WINSTON CHURCHILL'S ..... Finest Hour #4

CHURCHILL'S  FINEST  HOUR  #4

TOWARDS OPERATION OVERLORD

In 1943, fighting in North Africa ended and both Sicily and mainland Italy were invaded by the Allies, forcing a surrender. churchill and roosevelt, later joined by stalin, met in a series of conferences to plan the final downfall of Nazi Germany, which began with the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June, 1944. Even before the United States entered World War II at the end of 1941, Churchill had eagerly awaited an Allied invasion of Adolf Hitler's 'Fortress Europe'. On a clear day the most likely point-of attack, the coast of northern France, was visible across the English Channel. It was temptingly close, but lack of manpower, weaponry and transport put it out of reach. The Americans had begun to mobilise troops but they were nowhere near ready for an assault on this scale. When Churchill and Roosevelt met at Hyde Park on 20 June, 1942, they agreed that there were too few US combat aircraft or landing craft available for the cross-Channel invasion to go ahead in early 1943, as they had originally hoped. Despite this agreement, Roosevelt wanted to make a landing on the Cherbourg coast of France in September 1942. At the end of July, Roosevelt sent a delegation to London, headed by Harry Hopkins, to persuade the British to cooperate. Their case was rejected outright. Churchill, backed by the British Chiefs of Staff, condemned the Cherbourg plan as too weak to have a hope of 

[On 14 May, 1943, the third anniversary of the formation of Britain's Home Guard, Churchill marked the event with a broadcast from the White House in Washington. Churchill (above) as he arrives at the Quebec Conference of August 1943.]

holding off the inevitable German counterattack. Reluctantly, the Americans backed down.

Instead, it was decided that the Allies would mount an offensive on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, which seemed the most promising area in which to challenge the Germans and their Italian allies. Decisive action in North Africa was not long in coming. In October 1942, the British Eighth Army triumphed at El Alamein in northern Egypt, forcing Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps into a rapid retreat westwards. On 8 November, Operation Torch was launched and 60,500 Allied troops landed on the coasts of the French territories of Morocco and Algeria. Swiftly overcoming . reistance from the Vichy French forces, they ensured that the first Anglo-American joint venture of the war proved a success.

Churchill now tried to revive p'lans for a cross-Channel invasion in 1943. But the Chiefs

[Roosevelt and Churchill during the Casablanca Conference in January 1943. 'Meeting Franklin Roosevelt,' Churchill said, 'was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.']

of Staff informed the Prime Minister that this was impossible: although American troops had been arriving in Britain since the start of 1942, there were not yet enough to fulfil such a timetable. The Chiefs also argued that the Germans could rapidly reinforce the Atlantic Wall, the line of defences along the northern coast of France, by using the excellent rail system of continental Europe: German troops could be rapidly relocated so that they were prepared for any Allied invasion.

The potential for disaster had already been revealed at Dieppe, where a mainly Canadian force of 6000 men landed on 19 August, 1942. Designated a 'reconnaissance in force', the raid was designed as a trial run to establish a beachhead and capture a French port. What it showed was that a successful assault would require a more sophisticated and technologically advanced operation than the Canadians had to offer. Battered by German counter-attacks, without proper communications or air cover of their own, nearly two-thirds of the Canadians were killed, injured or captured.

With this costly lesson in mind, the Chiefs of Staff thought it far better to invade Europe from the south, with a landing in Italy, using the troops already fighting in North Africa. Once Italy was forced out of the war, the Balkans could be the next target. Their opinion was endorsed

when Churchill, Roosevelt and their respective Chiefs of Staff met in Casablanca, on the Atla coast of French Morocco, on 14 January, 1943. At the conference, neither the Italian nor the cross-Channel venture was sanctioned for action that year, even though the latter was also favoured by General Marshall and other Americ service chiefs. Instead, it was decided that once final victory had been achieved in North Africa, assault would be launched on Sicily as a precurs to an invasion of the Italian mainland. But the

[En route to the White House in "Washington on 4 Ju 1943, Roosevelt and Churchill celebrate the news th. have just received that the fighting between Allied at Axis forces in North Africa has come to an end.]

