Jennie was shocked and depressed at the lecture; she was too old to change her ways and she could not see how to begin to retract and change her entire lifestyle. After a while, though, she realised that the national news was so serious that ‘this is not the moment to lament about one’s personal affairs’.9
Jack was one of the first men to get into uniform, leaving immediately to join his voluntary Yeomanry unit at Banbury. Goonie was relieved that at least he had something to occupy his mind rather than sitting at Cromer worrying about finances over which he had no control. ‘I wish he had not had to go, but I am proud that he is serving his country!’ she wrote.10
On 2 August the Cabinet learned that Germany had declared war on Russia. ‘I cannot think that the rupture with France can be long delayed,’ Winston told Lord Hugh Cecil. ‘And the course of events is likely to be very serious as regards Belgium.’* Clementine, who had stayed at Cromer with Goonie and the children, was still encouraging and urging diplomacy, but her hopes were dashed when she received the following note:
2 August 1914 1 a.m. Admiralty
Cat – dear – It is all up. Germany has quenched the last hopes of peace by declaring war on Russia, & the declaration against France is momentarily expected. I profoundly understand your views – But the world is gone mad – & we must look after ourselves – & our friends. It wd be good of you to come for a day or two next week. I miss you so much – Your influence when guiding & not contrary is of the utmost use to me.
Sweet Kat – my tender love. Your devoted W11
Two days later, at 11 a.m. on 4 August, Winston sent out the general signal to the Navy: COMMENCE HOSTILITIES AGAINST GERMANY.
At first, no one imagined that Britain would be confronted with an all-out world war that would last for the next four years. The Triple Entente alliance entered into with France and Russia in 1907 against the Central Powers of the German and Austrian empires assumed that the brunt of the fighting on land would be carried out by the Russian and French armies, which – with strategic assistance from the British Army in the form of a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) – would be able to stop the German Army from annexing the rest of Europe as Napoleon’s armies had done. The Kaiser had spent the seven years before the war feverishly building warships in an attempt to enable the Germans to take on the British Navy.* So Britain’s main role was to be the containment of the German Navy, and in particular her much vaunted new dreadnought battleships which were thought to be superior to those of the British Navy.
For two days Winston had been impatient to attack the German warship the Goeben,† in the Mediterranean, on the grounds that she was faster than anything in the French Navy and was therefore a danger to French troopships. But the Cabinet had held him to the strict terms of a declaration of war, and to his utter frustration the Goeben, together with the Breslau, slipped away to Constantinople beyond the reach of British ships. The Germans then announced that they had sold the two ships to Turkey (who at that point had not taken sides). Winston’s bitterness over this lost opportunity was only assuaged by the success of the Navy in transporting the entire British Army across the Channel to Calais, Boulogne and Le Havre without the loss of a single man. Three days later the British Expeditionary Force, the best-equipped and well-trained force that had ever left Britain, was successfully attacking the German Army at Mons, where they were ordered to defend the canal even though outnumbered by six German fighting divisions to four British. Only when the French Army retreated did the British begin a general retreat, which over the next two weeks took them back as far as the outskirts of Paris.
The Secretary of State for War was Winston’s former chief, sixty-nine-year-old Lord Kitchener.* Their last meeting was in September 1898 at Omdurman, when Winston had been a subaltern reporting the advance of the dervish forces to his commanding officer. Their experience of each other was unfortunate: Winston had little patience with the Sirdar, and in his book The River War had openly criticised Kitchener for not stopping the killing of wounded members of the opposing army and for allowing the destruction of the Mahdi’s tomb at Khartoum. Likewise, Kitchener had disapproved of Churchill because he suspected that he did not intend to make the Army his career and was therefore usurping opportunities that rightly belonged to men who did. Now these two men, the only Cabinet members with any experience of actually fighting a war, were forced to work in tandem. It was an uneasy truce, but at least Kitchener recognised that Winston’s interest and experience in aviation were greater than his own. The Army’s Aviation Division was fully occupied in France with the planned counter-attack on the Marne, so on 3 September Kitchener invited Winston to take over responsibility for the aerial defence of Britain. Winston eagerly accepted this, for he was convinced there would be attacks on London from the air by Zeppelins. His days were already long – from 9 a.m. to 2 a.m., broken only by an afternoon power nap. He would have been perfectly justified in believing that this moment in history was the destiny he had so long believed was his and was the reason why he had been saved in so many dangerous circumstances.
