The Day We Went to War

by Terry Charman

  11.00pm, PLACE DE LA CONCORDE, PARIS

  Hubert Earle of the US Embassy is walking home to his apartment in the pitch dark. The blackout is so complete with ‘not a suspicion of the moon’, that Hubert walks right into a fountain and is soaked to the skin.

  11.00pm, CABINET ROOM, 10 DOWNING STREET

  Ministers begin to assemble, some in white tie and tails, others in dinner jackets or ordinary suits. To Minister of Agriculture Reginald Dorman-Smith, Chamberlain is like ‘a stag at bay’, with his ministers angrily demanding action and ‘if necessary to destroy him’. But things calm down rapidly as Chamberlain acknowledges his colleagues’ strength of feeling. Hore-Belisha puts forward his view that the ultimatum should be given in three hours’ time at 2am to expire at 6am, ‘The less time involved the better.’ Chamberlain tells his colleagues of the trouble both he and Lord Halifax have had with the French over delivering a joint ultimatum. And it is now reluctantly acknowledged that the two allies will hand in separate ultimatums tomorrow morning.

  11.00pm, TAKELEY

  The Charlton family discuss the latest radio news of the crisis. Moyra has never felt so angry or worked up before. She believes that ‘Mr Greenwood, in a concise and excellent speech, voiced some of the points which express surely, not only Opposition views, but the views of anyone with any foresight in England. War is ghastly, but what of the future if we let this go? What security, what peace would there be? Damn it all, we still have the guts to face it, even if Mr Chamberlain has not.’ The Charltons decide that there must be some definite reason for the apparent change in the Government’s policy. Moyra records ‘two fascinating suggestions: (a) that Hitler has shot himself. (b) That there is a revolt in Germany.’ She goes to bed, ‘very worried . . . I hope to Heaven we know soon one way or the other.’

  11.00pm, BOLTON

  In the street, a loud voice is heard shouting, ‘T’ war cancelled for twenty-four hours.’

  11.30pm, WEST NORWOOD

  Nellie Carver, a supervisor at the Central Telegraph Office in the City, has had a busy day. Writing up her diary tonight she reflects on how the telegraph service always seems to thrive in crises. ‘Well, I’ve seen a few myself. Coal strikes, General Strike, two Kings’ deaths & funerals, a war, an Abdication & now another war! In each of these we appeared to be the centre of the whirlpool, but this beyond everything yet seen.’ Nellie is unable to sleep because of a violent thunderstorm breaking over the capital. It seems to ‘put the lid on a ghastly situation’. She tries to imagine what the future might hold but her imagination fails and she just writes in her diary, ‘Germany has been given until 11am tomorrow (an ominous hour in our History), but we know what her answer will be – they will not withdraw now.’

  11.55pm, BROADCASTING HOUSE

  Chief BBC Announcer Stuart Hibberd is exhausted. He has been on duty all day, although there has been virtually no news. About to leave, Hibberd reflects that today has been ‘A glorious summer day. Why is it,’ he asks himself, ‘that at this, the most lovely time of the year, men should start thinking about killing their own kind?’

  12.00 midnight, PUTNEY

  ‘As I write there is raging outside a terrific storm, almost continuous lightning and thunder. Nature is providing the finishing touches to these poignant, horrible days. The waiting, listening to news bulletins every hour, the instructions for complete blackout at night, general mobilisation yesterday – khaki-clad boys everywhere – the speeded up evacuation of three million children and invalids from the cities, all these have come to us – a supposed civilised people! Warsaw has been bombed, German tanks and aeroplanes have been shot down and war is once more striding across our world.

  ‘This storm makes one feel that perhaps God is wishful of reminding us that our little wars are as nothing compared with his awful power, but it is too late now, we are too deeply immersed in it. The blackness in the streets is so strange, one feels one must be quiet and secret all the time and walk upon one’s toes. What a state to come to – darkness and fear – a vast organised army of people wondering if all the fighting, first aid, ARP and other services for which they have trained, rather amusedly in most cases, for the past months, will be used in the worst manner they have conceived . . . Here’s the storm again tearing its way across the sky above us – I wish it would stop and we could have some sleep, as we should be able to do, without fear of raids for tonight at any rate!’ (Vivienne Hall)

