скачать книгу бесплатно
‘No, not by a long chalk. I want every stinking German left alive crawling on his hands and knees, begging for mercy, just like you left that faggot the other night. I hope I make myself clear.’
There was no point in further protest. In war he had been a senior officer but in defeat he felt no better or more worthy of respect than any other man; the German turned on his heel as correctly as his ailing legs would allow and joined the end of one of the lines.
It took more than two hours for the guards to finish their work, and the drizzle continued to fall as the parade ground turned into a sea of slime. There were tears mingling with the rain that flowed down the cheeks of many of the Germans, tears of emasculation and despoliation, tears of despair at having been captured, of having failed both their comrades and their country. But most of all there were tears of guilt at being survivors when so many others had found the courage to do their duty to the very end. In laying down their arms instead of their lives they were guilty of desertion, of dereliction, of having betrayed the womenfolk and children they had left behind. As Pilsudski knew, almost every one of the men on that parade ground secretly believed he deserved the punishment being meted out to him. Pilsudski might be a vicious bastard but, as losers, theirs was the greater sin.
Such feelings of guilt are the general rule for prisoners of war. But to all generalities there are exceptions. And in Camp 174B, the exception was Peter Hencke …
‘It’s an unpalatable prospect, Willie,’ the Prime Minister growled, breaking a lengthy period of silent contemplation as he searched for the soap under a thick layer of suds.
William Cazolet took off his glasses and gave them a vigorous polish to clear the condensation. He felt such a fool on bath nights. In the fortified Annexe off Downing Street where the Prime Minister spent much of his time, the ventilation was close to non-existent behind windows which were permanently enclosed in thick steel shutters. It made the bathroom hot and steamy, just as the PM liked it, but for visitors – and there usually were visitors on bath night, even female secretaries taking shorthand – it could be an ordeal. It was one of the many eccentricities of working and living with Winston Churchill.
‘What prospect is that, exactly?’ Cazolet asked, leaning forward from his perch on the toilet seat in an attempt to restore the circulation to his legs. It could be uncomfortable sitting at the right hand of history.
The Prime Minister grumbled on, almost as if talking to himself. ‘There was a time, not so long ago, when the British were the only players in the orchestra. We were on our own. Our empire provided all the musicians. I conducted, even wrote most of the score. My God, but we made sweet music for the world to listen to.’ There was no hiding the pride in his voice. ‘Had it not been for us, Europe would now be listening to nothing but the harsh stamp of German brass bands. D’you know, Willie, I’ve never liked brass bands. All huff and puff without any trace of tenderness. Could you ever imagine Mozart composing sonatas for brass bands?’
He paused to scrub his back and puff fresh life into the cigar which had been lying sad and soggy in an ashtray beside the soap dish. The Old Man was lacking his usual jauntiness tonight, the secretary thought. Cazolet was only twenty-eight, a young Foreign Service officer thrust by the opportunities and shortages of war into the tight-knit team of prime ministerial assistants who were responsible for taking care of the Old Man’s every need, transmitting his orders, acting as a link between Downing Street and the mighty war machine over which he presided, ensuring that he took plenty of soda with his whisky and, if necessary, putting him to bed. Some couldn’t take it, working round the clock in the cement cocoon of the Annexe and the War Cabinet Rooms beneath, without sunlight or sight of the world above, discovering what the weather was like only through bulletins posted on a board in the corridor, subjected to the Old Man’s vile temper and suffocating in an atmosphere of constant cigar smoke. But Cazolet had taken it, and it had given the young man an uncanny aptitude for reading the PM’s thoughts.
‘I’ve always thought the American military display too great a fondness for brass bands,’ Cazolet prompted. ‘Very loud. No subtlety.’
‘But my God, how we needed them, and how generously they have given. Yet …’ There was an unaccustomed pause as the Old Man searched for an appropriate expression, hiding behind a haze of cigar smoke. ‘It seems we are destined to march behind one brass band or another, Willie,’ he said slowly, picking his words with care.
