WC02 - Never Surrender (34 page)

The officer was still struggling to find an answer as Henry Chichester pushed his way past.

They tried to escape from the beach again, this time in the company of others. One of them was the corporal they had encountered in Dunkirk. He seemed to have fattened up; he was bulging: his pockets, his back pack, even the pack intended for his gas mask. When Don asked what he was carrying, he got nothing but another crafty wink in reply.

Together they found a boat, the sort of thing that might be used for an occasional hour on the Serpentine. This time the corporal made no objection as Claude was helped on board Winston, too, standing in the prow like a mascot. They began paddling, with pieces of timber scavenged from the beach, out towards the boats a mile or so offshore.

They had gone no further than a couple of hundred yards when the skies opened above them and another torrent of death began to fall. The Luftwaffe was back. There was more artillery today, too; the Germans and their guns were pushing closer, their aim growing more accurate. As the bombs and bullets turned the sea to a maelstrom, they dug in their paddles and prayed they were too tiny a morsel for the great Luftwaffe, but a Messerschmitt caught them with a blast across the middle that cut their small craft clean in two.

They were thrown into the water. Claude reached out for Don his ankle was less of a problem in the water and helped him cling to a fragment of the boat that was still floating. Nearby the corporal was desperately unloading handfuls of jewellery and watches from his pockets onto a door that someone had tried to use as a raft, but the weight of his packs was dragging him down. He began to struggle with the packs, trying to slip them off, but the sea was winning. Then there was nothing but a fist, still clenched around some trinket, slipping beneath the water. That was the last they saw of him.

With Winston leading the way, they swam slowly and with great difficulty back to the shore. Their uniforms and boots were like anchors, pulling them back. They had been on the beaches for almost forty-eight hours. They had got nowhere.

As he climbed from his car, Churchill was startled to hear the sound of small-arms fire coming from behind the Palace, but Lascelles, who was waiting to meet him, showed no sign of alarm although there was nothing unusual in that, Churchill thought. Lascelles was an earthworm. Slice him in two and he would simply carry on wriggling.

He found the King on his lawn. His wife was beside him in a floral print dress that was blowing gently in the breeze, and in her outstretched hand she was holding a revolver. It was aimed at a target some thirty paces away, pinned to which was a large photograph of Hitler. The gun barked. The Fuehrer continued to stare back at her.

"Ah, Winston!" the King greeted. "I'm teaching the Queen to shoot. Never know just in case."

"I hope it will not come to that, sir," Churchill offered, bowing.

"Yes, but war's a f-funny old business." He lit a cigarette and led his Prime Minister a little distance away from the impromptu firing range. "I believe the evacuation is almost over."

Churchill nodded.

"Remarkable how long we've managed to stretch it."

"There are still many troops trapped inside the pocket, sir, French as well as British. But we shall do our best."

"And then what? After the evacuation?"

"In France capitulation, I fear."

"Sad. Great country but .. . there seems to be something rotten right at their core. Perhaps it's their habit of changing their system of government king, emperor, republic, backwards and forwards. Tried them all many times and still don't seem happy. So try a Fuehrer this time and see if it works any better, eh?"

Churchill nodded. He had never rated the King's political acumen very highly, but he seemed to have a point that might even be profound.

"And here what do you think will happen here, Winston?"

"That's why I have asked to see you, sir. After the evacuation we shall have to consider the possibility of invasion."

"Papers are full of it. Can't hide from such things." Another explosion punctuated their walk. "Squeeze gently!" the King called across to his Queen. "Like a puppy's ear."

"Sir, a few days ago we exchanged words about the position of you and your family. I may have appeared a little abrupt."

"I prefer plain speaking, Winston. You know, Mr. Chamberlain was always so courteous. Talked to me at great length and never told me a thing."

"I shall always try to deal with you plainly, sir. The other day I said you must stay."

"Emphatic about it, you were."

