War Declared
IN ENGLAND, it had been a gloriously hot last week of August, and the first day of September had been every bit as lovely. At Hove, on the south coast, it was the Friday of the Brighton and Hove cricket week, and the Sussex team were playing host to Yorkshire, already crowned county champions for a record-breaking seventh time that decade.
The match was also a benefit game for Jim Parks, a stalwart of the Sussex side and an England player too, and while other games around the country had already been cancelled because of the imminent outbreak of war, the fact that it was a cricket festival week and a benefit match encouraged both sides to keep playing and finish off the three-day game. The tension in the air that day was palpable. Some felt they shouldn’t really be playing sport at a time like this, and yet alongside that was a very keen sense that this could be the last match for a very long time. Sussex reached 387 in their first innings, and Yorkshire 393, when, after lunch on that Friday, the hosts began batting again. There had been a thunderstorm on the Wednesday night, but now the sun was blazing hot, baking the wicket in what were ideal conditions for spin bowling.
Hedley Verity had proved the finest spin bowler of the past decade, playing for both Yorkshire and England and taking vast numbers of wickets. He’d twice achieved the feat of claiming all ten wickets in an innings and had taken nine seven times – an unequalled record. Still only thirty-four, he could have had a long career yet ahead of him. For the time being, however, it seemed as though it would most likely be put on hold. Not, though, before he had bowled out Sussex in their second innings.
That afternoon, as German soldiers pushed into Poland and the Luftwaffe screamed overhead, amidst the genteel calm of the Sussex county ground at Hove, Verity took seven wickets for nine runs as the hosts were bowled out for just thirty-three. Not long after, Yorkshire cantered home to an emphatic victory. If it was to be Verity’s last match for a while, those were exceptional bowling figures on which to end.
Straight after the match, the Yorkshire players headed back north in the team coach, no one much mentioning the cricket, even though it had been a fine match. Outside London, they saw streams of vehicles filled with people and possessions evacuating the capital. A blackout was now in force, and so they halted for the night at Leicester. If it was war – and with the news of the invasion of Poland, it would be any moment – most of the country’s cricketers would be expected to play their part; sporting heroes would not be exempt. Verity knew this but had decided to enlist anyway; he’d been thinking about it for almost a year ever since the Munich crisis and had not only spoken to Lieutenant-Colonel Arnold Shaw of The Green Howards, a local Yorkshire infantry regiment, but had also spent considerable time reading military textbooks. For Verity, it was simple. Hitler and Nazism were evil, Britain was under threat, and it was his duty to play his part.
In France that same day, mobilization continued. By law, every Frenchman, or naturalized Frenchman, was obliged to serve in the Army, Navy or Air Force unless he was unfit to do so, and that included those living in French colonies. Originally after the last war, Frenchmen were required to do their ‘Colour Service’ for just one year. This was the annual conscript class, normally called up in October, for all 21-year-olds. Back in 1935, as the effects on childbirth of the First World War started to take effect, this was raised to eighteen months. The following year, 1936, it had been raised to two years, and still numbers were down.
Once a conscript had seen out his Colour Service, he was then considered en disponibilité for a further three years. The idea was that in peacetime, all units, regiments and divisions would operate at around a third of their strength. If hostilities broke out the numbers en disponibilité would then be immediately called up and would bring the active armed services up to war strength. After this period of service, a Frenchman would be in the 1st Reserve for a further sixteen years. Finally, there would be a final period of seven years when they would be on the 2nd Reserve. In theory, most people would only expect to do their service in the Colours. Provided peace held, those en disponibilité or in the 1st and 2nd Reserves would not expect to have to put on their uniforms again, and even in a time of crisis it might well be the case that only those reserves who had most recently served would be called up.