The Churchills, like families all over Britain, were directly and immediately affected by the war. Only eight weeks after the outbreak of hostilities the first family casualty was reported. Jennie’s sister Leonie was staying at her London house when she received news that her second son, twenty-eight-year-old Norman, had been killed in France at Armentières. The family asked Winston to confirm through the War Office that this was correct. Norman had been leading his unit across a railway embankment, carrying in his hand the sword that had been given to him by the Duke of Connaught* (a former lover of Leonie’s), when a sniper positioned in a signal box killed him outright. Leonie was so shocked that for days she hardly took in what had happened. Everyone said to her what is always said to women survivors of war dead – ‘Better to die quickly and cleanly, than of typhoid in a filthy hospital’, and so on – and though there may have been some comfort to be found in these words the fact remained that her beautiful young son was never coming back. Jennie, who was very close to Leonie, believed that her sister never fully recovered from this loss.
Leonie’s elder son Shane had suffered a nervous breakdown some time earlier, and was deemed not fit to fight. Nevertheless, a month after the tragedy he travelled to France determined to locate his brother’s body. He found it buried a mile behind the trenches and within the sound of the guns of both armies. Some planks had been placed over the body so that when they were removed ‘he looked just as he had been’, he reported to Leonie. ‘His clothes were unsoiled and clean.’ He double-checked for a broken tooth that Norman had chipped with a billiard ball fifteen years earlier, then cut a lock of his brother’s hair for Leonie and arranged for his body to be placed in a coffin and buried formally. A modern-day onlooker might conclude that this action of Shane’s was in its way as brave as his dead brother’s had been. The body would not fit in the coffin with the boots on, so they were removed. ‘I did not cry,’ Shane wrote, ‘till I saw that lonely pair of boots on the field for they had the shape and look of so many other pairs of his [that] I had seen outside his room.’12
Jennie herself was depressed. Apart from feeling the loss of her nephew, she had never been alone before; there had always been a man on the scene to whom she could turn. Now that she was sixty she felt the stigma of her divorce, and she could not manage within her budget; many of her oldest friends had died, the world had changed beyond recognition, and the war meant the end of her constant trips to Paris. Moreover, she had put on weight and had stopped colouring her hair which was by now quite grey though always elegantly styled. And she was in debt yet again, despite Jack’s lectures.
Although he had not actually lectured her on her extravagance, a letter from Winston a little later must have concerned her: ‘The world has gone mad – the whole financial system has completely broken down…Be careful with what you have got – Gold will soon be unobtainable.’13 Winston and Jack both led the lives of busy young family
men, and though Jennie appreciated this the fact that she saw comparatively little of them made her feel isolated and lonely.14 The part she had once played in Winston’s political career, which had so thrilled her, had now been taken over by Clementine. But at the outbreak of war she threw herself into fund-raising for the American War Fund, and worked in various ways for the American hospitals in London and Devon. Later she would organise piano concerts and matinées for military charities.
