Command Decision (17 page)

For this Dennis had taught himself to look past the doom in the strained young faces that swarmed off the trucks from the replacement centers. He himself had had a voice in determining the duration of the tour of duty that fixed the mathematical odds at two to one against the individual’s survival. He had been able to do it by looking beyond the boys he could see toward the indeterminable point where this never-ending stream of immolation would finally stop. It was not enough to think of the boys who were here. He had to think of the ones who might be spared coming.

For this he knew that forty planes was cheap for a target of consequence. One boy killed for statistical effect was wanton murder. For this he knew that milk runs over France were a delusion that could only mean more telegrams to different families later. An occasional easy mission was, of course, indispensable. There had to be a limit to what was asked of any individual. The current requirement of twenty-five missions was as close to that limit as he had dared to recommend.

But, if the therapy was to succeed, the country had to get its bodies’ worth out of those twenty-five missions. To send two hundred planes over an easy Channel target, even if they returned without a scratch, meant the loss, by graduation, of eight competent crews; it meant the country had to provide eight more green crews. It meant saving the boy who was here now to kill the boy who was training at home. By longer projection it meant saving aviators to kill infantrymen, in a ratio not determinable.

There were times when Dennis doubted that Kane remembered this. He knew that many of his senior’s burdens were imponderables even more elusive than the terrible ratios which tormented himself. But some of these imponderables were part of a peacetime past. Kane was still fighting the bitter clinical disputes which had preceded this experiment in blood itself. It was possible that his long struggle for the knife had vitiated his capacity to use it.

Dennis had read that the human body replaces itself, tissue by tiny tissue, so systematically that every seven years sees a complete change in the structure. Studying Kane now he wondered if the human character and spirit likewise changed to different substance in the old mold under the same inexorable combustion of time and energy. This man fumbling with his apprehensions of past problems was not the Kane he had known. Or Dennis was not himself. Strain had changed one of them. To believe he was the one was to believe himself unfit for this command. It was possible but others had to judge that. Now he cut through the continuing tirade of Kane’s lamentations curtly.

“Sir, that’s all true. But the point of the whole struggle was to get the Air Force in time.”

He walked over and tapped the Swastika on the wall.

“They’re still ahead of us technically. It’s enough. These things can be the end of bombardment unless we check them now.”

“Casey,” protested Kane, “I’ve lived with the things that can be the end of bombardment. Do you remember the fight to get our first Fort? Do you realize how the navy wants them now, for sub patrol and to protect the repairing of those battleships air power couldn’t hurt? Do you realize how the Ground Forces want our pilots for company commanders? Do you know how the British want these Forts for night bombing? Do you know there’s a plan to fly infantry supplies to China
with bombers
? Do you know what the Russians want? Don’t you realize the United Chiefs are half admirals, the Consolidated Chiefs half British? Don’t you know why the whole Air Corps holds its breath every time the Prime Minister goes to Washington?

“On Tuesday every damned one of these factions will have a voice in that meeting. Everyone has some pet reason for wanting us to fail, some sure-fire strategy of naval blockade or attrition by defensive, or building a road across the Himalayas, or breaking German morale with pamphlets or any other sure-fire way to keep a nice war going.

“Tuesday, this Tuesday, they’ll be waiting for the Chief like buzzards and you want to send him in there with three days of prohibitive losses hanging over the allocation we need to prove our theory.”

“Damn it, sir. It isn’t a theory any more. We got Posenleben beyond fighters, with one division. And Ted did wreck that torpedo plant today even if it was the wrong target.”

Martin held his breath at the outburst but this time it was with hope. Kane had his temper firmly in control again. He seemed to be measuring every word Dennis spoke. Rising now he walked over for a long look at the two red crosses before turning back to them. There was no trace of rancor in his gravity.

“I know, Casey. With time and planes we can do the same thing to any factory in Europe. But they
don’t
know it yet and the whole thing’s at stake here and now. It isn’t just a matter of a few losses this week or even a lot in six months. The Germans are going to kill a lot more of our people. But they won’t be any deader than the ones who’ve been killed in the last thirty years, to give us air power.