[CHURCHILL  BROADCAST TO THE WORLD, 29 NOVEMBER 1942.....

Two Sundays ago, all the bells rang to celebrate the victory of our desert Army at Alamein. Here was a martial episode in British history which deserved a special recognition. But the bells also carried with their clashing joyous peals our thanksgiving that, in spite of all our errors and shortcomings, we have been brought nearer to the frontiers of deliverance ....]

leaders did agree that the cross-Channel attack would take place in early 1944, and Roosevelt promised that 938,000 American troops would be stationed in Britain by the end of 1943, in preparation for it.

At Casablanca, Churchill, Roosevelt and their advisers also decided the nature of the victory which the British and Americans meant to impose on their enemies: not an armistice or a negotiated peace, but unconditional surrender, first for the Italians and the Germans, and then the Japanese.

After the talks ended on 23 January, Churchill and Roosevelt took a brief break from the talk of war. Together, they drove inland to Marrakech, where they watched the sun flushing the sky with orange as it set beyond the peaks of the Atlas Mountains. 'The most lovely spot in the world,' was how Churchill described it. Entranced by the beauty around him, Churchill stayed on in Marrakech and spent an iftemoon painting a view of the mountains. It was lis only painting of the war years.

[At the Quebec Conference, in September 1943, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King  President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill discussed the appointment of a commander for the invasion of Europe. Churchill wantd Brooke to be in charge but Roosevelt insisted that the position go to an American.]

ILLNESS AND CONVALESCENCE

It was an idyllic interlude at a taxing time. The Casablanca Conference and the two weeks Churchill spent touring British army units in the Middle East before flying home to Britain proved exhausting. He arrived back in London on 7 February feeling unwell, and nine days later developed a bout of pneumonia. Churchill refused to stop working and defied a temperature of 102 degrees to dictate a seven-page letter to the king explaining Anglo-American co-operation in Tunisia. Getting well fast became Churchill's chief objective. 'I was very struck by his immense vigour and enthusiasm, his determination to get over his illness as' quickly as possible,' his nurse Doris Miles later remembered. 'He told me that he ate and drank too much - roast beef for breakfast - and took no exercise, but was fitter than "old so-and-so who is two years younger than me". He loved watching films, particularly newsreels, and was delighted if he featured in them.'

FURY AT DELAYS

In April and May 1943 the news of developments in North Africa made Churchill more eager than ever to shake off his illness. The Germans and Italians had been fighting hard to defend their positions along the Tunisian coastline, but

[On 30 January, 1943, Churchill flew from Cairo to Turkey, where he met President Ismet Inonii near Adana. Churchill was convinced that he could persuade Inonii to bring Turkey into the war against Germany. But despite his concerted efforts, Turkey remained neutral throughout the war.]

gradually they were being prised away and on 12 May their resistance came to an end. More than 240,000 Germans and Italians were taken prisoner. Churchill, who was on board the liner Queen Mary on his way to another meeting with Roosevelt, was elated when the news was signalled to him. He gave orders once again for church bells throughout Britain to be rung in celebration.

Now that North Africa was in Allied hands the way was clear to proceed with the invasion of Sicily, as agreed at Casablanca. But to Churchill's dismay the American General Dwight D Eisenhower, who had been in overall command of the Allied forces in North Africa, announced that he wanted to delay the Sicilian campaign for three or four months. Eisenhower's reason was the unexpected arrival of two German divisions on Sicily, in addition to the six-Italian divisions already known to be on the island. The British Joint Planning Committee shared his caution, but Churchill was furious and made no secret of his anger.

'I trust the Chiefs of Staff will not accept these pusillanimous and defeatist doctrines from whomever they come,' he raged. 'Such an attitude would make us the laughing stock of the world ....' What would happen, Churchill asked sarcastically, if two German divisions met Eisenhower 'at any of the other places he may propose .... What Stalin would think of this when he has 185 German divisions on his front, I cannot imagine.'