  CHAPTER 4

  Sunday,

  3 September 1939

  Introduction: resumé of 2 September

  For twenty-four hours Poland had been under attack. But there was still no positive news of Britain and France coming to her aid. Huddersfield housewife Marjorie Gothard wrote in her diary, ‘the people of Britain wake up to hear that no reply to the British ultimatum has come from Hitler’. People were perplexed at the lack of action on Britain’s part. There was a genuine concern that the Government was still trying to appease Hitler and wriggle out of its obligations to Poland. A Mass Observation diarist, a woman of twenty-four, ‘woke up feeling flattened and weak. News in evening bewildering. What is the reason for delaying the decision? Afraid of letting down Poland.’ In Bolton, a woman told Mass Observation, ‘No one would stand another Munich.’ In her diary, Helena Mott, a persistent critic of Chamberlain and appeasement, wrote with increasing frustration: ‘WHY HAVE WE NOT STARTED?!!’

  In France too, there was uneasy feeling that the Poles were going to be abandoned, just as the Czechs had been the year before. Despite Daladier’s brave words in the Chamber, there were many deputies who believed that ‘Bolshevism is our first enemy. Let us not forget it,’ and that the Nazis posed no threat to France. After all, said one deputy, ‘Hitler declared that he will not claim Alsace Lorraine!’ The ordinary people displayed more resolution, but nothing like the enthusiasm that had been seen in 1914. Captain Daniel Barlone noted of his men that, if ordered, ‘Of course they will go, and return home to peace and quietness after handing Hitler a good drubbing. The men’s great hope is that Hitler will be assassinated.’ In Paris, reservists were still arriving at the Gare de l’Est and other stations. Writer Jean Malaquais, a naturalised Polish Jew, described the scene: ‘You know how stations are on general mobilisation days: sniffles, tears, promises that a stray bullet can break.’

  On the morning of 2 September, Berlin’s Stettiner Bahnhof was full of small children, wearing blue tags, ready to be evacuated to the countryside. William Shirer noted that in general Berliners ‘seemed to be a little more cheery’ as no Polish bombers had got through to the capital, which had ‘a fairly normal aspect today’. Berliners appeared to have quickly ‘settled down to a dazed war routine’. All German papers reported the initial successes in Poland, and the High Command confirmed that the advance was going according to schedule. ‘The people were cheered. They did not expect that England and France would enter the conflict,’ one of Shirer’s colleagues reported. At the British and French embassies, the diplomats’ bags were packed ready for departure, but their American colleague William Russell still ‘wondered fearfully if they would break their word again’.

  As the British and French continued to vacillate, Poland was not only bearing the full brunt of Germany’s military machine but also the consequences of Nazi racial propaganda. Corporal Willi Krey wrote in his war diary: ‘The houses in these Polish villages are crammed with filth . . . the folk who stand outside and gape at us appear to be totally uncivilised: they all look dirty and bedraggled, the women as well as the men. These so-called representatives of civilisation seem to me to be competing as to who can be the dirtiest.’

  Later the same day, 2 September, his unit came under fire from a house. They stormed it and found, as Krey wrote, ‘Two Poles lay in their blood, one dead, the other wounded in the arm and stomach . . . Our German doctors refused to treat the wounded Pole. We placed him on pile of straw . . . and left him to rot. He took seven hours to die.’

  12.00 midnight, HAR
WICH–LIVERPOOL STREET BOAT TRAIN

  Virginia Cowles and her friend Jane are only just back from the Continent. Before boarding the train they ask a docker whether war has been declared. ‘Not yet,’ comes the reply, ‘But I hope it won’t be long now. This waiting around is making us all nervous.’ The two young Americans now hear the sound of far-away explosions. They lean out the train window and see ‘the sky lighting up with sharp spasmodic flashes – obviously bursts from anti-aircraft fire,’ thinks Virginia. She and Jane are still hanging out of the window when they reach the outskirts of London. Suddenly, they feel torrential rain coming down. And only now does it dawn on them that the ‘explosions’ they heard, and ‘anti-aircraft fire’ they saw, were just a thunderstorm.

  12.00 midnight, HAMPSTEAD, LONDON

  A violent and frightening thunderstorm breaks over the capital. Verily Anderson, a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry [FANY], is shivering in her bed. But she manages to ask her friends jokingly, ‘Perhaps it could be Hitler’s secret weapon?’

