Wraith of Winnie’s cigar smoke lingers in London bunker

Press, 5 March 1982, Page 15

Wraith of Winnie’s cigar smoke lingers in London bunker

From

KEN COATES,

in London

Deep below the Treasury in London’s Whitehall is' a maze of subterranean rooms and corridors where it is easy to imagine. there still lingers the faint smell of cigar smoke. There is a Mary Celeste air of recent abandonment about the place. In the dark days of the blitz and throughout the war, its location was secret, for here was the bunker for Sir Winston Churchill, the War Cabinet, and the chiefs of staff.

Even today, few Londoners know’ of its existence, and to visit an appointment has to be made with Mr Peter Dolan, custodian, who takes small groups on an underground tour. It is like stepping backwards in time. The last meeting of the War Cabinet in the operations room, presided over by Churchill was on March 28, 1945, and apart from the removal of files and documents of importance, the room has lain unused and

unaltered — as though its former occupants had just left the building after an allclear siren had sounded.

There are bottles of ink, maps of Europe’s battlefields, half-used candles and directories dated 1939 and 1949 beside old fashioned telephones; thick, unpainted pencils, blotters and official folders.-

Filing cabinets are labelled, Overlord, Poland, Middle East ... Ashtrays lie everywhere, ready to catch ash from that famous cigar.

Behind Churchill’s chair is a bucket into which the wartime leader threw his butts.

According to Mr Dolan, who has a ready fund of stories about the great man, a Royal Marine on regular guard duty collected the butts and sold them to the public at £4 each. But it may not have been as lucrative as it sounds, for Sir Winston was not a chain smoker, as many believed. Lord Beaverbrook always said Churchill smoked

matches, but he always appeared in public with the familiar long Havannah cigar, because that was what people expected. Churchill’s unerring sense of impending conflict in Europe as far back as 1936 led him to press for a secretrefuge for the Cabinet and military chiefs in time of war.

In 1937, planners carefully examined four sites: one was the old Down Street tube station, between Hyde Park Corner and Piccadilly Circus; another a disused gas-holder in Horseferry Road, near the Thames, and a third, the General Post Office research station in Doliis Hill, north London. The site chosen was the large basement underneath what was then the Office of Works, at Storey’s Gate,

overlooking St James’s Park. It was excavated a further eight metres, and the project was known simply as “the hole in the ground.’’ The idea was to provide a safe haven for continuing command of British forces even if the buildings above were completely demolished. Work was speeded up as events moved towards a declaration of war against Germany. Bv the time of the Munich crisis. 18 rooms were being used.

Old tram lines were used for reinforcing the thick concrete,pouter walls, and huge steel doors, backed by a pair of wooden doors were installed at 24 checkpoints. Many of the 270 staff working and sleeping in the bunker were made to walk many times the distance to the defence map room, or Cabinet war room.

They had to take a long way round through the labyrinth of underground corridors so they would not know the precise location of the nerve centre of operations. The main door, facing St James's Park, was reserved exclusively for Churchill and his family’s use. Two sentries from the Home Forces (Dad’s Army) stood outside, but hidden to one side of the steel entrance door was a machine-gun post, manned by Grenadier Guards.

In the Cabinet war room, with massive steel girders overhead, furniture, filing cabinets and fixtures look quaintly amateurish; there are hand-lettered tags, and pigeon-holes with “most secret," “secret” and “the King” look as though they were snipped from newspaper headlines and pasted on to woodwork.

Snaking through the 168 rooms and corridors are miles of ships’ air ducting, paint now peeling, which brought fresh air from Horseferry Road. Chairs are still in place in the Cabinet room; I sat in that of Mr-Bevin, the Labour Minister. Across the table was Lord Beaverbrook's chair.

“Beaverbrook often clashed with Bevin," said our guide. “Bevin came from a working-class background; Beaverbrook was a millionaire press lord and in charge of aircraft manufacture.

"He used to urge work, and more work, with round-the-clock factory shifts, which Bevin tried to resist. But Beaverbrook did more than anyone else to help win the Battle of Britain.” In front of Sir Winston's desk lies a rather battered, red. leather-covered dispatch box. The handle is on the bottom the idea being that if the case is not locked it will be known at once — the lid will fly open and all the papers will spill out.

. Each day, the red box would be delivered to King George VI and was collected by men in bright livery who arrived by horse ,and carriage.

“Such obvious importance was a perfect cover,” says Mr Dolan,- who seems to believe what he says. A printed notice bears-the legend: “Please understand there is to be no depression in this house. We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.” Churchillian in tone, but borrowed from an earlier age when Queen Victoria was told of a defeat in South Africa and said she did not want to know.

Gas masks still lie on a table, together with packets of shell dressings and tins of anti-gas ointment. In the famous map room, one wall is covered with a huge map of the world’s oceans, so densely holed with pinpricks that it resembles advanced borer. It was here that information on German U-boats, convoys and shipping movements of all kinds was collected. There are dozens of pinpricks around New Zealand and Australia. Lord Ismay, who masterminded the wartime underground government and service headquarters, also headed the strategic deception and cover planners' organisation. The aim of this group was to fool the enemy and to demoralise him. Just one of its many ploys was to have an actor playing the role of Churchill visiting all the theatres of war.

In a cleaning cupboard that Churchill had converted to a small office where he refused to be disturbed is a telephone that was on a direct line to President Roosevelt. London time and Washington time are noted on the wall. In a recess once used for storing brooms and mops, is a lecturn. Churchill sometimes liked to work standing up.

