of State has been telephoned this afternoon by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, and he has in turn telephoned me to ask me to give him something he can tell the Cabinet tomorrow in the light of the increase in V2 activity over the past couple of days. I need some facts, and above all I need some recommendations for action. This is an informal meeting: no minutes, no names, nothing for the record, therefore no need to protect any backs, yours or anyone else’s – got it? Good. Jim, why don’t you bring us up to date?’
He sat back stiffly in his chair and lit a cigarette. Through the screen of smoke, he stared down the table at Kay. She caught his eye briefly and he looked away. One of the officers rose and stood in front of the map.
‘Right, sir, I think it’s fair to say we were all rather lulled into a false sense of security in October, when the parachute landings at Arnhem forced the Germans to pull the V2 launchers temporarily out of the area around The Hague. That put London out of range of the rockets, and all they could do was fire missiles at Norfolk, to little or no effect. Unfortunately, when Operation Market Garden failed, they were able to reoccupy the coastal strip here’ – he gestured to the map – ‘at the end of October, and as a result November has been the worst month by far.’ He opened his file. ‘We recorded a total of twelve V2s hitting Greater London in the first week of November, rising to thirty-five in the second week, twenty-seven in the third week, and so far we’re looking at about forty for this week.
‘Just to give you some idea of casualties over the past seven days: we had nine killed in East Ham in one incident on Monday; twenty dead on Tuesday in Walthamstow, Erith and Battersea; twenty-four dead in Bethnal Green on Wednesday, plus another six in Chislehurst about fifty minutes later; two dead on Thursday; nineteen dead on Friday; and then, unfortunately, yesterday – the worst incident so far – a hundred and sixty dead in Deptford, and another seven elsewhere. We’re still getting information about today, but so far it’s more than a dozen killed.’
A square-faced officer with thick black eyebrows raised his hand. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Jim, but if we’re speaking frankly, and at the risk of sounding like a brute, at Bomber Command we’re probably killing ten times as many Germans as all of that in a single night. In strictly military terms the rockets are a bloody nuisance, but they’re not going to be a decisive factor in the war.’
Templeton said, ‘That may be true. But any day now, one of those things could hit the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace or Number Ten Downing Street and we’re powerless to stop them. We can’t just tell people to grin and put up with it. They’ve had enough.’
‘Yes,’ continued the officer at the map, ‘we did have an airburst above the Houses of Parliament on Sunday evening two weeks ago – that caused a panic at Victoria station. And the other side to this, sir, apart from the casualties, is homelessness. Because the missiles hit so fast, they create craters up to thirty feet deep and the blast damage can be pretty devastating for an entire neighbourhood.’
‘How many buildings have been damaged so far, do we have any idea?’
‘About five thousand houses have either been destroyed or will have to be demolished, sir. In total, about a hundred and fifty thousand buildings have been damaged.’
A murmur went round the table. He returned to his seat.
Templeton said, ‘Have we really not been able to lay a finger on these bastards at all? How many sorties have we flown in the last couple of days?’
‘The weather’s kept us grounded for forty-eight hours, sir,’ said one of the other officers. ‘We did put up four Spitfires from Coltishall this morning.’ He stood in front of the map. ‘They crossed the coast here, at Egmond, turned south and flew down the Dutch coast to the Hook of Holland. Unfortunately, the cloud base was three thousand feet. Even when they dropped to two and a half thousand, there was still too much mist to see anything. As soon as they went back up to twenty thousand – sod’s law – they saw a V2 rising straight up through the clouds, but of