The Day We Went to War (27 page)

11.50am, P
ARLIAMENT
S
QUARE
, W
HITEHALL

A member of the Mass Observation organisation joins a group of working-class men in Parliament Square to hear what they have to say about the air-raid warning. One remarks, ‘They didn’t lose any time attacking.’ To which another replies, ‘Course he didn’t – he meant it all along.’ A third member of the group adds, ‘I wonder how they got on in Paris.’ Surprised at this mention of France, the Mass Observer asks if the French have been attacked. ‘Yes,’ replies
the first speaker, ‘so’ve we. They turned ’em back off Southend.’ The second speaker ‘confirms’ this: ‘That’s right, isn’t it? Perhaps we’ve already bombed Berlin – no one knows. We’re too much for ’em. We’ll split Berlin so they won’t know it again.’

11.52am, HMS
W
ALPOLE
, S
T
G
EORGE’S
C
HANNEL

HMS
Walker
’s sister ship gets a good ASDIC contact, and carries out the Royal Navy’s first depth-charge attack of the war against a suspected U-boat. But the attack brings not a U-boat to the surface but a shoal of dead fish. From the bridge of HMS
Walker
, Sub-Lieutenant John Adams sees the fish. Their bladders have been forced through their mouths from the shock of the explosions.

12.00pm, HMS
S
UFFOLK
, P
ORTSMOUTH

Hugo Bracken and other members of the ship’s company wearing beards are ordered to shave them off in order that their gas masks will fit properly.

12.00pm, T
AKELEY

London buses full of child evacuees from Wood Green pull up on their way to Felstead. Myra Charlton watches as the children, ‘hundreds of rather gay little things’, swarm to the nearest lavatory.

12.00pm, G
ERMAN
E
MBASSY
, C
ARLTON
H
OUSE
T
ERRACE

Robert Dunbar and Dr Kordt have reached an
impasse
over who should or should not receive diplomatic status and protection from among London’s German colony. They decide to call a halt and Dunbar prepares to return to the Foreign Office. As he leaves he wishes Kordt ‘goodbye’, but remembers just in time not to add ‘good luck’. The Chargé d’Affaires likewise wishes the British diplomat a plain ‘goodbye’. Dunbar retraces his steps back to his office. There he sets about working on the details of the German diplomats’ departure from London.

12.00pm, ‘V
ILLA
V
OLPONE
’, S
OUTH
H
AMPSTEAD

James Agate hears the ‘All Clear’ sound and emerges from his ‘dugout’, as he calls his air-raid shelter. Curious, he goes out into the street and sees a man look at his watch. It is now midday and the man joyfully exclaims, ‘They’re open!’

12.00pm, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Captain Cook orders Chief Officer Barnet Copland and Chief Purser Wotherspoon to draw up a notice to tell the passengers that war has been declared. ‘The important thing, of course,’ Cook tells the two men, ‘is not to alarm the passengers. Try to avoid discussing the matter with them; but if you have to, be reassuring. Make certain they understand that our preparations are precautionary.’

12.00pm, H
OUSE OF
C
OMMONS

The House is crowded. There has not been a Sunday sitting since 30 January 1820, when King George IV came to the throne on the death of his father George III. As usual, there is the Speaker’s procession and the ritual of prayers. To MP Beverley Baxter they appear to give a secure sense of permanence to a world that seems already collapsing. He too notices a complete absence of emotion. Members know that they are witnessing a great historic scene and yet the element of drama is missing completely. Because everybody has heard the Prime Minister’s broadcast, Baxter cannot get over the feeling that he and his fellow MPs are like mummers performing in a play which the audience have already seen. But already a subtle change has taken place in the appearance of the Commons. About half a dozen members are now in uniform. One young MP, booted and spurred, is already wearing the badges of rank of a colonel, while another is in Royal Air Force blue. An older MP is wearing Other Ranks uniform with a single lance-corporal’s stripe on each sleeve.

Those in the gallery are equally devoid of emotion. The ambassadors give the appearance of ‘a board of directors attending the liquidation of a business that once had promised well’. French ambassador Charles Corbin is in his usual place, ‘his fine, pale face is utterly impassive, his delicate hands are always still,’ Baxter notes. Next to Corbin is Poland’s representative to the Court of St James, grim-faced Count Edward Raczynski, who is clearly showing the effects of the enormous pressures that have been on him over the last few days. Near him is the immensely popular American ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Kennedy too is not looking his usual ebullient self. Even more than Racyznski’s, Baxter thinks that Kennedy’s face is showing the marks of suffering. The MP hears a report that the ambassador has just now been to see Chamberlain at Number 10. Both men broke down and wept unashamedly. For today’s historic Sunday sitting, Kennedy has brought his wife Rose with him, together with their two eldest sons, Joe Jr and twenty-two-year-old Jack. Harvard student Jack senses today ‘a feeling of grim determination among the Government and the people’.