Cazolet wiped the condensation from his glasses once more while he studied the other man. He saw not the great war leader, the stuff of the newsreels and propaganda films. The Old Man was no celluloid figure in two dimensions but a man full of self-acknowledged faults which at times made him impossibly irascible even in the same breath as he was visionary. The spirit seemed unquenchable, yet the body was seventy years old and was visibly beginning to tire. What else could one expect after six winters of war? Flamboyance and strength of character were not enough any longer to give colour to the cheeks, which were pale and puffy. Too many late nights, too many cigars, too much hiding underground. Of everything, simply too much.
‘How was Eisenhower?’ Cazolet enquired, anxious not to allow the PM to slip off into another empty silence. Anyway, it was time to probe. The PM had been unusually reticent and moody since his meeting with the American general on the previous day, and Cazolet could sense something churning away inside.
‘He is a determined, single-minded man, our general,’ the Old Man responded. The deliberate way he punctuated the words did not make them sound like a compliment. ‘The very characteristics that make him such an excellent military leader make him nothing of a politician. And he is American. He thinks American. He listens too much to Americans, particularly his generals, most of whom seem to have gained their experience of battle out of books at West Point. They are all quartermasters and caution. I judge an officer by the sand in his boots and the mud on his tunic rather than the number of textbooks he has managed to pacify.’
The PM contemplated the moist end of his Havana, deliberating whether it was yet time to call for its replacement. Since his heart murmur three years earlier his doctors had told him to cut down, to cut down on everything except fresh air and relaxation. Idiots! As if the greatest danger facing the British Empire was a box of Cuban cigars and the occasional bottle of brandy.
A potent mix of smoke and steam attacked Cazolet’s lungs and he stifled a cough. ‘They say Eisenhower can be weak and indecisive, that he listens to too many opinions, carries the impression of the last man who sat upon him.’
Churchill shook his head in disagreement. ‘If that were so we would not be at odds, since I would be constantly by his side, ready to sit upon him at a moment’s notice.’ He patted his paunch. ‘And I would make a very considerable impression!’ He broke into a genial smile, the first that evening. He was beginning to feel better. To hell with the doctors. He lit a fresh cigar. ‘Don’t underestimate the general, William. He is not weak. A conciliator, perhaps, who prefers to lead by persuasion rather than instruction. But above all he is an American. Americans are boisterous, unbroken, raw, full of lust and irresponsibility, goodheartedness, charm and naked energy. And above all they haven’t the slightest understanding of Europe. For them it is little more than a bloody battlefield on which they have sacrificed their young men twice in a generation, some troublesome, far-flung place on a foreign map. That’s why they deserted us after the last war. They threw away the victory then; we must not allow them to do so again.’
‘What do you want from them?’
‘There are many things I expect of our American friends – ships, arms, food, money, materiel. But one thing above all they must give me, Willie.’ His blue eyes flared defiantly. ‘They must give me Berlin!’
The blackout curtains were drawn tight around the luxurious manor house adjacent to SHAEF forward military headquarters in newly-liberated France. It wouldn’t do to have the Supreme Allied Commander shot up by some Luftwaffe night-fighter, not when he was having dinner and, with growing agitation, giving forth of his own version of the previous day’s meeting.
‘Would you believe the man? He tried to scold me. Said I was smoking too much, that it was an unforgivable extravagance at a time of general shortage. Damn nerve!’ General Dwight Eisenhower started to chuckle in spite of himself. He regarded the PM, half-American on his mother’s side, as something of a father figure and so tolerated the older man’s bombastic and occasionally patronizing manner. He was no less a chain smoker than Churchill, yet even in his addiction he revealed his modest, less flamboyant character. Strictly a ‘Lucky Strikes’ man.
Eisenhower paused to indicate there was a serious point to his tale. ‘Extravagance! I told him I was willing to be extravagant with everything but men’s lives. Yet he still insists on taking the most outrageous risks …’ The general shook his head sadly, staring into the flame of the candles that lit the beautifully laid dinner table separating him from his companion. ‘The Brits are running out of time. They’ve been bled dry; Britannia with her wrists slashed. It’s making the Old Man impatient, rash.’
