Authors: Michael Ridpath
‘
SIR
YOU
ARE
REQUIRED
URGENTLY
AT
HOME
STOP
LEAVE
28
TH
STOP
PLANE
WAITING
FOR
YOU
AT
BIARRITZ
AERODROME
STOP
ALSTON
’.
Wiltshire
It had been a long, long voyage from Bordeaux, and it wasn’t over yet. Conrad had managed to get a place on a cargo ship from Durban which had diverted to Bordeaux to pick up passengers. The ship had room for sixty passengers, but there were at least three hundred on board. Conrad found himself a few square feet of deck on which to lie.
The journey had taken thirty-six hours. The ship had dumped its passengers in Falmouth, before continuing its scheduled voyage to Liverpool. From Falmouth, Conrad had had to fight for a place on a train to Exeter, and then on to London.
He had had plenty of time to think. About his father, most of all. How was he going to tell his mother what had happened? She was a brave woman, but Millie’s death had hit her hard. And of course he would have to tell her his own part in his father’s death. He hoped she wouldn’t blame him; she knew Lord Oakford and his pig-headed determination to achieve peace at any costs better than anyone else.
And his father had been foolish, typically foolish. He was living proof that a pacifist could be brave; he had been willing to sacrifice his life for what he believed in. Indeed willing to dare his son to shoot him. What kind of father was he?
A courageous, stupid, fanatical, bad-tempered, principled, treacherous father. That’s what kind.
How could Conrad live with a dead father like that?
How could he live without him?
Of course, as Veronica had pointed out, Conrad was now the new Viscount Oakford. Conrad didn’t want the bloody title. It was his father’s. Or Edward’s. As far as Conrad was concerned, even bloody Reggie could have it; he’d love to be lord-of-the-bloody-manor. Conrad just wanted his family back.
He had hastily discussed with Madame de Salignac what to do with his father’s body. She had suggested burying him in the local village churchyard. Conrad had agreed, but on condition that Constance Scott-Dunton was buried somewhere else, anywhere else, just not next to his father. He imagined taking his mother there after the war. What he couldn’t imagine was what kind of country France, or Britain for that matter, would be when the war eventually ended, and whether that would be in several years’ time or just a couple of weeks.
He remembered Veronica urging him to shoot his father. He could forgive her that: she understood why he was hesitating and was urging him to do what she believed was the right thing. He wasn’t sure about her working for McCaigue, although he believed that she had been duped by the major. He wondered whether she would be successful persuading the Duke of Windsor to stay in France. A tall order, but Conrad had learned never to underestimate his wife.
He had grabbed a copy of
The
Times
at Exeter station. Rumours that the Allies had surrendered Calais were false. The French were counter-attacking near Amiens. Back in England, pig clubs would come to the aid of small rearers in time of war and housewives were advised to move kitchen cabinets nearer to the stove to save labour.
Conrad wondered whether his battalion was still twiddling its thumbs in Suffolk, or whether it had been ordered to France as Colonel Rydal had anticipated. Perhaps they were fighting the Germans at last. If so, it sounded as if they would be lucky to get back to England in one piece. He should be with them.
And what of Anneliese? How would she be taking captivity? Conrad had hoped that McCaigue would get her out of prison. Much more likely, he was keeping her inside.
He missed her. He felt a sudden, almost overwhelming desire to hold her. To talk to her. To stroke her hair.
But now he was on a train jolting and juddering its way towards London, he couldn’t think about his mother, or Anneliese, or even returning to his unit. Somehow he had to convince the British government that it was in imminent danger. But whom could he talk to?
Not McCaigue, obviously. Van almost certainly wouldn’t listen to him and would alert McCaigue. His mother, perhaps. She knew people, but she was back in Somerset. It would take too long. Also she was German and therefore bound to raise doubts.
What of his father’s friends? Many of them were powerful people. But Conrad had no idea which, if any of them, were involved in Lord Oakford’s plotting. Or which were also friends of Sir Henry Alston.
