Churchill's Triumph Read Online Free PDF

the children’s shoulders. Their bodies had become a canvas of sores, scars and infection, and where the girl’s left arm should have been there was nothing but a desperate, blackened stump. They had no shoes, the girl was clad in a sack and the boy was wearing a grey German field tunic that still bore its dark stain of death. His hand went to his mouth, begging for food, and Churchill cried out in anguish. He stepped forward, but as he did so they were gone, vanished into the grey gloom of snow. From nearby he heard the guard shouting in impatience; Churchill swore softly at him, didn’t move, couldn’t move, as tears trickled down his cheeks. When at last he had clambered back into the car and they were on their way once more, he said nothing for many miles.
    Then they began to climb into the mountains. They made another stop, this one planned; another feast set out on groaning tables, with Soviet dignitaries—Molotov, the wretched foreign minister, and Vyshinsky, odious prosecutor— dancing attendance and insisting they eat. Churchill cursed the memory of the stale ham sandwiches and whispered urgently to his daughter. While he ate and engaged the attentions of his Soviet hosts, she busied herself on his errand.
    By the time they were on their way once again the short winter day was drawing to its end. Sarah sat with two bulging canvas shoulder-bags at her feet. The old man squeezed her hand in gratitude, but said nothing. An hour further on they approached the ruins of another village. Firelight flickered between the cracks: there was life here, of sorts. Once again Churchill demanded that they stop, and this time Sarah joined him as he stepped from the car and disappeared into the shadows. When, a few minutes later, they returned, the guard failed to notice that they were no longer carrying their shoulder-bags, or that the rear compartment no longer smelled so strongly of suckling pig and smoked fish.
    “It seems so desperately inadequate, Papa,” Sarah whispered.
    “Of course it is.” He sobbed in genuine distress. “Everything I do nowadays seems so. But at least, Mule, we shall know that we tried, and that some good, no matter how little, has come from this wretched conference in Yalta.”
    ❖ ❖ ❖
    Elsewhere on the road, another car was bumping its way through the mountains.
    “He really has degenerated, Anthony. He’s become just another silly old man. All over the place.”
    “Winston, you mean?”
    “It’s inexcusable. We travel halfway round the world to sort out the peace, yet Winston won’t even read the papers I give him. It really is a terrible shemozzle.”
    “Shemozzle, indeed, Alec.”
    The two men fell into silence, contemplating the dreariness of the scene outside the car. Anthony Eden, the foreign secretary, and Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent under-secretary, were, as so often in their careers, following some way behind Churchill. Neither found it a comfortable position. Eden was the suave and elegant politician, the diminutive and intellectual Cadogan his most senior official; both were quintessential figures of order, and they found it inconvenient and frequently exasperating to work for a prime minister who most evidently was not.
    “He’s not the only one, of course, Alec. Look at the Americans. Half their delegation is dying on its feet—and Franklin looks like an impressionist picture that’s been left out in the rain. We should be holding this conference in the catacombs.”
    “We need to stick a few pins in their rumps. Make sure they take a little guidance—”
    “Our guidance.”
    “Otherwise we’ll achieve nothing. These meetings are all the same. Our masters dine and our masters wine, which is all very well, but nobody knows what on earth has been settled—least of all themselves. Winston is the worst.”
    “Oh, but he’s done so much.”
    “Anthony, forgive me, but this is the most decisive point of the war. Everything we’ve fought for hangs upon