Read Online Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre - Free Book Online
Authors: Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre
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second hand, playing out the summers of his youth in the palaces of his more favored cousins. The memories of those idyllic summers remained deeply etched in his memory—tea parties on the lawns of Windsor Castle to which every guest might have worn a crown; cruises on the yacht of the Tsar; rides through the forests around St. Petersburg with his hemophiliac cousin the Tsarevich and his sister the Grand Duchess Marie, with whom he fell in love.
With that background, Mountbatten could have enjoyed a pleasant little existence, a modest income, a token commission, the life of an appropriately handsome embellishment to the ceremonials of a declining caste. He had chosen quite a different course, however, and he stood this winter morning at the pinnacle of a remarkable career.
Mountbatten had just turned forty-three when, in the fall of 1943, Winston Churchill, searching for "a young and vigorous mind," had appointed him Supreme Allied
Commander Southeast Asia. The authority and responsibility that command placed on his youthful shoulders had only one counterpart, the Supreme Allied Command of Dwight Eisenhower. One hundred and twenty-eight million people across a vast sweep of Asia fell under his charge. It was a command, which at the time it was formed he would later recall, had had "no victories and no priorities, only terrible morale, a terrible climate, a terrible foe and terrible defeats."
Many of his subordinates were twenty years and three or four ranks his senior. Some tended to look on him as a playboy who had used his royal connection to slip out of his dinner jacket into a naval uniform and temporarily abandon the dance floor of the Cafe de Paris for the battlefield.
He restored his men's morale with personal tours to the front, asserted his authority over his generals by forcing them to fight through Burma's terrible monsoon rains, cajoled, bullied and charmed every ounce of supplies, every priority he could get from his superiors in London and Washington.
By 1945, his once disorganized and demoralized command had won the greatest land victory ever wrought over a Japanese army. Only the dropping of the atomic bomb prevented him from carrying out his grand design, Operation Zipper, the landing of 250,000 men staged out of ports two thousand miles away on the Malayan Peninsula, an amphibious operation surpassed in size only by the Normandy landing.
As a boy, Mountbatten had chosen a naval officer's career to emulate his father, who had left his native Germany at fourteen and risen to the post of First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy. Mountbatten had barely begun his studies as a cadet, however, when a tragedy shattered his adored father's career. He was forced to resign by the wave of anti-German hysteria that swept Britain after the outbreak of World War I. His heartbroken father changed his family name from Battenberg to Mountbatten at King George V's request and was created Marquess of Milford Haven. (The King himself, also of German descent, changed his family name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor at the same time.) The First Sea Lord's son vowed to fill one day the post from which his father had been driven by an unjust outcry.
During the long years between the wars his career had been the slow, unspectacular rise of a peacetime naval officer. It was in other, less martial fields that the young Mountbatten had made his impression on the public. With his charm, his remarkable good looks, his infectious gaiety, he was one of the darlings of Britain's penny press catering to a world desperate for glamor after horrors of war. His marriage to Edwina Ashley, a beautiful and wealthy heiress, with the Prince of Wales as his best man, was the social event of 1922.
Rare were the Sunday papers over the next years that did not contain a photograph or some mention of Louis and Edwina Mountbatten: the Mountbattens at the theater with Noel Coward, the Mountbattens at the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, the dashing young Lord Louis
With that background, Mountbatten could have enjoyed a pleasant little existence, a modest income, a token commission, the life of an appropriately handsome embellishment to the ceremonials of a declining caste. He had chosen quite a different course, however, and he stood this winter morning at the pinnacle of a remarkable career.
Mountbatten had just turned forty-three when, in the fall of 1943, Winston Churchill, searching for "a young and vigorous mind," had appointed him Supreme Allied
Commander Southeast Asia. The authority and responsibility that command placed on his youthful shoulders had only one counterpart, the Supreme Allied Command of Dwight Eisenhower. One hundred and twenty-eight million people across a vast sweep of Asia fell under his charge. It was a command, which at the time it was formed he would later recall, had had "no victories and no priorities, only terrible morale, a terrible climate, a terrible foe and terrible defeats."
Many of his subordinates were twenty years and three or four ranks his senior. Some tended to look on him as a playboy who had used his royal connection to slip out of his dinner jacket into a naval uniform and temporarily abandon the dance floor of the Cafe de Paris for the battlefield.
He restored his men's morale with personal tours to the front, asserted his authority over his generals by forcing them to fight through Burma's terrible monsoon rains, cajoled, bullied and charmed every ounce of supplies, every priority he could get from his superiors in London and Washington.
By 1945, his once disorganized and demoralized command had won the greatest land victory ever wrought over a Japanese army. Only the dropping of the atomic bomb prevented him from carrying out his grand design, Operation Zipper, the landing of 250,000 men staged out of ports two thousand miles away on the Malayan Peninsula, an amphibious operation surpassed in size only by the Normandy landing.
As a boy, Mountbatten had chosen a naval officer's career to emulate his father, who had left his native Germany at fourteen and risen to the post of First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy. Mountbatten had barely begun his studies as a cadet, however, when a tragedy shattered his adored father's career. He was forced to resign by the wave of anti-German hysteria that swept Britain after the outbreak of World War I. His heartbroken father changed his family name from Battenberg to Mountbatten at King George V's request and was created Marquess of Milford Haven. (The King himself, also of German descent, changed his family name from Saxe-Coburg to Windsor at the same time.) The First Sea Lord's son vowed to fill one day the post from which his father had been driven by an unjust outcry.
During the long years between the wars his career had been the slow, unspectacular rise of a peacetime naval officer. It was in other, less martial fields that the young Mountbatten had made his impression on the public. With his charm, his remarkable good looks, his infectious gaiety, he was one of the darlings of Britain's penny press catering to a world desperate for glamor after horrors of war. His marriage to Edwina Ashley, a beautiful and wealthy heiress, with the Prince of Wales as his best man, was the social event of 1922.
Rare were the Sunday papers over the next years that did not contain a photograph or some mention of Louis and Edwina Mountbatten: the Mountbattens at the theater with Noel Coward, the Mountbattens at the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, the dashing young Lord Louis
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