"The most important visitor to this country we had ever had"

Churchill, Brendan Bracken, and Harry Hopkins in London, January 10, 1941 Hopkins's wry, streetwise reply suggests he was trying to impress his British hosts that the Americans were as unflinching as they were. It was not easy to land in a country that had taken the brunt of war for more than a year. For them, Hitler was not the unseen force behind Murrow's broadcasts. He was an all-too-real enemy. Hopkins found himself in a house with men and women who were dealing with death and destruction face-to-face, so he put on a brave act, pretending that Roosevelt-who cared deeply about the shape the world would take-was concerned only with the present, not the future. Churchill and Hopkins, each trying to win the other's trust, had reversed roles.

"The people here," Hopkins told Roosevelt in a handwritten letter after the weekend, "are amazing from Churchill down and if courage alone can win-the result will be inevitable." Churchill and Hopkins shared a love of action. At dinner, in a "slow, deliberate, halting" tone that "was a remarkable contrast to the ceaseless flow of eloquence to which we had listened" as Churchill spoke, Hopkins "said that there were two kinds of men: those who talked and those who acted. The President, like the Prime Minister, was one of the latter." Hopkins now sensed that "the almighty Churchill" he had scorned from afar might be just that.

ON SUNDAY, January 12, 1941, in the middle of the film Night Train to Munich, Colville was called away to the telephone: The HMS Southampton had been destroyed by German dive-bombers in the Mediterranean, and the aircraft carrier Ill.u.s.trious was damaged. For Hopkins, the report, and how the British leaders reacted to it, was another important, firsthand lesson. Churchill was pained but tough. He had been this way from the beginning of the war. C. P. Snow recalled a small episode from the previous autumn: "I was sitting in an air raid shelter that September with a senior civil servant: we were discussing the theoretical plans for evacuating governmental departments. . . . 'It will not, however, happen,' he said, in a precise, old-fashioned, mandarin tone. 'The Prime Minister has determined that we shall die in the last ditch: and there is no one inclined to say him nay.' " Now the same flinty courage was evident as Hopkins watched Churchill. "Having had no direct experience of the realities of warfare," Sherwood wrote, Hopkins "was shocked by the stark immediacy of the information that ships had been sunk and that British sailors had been killed and maimed. But he had to learn that those who make the great decisions in this brutal business can take no time out for mourning or for penitence; and Winston Churchill, no respector of his own safety, was a good man from whom to learn it."

In all their hours together, Churchill did not tell Hopkins that by late October 1940 Britain's Enigma decrypts had suggested a German invasion was no longer an immediate danger, nor did he reveal another piece of signals intelligence confirming the point on January 12. It was, after all, in Churchill's interest to convince the United States that the danger was great-as it was, though a full-scale invasion of England was off for the moment. The sharing of intelligence would soon improve, with Americans visiting Bletchley and the British receiving American work on cracking j.a.panese codes.

THOUGH HOPKINS CUT an odd figure, the British enjoyed him. Mary Soames thought him a "most curious, fascinating character" whose "clothes always looked too big for him." Hopkins never quite acclimated himself to English weather. "I think he suffered desperately from the cold at Chequers," Mary said. "It's a great big Elizabethan house and we all found it fairly cold. But I think Harry Hopkins must have thought it was the North Pole and, poor man, we discovered in the end he used to take refuge in the downstairs bathroom where all the hot pipes ran through. He found it very convenient to sit in there in his overcoat reading all the official papers." His health was an issue, but one he seemed to pay little attention to. "Hopkins never seemed to eat anything," Pamela Churchill recalled. "He would have a Scotch." He seemed, Pamela said, "small, shrunken, sick. . . . This large overcoat over this small man and always kind of a dead cigarette out of the side of his mouth, looking sort of like a very sad dog." But duty drove him. "Then his face would light up and he would start talking about the war, and his purposes for being there and FDR and the whole man would change," Pamela said. "He became very determined, very strong. He was an extraordinary contrast. If you just came into a room and saw him sitting there, you would feel sorry for him. But if you heard him talk, you would listen with great respect."

Another side of his character-the shrewd observer-was evident as he composed a letter to Roosevelt.

Dear Mr. President- . . . Churchill is the gov't in every sense of the word-he controls the grand strategy and often the details-labor trusts him-the army, navy, air force are behind him to a man. The politicians and upper crust pretend to like him. I cannot emphasize too strongly that he is the one and only person over here with whom you need to have a full meeting of minds.

