War and Remembrance (107 page)

Victor Henry looked puzzled.

“Were you still abroad? Barney Baruch threw a sort of belated — and frankly, ill-advised — wedding dinner for us. Some reporter got hold of the menu. You can imagine, Pug, a Baruch blowout! Pate de foie gras, champagne, caviar, the works. With all the discontent about rationing and shortages, I took my lumps again. That, plus the damned lie that Beaver-brook gave Louise an emerald necklace worth half a million as a wedding present, really made things rough around here. I’ve got a rhinoceros hide, but I’ve exposed Louise to all this by marrying her. It’s terrible.” He made a gesture of loathing at the book. “Well, try to pass a new immigration law, and that poison will boil up all over the land. We’d probably get beaten on the Hill. Certainly the war effort would suffer. And in the end what good would it do? We can’t pry the Jews out of the German clutches.” He gave Victor Henry an inquisitive glance. “Where’s your daughter-in-law now?”

“Sir, that’s why I asked to see you.”

Pug described Natalie’s predicament, and Slote’s idea for getting her out of Lourdes. Asking a favor came hard to him, and he somewhat fumbled his words. Hopkins listened with his thin mouth pursed. His reaction was quick and hard. “That’s negotiating with the enemy. It would have to go to the President, and he’d bump it over to Welles. Lourdes, eh? Who’s this fellow at State, again?” He pencilled Leslie Slote’s name and telephone number on a bit of paper fished from his pocket. “Let me look into this.”

“I’m very grateful, sir.” Pug made a move to rise.

“Sit where you are. The President will call me soon. He has a cold and
he’s sleeping late.” With a grin Hopkins unfolded a yellow sheet from his breast pocket. “Just an average basket of crabs for him today. Like to hear it?
One. Chinese calling home their military mission.
Now, there’s a bad business, Pug. Their demands for aid are just moonshine, in view of what we need in Europe. On the other hand, the Chinese front is a running sore for Japan. They’ve been fighting this war longer than any of us, and we have to keep them placated.

“Two. Heating oil crisis in New England.
God, what a flap! The weather’s fooled us, it’s been a much colder winter than predicted. Everybody’s freezing from New Jersey to Maine. The Big Inch pipeline has fallen behind half a year. More controls, more trouble.”

Thus he read off and commented dourly on a list of topics:

3. Snag over the Siberian route for Lend-Lease.

4. Sudden acute shortage of molybdenum.

5.Pessimistic revised report on rubber.

6. Another rash of U-boat sinkings in the Atlantic.

7. German reinforcements in Tunisia throwing back Eisenhower’s advance, and famine in Morocco threatening his supply lines.

8. General MacArthur again, more troops and air power in New Guinea desperately needed.

9. Revision of the State of the Union speech.

10. Plans for a meeting with Churchill in North Africa.

“Now that one’s top secret, Pug.” Hopkins rattled the paper at him. “We’ll be going in about a week to Casablanca, Joint Chiefs of Staff and all. Stalin begged off because of the Stalingrad battle, but we’ll keep him informed. We’re going to settle strategy for the rest of the war. The President hasn’t been in an airplane in nine years, not since he took office. What’s more, no President has
ever
flown abroad. He’s as excited as a boy.”

Victor Henry was wondering at Hopkins’s chatty expansiveness, but now came the explanation. Hopkins hunched forward and touched Pug’s knee. “You know, Stalin’s howling for a Channel crossing this year. That’ll get thirty or forty German divisions off his back, and then he probably could throw the Germans out of Russia. He claims we welshed on a second front in ‘42. But we didn’t have the landing craft, and we weren’t ready in any respect. The British hate the whole idea of invading France. At Casablanca they’re bound to plead the landing craft shortage again.”

Drawn in despite himself, Pug asked, “What are the numbers now, sir?”

“Come here.” Hopkins led Henry into another room, small, airless, full of dowdy old furniture, with one incongruous card table piled with files and papers. “Have a seat. The Monroe Room, they call this, Pug. He signed the
Doctrine here — now, what the devil! I was just looking at those figures.” He shuffled papers on the table, and some fell off. Hopkins ignored these, pulling out and brandishing an ordinary file card, while Pug marvelled at this slapdash casualness at the hub of the war. “Here you are. Figures as of December fifteenth. They’re cloudy, Pug, because the losses in North Africa aren’t firmed up yet.”