The genuine regret in Eisenhower’s voice was not lost on his companion, who was British, and who mistook neither the irony of sitting in a Europe only recently freed from German occupation while surrounded by seemingly endless supplies of vintage champagne, nor the absurdity that war seemed to be fought either from foxholes or from the luxury of liberated French chateaux. ‘So what did you tell him?’
‘Just that. He was being rash. So then he gets het up and says risks have to be taken, it’s the art of war. Art, for Chrissake! I told him that dying isn’t an art but a ruthless damn military science.’ He stubbed out his cigarette as if he were crushing bugs, grinding it to pulp in the crystal ashtray. ‘You see, he wants Berlin. A final master stroke to crown his war, so he can lead the victory parade through the captured German capital.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Oh, not a lot, except the military value of Berlin doesn’t amount to a row of beans and it’d cost at least one hundred thousand casualties – American casualties – to get there before the Russians. Christ, can you imagine how tough the Germans are going to be fighting for their own capital? !’
The telephone interrupted them for the fourth time since they had sat down to dine, and Eisenhower jumped to answer it. This proved to be a mistake for as he drew back his chair he seemed to double up and a flash of pain crossed his face. Chronic indigestion. When in England he had blamed it on the endless diet of Brussels sprouts and boiled cabbage which seemed to be standard fare in London, but in France he had run out of excuses. They didn’t eat boiled cabbage, and the pain was getting worse. The strains of war were plucking at him, demanding that he ease up. The point had been brought firmly home when he discovered a rat in one of the classrooms serving as his office. He had taken out his revolver and, from a distance of no more than a few feet, shot at it. He missed. Carefully he had put on his glasses and shot again. And missed again. The third shot succeeded only in blowing off its tail and a sergeant had used a chair to put both the rat and the Supreme Commander out of their misery. Eisenhower was tired, he had been losing weight and the patchwork quilt of lines beneath his eyes had sagged into whirlpools of fatigue. He needed to steady his hand and to get his mind off the war, but how could he? Even as he talked on the telephone his jaw was chomping with frustration.
‘OK-OK-OK, run up the white flag. If State insists it’s vital I see the Crown Prince – where’d you say he was from? – you’d better fit it in. Then you go and ask the State Department, very politely, if they’d mind putting a cork in their courtesy calls and letting us get on with winning this goddamned war!’ The grinding of his teeth could be heard across the room. ‘And one more thing. No more interruptions, eh?’
He hobbled back towards the table, massaging his bad knee. It always swelled when he was run down, and his habitually high blood pressure hit new peaks and he lost still more of his hair. And he could really do without this run-in with Churchill.
‘For Chrissake, he’s being preposterous. Even if we do take Berlin, we can’t hold it. We already agreed at Yalta that it’ll be in the Russian zone of occupation after the war. So five minutes to hold Mr Churchill’s victory parade and then we hand it back. That’s about twenty thousand US casualties for every godforsaken minute. A high price for an old man’s ambition, eh?’ He swirled the whisky around the glass, watching the candlelight catch the finely cut patterns in the French crystal, wondering what his troops in the field facing von Rundstedt had eaten that evening, and envying them their simple tasks of war. ‘I’ll not let the old men of Europe play their games with my troops,’ he said quietly. ‘My duty is clear. To win this war, and to win it with the minimum loss of Allied lives. If lives are to be lost, better they be Russian than American or British.’
There was no response from his companion. Perhaps he had gone too far. He felt the need to justify himself. ‘There’s something else. Something pretty scary. Our intelligence guys believe Hitler may be planning a retreat from Berlin to the mountains in Bavaria and Austria, a sort of Alpine redoubt. He moves everything he can in there and conducts endless guerrilla warfare. God, it would be tough rousting him out of there. The war might never end.’
‘But is that likely?’
‘He’s fighting for his life; he’s not going to roll over just to please Churchill.’
‘So …?’
‘So to hell with what the Old Man wants. We concentrate on cutting off any chance of Hitler’s retreat to the mountains.’ He drained the glass. ‘And if it means Stalin taking Berlin and half of Europe, it would be a pity. But not a great pity.’
‘What a way to run a war!’ Churchill exclaimed, more soapy water splashing over the side of the bath and dripping on to the carpet.