Churchill wants to see you-the sooner the better-but I have told him of your problem until the bill is pa.s.sed. I am convinced this meeting between you and Churchill is essential-and soon-for the battering continues and Hitler does not wait for Congress.

I was with Churchill at 2 A.M. Sunday night when he got word of the loss of the Southampton-the serious damage to the new aircraft carrier [Ill.u.s.trious]-a second cruiser knocked about-but he never falters or displays the least despondence-till four o'clock he paced the floor telling me of his offensive and defensive plans.

I cannot believe that it is true that Churchill dislikes either you or America-it just doesn't make sense.

Churchill is prepared for a set back in Greece-the African campaign will proceed favorably-German bombers in the Mediterranean make the fleet's operation more difficult-convoys must all go around the Cape. An invasion they feel sure can be repelled-Churchill thinks it will not come soon but Beaverbrook and others think it will come and soon.

This island needs our help now Mr. President with everything we can give them.

There is no time to be out of London so I am staying here-the bombs aren't nice and seem to be quite impersonal. I have been offered a so called bomb proof apartment by Churchill-a tin hat and gas mask have been delivered-the best I can say for the hat is that it looks worse than my own and doesn't fit-the gas mask I can't get on-so I am alright.

There is much to tell but it will have to wait-for I must be off to Charing Cross.

Harry Hopkins would always be wary of British political and economic imperialism, but on the question of the war, Churchill had won his man.

Roosevelt was pleased with the mission, in no small part because he believed that, across the fog of battle, he had picked the right envoy for the job. Churchill, Beaverbrook once said, "was not a sinner but he liked the company of sinners." Hopkins loved being around the rich and the glamorous. "One of the things he always did with those people was say this kind of thing: 'Oh, you blankety-blank rich!' " recalled Marquis Childs. "Still, he liked the champagne and he liked the diamonds." Hopkins very much liked Clementine, whom he found "the most charming and entertaining of all the people that he met." The feeling was mutual. "My mother, who was quite a critical person, and wasn't at all p.r.o.ne to naturally take to people at first sight, was captivated by him," Mary said. Clementine's innate sense of hospitality was part of the reason. "She realized how frail he was and took pains when he came to visit to make sure he had what he needed," Mary recalled. But Hopkins and Clementine also shared an appreciation of candor that probably provided common ground: Hopkins's bluntness led Churchill to refer to him as "Lord Root of the Matter."

CHURCHILL AND HOPKINS took a train trip north through Scotland to Scapa Flow to see Lord Halifax off to Washington. As the train moved through the country, Churchill would introduce Hopkins as "the personal representative of the President of the United States of America."

At a dinner one evening, Hopkins stood and said: "I suppose you wish to know what I am going to say to President Roosevelt on my return. Well, I'm going to quote you one verse from that Book of Books . . . : 'Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d.' " Then, quietly: "Even to the end."

Churchill wept. "He knew what it meant," Lord Moran, his doctor, wrote. "Even to us the words seemed like a rope thrown to a drowning man." Churchill long remembered Hopkins's kindness. "His was a soul that flamed out of a frail and failing body," Churchill wrote later. "He was a crumbling lighthouse from which shone the beams that led great fleets to harbour."

Hopkins returned the sentiment. After a long night with Churchill, Hopkins sat by a fire, so entranced by his host that he could only say, "Jesus Christ! What a man!"

IT WAS SNOWING when Churchill and Hopkins went to Chequers on Sat.u.r.day, January 18. In a letter home, Eric Seal, Churchill's princ.i.p.al private secretary, wrote that Hopkins "is really a very charming and interesting man. Winston has taken to him enormously. Tonight . . . we rang up the President-and the Prime Minister spoke to him. He started off 'Mr President-it's me-Winston speaking'!!"

On January 19, Wendell Willkie, who was to leave for England the next day, stopped by the White House. As he chatted with Willkie, Roosevelt wrote out a verse from memory of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Building of the Ship" to take to Churchill: Dear Churchill, Wendell Willkie will give you this. He is truly helping to keep politics out over here.

I think this verse applies to your people as it does to us.

Sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

As ever yours, Franklin D. Roosevelt In Washington, Charles Lindbergh was testifying against Lend-Lease. When it came to Hitler's Europe, Lindbergh said, he did not think it "possible for either America or Europe to invade the other successfully by air, or even by a combination of air, land, and sea, unless an internal collapse precedes invasion." For his part, he preferred "to see neither side win" and "would like to see a negotiated peace." Two days later, on Friday, Churchill and Hopkins went to Dover, where Hopkins told Churchill he had overheard a workman say to another as Churchill went by: "There goes the b.l.o.o.d.y British Empire." That pleased Churchill. "Winston's face wreathed itself in smiles and, turning to me, he lisped, 'Very nice,' " wrote Colville. "I don't think anything has given him such pleasure for a long time." (Churchill's grandson Winston related a similar story. Three months later, Averell Harriman and Churchill were touring a bomb-ravaged area of Bristol. As cheering locals surrounded them, Harriman, having been told that Churchill was hard of hearing, remarked to Lord Ismay, "Isn't it wonderful how all the old ladies love the P.M.?" Overhearing, Churchill growled: "It isn't just the old ones.") At midnight at Chequers on January 24, Churchill and Hopkins adjourned to Colville's office to talk. One topic: Churchill's opposition to cutting a deal with the Third Reich. "Never give in," Churchill said, "and you will never regret it." A negotiated peace "would be a German victory and leave open the way for another and final 'spring of the Tiger' in a few years' time. Hopkins agreed and said that Lindbergh, and others in America who favor a negotiated peace, really desired a German victory. The P.M. wound up by saying that after the last war he had been asked to provide an inscription for a French war memorial. His suggestion, which was rejected, had been: 'In war fury, in defeat defiance, in victory magnanimity, in peace good will.' "

Churchill's conquest of Hopkins was important but not conclusive. He knew Roosevelt was his real quarry-and that Roosevelt would come along only as American opinion warmed to Churchill and the British.

SPEAKING ON THE radio the next day, Churchill had a complex task: rea.s.sure Americans that the British were strong but not so strong that they could overcome Hitler without aid.

We must all of us have been asking ourselves: What has that wicked man whose crime-stained regime and system are at bay and in the toils-what has he been preparing during these winter months? What new devilry is he planning? What new small country will he overrun or strike down? What fresh form of a.s.sault will he make upon our Island home and fortress; which-let there be no mistake about it-is all that stands between him and the dominion of the world?

He told the audience about Roosevelt's Longfellow quotation and read it out. Then: What is the answer that I shall give, in your name, to this great man, the thrice-chosen head of a nation of a hundred and thirty millions? Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under Providence, all will be well.

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

HOPKINS'S CAPTIVATION WITH Churchill was clear, and it soon infected Roosevelt. Over a lunch of corned beef hash, poached eggs, and chocolate pudding in the Cabinet Room after Hopkins returned, Roosevelt was working on a speech for the White House Correspondents a.s.sociation dinner. According to Sherwood, Hopkins "suggested that, since Churchill had made so many respectful references to Roosevelt in his speeches, perhaps the President might care to mention him. So Roosevelt dictated, 'In this historic crisis, Britain is blessed with a brilliant leader in Winston Churchill.' He thought that over for a moment, then added, 'Make that "a brilliant and a great leader." ' "

They were suddenly a long way from the grudging remark, made less than a year before in that very room, that Roosevelt "supposed" Churchill was "the best man" England had.

In these months-from January to March-American military planners were also meeting secretly with the British and produced strategic recommendations in line with previous American thought: that in the event of U.S. entry into the conflict, the defeat of Germany and Italy, along with control of the Atlantic, would be the primary goal; the Allies would fight a more defensive war in the Pacific.

Roosevelt won the Lend-Lease vote on February 8, 1941. Hopkins tried to reach Churchill on the telephone, but Churchill was asleep. Hopkins left a message and wrote Churchill: "I find my thoughts constantly with you in the desperate struggle which I am sure is going to result, in the last a.n.a.lysis, in your victory." Churchill was grateful, replying: "Thank G.o.d for your news. Strain is serious." To Roosevelt, Churchill cabled: "Our blessings from the whole of the British Empire go out to you and the American nation for this very present help in time of trouble." In his heart, however, Churchill knew this was not enough. "Far more was needed," he said later, "but we did our best."

