Top Secret Visit to Cabinet War Rooms, London

VISIT TO THE CABINET WAR ROOMS. LONDON
Leaving the sunlight and the fresh green trees of St James’s Park, I show my pass dated 27 July 1940 and go through a sandbagged entrance down narrow stone steps past into a dimly lit underground maze of long narrow corridors and small rooms. An air raid siren sounds and I almost expect enemy planes to zoom overhead and drop bombs on us. For we are reliving the Second World War when this basement was converted from the dank store under the Office of Public Works in Whitehall [Now the Treasury] into the Cabinet War Rooms where Mr Winston Churchill, his War Cabinet, Heads of the Armed Services, senior officials and a host of government office workers spent a large part of their time working to win the War.
‘As the son of a British service man and a mother working on coding at Bletchley, this place means a great deal to me’, ‘Humphrey Aylwin Selfe, one of the museum assistants told me. Then as an unmistakable voice starts speaking on the wireless, measured, firm and re-assuring, Humphrey adds. ‘This is the man who led us through the war. Mr Churchill making one of his BBC broadcasts to the nation from down here.’
I asked how far underground we were. ‘Only about ten feet,’ Humphrey told me. ‘But Mr Churchill realised that with a direct hit all the ceilings would probably come down and so you can see heavy red girders supporting the Cabinet Room and other places. At first 500 pound bombs were dropped but later 1,500 and 1,700 pounders landed so it’s lucky we’re still here.’
I make my way along the corridors installed with rifle racks and gas filters past cramped busy offices. Uniformed men are pouring over maps or answering telephones and in other offices young women in neat page boy hair styles and square shouldered 1940 blouses and suits type at heavy manual typewriters, gas masks, fire helmets and a whistle at the ready. Farther along is the map room [Churchill loved maps] with enormous maps on the walls for the minutest military move to be planned and noted. On one in the Atlantic Ocean someone has drawn a caricature of a squatting Adolf giving the Nazi salute. There is also an incredible number of heavy old telephones, black, white, red and green to indicate the different places they were connected to. Then what had been a broom cupboard gloriously delegated to become the transatlantic phone booth direct to President Roosevelt and disguised as a loo. The huge equipment for scrambling all the phones was in Selfridges basement. Then - most impressive, although still very spartan, is the Cabinet Room with tables set with papers as for a Cabinet meeting. Mr Churchill’s large chair is in the far centre facing the meeting with the red box of state papers in front of him. Nothing must be touched except for cleaning and no one must ever sit in his chair. If an air raid begins a red lamp flashes.
‘I was assistant Duty officer down here when Pearl Harbour fell and had to report it to Cabinet Ministers minutes after the 9.o’clock news. I believe a cabinet meeting was held that evening,’ William Frend [now Rev. Professor at Cambridge] told me recently. ‘It was hard work but we just carried on with calculated optimism through this worst part of the War.’
Though the gun racks are empty and the thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke tinged with the distinct odour of chemical toilets and no proper drainage dispersed, and rats and other vermin exterminated, you can still imagine how it felt being cooped up here without any fresh air or daylight - never knowing in the centre of London if one’s last hour was going to come. It even makes one think what a medieval castle under siege might have been like [only without chemical toilets!]. It was even worse for the humbler office workers who had to crawl down to a basement even lower to sleep here overnight. No light, no toilet and rats.
Churchill had special living and working quarters above the underground facilities but as raids increased, living accommodation had to be created for Churchill’s Chiefs of Staff and for Mr and Mrs Churchill. In a small room typical of student ‘digs’ with a single bed, small electric fire, fan, dressing table, ewer and wash bowl a girl in a 1940s suit and wearing very bright lipstick is checking her hair in the mirror and is a bit embarrassed when I come along.
‘How do you do. I’m Miss Hughes,’ she says. ‘I’m just making sure everything is in order for Mrs Churchill in case she needs to use this room. To be honest I’m not sure she’s very keen on sleeping here.’
‘Still, no need to install oneself till Gerry floats over, what!’ Major Wade of the Royal Signals winks at Miss Hughes as he marches past with an urgent message. Miss Hughes blushes. Despite the raids and often being in tears from Mr Churchill’s impatient demands the female staff had quite a good time as eligible men outnumbered them enormously.
Even sparser single rooms always with the necessary chamber pot are along the corridor for Churchill’s aides including his faithful private secretary, later Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, his trusted aide Tommy Thompson, George Harvie-Watt, Norman Brook and Desmond Morton. Then a small simple dining room with a table set for four and on the sideboard the essential cigar cutter.
Miss Hughes kindly shows me the tiny kitchen nearby with its little electric cooker and where all waste water had to be carried upstairs and out and Churchill’s cook Mrs Landemare struggled to make appetising dishes and probably keep a number of bottles of champagne on ice.
‘Sometimes Mrs Landemare would be cooking the lunch in No. 10 when the siren sounded,’ the Churchill’s grandson the Hon. Nicholas Soames MP told me. ‘Then she had to transfer the food on to a tray cover it with a shawl to keep it warm and the chauffeur drove her round to where she finished cooking the food.’
However today Marguerite Patten looking wonderfully elegant in a delicate lavender two piece is in the kitchen talking to Gary Rhodes about recipes in the War including spam fritters. She did not cook for the Churchills but she was Food Adviser to the Ministry of Food and created all sorts of delicious recipes encouraging women to make the most of their meat ration with home grown garden vegetables and herbs.
I then come to Churchill’s own bedroom with a map on the wall behind the bed and a large bed tray where he took breakfast, smoked his cigar, read the newspapers and held meetings. His working times were erratic as he took a siesta in the afternoon and then worked till the early hours and expected his staff to be awake when he was. He was completely fearless and often went up on the flat roof of the Government Offices during air raids to watch the ‘Fire’ over London. He visited bombed sites and travelled unafraid overseas to meet other leaders. Although slightly difficult to work for he was loved and honoured by everyone as a great leader. And haven’t the British, most of whom were born after the War, chosen him as the Greatest Briton in History?
On view under glass are some touching letters written to Churchill from King George Vl from Buckingham Palace as of course the King and Queen also spent the War in London and suffered bomb damage and fond letters from the then Princess Elizabeth .
The Cabinet War Rooms open daily from 9.30 to 6.o [10.0 opening in winter] and has disabled easy access. Admission for adults £7.0, children under 16 free and concessions £5.50. There is a shop with Churchill and War memorabilia and a cafe which serves refreshments and has good toilets [not chemical]

First published in The People's Friend 2004