Cazolet looked despairingly at his suit, the razor-sharp creases of half an hour ago now a sorry tangle of damp wool.
‘Some intelligence men sitting on their backsides in a Zurich bar hear whispers about a mountain fortress, and Eisenhower wants to cast all our plans aside. For mere tittle-tattle and rumour!’
‘But surely there may be something in those reports,’ interjected Cazolet. He could always recognize when Churchill’s enthusiasm ran away with his prudence, particularly late at night.
‘Let us suppose, let us for one fraction of a moment suppose …’ Churchill responded, his jowls quivering with indignation and stabbing his cigar like some blunt bayonet in the direction of the younger man. ‘Let us suppose that the same American intelligence experts who just four months ago so lamentably failed to spot thirty-one Nazi divisions massing in the Ardennes to launch the Battle of the Bulge were, on this occasion and in spite of their track record, right. So what? What can Hitler do in the Alps? Let him have his caves, let him freeze in the winter snows just as he did on the Russian plains. He can do no real damage in the mountains. But Berlin …’ At the mention of the word, his voice lowered, the brimstone being replaced by an almost conspiratorial timbre. ‘Berlin is the key, William, the key. Without it, everything may be lost.’
The waters heaved and parted as Churchill raised his considerable girth out of the bath and gesticulated for Cazolet to hand him a tent-size cotton towel. ‘It is quite simple. Either we take Berlin, or the Russians will. Vienna, Budapest, Sofia, probably Prague, almost every one of the great capitals in Central Europe will soon be occupied by the Red Army. If he gains Berlin, too, Stalin will have his paws around the heart of the continent. I have to tell you, Willie, I do not trust him. He talks of friendship, but every time Comrade Stalin stretches out his hand to me, it always feels as if he is reaching directly for my throat!’ Churchill, suddenly distracted, sat naked on the edge of the bath.
‘And behind us, here in London, I fear the worst, Willie. Defeat. Before the end of the year, at the election.’
Cazolet couldn’t help himself. The idea seemed too absurd. ‘Nonsense! How can you lose after all you’ve done? They must support you.’
‘I love them, with all my heart I love them, but I have little faith in their gratitude.’ He sat silent for a moment, drawing in his chin until it became lost in the loose folds of flesh. He tried to hide the misting in his eyes, but there was no mistaking the catch of emotion in his voice as he resumed. ‘My own father. One of the great statesmen of his age. Yet they threw him to one side. Broke his heart on the great anvil of politics …’ Tears were starting to roll down Churchill’s cheeks as he remembered the humiliation, even as Cazolet recognized the hyperbole and inexactitude. Churchill’s father had been a drunken womanizer, a disgraceful husband and even worse father, and had died at a young age of syphilis. Perhaps that was why the son had to work so hard to weave the legend and why he, at least, had to believe so passionately in it.
‘No. All triumphs are fleeting, Willie. One cannot expect gratitude. After the last war we promised them homes fit for heroes. They’re still waiting. And if Stalin and his acolytes are to rule from the Urals to the Atlantic, right up to our own doorstep, I’m not sure how long the electorate could resist inviting them in, even here. So you see, we need Berlin, to stop the disease spreading, Willie. If we lose. Berlin we shall lose the peace. The battle for Hitler’s capital is the most important contest of the war. Sadly, it seems we shall have to wage it against our American allies.’
There was a glint in his pale eyes, revealing the boyish enthusiasm of which he was so capable – or was it the desperation of an ageing, ailing leader? Cazolet was no longer sure.
‘If only we could be certain Hitler would never leave Berlin,’ Cazolet responded. ‘Then everything would fall into place.’
‘My thoughts precisely, Willie. If only.’
The tension in the general’s face had disappeared. As the flame had eaten away the candles and the warm wax had trickled on to the starched tablecloth, his mood had softened. Eisenhower was no longer a general on parade. The creases across his face dissolved and the muscles around his jaw stopped working overtime. ‘Have I been too hard on the Brits?’
‘We’ll survive,’ his companion responded, returning his smile.
