Churchill's Triumph by Michael Dobbs
Those around him knew the warning signs. They also knew better than to argue. It was what he did when he was deeply depressed. He would charge around and fill up the dark hole in his life with activity, and he showed no mercy to anyone who got in the way. It was as though he was a young man again, back on his horse, leading the charge at Omdurman.
The frantic activity was cut through by a wail that emerged from Churchill’s room and wound insistently up the staircase. Sarah rushed in to find a scene that resembled the aftermath of an avalanche. Half-packed suitcases were strewn in every corner, clothes partly in, partly out, and in the middle of it all knelt Sawyers. There were tears in his eyes.
“He can’t do this to me, miss.”
“I’m rather afraid he already has, Sawyers.”
“But one minute he tells me he’s wearin’ his army uniform, the next his Royal Yacht Club suit, then changes his mind again and says he’s goin’ in his Lord Warden’s outfit.”
“What? What?” Churchill demanded, emerging from his bedroom in his underwear. “Where the hell are my trousers?”
“There are some here, some there, and some on the back of the chair,” Sawyers responded stubbornly
“So what’s the bloody mess all about?”
It was the point of no return for Sawyers. He beat his breast, thumping his heart as though he wanted to bring it to a halt. “It’s the laundry. You weren’t supposed to be goin’ so soon. And it’s all sodden and wet. If I go packin’ it like that, it’ll all be ruined.”
“Then. . . do something, man.”
Sawyers’s eyes brimmed with anguish and hurt pride, and he knelt to attention. “As always, zur, I’m open to suggestions.”
It was Churchill’s turn to show petulance. “Look, I’m the Prime Minister, not some bloody laundrymaid. Sort it out yourself. The sodding laundry stays, the sodding laundry goes, I don’t much care which. But hear this.” He stamped his foot like a child. “I am off!”
He didn’t make it at five, not quite. It was thirty minutes past the hour before he left, the last of the leaders to do so. He made a scrambled and somewhat undignified departure, leaving Yalta all but deserted behind him.
***
Many things drive a man on: lust, greed, ambition, fear, anger, jealousy, poverty and, particularly, hate. But the greatest motivation of all is love.
There could be no other explanation for how Nowak picked himself up and was able to drive himself onwards, even after a tire had punctured and filled every yard with rattling confusion and pain. Such things no longer mattered to him. This was his last throw of the dice, his last gamble, and he had come to the point of exhaustion where it scarcely mattered what it cost him. He had one last chance.
By the time he pulled up by the guardhouse at the entrance to the Vorontsov compound, it was growing dark and he was entirely numb. He had lost feeling in his legs, his backside was rubbed raw, his brow was black, his clothes smeared and torn, and he was shaking from the effects of many different types of pain.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” the guard demanded, spitting a fleck of tobacco from his tongue.
Nowak’s streaming eyes looked up. “I have come to repair Mr. Churchill’s plumbing,” he gasped. “It’s an emergency.”
“Fucking looks like it, too.”
“Please, comrade. You must let me pass.”
The guard called to his partner. “Look what we’ve got here. Some idiot who’s come to fix Churchill’s bog.”
“Steal the lead piping, more like.”
“Got himself into a right state about it, too.”
“They… complained about my work last time. I can’t afford to mess up again,” Nowak stuttered.
“Sent for you specially, did they? Is that what you were told? Emergency and all?”
“Yes, comrade.”
And the guards burst into mocking laughter. “You better go back, you stupid arse. They’ve played a joke on you.”
“No, comrade. I must go. Please.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Churchill’s plumbing.”
“But I have orders,” Nowak pleaded.
“Bet Marshal Stalin sent him personally,” the guards began joking between themselves. “Get the Order of Lenin for this, he will… And all we ever get is a thirty-kopeck whore. . . ”
“Please, comrades. Let me pass!”
“Persistent swine, ain’t he?”
“He’s come for the lead piping, for sure.”
“He’ll get a labor camp for that.”
“I’ve been there already,” Nowak said softly, exhausted.
The admission brought a temporary halt to the banter of the guards as the shadow of the camps passed across their souls.
“Well, help yourself, then, if you must,” Nowak was told. “But take your time. The revolution’s been postponed. Put off until tomorrow.”
“That’s right,” the other guard added. “Take all the time in the world.”
“Why? What do you mean? Tell me.”
“You blind fool. We keep telling you. You’ve been had.”
“How?”
“Churchill left here an hour ago.”
And, as Nowak’s legs gave way and he sank slowly to his knees, the guards took up their mocking laughter once more.