Goonie felt it was rather exciting to be still living on the east coast at Cromer, as it was considered to be a possible danger zone, and she wrote to Jennie that there was a chance that the Germans might fly over and bomb Overstrand.15 Clementine wrote something similar to Winston. When Goonie returned to London on 1 September, she called on Jennie at 72 Brook Street, a house that Jennie had redecorated as a ‘project’, and there she was treated to a seven course dinner – pre-war style – which hardly appeared to reflect a woman trying seriously to ‘live within her means’. Goonie reported each detail to Jack – the exquisite platters of luscious fruits, served after the meal in a sumptuous dining room, the walls of which were decorated with beautiful paintings. Afterwards they had sat in the ‘pickled-oak’ drawing room, well-lit with concealed lighting; both of these features were previously unheard of in England at that time. The house was filled with expensive bibelots, furniture, rugs and flowers, and seemed to Goonie to be very opulent and comfortable. Upstairs, she wrote, there was a silver bedroom, a blue dressing room and a white bathroom. Downstairs, she had noticed several pieces of new furniture such as writing tables, chairs and occasional tables, but she thought that perhaps some of these had been exchanged for her older larger furniture.
More important to Goonie though, was learning from Jennie (who had it from Winston) that the Yeomanry would soon be going to the front line. She wrote that every woman was going to be unhappy in 1914, and she was no exception, but she felt it very cruel that Jack had to be away at a Yeomanry camp at Churn* in Oxfordshire, when she wanted to be with him every moment until he was sent overseas. She was trying to be brave, and clung to the hope that he might be needed in England, and so not have to expose himself to slaughter by the enemy. Winston had told her he might run down to Churn to see Jack that day, but he had refused to take her with him, as he said it was ‘all men’ and she would be in the way. Jennie had generously invited Goonie and the children to come and stay with her during the war, but Goonie declined at this stage, perhaps preferring to be her own mistress. Soon afterwards, Jack was commissioned as a major and transferred into the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars.
For Consuelo the thought of war was terrifying. She had two teenage sons, the elder of whom, Blandford, had recently completed his schooling at Eton and was about to start an officer-training course at Sandhurst. She was still in America staying with Alva and speaking at women’s suffrage meetings when the crisis flared in July, and she hurried back to England where she threw herself into war work. She was a sad figure, living mostly alone in Sunderland House apart from her servants. Winifred Beech* was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a Woodstock clergyman who had come to live in London at Consuelo’s suggestion to study acting. She had rooms close to Consuelo’s home, and as Consuelo liked to keep a friendly eye on her she was a regular visitor at Sunderland House. In her memoirs, written after she had achieved renown as an actress, Winifred recalled Consuelo’s life in the period leading up to the war: ‘Her loneliness…tore my heart. She had everything in the world except the things that matter most. After she had kissed me farewell I hated to hear those little heels of hers clicking away from me across the marble floors into the dim desolation of that great French palace, fragrant with lilies and incense and lovely with antique brocades and priceless porcelain.’16 Yet the dreadful war years would eventually bring Consuelo the happiness that had so far eluded her.
Like most MPs of the right age, at the outbreak of hostilities Ivor and Freddie Guest were quickly into uniform. Ivor was appointed to the staff of the newly formed 10th Irish Division under Lt-General Sir Bryan Mahon at the Currah, and Freddie, who before entering Parliament had been a professional soldier, returned to active service as an aide-de-camp to Field Marshal Sir John French who was commanding the British Expeditionary Force in France. Because of his fluent French, Freddie was quickly put to work performing confidential missions for the French and liaising with political leaders in both countries. He rather enjoyed his war, having led a somewhat subjugated life at home under the domineering personality of his redoubtable wife Amy. A year earlier when Clementine had stayed with Freddie and Amy at their home, Burley-on-the-Hill (renovated after the great fire on the eve of Jack and Goonie’s marriage), she noted: ‘The wind whistled round this great gloomy barrack of a house…Amy is kind, but more Suffragetty, Christian Science & Yankee Doodle than ever. Poor Freddie is a Sheep in Lion’s clothing.’17
Bill Hozier, Clementine’s brother, was in the Navy, in command of a torpedo destroyer. But it was Bill’s twin Nellie, of whom Clementine was especially fond (she was known as ‘the Bud’ or ‘Mlle Beauxyeux’), who was causing her most concern. In late July it was arranged that Nellie would come from Dieppe to join Clementine at Cromer, bringing their mother. But Lady Blanche arrived alone announcing that Nellie had joined a nursing unit as secretary and interpreter and was headed for Belgium. Angry – as much as anything because she was then into the third trimester of her pregnancy and did not feel up to looking after her mother on her own – Clementine had written crossly to Winston that as her sister was not trained ‘She’ll be just one more useless mouth to feed in that poor little country.’ But Clementine was very anxious about her, and with reason. On 20 August Nellie and her little group were in Brussels when it was occupied by the Germans. They were able to get to Mons, but there they were taken captive. The Germans allowed the unit to treat British captives and Belgian casualties for several months, but when Nellie’s group refused to treat German wounded they were repatriated – via Norway, in mid-November, and wearing only the clothes they had worn to travel in August. There was great joy when a half-frozen Nellie arrived without warning at 41 Cromwell Road, Goonie’s London home.
