Chapter 8

Sitting at the head of the table, Digger was making too many jokes, Pug thought, so as to put himself at ease with the ship's lieutenant commanders and two-stripers. That was all right. Digger was a big fellow and could Turn on impressive anger at will. Pug's style was more of a monotone. His own sense of humor, such as it was, went to jabbing ironies. As an executive officer-if he ever achieved it-he planned to be taciturn and short. They would call him a dull sour son of a bitch. One had plenty of time to warm up and make friends, but the job had to be done right from the hour one reported aboard. It was a sad fact of life that everybody, himself included, jumped to it when the boss was a son of a bitch, especially a knowledgeable son of a bitch. In the West Virginia he had been a hated man until that first meatball pennant had broken out at the yardarm. Hereafter he had been the ship's most popular officer. The immediate target of Digger's raillery was his communications officer, a lean morose-looking Southerner. Recently the Colorado had received new powerful voice radio transmitterwhichbouncedwavesofftheHeavisidelayeratash(a) allow angle. If atmospheric conditions were right, one could talk directly to a ship in European waters. Digger had chatted with his brother, the engineering officer in the Marblehead, now anchored off Lisbon. The communications officer had since been romancing an old girlfriend in Barcelona via the Marblehead radio room. Digger had found this out three days ago, and was still trying it for jokes. Pug said, 'Say, how well did this thing work, Digger? Could you understand Tom?" "Oh, five by five. Amazing." "Do you suppose I could talk to Rhoda in Berlin?" it occurred to Pug that this was a chance to tell her about Madeline, and perhaps reach a decision. The communications officer, glad of an opportunity to stop the baiting, said at once, "Captain, I know we can raise Marblehead tonight. It ought to be simple to patch in the long-distance line from Lisbon to Berlin." "Tell be what-two or three o'clock in the morning there?" Brown said. "TWO, sir." 'Want to break in on Rhoda's beauty sleep, Pug?" 'I think so." The lieutenant carefully rolled his napkin in a monogrammed ring, and left. The talk turned to Germany and the war. These battleship officers, like most people, were callowly inclined to admire and overestimate the Nazi war machine. One fresh-faced lieutenant said that he hoped the Navy was doing more work on landing craft than he'd been able to read about. If we got into the war, he said, landing would be almost the whole Navy problem, because Germany would probably control the entire coastline of Europe by then. Digger Brown brought his guest to the executive officer's quarters for coffee, ordering around his Filipino steward and lolling on the handsome blue leather couch with casual pride of office.
They gossiped about their classmates: a couple of juicy divorces, a premature death, a brilliant leader turned alcoholic. Digger bemoaned his burdens as a battleship exec. His captain had gotten where he was with sheer luck, charm, and a Marvelous wife-that was all; his ship-handling was going to give Digger a heart attack. The ship was slack from top to bottom; he had made himself unpopular by instituting a stiff program of drills; and so forth. Pug thought that for an old friend Digger was showing off too much. He mentioned that he had come back from Berlin to talk to the President. Digger's face changed. 'I'm not surprised," he said. "Remember that phone call you had at the Army and Navy Club? I told the fellows, I bet that'
from the White House. You're flying high, fella." Having taken the wind out of Digger's sails,(s) Victor Henry was content to say nothing more. Digger waited, stuffed his pipe, lit it, then said, 'What's Roosevelt really like, Pug?" Henry said something banal about the President's charm and magnetism. There was a knock on the door and the communications officer came in. "We raised the Marblehead, no strain, sir. It took all this time to get through to Berlin. What was that number again?" Pug told him. "Yes, sir, that checks. The number doesn't answer.The eyes of Digger Brown and Victor Henry met for a moment. Brown said, "At two in the morning? Better try again. Sounds like a foul-up." "We put it through three times, sir." "She might have gone out of town," Henry said. "Don't bother anymore. Thanks." The lieutenant left. Digger puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. 