JULY 16, 1940
LONDON, ENGLAND
8:30 P.M.
Winston Churchill wants to fight dirty.
Tonight is a working meal at 10 Downing Street. The relentless Churchill rose from his daily nap two hours ago, refreshed and ready to labor well into the night. He is dressed in pink silk underwear, workaday coat, and bow tie rather than a dinner jacket, and sips Pol Roger as colleagues arrive. The stress of being a wartime leader does not show on his pale round face. If anything, friends have noted, Churchill looks and behaves ten years younger. Cigar in one hand, silver champagne tankard in the other, he now thinks of a provocative letter that came his way recently, soon to be the primary topic of tonight’s agenda.
The evening’s first course, a clear broth, will be served shortly after nine. Head cook Georgina Landemare well knows that Churchill detests creamy soups. Red and white wine will be offered with the main course, although the prime minister will maintain a bottle of champagne for personal consumption, positioning the ice bucket near his chair so he need not wait for a servant to offer a refill. Ice cream with chocolate sauce is Churchill’s preferred dessert, followed by a plate of Stilton cheese. Brandy, cigars, and conversation will conclude the meal.*
Dinner routine is the one constant in Churchill’s life right now. It is two tumultuous months since he rose to prime minister. The world has been turned upside down. Churchill and Great Britain are now synonymous, his every decision and sentence scrutinized.
Two days ago, in a radio address to the British people, Churchill raised the stakes in his personal war against “that man,” as he refers to Adolf Hitler, vowing that Britain would not bend a knee.
And London will never be an open city.
“Be the ordeal sharp or long—or both—we shall seek no terms, we shall tolerate no parley, we may show mercy—we shall ask for none,” Churchill promised.
“We would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.”
Hitler gets the message. The Führer issued Directive No. 16 today, officially authorizing the invasion of Britain. The New York Times is reporting from Berlin that “Germany tonight raised the threat of a shattering bombardment of London in a sharp answer to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s promise of a street-by-street defense of the metropolis.”
Operation Sea Lion, as the attack is known, will begin by launching waves of German bombers against England. Landings will then be executed up and down the British coast—Lyme Regis, Portsmouth, Brighton, Dover, Ramsgate—all followed by the inexorable and inevitable conquest of London.
Winston Churchill is not cowed.
The prime minister lacks the resources to invade Europe in a traditional sense. But he nonetheless believes this is the perfect time to attack. “Existence is never so sweet,” Churchill has written, “as when it is at hazard.”
Among the guests now enjoying pre-dinner libations are Churchill’s thirty-nine-year-old parliamentary private secretary, Brendan Bracken, and his eccentric scientific adviser, Frederick Lindemann, known by one and all as the “Prof.” Both men are regular guests at Churchill’s banquet.
As a young man, Winston Churchill served as a newspaper correspondent covering the war between Britain and a group of Dutch settlers known as Boers in South Africa. These guerrilla fighters did not wear uniforms or practice conventional tactics. And yet they frustrated and often defeated a much larger and more professional British Army. Ever since, Churchill has harbored a romantic fascination with the Boer fighting force known as “commandos.” As recently as Dunkirk, Churchill has encouraged his generals to use commando-style tactics of all-out war, even ordering them to “prepare hunter troops for a butcher-and-bolt reign of terror.”
Now the dinner conversation turns to making commandos a regular part of British strategy. For the past two weeks Churchill has pondered a suggestion to form a new covert fighting force. He foresees a group of undercover killers with no rules or ethics, working behind enemy lines to disrupt and kill by any means possible. The men would be vagabonds, cutthroats, and ruffians, perhaps even hardened criminals comfortable operating without structure or direction. They must be volunteers. Some might even be women. Death will be all but certain.
This is the subject of the letter that weighs so heavily on the prime minister’s mind. It was written in the form of a proposal by Churchill’s glowering, outspoken minister of economic warfare, Hugh Dalton. The prime minister does not like this prickly Socialist. In fact, Dalton even sits across the aisle from Churchill as a member of the Labour Party, making him a direct rival.
But it is Hugh Dalton whose words speak to Churchill’s fascination for unconventional warfare. Written several weeks ago, then passed upward to the prime minister’s desk through political channels, Dalton’s manifesto offers a partial solution to Britain’s few military options: “We have got to organize movements in enemy-occupied territory comparable to the Sinn Fein movement in Ireland, to the Chinese guerillas now operating against Japan,” noted the fifty-two-year-old Etonian. “This ‘democratic international’ must use many different methods, including industrial and military sabotage, labour agitation and strikes, continuous propaganda, terrorist acts against traitors and German leaders, boycotts, and riots.”
Dalton also suggests that he be given the chance to lead this band of marauders. “Not a military job at all. It concerns Trade Unionists, Socialists, etc., the making of chaos and revolution—no more suitable for soldiers than fouling at football . . . surely, the War Office have enough on their plate at the present.”
A typical Churchill dinner can go to midnight and beyond, but this evening’s meal is done by 11:15. The prime minister retires to the Cabinet Room and summons Dalton. A formal document has been prepared, creating a commando force known as the Special Operations Executive. The organization will be top secret for security purposes, operating with minimal oversight. Hugh Dalton will be in charge.
All that remains is Churchill’s signature.
“The letter to be signed by him was on the table,” Dalton will record in his journal. “I ask whether he is really sure that he wants me to do a little more.”
“Yes,” Churchill replies. “Certainly.”
In time, nicknames like “Churchill’s Secret Army” and “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” will be applied to this new unit. But right now there is no tongue-in-cheek romance, only practicality. Hugh Dalton and the SOE represent Churchill’s slim hope of defeating Adolf Hitler. Even bomber aircraft missions into Nazi Germany have had little effect. Aggressive missions by the SOE, no matter how brutal they might be, are an antidote to the impotence Hitler imposes upon Churchill and Britain.
On Monday, July 22, the war cabinet formally agrees to Dalton’s new role.
Dalton records Churchill’s marching orders in his journal:
“ ‘And now,’ said the P.M., ‘go and set Europe ablaze.’ ”