War and Remembrance (166 page)

“I’ve come a long way, Pam!”

On the first airplane jump, back in the States, the man ahead of him in line, a beefy Army captain who had done very well in training, had refused; had looked out at the landscape far below and had frozen, resisting the dispatcher’s shove with hysterical obscene snarling. Once he was pushed aside, Slote had jumped out into the roaring slipstream with, in his words, “imbecile joy”; the static line had opened his chute, and the shock had jerked him upright; he had yanked on his webs, floated down in proud ecstasy, and landed like a circus acrobat. Afterward he had shivered and sweated and gloried for days. He had never made another jump half as good. To him, jumping was a hideous business. He hated it. Quite a few OSS men and Jeds felt as he did, and were ready to admit it, though others liked to jump.

“Passing the psychological tests really stunned me, Pamela. I was having very shaky second thoughts about volunteering. I told the Jedburgh
board straight out that I was a high-strung coward. They looked skeptical and asked why I had put in for the duty. I gave them my song and dance about the Jews. They rated me ‘questionable.’ After weeks of being observed by psychiatrists, I passed. They must have been damned hard up for Jeds. Physically I’m very fit, of course, and my French is dazzling, at least to Americans.”

It was obvious to Pamela that he would go on and on in this vein and say no more about Victor Henry. “I’ve got to go, Leslie. Walk me to my jeep.” Over the whirring of the motor, as she turned the key, Pamela asked, “Where is Captain Henry, exactly? Do you know?”

“It’s Admiral Henry, Pam,” said Slote, suppressing a smile. “I told you that.”

“I thought you were being facetious.”

“No, no. Rear Admiral Henry, ablaze with gold braid, battle ribbons, and stars. I ran into him at our embassy. Try the U.S. Amphibious Base in Exeter. He said he was going there.”

She reached out and clasped his hand. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Till we meet again, Pam. Lord, isn’t it a million years since Paris? I did some drinking with Phil Rule last month in London. He’s gotten utterly gross.”

“It’s the liquor. I saw him in Moscow last year. He was all stout and tallowy then, and he got falling-down drunk. Victor wrote me that Natalie’s waiting out the war in a Czech ghetto.”

“Yes, so he told me.” Slote nodded, his face falling. “Well, Pamela, we were young and gay in Paris, anyway.”

“Were we? I think we labored awfully sweatily at being Ernest Hemingway characters. Too too raffish and mad. I remember how Phil would hold that black comb under his nose and do Hitler reciting Mother Goose, and we would roar.” She ground the jeep into gear, and raised her voice. “Very funny. Those were the days. Good luck on your mission, Leslie. I admire you.”

“I had a time tracking you down.” Pamela’s voice over the telephone was affectionate and cheerful. Hearing those husky tones was very painful to Victor Henry. “Will you by some chance be in London on Thursday?”

“Yes, Pamela, I will be.”

“Wonderful. Then come to dinner with us — with Duncan and me — at Stoneford. It’s only half an hour from town.”

Pug was sitting in the admiral’s office in the Devonport dockyard. Seen from the window, landing craft stretched out of sight in the gray drizzle, tied up in the estuary by the hundreds; an array of floating machinery so thick that no water was visible from shore to shore. Back home
Pug had dealt in abstractions: production schedules, progress reports, inventories, projections. Here was the reality: multitudes on multitudes of ungainly metal vessels — LCIs, LCMs, LSTs, LCVPs — strange shapes, varying sizes, seemingly numberless as the wheat grains of an American harvest. But Pug knew the exact number of each type here, and at every other assembly point along the coast. He had been hard at work, travelling from base to base, exerting willpower not to telephone Pamela Tudsbury; but she had found him.

“How do I get there?”

“Take one of the SHAEF buses to Bushey Park. Ill pick you up at four or so, and we can talk a bit. Duncan sleeps from four to six. Doctor’s orders.”

“How is he?”

“Oh — not too well. There will be a few others for dinner, including General Eisenhower.”

“Well! Exalted company for me, Pamela.”

“I don’t think so, Admiral Henry.”

“That’s two stars, and only temporary.”

“Leigh-Mallory will be coming, too, Eisenhower’s commander for air.” A silence. Then Pam said jocularly, “Well, let’s both get on with the war, shall we? See you Thursday at four, out at SHAEF.”