THE FOLLOWING DAYS
TEN
The Americans left Yalta with a huge sense of achievement. Roosevelt told his colleagues that Yalta had paved the way for the kind of world he had been dreaming about. He said he felt he understood Stalin, that Stalin understood him, and that a new era in world peace was at hand. He was profoundly content, and after his detour to the Middle East, Roosevelt sailed back to his homeland and a welcome that compared him to both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
But the USS Quincy that brought the President home was a ship of sorrows. During the voyage, his old friend Pa Watson collapsed and died, never having made up his quarrel with Hopkins, and Hopkins himself had become so sick that he asked to be put off the ship in Morocco. This displeased Roosevelt, who missed Hopkins’s nimble mind. After all, it wasn’t as if Hopkins was the only sick man on board.
On the long journey back, Roosevelt spent considerable time with members of the traveling press, relaxing, letting down his guard, and off the record he was withering to them about Churchill. He went out of his way to accuse the prime minister of being mid-Victorian and of being too slow or too stubborn to appreciate the inevitable fate that awaited his empire. They were mean thoughts, unworthy of a great man, and understandable only in one racked by illness and exhaustion.
When he had set his wheels once again upon dry land, he went to the Congress to make his report. He began with an apology. It was the first time he had addressed Congress seated, “but I know you will realize it makes it a lot easier for me in not having to carry about ten pounds of steel around the bottom of my legs.” Up to that point throughout all the years of his presidency, he had forbidden photographs of him in his wheelchair. Many Americans didn’t even know he was paralyzed, yet now the secret was out. He was growing too weak to stand, and too weak to pretend any longer, yet his thoughts and ideals shone through as strong as ever.
He told them that the three leaders had spent days in discussing momentous matters such as Poland. He said they had argued, “frankly and freely across the table. But at the end, on every point, unanimous agreement was reached. And more important even than the agreement of words, I may say we achieved a unity of thought and a way of getting along together.”
They applauded him for that, and it seemed to inspire him. “Never before have the major Allies been more closely united—not only in their war aims but also in their peace aims. And they are determined to be united with each other—and with all peace-loving nations—so that the ideal of lasting peace will become a reality.”
Th
And at times, when he left the script that he had agreed with his advisers, the right words seemed to elude him. He hesitated, reached for meanings, and couldn’t always touch them. He talked disparagingly of what he called “a great many prima donnas in the world” whose tantrums delayed progress, and implied that de Gaulle was one. And, astonishingly, he claimed to have learned more about the Muslim-Jewish problem in five minutes in conversation with Ibn Saud, the Saudi king, than he had in any number of written exchanges. Yet in private he had mocked the fat king, calling him a great whale. Some of what he told his audience was faltering, a little of it was silly, yet his idealism drew him on.
“The conference in the Crimea was a turning point, I hope, in our history, and therefore in the history of the world. There will soon be presented to the Senate and the American people a great decision that will determine the fate of the United States—and I think therefore of the world—for generations to come. There can be no middle ground here. We shall have to take the responsibility for world collaboration or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict.” Portentous words, but now he was hurrying, glancing at the clock, misreading one or two words in his script, anxious to finish.
“No one can say exactly how long any plan will last. Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it, and sacrifice for it. Twenty-five years ago, American fighting men looked to the statesmen of the world to finish the work of peace for which they fought and suffered. We failed them—we failed them then. We cannot fail them again and expect the world to survive.”
Even as he faltered, Franklin Roosevelt kept his eyes fixed on a distant horizon.
Churchill’s view, which he expressed to the House of Commons, was far more opaque. When he rose to his feet in a crowded House of Commons on the morning of February 27, he displayed little of Roosevelt’s certainty. The President talked of the world being at an historic turning-point, but Churchill saw a very different world from the one the president gazed upon.
“We are now entering a world of imponderables, and at every stage occasions for self-questioning arise. It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at one time. . . No one can guarantee the future of the world.”
It was exceedingly cautious stuff, and whereas Roosevelt talked of his hopes for a world of collaboration, Churchill was far more circumspect, particularly when it came to Poland.
“Even more important than the frontiers of Poland is the freedom of Poland,” he told the packed House. “The home of the Poles is settled. But are they to be masters in their own house? Are they to be free, as we in Britain and the United States or France are free? Are their sovereignty and their independence to be untrammeled, or are they to become a mere projection of the Soviet state, forced against their will by an armed minority to adopt a Communist or totalitarian system? Well, I am putting the case in all its bluntness. It is a touchstone far more sensitive and vital than the drawing of frontier lines. Where does Poland stand?” he asked. “Where do we all stand on this?”
So many questions. Yet these were not mere rhetorical flourishes. By raising so many questions, Churchill implied that there might be insufficient answers. And by so openly parading these misgivings, he gave legitimacy to others who also raised them. But he couldn’t allow himself to be held responsible for knocking down the agreement. He told them that he had “the impression” that Stalin wished to live in honorable friendship and equality with the Western democracies. He had a “feeling” that the Russians’ word was their bond. “I decline absolutely to embark here on a discussion about Russian good faith,” he declared. But, once more, by raising the issue, he gave others the right to do so. And there were many who were eager for the chance.
