Christopher Priest - The Separation

Dear Mr Sawyer,

We refer to your letter of April 19, concerning the possible whereabouts of a family named Sattmann, formerly of Goethestrasse, Charlottenburg, Berlin, now thought to be refugees within the Federal Republic of Switzerland.

We regret to inform you that no trace has been found of the family, either by the Swiss authorities or by the Embassies of Sweden and the Irish Republic, acting on our behalf elsewhere.

Yours sincerely,

K. M. Thomason - Foreign Office

Assistant Under-Secretary

ii

The letters of Birgit Heidi Sawyer (nee Sattmann).

November 8, 1940 to Flt Lt J. L. Sawyer, c/o 1 Group, RAF Bomber Command

Dearest JL,

Joe is alive! He was found yesterday in a hostel for homeless men, suffering from concussion. Apart from that he is not physically harmed. The Society is bringing him home today or tomorrow.

My darling, it will be all right for us again. Soon, I promise. For now I must care for Joe.

My fondest love, which I renew in my heart day by day,

Birgit

iii

November 8, 1940 to Mrs Elise Sawyer, Mill House, Tewkesbury,

Gloucestershire

Dear Mrs Sawyer,

I am pleased to tell you that my husband Joseph, your son, has been found unharmed and is on his way home. I will ask him to contact you as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Birgit Sawyer (Mrs)

Papers of Institut Schweizer fur Neuere Geschichte, Zurich

The letters of A. Woodhurst, British Red Cross, Manchester

November 11,1940 to Miss Phyllida Simpson, 14 Stoney Avenue, Bury, Lanes.

My dear Phyllida,

I’m so glad you came to my office earlier today, to tell me yourself what happened in the ambulance on Saturday night while you were driving back to Manchester. The incident must have been upsetting to both you and Ken Wilson. You are certainly not to blame in any way for having fallen asleep while supposed to be caring for Joe Sawyer. I know how exhausted you must have been. I have nothing but admiration for the dedication you and hundreds of other young Red Cross workers have been showing during the Blitz on our cities.

Be sure that you may come here to speak to me at any time. In the short time he has been working for us, we have all become very attached to Joe.

Yours sincerely,

Alicia Woodhurst

British Red Cross Society - Manchester Branch

Extract from Chapter 9 of The Greatest Sacrifice -British Peacemakers in 1941 by Barbara Benjamin, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996:

. . . which is where the Duke of London emerges unexpectedly from his past to stride the world’s stage for a few crucial months. No one man - politician or general or diplomat - did more to affect the course and outcome of the German War than the Duke. ‘If I encounter a man with a mind of his own I see it as my prompt duty to change it for him,’ he once said, describing a condition that he might well have applied to himself. Although a man of apparently unshakeable convictions, the Duke of London was for years considered politically untrustworthy because of his habit of changing sides.

In this we can see the first clue to what many people interpreted at the time as an inexplicable volte-face, one which turned out to be the most important and historically significant of the last hundred years.

If there had been no war with Hitler’s Germany, the Duke might have remained in the political wilderness for ever, perhaps thought of as a complex, innovative but inconsistent politician who was never able to fulfil his potential. The fact that war came when it did was his making. He rose magnificently to the challenge. Had the war continued and had London led the conduct of the war to the military victory he always promised, one may only guess at the terrible consequences. Because London reversed his policy, though, a real and lasting peace became unexpectedly possible.

In such a way arises the great historical dilemma over which the Duke presided. When is it right to fight? When is it right to lay down your arms? When the chance arose in 1941 to alter the course of history, it required a man of greatness to know whether that chance should be seized or spurned.

The Duke of London, who was half-British, half-American, was born Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill on November 30, 1874, the elder son of Lord Randolph Churchill. His mother was Jennie Jerome, daughter of a businessman from New York City. He built substantial fame and popular support while still young by filing colourful and sensational accounts of British wars in his role as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. The books later published which were based on these accounts became best-sellers. During his experiences - in Cuba, the North-West Frontier of India and in the Sudan - he displayed the first signs of impatience, impetuosity and inconsistency: as a serving officer, in his case with the 31st Punjab Infantry, he should not have been allowed to write for the press. It was only his personal charm and family contacts with the great and the good that enabled him to break the rules so much to his own advantage.

He first ran for Parliament in 1899, unsuccessfully contesting the seat for Oldham. The following year he gained the seat for the Conservatives in a by-election. By 1904 Churchill had fallen out with the Conservative establishment and crossed the floor of the House to become a Liberal. It was the first of many such shifts of political loyalty, a habit that endured for most of his career. A gifted speaker and orator, Churchill made a number of anti-Conservative speeches at this time which members of the Conservative establishment liked to quote back at him many years later when his judgment was so often in question.

Winston Churchill held several of the main offices of state over the next three decades. His first Cabinet appointment, as Home Secretary, was in Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government of 1910. Controversially, as Home Secretary he took a leading personal role in a police siege of two gunmen in East London, putting himself in the line of fire and bringing in armed troops to deal with the problem. It was the first indication that he would allow his reckless nature to colour his political judgment. The second was far more serious and affected the lives of thousands of men. As First Lord of the Admiralty in 1915 he bore personal responsibility for the disaster that occurred in the Dardanelles. Churchill always maintained that the bungled campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula was the collective responsibility of Lloyd George’s cabinet, but history has identified it as an incautious adventure in the familiar Churchillian mould. It seriously damaged his political career and for a time he rejoined the army and served on the Western Front in France. By the end of the Great War, though, Churchill returned to government and was Secretary of State for War. In this position he became an advocate of British intervention to quell the Russian Revolution. In 1941, Josef Stalin was quick to remind Churchill of this by-then inconvenient fact. The breakdown in relations between the United Kingdom and the USSR in the summer of 1941, and the catastrophic consequences when Britain remained neutral during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, are traced by many historians to this solecism by Churchill.

After the Great War he lost two more elections, returning to Parliament only in 1924 as a Constitutionalist member for Epping. The same year he changed political allegiance yet again, returning to the Conservative party and becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer under Stanley Baldwin. As Chancellor he argued repeatedly for reducing Britain’s defence spending, a political stance which his later anti-appeasement arguments totally contradicted. In 1926 he bitterly attacked the leaders of the General Strike, from his office as editor of the officially published British Gazette. As he had used soldiers as strikebreakers in 1910, against striking miners and dockworkers, his contribution was seen as unduly threatening.