London At War by Ziegler Philip

Author:Ziegler, Philip
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2015-04-23T16:00:00+00:00

12

‘The girls here walk out with niggers!’

JAPAN’S ATTACK ON the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and the German declaration of war against the United States a few days later made eventual victory inevitable. They also introduced the blackest period of the war, involving a series of humiliating defeats which cost Britain her South-East Asian and Pacific empire, and included naval setbacks still more damaging to national pride. Of those the most painful came only three days after Pearl Harbor, when the Prince of Wales and the Repulse were sunk by Japanese bombers off the coast of Malaya. The British public had not yet fully taken in the disastrous weakness of the Allied position, Singapore was still believed to be impregnable, but the scale of the disaster was painfully apparent.

Christmas was therefore unlikely to be conspicuously merry, but at least there seemed little risk of heavy bombing and most of the children had once more drifted back to their homes. ‘No Christmas carols at all,’ noted Charles Graves, but he did not find the explanation in evacuation: ‘I suppose that all the little boys are making munitions.’ However concerned they might be about the future, first things came first, and Londoners addressed themselves to the serious business of finding presents for the children. Since scarcely any shops still made deliveries and there was no wrapping paper, customers had to stagger home with whatever loot they had acquired. Some carried suitcases; more, wrote Mollie Panter-Downes, ‘looked like harassed and cruelly overloaded camels’. They were the lucky ones who found something to carry away. Gwladys Cox went on a teddy-bear hunt. They were available but only for prohibitive prices; at Hamley’s the smallest bear cost 15/6d; at Selfridge’s, where she found the Xmas decorations very piano and, of course, no fandangle, mechanical toy facade, as they usually have’, bears were a little cheaper but still 10/- for a small and shoddy specimen. ‘A weary-looking woman, with two small children dragging at her skirts, said to me, “Who can afford such prices?”’ But at least there was some pleasure in the hunt and in exchanging complaints with fellow shoppers: ‘I noticed that strangers on the bus were chatting unreservedly; the atmosphere was exhilarating, not to say electric.’ By Christmas Eve not even the exhilaration remained. Those who had been so ill-advised as to leave their shopping to the last minute found the stores crammed with customers yet almost bereft of goods. There were no turkeys to be had; no whisky, gin or sherry; no chocolates; no fruit; the few remaining toys were shoddy and over-priced.

The New Year brought fresh disasters, in Malaya and North Africa, where Rommel broke through and swept across Libya. Churchill had been paying a lengthy visit to the United States and his return to London was made the occasion for a demonstration of loyalty by Clement Attlee, who assembled almost the entire Cabinet at Paddington to welcome him. The gesture was slightly marred by an over-zealous

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