Day 7: The Blitz, as Churchill Lived It
Monday, August 27, 2007
We rise early and realize with a shock that we only have 4 days left with so many things left to do. We must decide what to keep in the itinerary. Transportation concerns me still so we find it easiest to cut out our day trips out of the city. (This means that we’ll have to come back now, but it doesn’t seem so unlikely.)
The day is also sunny but there’s a cool northeasterly wind whipping across the river. The high will be in the 60’s. So we return to our layers and find ourselves much more comfortable.
It’s a Bank holiday today and it seems everyone is on the streets. Tourists crossing Westminster Bridge, travelers toting suitcases to Westminster Station, and London revelers out to enjoy the morning. Just to the west of us Notting Hill is alive with the Carnival Festival to celebrate the abolition of slavery. The morning news calls this the largest European street festival with some 50,000 entertainers and more than a million visitors. But warnings of keeping our valuables well tucked and the usual police arrests keep us away. Instead we have in mind continuing our trek through 1940’s London.
So we walk across the river, along Parliament Square and find tucked beneath the current Treasury Building (then Public Works) the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. In 1939 when England knew war with Hitler was at hand, they built this structure in the bowels of government storage cellars. It lays two stories beneath the street, a concrete bunker kept perfectly preserved from 1939-1945.
You pick up an audio guide at the entrance and make your way along the old corridors, past the sentry forever on duty, over the steps to the floor below where ordinary workers found a bed in the barracks. The War Cabinet Room is exactly as it was 60 years before, tables in a square with seats and papers waiting for Churchill and his commanders. Behind another door marked “loo” and “engaged” lies Churchill’s private telephone booth. There he is on the phone with his good friend Roosevelt planning the defense against Hitler.
We take a step aside and into the new Churchill Museum where you learn the life of this remarkable leader. There are things we never knew. He was the grandson of an aristocrat, his parents both socialites and neglectful. They shipped him off to boarding school at Harrow as soon as they could and ignored all his pleas for visits. Only his beloved nanny showed him any affection. After school he entered the cavalry because it was the easiest branch to join, turned war correspondent during the Boer War and stumbled his way into office. He married his wife Clementine at St. Margaret’s Chapel, the ancient church beside Westminster Abbey. Fought with the Royal Navy during WWI, lost political favor in the next years when he opposed Indian Self-rule (he saw it as the end of the British Empire) and supported Edward VIII’s marriage to Wallace Simpson. And though he came to power during Britain’s greatest time of need, he was voted out of office as soon as hostilities ended. The socialist’s successfully won the people’s desire to just resume daily life, build homes and ignore all threats of communism. Japan could be left to the Americans, they felt.
The ironic thing for us is how similar the comments of yesterday resemble the comments of today.
We pick up again with the War Cabinet Rooms, strolling along the private headquarters of the executive staff and their secretaries. Little more than cubbyholes with a bed, desk, chair and washbowl. You can tell the officers from the staff by the bit of worn carpet in their rooms.
This bunker was meant to be a shelter as well as command center impervious to German attack. So it had its own power generator. This lies in the Switch Room and beyond that is the Switch Room Café where we break for lunch rations (tea, sandwiches and scones). All the while we eat we hear the air raid sirens from the street above. They tell us on the tour that there was no way of knowing what awaited in the world above. No sunlight down here or air from above. By the sentry where you’d climb out they’d place a sign telling you what the weather was like, but you’d have to exit to find what sights of destruction you’d see. (The fellow East Enders in that Anderson shelter the day before described one theatre bombed during a show. All that was left was rubble and bits of bodies.)
We continue on to the heart of this bunker. Past the door of master keys and into the Communications room where the BBC would broadcast Churchill to the people. You hear Big Ben toll the hour and Churchill lambaste the German indiscriminate policy of killing every civilian they could as a failed attempt to shaken the will of the Briton. We will fight on, he says. And in this darkest hour you wonder if you had lived in this city at that time if you really would have the fortitude to just stick it out.
At last we find ourselves at Churchill’s private room. A bit lusher than the others, but still just a rudimentary cot. And at the foot of this bed lies a map of Britain’s home defenses. Churchill only slept in this room three times, but he’d nap here during the day. Just imagine how he’d recline on his cot and stare up at that map wondering if his country would hold against a German invasion. The audio guide tells us that he hated to stay in this bunker away from the people and cowering from the enemy. So many times he would climb to the roof of the Treasury and watch the bombing in progress. From there he could see Parliament and Westminster Abbey to the west, Buckingham Palace to the north, Southwark to the south and the devastated East End to the east. Once the Germans got close and destroyed the steps at the very corner by the bunker. Churchill climbed the rubble as soon as he could. Nothing swayed him from his opposition of the evil Nazi regime.
We leave the museum after a long talk with the workers about life then and life now. The staff are my generation so it all is just stories of our grandparents. And yet we are living in a time of another sinister world war. We wonder how much we’ve forgotten and how much history mankind is doomed to repeat.
Next we walk along the Horseguards, see a very quiet 10 Downing Street and meet with one of the surprisingly knowledgeable sentries on duty. He tells us all about the historic structures surrounding us. Lord Nelson gazing over his fleet along the Mall. The citadel built in the 1940’s as a communication center and disguised from German bombing by creeping ivy.
The night is warm and clear so we decide to take a roundabout walk to Piccadilly Circus. We walk along Pall Mall, home to gentleman’s clubs for 200-some years. We find St. James Square, the first most fashionable address in Westminster. Jermyn Street where boot makers and tailors still bear the colonial style hanging street signs of their original shops (18th century stores selling 21st century contemporary clothing). At the foot of Piccadilly Arcade on St. James Street we stumble upon a statue of some old bloke. It turns out to be Beau Brummel… the first style patron of Regency England. His motto was “The first stare of fashion is not to be noticed.” I think I prefer my 21st century fashion patron, don’t you? His motto is "The first stare of fashion is to BE noticed."
We conclude our walk in Planet Hollywood, Piccadilly Circus. It is pretty much the only accessible restaurant we find. The rest all have a step up and no portable ramp. (More chinks in the promise of the DDA.)
By the time we leave it is past 11pm. We could take a bus but the distance home is no more than a mile and the weather still holds. So we walk back, down Piccadilly, Regent Street, Whitehall and Parliament Street. By the time we’re crossing Big Ben the clock reads 12:03pm. What a shame we couldn’t hear the bells chime since it would have been a perfect night for it. Just above we see a full moon shining.
Total Distance(s) walked:
(Day 5 in Southwark) 2.69 miles http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1302054
(Day 6 in Westminster) 3.8 miles http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1302064
BroganMc
P.S. I have a trivia question for you. Where did Dwight D. Eisenhower plan the D-Day invasion whilst in London? Address, location please. Bonus question, what was the mission’s codename?
At the bottom of King Charles Street beneath the Treasury and across from St. James Park.