Victor Henry knew by heart the landing craft projections he had brought to the Argentia conference, and he was shocked by the statistics on the card that Hopkins read off. “Mr. Hopkins, what in God’s name has happened to production?”

Hopkins threw down the card. “A nightmare! We’ve lost a year! Not only in landing craft, but across the board. The trouble was priorities. Tugs of war between the Army, industry, the home economy, squabbles between this board and that board, jealous infighting among some fine men. All at each other’s throats. Everybody was brandishing triple-A priorities, and nobody was getting anything delivered. We had a crazy sort of priority inflation, Pug. Priorities were getting meaningless as old German marks. The mess was beyond description. Then along came Victor Henry.”

Hopkins laughed at Pug’s astonished blink. “Not really you, of course. Your sort. Ferdie Eberstadt is his name. One of these fellows nobody hears about, who can get things done. You’ll have to meet him. A stockbroker, would you believe it? A Princeton type straight out of Wall Street. Never in government. They got him down here on the War Production Board, and Ferdie worked out a brand-new priorities scheme. The
Controlled Materials Plan,
he calls it. It gears all production plans to the flow of three materials — steel, copper, and aluminum. That stuff’s being allotted now in a vertical pattern, according to the thing that’s being produced. Destroyer escort, long-range bomber, heavy truck for the Soviets, whatever it is, those materials get allotted to make every single component of the thing. Not horizontally, some here, some there, some to the armed forces, some to the factories”— Hopkins waved his long arms wildly about —“depending on who has the coziest inside track in Washington. Well, it’s a miracle. Production figures are shooting up all over the country.”

He was pacing as he talked, his lean clever face electrically alive. He dropped in a chair beside Henry’s. “Pug, you can’t imagine what was going on before Eberstadt did this. Piecemeal insanity! Waste to frighten the gods! Ten thousand tank tracks, and no tanks to put them on! A football field full of airplane frames, without engines or controls even being manufactured! A hundred LCIs docked and rusting away, for want of winches to drop and raise the ramps! That awful time is over, and we can get the landing craft we need, but the Navy has to run a coherent show. That means one good man, a Ferdie Eberstadt, in charge. I’ve talked to Secretary Forrestal and to Vice
Admiral Patterson. They know your record. They’re for you.” Hopkins leaned back in his chair, spectacle frames to his mouth, his eyes twinkling. “Well, old top? Will you sign on the dotted line?”

The telephone on the card table rang. “Yes, Mr. President. Right away. As it happens, Pug Henry’s here… Yes, sir. Of course.” He hung up. “Pug, the boss will say hello to you.”

They walked out into the dark book-lined hall and down a rubber-padded ramp toward the Oval Office. Hopkins took Pug’s elbow. “What say? Shall I tell the President you’re taking it on? There are a lot of Navy captains who can do Cincpac’s staff work, you know that. There’s only one Pug Henry who has a grasp of landing craft from A to Z.”

Victor Henry had never before had a clash of wills with Hopkins. The great seal of the Presidency was in this man’s pocket. Yet he was not the Commander-in-Chief, or he would be issuing orders, not cajoling. The affable insiders’ talk, the flattery about Eberstadt, and now this arm-twisting were tactics of a powerful subordinate. Hopkins had taken it into his head to put him in landing craft, and the visit about Natalie had given him his opening. He probably did this sort of persuasion all the time. He was damned good at it, but Victor Henry meant to go to Cincpac. Hopkins’s airy dismissal of that job was civilian talk. There were plenty of good men in the landing craft program, too.

They were walking past the Oval Office toward the open door of the President’s bedroom. The President’s rich resonant voice sounded hoarse today. Pug felt a touch of awe and affection at hearing Franklin Roosevelt’s accents.

“Mr. Hopkins, this probably means the rest of my war service. Let me talk it over down at BuShips.”

