Christopher Priest - The Separation

Pray advise me of the numbers of the Jewish population, as best known, not only in Germany but also in the states currently controlled by the German occupiers. We should be prepared for all contingencies.

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for Air and Chiefs of the Air Staff

March 4, 1941

The bombing results against German targets for last month show no marked improvement on the previous month. The number of sorties is up but the photographic reconnaissance shows a remarkable lack of accuracy. Our new four-engined heavy bombers will be operational in the next week or two so I am looking for better results all round. I note also that losses of aircraft are increasing steadily and the numbers of our airmen posted as missing is almost twenty-five per cent up on the previous month. The war will not be won if we merely send our young men into danger and death, without prospect of result.

I enclose a copy of the final report from the Min. of Works concerning the damage caused by the Luftwaffe to the city of Coventry. Since November, when the attack occurred, it has seemed that the nightly bombing of British cities has, if anything, been stepped up. Kindly report back to me with your proposals.

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs

April 23, 1941

Red Cross representatives have been noticeably busy in recent weeks, using our airfields for their various enterprises in travelling abroad, presumably to neutral countries. Although the procedure for Red Cross use of our air space is well regulated, I note that we are provided with little information about the known destinations of their several flights, or indeed what is intended by them. We do enjoy excellent relations with all levels of the Red Cross, their work in the Blitz has been exemplary and much official gratitude has been expressed to them. We remain tolerant in every respect of Red Cross activities, hoping for the best. We do not actually need to know what they are about, nor should we officially enquire.

Pray let me have a summary of what intelligence on the British Red Cross you have to hand and any more that arises in the foreseeable future. We do naturally have vital national interests in all parts of neutral Europe.

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Lord Privy Seal

April 25, 1941

In response to your several private memoranda I am content for Foreign Office staff to make yet another search for any files or written material concerning the Duke of Windsor, our former king. The papers to which I allude are the sort of papers to which I always allude in this context.

All personal and state papers, to the point of his abdication, are naturally sacrosanct and are anyway safely in the usual repositories. I am concerned with the later period in His Royal Highness’s peregrinations, up to the point in August last year when he accepted Governorship of the Bahamas.

I am particularly anxious to locate material that arose during the Duke of Windsor’s flight last year from the house called La Croe, now in the part of France controlled by the regime in Vichy, his time soon afterwards in Madrid and of course the weeks he spent near Lisbon. It still seems likely he received aid and comfort from agencies other than H. M. Government.

To suggest that there are likely to be no papers left from his period of flight and confusion is mistaken: no household as large as the Duke’s can fail to leave a trail behind it. For instance, several telegrams passed between myself and His Royal Highness while he was in Madrid. We possess those, but there would be others of similar ilk. Sir Ronald Campbell was our Ambassador in France at the time of the fall. He is now, of course, our Ambassador in Portugal and holds a substantial archive. Information from our Spanish embassy has been slow in coming forward, for some reason.

I have never discounted rumours that leading Nazi officials have been observed in Spain. I dare say Portugal is another place they favour with their presence from time to time. The Duke resided in a villa near Lisbon for a month, during which time he was out of contact with London except on the most superficial of business. Material related to that particular period, in that particular house, is that which is most urgently required.

Prime Minister to Secretary of State for War and Home Secretary

April 30, 1941

I am enclosing a report from D Section, under the usual classification. Pray respond with a detailed analysis and proposal for action as soon as you may.

It could amount to nothing, but on the face of it we should at least be better informed about this kind of thing. D Section are maintaining observation on the young man who is the subject of the report. For various reasons the section’s activities have been neither consistent nor continuous. The immense difficulty of mounting any sustained intelligence operation while the German air raids continue speaks for itself and I can only commend the sterling work they have so far achieved.

In the present matter, which I find unusual, we have as the subject a serving officer with RAF Bomber Command, one Fit Lt Sawyer, apparently a pilot who has performed his duties with great bravery and skill, already decorated for gallantry, but who is said to have been associating with one of those anglicized German nationals we have not yet rounded up. In Sawyer’s case it is a young woman, to whom it is said he is married. She is a naturalized British subject who came to the UK before the war.

D Section have not been able to confirm the marriage, saying that the register office where the records might have been found was destroyed in an air raid in September last year. They maintain Sawyer is not married to the woman but is merely cohabiting with her. There is evidence from neighbours which I have disdained to read. Taken in all, though, the matter and the circumstances surrounding it give rise to disquiet.

What makes the case unusual and worthy of attention is that Sawyer was registered, at least for a time, as a conscientious objector with links to the British Red Cross, for whom he has apparently been working in some capacity. How he rationalizes this while being a serving officer in the RAF is central to the mystery. I have no rooted objections to any of such behaviour, but not all in the person of one man, all at once or at all in wartime. He cannot be allowed to continue in this multi-faceted role, especially as a substantial portion of his life appears to be usefully involved with our bombing offensive against the Nazis.

The report obscures more than it clarifies. It seems likely to me there has been some confusion of identity, but I require it to be cleared up. The German woman under suspicion should be left to her own devices, as I have an abhorrence of young people being locked up without good reason.

After Lisbon, I returned to my life in Rainow with a sense that at last the war was about to finish. Granted leave of absence by the Red Cross, on full pay, the only memento I had of that extraordinary meeting in Portugal was a brief handwritten letter from Dr Burckhardt. He passed it to me before I boarded the aircraft for the long flight home. In it he asked me not to involve myself in the normal day-to-day work of the Red Cross, but to hold myself ready to travel at short notice.

During those days at Boca di Inferno I had come to think of myself as a neutral in the war. I was an intermediary, a Red Cross official, someone who composed or translated important documents that could, quite literally, change history. But within a few hours of returning to Britain I felt myself become partisan once again: English, British, not neutral at all. I found it an enlightening experience. I had assumed, before I went to Portugal, that by being a pacifist I counted myself out of partisanship, but when you are in a war you cannot help but identify with your own people. It gave me a lot to think about.