In one way, the trips to the underground were the most anxious of all for Thompson. Churchill’s humor was, as stated, badly soured by his confinement and he laid about with wrath. “Although he showed no normal sign of nerves the times increased when the Old Man wanted to let off steam,” the detective has said in his reminiscences. “Because I was almost always on the spot I was the scapegoat on many occasions.” After one ferocious tongue-lashing, he complained to General Ismay that he had been bawled out for absolutely nothing. The general’s reply was, “I get it just the same, Thompson. If it gives him relief from constant strain, it is well worth it.”
Eventually, Churchill’s colleagues got together and decided on an expedient, since it was clear he had no intention of ducking bombs. At Chequers, the country residence for England’s Prime Ministers, and at Chartwell — one or another of which he usually visited on week ends — artillery troops and anti-aircraft guns were stationed to fend off low-flying planes. Churchill was delighted. When at Chequers (Chartwell was converted to government offices during the latter part of the war) he made a rite of inspecting his soldiers and their Bofors gun. As a rule he took several guests along, and since these generally included some high-ranking officer, the troops were far from happy. The gun crews had orders that, when a night raid began, Inspector Thompson was to be awakened promptly, so that the business of trying to argue the Prime Minister into the cellar could begin. Churchill countermanded these orders, which had been handed down by the Army Chief of Staff. His program made it clear that he would be awakened only if “my flak” was going into action. The idea was, simply, that he wanted to scamper up onto the parapet and watch the fun.
Eric Ambler, the English author, was a subaltern attached to the gun crew at Chequers; later on he recorded his impression of the duty for the British magazine Strand. He was on hand for one of Churchill’s birthdays and was invited into the house with his battery captain and two other subalterns. They were ushered into a large, darkened room in which there appeared to be a seated audience of some size. The Prime Minister’s favorite entertainment was about to get under way — a film featuring Deanna Durbin. Ambler was shown to a chair on the left of a swaddled figure that he took to be an uncommonly cold-blooded woman, wrapped all around in an eiderdown quilt. When he noticed that, through a tiny aperture resembling the vent in a wigwam, the figure was smoking a cigar, he realized that his neighbor was Churchill. The quilt turned out to be a polychromatic dressing gown of the Premier’s own design. The film was A Hundred Men and a Girl. No sooner had it started than a low rumble, with gestures, issued from the figure in the eiderdown. Alarmed, with visions of a gastric emergency, Ambler leaned forward. As he did so, the cigar came more plainly into view, held in one hand and stabbing at the air like punctuation. It finally dawned upon Ambler that Churchill was rehearsing a speech, but he was enjoying the movie at the same time, for he broke into chuckles at exactly the right spots. “The total effect was curious,” says Ambler. ‘Mumble mumble mumble, demumble mumble demumble — Ha! — demumble mumble? Er, mumble de-mumble mumble mumble — Cor! — mumble mumble de mumble ’ And so on.”
After the movie, Churchill disappeared and came back wearing his siren suit, which was received with restrained enthusiasm. He met all the officers and invited them again for the next week, when he was having another Deanna Durbin film — Bachelor Mother. One of the subalterns said, deferentially, “I think the star of Bachelor Mother is Ginger Rogers, sir.
“Deanna Durbin, I’m sure,” replied Churchill, bristling slightly.
The subaltern held fast. “No, sir. Ginger Rogers.”
Churchill thrust his jaw out in the familiar expression, then said, “Well, we shall see.” But he wasn’t finished. “Exactly how many rounds of anti-tank ammunition does your gun carry?” he asked sharply, and when the subaltern hesitated, he gave the correct answer himself, after which he went on to rattle off every known statistic on the Bofors gun. This done, he looked as if he had solved the question of Bachelor Mother for once and all. The Prime Minister devoted the rest of that evening to wrestling noisily with a small black dog. In the following weeks he was so kindly and genial that the gun crew began to count itself fortunate. “There could have been little interest for him in the presence of so undistinguished a group of junior officers and still less in our conversation,” said Ambler. “We felt a great affection for him.”
