Michael Dobbs - Never Surrender

The column was closely packed, a confusion of every sort of vehicle grinding along at the pace of the slowest, but they were all heading in the same direction. North, towards the enemy. Belgian bicycle troops meandered beside the convoy, frantically ringing their bells. It was spring, hawthorn blossom blew across their path, and the British army sweated gently in the sun.

By early evening they had passed through Brussels and were making camp in an old deserted brewery outside Mechelen. They unloaded the chairs, filing cabinets and the bottles of sherry while tea was brewed. This site was to be the Casualty Clearing Station, for the time when there were casualties. But of the enemy there was no sign. Perhaps this one was going to be easy, after all.

In the evening, the padre came round with a billycan of corned-beef stew accompanied by cigarettes and a homily about the morality of their cause. Strange, Don thought, how morality had become such a moveable feast. Why, it was less than two years ago when vicars throughout the land had climbed into their pulpits to denounce aggression and offer prayers for the triumph of appeasement and Neville Chamberlain. Yet today, from those same pulpits and plundering phrases from the same scriptures, they prayed to the Almighty that they might remember their gas masks and gain rapid victory. Whichever way you read it, kneeling down or standing on your head, it simply made you giddy.

That’s not what he had explained to the Tribunal for the Registration of Conscientious Objectors, of course. For them he had displayed a morality that was clear, principled and utterly inflexible – he’d copied that much from his father. And it was his father’s God-fearing morality that he offered them, everything taken from the Book, every argument backed up by scripture and psalm. They quoted the Book back at him, all the bits about eyes for eyes and the righteousness of vengeance, but he’d spent so much more time in church and Bible classes than they had that putting down their counter-case had proved to be, quite literally, child’s play.

It troubled him that he couldn’t be entirely honest with the Tribunal. He would have liked to tell them that reasons why the world shouldn’t set out to slaughter itself were so bloody obvious you didn’t need the Bible, but that wasn’t the way the Tribunal game was played.

Don had played, and he had won. Noncombatant service. No weapons, no killing. But it troubled him more than he cared to admit that he had won only by leaning on his father’s beliefs, and that his father knew it. There was a little of Absalom in everyone.

As he tossed in distraction upon the floor of the abandoned brewery, other thoughts began to chisel away at his sense of well-being. If God moved in mysterious ways, so, it seemed, did the generals. The men of the British Expeditionary Force had spent half a year working flat out to build a defensive line of tank traps and pillboxes. They’d been assured it would be all but impregnable.

So why, at the first sign of trouble, had the generals ordered them to come out from behind its cover and move forward into a field of fire that was totally unprepared?

And let’s not turn our back on good fortune but why, during all that long first day of advance, had there been no sign of the enemy? There hadn’t been a single air attack.

As Don struggled to find some comfort on the cold concrete, one thought kept nagging at him. It was almost as though the Germans wanted them there.

At last Churchill was alone. Letters written, appointments made, officials dismissed, Bracken on his way home. The path begun.

He felt exhausted. Keeping up the spirits of others had sapped his own, and a mood of darkness clung around him. It had been a day he had dreamed of for so long, yet the reality had proved so very distant from the dream. There had been no cheering crowds at the Palace to greet him, not even curious onlookers, no one but soldiers in war garb who had stood in front of a palace that had retreated behind sandbags and shuttered windows. Then the King’s little flash of humour to cover his unease. Faces long, brimming with concerns. No victorious arrival at Downing Street. Only Bracken to lift the gloom.

How he had longed for this day! A Churchill as His Majesty’s First Minister, his destiny achieved, his father’s memory vindicated. Yet all around he found nothing but sorrows and unspoken fear. Instead of triumph, he had found his way into a tragedy.

He sat slumped in his chair, an old man, clutching his glass of whisky in both hands as if he were afraid it might fall. No one there to see him, to help guide him through the depression that emerged like a mist from a swamp to surround him. He had such a way with words, brave and magnificent outbursts that stirred hearts, but words were for others, while he was left with nothing but his own dark thoughts.

These thoughts carried him to the oil painting that hung in a corner near the bookcase. It was a portrait of his father – not a particularly magnificent piece, one that had been painted long ago in Belfast. It showed Lord Randolph small and slim, with delicate ears and a twirling moustache, his neck surrounded with a huge moleskin collar and a polka-dot bow-tie that Winston himself had adopted. The painting followed the son everywhere, almost haunting him, for it had been completed in 1886, the year of his father’s brief triumph, which had turned so quickly to endless disaster. Lord Randolph was a rising star, one of the most powerful men in the country – some said the most powerful, and he believed it. He had quit the Government in the expectation of being recalled with ever greater honours, only to find his resignation greeted with ridicule. His reputation had crumbled. So had his mind, relentlessly. Winston had been still a schoolboy, not yet twelve. So long ago, yet the pain still so fresh.

He stared at the portrait. What had his father been thinking when it was painted? Had those bright protruding eyes been able to see any of the misery that lay so close ahead? Had he felt any symptoms – had he guessed in any way that he had already set out upon a path that would lead to a slow and wretched death?

No, he could not have known. No man ever knew what lay ahead.

Tiredness gnawed away at the old man and his head sank towards the glass, still clutched tightly in his two hands. Yet as the head fell forward he was once more jerked awake. He opened his eyes to find himself staring at his father. Lord Randolph was sitting in the chair opposite – not an oil painting, not an hallucination, but body and blood, so far as Winston could tell. It wasn’t possible, of course, but …

‘Papa?’

‘What are you doing, Winston? Where are we?’

‘In my office. At the Admiralty.’

‘So, you’ve become a clerk in the navy, have you?’

‘I followed you, Papa. Into politics.’

‘Brutal game. Surprised you had the stomach for it. You were such a weakly child, always sickening for something.’

‘Politics have been my life. I entered Parliament at the same age as you, Papa. Twenty-five.’

‘Ah, all those years, but to what end?’ The father managed to sound both envious and dismissive. He began filling his amber cigarette-holder with a little pad of cotton wool to soak up the nicotine. The process seemed to absorb him, to the annoyance of his son. Instinctively the son decided not to reveal all of his hand, to keep something in reserve.

‘I have been Home Secretary and, as you were, Chancellor of the Exchequer. For five years.’

The father, who had been Chancellor for a mere five months, seemed not to hear, his attention focused on the search for a match from deep within his pockets.

‘I used your old robes, Papa, the ones you wore.’

Randolph scowled impatiently as his search continued fruitlessly.