“You can concentrate on Germany but I’m fighting the tough part of this war against the Ground Forces and the navy and the Congress and the White House and the people and the press and our goddamned allies, every one of them with a different idea of fighting this war just as the last one was fought, only more slowly.

“You think I don’t know that the boys call me old Percent? You think I’ve enjoyed spreading this mug of mine around the press like a divorced heiress? You think I haven’t known what they could do to me for the statistics I’ve juggled, the strike photos I’ve doctored, the reports I’ve gilded? You can worry about losses and you should. But I’ve spent twenty-five years watching men, my friends, killed and broken and disgraced and discarded for one single idea… to get us an Air Force. Now you want me to gamble the whole thing to save a few casualties next winter.”

“Sir,” said Dennis implacably, “if it were a few casualties we wouldn’t be discussing it.”

Kane relapsed into silence and Brockhurst felt a darkening presentiment. He knew that decisions like this one were not made on the abstract merits of the case. Dennis was sustaining the inequality of his position by sheer moral force because Kane was afraid of the moral force that sustained Dennis. But Brockhurst knew that men with power to do it destroy what they fear. Kane had the power.

And yet in this he was misjudging Kane as many men did. For Kane’s mind, as always, was working far above the levels of the present decision. He was acutely aware of that moral force in Dennis, aware of his own vacillation in the face of it. But he was thinking that what was troublesome at his level might be invaluable at another. If they had had a man of this determination in the last Congressional hearing, instead of that mealymouthed Lester whose brilliance never lost a point or won a fight…

Of course Dennis was young but Kane knew that this war would be the end of him and most of the old gang. They’d have to retire while their temporary ranks held. There wouldn’t be another bonanza like this in their lives. Dennis would not retire. With one more star and a good war record a man like that could fight the navy. He had everything except caution.

Time was with Dennis and the young men now. They had the best war in history in their hands. If he could preserve Dennis, if he could fuse just enough caution into that power and passion…

The opening of the door broke his reverie. He looked up with a clearing snap of his head to see a young major hurrying proudly with a weather map in his hand.

Chapter 10

Major Davis interrupted the conference with an unscientific sense of personal importance. He knew the impropriety of this feeling but could not resist it. For weary months he had been summoned and dismissed, like a bellhop. This time he bore information that warranted a voice in affairs. Haley had warned him that Kane himself was in the room. Davis had rejoiced in reminding Haley that there was no data indicating correlation between Kane’s whereabouts and incipient Polar Turbulence. Dennis had told him to report change instantly. He had change to report. His confidence was confirmed, upon entrance, by the instant, complete attention he could always command from Dennis… for a minute.

“Excuse me, sir. You said if anything special…”

“Of course. Go right ahead, Major.”

“We’ve a flash from Iceland, sir. Only preliminary but it does indicate a most interesting condition. A cold mass of a rather exceptional nature has formed eccentrically…”

“Never mind the genealogy,” said Dennis. “What’s it going to do?”

It was always like this. Davis compressed his indignation.

“Blanket the Continent, sir, if…”

“When?”

“On present indications late Monday afternoon unless…”

“When will it close my bases?”

“Best estimate now, sir, is any time after fifteen hundred Monday.”

Davis held his tongue now. They could chew that one over and then ask him. But Dennis did not ask him. He burst out savagely.

“I always said God must love Willi Messerschmitt.”

He brooded through a black silence and then, remembering Davis, nodded brief, absent-minded dismissal.

“Bring confirmations or further changes as they come in.”

Davis retired with a frustrate and highly unscientific inner imprecation that the Army Air Forces and all their generals could go to hell.