Churchill was not alone in his fury. The British and American Joint Chiefs were equally incensed and gave orders that the invasion of Sicily should go forward as planned. The Queen Mary, with Churchill aboard, reached New York on 11 May and the Joint Chiefs' decision was endorsed in Washington during his talks with Roosevelt. Sacrifices now had to be made. The next Arctic convoys to Murmansk were cancelled: the ships intended to sail with them as escorts were required for Sicily. The campaign also delayed the cross-Channel landing by requisitioning the transports earmarked for France, but compensation came in November 1943, when the date of May 1944 was finally fixed for the invasion of northern France.

SUCCESS IN SICILY

The Allied attack on Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, began on 10 July, 1943, five weeks after Churchill returned home. He sat up until the small hours playing cards with his daughter-in-law Pamela, Randolph's wife, who afterwards recalled a 'very, very tense and torturous' night. 'We settled down to play bezique, which he loved,' Pamela remembered, 'and then one of the Private Secretaries came in to say that the winds had got up and they had delayed the landings, they did not know for how long. So we played bezique through the night and every now and again, he would put down the cards and he would say, "So many brave young men going to their death tonight. It is a grave responsibility." ... we would go on playing bezique but he would always set down the cards and talk about the young people and sacrifices that they were being asked to make.' News that the landings had taken place came through at last at four in the morning.

The campaign in Sicily was a brief one, lasting only 38 days, but its success was overwhelming. Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy for 21 years, was forced to resign on 25 July and hand over the government to Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio. Eisenhower's fears about the two German divisions on Sicily proved excessive. By

[CHURCHILL  ADDRESSES  THE  BRITISH  'DESERT ARMY'  IN  TRIPOLI,  LIBYA,  3  FEBRUARY  1943.....Let me assure you, soldiers and airmen, thai your fellow countrymen regard your ... work with admiration and gratitude and that after the War wh a man is asked what he did, it will be quite sufficie for him to say 'I marched and fought with the Desert Army'. And when history is written and all the facts known, your feats will gleam and glow and will be the source of song and story long after we who are gathered here have passed away.]

[On 30 June, 1943, Churchill received the Freedom the City of London, an award bestowed on those u have served in an exceptional capacity. In celebratit Churchill rode through the City with his family.

In a rousing speech to a Joint Session of Congress in the United States on 19 May, 1943, Churchill urged his American allies to remain steadfast and strong in their duty to mankind.]

17 August, when American and British forces were approaching Messina at the eastern tip of the island, the German and Italian forces were evacuated across the Strait of Messina to Reggio Calabria in the 'toe' of mainland Italy. Over 40,000 German and 60,000 Italian troops managed to get away, with 47 tanks, 10,000 vehicles and many thousands of tons of supplies. As Churchill had feared, the Allied victory was expensive, costing 20,000 casualties. Around 12,000 Germans and 147,000 Italians were killed or captured.

BOUND FOR QUEBEC

Once Allied success in Sicily seemed guaranteed, Churchill turned his attention to another problem: the increasingly strained relations between Britain and the United States. After returning from his third journey to America, Churchill told the House of Commons: 'All sorts of divergences, all sorts of differences of outlook and all sorts of awkward little jars necessarily occur as we roll ponderously forward together along the rough and broken road of war.' Characteristically, Churchill continued on a more positive note: 'But none of these makes the slightest difference to our ever-growing concert and unity. There are none of them that cannot be settled face to face by heart-to-heart talks and patient argument.'

The Americans had proposed that the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, rather than Italy, should be the next target after Sicily, but Churchill disagreed. Oliver Harvey, a Foreign Office diplomat, believed that at the back of Churchill's mind was the fear that the Americans might abandon the campaign in Europe. 'He is anxious to pin the Americans down,' Harvey wrote in his diary, 'before they pull out their landing craft and send off their ships to the Pacific' Churchill decided that a fourth meeting with President Roosevelt was needed and, accompanied by Clementine, he boarded the Queen Mary on 5 August, bound for Quebec ir Canada. While he was there, he thought to keej Josef Stalin happy by sending him a 'small stereoscopic machine': this enabled the Soviet leader to view highly realistic 3D slides showing bombed-out German cities as they appeared aft British air raids.

