THE BOY FROM THE TANGIER SOUK

by Richard Savin

  ‘Operation Dynamo has been a success and we must now rebuild our forces so that we may resist this tyranny. If France wishes to throw in the towel then so be it, but we are able to fight on and we should fight on. After all, we shall obtain no worse terms if we are defeated than if we treat for peace on dishonourable terms now!’

  Chalfont looked at Halifax but said nothing. He sat like the observer he so clearly was and waited for Halifax to respond. Halifax, despite his training as a diplomat, looked frustrated and irritated, but he kept a cool demeanour. In his view Winston was an adventurer with a checkered history of doubtful decisions and uncertain results. Now, here he was once more bent on sending good men to their deaths for a cause that could not, he believed, be won.

  ‘This is rhetoric,’ he said unsmilingly, ‘and it does you no service that you are intent on the destruction of this entire nation. It speaks poorly of you that you are so unwilling to consider any other course than your own. I do not believe that I can continue to serve in a government that refuses to take the wider view of a negotiated peace.’

  Winston held his silence. He thought for a moment, sensing the fragility of the position. A resignation at this time could be awkward. It could force a vote of confidence and then what? If it were lost there could be hell to pay with another pacifist cabinet and all the unthinkable consequences. He needed to buy time – lie if necessary, but keep them hopeful.

  ‘Gentlemen, I have made my position clear. However, I am prepared to listen to what the rest of the War Cabinet may think of your proposal. I would not object if you indicated to Signor Bastianini that we are considering a negotiated settlement. In this way we may at least buy ourselves a little time and so prepare ourselves for whatever decision we come to. I shall leave you – we can discuss it further when we meet in the House tomorrow.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Chalfont as Winston was taken to the door.

  ‘I think he is playing for time – the leopard will not change its spots.’

  ‘I’ll get the others back in. We shall have to act.’

  Before Churchill had reached the front door he was approached by the man who had ushered him in. He bent his head forward courteously, ‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting a moment sir, I shall bring your coat and hat.’ Winston thought it odd and not a little delinquent that a trained man of the house should have been so unprepared as to have to ask him to loiter in a hallway, but he let it go without comment. He remained preoccupied with the meeting he had just left.

  Outside in the street two men in belted trench coats and wearing trilby hats approached the parked limousine. As they reached the car they moved apart. One went swiftly to where the driver stood smoking his cigarette. The man pulled something from his pocket and started talking to the driver in a quick low voice. In the same moment the second man opened the rear door to confront Walter Thompson, Churchill’s bodyguard. Thompson was caught off guard and before he could reach for the gun he kept concealed in his coat pocket the second man blocked him with a tight grip. He too spoke quickly and in a hushed voice. Then suddenly both men broke off and, looking briefly around, left as rapidly as they had arrived.

  Churchill emerged from the front door and stood for a moment at the top of the steps. Then he descended in a measured manner and walked to the car. The driver opened a door and he got in.

  The car pulled away from the kerb and accelerated towards Westminster.

  At Victoria the driver turned right into Victoria Street and then took a left to join Vauxhall Bridge Road. Churchill looked surprised and tapped on the glass partition. ‘Why are we going this way Stevens?’

  ‘Small diversion, sir,’ Stevens replied in a matter of fact tone, but when they crossed Vauxhall Bridge and turned right to join the Embankment heading south away from Nine Elms shunting yards, Churchill became suspicious. He looked at Thompson. ‘All right, what’s going on Walter?’

  ‘Sir,’ Thompson said awkwardly, ‘there is a plot to get rid of you.’

  ‘I know Walter; Viscount Halifax and some others; Chamberlain is one of them and I suspect Lord Chalfont. They’re plotting to resign tomorrow in the House and call for a vote of no confidence.’

  ‘It’s more serious than that, sir.’

  ‘What could be more serious than that? It’s downright treachery.’

  From Albert Bridge any passer-by who looked towards Albert Embankment could have seen the military roadblock. From the Humber, as it approached it looked like any of the check points that the authorities set up to control traffic in the vicinity of unexploded bombs or a burst main in the street.

  A soldier stepped forward and raised his hand to stop the car.

  CHAPTER 2

  Washington, 6 June 1940

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt – 32nd President of the United States of America and the man who was carried to victory on the promise that the sons of America would not be sent to die in another European war – sat at a table in the White House together with his Chiefs of Staff and pondered how he was now to keep that promise.

  Sitting at that table with the same thoughts running through their collective minds were General George Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, Admiral Chester Nimitz, General of the Army Air Corps Hap Arnold and Henry L Stimson, Secretary for War.

  Roosevelt had been up since dawn. He had been woken early by an aide with a transcript from his intelligence chief and the contents were disturbing. He surveyed the assembled company of military men.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’ll get right to the point. When I came to this high office I did so on the ticket that I would keep our boys out of foreign wars that were none of our damn business. I pledged not to send the sons of America to die for somebody else’s cause! I pledged to keep this country isolated from the lunacy that has once again got European nations tearing at each other’s throats.’