Churchill and Roosevelt now shared something personal: faith in Hopkins and his judgment. "The President knew his man and sent the right man to the right place at the right time," Pamela Churchill said. "Hopkins had that extraordinary ability to make WSC feel Hopkins was working for him at the same time he was working for FDR" and could translate "Roosevelt into language that Churchill would understand." By fits and starts, Roosevelt and Churchill were moving ever closer. Because of Hopkins, Pamela recalled, when Roosevelt and Churchill got together, they were "able to meet as old friends."

"We are Christian soldiers, and we will go on, with G.o.d's help"

Roosevelt and Churchill at a church service aboard HMS Prince of Wales, August 10, 1941.

CHAPTER 4.

LUNCHING ALONE BROKE THE ICE.

A Secret Meeting at Sea-Churchill and Roosevelt.

Hit It Off-America Enters the War.

AT A NO. 10 Downing Street lunch in March 1941 with James B. Conant, the president of Harvard, and Clementine, Churchill sat and listened as Conant said, "it was unfortunate that so many people in America were anxious to keep America out of the War at any cost because they took the view that 'nothing is worse than war.' " Hearing this, recalled Charles Eade, a fellow guest, "Mr. Churchill snapped in his best radio manner, 'Slavery is worse than war. Dishonour is worse than war.' "

Eloquent as always, but the prime minister's message was still failing to bring the United States fully into the conflict, and the Germans were having a fine time in the field in the spring of 1941. Churchill may have stymied Hitler, at least for the time being, in the skies over Britain, but Berlin continued to seize territory, capturing or cutting deals with Yugoslavia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Greece. In North Africa, German General Erwin Rommel was scoring victories in Libya. Americans were producing three times as many combat munitions as they had been in 1940, but the total was still less than Germany's and Britain's. In Washington, Roosevelt decided it was time to sit down with Churchill.

"I was faced with a practical problem of extreme difficulty," Roosevelt later wrote in a private memorandum. He wanted to effect a clandestine session with Churchill off Newfoundland in August 1941 to, as Roosevelt put it, "talk over the problem of the defeat of Germany." Confidentiality was key for both security and politics. "It was constantly emphasized, both in London and Washington, that the utmost secrecy before and during the trip was essential," Roosevelt recalled. "This was, of course, obvious because the Prime Minister would traverse, both going and returning from Newfoundland, long distances in dangerous waters-the danger being from bombing planes, heavy raiders and submarines." Roosevelt also wanted to keep his critics quiet until the meeting was over. The United States was still neutral, and after Lend-Lease, the last thing he needed was to hand the isolationists something else to use against him.

Roosevelt took matters into his own hands, telling reporters he might take a cruise on the USS Potomac in Maine "to get some cool nights" that summer. "This," Roosevelt recalled with a touch of boys' adventure novel prose, "became the basis for the plan of escape."

Hopkins was the conduit to Churchill. Roosevelt dispatched his aide to England, where he landed with ham, cheese, and cigars for the Churchills. "Harry Hopkins came into the garden of Downing Street and we sat together in the sunshine," Churchill recalled. "Presently he said that the President would like very much to have a meeting with me in some lonely bay or other." Churchill jumped at the chance. That night, he and Hopkins spoke to Roosevelt on the telephone, and, Churchill said, "thus all was soon arranged." Churchill was eager to get on with it.

Roosevelt kept Eleanor in the dark, to the extent that his main communication with his wife in the run-up to the meeting was a "Memorandum for Mrs. Roosevelt" from Grace Tully that read: "The President asked me to check on your operator's license for New York State and on his also. . . . I have been in touch with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and have been informed that both you and the President renewed yours at the beginning of this year."

Roosevelt did, however, tell his cousin Margaret "Daisy" Suckley, writing her: "Even at my ripe old age, I feel a thrill in making a get-away-especially from the American press." That he took Daisy into his confidence is revealing. Suckley is an intriguing figure in the Roosevelt world, one whose full significance became clear only after the biographer Geoffrey Ward edited and published excerpts from her diary and letters in 1995. A remote cousin of Roosevelt's, Suckley, a spinster obsessed with dogs, health, and Franklin Roosevelt-not necessarily in that order-was part of the genteel Hudson Valley squirearchy. Roosevelt enjoyed Daisy's quiet company, and there was apparently no romantic connection between the two. He liked having her around as an audience and a caretaker, and Daisy adored the man she often referred to in her diary as "the P." or "F."

"We always thought of him as a friend of our aunt's; we never talked about it," recalled Margaret Hendrick, Daisy's niece. "We did not want my aunt's friendship with him broadcast around. That just wasn't done. We underplayed everything. There was no great romance between them or anything; they both came from the Hudson River and liked spending time together, that's all."

