Finest Years (50 page)

The prime minister displayed no appetite for a respite from responsibility, and welcomed companionship only to provide himself with an audience. For all his sociability, paradoxically Churchill remained an intensely private person. Moran thought that he kept his own counsel, ‘
sharing his secret thoughts
with no one…There is no one to whom he opens his heart. Brooke is too cold and critical; he always seems to be doubtful of the P.M.'s facts and often throws cold water
on his pet projects.' Alexander, by contrast, was a notably skilled flatterer. The accommodating Guardsman listened patiently to the prime minister's monologues. When he himself responded, ‘
He is always so reassuring
,' in Moran's words, ‘always so sure that the P.M.'s plans are right.' The companionship of courtiers and visitors sufficed to assuage Churchill's restlessness only for short periods. He was driven by a constant hunger for movement, action and the company of other great men, with whom he could advance great matters.

It had become plain that, even if other factors proved favourable, landing craft would be lacking for a French D-Day in 1943. Lack of shipping also made it necessary to abort a proposed amphibious landing in Burma. Churchill wanted to ensure that the Americans persevered with his Mediterranean strategy, and were neither deflected towards the Pacific nor persuaded to hold back their forces for a later descent on France. He was shocked and angry when he learned that Eisenhower had said that news of two German divisions deployed in Sicily might make it necessary to abort
Husky
. On 8 April he minuted the chiefs of staff that he was bewildered about how the American general could therefore have professed himself so eager for a 1943 invasion of France across the Channel, ‘where he would have to meet a great deal more than two German divisions…I trust the chiefs of staff will not accept these pusillanimous and defeatist doctrines, from whomever they come.'

John Kennedy wrote, as he watched the prime minister compose one such missive: ‘
I had never seen him
dictate before, and it was most interesting. He mouthed and whispered each phrase till he got it right, & then said it aloud to the typist.' Churchill suggested another meeting with Marshall and Hopkins in North Africa in April, but neither the war cabinet nor the Americans favoured such a rendezvous. Instead, he decided to go to Washington again. On 4 May he set off from London to Clydebank, and thence onward aboard the great liner
Queen Mary
to New York.

Throughout the first half of the war, Britain confronted predicaments rather than enjoying options. Henceforward, however, vastly improved
circumstances conferred opportunities, promoted dilemmas. The North African campaign was at last approaching a close. On 8 May, British forces entered Tunis, and the Americans took Bizerta. Once more Britain's church bells rang for victory. At Casablanca the Americans had endorsed an overwhelmingly British vision for further Mediterranean operations. The two subsequent Anglo-American conferences of the year, codenamed
Trident
and
Quadrant
, were dominated by British efforts to sustain the US commitment made in January. Some of the contortions of Marshall and his colleagues reflected a desire to gain control of the Allied agenda, to resist British wishes simply because they were British. It seemed to the Americans intolerable that when their cash, supplies, aircraft, tanks and soon manpower would overwhelmingly dominate future Allied operations, Churchill and his colleagues should dictate the nature of these.

Each side also cherished its own unrealistic delusions. For instance, the Americans were uninterested in amphibious operations in South-East Asia, because these would contribute nothing towards fulfilling their principal strategic interest in the region, that of assisting Chiang Kai-shek's ramshackle war effort in China. On Churchill's part, he sailed to America in May determined to resist entanglement in the fever-ridden jungles of Burma, eager instead for ‘an Asiatic
Torch
'—possible landings on Sumatra, Java or Malaya, all fanciful. Shrewd strategists, notably including the British General Bill Slim, understood that the American drive across the central Pacific would be the key element in Japan's defeat. British operations in Burma were chiefly designed to ‘show willing' to the US, which goes far to explain the prime minister's cynicism about most things to do with the Asian war.

Churchill and his commanders were justified in their insistence that operations in Sicily, and thereafter some further exploitation in Italy, were indispensable. He told the chiefs of staff at a meeting aboard the
Queen Mary
on 10 May: ‘The greatest step we could take in 1943…would be the elimination of Italy.' But the British woefully underestimated the difficulties of conducting a campaign on the mainland, and the likely strength of German resistance. They were rash enough to urge upon the Americans a view, reflecting their
experience against Mussolini's troops in North Africa, that occupying most of Italy would be easy.