'Also, she cuts off the phone in the bedroom at night," Henry said. 'I forgot that. She may not hear the ringing in the library if the door's closed." 'Oh, I see," Digger said. He puffed again, and neither said anything for a while. "Well. Guess I'll make tracks." Victor Henry stood up. The executive officer accompanied him to the gangway, looking proudly around at the vast main deck, the towering guns, the flawlessly uniformed watch. 'Shipshape enough topside," he said. "That's the least I demand. Well, good luck on the firing line, Pug. Give my love to Rhoda." "If she's still there, I will." They both laughed. Hello, Dad!" Men Paul Munson's plane landed, Warren was waiting at the Pensacola airfield in a helmet and flying jacket. The son's handgrip, quick and firm, expressed all Warren's pride in what he was doing. His deeply tanned face radiated exaltation. "Say, where do you get this outdoors glow?" Pug said. He deliberately ignored the scar on hisson's forehead. 'I thought theyd make you sweat in ground school here. I expected you to look like something from under a rock." Warren laughed. "Well, I had a couple of chances to go deep-sea fishing out in the Gulf. I tan fast." Driving his father to the b.O.Q, he never stopped talking. The flight school was in a buzz, he said. The day after Hitler invaded Poland, Washington had ordered the number of students tripled, and the year-long course cut to six months. The school was 'telescoping the syllabus." In the old course a man qualified in big slow patrol planes, then in scout planes, and then, if he were good enough, went on into Squadron Five for fighter training. Now the pilots would be put on patrol, scout, or fighter tracks at once, and would stay in them. The lists would be posted in the morning. He was dying to make Squadron Five. Warren got all this out before he remembered to ask his father about the family. "Ye gods, Brinys in Warsaw? Why, the Germans are bombing the hell out of that town." "I know," Pug said. "I stopped worrying about Byron long ago. He'll crawl out of the rubble with somebody's gold watch." 'What's he doing there?" "Chased a girl there." "Really? Bully for him. What kind of girl?" "A Jewish Phi beta from Radcliffe." "You're kidding. Briny?" "That's right." With an eloquent look, surprised and ruefully impressed, Warren changed the subject. really big. There The audience at Paul Munson's lecture was surpnsing must have been more than two hundred student aviators in khaki, youngsters with crew cuts and rugged clever faces, jammed into a small lecture hall. Ijke most naval men, Paul was a bumbling speaker, but the students sat on the edges of their chairs, because he was telling them how to avoid killing themselves. With slides and diagrams, with much technical jargon and an occasional heavy bloodthirsty joke, he described the worst hazards of carrier landings, the LIFE-or-death last moments of the approach, the procedure after cracking up, and such cheerful matters. The students laughed at the jokes about their own possible deaths. The strong male smell of a locker room rose from the packed bodies. Pug's eye fell on Warren, sitting in a row across the aisle from him, erect and attentive, just one more close-cropped head in the crowd. He thought of Byron in Warsaw under the German bombs. It was going to be a tough ten years, he thought, for men with grown sons. Warren told him after the lecture that Congressman Isaac Lacouture, the man who had taken him deep-sea fishing, had invited them to dinner at the beach club. Lacouture was president ofthe club, and before running for Congress had been chairman of the Gulf Lumber and Paper Company, the biggest firm in Pensacola. 'He's anxious to meet you," Warren said as they walked back to the b.O.Q. ctmy?)y 'He's very interested in the war and in Germany. His opinions are kind of strong." "why has he taken such a shine to you?)t "Well, sir, this daughter of his, Janice, and I have sort of bit it off With an easy knowing grin, Warren parted from him in the lobby. At his first sight of Janice Lacouture, Victor Henry decided against talking to Warren about Pamela Tudsbury. What chance'had the slight English girl in her mousy suits against this magnetic blonde whose long legs dazzled at every Turn and flip of her skirt, this assured radiant tall American girl with the princess-like air, and the lovely face only slightly marred by crooked teeth? She was another, early