Free The Day We Went to War by Terry Charman Page A

Clark at the National Gallery.
    From the US Embassy, ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy cables the State Department. Kennedy is extremely pessimistic about the chances of peace. His son Jack has just arrived back from Berlin, where the US Chargé d’Affaires Alexander Kirk has told him that war will start within a week. Kennedy himself has just seen Chamberlain. He wires Washington that the Prime Minister ‘says the futility of it all is the thing that is frightful. After all, they cannot save the Poles. They can merely carry on a war of revenge that will mean the destruction of all Europe.’
    24 August, V ATICAN
    Pope Pius XII broadcasts an appeal for peace. But even devout Catholic convert Evelyn Waugh thinks that it was delivered ‘in terms so general and trite that it passes unnoticed here, where no one doubts that peace is preferable to war’.
    24 August, T EDDINGTON
    ‘Halifax . . . spoke on Poland. “The British government do not go back on their obligations.” A little late to make that observation, but steps back in the right direction . . . Forster is made Head of State and dictator in Danzig. The atrocity tales against Poland are very fierce in Berlin.’ (Helena Mott)
    24 August, W ORTHING
    ‘News blacker and blacker. Parliament recalled and the PM (Chamberlain) made a momentous statement our guarantee to Poland holds good. In this way the situation differs from that of last September over Czecho-slovakia.’ (Joan Strange)
    24 August, G ERMANY
    ‘Captain Wellmann gave a short address in which he informed us that the movement orders had been received. The situation is grave and we must do honour to the traditions of our battery. We gave another cheer for Fatherland and Fuehrer and marched off from the barrack square behind the battery colours, singing heartily. Our train started shortly after eight passing through Schoenebeck, we reached Magdeburg where we had to change. Everywhere one saw masses of men laden with trunks and parcels, making their way to the mobilisation points. Many of them wore medal ribbons from the Great War. Were those who had already experienced the horrors of 1914–18 to go campaigning once more? It was scarcely imaginable.’ (Corporal Wilhelm Krey, 13th Artillery Observation Battery, German Army)
    24 August, C ITY OF L ONDON
    ‘New hats, frocks, coats, theatres and even holidays are forgotten and replaced by purchase of tinned foods, black curtains and adhesive tape.
    ‘The railway stations had their blue anti-glare lights fixed, provision all over the country for a quick black-out is being made and everything is, apparently, ready for the “big bang”.
    ‘For twelve long weary months we have lived with the threat that on such-and-such a date war will be declared and as each date passes nerves become more strained, the tension grows tighter and we wait with a jagged dread for the next date. Of course, we carry on and live and eat and sleep and generally behave as thoughnothing was worrying us at all but all the time there is a little devil deep inside that whispers “what’s the use of making this arrangement – we probably shalln’t be here when the time comes to fulfil it.”’ (Miss Vivienne Hall, aged thirty-two, shorthand typist with the Northern Assurance Co. of Moorgate, London EC2, living with her mother in Putney)
    25 August, L ONDON
    The BBC starts broadcasting news bulletins from 10.30am. Up until today the first news had gone out as late as 6pm. Britain and Poland sign a five-year military mutual assistance agreement. It is an unambiguous declaration that Britain will fight if Poland is invaded.
    25 August, D ANZIG
    Instead of the cruiser Koenigsberg promised in June, the battleship Schleswig-Holstein arrives on a ‘courtesy visit’ to the Free City. The crew consists in the main of naval cadets. Three days ago, navy commander-in-chief Admiral Erich Raeder warned Hitler that Polish coastal batteries might very well sink the old battleship, with the loss of over