Everybody who came into contact with Churchill during the war felt the strong enigmatic stirring of courage that he stimulated. The effect was almost hypnotic. At the time of Dunkirk, not long after he took office, it was principally his urging that saved the Expeditionary Army. When the treacherous King Leopold of Belgium, whose excellent army was protecting the Allied left flank, suddenly and inexplicably surrendered to the Germans, Churchill wired the British commanders, “March to the North Channel ports. Fight anything that gets in the way.” And when the news came from Dunkirk of the quick necessity for evacuation, at 6:30 A.M., May 26, 1940, he sprang out of bed and grabbed for his telephones without putting in his false teeth. He worked throughout the day in this stringhalted condition. What with his natural speech impediment, and the forgotten dentures, Churchill’s voice came through in almost unrecognizable form, but there was no mistaking the rolling phrases and impassioned commands to action. While standing in his nightshirt, he put the Admiralty on a crisis footing, and then, still using the telephones, he turned the nation as a whole into a giant Coast Guard station. Somewhat more than 350,000 British and French soldiers were trapped on the beaches, while the enemy was attacking with every available means, bombing the piers, sowing magnetic mines, bringing up artillery, and rushing forward great numbers of troops in fast lorries. In less than an hour the word had been spread, via radio and the newspapers, that “Winnie needs boats.” Then the oddest flotilla within the memory of man put out from the ports of England. Altogether the episode provided one of the most gallant chapters in British military annals. First, the Navy headed full tilt for the scene with as many as a thousand ships of all sizes and kinds, from barges and mine sweepers to big warships. But these were only the beginning. Up and down the Thames, and elsewhere, men were jumping into private craft, casting off, and pointing toward Dunkirk. There were million-dollar yachts and fishermen’s luggers, racing sailboats and tramps so leaky that only their gunwales were above water. One of the London newspapers carried an item about two moderately drunk night clubbers in evening dress who were stopped while trying to row a dory out of the Thames estuary. “Where the devil do you think you’re headed?” came a hail from a Dunkirk-bound ferryboat. “Why, France, as it were,” replied one of the men. “Throw us a line — we’ll take you aboard,” cried the ferry captain, and the roisterers went on to France in safety. From start to finish, the desperate expedition was marked by typically British high spirits. A member of a cruiser unit told of a near-collision in fog and of its signalman’s challenge: “What ship are you?”
“H.M.S. Myrtle T. Bosworth.”
There was a brief silence, then, “What class?”
“Brighton sight-seer — three rifles and a possible hand grenade.”
Maintaining a dignified but injured silence, the cruiser continued toward Dunkirk.
In Churchill’s words (his report to the House) it was feared that the situation on the French beaches would result in “the greatest military disaster in our long history.” But the incredible rescue carried out by the Navy and civilian ships and boats brought 338,000 men across the stormy Channel to England. While the Prime Minister did not minimize the work of the hasty flotilla, he gave the edge of victory to the Royal Air Force, saying, “This was a great trial of strength between the British and German Air Forces. Can you conceive a greater objective for the Germans in the air than to make evacuation from these beaches impossible, and to sink all these ships which were displayed, almost to the extent of thousands? Could there have been an objective of greater military importance and significance for the whole purp
ose of the war than this? They tried hard, and they were beaten back; they were frustrated in their task. We got the Army away; and they have paid fourfold for any losses which they have inflicted.”
Churchill made no attempt to disguise the rescue as a vie-tory. Instead, he painted England’s position in dark colors. Just before France fell, he acknowledged that the sacrifices of materiel had been “enormous. We have perhaps lost one-third of the men we lost in the opening days of the battle of 21 March, 1918,” he went on, “but we have lost nearly as many guns — nearly 1000 guns — and all our transport, all the armoured vehicles that were with the Army in the North.” Europe was gone, Russia joined the Fascists, and America proclaimed her unshakable neutrality. Churchill called a meeting of his Cabinet, whose members joined in solemn council to hear his dread predictions. They had never found him in better spirits. “Well, gentlemen, we are alone,” he told them. “For myself I find it extremely exhilarating.”