Rhoda, swathed in cloudy pink, all composed of sweet scent, sexual allure, and girlish grace. The slang was changed, the skirt hem higher. This girl looked and acted brainier. She greeted Pug with just enough deference to acknowledge that he was Warren's father, and just enough sparkle to hint that he was no old fud for all that, but an attractive man himself. A girl who could do that in half a minute of talk, with a flash of the eyes and a smile, was a powerhouse, and so much ' thought Pug, for his inept matchmaking notions. A stiff wind was blowing from the water. Waves broke over the club terrace and splattered heavy spray on the glass wall of the dining room, making the candlelit Lacouture dinner seem the cosier. Victor Henry never did get it clear who all the ten people at table were, though one was the beribboned commandant of the naval air station. The person who mattered, it was soon obvious, was Congressman Isaac L-acouture, a small man with thick white hair, a florid face, and a way of half sticking out his tongue when he smiled, with an air of sly profundity. -How long are you going to be here, Commander Henry?" Lacouture called down the long table, as green-coated waiters passed two large baked fish on silver platters. 'You might like to come out and spend a day fishing, if the weatherman will Turn off this willawa. Your boy caught these two kingfish with me." Pug said that he had to return to New York in the morning to get his plane for Lisbon. Lacouture said, "Well, at that I suppose I'll be hurrying up to Washington myself for this special session. Say, how about that? What do you think of revising the Neutrality Act? How bad is the situation, actually? You should know." "Congressman, I think Poland's going to fall fast, if you call that bad." "Oh, hell, the Allies are counting on that! The European mind works in subtle ways. The President has sort of a European mind himself, you know. That mixture of Dutch and Englishis really the key to understanding him." Lacouture smiled, protruding his tongue. 'I've done a lot of business with the Dutch, they're very big in the hardwoods trade, and I tell you they are tricky boys. The gloomier things look in the next few weeks, why, the easier it'll be fOr Roosevelt to jam anything he wants through Congress. Right?" 'Have you talked to Hitler, Commander Henry? What is he really like?" said Mrs. Lacouture, a thin faded woman, with a placating smile and a sweet tone that suggested her social life consisted mainly of softening her husband's impact, or trying to. Lacouture said as though she had addressed him, "Oh, this Hitler is some kind of moonstruck demagogue. We all know that. But for years the Allies could have cleaned up him and his Nazis with ease, yet they just sat there. So it's their mess, not ours. Any day now we'll be hearing about the Germans raping nuns and boiling soldiers' corpses down for soap. British intelligence started both those yarns in 1916, you know. We've got the documentary evidence on that. How about it, Commander Henry? You've been living among the Germans. Are they really these savage Huns the New York papers make them out to be?" All the faces at the table turned to Pug. "The Germans aren't easy to understand," he said slowly. "My wife likes them more than I do. I don't admire their treatment of Jews." Congressman Lacouture held up two large hands. "Unpardonable! The New York press is quite understandable on that basis." Warren said firmly from the middle of the table, "I don't see how the President's revision would weaken our neutrality, sir. Cash and carry simply means anybody can come and buy stuff who has the ships to haul it off and the money to pay for it. Anybody, Hitler included." Lacouture smiled at him. "The administration would be proud of you, my boy. That's the line. Except we all know that the Allies have the ships and the money, and the Germans have neither. So this would put our factories into the war on the Allied side." 'But nobody ever stopped Hitler from building a merchant marine," Warren promptly came back. 'Piling up tanks, subs, and dive bombers instead was his idea. all aggressive weapons. Isn't that his tough luck?" 