Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [23]
Immediately following the May 28 meeting, some twenty-five other ministers—all those who were not members of the War Cabinet—filed into the room, to be briefed by the prime minister. He described the situation at Dunkirk, anticipated the French collapse and expressed his conviction that Britain must fight on. “He was quite magnificent,”75 wrote Hugh Dalton, the minister of economic warfare, “the man, and the only man we have, for this hour … He was determined to prepare public opinion for bad tidings … Attempts to invade us would no doubt be made.” Churchill told the ministers that he had considered the case for negotiating with “that man”—and rejected it. Britain’s position, with its fleet and air force, remained strong. He concluded with a magnificent peroration: “I am convinced that every man of you would rise up and tear me down from my place if I were for one moment to contemplate parley or surrender. If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”
He was greeted with acclamation extraordinary at any assembly of ministers. No word of dissent was uttered. The meeting represented an absolute personal triumph. He reported its outcome to the War Cabinet. That night, the British government informed Reynaud in Paris of its refusal of Italian mediation for peace terms. A further suggestion by Halifax of a direct call upon the United States was dismissed. A bold stand against Germany, Churchill reiterated, would carry vastly more weight than “a grovelling appeal” at such a moment. At the following day’s War Cabinet meeting, new instructions to Gort were discussed. Halifax favoured giving the C-in-C discretion to capitulate. Churchill would hear of no such thing. Gort was told to fight on at least until further evacuation from Dunkirk became impossible. Mindful of Allied reproaches, he told the War Office that French troops in the perimeter must be allowed access to British ships. He informed Reynaud of his determination to create a new British Expeditionary Force, based on the Atlantic port of St.-Nazaire, to fight alongside the French army in the west.
All through those days, the evacuation from the port and beaches continued, much hampered by lack of small craft to ferry troops out to the larger ships, a deficiency which the Admiralty strove to make good by a public appeal for suitable vessels. History has invested the saga of Dunkirk with a dignity less conspicuous to those present. John Horsfall, a company commander of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, told a young fellow officer: “I hope you realise your distinction76. You are now taking part in the greatest military shambles ever achieved by the British Army.” Many rank-and-file soldiers returned from France nursing a lasting resentment towards the military hierarchy that had exposed them to such a predicament. Horsfall noticed that in the last phase of the march to the beaches, his men fell unnaturally silent: “There was a limit to what any of us77 could absorb, with those red fireballs flaming skywards every few minutes, and I suppose we just reached the point where there was little left to say.” They were joined by a horse artillery major, superb in Savile Row riding breeches and scarlet-and-gold forage cap, who said, “I’m a double blue at this, old boy—I was at Mons [in 1914].” A young Grenadier Guards officer, Edward Ford, passed the long hours of waiting for a ship reading a copy of Chapman’s Homer which he found in the sands. For the rest of his days, Ford was nagged by unsatisfied curiosity about who had abandoned his Chapman amid the detritus of the beaches.
Though the Royal Navy’s achievement at Dunkirk embraced its highest traditions, many men noted only the chaos. “It does seem to me incredible78 that the organisation of the beach work should have been so bad,” wrote Lt. Robert Hichens of