the terms on offer?"

  Well, that was the nub of it. They could circle around the issue like a cardinal around a nun, but in the end it had to be brought out into the open.

  "Reason?" Churchill demanded sharply. He had to make it a matter of passion now; logic and moderation would never get him through, for Halifax was the master of both. Churchill had to shift the battle onto a ground that he dominated. "Since when did reason have any place on the table of Adolf Hitler? If we could talk in reason and reach an understanding, even at the cost of some of our colonies yes, Gibraltar, Malta, some of our African possessions I would be willing to consider the proposal, but since when in the entire annals of Nazidom has reason become the driving force? Every time reason has been brought before That Man, he has abused it. Every time reason has been offered, he has used it as a sacrificial lamb. He doesn't pursue a policy based on reason but upon brutality and force of arms."

  I don't necessarily disagree, Prime Minister, but I must press you. Are you saying that there are no circumstances in which you would countenance negotiation?"

  Of course he'd never countenance negotiation, even if, like Reynaud, it might cost him his position and his life. But how could he bring these exhausted and careworn men along with him to that sticking place? Ruth had explained with such persuasive passion that peace was not an option, but Ruth wasn't here.

  "What I propose," Churchill began, running from Halifax's thrust, 'is that before all else we bring back our troops. Bring them back as an undefeated army, as many of them as possible, holding their heads up high and their weapons in their hands. Then we shall have the greatest possible strength for whatever policy we wish to pursue."

  "But, Prime Minister, they cannot bring their weapons back, the Chiefs of Staff have made that abundantly clear. Every tank, every truck, every tanker and every artillery piece the BEF possesses will be lost. All we can save is some of our men. And even if we manage to bring back as many as fifty thousand, which we are told we cannot, that will leave nearly a qu
arter of a million British soldiers as prisoners. I don't feel that's much of a bargaining position."

  "Nevertheless, we must try to bring them back. As many as we can."

  "Of course. Perhaps we should have tried that some days ago instead of persisting in the futile policy of having them push south."

  Oh, it was a cruel card to play. It was like screaming from every rooftop that Churchill's policy of unceasing advance lay in ruins, but the stakes were too high for delicacy.

  "We must give our troops a chance," Churchill began, hoping to seize back the initiative, but Halifax was already there.

  "Prime Minister, I suggest that we give peace that chance. Let us talk."

  Halifax would not be denied. Churchill could not refuse to talk, not at this point. Halifax had the facts, while Churchill had little else but his fears and what others saw as dark fantasies. He would have to give some ground or he would lose the entire field.

  "But can Hitler be trusted?" Churchill began again, casting around for allies. He turned to Neville Chamberlain, his former Prime Minister and rival a man who had wanted Halifax to succeed him. It was a measure of the desperation Churchill felt. "You have had more dealings with That Man than anyone in this room. How far, in the matter of negotiations, do you think that Hitler may be trusted?"

  And now Churchill was calling in all the favours and courtesies he had showered upon this failed Man of Munich in the two weeks since he had succeeded him. The handwritten letters, the phone calls, the whispered confidences, the refusal to put to the sword those who had been close to him, the suggestion that he should remain living at Number Ten. Churchill had been assiduous in trying to reach out across the ocean between them in preparation for a moment such as this.

  The former Prime Minister was a proud man. He didn't particularly care for Churchill, but it was not Churchill who had humiliated him, cast him from office and made sure that the name of Chamberlain would for ever be linked with failure and unforgivable weakness. That was Hitler's doing.