"But there are other powerful voices who think differently. You have seen the paper put forward by the Foreign Office?"

"That the Queen and I should be moved away to some far-flung corner of the island or even sent abroad with all the royal baubles? Of course I have. Discussed it with Halifax."

Churchill knew it; that was the real reason why he'd come. He couldn't fight on every front, not against the King as well as Halifax and Hitler. He'd struggled with every grain of resolution he possessed to do what he thought was right, but it wasn't enough; he had to give a little, build bridges, stop railing against the entire world. There were times when he had to bend, or risk being broken. And in the matter of the King, it was more important to ensure that the Monarch kept on fighting than to go down arguing about what part of the globe he should fight from. The King against him in combination with Halifax was altogether too powerful. Compromise. Why did he find it so difficult? Nevertheless .. .

"The time may be drawing closer, sir, when we should think about such options."

"But the other day you said .. ."

"Yes, sir. But the situation has changed and grown ever more perilous. It will be our turn next to face the full force of the Nazi onslaught, and who can say how events will proceed? We must remain confident, determined but we cannot allow you to fall into the hands of Hitler, not like King Leopold. Of all the disasters that chase me through my dreams, that is the worst. You and your family would disappear, your brother brought back. There would be nothing left to fight for, no flag, no great emblem around which we could rally."

George exhaled a steady stream of blue smoke. "You needn't worry, Winston. That will not happen."

"I, too, have confidence that we shall resist the invasion, but .. ."

The King dropped the stub of his cigarette on the path they were following and ground it out with his toe. "No, you don't understand. I have discussed it with the Queen. We are agreed. We will not be taken by Hitler. Not alive. That's why we are p-polishing up our skills." He took a new cigarette from his silver case. "But neither will we flee. If I run, why should any man stand and fight? As you put it, there would be no flag around which we could rally. Why, it would leave us like France. And we are not like France! No, while there are men willing to defend this realm, I and my family will be staying with them. Right here." The cigarette began to glow; he drew the new nicotine down deep. "There I seem to have made a speech."

Churchill's thoughts were flooded with admiration at this man a man whom he had underestimated. There was a simplicity and lack of sophistry in him that was so unlike Halifax. Churchill was glad he had come. He was no longer fighting the war entirely on his own.

Suddenly, another explosion: this time the Fuehrer jumped and fell to pieces. "Bravo, my dear! A couple more like you and we'll have the whole German army on the run!"

George turned once more to his Prime Minister. "So we're not going, and neither are the baubles. Let's put them away somewhere safe. Bury them in caves and cellars, wherever you think best. But none must go. I want everyone to understand. We're going to beat them!"

The Maid of Manx was a nautical sheep. She had been built, like so many others, to spend her life meandering in dreary style around the seas of Europe. Her life, like that of any sheep, was intended to be unremarkable and her death to go unmarked. She was a passenger vessel, not a sleek warrior, and she had no chance of getting close to the Dunkirk shore. So she had to sit, and wait, for her human cargo to be ferried to her by the smaller boats. Like all sheep, the Maid depended for her survival on being part of a larger flock, hoping that the wolves that snarled and circled would select some other victim, but while she sat, and waited, she made an excellent target.

The wolves pounced while she was still several miles out. Henry Chichester stood in the prow, trying to pretend he had no fear, while the deck hands were unanimous that they weren't going to make it. He felt guilty: he was the reason why they were here, he'd shamed them into coming. And beside the guilt he felt fear not of dying, he'd faced that many times in the last war, but of dying alone. Without family, and without faith. He knew why he'd come on board. It was his way of challenging God to keep him safe, to prove beyond further doubt that the whole of Henry Chichester's life hadn't been an exercise in futility. He had placed himself in the hands of the Almighty. Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that is with him, for there be more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles .. .