Chapter 25
IN HIS APPOINTMENTS, the Prime Minister of a Coalition Government must be discreetly impartial. During the war Churchill tried not to show his Tory preferences, but he sometimes failed. Bravely swallowing his distaste for everything Socialistic, he named the Socialist A. V. Alexander First Lord of the Admiralty, and he cut across party lines in many other cases. Clement Attlee, who would later unseat him, was Lord Privy Seal, a post of little importance. Sources close to Churchill say that he has always been contemptuous of Attlee and has seldom missed a chance to heckle him. In one meeting shortly after Dunkirk, when the Prime Minister was being advised against converting shallow underground stations to air raid shelters, Attlee suffered an occupational accident of British politicians. Perhaps because they are compelled to sit bolt upright for years in school, Englishmen perch on their lower spines as much as possible thereafter. Even in Parliament, a formal and ritualistic body, those Members on the front benches, to a man, sit slumped far down and with their feet on the large square desk before them. It makes an odd sight for American visitors: the bewigged Speaker on his elevated stand and below him the scuffed boots of England’s greatest names. In the midst of the discussion, Attlee went over backward with a crash. He was badly jarred, in one of the authentic chair-tilting disasters of the political year. Churchill sprang to his feet and cried, “Get up, get up, Lord Privy Seal! This is no time for levity.”
Nearly all of his associates felt the sting of Churchill’s tongue at one point or another in the war. When Sir John Dill was, for a space, in charge of a branch of Intelligence, he submitted to the importunings of reporters and called a monster press conference. This was all unknown to Churchill, who was rabidly opposed to having war leaders gush out plans and projects for publication. Intending only to be cooperative, Dill blithely reviewed British strategy in fine detail at his meeting. Churchill called him onto the carpet and said, “Dill, I’m told that you’re a great general. Now I hear that you’ve addressed 150 newspapermen. They sat all around you like mice asking for crumbs of cheese, and you had to go and give them a whole damned Stilton!” Also in this period a well-known English scientist had made some strides with an “acoustical rocket,” sensitive to sound, and he badgered the Prime Minister and a party to journey to an Oxfordshire farm to see it demonstrated. The season was the dead of winter. The scientist, his wild hair flying in a raw wind, touched off his creation, which rose up a few feet, coughed, emitted a sinister fizzling noise, and then headed pretty rapidly toward Churchill. Displaying a neat burst of speed for a politician past sixty, the latter sprinted for a tree, but as he ran he kept yelling, “Damn the man, damn the man — he can go home in an open car.” When they all returned to London, the scientist trailed along behind in a hard-riding jeep, bounced by the rutty roads and exposed to the elements.
At no time did Churchill’s colleagues doubt who was in command. He showed genius at reducing bombast in high officials and preventing premature swellings in small ones. Attending one meeting of the Cabinet, he found a somewhat pompous member of the War Office Staff holding a pointer and preparing a large-scale map for a lecture. The man had removed his heavily braided cap and set it upside down on the desk before him. Smoking a cigar, Churchill lumbered by the desk, stopped, fished in his pocket, and tossed a penny into the cap before he went on. The general sat down and Churchill then got the meeting under way. At another Cabinet session, a notoriously self-righteous member of the Ministry of Information balked at some stiff assignment, drawing himself up and crying out, “You should understand that my right hand cannot do two things at once!” Churchill’s reply was to thrust his own right thumb into his mouth and set up a vigorous action with all five fingers. “Now have a look at my right hand,” he said, speaking through the barricade. “It’s scratching my teeth and rubbing my nose — both at once!”