Twenty-five members of Parliament voted against the Yalta agreement, most of them Conservatives. Others abstained, a minister resigned. There was no jubilation in the streets. Churchill’s questions were left hanging in the air.
He had only hours to wait for Stalin’s answer. On the very same evening as Churchill told the House of Commons they were moving into “a world of imponderables,” the Russians sent their tanks and troops on to the streets of the Romanian capital of Bucharest and mounted an armed coup. It was in flagrant breach of both the spirit and letter of the promises that had been strewn about at Yalta. Both British and American governments demanded meetings and explanations, but the Russians didn’t even bother to lie. They simply ignored their allies, said nothing, and carried on.
It was the beginning of much, much worse to come. The Soviet boot stamped down upon Romania and Bulgaria, the Baltic States, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the eastern half of Germany, and, of course, Poland. Churchill foresaw it, or much of it. In the month after they had parted at Yalta, Churchill pestered Roosevelt with telegrams urging caution about Russia. His words fell on deaf, and dying, ears.
On April 12, eight weeks after he had left the Crimea, the president was sitting quietly in his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, when he rubbed his temples and complained of a terrific headache. Then he collapsed. Three hours later, Franklin Roosevelt was dead.
And three months after that Churchill, too, was gone, cast aside by the catastrophic election defeat that Stalin had assured him could never happen.
***
Nowak the warrior was also dead. During the weeks after the Russian occupation of Piorun, many of the missing men of the town began to make their way home—from gulags and concentration camps, from prisons, from labor details, and from the places that had kept them hidden throughout the years of war. There were many others, of course, who would never make it home and who would lie in unmarked graves, but for those who did they found a town that was still at war. The Home Army was treated as an enemy by the occupying force: its leaders were arrested as traitors, there were executions and mass transportations, so the men of the Home Army fled once more to the forests to continue their resistance.
But there was a new ambivalence among the Poles. Their “provisional” government was, nominally at least, Polish, and for some that was enough excuse to bring the years of bloodshed to a close. So one night in May, Nowak and his men in the forest were betrayed by a fellow countryman. They woke up the following day to discover, as the mists melted away, that a ring of steel had been thrown round them, and out of the morning sun from the east came bombers who rained death upon their hiding places. For Nowak and his friends, there was to be no escape. They had no hope of beating off the Russian tanks, and when they tried to flee from the forest they were picked off, one by one, like low-flying pheasants. Nowak was hit in the leg. He knew he would die, but was determined to make it back to Piorun first. They caught up with him in a potato field on the outskirts, within sight of the rooftops, and they did not take prisoners.
Yet at least Nowak the warrior had the privilege of dying on Polish soil. Not everyone was accorded as much.
In March, General Leopold Okulicki, the head of the Home Army, and fifteen other of the most influential non-Communist Polish leaders, including ministers from the government in exile in London, were invited by the Russians to discuss the formation of the new “broadly based” administration promised by the agreement at Yalta. They had been given personal letters of safe conduct from the commander of the Red Army in Poland, in which he offered his “word of honor that from the moment of your arrival among us I shall be responsible for everything that happens to you and that your personal safety is completely assured.”
They agreed to meet the Russians in a suburb of Warsaw. Not a single one of the Poles returned from the meeting.
They had been promised that a plane would be provided to
Nowak. Okulicki. And tens of thousands of others. Systematically, the Russians were finishing off the task begun by the Nazis, and wiping out all traces of Polish resistance.
THE MEDITERRANEAN
JUNE 1963
EPILOGUE
“Nearly twenty years. A long time ago,” Churchill began, leaning forward, trying to adjust his eyes to the glare from the surrounding sea. “There were so many people, so many different places. . . ”
“Yalta.”
“I still don’t recognize—”
“I had two good legs then.”
Churchill stared still harder. A Pole? At Yalta? It couldn’t be. He’d only met the one and this man was so very much older. The scalp was threadbare, his brow a forest of furrows, his knuckles gnarled like an ancient oak. No, this wasn’t the man: this was an impostor, intent on some cruel mischief, no one aged that quickly, not unless. . . Then, as the Pole raised his glass, Churchill saw the gash on his hand where two fingers should have been.
“Is it. . . you?” The words came in a sigh, like air escaping from an opened coffin. This had to be a dream. . .
“Yes, Mr. Churchill. Although it’s Sir Winston now, isn’t it? So many honors. A man of honor, that’s what I think you once told me, or something like that. But I’ll call you plain Mr. Churchill.”
“How. . . ?”
“How did I escape?” Nowak laughed dryly, leaning on the Christina’s rail, shifting the weight from his leg without taking his eyes off the old man. “With luck. With help. Because some angel was watching over me. An angel named Frank Sawyers.”