Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [44]
“Romans in Rome’s quarrel149,
Spared neither land nor gold”
On July 19, Hitler addressed the Reichstag and the world, publicly offering Britain a choice between peace and “unending suffering and misery.” Churchill responded, “I don’t propose to say anything in reply to Herr Hitler’s speech, not being on speaking terms with him.” He urged Lord Lothian, Britain’s ambassador in Washington, to press the Americans to fulfil Britain’s earlier request for the “loan” of old destroyers. On August 1, he delivered a magisterial rebuke to the Foreign Office for the elaborate phrasing of its proposed response to a message from the king of Sweden, who was offering to mediate between Britain and Germany. “The draft errs,” he wrote, “in trying to be too clever, and to enter into refinements of policy unsuited to the tragic simplicity and grandeur of the times and the issues at stake.” That day, Hitler issued his Directive No. 17, unleashing the Luftwaffe’s massive air campaign against Britain.
FOUR
The Battle of Britain
THUS BEGAN THE events that will define for eternity the image of Britain in the summer of 1940. Massed formations of German bombers with their accompanying fighter escorts droned across blue skies towards Kent and Sussex, to be met by intercepting Hurricanes and Spitfires, tracing white condensation trails through the thin air. The most aesthetically beautiful aircraft the world has ever seen, their grace enhanced in the eyes of posterity by their role as the saviours of freedom, pierced the bomber formations, diving, twisting, banking, hammering fire. Onlookers craned their heads upwards, mesmerised by the spectacle. Shopworkers and housewives, bank clerks and schoolchildren heard the clatter of machine guns and found aircraft fragments and empty cartridge cases tinkling onto their streets and littering suburban gardens; they sometimes even met fallen aircrew of both sides, stumbling to their front doors.
Stricken planes spewing smoke plunged to the ground in cascades of churned-up earth, if their occupants were fortunate enough to crash-land, or exploded into fiery fragments. This was a contest like no other in human experience, witnessed by millions of people continuing humdrum daily lives, bemused by the fact that kettles boiled in kitchens, flowers bloomed in garden borders, newspapers were delivered and honey was served for tea a few thousand feet beneath one of the decisive battlefields of history. Pilots who faced oblivion all day sang in their “locals” that night, if they lived. Their schoolboy slang—“wizard prang” and “gone for a burton”—passed into the language, fulfilling the observation of a French writer quoted by Dr. Johnson: “Il y a beaucoup de puérilités150 dans la guerre.”
Once bombs began to fall on Britain’s cities in August, their blasts caused a layer of dust to settle upon every surface, casting over the urban fabric of the country a drab greyness which persisted throughout the blitz. Yet islands of seasonal beauty survived. John Colville was struck by the tortoiseshell butterflies fluttering gaily over the lawn behind Downing Street: “I shall always associate that garden151 in summer, the corner of the Treasury outlined against a china-blue sky, with 1940.” Churchill, intensely vulnerable to sentiment, witnessed many scenes which caused him to succumb. While driving to Chequers one day, he glimpsed a line of people. Motioning the driver to stop, he asked his detective to enquire what they were queuing for. Told that they hoped to buy birdseed, Churchill’s private secretary John Martin noted: “Winston