The Quebec Conference lasted only two da but a firm plan for the future was worked out Was confirmed that an amphibious invasion of northern France would take place in May 194 as a prelude to an assault on Nazi Germany itself. The Allies also agreed on a diversionary assault on the Riviera coast of southern Frano

[CHURCHILL ADDRESSES THE US CONGRESS, 19 MAY, 1943......

We have surmounted many serious dangers, but th< is one grave danger which will go along with' us till end; that danger is the undue prolongation of the V No one can tell what new complications and perils might arise in four or five more years of war. And it in the dragging out of the War at enormous expens until the democracies are tired or bored or split, th the main hopes of Germany and Japan must now reside. We must destroy this hope, as we have destroyed so many others, and for that purpose, w< must beware of every topic, however attractive, ant every tendency, however natural, which turns our minds and energies from this supreme objective of victory .... By singleness of purpose, by steadfast™ of conduct, by tenacity and endurance such as we have so far displayed - by these and only by these we discharge our duty to the future of the world an the destiny of Man.]

[Stalin had every reason to look pleased with himself at e Tehran Conference of 1943, where he had succeeded outmanoeuvring Churchill over his plan for an vasion of Europe through Yugoslavia.]

to force the Germans to move troops and eaponry away from the Channel. The impaign in Italy was to be downgraded in lportance: the capture of Rome was the -incipal target, but the Allied advance up the ngth of Italy was to reach no further than Pisa Tuscany, some 286 miles north of the capital. In the Pacific and south-east Asia, the Allies jreed that Japan would be defeated within a year of Germany's downfall.

A BRIEF RESPITE

By the time the negotiations were completed, on 24 August, Churchill was exhausted. He left Quebec to spend a few quiet days at a fishing camp in the Laurentian mountains. It was peaceful, and an ideal place to get a view of the Aurora Borealis, the spectacular Northern Lights. Churchill came out onto a riverside pier to gaze up at the curtains of sparkling light that painted the night sky high above. His doctor, who was with him, remarked: 'This quiet life is doing him good, but he feels he is playing truant.'

When Churchill returned to Britain the following month he found a catalogue of events unfolding. Italy had surrendered on 3 September and was invaded by Allied forces the same day, although German forces continued to fight on in Italy for some time afterwards. Four weeks later, the Allies entered Naples. The Mediterranean islands of Corsica and Sardinia were.captured after only a token fight.

In the Battle of the Atlantic, German U-boats were using a new acoustic torpedo that found its target by picking up sounds from engines or propellers. But it came too late to reverse the balance of power in the Atlantic, which was by now firmly on the side of the Anglo-Americans. And in Russia, a huge tank battle at Kursk in July ended in defeat for the Nazis, setting the Red Army on an advance that would not halt until they reached Berlin.

Churchill came up with a plan to clear the path to Allied victory with an assault on the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea. Rhodes had been ruled by the Italians since 1912 and, as lo as it remained unconquered, could be used by t Germans as a base to endanger the Allies' campaign in the Italian peninsula. Churchill became enormously excited over his scheme an seemed to lose sight of other priorities.

A FIXATION WITH RHODES

Alan Brooke was furious with him and confide to his diary: 'I can control him no more. He has worked himself into a frenzy of excitement about

[The Red Army's victory in the Battle of Stalingrad i .January 1943 swung the balance of the war in the Soviets' favour. At the Tehran Conference, Churchil marked the Soviet success by presenting Stalin with sword of honour.]

the Rhodes attack, has magnified its importance so that he can no longer see anything else and has set himself on capturing this one island even at the expense of endangering his relations with the President and the Americans and the future of the Italian campaign. He refused to listen to any arguments or to see any dangers.'

Brooke would not endorse the Rhodes venture and President Roosevelt also opposed it. Churchill became so upset that he even spoke darkly about 'chucking it in'. He told his secretary Marian Holmes, 'The difficulty is not in winning the War, it is in persuading people to let you win it.'

Roosevelt would not budge and became irritated that Churchill should seek to renege on agreements already concluded at Quebec. He sent Churchill a telegram insisting that there must be no diversion of forces or equipment that could compromise the Allied advance in Italy or the cross-Channel assault, now codenamed Operation Overlord.

ODD MAN OUT

Stalin had his own vested interest in Overlord, the 'second front' he sorely needed to distract the Germans from the war in Russia. In November

[Churchill spent his 69th birthday in Tehran. That evening, he hosted a dinner for the delegates and numerous toasts were drunk. T drink to the Proletarian masses,' Churchill said, for Stalin's benefit.]

1943 the commitment to the second front was confirmed at the Tehran Conference in Persia, where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin - the 'Big Three' as they were called by the newspapers -met together for the first time. The principle of a 'second front' was one thing, but its location was quite another. Churchill's idea of a 'second front' was an invasion through Yugoslavia. Stalin interpreted this as a British attempt to secure Vienna and Belgrade, the Austrian and Yugoslav capitals, before the Soviet Red Army was able to reach them.

Stalin categorically opposed Churchill's plan, and Roosevelt agreed with him. Encouraged by his own service chiefs, Roosevelt favoured an Allied invasion of northwest France. Although he would have preferred a direct strike against Germany from the west, this satisfied Stalin who also agreed to an invasion date in May 1944. Churchill was outmanoeuvred and outvoted. There was something predictable about this outcome. Before the conference began, Stalin had virtually hijacked the American President: he insisted that he stay at the Soviet rather than the British legation in Tehran, ostensibly to preserve him from a possible assassination attempt. By this means, contact between Churchill and Roosevelt was effectively reduced. Later on during the conference, Stalin and Roosevelt contrived to confer together in Churchill's absence. In addition, Roosevelt turned down Churchill's invitation to luncheon in case Stalin thought they were ganging up on him. That same afternoon, Roosevelt and Stalin had another meeting, again without Churchill.

Despite this, the three managed to agree on the fate of Germany in anticipation of an ultim. Allied victory. The defeated Germany would be divided into five small autonomous states. Churchill was particularly keen that Prussia, the core of German militarism, should be isolation.

Churchill left Tehran for Cairo on 2 December. He had been suffering from exhausti again but insisted on holding daily meetings wr his advisers to discuss supplying aid to the anti-Nazi partisans in Yugoslavia, Greece and Albar On 10 December he flew to Carthage in Tunisi; more than eight hours from Cairo by air, where he became very unwell.

ILL HEALTH

'They took him out of the plane,' Brooke remembered, 'and he sat on his suitcase in a vej cold morning wind, looking like nothing on earth.' Churchill had caught pneumonia once again, and, worse still, on 15 December he suffered a second heart attack. Like the first, it was mild, but was followed by another two da] later. 'Papa is very upset,' Clementine wrote to Mary after flying to Carthage to be with her husband, 'as he is beginning to see that he cam: get well in a few days and that he will have to lead what for him is a dreary monotonous life with no emotions or excitements.'

The mood soon passed. Churchill held sevei bedside conferences, with visits from General

[CHURCHILL  ON  AMERICAN  ISOLATIONISM,  6  SEPTEMBER  1943......Twice in my lifetime, the long arm of destiny has searched across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle. There was no use in saying 'We don't want it; we won't have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old.' There was no use in that The long arm" reaches out remorselessly, and everyone's existence, environment and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change .... The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued ... absorbed in their own affairs and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans. But one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised worid without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.]

[Roosevelt and Churchill met the Chinese Commander-n-Chief General Chiang Kai-shek and his wife in Cairo n November 1943. China had been at war since 7 July, '937, when it was invaded by Japan. China's 'ontribution to the Allied war effort was hamstrung by he fact that Chiang's Nationalist government, which >ad already been weakened by corruption and inflation, uas under threat from rival Communists.]

Eisenhower and his deputy, the British General Sir larold Alexander. The three of them discussed he forthcoming amphibious landing at Anzio, 13 miles south of Rome, which was intended to irepare the way for the capture of the Italian apital. By Christmas, Churchill was openly gnoring medical advice. 'The doctors are quite mable to control him,' wrote John Martin, Churchill's Principal Private Secretary, 'and the igars have now returned.'

Harold Macmillan, Minister of State for forth Africa and a future Prime Minister, came to visit Churchill and afterwards wrote in his diary: 'He took my hand in his in a most fatherly way and said: "Come and see me again before I leave Africa ..." He really is a remarkable man. Although he can be so tiresome and pigheaded, there is no one like him.'

FULL VIGOUR RETURNED 

Churchill convalesced at Marrakech after defying his doctors by flying there at what they considered an unsafe altitude. His aircraft had to f    climb above 3000 m (9846 ft) to pass over the mountains., requiring him to wear his oxygen mask again. On the last day of the year General Eisenhower and General Bernard Montgomery, the victor of El Alamein in 1942, arrived in Marrakech to discuss Operation Overlord with Churchill. Clementine was with him, and on New Year's Day 1944, he went to her room with good news. 'I am so happy,' he told her, 'I feel so much better.' To prove it, Churchill took a two-hour drive with Montgomery to the Atlas mountains, where they ate a picnic lunch and admired the view.

On 18 January, 1944 Churchill was back in London. The same day, he was in the.House of Commons for the regular question and answer session known as Prime Minister's Questions, then met his War Cabinet and lunched with the king at Buckingham Palace. In his 70th year and despite his heart problems, Churchill seemed to have returned to full vigour and a full timetable. But before the end of the month another crisis emerged.

[Churchill and other war leaders test out the US Army's new rifle in 1943. General Dwight D Eisenhoiuer (left) was a desk general who had never taken part in a battle. But Lieutenant General Omar Bradley (right) was a crack shot, having gained his expertise labile hunting with his father as a small boy.]

The amphibious invasion at Anzio, which took place on 22 January, had failed six days later wl faced with fierce German resistance.

'We hoped to land a wild cat that would te; the bowels out of the Boche,' Churchill commented, ' instead we have stranded a vast whale with its tail flopping about in the water.' Four months passed before the Allied troops managed to break the German defences and fig their way out of the beach-head and onto the road that led to Rome.

As 1944 progressed, Operation Overlord increasingly dominated Churchill's workload. I was in regular discussions with General Eisenhower, who had been appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Western Europe in 1943, and chaired the weekly Overlord Committee of the "War Cabinet. General Hastings Ismay, Churchill's link with the Chiefs of Staff, described what it was like to sit in session at committee meetings with a Prime Minister turned taskmaster. 'His fiery energy and undisputed authority dominated the proceedings,' Ismay remembered. 'The seemingly slothful or obstructive were tongue-lashed; competing differences were reconciled; priorities were settled; difficulties which at first appeared insuperable were overcome and decisions were translated into immediate action.'

No detail of the complex arrangements for Overlord escaped Churchill's attention - the naval bombardment and glider-borne assault preceding the beach landings, the air support and the artificial harbours where supplies and reinforcements were to be unloaded. The strain of the last few months before the Normandy invasion proved extremely tiring for Churchill. The pressure mounted when intelligence sources and Bletchley Park decrypts revealed that the Germans were developing pioneering rocket technology, which they planned to use in an attack on Britain.

IMMINENT THREAT

In a broadcast made on 26 March, Churchill spoke in carefully veiled terms about the forthcoming invasion of France, but included a more direct warning of the imminent threat to Britain. 'The hour of "our" greatest effort and action is approaching. We march with valiant Allies who count on us as we count on them. The flashing eyes of all our soldiers, sailors and airmen must be fixed upon the enemy on their front. The only homeward road for all of us lies through the arch of victory. And here I must warn you that... we may also ourselves be the object of new forms of attack from the enemy. Britain can take it. She has never flinched or failed. And when the signal is given, the whole circle of avenging nations will hurl themselves upon the foe and batter out the life of the cruellest tyranny which has ever sought to bar the progress of mankind.'

