‘No need to imagine any more. Four days ago I went to a place called Ohrdruf Nord, just outside Gotha which we captured last week. The local divisional commander called me direct. Said I must come. He was almost in tears. Believe me, it’s all true and more.’ He moistened his lips, his mouth felt parched, as the taste of vomit not yet gone. ‘I saw bodies lined up in great avenues, hundreds of them, stacked one upon the other, just cast-off pieces of bone and skin lying out in the open waiting to be burned. Men, women, even children. The scale of what has happened passed anything I could comprehend. I thought they had brought me to the gates of hell, yet by the day we are discovering more camps, places like Buchenwald and Belsen. As we drive deeper into Germany they’re getting bigger and far, far worse. Seems the Germans are running out of time and furnaces to cover their tracks, they simply can’t dispose of that many corpses quickly enough …’
He was sitting tensely on the edge of his chair, leaning forward across the table, his voice flat and deliberately unemotional but, as the general had raised the ghosts of his visit, Churchill saw the colour drain from his face.
‘So I don’t need any more lessons about war being more than just military objectives. Now I understand your passion. There’s no man alive who wants so much to dance on that bastard’s grave, and if it meant leading a column to Berlin myself and digging the hole with my bare hands, I’d do it!’
‘But I’ll warrant you haven’t come here to offer me second-in-command of this hypothetical column.’
The American shook his head. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure. I can tell you with all my heart that I haven’t cared for the … misunderstandings which have come between us recently. We shared so much in the months we were planning the campaigns in North Africa and Europe together. I had come to regard you as a close friend.’
‘You were right to do so, General.’ There was a determined set to Churchill’s jaw as he contemplated what he might say next. He was still battling inside with his pride. ‘This seems to be a moment for honesty. Well, let us not dance in shadows. We have had no “misunderstandings”, as you put it – we have understood each other all too well. We have shared differences of opinion which were profound and we both fought our cases hard. You have won, and I accept your victory with considerable regret. I fear that when Marshal Stalin gets hold of half of Europe, as he now certainly shall, it will be the prelude to a forest of concentration camps which will spring up through a long Siberian winter, and the peoples of Eastern Europe will have exchanged one terror for another. But the die is cast. In politics, as in life, we must move on.’
Having conceded defeat as gracefully as he could, Churchill stopped to take a cigar from the flap pocket of the one-piece siren suit he had himself designed and worn almost every day throughout the war. He had worn it today largely out of nostalgia; the war was all but over, it would soon be time to dispatch such wartime trivia to the back of the closet.
Eisenhower leaned across to light the Old Man’s cigar. ‘There’s more.’
‘Thought there might be,’ Churchill muttered, still full of hurt. ‘Didn’t have to come here to tell me yet again that I wasn’t going to get Berlin.’ He was staring moodily into the flame which rose and fell as the tightly packed tobacco leaves began to smoulder, his broad and upturned nose seeming to point at the General like an artillery piece made ready to fire.
Eisenhower’s tone was as soft as his words were chilling. ‘When I said I’d lead a column to Berlin to dance on his grave, I meant it. But he’s not going to be there.’
The flame stopped dancing.
‘The Germans have gathered all their leading atomic scientists in the Black Forest, just south of Stuttgart,’ Eisenhower continued. ‘They’re also transporting a small pile of uranium and other supplies to facilities around Berchtesgaden.’
‘Dear Lord, is it really happening …?’
‘And worse than we ever thought. The Alpine redoubt a reality. Endless war. And Hitler with an atomic bomb.’
Churchill sat silent as the words sank in.
‘No one knows for sure how close they are to putting together a bomb, but sure as hell doesn’t look as if Hitler’s ready to give up yet.’
‘Now I see why you came yourself.’ Churchill slumped back in his chair, cigar forgotten. ‘General, I must confess that when I contemplate what my scientists tell me about the power of the atomic bomb, I am filled with awe. I begin to believe the world is changing so fast and for such terrible ends that I no longer wish to play a part. Or perhaps I am no longer capable …’ His head went back and he looked to the heavens. ‘Roosevelt gone. Hitler and Mussolini soon to follow. The French Republic swept away. Poland, the country for whom we went to war in the first place, practically ceased to exist … There is a tide of history and it seems to have turned against me.’ His words faded as he slumped back in his chair looking aged and vulnerable, like a discarded rag doll, a crumpled old man in a child’s siren suit.
‘Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’ the General countered in a loud, belligerent voice. ‘I’ve lost count in recent weeks of how many times I’ve cursed and fretted, called you stubborn, cantankerous, cussed – and plenty of other things besides. You got in the way, held things up, went behind my back.’ His diction slowed to emphasize his words. ‘But … Never once have I lost sight of the fact that if it hadn’t been for you, and your infernal stubbornness and your mule-headed refusal to accept defeat, then this war would have been lost long before we Americans even got here. You talk about a tide of history. Well, there are some occasions when one man seems to stand his ground and just refuses to accept getting washed away. That’s how we arrogant Americans won the New World. And that’s how you, Mr Churchill, have saved the Old World.’ He leaned over to grab the other man’s hand, trying to rekindle the friendship and trust. ‘But for you, the whole of Europe would by now be one vast concentration camp. Nobody’s ever going to forget that.’
For a while Churchill continued to stare at the heavens, hiding the turmoil. When eventually his head came down his cheeks were moist. ‘Thank you, General.’ He nodded his gratitude, yet the eyes stared fierce and uncompromising, the bottom lip jutting forward. ‘But I was right about Berlin. You’ll see.’
‘It would have been empty … deserted.’ Eisenhower threw his hands up in exasperation. ‘Hitler’s not going to be there!’
‘We should not have let him escape. Dealt with him, sir, like a mad dog! No mercy. No Fuehrer. No Redoubt. No endless resistance. No bomb. And we would have had Berlin!’
The military man shook his head. ‘Kill him? Ridiculous.’
‘Why? We slaughter his armies freely enough.’
‘It would have been …’ Eisenhower searched for the argument.
‘Immoral?’ There was no mistaking Churchill’s impatience. He slurped his tea dismissively.
‘Impractical. We never know precisely where Hitler is. Nothing we have could get through that much concrete. There’s no way of getting at him, not even with a whole army of parachutists.’
‘Not an army. One man. On the inside.’
‘Be serious!’ Eisenhower exclaimed in astonishment. He had tried, dammit he had tried, to bring the Old Man back on side but the stubborn bastard wasn’t prepared to give an inch. His hand slapped down, the coffee spilled, his trousers stained but he did not notice. ‘Where in mother’s name could you have got one man? On the inside …?’
On the other side of the North Sea, on a spit of sand which before the war had been a favourite loitering place of North Germans seeking sun and relaxation, a figure, scarcely discernible in the pale moonlight, was washed up on the shore. For several minutes it made no movement except for the languorous waving of the legs in the receding tide. Then it coughed and threw up before starting to cough again. Slowly and with obvious pain the figure began to claw its way up the sandy beach to the dry dunes and to safety.