The Anglo-American armies needed to learn manifold lessons about command structures, air support and large-scale opposed amphibious landings. These the Mediterranean provided in 1943. But when the Russians were fighting huge and bloody battles in the east, it is unsurprising that American officers recoiled from the prospect that their own ambitions for the coming year should be so modest. Many senior figures in the US Army doubted that the British were sincere about supporting a French D-Day even in the spring of 1944. Marshall and his colleagues, and indeed Roosevelt, were apprehensive that once the Allies got themselves into Italy, they would not easily extricate the forces which it would be essential to shift to Britain before the end of the year.

During Churchill's first days in America he visited Roosevelt's retreat at Shangri-La in the Alleghenies, and delivered another magnificent oration to Congress on 19 May. When Halifax, at the Washington embassy, fussed that after the war the Americans might demand repayment of Britain's Lend-Lease debt, Churchill said truculently: ‘
Oh, I shall like that
one. I shall say, yes by all means let us have an account…but I shall have my account to put in too, and my account is for holding the baby alone for eighteen months, and it was a very rough brutal baby…I don't quite know what I shall have to charge for it.' He was dismayed, however, by a perceived decline in Roosevelt's health. ‘
Have you noticed
that the President is a tired man?' he demanded of Moran. ‘His mind seems closed; he seems to have lost his wonderful elasticity.' If it was true that the president's health was declining, the real significance of his changed mood was that he was less amenable to Churchill's blandishments.

The prime minister would have been even more troubled had he known that at this very moment the president was secretly pursuing a bilateral meeting with Stalin, excluding Churchill, through the good offices of the pre-war US ambassador to Moscow, the egregious Joseph E. Davies. Davies, like Stafford Cripps, was a devoted admirer of the Soviet Union. During his time in Moscow he sought to persuade his wife that volleys she heard as NKVD firing squads executed victims
of the purges were mere construction workers' jack-hammers. Davies formed a large art collection from works sold to him at knockdown prices by the Soviet authorities, looted from galleries or confiscated from murdered state enemies. His outrageous and adulatory memoir of his time in Russia was made into a 1943 Hollywood movie,
Mission to Moscow
, using a script authorised by himself. In May, Roosevelt provided a USAAF aircraft to fly Davies to Moscow carrying prints of the film for Stalin's edification. Though this deplorable figure failed to arrange the meeting Roosevelt sought, the president's willingness to employ him reflected shameless duplicity towards Churchill.

The combined chiefs of staff, meanwhile, were locked in close, tense, almost continuous sessions under Marshall's chairmanship. Brooke on 13 May made remarks which stunned and appalled the Americans. Dismissing prospects of an early invasion of France, he said that ‘no major operations would be possible until 1945 or 1946, since it must be remembered that in previous wars there had always been some 80 French divisions available on our side…The British manpower position was weak.' Marshall responded icily: ‘Did this mean that the British chiefs of staff regarded Mediterranean operations as the key to a successful termination of the European war?' Sir Charles Portal interjected, in a fashion surely designed to limit the damage done by Brooke's brutal assertion, that ‘If Italy was knocked out this year, then in 1944 a successful re-entry into NW Europe might well be possible.' British scepticism, said Portal, focused on the notion that a force of twenty to twenty-five divisions could achieve important results across the Channel on the Continent of Europe ‘
unless almost the entire bulk
of the German Army was in Russia or the Balkans'.

