Churchill's Hour

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘And I take the point,’ Churchill said, a little grudgingly. ‘It would perhaps be best to avoid a discussion of his motives, be they humanitarian or otherwise. We shall instead concentrate on his plea for peace.’

  But Beaverbrook was shaking his head.

  ‘That also troubles you, Max?’

  ‘Not me. But I think it may trouble many others. You know what it’s like out there, on the streets—or what’s left of them. You start telling them that there’s some sort of peace deal on offer and many of them won’t stop to ask questions, they’ll simply grab hold of it and begin their street parties. Sure, they’ve been offered peace with honour before and it didn’t work out last time either, but when you’ve just lost your home, your neighbourhood, your hope, it’s exactly the kind of tune they might dance to.’

  Churchill looked around the room. He could see in their faces that they thought Max was right. And now that Churchill himself had been given a chance to pause and reflect, he, too, thought Max was right. But he did so resent having to acknowledge the fact in public.

  ‘I’ve always made it clear that any so-called peace which leaves Hitler dominant in Europe would not be worthy of the name.’

  ‘And I agree,’ Beaverbrook added, trying to be helpful.

  ‘It seems, therefore, that the most important point to emphasize in this extraordinary matter is the light that it throws upon the divided leadership in Berlin.’ Churchill was trying to sum up, to move on, but…

  ‘You still have problems, Max?’

  ‘If Hess’s arrival says anything to the outside world—well, it may be about splits in Berlin, sure. But it also talks about splits right here in Britain.’

  A blue haze of silence hung across the room.

  ‘He didn’t come here to talk to you, Winston—not to me, either,’ Beaverbrook continued, his voice softer. ‘Looks like he wanted to do a deal with others. Those who think the war’s not going too well. You know the whispering that’s going on. You remember the debate we had in the House the other day.’

  The silence continued.

  ‘From what I gather, Hess still loves his Fuehrer, thinks Germany is going to win. He’s come as a salesman, not to surrender.’

  Menzies was nodding his head gently.

  ‘We can’t afford to make a public spectacle of Hess,’ Beaverbrook said, looking directly at the Prime Minister. ‘You said we had to figure out whose arse Hess had come to kick. Well, I guess it’s ours.’

  It had seemed like the greatest propaganda coup of all time, but suddenly no one was so sure.

  ‘What, then, are you suggesting we say?’

  They were still arguing about that when news of the German communiqué came in. Berlin had beaten them to it. According to German radio, Hess had been under suspicion for some time. He had disobeyed orders, stolen a plane. Was ill, had a mental disorder, had been suffering from hallucinations for years.

  For Hitler, it seemed, the matter was quite simple.

  Hess was raving mad.

  The following morning Churchill went to the spot he loved most on the earth.

  It was gone.

  Where his debating chamber had stood, there was nothing but twisted girders and empty spaces. This had been his shrine of liberty, his fortress, his Parliament, but not a trace remained. The walls were blackened and scarred, the ashes that lay beneath his feet were still warm. Churchill stood amidst the rubble and closed his eyes, wanting to hide these sights from view, and to remember. A year ago he had stood in this place and promised the people victory, and they had given him their trust. Yet there was no victory. He had found nothing but disaster.

  The skies that morning were blue and cold, more like February than spring, with the barrage balloons pointing north into an Arctic wind, their tail fins twisting behind them, buffeting through the smoke like salmon through the current. On the opposite bank of the river St Thomas’ Hospital was still ablaze, and there were fires all the way from Lambeth Palace to St Paul’s.

  The girders that had once supported the roof of this beloved place now lay around him like some abandoned children’s toy. The tower of Big Ben stood scarred and drenched in soot. Oh, in many ways the Parliament was a ridiculous institution, inefficient, impractical, built on marshlands of confusion, but it was this little place that represented the crucial difference between them and the way things were in Germany. The people of these islands knew about compromise, about the moments when plans were washed away and there was nothing left but to bugger on and muddle through, while the Germans made a religion of efficiency and authority. They couldn’t tolerate disappointment, couldn’t bend with a changing wind. That, in the end, would bring them low.

