The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson Read Free Book Online Page A

more than one hundred sources, including postal and telephone censors, movie-theater managers, and the operators of bookstalls owned by W. H. Smith. After Churchill’s broadcast, Home Intelligence conducted a lightning survey of listeners. “Of 150 house-to-house interviews in the London area,” it reported, “approximately half said they were frightened and worried by the speech; the rest were ‘heartened,’ ‘made more determined,’ ‘stiffened.’ ”
    Now Churchill turned again to the agonizing decision about what to do with the hundreds of thousands of British soldiers in France. His inclination was to insist that they take the offensive and fight it out, but the time for such heroics seemed to have passed. The British Expeditionary Force was in full retreat toward the coast, pursued by Germany’s armored divisions, which had given Hitler so lethal an advantage in his drive across Europe. The BEF faced the very real prospect of annihilation.
    The Churchill who on Sunday had struck Colville as being unfazed was here supplanted by a prime minister who seemed deeply worried about the fate of the empire in his charge. Wrote Colville on Tuesday, May 21, “I have not seen Winston so depressed.”
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    C HURCHILL RESOLVED, AGAINST THE advice of his chiefs of staff and others, to fly to Paris for a second meeting, this time in foul weather.
    The visit achieved nothing, except to worry Clementine and daughter Mary. “It was terrible flying weather,” Mary wrote in her diary, “and I was so anxious. The news is unbelievably bad—one can only hang on by praying it will come out all right.”
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    S O TENSE WERE THINGS, so high the pressure on all, that members of Churchill’s cabinet decided that he ought to have a personal physician, though the patient himself did not agree. The assignment fell to Sir Charles Wilson, dean of the medical school at St. Mary’s Hospital in London. A medical officer in the prior war, he had been awarded a Military Cross in 1916 for bravery in the Battle of the Somme.
    Late in the morning on Friday, May 24, Wilson found himself at Admiralty House, being led upstairs to Churchill’s bedroom. (In Britain, a doctor of Wilson’s stature is typically referred to not by the prefix “Dr.” but, rather, as “Mr.”) “I have become his doctor,” Wilson wrote in his diary, “not because he wanted one, but because certain members of the Cabinet, who realized how essential he has become, have decided that somebody ought to keep an eye on his health.”
    It was almost noon by now, but as Wilson entered the room he found Churchill still in bed, seated upright against a bedrest, reading. Churchill did not look up.
    Wilson walked to his bedside. Churchill still did not acknowledge his presence. He continued to read.
    After a few moments—what to Wilson “seemed quite a long time”—Churchill lowered the document and with impatience said, “I don’t know why they are making such a fuss. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
    He resumed reading, with Wilson still at hand.
    After another overlong interval, Churchill abruptly shoved away his bedrest, threw off his covers, and barked, “I suffer from dyspepsia”—indigestion, or what later generations would call heartburn—“and this is the treatment.”
    He launched into a breathing exercise.
    Wilson watched. “His big white belly was moving up and down,” he recalled later, “when there was a knock on the door, and the P.M. grabbed at the sheet as Mrs. Hill came into the room.” This was Kathleen Hill, thirty-nine, his beloved personal secretary. She and her typewriter were ever present, whether Churchill was clothed or not.
    “Soon after,” Wilson wrote, “I took my leave. I do not like the job, and I do not think the arrangement can last.”
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    F ROM J OHN C OLVILLE’S PERSPECTIVE, Churchill had no need for a doctor’s attention. He seemed fit and was once again in good spirits, having shed his