These were not ordinary times, however, and now all reserve officers and those en disponibilité had been called up, which was why men like René de Chambrun had been hastily brought back into active service with immediate effect and not even the chance to enjoy a birthday outing. By 1 September, Chambrun was a captain once more and a company commander in 162e Régiment d’Infanterie based at Amanvillers, near the border city of Metz in Lorraine and right on the Maginot Line. When he had reached the village, large groups of men had been arriving, mostly in civilian clothes, some on bicycles, others on foot. On arrival, each had been issued with a uniform and no fewer than 142 items, from ammunition pouches to steel helmets. Chambrun had seen one man, newly equipped and dressed, leaning sadly on a farmhouse door. In a voice choking with grief, he had explained that his wife of five years had been killed the day before in a threshing machine accident and that, now called up, he’d had to leave his three-year-old daughter with friends in his village – which was worryingly close to the German border. The French General Mobilization, however, made no exceptions; this man would have to do his duty, grief-stricken or not.
At Amanvillers the following day, René de Chambrun had attended Mass in a field next to the small village church. The priest, now wearing the uniform of a corporal, told the assembled officers and men, ‘Remember – many things are more painful to bear than war. Slavery is one of them, and, with the help of God, let us fight so this soil will remain French forever.’ Chambrun had followed his eyes to the horizon, where the menacing turrets of the Maginot Line thrust upwards out of the ground.
Barely had German troops crossed into Poland than embassies in Warsaw and Berlin began furiously transmitting communiqués to their respective governments. In Britain, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, called his cabinet together at 11.30 a.m. The previous day, the Italians had made one more final attempt to resolve the situation by calling for a world peace conference, but it was too late, and the British rejected the overture.
So, what had been threatened all summer had finally occurred; attempts to deter Hitler had failed. ‘The events against which we had fought so long and so earnestly have come upon us,’ Chamberlain told his colleagues, ‘but our consciences are clear and there should be no possible question now where our duty lies.’ Had Chamberlain looked deep into his heart, perhaps his conscience about British abandonment of the Czechs might have been a little less clear. However, be that as it may, he was right on one point: Britain had to declare war on Germany. It was agreed a final warning would be issued to Germany to withdraw immediately, and they would also have to work out procedural details with the French, but Chamberlain’s mind was clear.
The House of Commons met at 6 p.m. that evening. The moral agony of the Prime Minister was all too evident; there was no doubting he had, for the past year, acted in the hope of avoiding war, regardless of whether his judgement had been correct. But he insisted there could be no peace in Europe while Hitler and the Nazis remained in power, and in this he was unquestionably correct.
There was still no announcement, however, about just when Britain would declare war. Since the warning to Germany to withdraw immediately was sent that evening, it would presumably be the following day on the assumption that Germany would ignore the threat. It became clear that evening, however, that France was wobbling. The French had not rejected the Italians’ offer of a peace conference outright, and Georges Bonnet, the French Foreign Minister, now called Lord Halifax, his British counterpart, to say that constitutionally they could not declare war until Parliament had met and that would not be until the evening of Saturday the 2nd, although general mobilization had been ordered. It was Général Maurice Gamelin, Chief of the General Staff, who was most nervous; he worried that German bombing might hamper mobilization and that France needed a little longer to get ready.
While the French were playing for time rather than dodging their commitments, Chamberlain and Halifax faced revolt from both the Cabinet and the House of Commons when it met late the following day, Saturday, 2 September. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary had been delaying only to keep a united front with the French and to give Germany a chance to withdraw – any chance of peace, however slim, was, to their mind, worth pursuing. But their colleagues did not see it that way. Edward Spears was far from alone in feeling increasingly incensed by the delay.
‘Speak for England!’ shouted the Conservative Leo Amery. And the Labour MP Arthur Greenwood did so, urging the Prime Minister to be decisive, to save Britain’s honour. ‘The moment we look like weakening,’ he said, ‘the dictators would know we were beaten.’ Chamberlain, horrified by the hostility he had met, feared the Government might fall. The Cabinet met again at 11.30 p.m. that night. Outside, a violent thunderstorm raged. A shaken Prime Minister now accepted that, as Greenwood had urged, decisive action was needed, regardless of the French stance. It was agreed that an ultimatum would be presented to Berlin at 9 a.m. the following morning, which would expire two hours later.
Later that evening, Gwladys Cox, her husband, Ralph, and their cat, Bobby, arrived back at their flat on the top floor of Lymington Mansions in West Hampstead. For a couple of days, they had gone to Guildford to stay with Gwladys’s sister, Ruth. Like many others in London, they had decided to evacuate, fearing gas attacks and other horrors. It was the threat of gas attacks that particularly troubled Gwladys – Ralph suffered badly from asthma and during the numerous Air Raid Precaution trials in August, he had been unable to cope with wearing their newly issued gas masks.
After two days in Guildford, however, they decided to return; they had been wracked by indecision ever since they had left – or, rather, abandoned – their home. They had only moved into their flat a year before and had been delighted with it. On the top floor, it had come equipped with electric plugs, a shower in the bathroom and an Ascot heater in the kitchen, so that hot water was both constant and plentiful. It had a south-facing view that caught the sun and had lovely views of London, so that they could easily see St Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben and other landmarks. In Guildford they were miserable; no matter what lay ahead, it was better to face the future from their own home with their own things.
Almost 1.5 million were leaving Britain’s cities – a massed evacuation that had begun on 1 September. Although most taxis and cars were being used, the Coxes managed to find a car and driver, and reached West Hampstead at sunset. ‘I shall never forget my first sight of the barrage balloons,’ scribbled Gwladys in her diary. ‘Hundreds of them dotted the sky and glittered silvery pink in the setting sun.’
That night, as darkness fell and once more back in Lymington Mansions, they put up the blackout curtains for real for the first time; then, before going to bed, she switched off the light and looked over London. ‘The sky was heavy with dark clouds,’ she noted, ‘and countless searchlights combed the heavens.’ As though anticipating what was to come, the weather had then dramatically turned. Gwladys was woken in the morning to the sound of thunder. Sheet lightning flashed across the sky. She noticed all the barrage balloons, suspended high above London to prevent low-flying enemy aircraft, had gone.
Sunday, 3 September, dawned, warm and sunny. At 9 a.m., the ultimatum was issued. Two hours later there had been no response from Berlin, and Chamberlain wearily announced to the nation, after a quarter of an hour, that Britain was at war with Germany. Those at church were told by priests at the conclusion of the morning service. Later that afternoon, the French finally followed suit. Around the world, the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all British Dominions, also declared war. Two days later, so too would South Africa.
It had come to pass.
That morning, Edward Spears had joined a meeting of the Eden Group, an informal gathering of Conservative anti-appeasers led by the former Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. They met at a house in Queen Anne’s Gate, near St James’s Park. Sunlight poured in through the drawing room windows. Spears looked out at the blue sky and the trees of St James’s Park, wishing not to miss a moment of sunshine or colour.
The assembled group had not only been discussing the inevitable outbreak of war, but also the news that Churchill was to be brought back into the Cabinet. Spears was relieved, as they all were; Churchill would be resolute in his determination to stand up to Germany, and it was essential he was in the Cabinet. Spears, for one, believed he might well become Prime Minister. If he were to lead the country through this war, he needed to be at the centre of the Government now.
Not far away, Churchill and his wife, Clementine, had listened to Chamberlain’s broadcast then heard the wail of an air raid siren droning out over London. Hurrying up to the flat roof of the house, they looked out to see what was going on. Slowly rising above the roofs and spires of London were as many as forty silvery barrage balloons. There was no sign of the enemy, but aware of the prescribed air raid drill, the Churchills grabbed a bottle of brandy then hurried to the nearest shelter.
In an empty lecture hall of the London School of Economics, the 24-year-old Jock Colville heard the news with a sense of numbness, from which he was only awakened when he heard the same air raid drone. Colville was a young member of the Foreign Office who, that morning, had discovered he had been reassigned to the brand-new Ministry of Economic Warfare, which was being established in empty rooms at the LSE. A Cambridge graduate, he had travelled widely through Russia, Asia, Turkey and Europe after leaving university, learning German and French in the process. After attempting a career in the City, he decided it wasn’t for him and so had sat exams for the Foreign Office. To his surprise and delight, he got in. He had not looked back.
Now, though, with the siren blaring, it seemed likely that aerial apocalypse was about to arrive, so he hurried to the nearest shelter with several of his colleagues and played bridge until the all-clear sounded. They were back at their desks by lunchtime, but with nothing to do and with no bombs falling after all, he decided to head home, reflecting that Britain seemed hardly ready for Armageddon.
Churchill, meanwhile, had hurried to the House of Commons, where MPs were due to meet at noon. Listening to Chamberlain’s statement on the declaration of war, Churchill suddenly felt a serenity of mind descend over him, then a sense of uplifted excitement that Britain was at last standing firm. Afterwards, the Prime Minister asked to see him. Not only did he want to offer him a place in the War Cabinet, but also the post of First Lord of the Admiralty. It was the position Churchill had held twenty-five years earlier when Britain had last gone to war.
In Britain, uncertainty filled the air. Mobilization was in full swing, over 1.5 million children were still being evacuated from Britain’s cities, and yet, despite the air raid siren sounding only twenty minutes after the declaration of war, the aerial onslaught that many had predicted and feared had not yet materialized; on the face of it, peacetime and wartime Britain did not seem so very different. Reaching home, Jock Colville met his brother, Philip, who was awaiting his call-up to the Grenadier Guards, and together they drove up to Trent Park in north London, owned by a friend. ‘It had an excellent private twelve-hole golf course,’ noted Colville, ‘on which my brother and I peacefully spent the first afternoon of war.’
In France the mood was more palpably tense. Britain was – had its population stopped to think about it – still a long way from German airfields and so unlikely to be receiving massed bomber formations that first day of war. In any case, the Luftwaffe was busy destroying the Polish Air Force; fears of its size and strength had been greatly exaggerated. Moreover, France and Germany shared a border, and the French had experienced, first hand, just a generation before, the agony of being invaded and the country carved up.
In Paris, many were devastated, including Andrée Griotteray, nineteen years old, who worked in the passport and ID department at the police headquarters. ‘That’s it,’ she wrote starkly in her diary. ‘War has been declared.’ She had enjoyed a happy and carefree childhood with her French father, Edmond, and her Belgian mother, Yvonne, and three siblings – an older sister and brother and one younger brother, Alain. In 1930, they had left Paris for Cannes and then Nice, where her father had opened an antiques and interior-decorating business. They had returned to Paris six years later, and Andrée had been sent to England for a year, where she had made friends, become an Anglophile, and learned English. Life for her had been good – as a family, they had not wanted for much – but now suddenly it seemed as though her world had come to an end. Bright, vivacious and pretty, Andrée instinctively knew the advent of war would change all their lives. A few days after the declaration, she noted, ‘We are now at war and we will have to live with it. Hitler has to be stopped. We must believe in France’s victory and shout from the rooftops of Paris, “Vive la France.”’ The doubt, however, was unmistakable; it was as though she wanted to believe in French victory but feared the worst. Her brother, Alain, she scribbled, kept repeating, ‘what bastards they all are.’ ‘As for me,’ she added, ‘I am totally heartbroken.’
Now back in Paris along with the rest of the French mission to Moscow was André Beaufre, although it had been no easy task getting home and had involved a long, circuitous journey through Finland, Sweden and Holland; during the flight from Sweden to Amsterdam, their aircraft had even been buzzed by a German fighter plane. In Holland, the Dutch Army was also mobilizing, so the airfield at Schiphol was teeming with troops. Finally back in Paris on 29 August, the situation was equally frenetic as mobilization got underway.
Beaufre had discovered a city full of grim resignation. At Army HQ in the Boulevard Saint-Germain, he found most of his friends already gone to set up General Headquarters, so he took an empty office and settled back into staff work. Around him, Parisians carried gas masks over their shoulders, blackout curtains went up over windows, and after dark the city’s lights remained switched off, cloaking Paris in darkness. But, as yet, there was no sign of any bombers coming to terrorize them.
Along the front, however, Order X had been enacted. This called for the complete evacuation within three hours of all the villages in front of or next to the Maginot Line. Lieutenant René de Chambrun had been given the agonizing task of clearing the hamlet of Gomelange, home to some 318 inhabitants. A piercing bugle call had signalled the start of the task shortly after midnight on that Sunday, 3 September. Men, women and children were woken and told they had an hour to clear out; they could take only what they could carry. Vehicles, animals, carts – all had to stay behind. A bridge over the river was blown, as was a dam so that the fields might be flooded – an extra line of defence. Chambrun saw a small child of about five point towards one of the soldiers in the half-dark. ‘C’est Papa!’ he cried out then ran to the soldier’s arms. ‘Well, as long as the fields are flooded,’ a farmer said philosophically, ‘what else can we do but go away?’ Chambrun was deeply moved by the stoic fortitude of the people of Gomelange.
André Beaufre might have escaped Moscow in time, but others were finding themselves trapped on the wrong side of the fence now that war had been declared. Among them was Eric Brown, a twenty-year-old Scot who was something of a Germanophile – an attitude that was not uncommon in Britain. After all, many British considered themselves Anglo-Saxons; the Royal Family was of German origin; and until the turn of the century Germany had been a firm ally, albeit never a formal one. The vast majority of British people instinctively disliked the Nazis and all they stood for, but not all – famously, two of the Mitford sisters, noted society beauties, had courted Hitler and his entourage, while the British Union of Fascists had also formed links.
Eric Brown had first visited Germany during the 1936 Olympics – his father, a former balloon observer and pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, had been invited along with other ex-pilots to the opening ceremonies by Göring and other former First World War pilots. While there, he had met Ernst Udet, a fighter ace and stunt pilot but by then in charge of the Luftwaffe’s technical department, the T-Amt. Udet had been delighted one of his old adversaries had brought his son and, learning of young Eric’s interest in aircraft, had offered to take him for a flight from Halle in his Bücker Jungmann biplane.
Udet, who was probably the finest aerobatic pilot in the world, put the plane – and Eric – through their paces. After twirling and pirouetting around the sky, Udet finally took the plane in to land, Brown still clutching his stomach and relieved he had not disgraced himself. Suddenly, Udet flipped the plane over. Brown watched upside down as they continued to approach the airfield. ‘In fact,’ says Brown, ‘we were coming in so low I thought the silly old fool’s had a heart attack!’ Thinking it was the end, Brown braced himself, but then, when there was only just enough space, Udet rolled the plane back again and made a perfect landing, looked at his ashen passenger and burst out laughing. ‘He was young at heart, really, Udet,’ says Brown.
As they walked clear of the plane, Udet had slapped him on the back and told him he would make a good fighter pilot but had to do two things – learn to fly and learn to speak German.
Brown took Udet at his word and did both, studying modern languages at Edinburgh University and joining the University Air Squadron. In the summer of 1938, he returned to Germany, renewing his acquaintance with Udet, and was back again the following summer. This time, however, it was courtesy of the Foreign Office, which had been recruiting at Edinburgh and had suggested Brown spend the next year in Europe before returning to Edinburgh to complete his degree.
On 3 September, he had only recently reached Salem on Lake Constance and was staying in a small Gasthaus when he was rudely awoken by three members of the SS. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us,’ he was told, ‘because our countries are now at war.’
Gathering together all his belongings, and also taking his MG Magnette, they took him to Munich and put him in a cell. It was the first day of the war, and, as far as Brown was concerned, it seemed likely he would be a prisoner of the Germans for the duration.
Other people were trying to leave not just Germany, but Europe. On board the SS Athenia was the eighteen-year-old James Goodson, heading back home to Toronto. Goodson had been born in the USA to British parents but had been brought up in Canada and had recently been in France studying at the Sorbonne; with all the talk of war, it had seemed it was time to head home.
Chamberlain’s announcement had been broadcast by radio throughout the ship, and Goodson, along with a number of other passengers, had listened to it in the Third Class lounge.
For a moment after the Prime Minister had finished speaking there was silence, then Goodson said, ‘This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a whimper!’, quoting T. S. Eliot.
‘Well, we’re well out of it,’ said another. Most seemed to agree. The ship was heading for Montreal and crammed with over 1,100 passengers, including more than three hundred Americans, a large number of Canadians, a few English, Scottish and Irish, and a number of European refugees. There were also over three hundred crew.
By evening, they were off the Hebrides. There was a cold, strong westerly wind, and the ship was pitching and rolling. Goodson had just climbed the staircase and was making for the dining room when he felt the ship lurch violently and heard a huge explosion followed by a loud crack. A moment later, the lights went out and people began to scream. Slewing to a halt, the Athenia began to list. Around Goodson, people were running in all directions, shouting, calling out to one another. Suddenly the emergency lights went on and Goodson hurried back to the companionway from which he’d come. Looking down, he saw a large gaping hole filled with surging water and broken bits of wooden stairway, flooring and furniture. A number of people were clinging to this flotsam, so Goodson clambered down and tried to pull as many women as he could to safety. Some were screaming that they couldn’t swim. Throwing off his jacket and kicking off his shoes, he plunged into the water and helped those unable to swim out onto the broken companionway, carrying children and others one by one out of harm’s way. When Goodson asked the crew for some help, they all shook their heads sadly and confessed they could not swim.
Despite working alone, Goodson finally managed to clear the corridor and join some of the crew, who asked him to help search the upper corridors. By now the ship was listing much further and Goodson found himself wading and then swimming once more. He found no one, just the dead body of a young man who earlier had sung Scottish ballads in the lounge.
Clambering back up, cold and soaking wet, Goodson was helped up onto the deck and then he and some surviving crew headed towards one of the lifeboats. It was packed and suddenly one of the ropes on the davits slipped, the front of the boat dropped and the passengers were tipped, screaming, into the water. There was nothing Goodson could do, so he hurried to the other side of the ship and saw the very last lifeboat about to be lowered.
There was no room for him, but from the deck he saw a lifeboat out at sea just a hundred yards away. Using one of the davit ropes, he began climbing down then dropped into the water and, after eventually coming back to the surface, swam as hard as he could towards the lifeboat he had seen, although it now looked horribly far away.
Eventually, he reached it, although several of the passengers tried to push him away, banging his knuckles as he gripped the side of the boat. A seaman yelled at them and then a young woman came to his rescue, pushing his assailants aside and helping to pull him up. As he collapsed, exhausted, into the boat, a blanket was wrapped around him. Looking up, he saw the girl who had rescued him. She was about his age, pretty and dressed only in bra and underclothes. It seemed she had been dressing for dinner when the boat was struck. The girl was American and had been touring Europe that summer with several of her friends. They began telling jokes and singing songs, then, when they had rowed far enough from the ship not to be pulled down with it when it finally sank, they stopped, huddling together to keep warm and praying they would be rescued.
It was well after midnight when the Athenia went down. Slowly, the stern disappeared and then the bow began to rise, water surging off her as she rose vertically, towering above them. For a moment, she seemed to pause there before plunging downwards until, with a final surge of water erupting into the air, she disappeared from view.
Little did Goodson or his fellow passengers on the lifeboat know it at the time, but the SS Athenia had been hit by a torpedo fired from U-30, one of Germany’s U-boats already patrolling the Atlantic.
On the first day of hostilities, it was at sea, and against civilians, that Germany had first struck at Britain.