‘I didn’t mean to be hard. Your Churchill’s a great guy, really. Just wrong on this one, I guess. I’m sorry.’ He looked coy as he tried to make amends. ‘You know I like the British.’
‘What, all of us?’
‘Some more than others, I guess.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
The general looked intently across the table at Kay Summersby, the woman seconded to Eisenhower’s headquarters early in the war as his driver, then secretary, now also his lover.
‘Would you obey a direct order to come to bed, or shall I have you taken out at dawn and shot for disobedience?’
She threw her napkin playfully across the table at him, and thought how boyish he could still look with his blue eyes and explosive smile, even with his hair in rapid retreat.
‘Well, if it would help further the cause of Anglo-American understanding …’
It was in their eyes that Hencke could see the change. Once they had been battle-hardened, men of steel, soldiers of the Wehrmacht who even in captivity would gather together for the strength and support they could give each other. They had crowded around the numerous kindling fires in noisy groups, finding tasks to fill their days and maintain their spirits, beating tin cans into exotic cigarette cases, moulding and whittling jewellery from scraps of clear plastic salvaged from the cockpits of crashed planes, while those with less dexterity played chess, exchanged stories or simply shared photographs and experiences. Even in defeat there had been defiance.
Now it was all gone. There was little conversation, only silent figures whiling away the hours huddled over the low flames, some using tin cans to cook the scraps of extra rations they had bribed out of the guards or wheedled from fellow prisoners through a crooked game of Skat, no longer sharing, gaunt faces blackened from squatting so close over the fires, heads bowed, eyes red rimmed and desperate, peering out of sooty masks like clowns at a circus of the damned. As Hencke walked around the camp they cast furtive glances to see who passed by before returning once more to stare into the flames, unable or unwilling to hold his gaze. Pilsudski had known what he was about, the bastard.
It wasn’t just the finger. God, if that had been all it would have been over and done with in a moment Less pain than a boot camp hypodermic, one good heave and a cold shower and it would have been nothing more than unpleasant history. No, it was the feeling of utter worthlessness with which they were left. Pilsudski had reduced them to objects without value, with no rights, no feelings, no dignity, scarcely men at all. They had stood in the rain, raging inside at the injustice and their impotence, sick with apprehension as the line of men shortened and their turn came ever closer. They were fighting men, yet in a minute Pilsudski’s guards with their harsh, slime-smeared gloves were going to reduce them to the level of castrated pigs, not physically, but inside, where the scars never heal. When it was over they had slunk around in their private worlds of shame, feeling dirty, guilty, no longer comrades but individuals, isolated and alone. And Hencke would need every one of them if he were to have any hope of success.
A lifetime ago he had been a teacher in a bustling provincial town where the children laughed, the coffee shops were washed with conversation and the trams ran on time. He had found happiness, for a while, helping his wards enjoy a childhood he had never known. His mother had died in childbirth, his father had failed to return from the gas-filled trenches of the First War and he had been entrusted to the care of a maiden aunt who had carried her enforced maternal duties and self-sacrifice like a donkey does a chafing saddle, intolerant and protesting, a burden which she used to impress her neighbours even while she oppressed the boy. She had offered love, of a sort – selfish, demanding, inflexible, but what the middle-aged spinster recognized as love, her entire knowledge of which had been gained one clumsy afternoon as a teenager in a hayrick. She had grown to maturity with the view that men were capable only of deception, that even her brother’s death at the front was an act of personal desertion and yet, to do her justice, she was determined that her young ward would prove the exception. All her attention was lavished on the boy whom she would raise in her own image, the one man in her life who would never descend into lust and betray her. It hadn’t worked, of course. She had kept him isolated and away from the corrupting influence of friends, forbidden even to touch the memory of his lost father, so that he grew up at first in awe and eventually in hate of her until the self-righteous demands and accusations of ingratitude she cast at him had broken their bonds completely and he had been left on his own. He had built himself a new life, living his lost childhood through his young pupils, recapturing the dreams that had been stolen from him and devoting himself to the tasks of teaching with an enthusiasm combined with a degree of sensitivity and understanding that surprised those who knew nothing of his background. And few did, for outside school Hencke was intensely private, a man who insisted on the right to build his own world into which others were not invited until they had earned his trust, and he had convinced himself they would not infect the wounds left unhealed by his aunt. At last, in the small Sudeten town of Asch with its laughing children and coffee shops and trams, he thought he had found happiness. Then the war forced its way across his doorstep and the world he had so painstakingly built for himself had been blasted away, leaving nothing but fragments. After that there had been nowhere left to hide. Pilsudski had tried to strip away his sense of personal security and hope, but he was too late. Others had got there first.