Suckley's doc.u.ments were found under her bed at Wilderstein, her Dutchess County house, after she died in 1991, and Ward prepared them for publication. Daisy thought of Roosevelt as the savior of the world-a view he did not vigorously reject-and worried about his health. "I don't want to harp on one string always," she wrote him in July 1941, "but please remember that you are going to be needed more & more with every pa.s.sing month. And still more when the period of reconstruction comes!"

ON SUNDAY, JUNE 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Having abandoned SEA LION for the time being, Hitler, who despised Bolsheviks-he blamed them, as well as the Jews, for Germany's defeat in World War I-believed that he could conquer the Soviet Union. Churchill rushed to make an alliance with his former foes. "No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last twenty-five years," he said that Sunday evening. "I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it. But all this fades away before the spectacle which is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away."

Roosevelt said little about the invasion, puzzling over what to do. It was conceivable, he thought, that Stalin's stand against Germany might mean the United States could afford to stay out-a decision that would further frustrate Churchill. Nancy Astor wrote Agnes Meyer: "I pray America won't let the Huns wipe out Russia and so make our job five times as bad."

With Stalin as an unexpected ally, Hopkins flew from Britain to Moscow to size up the Soviet dictator. Churchill arranged for transportation. Weary, Hopkins arrived in Moscow on a sunny, warm day. "He looked very frail, weak, pale," recalled Valentin Berezhkov, a Stalin interpreter. Hopkins found Stalin steely but cooperative, which made sense: Russia needed its own version of Lend-Lease and, ultimately, a Second Front. A onetime seminary student who had become a brutal ruler, Stalin had gambled on Germany and lost. Betrayed by one ally, Stalin would be a wary figure in the trinity of leaders. "No man could forget the picture of the dictator of Russia," said Hopkins, "an austere, rugged, determined figure in boots that shone like mirrors, stout baggy trousers, and snug-fitting blouse. He wore no ornament, military or civilian. He's built close to the ground, like a football coach's dream of a tackle. He's about five feet six, about a hundred and ninety pounds. His hands are huge, as hard as his mind. His voice is harsh but ever under control."

Stalin's demands during the war-for Lend-Lease supplies and delivery, for a Second Front to help him in his blood-soaked battles against the Germans, for present and future concessions of territory and influence-affected the Roosevelt-Churchill alliance throughout the conflict. Stalin often seemed to believe he was doing most if not all of the real fighting (the Soviets would lose about 12,000,000 soldiers, compared to about 400,000 for Great Britain and about 300,000 for the United States). And there was the fear in London and in Washington that Stalin might fold, by either losing to Hitler or, under pressure, striking another separate peace. He was a man who had to be heeded-or, at the very least, handled with extreme care.

IN A SPEECH to the House of Commons on July 29, 1941, Churchill said the United States "is giving us aid on a gigantic scale and is advancing in rising wrath and conviction to the very verge of war." In a session with reporters in Washington the same day, Roosevelt was asked: "What do you think of Mr. Churchill's statement that the United States is on the verge of war?"

"Haven't read it."

"If you had read it?"

"If I had read it?" Roosevelt laughed.

"What was your answer, Mr. President?"

"That I hadn't read it."

"That's what he said, Mr. President."

"What?"

"That's what he did say."

". . . Try another one. I am afraid-I am afraid this heat's got you people here in Washington. It's bad. . . . Up in Hyde Park we had a grand time-lots of news and nice cool weather. Haven't any of you got any questions for me? Did you say 'Thank you, Mr. President,' Earl?" Roosevelt concluded with a laugh, teasing the reporter Earl G.o.dwin, who traditionally closed conferences with those words.

Grace Tully, who had also been kept out of the loop about Newfoundland, thought Roosevelt was looking forward to "a nice quiet cruise . . . while catching 'the first fish,' 'the biggest fish,' and 'the most fish,' which was the way the betting ran aboard the Presidential yacht." The trip began at eleven in the morning on Sunday, August 3, when Roosevelt rode by train from Union Station to New London, Connecticut, where he boarded the Potomac. It was still light out when he transferred to the yacht, and, Roosevelt said, "many persons saw me and we stood out of the harbor into the Sound in full view of thousands, my Presidential flag flying from the main top." He told reporters that he would be spending the next few days fishing.