  12.00 midnight, SAVAGE CLUB, LONDON

  Britain’s leading theatre critic James Agate watches the storm from the Club’s steps. ‘One moment there is complete darkness: the next a sheet of vivid green showing Westminster cut out in cardboard like the scenery in a toy theatre.’ The lightning flashes last so long that Agate can count the surrounding buildings.

  12.00 midnight, 10 DOWNING STREET

  Alec Douglas-Home, Chamberlain’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, and Tory MP Henry ‘Chips’ Channon are standing on the steps of Number 10 when the heavens open and rain deluges down. To both men simultaneously comes the thought that this is the gods weeping for the folly of man.

  12.00 midnight, SCOTT’S RESTAURANT, PICCADILLY

  Daily Express Editor Arthur Christiansen has been to see Arsenal play this afternoon. Now, coming out of the restaurant, he sees the lightning bringing daylight to the blacked-out streets. The thunder, Christiansen thinks, sounds like ‘the noise of a million guns, as though God Himself were rumbling in rage at human folly’.

  12.00 midnight, WATCHET, SOMERSET

  Regular soldier Second Lieutenant Peter Parton of the Royal Artillery is now back in camp. He’s just been to the local cinema to see a late showing of Wuthering Heights, starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. The film was only halfway through when a notice was flashed on the screen: ‘ALL OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS RETURN TO YOUR BARRACKS IMMEDATELY.’ Silently, the cinema rapidly emptied. Parton has spent most of the last few weeks training men of the Territorial Army’s anti-aircraft regiments. His own unit has now been brought up to full strength and they are all awaiting the inevitable. The cinema notice seems to indicate that things are coming to a head. Parton knows that his unit will be among the first to go out to France, ‘when the balloon goes up’.

  12.00am (1.00am), WARSAW CENTRAL STATION

  The first hospital trains arrived about an hour ago in the Polish capital. One eyewitness sees ‘the wounded men, looking very long and flat, [they] lay on stretchers roughly covered with blankets. Horribly wounded. The first fruits of the Great Mechanised War.’ Civilian volunteers and boy scouts have come to the station to help out the overstretched Polish Army medical personnel and Red Cross. They go up and down the platforms, offering the wounded men cigarettes, snacks and hot soup. The men on the stretchers have heard no real news for the past two days. They ask the helpers what is happening in the outside world. Their most urgent enquiry is to find out if Britain and France are honouring their pledges. They all want to know if fighting has started on the Western Front.

  12.00am (1.00am), FOREIGN MINISTER’S RESIDENCE, WARSAW

  As the hospital trains are being unloaded, France’s ambassador Leon Noël is having an awkward conversation with Foreign Minister Jozef Beck and his wife Jadwiga. Poland has now been under attack since Friday morning, and still France has made no move to assist its ally. Noël tries to allay Beck’s suspicion that France is attempting to wriggle out of her obligations. But the ambassador himself is torn by conflicting emotions. On one hand, he hopes that France will stand by Poland and come to her aid. On the other, he remembers that in the last war France lost over 1,300,000 men and that she cannot bear to stand such a catastrophic loss again this time. Noël knows too that even at this late hour Georges Bonnet, his foreign minister, is attempting to find a way of France getting out of honouring her word.

  1.30am, CABINET ROOM, 10 DOWNING STREET

  Neville Chamberlain’s cabinet have been in session for the past two hours. The meeting is a fraught one and nerves are getting frayed. The French are insisting on further delay in presenting the Germans with an ultimatum to withdraw their troops from Poland. But Britain’s service chiefs oppose any further delay. War minister Leslie Hore-Belisha wants the ultimatum to expire at 6am, which is in less than five hours’ time. Chamberlain replies that this is impractical. Eventually agreement is reached. Lord Halifax is to instruct Sir Nevile Henderson in Berlin to present the Germans with the British ultimatum, which will expire at 11am this morning. The ministers now disperse into Downing Street where they are met by blinding rain. In the mêlée, Government Chief Whip David Margesson tells ‘Chips’ Channon, ‘It must be War, “Chips”, old boy. There’s no other way out.’

