There was little time, often not enough time for the anaesthetic to take effect. More casualties arrived throughout the night, some civilian, all Belgian. The surgeons did whatever they could; often it was not enough. The dead were laid out in the ballroom.
War had at last caught up with Don.
Then, as the sun rose, the 6th were given fresh instructions. New orders. Fall back. Again.
‘How is it possible? How can it be that three armies have fallen back because of the approach of a mere handful of Nar-zi tanks?’
Churchill hunched over the map spread before him on the Cabinet table and held it down with his clenched fists. For many long moments he stood like stone as he studied what lay before him, refusing to believe. All day long he had been pacing up and down as reports flooded in of ever-spreading disaster, his head bent forward as though he intended to butt his way towards victory, but no matter how furiously he paced he couldn’t prevent disaster from catching up with him. The Dutch had surrendered, laid down their arms, given up. The Maginot Line was broken: the French were falling back, the Belgians with them, while the Germans had pushed beyond Sedan and were now halfway to the Channel. Luftwaffe bombers were now at airfields no more than thirty minutes’ flying time from the English coast. That morning he had been shaken awake by a telephone call from the French Prime Minister Reynaud. ‘All is lost,’ he had said in English. ‘The road to Paris is open. We have been defeated.’
And all through the day the calamities had continued.
‘Impossible!’ Churchill’s fists pounded the table and he exploded back into life. He turned to his right, to where Newall, Chief of the Air Staff, was sitting. ‘How many planes? How many planes do we have in France?’
‘Prime Minister, we had four hundred and seventy-four. I regret to tell you that as of this morning we had barely two hundred left still operational.’
‘In five days? We have lost more than half our strength in five days?’ Churchill gasped.
‘The Germans have lost a great many more machines,’ the Air Marshal responded sharply. ‘But we are outnumbered. I’ve heard of three Hurricanes taking on flights of thirty or forty enemy planes. They fight magnificently, but the French fuel is poor, their landing fields a disgrace and their radio communications nonexistent. This morning we attacked the pontoon bridges around Sedan. We sent in nearly eighty planes. Thirty-seven of them failed to return.’ He glared defiantly at Churchill through exhausted eyes. ‘If the RAF is in peril it is not through want of courage. Or of sacrifice, Prime Minister.’
‘The French want more. They want us to send over more squadrons.’
‘To what purpose, Prime Minister?’ Newall countered. ‘If the French are already beaten it would be like cutting out the heart of the RAF and offering it on a plate to Goering. There’s no point in sacrificing our aircraft simply to help the French improve their terms of surrender.’
‘We must keep them in the fight! No surrender. If France were to fall …’
The thought was so terrible as to be inexpressible. He left it hanging half-formed before them. A military aide came in, offered a smart salute and with lowered eyes placed another map before the Prime Minister. An update from the front. It showed an arrow through the place where the heart of the French Ninth Army should have been.
‘Dear God,’ Halifax whispered from his seat opposite Churchill. ‘I despair.’
‘Despair does not appear on the agenda of this Cabinet, my lord,’ Churchill growled. ‘Why, there is opportunity in such chaos!’
‘Then it eludes me, Prime Minister,’ Halifax responded calmly. ‘Opportunity for what?’
‘For counterattack! To mobilize our forces and take advantage of their tired and overstretched panzers before they can recover. I remember the twenty-first of March 1918. All experience shows that after five or six days they must halt for supplies – I learnt this from the lips of Marshal Foch himself. Look, look!’ His finger stabbed at the enemy salient protruding into France. ‘Once more they have exposed their neck like a wretch stretched out on a guillotine. So let us grab the moment to cut it off!’
‘This time, I fear, the French are fighting with a decidedly blunt axe.’
‘Then what do you propose as an alternative?’ Churchill all but spat, his frustration bubbling over.
‘Prime Minister, I have neither your abilities nor experience in the military field. I leave the art of fighting to you and the late marshal.’ His artificial hand moved awkwardly across the papers set out before him on the table. ‘But I am a diplomat. That is a different game and perhaps we might play it with rather better fortune.’ He looked around the room, bringing the other Ministers and military men into the discussion. ‘At this point the impetus appears to be with Herr Hitler, but he is isolated, alone. If we can prevent other nations from siding with him we can perhaps help stem his progress. We all know that Italy is threatening to come into the war on his side. That would be a disaster which would threaten our Mediterranean possessions and make the situation of the French impossible. I suggest, with all the powers of persuasion I command’ – they all noted the implicit words of warning – ‘that the Prime Minister write immediately to Signor Mussolini and make it clear to him that we bear Italy no ill will, that the dialogue between us remains open, and that if the Italians have any cause for grievance with us it can be settled without turning the Mediterranean red with each other’s blood.’
‘Ah, play the Roman card,’ Attlee muttered.
‘You think it a sensible suggestion, Lord Privy Seal?’ Churchill enquired.
‘I do,’ Attlee replied. ‘Nothing to be lost from it.’
‘But what if he says he wants Gibraltar, or Malta, as prizes for his co-operation?’ Which he would, damn him, like any jackal.
‘Better that such issues be resolved across the table than across a battlefield,’ Halifax insisted.
Churchill stared at him; Halifax stared straight back. He had given his advice ‘with all the powers of persuasion I command’. In the muted language of Halifax’s world, the Foreign Secretary was announcing that he would not tolerate rejection. And Churchill could not withstand rebellion. He had no choice. Anyway, it was only a bloody letter.
‘An excellent idea,’ Churchill announced. ‘You have a draft for my consideration, Foreign Secretary?’
‘Of course.’
‘Then it shall be done.’
Halifax nodded his gratitude. For a moment he tried to convince himself that perhaps it would work after all, this ill-conceived administration led by the charging bull that was Churchill, with himself to guard the gate of the corral. And suddenly Anthony Eden, the Secretary of State for War, was speaking. A fragile man, in Halifax’s view, and his predecessor as Foreign Secretary until he had fallen out with Chamberlain over appeasement and flounced out of the Cabinet. Now they were all back together around the Cabinet table, as uneasy as ever. Halifax sat back as Eden reported on his attempts to raise an army of local volunteers to defend the homeland.
‘From all corners they have come forward,’ he said in his precise, over-trimmed voice. ‘In every town and every village, bands of determined men are gathering together for duties on the home front, arming themselves with shotguns, sporting rifles, clubs and spears …’
Dear God, thought Halifax, is this what