it was a marvel that I survived and maintained my position in public esteem.” In the unedited version of that sentence, Churchill was franker. “It was a marvel—I really do not know how—I survived and maintained my position in public esteem while all the blame was thrown on poor Mr. Chamberlain.” In a note on the galleys of The Gathering Storm, Clementine Churchill told her husband why he survived: “Had it not been for your years of exile & repeated warnings re: the German peril, Norway might well have ruined you.” Chamberlain had no such history to shield him from criticism.

By early May, a majority of the British public agreed with the young lieutenant, who told a reporter on the road to Trondheim, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. It’s that bloody Chamberlain.” Chamberlain’s favorability rating, which had stood in the high fifties in March, was now in the thirties, and in the press and in the House of Commons there was much noisy speculation about whether he would still be prime minister at the end of May.

Chamberlain himself was confident that he would be. “I don’t think my enemies will get me this time,” he told his sister Hilda in a May 4 letter.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAMBERLAIN MISSES THE BUS

Early on the Sunday morning of May 5, 1940, a large crowd of middle-aged men could be seen gathering around the fountain in Finsbury Square, an acre and a half of treeless London lawn enclosed in a cheerless rectangle of commercial buildings just south of the Wesley Chapel burial grounds. Except for the bowling green and easy access to the numbers 21 and 43 buses, the fountain—fifteen feet high, constructed of gray and white stone, and built in the shape of a church steeple—was the square’s only notable feature. Erected by two Victorian worthies, Thomas and William Smith, to honor the memory of their mother, Martha, the fountain was for many years the sole province of the neighborhood birds; but after the Great War the birds were forced to share it with the Old Contemptibles, who, on the morning of their annual march to St. Paul’s Cathedral, would gather around the fountain to drink, smoke, and tell old war stories.

The first British troops to arrive in France in 1914, the Old Contemptibles owed their name to Kaiser Wilhelm, who dismissed them as that “contemptible little army,” and their special place in the heart of the British nation to the honor of being the first British troops to the fight in 1914. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Contemptibles’ parade became a highlight of London’s spring season. Every May, through slumps and booms, coronations and abdications, international crises and international peace conferences—through pacifist protests and Mosleyite marches (Oswald Mosley was leader of the British Union of Fascists)—the old soldiers would gather in Finsbury Square and march down to St. Paul’s Cathedral: the Scots Guards band in front, piping out the old tunes of glory, and the crowds singing along. Now, nearly thirty years on, the lean bodies and hard faces of war had given way to fleshy, middle-aged jowls and expanding waistlines, which made the old warriors as unrecognizable as the nation of their young manhood: the old Edwardian Britain, supreme in all things.

At 9:00 a.m. the trumpets of the Life Guards blared; the marchers snuffed out their cigarettes, slipped their whiskey casks into a coat pocket, and fell into line; on the far side of the square, a Manchester Guardian reporter took out his pen and described the scene forming before him. “In caps, bowlers and silk hats, tweeds and morning coats, the men were still regimental in their way of marching and it was hard to believe that these were the same men who were at Mons and the first Ypres twenty six years ago. All wore at least three medals and some six or seven.” By the time the reporter closed his notebook, the old soldiers had vanished into the crowd below the square and the Scots Guards band was beating out “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” for all they were worth.

Normally, the parade would receive a big write-up in the following day’s papers, but May 6 was an unusually busy news day. The two-day parliamentary debate on the Norwegian campaign would begin the next day, and the Times, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and the other major papers were full of speculation about the fate of Chamberlain, Churchill, and other members of the government. The other big news story of the day was the return of the 146th and 148th Territorials, who had made the “death march” to Trondheim. Readers looking for tales of valor and self-sacrifice could find them in the soldiers’ accounts, as could readers looking for explanations of why Norway had gone so wrong. “All the boys felt that if only we had some fighters to deal with their bombers, we could have smashed the Germans,” an infantry captain told a Guardian reporter. A sergeant who fought in central Norway told a similar tale to the Daily Mail’s man. “There was never a break in the [bombing] attacks. . . . If we had had tanks and fighter air craft we could have done really good work.” In interview after interview, the soldiers spoke of inferior British airpower, inferior British tactics, inferior British organization, leadership, and equipment, or of no equipment at all.

During a visit to Downing Street the previous Wednesday, May 1, Major Millis Jefferis, newly returned from Norway, told Chamberlain that another factor had also contributed to the poor British performance. Being bombed was a new experience, and some units had not stood up well to it. At the sound of an airplane, the troops would flee into the woods or into a cellar. The first day of May also brought a stream of other worrying news to Downing Street: from Turkey came a warning that the Germans planned to follow up their victory in Norway with a massive air strike on Britain, followed by a landing; from the Admiralty came a report that German planes had begun mining the Thames and the Tyne River; and from Yugoslavia came news of an imminent German attack on Holland. The first of May also brought Churchill to Downing Street; he arrived at about six in the evening, dripping wet and in a foul mood. “If I were the First of May,” he said, gazing out at the pelting rain, “I should be ashamed of myself.” Jock Colville, who was aware of Churchill’s four changes of mind over Trondheim, bristled at the remark: “Personally, I think he [Churchill] ought to be ashamed of himself.” The intelligence reports that arrived on Chamberlain’s desk the following day, May 2, included one particularly intriguing item: during a discussion of Anglo-Italian relations with an English acquaintance, Signor Giuseppe Bastianini, the Italian ambassador to Britain, had suddenly burst into tears. The ambassador’s behavior remained a puzzle for two days. Then, on May 4, a report from Myron Taylor, the American envoy to the Vatican, suggested a possible explanation. According to Taylor, Mussolini planned to enter the war on Hitler’s side as soon as he was confident that Germany would win.

On the fourth, the Chiefs of Staff submitted a new report to the war cabinet.