‘You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed.’ Neville Chamberlain, accompanied by his Parliamentary Private Secretary, Lord Dunglass (later Sir Alec Douglas-Home), leaves 10 Downing Street for the midday sitting of the House of Commons
.

The Duke of Alba, representing Franco’s Spain, is also in the diplomatic gallery, and so too, much to the surprise and disgust of many, is Stalin’s ambassador, Ivan Maisky, ‘smiling his Cheshirecat smile’. Baxter reflects that the ambassador, like his country’s reputation, has shrunk. For a few brief months this year, ‘While the flirtation of Russia and the Allies had been on, Maisky had experienced something of the exhilaration of Cinderella. He had been taken from the kitchen to the ball. Flattery had been poured upon him and Russia praised as a civilizing influence . . . now he was an outcast again . . . Russia had sold the pass, and Russia’s ambassador reverted to his permanent position of diplomatic outsider.’

The King’s younger brothers, the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent are also sitting in the gallery directly behind the clock. Like the diplomats, their faces are earnest but impassive as they look down on the Commons waiting for the Prime Minister to appear. Making his way to the chamber, David Lloyd George, Britain’s victorious First World War leader, tells a lobby correspondent in a cheerful voice, ‘There’s nothing new in all this to me. I’ve been through it all before.’

Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax, with his Private Secretary Oliver Harvey and followed by his Under-Secretary R.A. Butler, leaving the Foreign Office, 3 September 1939. Harvey recorded in his diary, ‘Halifax and I then walked across to the House of Lords where Halifax announced a state of war with Germany.’

12.00pm, D
AILY
E
XPRESS
B
UILDING
: F
LEET
S
TREET

Editor Christiansen’s phone rings. It’s Parliamentary Lobby correspond ent William Barkley on the line. He’s at the Palace of Westminster and has just seen how the ‘Mother of Parliaments’ has reacted to the first air-raid warning. Barkley tells Christiansen that it’s all been a great joke: ‘Chris, you should have seen all the MPs squashed together in the terrace corridor. If anything had happened, my dear, we’d all have been crushed to death or drowned in the Thames.’ Christiansen, rather exasperated, asks, ‘Go on, Willie, where’s the joke in that?’

‘Well,’ Willie replies, ‘it suddenly occurred to me that the whole thing must be a false alarm organised by Neville Chamberlain.’

‘Why, Willie?’

‘Because, my dear, he’s afraid to face the House!’

12.00pm (1.00pm), G
ERMAN
-P
OLISH
B
ORDER

Wilhelm Prueller’s company is again attacked by Polish aircraft. Of the five attacking planes, three are brought down by flak. Soon after this, Polish troops, hiding in nearby woods, fire on the company, causing a number of casualties, both in killed and wounded.

12.00pm (1.00pm), Z
LOCZEW
, L
ODZ
D
ISTRICT
, P
OLAND

SS men from the SS
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
and soldiers from the 95th Infantry Regiment are terrorising the town. Without any reason, they set buildings on fire, and indiscriminately shoot civilians on the street. Zofia Zasina’s husband Michal is one of the victims of a random shooting by the German troops. Janina Modrzewska witnesses some frightful scenes. She sees the disembowelled body
of a ten-year-old girl lying in the street. The girl has been shot through the back. Janina also sees a German soldier crush the skull of an infant with the butt of his rifle. Jozefa Blachowa is shot in the arm and then thrown into a blazing house, where she burns to death. A wagon carrying refugees is ordered off the road so that German units can get pass. As they do so, they turn their machine guns on the refugees and slaughter them. Nearly 200 civilians are murdered today in Zloclew.

12.05pm, P
ARIS

In the French capital civil-defence preparations are still taking place. The early-morning heavy rain has now stopped, but the sky above Paris is still distinctly murky as workmen place sandbags around the city’s statues. Those around the base of the Obelisk give it, correspondent Alexander Werth thinks, ‘an even more phallic look than usual’. The enormous Hotel Continental on the Rue Castiglione is in the process of being taken over by the Commissariat of Information. Premier Daladier has already asked Jean Giraudoux, one of France’s greatest living playwrights, to head the Commissariat. It will be responsible for France’s propaganda effort and media censorship.

12.05pm, H
OUSE OF
C
OMMONS

Chamberlain enters the crowded chamber and is greeted with cheers from the Government benches. Although almost dapper in dress, he looks utterly haggard. His hands are shaking as he fingers the notes which are to be the basis of the speech he is about to make. Opposite sits Lloyd George, ‘The Man Who Won The War’. Lloyd George loathes and despises Chamberlain, whom he sacked as Director of National Service back in August 1917. The feeling is mutual. Beside the Prime Minister on the front bench sits Sir John Simon. He is in exactly the same place he was twenty-five years ago, when Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey described the British ultimatum to Germany on 4 August 1914. Another member of that government, Winston Churchill, is sitting in his usual place on a corner seat below the gangway. He has not sat on the Government front bench for ten years now. In a slow, weary voice that sometimes appears to falters, the Prime Minister tells the House: