destiny and the dark

Churchill stood on the roof of the Admiralty building watching the bombs fall.
All along the mall, buildings were aflame.
London was burning.
A hard man, Churchill had hardened further if such were possible, since the war began.
An almost mystical change in him had become apparent after his order to sink the French navy at Oran.
To his close friends and aides he was no longer knowable.
He stood apart.
Unlike them in the appurtenances of common humanity.
He seemed if not a creature of darkness, then certainly a creature who knew darkness well.
Churchill had without hesitation ordered the mauling of French ships and crews which up until days earlier had been his allies.
The supposedly neutral French warships would never fall into Nazi hands.
They would line the bottom of the ocean.
And for the first time far away in Berlin, some of the more insightful members of the German High Command began to realise they were in a ball game.
Some of them, a very few, suspected that they were up against an enemy more dreadful than they had ever known.
And now London was burning.
Churchill turned to Macmillan who was standing with him on the parapet.
"Sink the Johnston Press," he snarled.