Yet he needed Pilsudski, with all his grotesque savagery. Hencke had stood in line, waiting his turn, feeling the harsh wind lash his back and the tightening of apprehension in his body as he drew closer to the table and its guards, but he had experienced neither fear nor outrage. Instead there was a sense of relief, of opportunity. The degradation itself left him empty, cold; he knew there were worse fates in war. Yet he also knew that stripping away their manhood had made the others malleable; it was precisely the effect Pilsudski wanted, but Hencke understood that he might turn it to his own advantage. Within each of the crouched and humbled figures around the prison camp burned a sense of outrage which, if harnessed, might turn them once more into a force of terrible retribution – his retribution. Hencke needed these men. There was little enough chance with them, none at all without them.
As he looked across the flickering glow of a dozen tiny campfires and the hunched shoulders of those he wanted for his own personal cause, Hencke understood that the inevitable price of failure in war, even a war so near its end, would be death. But he knew he would have to risk it, risk everything, if his mission were to succeed. Even if it meant his being the last man to die …
TWO (#ulink_7f59cd1a-05cb-5008-8bbe-248be6ff61b6)
Cazolet squeezed on to the narrow seat and tried to make himself comfortable, knowing he had little chance of success. When the House of Commons had been hit by a stray Luftwaffe bomb in 1941 the team of firefighters, already sadly depleted by the firestorms blazing around London, had faced the choice of saving either the Commons or the more ancient and gracious construction of neighbouring Westminster Hall. The comfort and convenience of politicians was balanced in the scales by the firemen against the preservation of an important part of the nation’s Tudor heritage; the Commons had been left to burn until gutted.
For a while this had caused considerable disruption until the members of the House of Lords came to the rescue and gave over to their common-born colleagues the facilities of the undamaged Upper Chamber, a still more impressive Gothic edifice than the one left smouldering in ruins. Yet their hospitality had not stretched to the civil servants who accompany ministers, and so Cazolet and his kind were condemned to squashing on to a row of hard wooden stools tucked away in one corner. Not even the glories of uninhibited Victorian craftsmanship could do much to distract from the numbness that crept over Cazolet’s body less than ten minutes after perching on one of those hideous stools. Still, today he had other distractions and for once had forgotten that he could feel little from his shirt tail down.
An air of expectation filled the Chamber. Members of Parliament, many of them in the uniforms of the armed forces in which they served, bustled to find themselves a position on the red leather benches while others loitered around the extravagantly carved oak canopy covering the sovereign’s throne. Something was up. The word had gone round – the Prime Minister was coming to the House to make an important statement – everyone wanted to be in on it. Cazolet sat with a conspiratorial smile; these were the times he found his job so rewarding, when the whole world seemed to wait upon a prime ministerial utterance, the words of which Cazolet himself had drafted. And this one was going to be a cracker.
The Prime Minister walked purposefully into the Chamber, conspicuous in full morning dress with flowing coat tails, a spotted and loosely secured bow tie at his throat and his father’s gold watch fob stretched across the front of his waistcoat. The outfit was not new, indeed it gave the solid impression of having been made for him at least twenty years earlier, since it bulged and stretched in too many places. It should have been replaced long ago, but he felt comfortable in it. Anyway, Clemmie was always nagging him to be less extravagant.
No sooner had he found his place on the front bench than he was given the floor. ‘Mr Speaker, I pray the House will forgive the exuberance of my attire,’ he began, a thumb stuck firmly in his waistcoat pocket. The Old Man was teasing them, keeping them waiting, building up the atmosphere. ‘I have not, as some Honourable Members might conclude, come straight from the racecourse’ – there was a ripple of polite laughter. It wasn’t a very good joke, but if he could begin with any form of joke the news must be exceptional – ‘but from an audience with His Majesty the King. Just an hour or so ago I received news which I thought it only right to share with him and with the House at the first possible opportunity.’
