Traitors' Gate

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      Late on the night of July 25th 1942 a little group of senior staff officers stood talking together in a small underground room. They all looked tired and a little pasty. That was hardly to be wondered at as they worked, on average, sixteen hours a day and seldom emerged from the fortress basement in which, as members of the Joint Planning Staff of the War Cabinet, they had their quarters.

      The semi  circular cellar in which they stood had been converted into a mess only as an emergency convenience during the worst air raids of 1940. In its centre two card tables put together enabled six officers to sit down to a meal. One angle was curtained off and behind it a Royal Marine heated soup or knocked up an egg dish as required; against the wall in the other stood a steel filing cabinet; but, instead of papers, its shelves carried an assortment of bottles and glasses. Crowded into the small space in front of it, the Planners were imbibing stiff whiskies and sodas before betaking themselves to their bunks in a still lower basement.

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