“WHATEVER YOU DO, WE FIGHT ON FOR EVER.”

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25735, 22 February 1949, Page 4

“WHATEVER YOU DO, WE FIGHT ON FOR EVER.”

FRANCE YIELDS

[By the Rt. Hon. WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL, M.P.]

XV

This was my fourth journey to France. The German aircraft were now reaching far down into the Channel, and we had to make a still wider sweep. As before, the Flamingo had an escort of 12 Hurricanes. After a couple of hours we alighted at a small landing-ground. There were a few Frenchmen about, and soon a Colonel arrived in a motor-car., I displayed the smiling countenance and confident air which are thought suitable when things are very bad, but the Frenchman was dull and unresponsive. I realised immediately how very far things had fallen even since we were in Paris a week before. After an interval we were conducted to the chateau, where we found M. Reynaud, Marshal Petain, General Weygand, the Air General Vuillemin, and some others, including the relatively junior General de Gaulle, who had just been appointed Under - Secretary for National Defence. Hard by on the railway was the Headquarters train* in which some of our party were accommodated. The chateau possessed but one telephone, in the lavatory. It was kept very busy, with long delays and endless snouted repetitions. DECISIVE MOMENT TO COME At 7 o’clock we entered into conference. General Ismay kept a record. I merely reproduee my lasting impressions, which in no way disagree with it. There were no reproaches or recriminations. We were all up against brute facts. We British did not know where exactly the front line lay, and certainly there was anxiety about some dart by the German armour—even upon Us. In effect, the discussion ran on the following -lines. I urged the French Government to defend Paris. I emphasised the enormous absorbing power of the house-to-house defence of a great city upon an invading army. I recalled to Marshal Petain the nights we had spent together in his train at Beauvais after the British Fifth Army disaster in 1918, and how he, as I put it* not mentioning Marshal Foch, had restored the situation. I also reminded him how Clemenceau had said: “I will fight in front of Paris, in Paris, and behind Paris.” The Marshal replied very quietly and with dignity that in those days he had a mass of manoeuvre of upwards of 60 divisions: now there Was none. He mentioned that there were then 70 British divisions in the line. Making Paris into a ruin would not affect the final event. Then General Weygand exposed the military position, so far as he knew it. He requested that every reinforcement should be sent—above all, that every British fighter air-squadron should immediately be thrown into 'the battle. “Here,” he said, “is the decisive point. Now is the decisive moment. It is therefore wrong to keep any squadrons back in England.” But in accordance with the Cabinet decision, taken in the presence of Air Marshal Dowding, whom I had brought specially to a Cabinet. meeting, I replied: ‘This is not the decisive point and this is not the decisive moment. That moment will come when Hitler hurls his Luftwaffe against Great'Britain. If we can keep command of the air, and if we can keep the seas open, as we certainly shall keep them open, we will win it all back for you." HOW TO DEAL WITH INVASION

Presently General Georges [comman-der-in-chief of the North-Western Front] arrived. After being apprised of what had passed, he confirmed the account of the French front which had been given by Weygand. I again urged my guerrilla plan. The German Army Was not sp strong as might appear at their point of impact. If all the French armies, every division and brigade, fought the troops on their front with the utmost vigour, a general standstill might be achieved. I was answered by statements of the frightful conditions of the roads, crowded with refugees harried by unresisted machine-gun fire from the German aeroplanes, and of the wholesale flight of vast numbers of inhabitants and the increasing breakdown of the machinery of government and of military control. - At one point General Weygand mentioned that the French might have to ask for an armistice. Reynaud at once snapped at him: “That is a political affair.” According to Ismay, I said: “If it is thought best for France in her agony that her Army should capitulate, let there be no hesitation on our account because whatever you may do we shall fight on for ever and ever and ever.’’ When I said that the French Army, fighting on, wherever it might be, could hold or wear out a hundred German divisions. General Weygand replied: “Even if that were so, they would still have another hundred to invade and conquer you. What would you do then?” On this 1 said that I was not a military expert, but that my technical advisers were of opinion that the best method of dealing with a German invasion of the Island of Britain was to drown as many as possible on the way over and knock the others cn th" bead fs they crawled ashore. Weygand rn v.erc-r’ with a sad smile; “At*any rale, I must

