WC02 - Never Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page A

for the Registration of Conscientious Objectors, of course. For them he had displayed a morality that was clear, principled and utterly inflexible he'd copied that much from his father. And it was his father's God-fearing morality that he offered them, everything taken from the Book, every argument backed up by scripture and psalm. They quoted the Book back at him, all the bits about eyes for eyes and the righteousness of vengeance, but he'd spent so much more time in church and Bible classes than they had that putting down their counter-case had proved to be, quite literally, child's play.
    It troubled him that he couldn't be entirely honest with the Tribunal. He would have liked to tell them that reasons why the world shouldn't set out to slaughter itself were so bloody obvious you didn't need the Bible, but that wasn't the way the Tribunal game was played.
    Don had played, and he had won. Noncombatant service. No weapons, no killing. But it troubled him more than he cared to admit that he had won only by leaning on his father's beliefs, and that his father knew it. There was a little of Absalom in everyone.
    As he tossed in distraction upon the floor of the abandoned brewery, other thoughts began to chisel away at his sense of well-being. If God moved in mysterious ways, so, it seemed, did the generals. The men of the British Expeditionary Force had spent half a year working flat out to build a defensive line of tank traps and pillboxes. They'd been assured it would be all but impregnable.
    So why, at the first sign of trouble, had the generals ordered them to come out from behind its cover and move forward into a field of fire that was totally unprepared?
    And let's not turn our back on good fortune but why, during all that long first day of advance, had there been no sign of the enemy? There hadn't been a single air attack.
    As Don struggled to find some comfort on the cold concrete, one thought kept nagging at him. It was almost as though the Germans wanted them there.
    At last Churchill was alone. Letters written, appointments made, officials dismissed, Bracken on his way home. The path begun.
    He felt exhausted. Keeping up the spirits of others had sapped his own, and a mood of darkness clung around him. It had been a day he had dreamed of for so long, yet the reality had proved so very distant from the dream. There had been no cheering crowds at the Palace to greet him, not even curious onlookers, no one but soldiers in war garb who had stood in front of a palace that had retreated behind sandbags and shuttered windows. Then the King's little flash of humour to cover his unease. Faces long, brimming with concerns. No victorious arrival at Downing Street. Only Bracken to lift the gloom.
    How he had longed for this day! A Churchill as His Majesty's First Minister, his destiny achieved, his father's memory vindicated. Yet all around he found nothing but sorrows and unspoken fear. Instead of triumph, he had found his way into a tragedy.
    He sat slumped in his chair, an old man, clutching his glass of whisky in both hands as if he were afraid it might fall. No one there to see him, to help guide him through the depression that emerged like a mist from a swamp to surround him. He had such a way with words, brave and magnificent outbursts that stirred hearts, but words were for others, while he was left with nothing but his own dark thoughts.
    These thoughts carried him to the oil painting that hung in a corner near the bookcase. It was a portrait of his father -not a particularly magnificent piece, one that had been painted long ago in Belfast. It showed Lord Randolph small and slim, with delicate ears and a twirling moustache, his neck surrounded with a huge moleskin collar and a polka-dot bow-tie that Winston himself had adopted. The painting followed the son everywhere, almost haunting him, for it had been completed in 1886, the year of his father's brief triumph, which had turned so quickly to endless disaster. Lord