  ‘Now I face a dilemma – we all face a dilemma, because those foreign wars are getting mighty close to our back yard and I don’t know how close we can tolerate without putting up our fists and striking a blow. I got you here this morning because I need your thoughts.’ He paused and picked up the report that each man had in front of him. ‘You’ve all read the report?’ There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘The British,’ he continued, ‘look like they are going to throw in the towel. This latest situation report from our Embassy in London says that Mr Churchill is out and Lord Halifax has taken over. Halifax is talking to Mussolini and Mussolini is talking to Hitler. It seems likely there will be a deal of some kind that takes the British out of the war.’

  He paused again and leaned back a little in his chair. ‘And then what? Where does Hitler go next? The German War Machine needs oil. So where does he go to get it. Turkey is neutral but that hasn’t stopped him so far. They could drive right through to the Persian Gulf and it seems there wouldn’t be a damned thing we could do to stop them. If he can secure his oil supply and he has rolled up all of Europe then he could start to look across the pond. He looked at Marshall, ‘George, what do we think?’

  Marshall grimaced. ‘Mr President, I can’t underestimate the seriousness of the impact this has on our position militarily. It’s not so much that it weakens our position but it moves the threat of an attack on the US closer. As you know, I have always been particularly concerned about our Pacific coast security. It’s been my belief the Japanese are looking in our direction with greedy eyes and I’ve long held the view that a confrontation somewhere in the Pacific region is inevitable. Now this latest report says to me that the problem is likely to get compounded and that we have to look at a threat from Germany in the North Atlantic.’

  Roosevelt turned to Nimitz, his Commander in Chief for the Pacific Fleet. ‘Chester, how strong are we in the Pacific?’

  Nimitz had better news. ‘Sir, we’re in pretty good shape. We know Admiral Yamamoto has been building up the Japanese fleet and they are adding more carriers as we speak, but I still don’t rate them as a match for our ships in th
at area. We outnumber them and we outgun them.’

  Roosevelt leaned forward a little and settled his gaze on Admiral King. Ernest Joseph King was the Navy’s hard man. Roosevelt knew him to be unsympathetic to the British; he was an openly professed Anglophobe and took every opportunity to display it. His fellow officers viewed him as confrontational and permanently in a bad humor (even his own family openly joked about his foul temper). But for all this he was an exemplary officer and Roosevelt knew that in a tight situation he was a good man to have in your corner. He took off his glasses and thoughtfully polished them.

  ‘OK Joe,’ – King preferred to be called Joe – ‘tell us what you think.’

  King looked sour and shook his head contemptuously. ‘Well, I always said you could count on those Limeys to fold in a fight and now they’ve done it.’

  Nimitz gave a wry smile, ‘Hey, don’t sugar the pill Joe, just tell it like it is.’

  The others laughed but Roosevelt just looked over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘I need to know if we can protect our Eastern seaboard, Joe, should the Germans try to make an incursion into our waters, that’s all.’

  King shook his head slowly again and pursed his lips. ‘It’s gonna be tougher without the British Navy because between them and the French they’ve kept the goddam Krauts busy on the other side of the water. Now if they’ve both gone over to the other side that’s a substantial shift in the balance. If the Krauts had sent the Limey fleet to the bottom of the ocean that would be one thing because there’s a lot of cold, grey water between us and them so they would have to spread themselves out pretty thin. But that hasn’t happened and if they combine their assets we would face potentially the biggest fleet in the world. Of course, you can’t be sure that the British would not insist on being neutral in any settlement but I wouldn’t want to put too many of my own greenbacks on that one.’ He stopped for a moment as if weighing the odds then went on.

  ‘But in the end I’m with Chester. I think the Japs are a bigger threat and we should deal with them first. Keep the Navy in the Pacific to knock out the Japs, that’s my view. We’re commissioning two new battleships – the North Carolina and the Washington – and four new cruisers are right behind them; and there are more on the slips. But Mr President, we need to build a lot more tonnage if we’re going to head off an Atlantic threat – and we need to do it like we had fire up our ass.’

  Roosevelt turned to Stimson who sat next to him. ‘Henry, where are we in the procurement stakes?’

  Henry L Stimson was Secretary for War. He was now 73 years old but still energetic with a strong and active mind. He had served in the same post during World War I under President Wilson. A lawyer and a lifelong Republican, he nevertheless served his Democrat president loyally and enthusiastically. Two years earlier he had outspokenly warned of the Japanese threat and urged Roosevelt to increase war preparations and allocations for the defence budget. He had not been without his critics but he got his way.

  Since 1937 he had overseen the ramped up recruitment of men into the armed services. The Navy now had more than 350 warships in the combined fleets and more were being commissioned at the fastest rate in US history. The production of tanks was slowly being addressed but no significant design innovation had been undertaken by the Army since the Great War; reliance for procurement had been on British and French output. There had been an increase in the procurement of heavy artillery and aircraft were starting to be turned out in larger numbers. The American arsenal was growing but, Stimson thought, not fast enough.