admit you have a very good anti-tank obstacle.” These were the last striking words I remember to have heard from him. After another hour or so we got up and washed our hands while a meal was brought to the conference table. In this interval I talked to General Georges privately, and suggested first the continuance of fighting everywhere on the home front and a prolonged guerrilla in the mountainous regions, and second the move to Africa, which a week before I had regarded as “defeatist.” My respected friend who, although charged with much direct responsibility, had never had a free hand to lead, the French armies, did not seem to think there was much hope in either of these. I have written lightly of the happenings of these days, but here to all of us was real agony of mind and r sodl A PLAN FRUSTRATED At about 10 o’clock everyone took <their places at the dinner. I sat on M. Reynaud’s right, and General d« Gaulle was on my other side. There was soup, an omelette or something, coffee and light wine. Even at this point in our awful tribulation under the German scourge we were quite friendly. But presently there was a jarring interlude. I had attached great importance to striking hard at Italy the moment she entered the war, and an arrangement had been made with full French concurrence to move a force of British heavy bombers to ths French airfields near Marseilles in order to attack Turin and Milan. AU was now in readiness to a strike. Scarcely had we sat down wnen Air Marshal Barratt, commanding the British Air Force in France, rang up Ismay on the telephone to say that the local authorities objected to the British bombers taking off. on the grounds that an attack on Italy would only bring reprisals upon the South of France, which the British were in no position to resist or prevent. Reynaud, Weygand, Eden, Dill, and I -4 the table and, after some parleying, Reynaud agreed that orders should be sent to the French authorities concerned that the bombers were not to be stopped. But later that night Air Marshal Barratt reported that the French people near the airfields had dragged all kinds of country cqfte ana lorries won to them, and that it had been impossible for the bombers to start on their mission. PETAIN REPROACHED Presently, when we left the dinner table and sat with some coffee and brandy, M. Reynaud told me that Marshal Petain had informed him that it would be necessary for France to seek an armistice, and that he had written ft paper upon the subject which be wished him to read. “He has not,” said Reynaud, “handed it to me yet He is still ashamed to do it.” Hd ought also to have been ashamed to support even* tacitly Weygand’s demand for our last 25 squadrons o* fighters, when he had made up his mind that all was lost and that France should give in. Thus we all went unhappily to bed in this disordered chateau or in the military train a few miles away. The Germans entered Paris on the 44th. Early in the morning we resumed our conference. -

We then took leave of Petain, Weygand, and the staff of GHQ, and this was the last we saw of them. Finally, I took Admiral Darlan apart and spoke to him alone. “Darlan, you must never let them get the French Fleet.” He promised solemnly that he would never do so.

The morning was cloudy, thus making it impossible for the 12 Hurricanes to escort us. We had to choose between waiting till it cleared up or taking a chance in the Flamingo. We were assured that it would be cloudy all the way. It was urgently necessary to get back home. Accordingly we started alone, calling for an escort to meet us, if possible, over the Channel. As we approached the coast the skies cleared and presently became cloudless. Eight thousand feet below us on our right hand was Havre, burning. The smoke drifted away to the eastward. No new escort was to be seen. Presently I noticed some consultations going on with the csptam, and immediately after we dived to • hundred feet or so above the calm sea, where aeroplanes are often invisible. What had happened? * learned later that they had seen two German aircraft below us firing JJ fishing-boats. We were lucky th« £heir pilots did not look upward!. The new escort met us as we approached the English shore, and tM faithful Flamingo alighted safely Hendon. (To be continued) Copyright 1949 in U.S.A, by The York Times Company and Time. Inc. (publisher of Time and Life); in tnj British Empire by the Daily Telcgrjpn Ltd.; elsewhere bv International COoperation Press Tnc. World ’■’"hts reserved. Reproduction in full r in nnrt in any language strictly prohibited.