Pug could not guess what this invitation was really about. Nor was Pamela free to tell him. She was dying to see him, of course, but bringing him into the high-brass dinner had a special purpose.

During these anxious last days before D-day, the planned airborne attack at “Utah Beach,” the westernmost American landing area, was in hot controversy. A swampy lagoon behind the beach was passable only over narrow causeways. These had to be seized by airborne troops before the Germans could block them or blow them up. Otherwise, the landing force could be stranded on the sands, unable to advance and vulnerable to quick destruction. Utah Beach was the closest landing area to Cherbourg. In Eisenhower’s view it had to be captured for Overlord to succeed.

Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, who had the responsibility for flying in the gliders and parachute troops, opposed the air operation. It would run into devastating flak over the Cotentin peninsula, he argued; the losses would exceed fifty percent; the remnant who got through would be overwhelmed on the ground; it would be a criminal waste of two crack divisions. Even if it meant cancelling the Utah Beach landing, he wanted the air assault dropped. The American generals would not hear of abandoning the Utah landing or its air operation. But Leigh-Mallory had been fighting the Germans in the air for five years. His knowledge and his fortitude were beyond dispute. It was a deadlock.

In the history of coalition warfare such impasses have been common, and sometimes disastrous. Adolf Hitler could well hope to the last that his foes would fall out in some such way. The Anglo-American invasion was riven by disagreements from start to finish, but Dwight Eisenhower held the grand assault together until his troops met the Russians at the Elbe. So he won his place in military history. To wind this matter up — for the Utah Beach attack is no part of our narrative — Eisenhower in the end took the responsibility and ordered Leigh-Mallory to do it. With the air reinforcement, Utah was a swift smooth landing. The causeways were secured. The airborne casualties were lighter than the estimates. Leigh-Mallory apologized to Eisenhower next day by phone “for adding to his burdens.” Years later, Eisenhower said that his happiest moment in the whole war was the news that the two airborne divisions had gone into action at Utah Beach.

When Pamela called Pug, Leigh-Mallory was still resisting the Utah operation. Burne-Wilke had contrived the dinner with Eisenhower so that his old friend might urge his case. Telegraph Cottage, Eisenhower’s country place, was near Stoneford. The ailing Burne-Wilke kept a good stable, and Eisenhower liked to ride; Burne-Wilke was a passable bridge player, and that was Eisenhower’s game. They had hit it off as neighbors, having already worked together in North Africa.

Burne-Wilke too thought that the Utah Beach air drop was a calamitous idea. In general, Burne-Wilke was seeing the world and the war through a veil of invalid gloom. To him the torrent of American manpower and weaponry flooding England had an end-of-the-world feeling; he saw the pride of Empire crumbling before candy bars, chewing gum, Virginia cigarettes, and canned beer. Still, when Pamela suggested inviting Pug Henry he warmly approved. The bone of jealousy was either missing in Lord Burne-Wilke’s makeup, or concealed beyond detection. He thought Rear Admiral Henry’s presence might dilute the tension of the dinner.

Pug had briefly met Eisenhower once; on arriving in England, he had brought him an oral message from President Roosevelt about bombing the French railway yards, terminals, locomotives, and bridges. The political consequences of slaughtering Frenchmen, their former comrades-in-arms, was troubling the British, and they were pressing Eisenhower to let up on the French. Roosevelt sent word by Victor Henry that he wanted the bombing to go on. (Later, since Churchill kept making trouble, the President had to put this hard-boiled view in writing.) At their meeting Eisenhower received the grim message with a cold satisfied nod, and made no other comment. He said some genial words about Pug’s football prowess against Army in the old days; then he queried him sharply on the close-support bombardments in the Pacific, and asked incisive questions about the Overlord naval fire-support plans. Pug left after half an hour feeling that this man had a trace of
Roosevelt’s leadership aura; that under a mild warm manner and a charming smile he was at least as tough a customer as Ernest King; and that the invasion was going to succeed.

The prospect of dining with him gave Pug no thrill. He had had enough of the war’s heavyweights. He was not sure how he would react to seeing Pamela again. Of one thing he was sure: that she would not inflict on him twice the pain of rejection; that by no word or gesture would he try to change her mind.

