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is terrible fighting with both hands tied behind one’s back.” He was, of course, venting frustration that he had been unable to persuade the United States to support his aspirations. In his war memoirs, he described this as “the most acute difference I ever had with General Eisenhower.”804 He cabled Eden from Cairo, also on November 21, to suggest that if questions were asked in Parliament about the Aegean, the foreign secretary should tell the House defiantly that the hazards of the operation were foreseen from the outset, “and if they were disregarded it was because other reasons805 and other hopes were held to predominate over them. If we are never going to proceed on anything but certainties we must certainly face the prospect of a prolonged war.” This was lame stuff, to justify the unjustifiable.

Amazingly, at the meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Cairo on November 24, the prime minister renewed his pleas for an invasion of Rhodes. Marshall recalled: “All the British were against me806. It got hotter and hotter. Finally Churchill grabbed his lapels … and said: ‘His Majesty’s Government can’t have its troops standing idle. Muskets must flame.’” Marshall responded in similarly histrionic terms: “Not one American soldier is going to die on [that] goddam beach.” The U.S. Chiefs remained unwavering, even when Maitland Wilson joined the meeting to press the Rhodes case. The British, having lost to the Germans, now lost to the Americans as well. In a letter to Clementine on November 26, Churchill once more lamented the fall of Leros: “I cannot pretend to have an adequate defence of what occurred.”807 Indeed, he did not. The Aegean campaign represented a triumph of impulse over reason that should never have taken place. It inflicted further damage upon American trust in the prime minister’s judgement and commitment to the principal objectives of the Grand Alliance. It was fortunate for British prestige and for Churchill’s reputation that it unfolded at a time when successes elsewhere eclipsed public consciousness of a gratuitous humiliation.

FIFTEEN

Tehran

IN THE EYES of the world, by the autumn of 1943 Churchill’s prestige was impregnable. He stood beside Roosevelt and Stalin, the “Big Three,” plainly destined to become victors of the greatest conflict in the history of mankind. “Croakers” at home had been put to flight by the battlefield successes denied to Britain between 1939 and 1942. Yet those who worked most closely with the prime minister, functionaries and service chiefs alike, were troubled by manifestations of weariness and erratic judgement. His government never lacked domestic critics. His refusal to seriously address issues of postwar reconstruction caused dismay. “His ear is so sensitively tuned808 to the bugle note of history,” wrote Aneurin Bevan—for once justly—“that he is often deaf to the more raucous clamour of contemporary life.” Eden agreed: “Mr. Churchill did not like to give his time to anything809 not exclusively concerned with the conduct of the war. This seemed to be a deep instinct in him and, even though it was part of his strength as a war leader, it could also be an embarrassment.”

It was irksome for ministers responsible for addressing vital issues concerned with Britain’s future to find their leader unwilling to discuss them, or to make necessary decisions. On November 29, 1943, Minister of Labour Ernest Bevin gained admission to the prime minister’s bedroom, where so many remarkable scenes were played out in a setting sketched by Brooke: “The red and gold dressing gown810 in itself was worth going miles to see, and only Winston could have thought of wearing it! He looked rather like some Chinese mandarin! The few hairs were usually ruffled on his bald head. A large cigar stuck sideways out of his face. The bed was littered with papers and dispatches. Sometimes the tray with his finished breakfast was still on the bed table. The bell was continually being rung for secretaries, typists, stenographer, or his faithful valet Sawyers.”

On this occasion, Bevin raised some issue