There was his father’s old school chum Lord Halifax. Conrad had met him on a number of occasions, and he was sure Halifax would remember him. He was also as convinced as he could be of his integrity and loyalty.
But not his initiative. Halifax was an expert at doing nothing.
There was one man who might listen to him, and if he believed Conrad, who would definitely act. He had listened to Conrad once two years earlier. The trouble was, he would be hard to reach, especially in these times.
But he was Conrad’s only hope.
Extract from Lieutenant Dieter von Hertenberg’s Diary
28 May
Fighting near Dunkirk. We can see hundreds of British ships evacuating troops, thousands of troops. If only we hadn’t been forced to halt, we would have bagged the lot of them!
Later given the order that we are to be relieved by XIV Corps. Guderian is to be given his own Panzer Group, which of course he deserves. It will be good to stop fighting for a few days, but we can’t sleep yet. Our new Panzer Group headquarters is 200 kilometres away. Maybe once we get there we can have a few days’ rest. We all need it.
Eighteen days since the offensive started. Who would have thought that eighteen days could be so vital? We have achieved more in those eighteen days than the German army achieved in four years in the last war.
Maybe peace will come now.
Downing Street, London, 28 May
Winston Churchill listened to Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, argue the case for honesty about the latest news from the continent. It was dire. That morning the King of the Belgians had surrendered. Calais had fallen the day before, Boulogne the day before that; 11,400 men of the BEF had been evacuated from Dunkirk so far, leaving behind a quarter of a million more waiting. The French wanted to discuss peace with Germany. They were defeated and they knew it.
Over the weekend the Chiefs of Staff had circulated a dispiriting paper entitled ‘British Strategy in a Certain Eventuality’, that eventuality being the fall of France. The report concluded that if the Germans won complete air superiority, there would be little the Royal Navy could do to prevent invasion.
But Britain wasn’t defeated. Not yet. Not according to Churchill.
Churchill was presiding over the War Cabinet, the small group of five men who ran the war day-to-day: himself, Lord Halifax, Neville Chamberlain and the two Labour ministers Arthur Greenwood and Clement Attlee. While the discussions focused on the details of the war, the unspoken question hung in the air. At what point should Britain admit defeat?
The question had become very close to being spoken the day before, when Lord Halifax had argued that the British should open discussions with the Italians. Afterwards, in the Downing Street garden, Halifax had threatened to resign and Churchill had been forced to apologize and beg him not to. Churchill could not allow the government to be seen to be split on the issue of peace and war.
The Prime Minister studied the adversary sitting opposite him. Halifax had a long, lugubrious face of high-minded seriousness. He prided himself, with justification, on his pragmatism, on his rational mind, on his ability to weigh pros and cons dispassionately. Britain was losing the war and Halifax felt that the War Cabinet should discuss what to do about it.
The trouble was that Halifax had no imagination and no sense of history, both of which Churchill knew he had in spades. Instinct told him, history told him, that at this vital moment it would be fatal to show any sign of weakness. Britain was an island that had not been invaded for a thousand years; it had a glorious history of defending freedom; it had a parliamentary democracy that was the admiration of countries everywhere; it had the greatest empire the world had ever seen. All that was the work of centuries; Churchill would not give it up without a fight.
But he couldn’t defend it single-handedly either. He needed the support of the War Cabinet, of the Conservative Party and of the British people. And he was weak. He had only been Prime Minister for eighteen days, and in those eighteen days the Allied armies had been routed. No one blamed him directly. But Halifax’s quiet appeal to hard-headed pragmatism in a dire situation was difficult for Churchill to counter.
Conrad perused
The Times
as he waited in an ante-room in 10 Downing Street. He was interested to see no mention of Calais that day, apart from a tiny piece stating that French sources in Paris claimed the town was still probably in Allied hands. It was half past eleven; Conrad had been waiting since ten. His demand that he must meet the Prime Minister with urgent news from France had met with scepticism, but when he had identified himself as Lord Oakford’s son, he was at least admitted.
A Civil Servant approached him.
‘I understand you wish to see the Prime Minister, Mr de Lancey?’