Meanwhile in Winston’s absence Clementine’s baby, a daughter she called Sarah, had been born on 7 October at Admiralty House. When Lloyd George remarked that baby Sarah looked just like her father, Winston famously replied that ‘all babies look like me’. The period of rejoicing was short, for Winston was at the centre of a row over the defence of Antwerp. The Germans saw the port as a main objective, but their sweep through Belgium to take the city was halted by the British Army at the River Marne. Winston was sent to Antwerp to persuade the Belgian King and Queen and the government not to evacuate the city, as they had advised they were about to do. Once there, he became so involved with Antwerp’s plight that he telegraphed Asquith and asked if he could resign from the Admiralty to direct the defence there. His request was denied, and he was relieved of his post at Antwerp on 6 October by Sir Henry Rawlinson. The city capitulated four days later. Winston travelled to London overnight on the 6th and after attending on the King at Buckingham Palace he went straight to Admiralty House, where Clementine proudly introduced him to baby Sarah.
By November 1914, when the Turks entered the war on the side of the Central Powers, Russia was hard-pressed in the Caucasus. The German armies blocked Russia’s land routes to Europe and no easy sea route was available, so when Russia appealed to Britain for help against the Turks it was decided to send a military force to Gallipoli to secure the Dardanelle Straits.* The war chiefs, horrified that the war in Europe, which should have been ‘over by Christmas’, had descended into stalemate in the Flanders trenches, and with growing daily lists of dead, welcomed a plan for a second front that might offer a hint of victory. Jack was one of the first to be sent out there. As Goonie and the family saw him off at Charing Cross in February 1915, they could little have envisaged the disaster that lay ahead. Probably they were relieved th
at he was not going to Flanders.
The original plan to attack Gallipoli and capture the Dardanelle Straits was not Winston’s (though usually associated with him). It had been proposed many months earlier by Vice-Admiral Carden,* and Winston initially ignored the idea, believing that all military efforts should be concentrated in northern Europe: ‘It is not until all the Northern possibilities are exhausted,’ he wrote, ‘that I wd look to the S of Europe as a field for the profitable employment of our expanding mil[ita]ry forces.’18 However, when he looked at the matter again he saw that the Dardanelles were a possible Achilles heel and worth exploiting. From the start of the war the War Cabinet had repeatedly discussed ways to occupy the Gallipoli Peninsula in order to allow a naval penetration of the Turkish-held Straits. But it was accepted that it would take time and organisation before an army could be landed there to open a second front. Winston now conceived a bold strategy to strike hard and fast and force the Straits. Having cruised to Constantinople in 1910 with F.E. Smith, he appreciated the geography of the area, and this helped his formulation of a plan to capture the Straits using naval power alone, with the Army following afterwards for a land assault on Gallipoli. Success there would not only give the Triple Entente powers access to the Black Sea – providing a means of supplying the Russians – but would place Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish Empire, at their mercy. Victory would eliminate Turkey as an ally of the Germans, and would almost certainly bring Greece and Bulgaria into the war against Germany. If successful it could precipitate the end of the war.
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