WC02 - Never Surrender Read Online Free Page B

walkers."
    Colville swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry with resentment. Never in his public service had he been spoken to like this. Still, it made his decision all the easier. He wouldn't put up with it for a moment longer than would be necessary to get himself a transfer. Submarines, for all he cared, after this.
    "Tell me, where did you go to school?" Churchill demanded.
    What? What had his wretched school to do with it? "Why, Harrow, sir. But a while after you."
    "Ah, another Harrovian. We make good runners at Harrow. You'll do."
    And so, through the accident of his education, Colville stood condemned.
    "Now, get me Lord Halifax on the phone. I have an urgent letter for him to deliver."
    "It's gone midnight. His Lordship will be asleep in bed, I'm afraid, sir."
    "You know that for a fact?"
    "I know His Lordship, sir."
    "Nevertheless, get him on the phone for me."
    "It will be a most exceptional pleasure for him," Colville responded, tripping over his own sarcasm.
    Churchill thrust his head forward. It made him look like a cannonball in flight. "No, it will not be a pleasure for him at this hour. And in future it will not be exceptional, either. Pray inform His Lordship of that, and anyone else that matters."
    Without another word, Churchill went back to his work and began writing a fresh letter. Colville, his face ashen, backed slowly out of the door.
    Bracken hooked his leg over the arm of his chair and began to chuckle. "As I said, Winston, there are so few who understand your ways. I think I'd better stay."
    Churchill's head fell towards the notepaper. "Thank God there's one person in this room who knows what to do."
    It had been like a triumphal progress from ancient times. Slowly the British army moved forward across the frontier into what, until that morning, had been the green fields and gentle canals of neutral Belgium. At every village and crossroads they were greeted like heroes. Old men shuffled forward in carpet slippers to offer them bottles of beer, with womenfolk at their side bearing baskets of cheeses and oranges, and daughters who climbed up on the vehicles with their snatches of schoolgirl English to hand out an abundance of flowers and kisses. The BEF advanced upon the enemy with lilac on their helmets and dictionaries in their pockets, and soon the songs of old could be heard encouraging them on their way "Tipperary', "Pack Up Your Troubles', and a new one, a tune about how they were going to hang out their washing on the Siegfried Line.
    The column was closely packed, a confusion of every sort of vehicle grinding along at the pace of the slowest, but they were all heading in the same direction. North, towards the enemy. Belgian bicycle troops meandered beside the convoy, frantically ringing their bells. It was spring, hawthorn blossom blew across their path, and the British army sweated gently in the sun.
    By early evening they had passed through Brussels and were making camp in an old deserted brewery outside Mechelen. They unloaded the chairs, filing cabinets and the bottles of sherry while tea was brewed. This site was to be the Casualty Clearing Station, for the time when there were casualties. But of the enemy there was no sign. Perhaps this one was going to be easy, after all.
    In the evening, the padre came round with a billy can of corned-beef stew accompanied by cigarettes and a homily about the morality of their cause. Strange, Don thought, how morality had become such a moveable feast. Why, it was less than two years ago when vicars throughout the land had climbed into their pulpits to denounce aggression and offer prayers for the triumph of appeasement and Neville Chamberlain. Yet today, from those same pulpits and plundering phrases from the same scriptures, they prayed to the Almighty that they might remember their gas masks and gain rapid victory. Whichever way you read it, kneeling down or standing on your head, it simply made you giddy.
    That's not what he had explained to the Tribunal