  But when would that be? He no longer knew. What he did know was that at their present rate of destructiveness the Germans would sink four and a half million tons of shipping over the next year—and the Americans and British could just about replace those losses with new-built ships. The mathematics were simple, their conclusion irresistible. In a year’s time the war would still be raging and no nearer its end. Yet, as he looked around the blackened ruins, he knew that within that terrible year London would be dead. It would all have been for nothing. Victory was slipping through his fingers.

  That was why Hess had come. That was why he thought there were those who were ready to talk peace. The Nazis thought that Britain had had enough, and would do a deal. Hess wasn’t a rat deserting a sinking ship but a cat that had come a-hunting, and there were many who might yet fall prey.

  Churchill stood, a lonely silhouette amidst the destruction, his head bowed, like a crusader returned home to find nothing but damnation. Above his head, Big Ben chimed the hour, the sound echoing in the emptiness around him with exceptional force. He raised his eyes. The smoke was gradually beginning to thin and shafts of sunlight were burning their way through the gloom.

  He gazed around the bare and broken walls, almost as if he expected to find the enemy lurking there, then raised his walking cane and pointed violently towards Big Ben. ‘You see that?’ he shouted. ‘The blessed clock still works. It still works!’ He gave a cry of hope. ‘So you, Herr Hess, can carry on spouting like a wounded whale about the benefits of your German peace. But Mr Churchill is going to stick to the policy he knows best. KBO!’ he bellowed. ‘KBO!’

  Then, more softly: ‘After all, he doesn’t have much bloody choice.’

  HMS Hood. To utter the name was to summon up two centuries of supremacy that the British had enjoyed upon the seas. She was the most famous battleship in the world, a 42,100-ton killing machine, and ever since the day she had been launched her exceptionally sleek lines had made her an object of both beauty and awe.

  She had been named after Admiral Sir Samuel Hood. The Hoods were an outstanding naval family that spawned many princes of the sea, and Sam was one of its best. He had commanded Nelson and was also his close friend, although unlike Nelson, he died in bed at a great age.

  Death was never far from the vessel named after him. On the very day her keel had been laid at the height of World War I, three British battle cruisers blew up under German fire at the Battle of Jutland. It was one of the worst days in British naval history. For some, it was the sort of injustice that the Hood was intended to redeem, yet for others in the superstitious community of seamen, it seemed more like an omen.

  For two decades she had been the largest warship in the world. She had been the British flagship at the battle of Mers-el-Kébir—not that it was much of a battle. It had been less than a year ago, and had been fought between the British and the French. Ten days beforehand the French had been allies, but they had capitulated to the Germans and Churchill was desperate to ensure that the fleet didn’t end up in Hitler’s hands. So he had taken the only step that could guarantee it. He ordered the fleet to be sunk while it lay at anchor. More than 1,250 French sailors were killed, mostly beneath the guns of the Hood. Drowned like rats. One British officer and a rating had been slightly injured.

&n
bsp; Churchill had wept when he had announced the events to the House of Commons. It was as nothing to the weeping around many hearths in France.

  Churchill had reason for his concern. War is a game of fluctuating tides, and seven weeks after the French fleet had been snatched from the grasp of the Germans, the Kriegsmarine brought into service the latest of their own battleships. She was named Bismarck. She was almost as big and just as fast as the Hood and carried the same number of huge fifteen-inch guns, but there was one crucial difference. Hood had already been the mistress of the seas for a generation. It was too long.

  A few days after Churchill had stumbled through the ruins of his beloved Parliament building, he began to receive reports that the Germans were increasing their aerial reconnaissance around the Denmark Strait that ran between Greenland and Iceland. They were checking the ice pack. It was a signal; it seemed likely that some of their ships were preparing to break out from their home ports and into the Atlantic.