Brooke once again emphasised that the Red Army alone possessed sufficient mass to engage the full weight of the Wehrmacht: ‘Russia was the only ally in possession of large ground forces and our strategy must aim to help her to the maximum possible effect.' He wrote in his diary that night: ‘
It was quite evident
that Marshall was quite incapable of grasping the objects of our strategy nor the magnitude of operations connected with cross-Channel strategy.' The CIGS found the
Trident
conference one of the most gruelling and depressing experiences of his war. The exchanges that day illustrated his deep caution, indeed pessimism. Brooke's reputation as a strategist is significantly damaged by his remarks at the combined chiefs of staff meeting on 13 May. Though Marshall was often wrong in 1942-43, thereafter it was Brooke whose judgement was suspect. If the British view prevailed, it was hard to imagine that D-Day would take place in 1944. Never since December 1941 had the two allies' military leaderships seemed so far apart.

Yet as the Americans fought back, the British gave ground. At last, Brooke's team acknowledged a ‘firm belief' that conditions for an invasion of France would exist in 1944. On the 19th the British accepted a target date of 1 May 1944 for a landing in northern France by twenty-nine divisions. Lt.Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan was appointed to lead the COSSAC
^*
staff, to plan such an invasion. The outcome, Churchill cabled to Attlee on 21 May, was agreement that Britain should have ‘a free hand' in the Mediterranean until November 1943. Success in Sicily would be exploited to advance the elimination of Italy from the Axis until concentration and redeployment of forces for the French landings began. Brooke wrote, after a meeting with Roosevelt and Churchill at the White House on 21 May: ‘I do not think they realised how near we were to a failure to reach agreement!' He observed four days later that such conferences were

the most exhausting entertainments
imaginable. I am convinced they do a lot of good in securing great understanding between us, and yet—they fall short insofar as our basic convictions remain unaltered. King still remains determined to press Pacific at the expense of all other fronts. Marshall wishes to ensure cross-Channel operation at expense of Mediterranean. [I still feel] that Mediterranean offers far more hope of adding to final success. Portal in his heart feels that if we left him a free hand bombing alone might well win the war. And dear old Dudley Pound when he wakes up wishes we would place submarine warfare above all other requirements…And Winston??
Thinks one thing at one moment and another at another moment. At times the war may be won by bombing…At others it becomes essential for us to bleed ourselves dry on the Continent because Russia is doing the same. At others our main effort must be in the Mediterranean…with sporadic desires to invade Norway and ‘roll up the map in the opposite direction to Hitler'! But more often he wants us to carry out ALL operations simultaneously!

Churchill was at his most ebullient by the time he and Roosevelt parted. At a final press conference at the White House with Roosevelt on 26 May, he delighted the assembled correspondents by clambering onto a chair and giving his famous two-fingered V-sign. Then he boarded a Boeing Clipper for Algiers via Gibraltar, accompanied by George Marshall and Brooke. The three travelled together to brief Eisenhower about the conference decisions. En route, the aircraft was struck by lightning, awakening Churchill from a deep sleep. He wrote wryly: ‘
I had always wondered
why aircraft did not mind being struck by lightning. To a groundsman it would seem quite a dangerous thing.' On the day of their later return from Gibraltar, on much the same course, a British plane whose passengers included the film star Leslie Howard was shot down by a German fighter, with the loss of all on board. If the hazards of many wartime flights were unavoidable, that of Churchill and his party to Algiers surely entailed extravagant risk. Had the US chief of the army perished with the prime minister and CIGS, the blow to the Grand Alliance would have been terrible indeed. The party arrived safely, however. As they neared the Rock, Brooke was curiously moved to see the prime minister, wearing what he described as a yachting cap, peering eagerly down through the clouds with a cigar clenched beneath his lips, looking out for the first sight of land. The soldier, so often exasperated by his master, perceived this as a glimpse of his ‘
very human & lovable side
'.

Churchill spent eight happy days in Tunisia and Algeria, on one of them addressing a great throng of British troops in the ancient amphitheatre at Carthage.
‘I was speaking,' he told guests at dinner that night, ‘from where
the cries of Christian virgins rent the air while
roaring lions devoured them—and yet—I am no lion and certainly not a virgin.' Eisenhower and Montgomery expressed confidence about planning for the Sicilian landing. Marshall, however, made it plain that he was determined to reserve judgement about future Italian operations until the outcome of the Sicilian campaign became clear.