As she drove Burne-Wilke’s Bentley to Bushey Park Pamela was dreading, and at the same time yearning, to look on Pug Henry once more. A woman can handle almost anything but indifference, and the revelation that he was in England had all but shattered her.

Since returning to England, Pamela had been finding out the gritty aspects of her commitment to Duncan Burne-Wilke. His family, she now knew, included an abrasively vigorous mother of eighty-seven who talked to Pam, when she visited, as to a hired nurse; and a numerous train of brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces, all of whom seemed unanimous in snobbish disapproval of her. By and large she and Burne-Wilke still enjoyed the old easy RAF intimacy, though illness and inactivity were making him querulous. In the stress of war she had become extremely fond of him; and bereft of any other future, she had accepted him. Pug’s abrupt proposal had come much too late. Still, Stoneford struck her as a big burden, however imposing; Duncan’s family was another burden; both bearable had she been deeply in love, but as things stood, gloomily disconcerting. The real trouble was that her letter of rejection to Pug had really settled nothing in her own mind. Not a word in reply for weeks! And then to learn from somebody else that he was here! Could he have turned stone-cold after that one letter, her only offending move, as he had with his wife? What a scary man! In this state of turmoil she drove’into Bushey Park and saw Victor Henry standing at the bus stop.

“You look smashing.” The schoolgirl words and tones gushed from her.

His smile was wry and reserved. “The big gold stripe helps.”

“Oh, it isn’t that, Admiral.” Her eyes searched his face. “Actually, you’re a bit war-worn, Victor. But so
American.
So totally American. They should carve you on Mount Rushmore.”

“Kind words, Pam. Isn’t that the suit you wore on the
Bremen?”

“So! You remember.” Her face burned with a blush. “I’m out of uniform.
I felt
like being out of uniform. There it was in the closet. I wondered whether I could still get into it. How long will you be here?”

“I’m flying back tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow! So soon?”

“Overnight in Washington, and on to the Pacific. Tell me about Duncan.”

Thoroughly rattled
(tomorrow!)
she described Burne-Wilke’s puzzling symptoms as calmly as she could while they drove: the abdominal pains, the recurring low fevers, the spells of extreme fatigue alternating with days of seemingly restored health. At the moment he was low again, scarcely able to walk around the gardens. The doctors guessed that injury and shock had allowed some tropical infection to get going in his bloodstream. Months or a year could go by before he shook it off; then again, it might suddenly clear up. Meantime, an invalid regime was mandatory: curtailed activity, much sleep, long bed rest every day, and many pills.

“He must be going mad.”

“He was. Now he reads and reads, sitting in the sun. He’s taken to writing, too, rather mystical stuff à la Saint-Exupéry. Flying plus the
Bhagavad-Gita.
Aviation and Vishnu really don’t mix, not to my taste. I want him to write about the China-Burma-India theatre, it’s the great untold story of this war. But he says there are too many maggots under the rocks. Well, here’s Stoneford.”

“Pam, it’s magnificent.”

“Yes, isn’t the front lovely?” She was driving the car between brick pillars and open wrought-iron gates. Ahead, bisecting a broad green lawn, stretched a long straight gravel road lined with immense oaks, leading to a wide brick mansion glowing rose-red in the sun. “The first viscount bought the place and added the wings. Actually it’s a wreck inside, Pug. Lady Caroline took in masses of slum children during the blitz, and they quite laid waste to the place. Duncan’s had no chance to fix it up. We live in the guest wing. The little savages never got in there. I have a nice little suite. We’ll have tea there, then walk in the garden until Duncan wakes up.”

When they mounted to the second floor, Pamela casually pointed out that she and Burne-Wilke lived at opposite sides of the house; he looked out on the oaks, she on the gardens. “No need to tiptoe,” she said as they walked past his door. “He sleeps like a dormouse.”

An elderly woman in a maid’s costume served the tea very clumsily. Pug and Pamela sat by tall windows overlooking weed-choked flower beds. “It’s all going to jungle,” she said. “One can’t hire the men. They’re fighting all over the world. Mrs. Robinson and her husband look after the place. She’s the one who bungled the tea, she used to be the laundress. He’s a senile drunk. Duncan’s old cook has stayed on, so that’s good. I have a job in the ministry, and I manage to come out most nights. That’s my story, Pug. What’s yours?”