LET THE PROUD author of the plot explain what happened next: "Strange thing happened this morning-suddenly found ourselves transferred with all our baggage & mess crew from the little 'Potomac' to the Great Big Cruiser 'Augusta'!" Roosevelt wrote Daisy. "And then, the Island of Martha's Vineyard disappeared in the distance, and as we head out into the Atlantic all we can see is our protecting escort, a heavy cruiser and four destroyers. Curiously enough the Potomac still flies my flag & tonight will be seen by thousands as she pa.s.ses quietly through the Cape Cod Ca.n.a.l, guarded on sh.o.r.e by Secret Service and State Troopers while in fact the Pres. will be about 250 miles away." Its master safely-and secretly-in the hands of the navy, the Potomac returned to the coast to resume the previously announced cruise. In what Roosevelt thought was a "delightful story," the yacht's crewmen dressed up as the president and his party and sat on deck.

To his wife, who was at Hyde Park, he maintained the fiction that he was fishing, routing a message through Press Secretary Steve Early: "The President sends word all well on boat and getting real rest. Weather excellent." And he left a bulletin to be released to the press in a few days: "From USS Potomac," it read. "All members of party showing effects of sunning. Fishing luck good. No destination announced. President being kept in close touch international situation by navy radio. All on board well."

HOPKINS ARRIVED FROM Moscow to sail with Churchill, who cabled Roosevelt: Harry returned dead beat from Russia but is lively again now. We shall get him in fine trim on the voyage. We are just off. It is 27 years ago today that the Huns began their last war. We all must make a good job of it this time. Twice ought to be enough. Look forward so much to our meeting. Kindest regards.

Churchill was thinking constantly of the encounter with Roosevelt, "planning all the details of the entertainment of the other fellow," John Martin noted, "ordering grouse, ordering turtle and ordering a band." This was his chance to shine. "I hope we shall have an interesting and enjoyable voyage," Churchill said to H. V. Morton, a writer whom Brendan Bracken had sent to record the events.

Then, Morton remembered, "with the slight hesitation and change of voice which are so effective on the radio," Churchill added, "And one not entirely without profit."

ONE NIGHT, CHURCHILL watched Lady Hamilton, a Vivien LeighLaurence Olivier movie about Lord Nelson and his affair with a diplomat's wife set during Britain's struggle to survive the Napoleonic wars. "Winston Churchill was completely absorbed in the story," Morton wrote. The tale of romance and war was a perfect diversion-and, Mary Soames recalled, Churchill found Vivien Leigh "ravishing."

"I have, my lords, in different countries, seen much of the miseries of war," Olivier-as-Nelson says in a scene in the House of Lords. "I am, therefore, in my inmost soul, a man of peace. Yet I would not for the sake of any peace, however fortunate, consent to sacrifice one chance of England's honor." Cut to Trafalgar, on October 21, 1805. Nelson issues the order Churchill had heard about at Harrow-"England expects that every man will do his duty"-and as the signals spell out the message, the camera stirringly captures the faces of ordinary sailors getting the word. When a French sniper wounds Nelson-fatally, as it turns out-he orders his officers to "cover my face, the decorations-no time for the men to see me like this." He is carried below, and as the end nears, he is told that he has won. "Sir, sir . . . a great victory!" an officer tells him. "Thank G.o.d," Olivier whispers hoa.r.s.ely. "I have done my duty." The admiral then dies. At that moment, Morton wrote, "the man who was watching so intently took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes without shame." Cadogan thought the movie "quite good" and noted: "P.M., seeing it for 5th time, moved to tears." His imagination burning bright and eager to woo Roosevelt face-to-face, Churchill told the group: "Gentlemen, I thought this film would interest you, showing great events similar to those in which you have been taking part." He ended the night playing backgammon with Hopkins, who later told friends: "You'd have thought Winston was being carried up into the heavens to meet G.o.d!"

JUST AFTER DAWN on Sat.u.r.day, August 9, Churchill appeared in his siren suit on the admiral's bridge of the Prince of Wales. "Can you see any sign of them yet?" Churchill asked Morton, who was already up and on the bridge. Churchill could not wait for the action to begin. "It was an interesting glimpse of him, and if in the future an historian wishes to describe him at that moment, he must picture the grey ship stained with the seas, striped with camouflage, her guns pointing forward in the stillness of the morning; no one about but a few sailors at their stations, and no sound but the hiss of water against her plates as she steamed through the quiet sea," Morton wrote. "High on the Admiral's Bridge, not in the steel and plate-gla.s.s bridge itself, but on the outside platform, stood Churchill on the eve of his mission. Just out of bed, his sandy hair still ruffled from the pillow, he stood watching the sea that stretched to the New World."