  Then the Bismarck was spotted speeding up the coast of Norway alongside a heavy cruiser, the Prinz Eugen. From here they could launch themselves into the Arctic Ocean and loop around Iceland through the Denmark Strait. Once past this point they would be in amongst the precious convoys. At this time of year the ice pack kept the Strait navigable for only thirty to forty miles of its width; it was the narrow gateway that led to the endless Atlantic further south. If the Bismarck were to be stopped, it must be here—and she must be stopped, for the convoys were all that was keeping Britain from the grip of starvation. So the Admiralty in Whitehall responded with the best it had. It ordered the Hood to the waters off Iceland, along with the very latest battleship in the British fleet, the Prince of Wales.

  The Royal Navy threw ships into the Strait. They took with them the latest radar equipment and aerial patrols, but it wasn’t until a frozen lookout armed with nothing more than a pair of old-fashioned binoculars had shouted the alarm that the British knew where the Bismarck was. She was only seven miles away. It was the evening of 23 May.

  All hands in the British task force were ordered to prepare for battle. They changed into life jackets, flash gear, gas masks—and clean underwear, to help ward off infection in case they were wounded. They also clambered into cold-weather gear. It was bitterly cold. Anyone ending up in the waters off Greenland at that time of year had only minutes to live.

  Yet even as the Hood and the Prince of Wales prepared to give battle, the Bismarck slipped away, losing herself in the drifting banks of snow and encroaching darkness. She didn’t want to fight—not here, at least. Her mission was to take on convoys of fat, sluggish merchantmen, not capital ships, so she ran and hid. It wasn’t until the early hours of the following morning that the British found her again. When they did, they immediately opened fire.

  They had been firing on the German ship for two minutes before the captain of the Bismarck reluctantly gave the order to use her own guns. He would much prefer to have run, but he couldn’t afford to have his ship shot out from underneath him, not on her first mission. So, although he had hadn’t been hit, he came head to head with the greatest ship on the ocean. It was shortly before six in the morning.

  Whether it was luck or skill would be left to the historians, but with one of her first shots the Bismarck hit the Hood near the base of her main mast. It wasn’t a fatal blow—an ammunition locker caught fire, but the fire gradually died down, the moment passed. Yet all those on board knew what it meant. Not a single British shell had yet found its target, while the Germans already had their range.

  Almost immediately, the Hood was struck once again. The consequences this time were extraordinary.

  Barely a second or two after she was hit, a huge geyser of fire erupted from her deck, blasting into the cold Arctic air. It was so bright that it temporarily blinded some of those watching from other ships. The aft magazines had blown up. The explosion ripped the heart out of the great warship. The Hood came to a complete stop, smothered in yellow cordite smoke, and straight away began to list. Already the bow was up, rearing out of the water as though desperate to escape, like the involuntary kicking of an executed man. No order was given to abandon ship; there was neither time nor any point. The stern sank first, vertically, then the bow, the forward guns firing one final salvo even as they pointed towards the sky. It was if they were trying to batter down the doors of Heaven.

  And she was gone.

  The Hood was the most famous ship afloat. It took her less than three minutes to sink. She left behind nothing but a mire of floating wreckage and an oil slick four inches deep.

  She had a crew of 1,418 men. Only three survived.

  It took only minutes for the screams of dying men to reach as far as Chequers that morning. Churchill was working in bed when he heard the terrible news. He did not take it well.

  He ran from his room, wearing nothing but his pyjamas, and onto the gallery behind the Great Hall. ‘Stop that infernal racket!’ he shouted to those down below.

  ‘Why, it’s only a bit of Beethoven,’ Vic Oliver replied nonchalantly from the keyboard of the piano.

  ‘It’s the Funeral March!’

  ‘No way. That’s entirely different. Like this.’ And the son-in-law struck more sombre chords.

  ‘No more! I know the bloody Funeral March. And I won’t have it in this house!’

  He was in one of those moods that brooked no argument, but the Great Hall was crowded and Oliver saw no reason why he should tolerate being abused like a backward child.

  ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘Even a dog that’s been dead for a week could hear the difference. Listen, everyone.’ He turned to embroil all the guests and started up again.