Kane watched the closing of the door with an uneasiness he could only hope he was not showing. His mind had been made up even before he heard the weather. In the long run he knew that the Allies would win this war, jets or no jets. He had resolved to save Dennis for the permanent wars among the services. A man of his force was too valuable to be destroyed by misfortune in a temporary foreign campaign. He told himself now that the only question remaining was how to whip Dennis without breaking his spirit. Even to himself he did not yet admit a deeper uncertainty as to whether he could, in a showdown, whip Dennis at all. As if aware of this himself, the Brigadier was already challenging him again.

“There goes our summer, sir. We’ll make it now or bite off our nails waiting for another chance.”

“Casey, I’m sorry, but two more days of prohibitive losses just now…”

Dennis exploded.

“God damn it, sir, it’s
not
a theory any longer. Can’t you see why we’re having these losses? Do you think the Germans would fight like this if they weren’t scared of our bombardment?”

Martin saw Kane himself shake with this blast. But he checked himself and spoke to his aide.

“Homer, make a note of that, for the Chief.”

Prescott whipped out a notebook, bent over the map table, and fixed his shocked eyes upon Dennis. The Brigadier, as if conscious of the narrowness of this momentary reprieve, paused for a minute before continuing with an earnest, low-voiced sincerity more moving than any vehemence.

“We’ve scarcely scratched Germany yet, sir, but look what we’re doing to their Air Force. We’re doing what no other weapon in this war has done or can do. We’re making it fight, on
our initiative
, where it can’t refuse in order to rest and rebuild. We are tearing it up
over Germany
. The German Air Force has been the balance of power in this whole war, ever since Munich. It took their Ground Forces everywhere they’ve been. It beat the Polish Air Force in three days, the Norwegian in three hours; it forced the Maginot Line and beat the French in three weeks…”

“Homer,” said Kane, “be sure you’re getting this.”

“The Royal Air Force,” continued Dennis, “won a brilliant battle from it but it was a defensive battle, over England. The German Air Force rested a little and then knocked off Yugoslavia and Greece for practice, captured Crete, dominated the Mediterranean, chased the Russians to Moscow and the Volga, and got close enough to that Caspian oil to smell it. They blockaded the North Cape and very nearly cut the Atlantic life line to England itself. Peterson would have done it if Goering had given him two groups instead of one
Staffel
. And even after that they took Rommel to the gates of Alexandria.

“Now where is that German Air Force, sir? Already we’ve made them convert bomber groups to fighters, we’ve made them switch their whole production, procurement, and training programs. We’ve made them pull operational groups off the Russians and away from Rommel to put them over there, across the Channel, against us…”

He walked over and banged the map with his fist and his voice was rising again now.

“Now the Russians have been able to mount and sustain a counteroffensive. Our own people, in the Med, have air superiority and they’re advancing with it…”

“Get every word of this, Homer,” breathed Kane.

“Well, get this too, Homer,” rasped Dennis. “The Germans know all of this better than we do. They’ve been willing to loosen their grip on their costliest conquests and break the whole balance of their Air Force for just one thing… to defend Germany itself from us. They’ve done it because they know something else. They know that fighters, Spits and Hurricanes, saved England from either decisive bombardment or invasion. Now they’ve got a better fighter than those were. They intend to make Europe as impregnable as the British made England. And they’re going to do it, just as surely as we sit here with our fingers in our asses and let them!”

Prescott coughed discreetly through the enveloping silence.

“Do you want that in too, sir?”

Kane did not hear Prescott. He had been listening to Dennis. It was the burning sincerity of the plea which had illuminated again for him the old dream. He was seeing in fact the old vision of Air Power itself, the vision he had followed, the vision for which he and his kind had planned and pleaded and promised.

And yet it remained a glittering gamble. Kane knew far better than Dennis how bitterly the levels above him were torn with their own disunities, political, strategic, nationalistic, now that they had achieved the suppression of air power to an auxiliary level. He knew the quarrels and compromises, the delays and disagreements, the wary stalemates between military strategy and international policy, the sacrifices of lives to save faces and of faces to save the fears that were older than any passing war.