  In September of the previous year when the Nazis had invaded Poland, ripping up their pacts and agreements with the French and the British, he had urged Roosevelt to declare war on Germany and get on with what he saw as the inevitable conflict. Roosevelt was reluctant to do it while the balance of arms still favored the Germans. Besides, Roosevelt was trapped by the policy which had helped bring him his second term in office – that he would not involve America in foreign wars. Stimson sat at the table with a quiet confidence; he knew he had been right all along and this was vindication. He addressed his reply not to the President but to the whole group around the table. He sat with his elbow on the table prodding the air with a finger, punctuating each word.

  ‘Gentlemen, preparations for a conflict on a major scale have been in hand for nearly two years. We are as well-equipped militarily now as at any time since 1918. In many ways we are better equipped. Innovation by our manufacturers can give us an edge over our potential adversaries – but we can’t say how long this will take. The news of the potential loss of Britain both as an ally and a naval partner is not good. This is grave news not only because it makes numerical superiority harder to achieve, but equally concerning must be the boost it will give to German morale and therefore battle confidence.’

  He paused for a moment and then added as an afterthought. ‘I lament the loss of Churchill – and not just for strategic reasons. I liked the man. I shared many of his views and misgivings about the Nazis – and he had a good sense of humor; he’ll be missed.’

  At this Roosevelt nodded. He and Churchill had formed a bond in the early crisis. ‘OK,’ he went on, ‘General Arnold, what’s our strength in the air?’

  Army Air Corps General Henry Arnold, known to his fellow officers and friends as Hap (short for happy) had been responsible for the shaping of the US air defences and its strike capability since 1937. But he was still not satisfied with the command structure, which he believed should be separated from the Army, a view which had earned him rancorous opposition at the highest levels in the military structure.

  So caustic was the opposition to him that when, some years earlier, he had unofficially gone public with his views of an independent air corps, he narrowly escaped a court martial for insubordination. He had campaigned since long before then to create an independent air corps under its own command structure instead of using it as an adjunct of the Army. His view that the Army Air Force was a cumbersome and ineffective structure, poorly deployed as a military asset, had not been shared by Roosevelt, who found him a tiresome renegade who failed to tow the party line. This had made him so unpopular with the President that for eight months he had been banished from the White House. However, he had a patron in the shape of Henry Stimson. Stimson pushed his cause and persuaded Roosevelt that Hap was the best man to take control of the Air Corps and reshape it into an effective fighting arm. As a result of this patronage he had his seat at the table that day.

  ‘I won’t beat about the bush Mr President. You are aware of my views. I believe we have a better Air Force today than we have ever had – but like the Navy we’re short. We need a lot more planes if we’re going to cover all that water on both sides of this country. We need carrier-borne fighters and we need bombers. We need more and they need to be bigger, faster and better armed than the opposition. We have the production potential to achieve air superiority but we need to build and we need to do it fast. Our long-range bomber fleet is getting obsolete; it doesn’t fly far enough or carry a big enough bomb load. I also happen to believe we have some of the best designers in the world. If we are going to protect America we need a much bigger budget allocation, at least double what we are spending now.’

  Roosevelt nodded but said nothing. He turned to King again. ‘I’m told the Germans have some pretty big guns in the Atlantic. Is that right Joe?’

  ‘At 2,000 tons, Tirpitz is way and above the largest warship in that operational area. Scharnhorst isn’t far behind. If they go on building stuff like this it’s going to get very rough out there. But in the end it’s as much about numbers – we need to be able to smother them.’

  ‘What do you need and how much time do we have to close the gap?’

  ‘Destroyers; lots of them – and carriers. I’m with Hap on that one; being able to deliver air power at sea is going to be vital.’

  The conversation came back round to Marshall. ‘George,’ he said sombrely, ‘it doesn’t sound good but it�
�s what we’ve got so we’d better get on with it.’

  Roosevelt sat back and took off his glasses. There was a short silence and then he said, ‘Gentlemen, I believe there is a war coming and I don’t believe we can talk our way out of it; nor do I believe the Atlantic Ocean is big enough to keep us isolated from it. Let me make it very clear. I do not want to go down in history as the President who lost the United States. Regardless of who strikes the first blow, in whatever form it takes and no matter where it breaks out, we cannot allow ourselves to lose this war if it comes our way.’ He stopped it there and then added his thanks, signifying that the meeting was at an end. As the room began to clear he put his hand on Stimson’s arm.

  ‘Hang on a bit, Henry, we have a few more things to discuss. You’re going to have to convince some of those stubborn SoBs over there in the Senate they need to dig a bit deeper into the military allocations budgets. We’re behind the eight ball and we need to get out of the way.’ Stimson nodded grimly.