  ‘You mock the dead and I will not have it!’

  Oliver banged the lid of the piano down to cover the keys. ‘I was not mocking the dead. I resent that, Winston. I was maybe mocking you just a little. Not the same thing, in my book at least.’

  ‘Not in this house, at least, sir.’

  ‘Which reminds me. Time to get back to London and entertain the troops. Thanks for your hospitality, Winston, but I really gotta go.’

  Oliver worked on a personal creed that he should always be the one to walk out first—on a dying show, on a decaying marriage and, if necessary, on Winston. He was growing more than a little tired of the histrionics of the Churchill family, and never a day went by without him being reminded that they, too, were growing more than a little tired of him. It was time to leave.

  Churchill watched him go, his fists balled in fury and eyes swollen with unrestrained temper. He knew he had made a fool of himself but didn’t know how to apologize to his other guests. Sawyers came to his rescue.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you all, ladies and gentlemen, that His Majesty’s ship the Hood has been sunk.’

  The gasps of alarm and sorrow that erupted gave Churchill his cover. He retreated to his room.

  As discussion of the latest disaster began to ripple around the Great Hall, Winant moved to the fireplace where Sarah was languishing elegantly and a little tragically. He couldn’t fail to notice that, during the entire iniquitous attack by her father upon her husband, she had done nothing to intervene.

  ‘Sorry,’ Winant said, offering her a cigarette. ‘Anything I can do to help?’

  ‘Not any more,’ she sighed. When she lifted her head to accept a light from the tall, gangling figure of Winant, he could see there were tears around her eyes. ‘That poor ship. Those poor men,’ she whispered. ‘Makes our troubles seem almost indecent.’

  ‘Come on. I’m taking you for a walk in the garden. Let’s get away from all this.’

  She smiled forlornly, and took his arm. It was a tiny gesture that somehow, for him, meant so much, and he had to struggle not to be childishly jealous when, minutes later as they arrived at the mellow brick gateway to the Rose Garden, he found Harriman and Pamela had beaten them to it. So they went elsewhere, not talking much, just walking slowly, holding on to each other, content in each othe
r’s company.

  He brought Sarah back in time for lunch. He was soon to wish—desperately—that he hadn’t, for when her father reappeared, he was dragging his Black Dog behind him. Winant later thought that he seemed a little like Lear, lashing out almost blindly, incapable of restraint. It was so unlike him—not that the old man should have a temper, but that he should have no control of it.

  Churchill remained sullen throughout the Brown Windsor soup, head down, while others struggled to maintain a conversation without him. Then, over the mutton, the head lifted as though he had received an electric shock.

  ‘Nearly two thousand brave British seamen died in an instant this morning,’ he said.

  There was a momentary silence before Winant took it upon himself to respond. ‘My country offers you its heartfelt condolences.’

  ‘Don’t want your condolences, Gil,’ he responded petulantly. ‘I want your country at our side waging bloody war.’

  Winant bit his lip in frustration. ‘You know, Winston, that Congress—’

  ‘How is it that the Congress doesn’t hang its head in shame?’

  ‘Prime Minister,’ Winant said, slipping into official mode to defend himself against the insult, ‘only recently you suggested that the aid my country is providing amounts to one of the most unselfish acts in the whole of Christendom. You know we are behind you.’

  ‘You glower from the other side of the globe as if a sour look or a harsh word will be sufficient to deter men like Hitler. They will not. My country is dying in order to preserve liberty and civilization, not just for ourselves but for your people, too. Yet you leave us to die alone. You call that Christian? Then pray forgive me if I seem to have read a different Bible.’

  ‘We’ve been through this before. The President has to work within his constitutional responsibilities and the limits of public opinion,’ Winant replied softly, hoping the other man might yet grow calm. He did not.

  ‘Ah! I hear so much about following in the footsteps of public opinion, yet so little about leadership. And I tell you, there is no leadership in permitting an entire world to be enslaved for fear of taking a few casualties.’