But the multitude of the King of Assyria, in the grey tunics of the German Wehrmacht, was moving closer. The defensive perimeter around Dunkirk was growing narrower, the guns drawing closer, and their fire becoming more destructive. The Luftwaffe, too, had a point to make. It had promised the Fuehrer that the British presence in Dunkirk would be eliminated within days. They had already held out for a week.

The savagery of the attack was greater than anything the Maid of Manx had endured in earlier days. The wolves hadn't selected her as a special target, they were sinking their teeth into every vessel afloat, from destroyer to the least significant dinghy. The Maid had already had much of her metal bent by the time she got to her berth, but she made it through and was waiting offshore when the serious stuff struck -bombs or artillery shells, it was impossible to tell which in the mayhem of explosions and water spouts. As the vicar cowered, the bridge disappeared in a tangle of blackened metal and, moments later, a hole appeared aft through which a huge column of fire and steam began erupting. The boiler room had gone. A tin helmet, turned red like a poker in the heat, rolled crazily along the deck on its rim. There was no sign of the deck hands who moments before had been standing nearby. Then the Maid broke her back and the Reverend Chichester was hurled into the sea.

(Sunday 2 June 1940. William L. Shirer, CBS.)

This is Berlin.

Those British Tommies at Dunkirk are still fighting against the advancing German steamroller like bulldogs.

The German High Command is our authority for this in its daily communique which has just been given out in Berlin. Here is its account of yesterday's operations:

"In hard fighting, the strip of coast on both sides of Dunkirk, which yesterday was also-stubbornly defended by the British, was further narrowed. Nieuwpoort and the coast to the north-east are in German hands, Adinkerke and Ghyvelde, six and a quarter miles east of Dunkirk, have been taken." Six and a quarter miles. That's getting very close.

But again, in the air, the great German air-armada continued all day yesterday, the communique declares, to harass the British in their attempts to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force. It makes grim reading.

"Altogether, four warships and eleven transports with a total tonnage of fifty-four thousand tons were sunk by our bombers. Fourteen warships, including two cruisers, two light cruisers, an anti-aircraft cruiser, six destroyers and two torpedo boats, as well as thirty-eight transports with a total tonnage of one hundred and sixty thousand, were damaged by bombs. Numberless small boats, tugs, rafts were capsized and troop concentrations along the beach successfully attacked with bombs

In three weeks, Hitler's steamroller army has overrun Holland, Belgium and northern France, pushed past the western extension of the Maginot Line on a front two hundred miles wide, and liquidated three of France's best armies and most of the British Expeditionary Corps.

How do Germans at home feel about the tremendous victory? As a whole, the German people, I think you can say, are feeling pretty elated. For one thing, they believe they cannot now lose the war hence the nightmare of another defeat, which their leaders have told them would be worse than Versailles, is removed. That makes them feel good.

They also believe that the decisive battle has been won and that the war will certainly be over by the end of the summer. That also makes them feel good. Many Germans I've talked to have an idea that a sort of united Europe under German leadership, to be sure will come out of the war. And that will be a good thing. They say it will ensure a long period of peace and probably of prosperity.

Ramsay watched as yet another desperate and listing vessel dragged herself back between the breakwaters at Dover and knew that his task was almost over. Daylight had become death for Operation Dynamo. There was no point in sending over more ships while the sun was up, for the balance between those saved from the beaches and those sacrificed in the effort was tilting too heavily against them. The German guns had come too close.

There was trouble even in the harbour below too many crew members going sick or A.W.O.L., anything but going back to that sink of destruction. He could no longer blame them. To order them back during daylight would break the heart of an operation that, in spite of all its difficulties, had been carved from English oak. Yet night in June lasted no more than a handful of hours. His timetable had been cut to fragments. There had to come a point where Dynamo was brought to its close, and that point was almost upon them.

During the morning he had signalled his fleet. One last effort. "The final evacuation is staged for tonight," he told them 'and the nation looks to the navy to see this through." Throughout Dover and the other ports involved, his signal sent a shiver of pride, and also of profound fear.