Last Man to Die Read Online Free Page B

gained their experience of battle out of books at West Point. They are all quartermasters and caution. I judge an officer by the sand in his boots and the mud on his tunic rather than the number of textbooks he has managed to pacify.’
    The PM contemplated the moist end of his Havana, deliberating whether it was yet time to call for its replacement. Since his heart murmur three years earlier his doctors had told him to cut down, to cut down on everything except fresh air and relaxation. Idiots! As if the greatest danger facing the British Empire was a box of Cuban cigars and the occasional bottle of brandy.
    A potent mix of smoke and steam attacked Cazolet’s lungs and he stifled a cough. ‘They say Eisenhower can be weak and indecisive, that he listens to too many opinions, carries the impression of the last man who sat upon him.’
    Churchill shook his head in disagreement. ‘If that were so we would not be at odds, since I would be constantly by his side, ready to sit upon him at a moment’s notice.’ He patted his paunch. ‘And I would make a very considerable impression!’ He broke into a genial smile, the first that evening. He was beginning to feel better. To hell with the doctors. He lit a fresh cigar. ‘Don’t underestimate the general, William. He is not weak. A conciliator, perhaps, who prefers to lead by persuasion rather than instruction. But above all he is an American. Americans are boisterous, unbroken, raw, full of lust and irresponsibility, goodheartedness, charm and naked energy. And above all they haven’t the slightest understanding of Europe. For them it is little more than a bloody battlefield on which they have sacrificed their young men twice in a generation, sometroublesome, far-flung place on a foreign map. That’s why they deserted us after the last war. They threw away the victory then; we must not allow them to do so again.’
    ‘What do you want from them?’
    ‘There are many things I expect of our American friends – ships, arms, food, money, materiel . But one thing above all they must give me, Willie.’ His blue eyes flared defiantly. ‘They must give me Berlin!’
    The blackout curtains were drawn tight around the luxurious manor house adjacent to SHAEF forward military headquarters in newly-liberated France. It wouldn’t do to have the Supreme Allied Commander shot up by some Luftwaffe night-fighter, not when he was having dinner and, with growing agitation, giving forth of his own version of the previous day’s meeting.
    ‘Would you believe the man? He tried to scold me. Said I was smoking too much, that it was an unforgivable extravagance at a time of general shortage. Damn nerve!’ General Dwight Eisenhower started to chuckle in spite of himself. He regarded the PM, half-American on his mother’s side, as something of a father figure and so tolerated the older man’s bombastic and occasionally patronizing manner. He was no less a chain smoker than Churchill, yet even in his addiction he revealed his modest, less flamboyant character. Strictly a ‘Lucky Strikes’ man.
    Eisenhower paused to indicate there was a serious point to his tale. ‘Extravagance! I told him I was willing to be extravagant with everything but men’s lives. Yet he still insists on taking the most outrageous risks …’ The general shook his head sadly,staring into the flame of the candles that lit the beautifully laid dinner table separating him from his companion. ‘The Brits are running out of time. They’ve been bled dry; Britannia with her wrists slashed. It’s making the Old Man impatient, rash.’
    The genuine regret in Eisenhower’s voice was not lost on his companion, who was British, and who mistook neither the irony of sitting in a Europe only recently freed from German occupation while surrounded by seemingly endless supplies of vintage champagne, nor the absurdity that war seemed to be fought either from foxholes or from the luxury of liberated French chateaux. ‘So what