Churchill returned below, emerging in a dark blue uniform, which he liked to wear on naval occasions, a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. Aboard the Augusta, Roosevelt was being dressed in a suit. Two of his sons, Elliott and Franklin Jr., happened to be in that part of the Atlantic, and Roosevelt summoned them to the Augusta. At eleven A.M., Churchill crossed the bay to the Augusta. After the national anthems were played, Churchill approached Roosevelt, who stood leaning on Elliott's arm.

Getting there had not been easy. "The Boss insisted upon returning to the painful prison of his braces," recalled Mike Reilly. "He hated and mistrusted those braces, but it was a historic occasion and he meant to play his part as much as his limbs would permit. Even the slight pitch of the Augusta meant pain and the possibility of a humiliating fall." But Roosevelt would stand to greet his guest, and that was that.

With what Morton called "a slight bow," Churchill presented Roosevelt with a letter from George VI. Roosevelt charmed Churchill with what the prime minister called "the warmest of welcomes." As their hands met, Roosevelt said: "At last-we've gotten together." With a nod, Churchill replied: "We have."

Patrick Kinna, the Churchill stenographer who had brought the king's letter from London, watched the two men together. "There was a warmth there, on the deck, from the start," Kinna recalled.

ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL lunched together with Hopkins. The princ.i.p.als did not mirror each other exactly, but they understood each other. Bloodied by political wars, they had been shaped by the same events, though in different ways. Both had been influenced by progressive social-reform movements. Both had run, or helped to run, their nations' navies. Both had surpa.s.sed the men who had made their names great.

Hopkins saw why his boss and his new friend were getting along. "They were two men in the same line of business-politico-military leadership on a global scale-and theirs was a very limited field and the few who achieve it seldom have opportunities for getting together with fellow craftsmen in the same trade to compare notes and talk shop," Sherwood wrote. "They appraised each other through the practiced eyes of professionals and from this appraisal resulted a degree of admiration and sympathetic understanding of each other's professional problems that lesser craftsmen could not have achieved. . . . They had a large and wonderful capacity to stimulate and refresh each other."

In his memoirs, Churchill hinted at his professional admiration for Roosevelt. "I formed a very strong affection, which grew with our years of comradeship, for this formidable politician who had imposed his will for nearly ten years upon the American scene," wrote Churchill, "and whose heart seemed to respond to many of the impulses that stirred my own." They would compete with each other, but their jealousies were often-though not always-put to the side. The mission was the most important thing. They might not have felt that way if ultimate power had come to them in younger years. Certainly they did not click in 1918. Age and circ.u.mstance made connection easier.

There was one rough spot. Churchill said how delighted he was to meet Roosevelt for the first time, and Roosevelt corrected him, recalling the evening at Gray's Inn. "Papa completely forgot they had met before," Mary said. "He hadn't been warned or reminded, and it had just slipped his mind." Churchill's lapse annoyed Roosevelt, and in his memoirs, Churchill went out of his way to cover up the fact that he had not remembered the 1918 encounter, writing: "I had met him only once in the previous war. It was at a dinner at Gray's Inn, and I had been struck by his magnificent presence in all his youth and strength." He knew Roosevelt's kind. "Most Americans," Churchill wrote in his biography of his father, were "proud as the devil." It was important that both Churchill and Roosevelt learn to let hard words pa.s.s by. "Many men with so many grave and at times conflicting problems to settle would get their backs up about something and thereafter find it difficult to work together," recalled Roosevelt naval aide Wilson Brown, "but fortunately for us all, both Roosevelt and Churchill were adept at give and take."

ALL IN ALL, they fell in together very quickly. In those first hours, Elliott Roosevelt, who wrote a 1946 book about the wartime conferences that had a pro-Russian, anti-British tone but still offers a window on those sessions, observed that "it didn't take them long, talking about their correspondence, their transatlantic phone conversations, their health, their jobs and their worries, to be calling each other 'Franklin' and 'Winston.' "

Eager to find out how he had done with Roosevelt, Churchill later asked Averell Harriman, who had gone to London as an envoy after Hopkins's initial visit: "Does he like me?" The prime minister's first audition with the demanding Roosevelt had in fact gone well. "He is a tremendously vital person & in many ways is an English Mayor La Guardia!" Roosevelt confided to Daisy. "Don't say I said so! I like him-& lunching alone broke the ice both ways." And Roosevelt wanted to make sure he had charmed his visitor, asking aides: "What did he think of me?"

