The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz

This chapter describes September 7, 1940, the first day of “the Blitz” or the German aerial assault on London. Citizens experience fearful bombings that shake homes and buildings or reduce them to rubble, filling the air with brown dust that settles on things and people. Bombs cause immense blazing fires in the streets that firefighters handle with difficulty. The first night’s raids kill over 400 people and injure 1,600 more. The following morning Churchill and his entourage rush from Chequers back to London to tour the damaged parts of the city. Beaverbrook, who was also at his country estate, returns to London and persuades his biographer to depict him as having been in the city throughout the raid (216). 

The raging fires from the bombs in London serve as guides for further bombers during the successive nights of September 8-11. Churchill visits the bombed-out parts of the city and raises Londoners’ morale with his presence and words. Beaverbrook inaugurates a new method of storing aircraft and dispersing manufacturing centers so as to protect them from German bombs. In Berlin, Rudolf Hess continues to seek a diplomatic solution to the conflict with Britain. Anxious to help the war effort, Mary Churchill moves to Chequers to work for the Women’s Voluntary Service.