Harry Hopkins smiled. “Oke. I know they’re all for it.”

They entered the bedroom just as the President violently sneezed into a large white handkerchief. Rear Admiral McIntire, the President’s physician, stood beside the bed in full uniform. He and several elderly civilians in the room chorused, “God bless you.”

Pug recognized none of the civilians. They all stared at him, looking self-important, while McIntire, whom he had known in San Diego, gave him a slight nod. Wiping his reddened nose, the President glanced up blearily at Pug. He was sitting propped on cushions, wearing over wrinkled striped pajamas a royal blue cape, with
FDR
monogrammed on it in red. Picking pince-nez glasses off a breakfast tray, he said, “Well, Pug, how are you? Did you and Rhoda have a nice New Year?”

“Yes, thank you, Mr. President.”

“Good. What were you and Harry cooking up just now? Where are you going next?”

It was an offhand polite question. The other men in the room were looking at Henry as at an interloper, like a Roosevelt grandchild who had wandered in. Despite the President’s cold, which showed in his irritated nose and rheumy eyes, he had a gay air, a look of relish for the new day’s business.

Victor Henry plunged, fearing Hopkins might overcommit him by speaking up first. “I’m not sure, Mr. President. Admiral Nimitz has requested my services as Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations.”

“Oh, I see! Really!” The President arched his heavy brows at Hopkins. Clearly this was news to him. A shade of vexation flickered over Hopkins’s face. “Well, then, that’s where you’ll go, I suppose. I certainly couldn’t blame you for that. All the best.”

Roosevelt rubbed his eyes with two fingers, and put on his glasses. This changed his aspect. He looked younger, more formidable, more the familiar President of the newspaper pictures, less an old man with mussed gray hair in bed with a cold. Obviously he was finished with Victor Henry, and ready to get on with his morning’s work. He was turning toward the other men.

It was Pug who took the matter further, with a few words that haunted his memory always. There was a touch of disappointment in the President’s reaction, a resigned acceptance of a naval officer’s narrow human desire to promote his own career during a war, that stung him into saying, “Well, Mr. President, I’m always yours to command.”

Roosevelt turned back to him with a surprised and charming smile. “Why, Pug, it’s just that Admiral Standley really did feel he could use you in Moscow. I had another cable from him about you only yesterday. He has his hands full over there.” The President’s jaw lifted and stuck out. A formidable aspect came over him, as he straightened up under the cape. “We’re fighting a very big war, you know, Pug. There’s never been anything like it. The Russians are difficult allies, Heaven knows, perfectly awful to deal with sometimes, but they are tying down three and a half million German soldiers. If they go on doing that, we’ll win this war. If for some reason they don’t, we may lose it. So if you can help out in Russia, and my man on the spot seems to think so, why, maybe that’s where you should be.”

The faces of the other men were turned to Victor Henry with mild curiosity, but he was scarcely aware of them. There was only the sombre face of Roosevelt before him; the face of a man he had once known as a handsome Assistant Secretary of the Navy, scrambling up a destroyer’s ladders like a boy; now the visible face of American history, the face of a worn old cripple.

“Aye aye, sir. In that case, I’ll go from here to the Bureau of Personnel, and request those orders.”

A pleased light came into the President’s eyes. He held out his hand with a sweep of a long arm from under the cape, gesturing manly gratitude
and admiration. It was all the reward Victor Henry ever got. When he thought about this scene in after years, it seemed enough. A love for President Roosevelt welled up in his heart as they shook hands. He tasted the acrid pleasure of sacrifice, and the pride of measuring up to the Commander-in-Chief’s opinion of him.

“Good luck, Pug.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

A friendly nod and smile from Franklin Roosevelt, and Victor Henry was walking out of the bedroom, the course of his days turned and fixed. Hopkins, near the door, drily said, “So long, Pug.” His eyes were narrow, his smile cool.

Rhoda jumped up as her husband walked into the living room. “Well? What’s the verdict?”

He told her. At the way her face fell, Pug felt a passing throb of his old love for her, which only told him how nearly it was gone.

“Oh, dear, and I was so hoping for Washington. Was that what you wanted — Moscow again?”