CHURCHILL RETURNED TO the Prince of Wales after lunch. Hopkins had sent over a note: "I have just talked to the President and he is very anxious, after dinner tonight, to invite in the balance of the staff and wants to ask you to talk very informally to them about your general appreciation of the war, and indeed to say anything that you would be disposed to say." That day, Inspector Thompson noticed a red leather bookmark Churchill had been using that bore the inscription "Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find." Picking it up, Thompson said, "That might be a good omen for the conference you are going to start, sir."

"I hope it will be," Churchill said, "for I have much to ask."

Whatever combination of factors drove Churchill-to find the means to win the war, the urge to please his father, to play his part as a hero like Marlborough, to make history-he was in the crucible, and the rest of us now know that he was succeeding at a level and to a degree beyond anything his venerated forebears accomplished. But he could not have grasped this as he dressed for dinner. He was only at the start, not even at the middle, let alone the end of the journey to the bittersweet glory of May 1945.

THERE WERE FAMILY frets. As Mary remembered it, 1941 had been a difficult year in the Churchills' private lives. Duncan Sandys, Diana's husband, was injured in an automobile accident; Sarah's marriage to the actor Vic Oliver collapsed; Goonie Churchill, the wife of Churchill's brother Jack, died of cancer, which shook Clementine. "Goonie had been her loyal and almost only confidante in the dark and troubled days of the Dardanelles crisis," Mary wrote.

Then Mary herself complicated the picture, if only briefly. Writing in a charming way about it years later, she recalled: "I managed to cause a diversion on the domestic front, when I somewhat precipitately became engaged in May to an intelligent, charming, and entirely suitable young man whom, however, I knew very slightly. From the very first my mother was convinced that I was not really in love at all. . . . My mother not unnaturally did not relish bearing the whole responsibility for intervening in this delicate matter, and running the risk of being thereafter accused of 'wrecking my whole life.' But my father was totally preoccupied with events of national importance, and so my mother had to grapple with this emotional situation herself."

The family worries, the war work, and a bout of bronchitis were wearing Clementine down. "Since the beginning of the war she had had no holiday, merely an odd weekend here or there and occasionally a day or afternoon spent at Chartwell," Mary wrote. "It was not easy, however, for her to find a suitable moment to 'ease up,' and she hated the idea of leaving Winston, even for a week, in these hard and anxious days." The meeting with Roosevelt provided the perfect opportunity: Clementine slipped away for a rest cure while Churchill went to Newfoundland. "I have ma.s.sage, osteopathy hot & cold showers etc. etc.-but nothing to eat so far but tomato juice & pineapple juice," she wrote her husband. "This is the fourth day & I am beginning to feel rested so that when you come home you should find a completely renovated (if not rejuvenated) cat."

Across the bay, Roosevelt may also have been thinking of home. An urgent item was Sara Roosevelt's health. She was eighty-six and spending what would be her last summer at Campobello. Confirming Trude Lash's observation that Eleanor spent more time with Sara than Roosevelt did, Eleanor had driven her mother-in-law up from Hyde Park herself, "worried about her because she did not seem very strong."

Time was running out that August, and the family knew Roosevelt would suffer when the inevitable happened. There was, James Roosevelt recalled, "a timeless permanence about her that made it even more of a shock when she died. Though Father often chafed and bridled under her efforts to treat him as if he were still the little boy she had raised with such fierce, almost consuming adoration, Father loved her dearly and sincerely."

SARA WOULD HAVE been proud-if not surprised, for she expected great things from her boy-that her Franklin was dining that evening with the prime minister of Great Britain. At a quarter to seven, Churchill and his party returned to the Augusta as Roosevelt's guests. "I had never met a person of the President's distinction who showed such apparently real interest in one's own replies to his questions," said Commander C. R. "Tommy" Thompson, Churchill's naval aide-de-camp-a sign that Roosevelt, who was a genius at charming others when he put his mind to it, was thoroughly engaged in the moment.