[Churchill met General Charles De Gaulle in Marrakech on 13 January, 1944. With difficulty, Churchill managed to persuade the arrogant and stubborn De Gaulle not to persecute former supporters of the collaborationist Vichy regime who had controlled Morocco.]

Churchill's wording was, as always, majestic and rousing, but listeners discerned exhaustion in his delivery. 'People seem to think that Winston's broadcast ... was that of a worn and petulant old man,' author and publisher Harold Nicblson wrote in his diary.

General Brooke, who saw Churchill almost every day, became worried about him. 'I am afraid that he is losing ground rapidly,' he wrote. 'He seems incapable of concentrating for a few minutes on end, and keeps wandering continuously ... he was looking old and lacking a great deal of his usual vitality.' Even so, Brooke concluded: 'I have never yet heard him admit that he was beginning to fail.'

Churchill drove himself hard and his level of activity barely faltered. He held prolonged talks with British and American officers about their roles in the Normandy invasion. He worried about the French civilians who would be killed in the pre-invasion bombing of the railways in northern France. He fretted over the slow progress being made in Italy. He also became alarmed at signs that Stalin was intent on spreading communism into eastern Europe and protested when Soviet forces advancing into Romania in the spring of 1944 arrested anti-communists along with Fascist leaders. 'Never forget,' Churchill told Anthony Eden, 'that Bolsheviks are crocodiles.'

WATCHING THE WEATHER 

The start of Operation Overlord, which would become known as 'D-Day', had initially been fixed for May 1944 but was delayed. On the evening of 4 June Churchill arrived in London. He was greatly cheered by good news from Italy where the Allied advance out of Anzio had begun at last. At 10:30pm that evening, he summoned his secretary Marian Holmes and sat working a dictating until 3:45AM the next morning. The date planned for D-Day, 5 June, had arrived. So had another, anxiously awaited, piece of news: during the night, Churchill was told that Rome had fall. Ecstatic crowds, Churchill learned, were lining the streets of the Italian capital to cheer the British and Americans, and shower them with flowers as they drove past.

The weather in the English Channel, often changeable, turned to rainstorms and high winds on 5 June and General Eisenhower decided to postpone the Normand invasion by one day. An important factor in his decision was the German belief that the weather would not clear for the next four or five days. They were so confident of this that General Erwir Rommel, in command of the defences in north France, returned to Germany on leave.

That night, Churchill and Clementine went to the Map Room at the Number 10 Annexe. Clementine told her husband: 'I feel so much for you at this agonising moment, so full of suspense.' Churchill studied the maps showing the dispositions of the German forces in Normand compiled from decoded Enigma messages, and projected Allied dispositions. Churchill turned Clementine. 'Do you realise,' he said, 'that by time you wake up in the morning, 20,000 men may have been killed?'

..........

TO  BE  CONTINUED

SPEAKING  FOR  A  SECULAR  STANCE:  TO  ME  D-DAY  WAS  A  VERY  BAD  MISTAKE,  IN  THAT  THERE  SHOULD  HAVE  BEEN  AN  AIR  RAID  OF  PLANES  WELL  BEFORE  THE  TROOPS  LANDED  ON  THE  BEACHES;  AN  AIR  RAID  OF  SOME  LENGTH  ALONG  THE  GERMAN  GUN  LINES.  WHEN  I  SEE  FOOTAGE  OF  THE  LANDING  ON  OPEN  BEACHES,  WITH  GERMAN  MACHINE  GUNS  MOWING  DOWN  SO  MANY,  IT  IS  SICKENING  TO  THINK  SUCH  AN  UNDERTAKING  WAS  REALIZED  WITHOUT  AN  FULL  AIR  ATTACK  ON  GERMAN  LINES.

Keith Hunt