‘He’s called an election,’ someone shouted from the back benches. It was a Labour MP renowned for his ready heckle, and Churchill rose willingly to the bait as more laughter washed across the House.
‘No, sir! The Honourable Gentleman must contain his impatience. He reminds me of a Black Widow spider, anxious for his date with destiny but who will undoubtedly discover that his love affair with the electorate will end only in his being brutally devoured.’
The Old Man was in good form, and there was general waving of Order Papers around the Chamber. The antagonisms of partisan politics had been laid to one side during the lifetime of the coalition government which Churchill led, but they were never far below the surface and were getting less restrained as it became apparent that an election and a return to normal parliamentary hostilities must be only weeks away.
‘Mr Speaker, sir, the whole House will know that a few days ago the Allied armies reached the western bank of the Rhine, the historical border of Germany.’ A low chorus of approval rose from the MPs, but Churchill quickly raised his hand to silence them. His tone had grown suddenly more serious. ‘No one could have been in any doubt that the crossing of the Rhine would be a deeply hazardous enterprise, with all the bridges across that vast river destroyed and the Nazi armies fighting fanatically to protect the homeland with their own towns and villages at their backs.’ He paused while he took a large linen handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers to clear his nose, and the habitual crease that ran down the centre of his forehead deepened into a frown. The Chamber was completely silent. Was it bad news after all? He had them all in his grasp – all, that is, except Cazolet, who struggled to contain his smile as he watched his master trifling with their emotions.
‘The Rhine is the last great barrier standing between our armies and complete victory. I have to tell this House that late last night a junior officer, a lieutenant, of the United States First Army, succeeded in’ – he hesitated slightly, toying with the words – ‘walking across a bridge at a small town called Remagen. It appears that the Germans, in their anxiety, failed to blow the bridge properly. Mr Speaker, the Rhine has been crossed. We have a bridgehead on German soil!’
The announcement was greeted with an outpouring of relief and jubilation on all sides, many Members rising to their feet to applaud and others shaking the hands of opponents they would normally have difficulty addressing in a civil tone. Churchill stood, triumphant in their midst, yet wishing for all the world that he were young again and could exchange his role for that of the lowly American lieutenant.
Once he had resumed his seat, other MPs rose to offer their congratulations and thoughts, giving the Prime Minister fresh opportunity to bask in the sun of military success.
‘What did you advise the King?’ asked one.
The Prime Minister’s demeanour was full of mischief. ‘The House may not know that in the dark days of 1940 I gave His Majesty a carbine, for his own personal use in the event of invasion.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I advised him that it was my firm opinion he would no longer need it.’
They loved it. Churchill’s sole regret was that he couldn’t hold the election instantly in the midst of such unqualified rejoicing. More questions, more praise. No one expected other than further fulsome accolades when Captain the Honourable Gerald Wickham-Browne, MC, DSM, caught the Speaker’s attention. The captain, junior scion of minor aristocracy, had lost an eye during the retreat from Dunkirk yet still managed to regard military combat with the sort of unrestrained enthusiasm normally found only amongst schoolchildren at a cup final. He was on his feet, standing in parade ground fashion, hands clasped behind his back and black eye-patch thrust proudly towards the distant ceiling. But he was not a happy man.
‘Is the Prime Minister aware, as delighted as I am to hear the news, that the honour of being the first to cross the Rhine was to have been left to British troops under General Montgomery? While of course we are delighted at the Americans’ good fortune in being able simply to walk across’ – Cazolet marvelled at how Wickham-Browne managed to make it sound as if a mongrel had run off with a string of prize sausages – ‘what is now to be the role of British troops, who have been preparing for months for the storming of the Rhine and who by sheer bad luck have been denied their share of this triumph? Are we to get anything by way of …’ He hesitated, unsure of the most appropriate word, before deciding it didn’t matter a damn anyway. ‘… compensation?’
