Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [11]
Addressing the Commons that day, the prime minister apologised for his brevity: “I hope that … my friends … will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act … We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering … But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say: ‘Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.’”
Churchill’s war speeches are usually quoted in isolation. This obscures the bathos of remarks by backbench MPs which followed those of the prime minister. On May 13, Maj. Sir Philip Colfox, West Dorset, said that although the country must now pursue national unity, he himself much regretted that Neville Chamberlain had been removed from the premiership. Sir Irving Albery, Gravesend, recalled the new prime minister’s assertion: “My policy is a policy of war.” Albery said he thought it right to praise his predecessor’s commitment to the cause of peace. Col. John Gretton, Burton, injected a rare note of realism by urging the House not to waste words, when “the enemy is almost battering at our gates.” The bleakest indication of the Conservative Party’s temper came from the fact that while Neville Chamberlain was cheered as he entered the chamber that day, Churchill’s appearance was greeted with resentful Tory silence.
This, his first important statement, received more applause from abroad than it did from some MPs. The Philadelphia Inquirer editorialised: “He proved in this one short speech40 that he was not afraid to face the truth and tell it. He proved himself an honest man as well as a man of action. Britain has reason to be enheartened by his brevity, his bluntness and his courage.” Time magazine wrote: “That smart, tough, dumpy little man41, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, knows how to face facts … Great Britain’s tireless old firebrand has changed the character of Allied warmongering.”
That day, May 13, the threat of German air attack on Britain caused Churchill to make his first significant military decision: he rejected a proposal for further fighter squadrons to be sent to France, to reinforce the ten already committed. But, while the news from the Continent was obviously bleak, he asserted that he was “by no means sure that the great battle was developing.” He still cherished hopes of turning the tide in Norway, signalling to Admiral Lord Cork and Orrery on May 14: “I hope you will get Narvik cleaned up as soon as possible, and then work southward with increasing force.”
Yet the Germans were already bridging the Meuse at Sedan and Dinant, south of Brussels, for their armoured columns emerging from the Ardennes’s forests. A huge gap was opening between the French Ninth Army, which was collapsing, and the Second, on its left. Though the BEF, in Belgium, was still not seriously engaged, its C-in-C, Lord Gort, appealed for air reinforcements. Gort commanded limited confidence. Like all British generals, he lacked training and instincts for the handling of large forces. One of the army’s cleverest staff officers, Col. Ian Jacob of the War Cabinet Secretariat, wrote: “We have for twenty years42 thought little about how to win big campaigns on land; we have been immersed in our day-to-day imperial police activities.”
This deficiency, of plausible “big battlefield” commanders, would dog British arms throughout the war. Gort was a famously brave officer who had won a Victoria Cross in World War I, and he still carried himself with a boyish enthusiasm. Maj. Gen. John Kennedy, soon to become director of military operations at the War Office, described the BEF’s C-in-C as “a fine fighting soldier”—a useful testimonial for a platoon commander. In blunter words, the general lacked brains, as do most men possessed of the suicidal courage necessary to