The Day We Went to War (34 page)

8.30pm (9.30pm), F
OREIGN
M
INISTER’S
R
ESIDENCE
, W
ARSAW

At the request of Colonel Beck, American ambassador Biddle arrives to hear a report on the events of today. Beck begins by telling the US envoy that he and his associates are ‘profoundly appreciative of France’s and Britain’s honouring their respective alliances with Poland’. The Colonel then gives Biddle the latest official information on German air attacks. Yesterday, twenty-seven towns and cities were bombed, while today, Deblin, Torun, Poznan, Krakow and Plock have been the Luftwaffe’s principal targets. So far, 1,500 civilians have been killed or seriously injured in the bombing. Beck claims that the Poles have brought down sixty-four German planes in the last three days for a loss of eleven Polish aircraft. In conclusion, the Colonel tells Biddle that his government is transmitting a vigorous protest to The Hague. It will list all of the Luftwaffe’s violations of the Polish-German Agreement of 2 September, which is supposed to limit aerial bombardments to only military objectives. As Biddle leaves the Foreign Ministry and walks through the forecourt, he notices that the Poles are already packing up their archives ready for evacuation.

9.00pm, B
ROADCASTING
H
OUSE

The BBC German Service broadcasts a message from Chamberlain to the German people.

German people!

Your country and mine are now at war. Your Government has bombed and invaded the free and independent state of Poland which this country is honour bound to defend. Because your troops were not withdrawn in response to the Note which the British Government addressed to the German Government, war has followed.

With the horrors of war we are familiar. God knows this country has done everything possible to prevent the calamity. But now that the invasion of Poland by Germany has taken place, it has become inevitable.

You are told by your Government that you are fighting because Poland rejected your Leader’s offer and resorted to force. What are the facts? The so-called ‘offer’ was made to the Polish Ambassador in Berlin on Thursday evening, two hours before the announcement by your Government that it had been ‘rejected’. So far from having been rejected, there had been no time even to consider it. Your Government had previously demanded that a Polish representative should be sent to Berlin within twenty-four hours to conclude an agreement. At that time the sixteen points subsequently put forward had not even been communicated to the Polish Government. The Polish representative was expected to arrive and within a fixed time to sign an agreement which he had not even seen. This is not negotiation. This is a
diktat
. To such methods no self-respecting and powerful State should assent. Negotiations on a free and equal basis might have well settled the matter in dispute.

You may ask why Great Britain is concerned. We are concerned because we gave our word of honour to defend Poland against aggression. Why did we feel it necessary to pledge ourselves to defend this Eastern Power when our interests lie in the west, and when your Leader has said he has no interest in the west?

The answer is – and I regret to say it – that nobody in this country any longer places any trust in your Leader’s word.

He gave his word that he would respect the Locarno Treaty; he broke it. He gave his word that he neither wished nor intended to annex Austria; he broke it. He declared that he would not incorporate the Czechs in the Reich; he did so. He gave his word after Munich that he had no further territorial demands to make in Europe; he broke it. He gave his word that he wanted no Polish Provinces; he broke it. He has sworn to you for years that he was the mortal enemy of Bolshevism; he is now its ally. Can you wonder his word is for us not worth the paper it is written on?

The German-Soviet Pact was a cynical
volte face
designed to shatter the Peace Front against aggression. This gamble failed. The Peace
Front stands firm. Your Leader is now sacrificing you, the German people, to the still more monstrous gamble of a war, to extricate himself from the impossible position into which he has led himself and you. In this war we are not fighting against you, the German people, for whom we have no bitter feelings, but against a tyrannous and forsworn regime, which has betrayed not only its own people, but the whole of western civilisation and all that we hold dear.

May God defend the right!

9.00pm (10.00pm), G
RACIE
F
IELDS’S
V
ILLA
, C
APRI

Gracie Fields, Britain’s most popular entertainer, is still recovering from a serious operation for cancer. This morning, she and her partner, film director Monty Banks, listened to Chamberlain’s broadcast. Now she looks out towards Naples where there is a blackout tonight. But Gracie is thinking that Britain is also in darkness. She wants to be there, ‘doing something’. Monty senses what Gracie is thinking, ‘You want to go back and get into it, don’t you?’ he asks her. ‘I must,’ Gracie replies. With that, Monty goes off to start their packing.

9.15pm, W
IRELESS
R
OOM
, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Chief Radio Officer Don is still steadily sending out SOS messages. As he tries to contact other rescue vessels, only two of the
Athenia
’s lifeboats remain to be launched. Assembled by one of them, in a scene reminiscent of the sinking of the
Titantic
twenty-seven years ago, the waiting passengers are singing ‘Nearer My God to Thee’ and ‘Abide with Me.’ But now, Don has managed to get through to two other ships. One is the American freighter
City of Flint
. The other is a luxury yacht, the
Southern Cross
, owned by Swedish millionaire businessman Axel Wenner-Gren. He is the founder of the Electrolux Company and an acquaintance of Hermann Goering. Brilliantly lit with its blue and yellow Swedish flag illuminated by
an arc-light, the
Southern Cross
answers Don’s signal at 9.22pm. Four minutes later, the
City of Flint
does the same, and in another signal promises Don that it ‘would reach the given position in ten hours’.

9.15pm, B
ROADCASTING
H
OUSE

It is now the turn of Labour’s acting leader Arthur Greenwood to take his place at the BBC microphone and speak for the Opposition. He has already won high praise for his forthright speech in the Commons last night. He now tells his listeners:

We are at war because the British people are united and steadfast in their conviction that there are cherished possessions of mankind which are worth defending, for without them life is empty. We believe in liberty, through which alone the mind and soul of the peoples of the world can find free expression. All peoples, whether they be great powers or small nations, have a right to live in security and independence, without threats or menaces, or the use of force. If we do not overthrow the forces of Dictatorship now, our turn will come sooner or later.