Churchill rose to respond, his chin working up and down as he sought for the words of his reply, rubbing his thumbs in the palms of his hands in instinctive search for the cigar he wished he were smoking. ‘Let us not quibble over the fortunes of war. It is enough that the Rhine has been crossed. But let us not forget what this event has proved to us. First, that German resistance is crumbling. And second, that if we can pursue the battle with speed and flexibility, and can grasp the opportunities which confusion and indiscipline amongst the enemy may present, then nothing can stop our march across Germany. I have no doubt that now is the moment of our greatest opportunity, and that British forces will be in the vanguard of the victory which is surely to come. I have already telegraphed my sincerest congratulations to General Eisenhower and told him that our troops stand ready for the next challenge. Onward Britannia! Nothing can stop us now!’
At times of great crisis, words can be more powerful than bullets. Churchill had proved that time and again during the days of the Blitz when he had precious few bullets and little else with which to resist the enemy and to maintain British morale. He was conscious of the effect his words could have, yet, as he resumed his seat to the congratulations of his parliamentary colleagues, he had not the slightest notion of the impact they were causing several hundred miles away, at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, where his congratulatory telegram was bursting into fire like a grenade thrown through the window.
‘What in God’s name is this crap?’ The message trembled in Eisenhower’s hand.
British troops are ready … Now is the moment to swarm across the bridgehead at Remagen …
The flush of anger was spreading across his face as he read every new sentence. The adjutant who had delivered the telegram took another precautionary step backwards; the general was reputed to have an unreliable temper, and he didn’t care to be around to suffer the uncertain consequences.
German resistance and morale may collapse if you strike before the enemy has time to regroup …
Eisenhower continued to quote from Churchill’s missive. ‘Shit, doesn’t he realize we’ve got less than two hundred men perched on that bridgehead and they could get blown away any time? If we put so much as another pack of paperclips across that stinking bridge it’ll topple into the river. What’ll happen then? Our guys on the bridgehead become sandwich meat, that’s what!’
Suddenly he pounded his head as if to inflict punishment on himself. ‘What a fool I am … Losing my wits. Why didn’t I realize straight away what that scheming old bastard was up to?’ He read on.
The arguments for a direct drive on the German capital become irresistible. Let us drive down the autobahns which Hitler himself has built and not dare to stop until we have reached Berlin.
‘Berlin! So that’s still his game.’
He turned in his chair and screamed through the open door into the next office to his chief of staff. ‘Beetle! Get in here and bring a stenographer. I want to send a reply.’
Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith and the stenographer scuttled in without a word and perched in front of Eisenhower. There they sat, pencils poised, for several long moments while Eisenhower remained lost in thought. Ice seemed to have taken the place of the fires within him. Eventually Bedell Smith could stand the uncertainty no longer.
‘Changed your mind?’
Eisenhower raised his head from his thoughts and looked at him with piercing blue eyes.
‘Beetle, how do I say “Fuck You” in British?’
The commander tapped his stick against the chair to demand silence. In the darkness of the night the entire prisoner complement of Transit Camp 174B huddled together on the exercise square in search of companionship and warmth, forming a human amphitheatre around the flames of an open fire. Their faces stared gaunt and drained of colour in the flickering light like ghosts gathered around a grave. They expected no comfort from the commander’s words. An Ehrenrat had been called, a ‘Council of Elders’, and that only happened when there was a real mess.
The commander sat at their head, with his two senior officers on either side and several others standing behind. He was leaning on his stick even while seated, his face a lurid mask as some player in a tragedy.
‘My friends,’ the commander began. A few of them noticed that he had forsaken his customary formal greeting – ‘Men of the Wehrmacht!’; there was no suggestion of command in his voice. ‘My friends, I have gathered you all together to share with you the news I was given today. I can find no words to lessen the pain, and so I …’ He lowered his head, struggling for composure and fresh strength. He cleared his throat, as if the words were sticking in his gullet like phlegm.
‘The Russians are fighting on German soil. They are already well advanced into Pomerania, and have crossed the Oder. They are less than a hundred miles from the Hauptstadt, Berlin.’
