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.The P.M. spopularity continued to astound him.Several times local people rushedforward and cheered him:  Stick it! He took this to be a sign of encour-agement.20446CHURCHILL S WARin his broadcast on the eleventh he had dwelt upon the Blitz.These cruel, wanton, indiscriminate bombings of London are, ofcourse, a part of Hitler s invasion plans.He hopes, by killing largenumbers of civilians, and women and children, that he will ter-rorise and cow the people of this mighty imperial city, and makethem a burden and anxiety to the government and thus distractour attention from the ferocious onslaught he is preparing.Littledoes he know the spirit of the British nation, or the tough fibre ofthe Londoners, whose forebears played a leading part in the es-tablishment of parliamentary institutions and who have been bredto value freedom far above their lives. This wicked man, he continued,the repository and embodiment of many forms of soul-destroyinghatred, this monstrous product of former wrongs and shame, hasnow resolved to try to break our famous Island race by a processof indiscriminate slaughter and destruction.* What he has done isto kindle a fire in British hearts, here and all over the world,which will glow long after all traces of the conflagration he hascaused in London have been removed.The American ambassador remained unimpressed. First of all, he ca-bled secretly to Roosevelt,  I don t believe that the bombing of the Ger-mans is all indiscriminate.They are principally after railroad installa-tions, docks and power plants and regardless of what anybody writes orsays they are doing a terrible lot of damage. 22But Churchill had assessed the mood of the British well: London couldtake it.Lady Spears watched one Cockney woman pick over the wreckageof her home, and heard her exclaim:  I don t fink much of them Germans.Why, if one of  em should land right  ere in this street with a parachute, Idon t believe I d even offer  im a nice cup of tea. 23One Whitehall witticism was that the air ministry had protested thatthe Germans were hitting  non-military targets like the war office.OnFriday the thirteenth the palace was again dive-bombed: King Georgeglimpsed the two bombs hurtling past his window. A magnificent piece of* Hitler rejected repeated requests by General Hans Jeschonnek, his chief of air staff, toauthorise  terror bombing. The most restrictive orders bound German crews.OnSeptember 14 the Führer again prohibited  terror attacks on London s population.21447DAVID IRVINGbombing, Ma am, if you ll pardon my saying so, the duty constable re-marked to the queen.fearing that the enemy might have similar designs on No.10, Mr Chur-chill had taken some precautions since Chamberlain s departure.Having seen blitzed dwellings in the East End where the whole fabrichad pancaked into the basement, the P.M.was not sanguine about No.10,despite the tiny air-raid shelter built below stairs and the reinforcedlounge and dining room that had been converted from old offices by put-ting steel shutters on the windows and shoring up the ceilings.He orderedhis living quarters shifted to the Annexe  a street-level apartment con-verted from two typists rooms in the solid government building at Sto-rey s Gate, right above the C.W.R.bunker.Clementine began to decorate this apartment, with its drawing room,dining room, and study, in pastel shades, and hung paintings and cosy fur-nishings.Winston began to live here on the sixteenth.Part of the urgency for the move was inspired by Bletchley.That Fri-day, September 13, they had intercepted orders for nine hours of veryheavy attacks on  a target believed to be London beginning at six p.m. Ifthe weather permits, Intelligence warned,  long-range bombers will beemployed. Shortly a further intercept revealed that the bombing offensivewould continue into Saturday morning and probably into the afternoon aswell.Since the Annexe would not be ready by then, Mr Churchill felt itwould be appropriate to leave London; it was nearly the weekend anyway.He again visited Dollis-hill on the way, and upon arrival at Chequers heordered the evacuation prepared of the first three hundred officials, in-cluding the war cabinet, its secretariat, chiefs of staff committee, andGeneral Brooke s headquarters to this bunker. Publicity must be forbid-den. 24Nothing much came of the predicted air raid.Thirty-one Londonersdied in scattered bombing.Saturday was also ominously quiet.GeneralBrooke suspected that the invasion scare was a bluff to pin troops down inthis country, since Italy s invasion of Egypt had just begun.Churchilldrove back to No.10 that afternoon, and spent his first night in the Cen-tral War Room bunker.His first amphibious landing operation since Namsos was about to be-gin.A British naval taskforce with General de Gaulle would, he hoped,shortly put ashore six thousand British marines and French legionaries at448CHURCHILL S WARDakar.But there were bad auguries.The British governor of Nigeria, SirBernard Bourdillon, had warned that  General de Gaulle s name cut no icein West Africa. And six French cruisers loyal to Marshal Pétain had leftToulon on September 9 and steamed out of the Mediterranean.In fact they were bound for Gabon, carried no troops, and had noconnection with the Dakar operation.The French admiralty had evenformally notified the British attaché at Madrid of the sailing, and hisimmediate signal reached London at 11:50 p.m.on the tenth.It was notdrawn to Admiral Pound s attention until the eleventh.Later, searching for scapegoats, the prime minister would make capi-tal out of this delay.That morning he presided over the chiefs of staffmeeting, and learned that the French squadron had been sighted off Gi-braltar.Pound ordered Renown to raise steam.At noon-thirty on Thursdaythe twelfth the cabinet ordered that a naval squadron confront the cruisersoff Casablanca and impede their advance on Dakar  wrongly presumed tobe their final destination.For the next three days Churchill had other occupations on his mind.It was not until he returned to Chequers at four-thirty on Sunday after-noon, September 15, that the bad news hit him: this powerful Frenchcruiser squadron had put into Dakar undetected.Ark Royal s aircraft hadsighted them there.It was pure coincidence, of course.But seizing a map of West Africa,Churchill telephoned Downing-street around five-fifteen p.m., ordered histrusty Major Morton to convoke the military staffs: cancel Dakar and re-place it with a landing further south at Conakry, followed by an overlandmarch to the north-east.De Gaulle could then invest Dakar by land whilethe British blockaded it by sea.25that clear, bright Sunday afternoon a thousand enemy planes  twohundred of them bombers  had attacked London.Again Churchill musthave had warning, because he hurried out to Uxbridge taking Clementineand a private secretary to follow the battle from No.11 Group s bunker.From a gallery of this totally silent underground room, he watched asAir Vice-Marshal Kenneth Park marshalled twenty-five fighter squadronsfor London s defence [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]