On the outside of the door is a lock showing “vacant” and “engaged.” “Many people, including the Royal Marine Guards, thought this was Churchill's private loo,” says Mr Dolan. “And once a guard reported to his replacement that the Prime Minister had been 'in there’ for five hours already.” In the corridor is a signboard. indicating the weather outdoors — fine, showers, or snow. "Windy’’ meant that there was an air raid going on.

A rain of bombs from the German Luftwaffe did not send Churchill scurrying for cover. Usually the Cabinet meeting was adjourned while the Prime Minister rushed up on the roof, to view what was happening. He expected everyone else to go too. Not once during the war did a bomb fall on the bunker complex. At the height of the bomb-

ing raids against London, Churchill slept in the bunker in a bedroom reserved for his use. This too is still exactly as it was and from a green leather-topped desk at one end he made some of his historic radio broadcasts.

It is Mr Dolan's delight to switch on a tape-recorder with the familiar bulldog voice rasping out the famous “we shall fight on the beaches" speech which Churchill made to the Commons.

In a desk once used by the Prime Minister’s private secretary. Mr Dolan found a wad of unused foolscap. “I took it up to the main office, thinking in these times of austerity it could still be used.” he says. “And in the middle of the pile they discovered a document marked “most secret.” It is headed, “Prime Minister’s personal telegrams to and from President Roosevelt from August 26 to September 6, 1942."

Churchill’s messages are all from “the former naval person” a transparent ploy, seeing that the President is named. One series of exchanges concerns the possibility of British troops landing in French North African territories wearing American uniforms.

“As it happened, they didn’t because I was there.” says Mr Dolan, who was a young naval lieutenant during the war. “The idea was that the French might be less antagonistic to Americans than to the British, but understandably it was not approved of by the President."

Mr Dolan is a man who enters fully into his job as custodian and guide in this historic place. He darted into a closet in Churchill’s bedroom and held aloft a chamber pot with "GR” on the side. ;

“I Was offered £BOO by a Texan for this potty, but ft is not Churchill’s so I couldn’t take it,” he said. "Anyone can see the GR is not large enough for someone of the Prime Minister’s stature.” Neither was the po. Mr Dolan claims to have the original crockery, unfortunately badly chipped, safe in hi's office.

It seems that Sir Winston descended to work in the bunker with the greatest reluctance. But he did go below when air raids were severe.

He already had “No 10 Downing Street annex” upstairs in the same building, complete with bedroom tor himself and his wife, a conference room and offices. The bed in the bunker is small and narrow. It annoyed Churchill, who did., a lot of his paper work in bed. because documents kept falling off the bed on to the floor.

In the corridor, yellowing notices warn that all marine sentries have orders to examine all passes. They are signed by the "camp com-

mandant,” Lt. Colonel C. F. Battiscombe. Handy is a wooden rattle for gas alarms, and a handbell, rung for air-raid all' clears. Ghosts of the past are not far away in this forgotten corner of London — rooms with their green-shaded lamps, absence of plastic, curved radio cabinets and overhead supporting beams of timber. On the Jowest level, where there are now only broken pieces of furniture and empty cigarette packets of long-forgotten brands, were the eating and living quarters of more than 250 staff. All that is left of a rifle range is a few spent shells and a heavily pitted wall. Churchill was" a crack shot with a Colt revolver and kept his eye in. Spartan bedrooms differ from each other only in that more senior officers and

Cabinet Ministers were given a wardrobe and wash-stand. There are ruins of recreation rooms, mess rooms, kitchen. darkrooms, cinema and dormitories. Whoever designed the lower level sleeping areas seems to have had dwarfs in mind: everywhere are signs, “mind your head” and in many areas it is impossible to stand upright. “They used to scuttle around like ants,” says Mr Dolan. In what was once the women's washroom, are yellowing pin-ups including, strangely, Hitler, General McArthur and Rommel.

Strategically sited are escape tunnel "entrances. One leads to a sentry box. now locked, on Great George Street, just round the corner from the entrance: another comes up at Waterloo Station and a third near Broad Walk in Kensington Palace Gardens.

During the war a light

aircraft could land here. Evacuation plans for the country’s leaders, should the worst happen, included flying them to Canada. The light aircraft would take them to a major airport. Mr Dolan has a story about Sir Winston's efforts to use his secret tunnel from 10 Downing Street to the bunker. After descending in a lift a great depth, it took the great man 45 minutes to reach the Cabinet war room. Thereafter, he insisted on using the street. For years, the bunker lay forgotten, though Mr Dolan swears that during the Suez crisis and in the 1961 Cuban missile crisis the complex w r as briefly “reactivated.”

In August last year, the Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, visited the Cabinet war rooms and insisted on clambering down to the lowest level.

During the last few years,

Americans. Australians and New Zealanders, especially ex-servicemen, heard about the bunker and interest has grown.

Only small groups can be shown" around, but you can sit in the chairs of the. famous, study the war maps and pick up telephones that were at the nerve centre of the worst conflict on earth.

As a result of Mrs Thatcher’s visit, all that is to be changed. The bunker is to become a major tourist attraction, much of it behind glass. Mr Dolan says there will be no more tours in the old style after the end of June when work will begin on alterations to handle tourist crowds. Once that is done, Churchill's war rooms in the basement of Treasury Chambers could well become as famous a tourist attraction as the Crown Jewels.