‘Yes. I have some urgent news from France.’
‘As you can imagine, the Prime Minister is very busy today. Perhaps you could tell me and I can pass it on?’
‘No. I must see him myself.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
Conrad had been expecting this. ‘Just tell Mr Churchill I’m here to see him and he can decide if he wants to meet me. Remind him that I saw him at Chartwell two years ago with an important message from Germany.’ That had been that the German officers were planning to overthrow their Führer. ‘Tell him this message is even more vital.’
‘I will tell the Prime Minister and we will be in touch with you,’ said the Civil Servant. ‘Can you give me details of where we can reach you?’
‘I can wait here,’ said Conrad. ‘The Prime Minister really needs to hear this as soon as possible.’
‘I am sorry, Mr de Lancey, you will have to leave.’ The Civil Servant glanced at a moustachioed policeman at the door of the ante-room.
Conrad argued for a few minutes longer, but it was clear he was getting nowhere. In the end the policeman escorted him firmly but politely to the door and out into the street.
Conrad stared desperately at the door of Number 10. ‘I have to tell him. I have to tell him somehow,’ he said to the policeman, because he was the only person there. ‘The future of the war depends on it.’
The constable, who was a large, comfortable man in his fifties, examined Conrad. ‘I shouldn’t say this, sir, but the Prime Minister often lunches at the Admiralty. You might catch him there later on.’
Halifax bided his time. The War Cabinet broke up with Churchill promising to make a statement in the House of Commons preparing them for bad news from France. They agreed to meet again at four that afternoon, when Churchill was sure Halifax would make his move.
Churchill pulled Neville Chamberlain to one side and asked him if he would agree to inviting Lloyd George into the cabinet. The ostensible reason was to strengthen government unity. Lloyd George was known to be defeatist; he had spoken of Hitler in admiring terms in the past, had been opposed to the war and had argued for peace intermittently since its outbreak. But if the worst came to the worst, Churchill preferred the idea of his old political partner Lloyd George taking over from him than someone like Oswald Mosley.
The success of Vidkun Quisling in usurping the Norwegian government in April had shaken Churchill and was one of the reasons why he had sanctioned locking up Mosley and Maule Ramsay. But they could always be let out of prison again once Churchill had gone.
Neville agreed to Lloyd George. Churchill then went off to lunch at the Admiralty to work on his speech to the House. He was still lodging there, having allowed Neville and his family to stay on at 10 Downing Street.
The food, and especially the wine, fortified him and, clutching a newly lit cigar, he left the Admiralty for Parliament in slightly better spirits.
‘Prime Minister! Prime Minister! May I have a word?’
Churchill glanced at the young man trying to attract his attention. He recognized him. ‘Mr de Lancey?’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Conrad. ‘I must speak to you.’
Churchill grinned. ‘If I stopped and talked to everyone who wanted to speak to me, I’d never get anywhere.’
‘What I have to say is more important than the message I gave you at Chartwell two years ago.’
Churchill frowned. He was intrigued. He had liked de Lancey. They had talked then not only about his German friends’ plans to remove Hitler, but about history and about bricklaying. Those days, which had seemed so dark at the time, now seemed a period of tranquil unemployment. How he would love to be working on his kitchen-garden wall at Chartwell and chatting to this young man!
‘What is it, de Lancey?’
‘We need to talk privately, sir.’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ said Churchill. ‘I’m on my way to speak in the House.’
‘I have become aware of a plan to replace you as prime minister,’ Conrad said. ‘My father was involved, I am ashamed to say.’
‘Your father!’ Churchill was surprised. Although Lord Oakford’s pacifism, even defeatism, was well known, Churchill had always held him in high regard. ‘Who else?’
He noticed de Lancey glance to see who was within earshot. Just Churchill’s detective and a uniformed policeman. ‘Henry Alston. And the Duke of Windsor.’
Churchill considered the young man in front of him. Could he be speaking the truth? He had done so at Chartwell in the summer of 1938. Churchill’s instinct was that he was doing so now. The duke was a worry, and Churchill had never trusted Alston.