  1.30am, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  A cluster of Foreign Office officials and Dr Hugh Dalton, Labour’s spokesman on foreign affairs, are watching the activity in Downing Street as the rain pelts down. Dalton sees that the cabinet meeting is breaking up and intends to buttonhole Lord Halifax to find out what the situation now is regarding a declaration of war. As Dalton makes to leave, Ivone Kirkpatrick, who has served in the Berlin embassy under Henderson, tells him, ‘If we rat on the Poles now, we are absolutely sunk, whatever the French do. We shall have no chance against Hitler. But if we go ahead, we shall have two chances. First, we may shame the French into coming in, even though they would not have moved unless we had; second, even if the French stay out, we shall have the opinion of the world behind us, and we at least have the Poles on our side with a chance that the United States and others will come in before we are beaten.’

  Dalton is a fervent anti-appeaser who has many friends in Poland. He agrees with Kirkpatrick’s prognosis. As he goes down the Foreign Office’s wide central staircase, Dalton bumps into Sir William Malkin, the FO’s chief legal adviser. Sir William tells Dalton that he’s only just come from 10 Downing Street. The Labour politician asks him, ‘How are things going?’ and Sir William replies, ‘I have got the declaration in the bag now. It’s settled now.’ Slightly relieved, Dalton leaves to accost the Foreign Secretary.

  1.40am, 10 DOWNING STREET

  Dalton approaches Halifax and asks him what the British position is now and what the French are intending to do. The abrasive Dalton sternly tells Halifax, ‘I warn you that if the House of Commons meets again without our pledge to Poland having been fulfilled, there will be such an explosion as you in the House of Lords may not be able to imagine. It may well blow up the Government altogether.’ Halifax is put out by Dalton’s hectoring tone. But he assures the Labour politician ‘that we shall be at war in ten hours’. The delay has been caused by the French wanting more time to get their mobilisation completed, he tells Dalton. ‘We may have to go in a few hours before the French,’ Halifax continues, ‘but they will follow all right now.’ The two men part. Dalton is now much relieved.

  2.00am, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  Now the decision has been taken, there is a general feeling of relief and a lightening of tension. Lord Halifax calls for beer. And bottles are brought to the Foreign Secretary’s office by one of the resident clerks, who only looks half awake. Jokes are cracked. Kirkpatrick tells Halifax that news has just come in that Dr Goebbels has forbidden listening to foreign broadcasts. The Foreign Secretary quips, ‘He ought to pay me to listen to his.’

  2.00am, POLISH EMBASSY, LONDON

  Mentally and physically exhausted ambassador Count
Edward Raczynski receives a telephone call from Hugh Dalton. Dalton tells the ambassador, ‘Today both we and France shall be on your side. I hope this news will help you to get a little sleep tonight.’ Raczynski replies that he is indeed grateful. ‘Yes,’ he tells the Labour politician, ‘it’s true, it makes me feel just a little less unhappy.’ The ambassador then tells Dalton of the speeches made yesterday in the Polish parliament: ‘They were all brave speeches, but one thing was missing. None of the speakers felt able to make any reference to our friends.’

  3.00am, FOREIGN OFFICE, WHITEHALL

  In anticipation of Britain and France going to war later today, officials have already drawn up a joint Anglo-French declaration on their proposed conduct of that war. It begins, ‘The Governments of the United Kingdom and France solemnly and publicly affirm their intention, should a war be forced upon them, to conduct hostilities with a firm desire to spare the civilian population and preserve in every way possible those monuments of human achievement which are treasured in all civilized countries.’

  3.00am (4.00am), BRITISH EMBASSY, BERLIN

  Sir Nevile Henderson receives instructions that he is to seek an interview with Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to present the British ultimatum at 9am. The text of it is being prepared now. It will be sent to Henderson within the hour. The embassy now tries to get through to the Foreign Ministry to arrange the ambassador’s interview with von Ribbentrop. The obtuse Foreign Minister is with interpreter Dr Paul Schmidt when he receives Henderson’s request. Von Ribbentrop correctly suspects that the ambassador’s communication ‘could contain nothing agreeable’. He turns to Schmidt and says, ‘Really, you could receive the Ambassador in my place. Just ask the English whether that will suit them, and say the Foreign Minister is not available at 9am.’ Schmidt gets back to the embassy and it is agreed that Henderson will see him in five hours’ time.