The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

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All Alone
IN BRITAIN, THE NEWS that France was out of the war prompted mixed
reactions. Harold Nicolson, whose principal task at the Ministry of
Information was to monitor civilian morale and keep the public informed
with advice about the possibility of invasion, was feeling pretty low in
morale himself, albeit he was calmly resigned. The prospect of fighting
alone filled him – and his colleagues – with gloom. At the Ministry, he had
meanwhile helped write a leaflet called If the Invader Comes, which was
issued to every household in the country. 6 It was all commonsense advice,
such as not believing rumours or spreading them, staying put, keeping
watch, and telling the Germans nothing. ‘Think before you act,’ it
concluded. ‘But think always of your country before you think of yourself.’
For a nation already expecting German parachutists to land at any moment,
this pamphlet did little to allay fears.
Harold certainly feared the worst. He felt it would be impossible to beat
the Germans and that, with France’s surrender, Britain would be bombed
and invaded. He and his wife, Vita, had both agreed that should Germans
land and Britain fall, they would kill themselves – they had even obtained
cyanide capsules for the purpose. ‘I am quite lucidly aware,’ he recorded,
‘that in three weeks from now Sissinghurst may be a waste and Vita and I
both dead.’
Olivia Cockett was stunned by France’s capitulation. A south Londoner,
Olivia was a bright, intelligent woman of twenty-seven who worked as a
payroll clerk at New Scotland Yard for the Ministry of Works. The news
had been broadcast on a radio at work and for the rest of the day she could
barely speak, let alone concentrate on the job in hand. She felt shaky and
tearful and in the evening, still in a state of shock, met up with her ‘man’,
Bill Hole. He too was in despair, although calm. ‘He felt we should give in,’
she noted, ‘which had not occurred to me, but which seemed reasonable at
the time.’ Bill had to leave her soon after; despite an intense affair that had
lasted ten years already, he remained a married man with a family to return
to. Still unable to eat, she went home, did some gardening and had a hot