Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [165]
ELEVEN
Camels and the Bear
CHURCHILL TRAVELLED TO the Middle East in austere and dangerous discomfort. “What energy and gallantry of the old gentleman,”630 marvelled Oliver Harvey, “setting off … across Africa in the heat of mid-summer.” This was true enough, but masked the reality that for the rest of the conflict, Churchill was much happier in overseas theatres than amid the drabness of Britain, where he found scant romance and increasing pettiness and complaint. Though he cherished a vision of fortress Albion, its reality became increasingly uncongenial. Before his departure, the prime minister discussed with Eden whether another minister should join his party: “He felt the need for company, especially in Moscow.”631 Here was a glimpse of Churchill’s loneliness when he faced great challenges. He yearned for the comradeship of some peer figure, such as Beaverbrook or Smuts, in whom he could confide, with whom he could exchange impressions and jokes. This time, however, it was decided that he should take in his entourage only civil servants and soldiers, Alan Brooke foremost among them. They would be joined for the Moscow leg by Averell Harriman, whose presence was designed to ensure Russian understanding that what the British asserted, the Americans endorsed; and by Sir Archibald Wavell, who had served in Russia in 1919 and spoke the language.
They travelled aboard a Liberator bomber which possessed virtues of performance—range, speed and altitude—but none of the luxuries of the Boeing Clipper. Somewhat to the embarrassment of Britain’s airmen, the safety of the prime minister was entrusted to a young Atlantic ferry pilot named Bill Vanderkloot, who hailed from Illinois. Vanderkloot was deemed to possess temperament, navigational skills and long-range experience which no available home-grown British pilot could match. The American admirably fulfilled expectations. His plane, however, was a cramped and unsuitable conveyance for an elderly man upon whose welfare, in considerable degree, the hopes of Western civilisation rested. It was so noisy that Churchill could communicate with his fellow passengers only by exchanging notes. The flight was long and cold. They made an African landfall over Spanish Morocco, then struck a course which took them well inland before turning east over the desert, flying high and using oxygen. In his mask, wrote one of the plane’s crew, Churchill “looked exactly as though he was in a Christmas party disguise.”632 He sat in the copilot’s seat, reviving a host of youthful memories as they approached Cairo: “Often had I seen the day break on the Nile,”633 during Kitchener’s campaign against the Dervishes in 1898. Once on the ground, he began a long, painstaking grilling of soldiers and officials about the desert campaign, the army and its commanders.
All that he saw and heard confirmed his instincts back in London. Ever since 1939, visitors to Egypt had been dismayed by the lassitude pervading the nexus of headquarters, camps, villas, hotels and clubs that lay along the Nile. An air of self-indulgent imperialism, of a kind that confirmed the worst prejudices of Aneurin Bevan, persisted even in the midst of a war of national survival. “Old Miles [Lampson, British ambassador to Egypt]634 leads a completely peacetime existence, a satrap,” wrote Oliver Harvey scornfully. “He does no work at all.” The habits and complacency of peacetime also prevailed in many military messes. In 1941 Averell