escaped the slaughter got away with the designs still in their bristle-brush heads. Intelligence recently reported that they've been at it again for some while in the Hartz Mountains.'
`But that's hundreds of miles from the sea. They can't be going to complete their tests with the long-range rockets right in the middle of their own country?
'No. Our guess is that Peenemьnde goin' up in smoke took the heart out of them about that idea. Probably hadn't got far enough with it for it to be worth while starting again. Looks as if they're concentrating' on the little fellers that have got wings. Pilotless aircraft they call 'em. Anyhow, they are beaverin' away in underground workshops this time and there's no way we can smoke'em out. R.A.F. might as well go lookin' for whales in the North Sea as try to pinpoint these ant-nests among all those miles of Christmas trees. They've been pushin' ahead with launching sites across the Channel, too. In December it was reported that they were workin' on about seventy of them. That side of it the R.A.F. is doing its best to tackle. In, spite of the hundreds of anti-aircraft guns protectin' 'em, a lot of them have been knocked out. But plenty more are being built; so come the spring we must expect trouble.!
'It's still possible that poor old London may take it on the chin, then?'
Sir Pellinore shook his white head. `Won't be as bad as that. I was only pulling your leg when I said you'd be safer in Berlin than in London. And you're dead right about staying put here now you have got back. You've done more to make the sauerkrauters spit blood than any other dozen agents already; so it's England, Home and Beauty for you from now on. I'll not have our people send you out again, however hard they press me. As for these robot aircraft, I feel pretty certain we can cock a spook at them. Everything points to their not being able to carry more explosive than a medium-sized bomb, and there'll be a limit to the number they can make. Odds are that half of 'em will go off course and those that do get here won't make things anywhere near as bad as they were in the Blitz… Given a bit of luck we may even have put the Nazis out of business before they are ready to start lobbing the damn' things over here.'
`For those words of comfort, many thanks. Now let's have the lowdown on how the war is really going.'
`Makes me see red even to think about it.'
`Oh, come!' Gregory protested… `We've been on the up and up for a year past now. Jack Slessor got on top of the U-boat menace last spring. The R.A.F. is bombing hell out of the German cities. The Yanks must be over here by the million by this time, and since the old Russian steam-roller really got moving the German Army, good as it is, has proved incapable of stopping it.' '
`Stoppin' the thousands of tanks we've sent them, you mean,' glowered the Baronet. `Mind, I'm not belittling the guts the Ruskies have shown; but they couldn't have socked the wursteaters the way they have if it hadn't been for the colossal amount of fighting gear we've sent them by way of Murmansk. And what those Arctic convoys cost us! It's sheer murder. for Navy is too stretched to give them much protection goin' round Norway they have to run the gauntlet of the Luftwaffe and the U-boats and German surface vessels into the bargain.'
`Yes, that must be pretty grim.'
`Grim! I should say so. Our poor lads are half frozen for most of the time, and bombed, shelled and torpedoed for the rest. No chance of bein' picked up either if your ship goes down. Two minutes in those icy waters and you're a deader. It's the Red Duster and the White Ensign we've got to thank for the Russian victories. Of course the public knows next to nothing about that, so the only credit we've been able to claim was the sinking of the Scharnhorst on Christmas Day. Admiral Fisher caught her sneakin' up on a convoy and blew her to smithereens.'
`Well done he. But even if we are largely responsible for Uncle Joe's big come-back and it's costing us a lot of lives, I can’t see why you are so pessimistic about the war situation n general.'
`Ever looked at the map of Italy?'
`Yes; and of course we've got ourselves bogged down here:
`You've said it. But, infinitely worse, we've chosen the worst conceivable place to launch a campaign against Axis-held southern Europe. We're not only bogged down now, but when we do break out the territory is so much in favour of the enemy that we're goin' to be bogged down again and again, the whole way up Italy.
`Once we had North Africa the game was in our hands. But we threw away all our trumps. Those damn' fool Americans vetoed Churchill's plan for going into the Balkans, where the Greeks and Yugoslavs would have risen to a man and slit the throats of the German garrisons. We could have driven straight up to Budapest then and had the Hungarians with us, too. Joined up with the Russians, saved ourselves from this murderous business of the Arctic convoys and encircled the southern flank of the German Army in the East.'
Sir Pellinore swallowed another gulp of champagne and went on angrily, `To have missed that chance was bad enough, but since the Yanks wouldn't have it from fear that after the war Central Europe would become a sphere of British influence we might at least have done better than go into Italy by the basement.'
`I couldn't agree more,' Gregory said quickly. `And if the intention was not limited to relieving Malta and making the Med reasonably safe for Allied shipping, but later to invade the Italian mainland, we ought never to have gone into Sicily at all. We should have done it via Sardinia and the Gulf of Leghorn.'
`Of course. Mountbatten was for that, Cunningham was for it; and it would have been their responsibility to get the troops ashore. Portal and Pug Ismay inclined that way, too; and in the early days, when the pros and cons of Sicily and Sardinia were discussed, Churchill had said that he could see no sense in climbing up the leg of Italy like a harvest bug. From the beginning the Joint Planning Staff had been all for Sardinia and at the Casablanca Conference, when the matter was finally decided, they staged a revolt. But Alan Brooke wouldn't have it. He'd always favoured Sicily and at the last conference in Washington he'd persuaded the Americans to accept his choice. At Casablanca he fought the others tooth and nail. He flatly refused to go back to the Americans and reopen the question. Said they would get the idea that the British didn't know their own minds."
`What!' Gregory exclaimed. `You can't really mean that he forced the issue upon which the whole course of the war and thousands of British lives depended simply to avoid having to confess to the Americans that his colleagues were against him and he might be wrong.'
That's what it amounted to.'
`Why didn't Churchill intervene?'
Sir Pellinore shook his head. `He never does. He produces some very good ideas and some very dangerous ones. He never stops gingering up his Chiefs of Staff to use everything we've got against the enemy. But he sticks to protocol like a leech. Can’t blame him for that. Duty of a Prime Minister to accept he decisions of his military advisers. How at times he resists he temptation to override them I can't think. But he never abuses his position. As spokesman for the Chiefs of Staff, Allan Brooke had sold him this one about going into Sicily Before they left London. And he has great faith in "Brookie", so that was that.'
`What a shocking business!'
`And look where Alan Brooke's pigheadedness has landed us. Etna commands the whole of north-eastern Sicily. Any fool could have foreseen that the wurst-eaters would dig in on its slopes and hold us up there while they reinforced southern Italy. Naturally, by the time Montgomery did throw them out they were ready for us and able to give us a bloody nose when we landed-and another at Salerno. And why Salerno, in God's name? If we'd gone in further up at Anzio we'd have had Rome for the askin'! The Italians had surrendered and could hardly wait to come over to us so as to get their own back