Various of Churchill’s physicians have decided that his explosions and buffoonery provided part of the recreation he needed so acutely during the war. Customarily he worked as many as sixteen to eighteen hours a day; without fun the strain would have mounted. By good fortune he has always been able to find pleasure in simple things. With the Royal Scots in the first great struggle he had been happy in his tin tub beneath the apple tree, listening to his batman play unpopular records on a scratchy phonograph. Now in the second great struggle he branched out little farther than this. Foremost on his list of diversions was movies. If ones starring Deanna Durbin were not available, he liked sagas of military and political history. He saw That Hamilton Woman — a story about Nelson — several times, and there is reason to believe that he identified himself with the hero throughout. In a similar way, Churchill drew much of his relaxation from marching. He is, and has always been, fond of marching as a pastime. He does it by himself, usually with music. Persons of his household have come across him many times prancing the length of his living room, wheeling, retracing his steps, sometimes counting the cadence, occasionally carrying a stick over his shoulder. It is to his credit that he is never abashed when caught at this surprising exercise. Personages of renown have walked in unexpectedly and received nothing more explanatory than a companionable gesture to be seated until the parade is over. Churchill’s accompaniments to these maneuvers are easily as bleak as the tunes he favored in his tin tub period. Inspector Thompson, who does not care for inarching but had to do a good deal in order to keep the Premier in view, has listed as the leaders: “Run, Rabbit, Run,” “Poor Old Joe,” “Home, Sweet Home,” and “Keep Right on to the End of the Road.” There were others, worse. Musically, Churchill has never starred. He has an almost African sense of rhythm, but his appreciation of melodic subtleties is limited. He is known as one of the feeblest whistlers in Kent, and his vocal outbursts in the bath have frightened house guests. “As Winston works he begins to hum,” says one of his associates, “and the longer he hums the farther off key he gets. Finally the tune loses its shape altogether and becomes an original. I really think he prefers it that way.”
It was probably Churchill’s capacity for having fun that won England allies in the war. A Premier with the stolid phlegm of Baldwin, or the involuntary frostiness of Chamber-lain, would have had difficulty persuading friends to such a forlorn cause. Churchill’s hearty camaraderie drew influential visitors in to listen partly because they were curious about the man. In a way, he acted as a master salesman, one of the greatest who ever lived, never ceasing in his efforts to sell England to whatever part of the world was receptive. And although his line of goods was thin, he opened up some important new territories. Throughout the war years the British capitol was thronged with foreign potentates of every degree. Claridge’s Hotel, the swankiest in London, was the headquarters of these powerful gentry, and Churchill wooed them with all the force of his roistering genius. Historic celebrants are born, and cannot be developed by the most anxious tutelage. Those persons around whom guests collect, as if to warm their hands, throw off social calories by an accident of nature rather than by design. From his boyhood, Churchill has seemed t
o burn increasingly brighter, like raised theater lights, when people gather round to hear him talk. As a war leader he was able to turn his peculair charm on, while pouring a little whiskey into, an Abyssinian medicine man and make him feel like the key figure of the universe. It is a lofty and useful gift; deprived of it, England could easily have perished.
Churchill’s sessions with Stalin and Roosevelt are distinguished cases in point. Before their now famous rendezvous in Placentia Bay, to plot the Atlantic Charter, Churchill and Roosevelt had met once before, when the latter visited England during the First World War. They had been members of a dinner party at Gray’s Inn. In the course of it, Churchill is said to have remarked of Roosevelt that he had “magnificent presence.” Oddly enough, Churchill later professed to have no recollection of the dinner, and Roosevelt was piqued. A good many of Roosevelt’s actions were aimed to make various groups and individuals like him, and he smarted under any failure, however reasonable, to score an impression. Churchill, on the other hand, is usually oblivious of the good or bad opinion of persons whom he meets; the Atlantic introduction to Roosevelt was an exception.
In London and in Washington, the conference was viewed as top secret, and the journeys of both President and Prime Minister began in elaborate disguise. The word was given out in official England that Churchill was headed “north” to watch a military operation. An Admiralty train, bearing war leaders, that pulled out of Marylebone Station slowed up for a country stop, where a journalist in the party “saw an excited crowd of people laughing, waving and pointing to someone on the other side.” Churchill was standing on the platform, waiting for the train. He had on a nondescript blue serge suit and a yachting cap whose bill was slewed around at an angle, rather in the style of the least fastidious among the Dead End Kids. He was smoking a cigar and appeared to have struck a carnival attitude. Churchill has always reacted favorably to ocean voyages, no matter how solemn their import. H. V. Morton, the English travel writer, who was selected along with novelist Howard Spring to cover the trip, recorded an authoritative report of the Prime Minister’s humor: “He’s rather like a boy who’s been let out of school suddenly. He says it’s the only holiday he’s had since the war.” It was suggested that another man might envision a voyage through waters dominated by German U-boats as anything but festive.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 37