We deny the right of any power to commit acts of brigandage or to seek to attain its ends by means of force or the threat of force. We believe there is no kind of dispute between nations which cannot be settled by peaceful methods, if the will is present . . .

This is a bitter hour for us all. It is a bitter hour for the Labour Party, which has always regarded peace with freedom as the greatest blessing of mankind. Those for whom I can especially speak are fighting for a world in which henceforth law shall rule instead of force. We do not want increased power for Britain in the world. We want no new lands. We do not want to destroy the German people, whose scholars, writers, musicians, democratic leaders and others have made such noble contributions to European civilisation which Hitler seeks to destroy.

We want – having paid an incalculable price – when the air raid sirens have been silenced and the war is ended, to make a new start to build a world where peace will be eternal, and where the arts of peace may flourish for the enjoyment of the whole of mankind . . .

9.15pm, E
ALING
F
IRE
S
TATION
, W
EST
L
ONDON

Elsie Warren cuts herself a few sandwiches and then sets off to the fire station for an all-night shift or ‘vigil’, as she thinks of it. Elsie hates the blackout and thinks it terrible now at night when you can hardly see a foot ahead of you.

9.30pm, B
ROADCASTING
H
OUSE

Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair now comes to speak on behalf of his party. He tells his listeners, ‘What is at stake in this great conflict is your right and mine, and the rights of other plain and ordinary people like us in this and other countries, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Let us in that cause, like the authors of the American Declaration of Independence, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour.’

9.30pm, J
ERSEY
, C
HANNEL
I
SLANDS

Norman Scarlyn Wilson and the other guests listen to the broadcasts by Greenwood and Sinclair. Wilson is particularly struck by the vision and courage of Greenwood’s speech. He reflects on how on such occasions some politicians ‘can unerringly find just those words that best express what is in our hearts’. But it is the two Royal Army Medical Corps colonels who, in Wilson’s view, sum up the whole ‘position with commendable brevity’.

‘Well,
he’s
asked for it,’ says one, as the other limps slowly across the room. In the doorway he turns. ‘Yes,’ he gruffly replies, ‘and
he’ll
get it.’ There is no need to name any names.

9.30pm, SS
C
ITY OF
F
LINT
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Captain Joseph L. Gainard has called a meeting of his passengers. He tells them: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are changing our course – the
Athenia
has just been torpedoed. I’ve been torpedoed three times myself and I can’t stand by and see people kicking about in the water. That’s all.’ Only minutes after Captain Gainard’s speech, his passengers, many of them American academics and college students, start helping the crew to prepare the ship to receive the
Athenia
’s survivors. Gainard cannot quite believe his eyes when he sees what is happening, but concedes that his passengers are ‘a swell bunch’.

9.45pm (10.45pm), F
OREIGN
M
INISTRY
, W
ARSAW

Foreign press correspondents have been called together to hear some important news from the government’s press spokesmen. They tell the journalists that units of the famed Polish cavalry have carried the war back into German territory, crossing into East Prussia north of Treuburg. The heartening news is wired back to London and the late editions of the
Daily Express
carry the headline, ‘Poles Invade East Prussia’.

10.00pm, US E
MBASSY
, P
ARIS

Hubert Earle and a colleague leave the embassy and stumble through the darkness to Harry’s Bar, the only place in the French capital where American hamburgers and hot dogs are to be got. On the way, Earle is stopped by a policeman because he is not carrying a regulation gas mask. The
flic
allows him to go on only after Earle assures him that his mask is at the embassy. He’ll go and retrieve it and promises to keep it with him at all times in the future. Arriving at Harry’s Bar, Earle and his companion find the place in uproar. It is jammed with American students and tourists, many of them blind drunk. The dance floor is crowded with dancers giving a riotous performance of ‘The Big Apple’. Earle and his colleague
get into conversation with a young couple at the next table, which is jammed up against their own. Totally oblivious to the war, the couple are already celebrating their marriage tomorrow. The bride-to-be is a student from Milwaukee and her groom comes from San Francisco. They met in Germany, and only just managed to get out before the frontier closed. Earle’s colleague questions them about conditions in the Reich. He doesn’t get very far with his questioning. The couple aren’t interested in anything except their marriage, and their only worry is that the war might interfere with it. They do tell him, however, that the German people they met certainly didn’t want war. Indeed, they were very depressed about the prospect of it.

10.00pm, E
ALING
F
IRE
S
TATION
, W
EST
L
ONDON

Auxiliary Firewoman Elsie Warren and the rest of her shift arrive and are given their orders for the night. Elsie and the others are all feeling rather miserable, but the District Fire Officer ‘is bubbling over with fun’. He keeps them all laughing with his fund of jokes and wisecracks.

10.00pm, SS
A
THENIA
, A
TLANTIC
O
CEAN

Chief Officer Barnet Copland reports to Captain Cook that all passengers are off the ship. In the wireless room Chief Radio Officer Don is sending off his last signals. He tells the
Knute Nelson
that ‘we are now abandoning ship’. He gets the simple reply, ‘Good luck.’ In lifeboat No. 6, eighty-year-old Sir Richard Lake gallantly insists on taking his turn at the oars.

10.00pm (11.00pm), W
ESTERPLATTE

Captain Franciszek Dabrowski signals Warsaw that the garrison is still holding out. This afternoon the Luftwaffe again attacked the fort. The planes dropped fifty or sixty bombs, but were driven off by machine-gun fire.