'Warren's absolutely right," Janice said. Lacouture sat back in his chair, staring at his daughter, who smiled back impudently. What both of you kids don't or won't understand," Lacouture said, is that this proposal is the camel's nose under the tent flap. Of course it seems fair. Of wurse it dens. That's the beauty of the package. That's the Roosevelt mind at work. But let's not be children. He isn't calling a special session to help Nazi Germany! He thinks he's got a mission to save the world from Hitler. He's been talking way since 1937-He's cracked on the subject. Now I say Adolf Hitler's neither the foulfiend nor the Antichrist. That's all poppycock. He's just another European politician, a little more dirty and extreme than the rest. This is just another European war, and it'll end up a lot dirtier than the rest. The way for us to save the world is to stay out of it. The citadel of sanity!" He rapped out the phrase and looked around the table, as though half expecting applause. "That's what we have to be. The Atlantic and Pacific are our walls. Broad, stout walls. The citadel of sanity! If we get in it we'll go bankrupt like the others and lose a couple of million of our finest young men. The whole world will sink into barbarism or Communism, which aren't so very different. The Russians will be the only winners." A small bald man with a hearing aid, seated across the table from Pug, said, 'Damn right." Lacouture inclined his head at him. ' "You and I realize that, Ralph, but it's amazing how few intelligent people do, as yet. The citadel of sanity. Ready to pick up the pieces when it's over and rebuild a decent world. That's the goal. I'm going back to Washington to fight like an alligator for it, believe you me. I'll be marked mud among a lot of my Democratic colleagues, but on this one I go my own way." When dinner ended, Janice and Warren left the club together, not waiting for coffee, and not troubling to explain. The girl smiled roguishly, waved a hand, and disappeared in a whirl of silky legs and pink chiffon. Warren belted long enough to make an early morning tennis date with his father. Victor Henry found himself isolated with Lacouture over rich cigars, coffee, and brandy in a corner of a lounge, in red leather armchairs. The congressman rambled about the charms of life in Pensacola-the duck-hunting, the game-fishing, the year-round good weather, and the swiftly advancing prosperity. The war would make it a real boomtown, he said, between the expansion of the Navy air base and the spurt in the lumber trade. "Creosoted telephone poles. You take that one item, Commander. Our company's had some unbelievable orders, just in the last week, from North Africa, japan, and France. The whole world's stringing wires all of a sudden. It's an indication." He tried to persuade Henry to stay over one day. A ship carrying mahogany was due in from Duich Guiana at noon. It would dump the logs in the harbor, and lumber mill workers would lash them into rafts and tow them up the bayou. 'It's quite a sight," he said. "Well, I've got this chance to fly back to New York with an old buddy. I'd better go." "And from there to Berlin, via Lisbon?" "That's the plan." "Not much chance of our paths crossing then, in the near future," Lacouture said. "Your wife's a Grover, isn't she? Hamilton Grover up in Washington is a friend of mine; we have lunch atthe Metropolitan Club about once a month." Pug nodded. Hamilton Grover was the wealthiest of the cousins, rather beyond Rhoda's orbit. 'And you're a Henry. Not one of those Virginia Henrys that go back to old Patrick?" Henry laughed, shaking his head. "I doubt it. I'm from California." "Yes, as Warren told me. I mean originally." "Well, my great grandfather came west before the gold rush. We're not sure from where. My grandfather died young and we never got the story straight." 'You're probably Scotch-Irish." "Well, no, sort of mixed. My grandmother was French and English." 'That so? We've got some French in our family ourselves. Not a bad thing, hey? Gives the men that certain touch in I'amour." Lacouture uttered a hearty coarse laugh, the get-together noise of American men. "Quite a boy, your Warren." "Well, thanks. Your girl is beyond words." Ucouture sighed deeply. 'A girl's a problem. Warren tells me you have one, so you know. They'll fool you every time. We weren't as lucky as you, we have no boys. All Warren wants to do is fly airplanes the rest of his life for the Navy, right?" "well, those wings of gold look awfully big to him now, Congressman.pr Lacouture puffed at his cigar. 'I liked the way he talked up at dinner. Of course he's naive about foreign affairs. You learn a lot about the outside world in the lumber business." Lacouture swirled the large brandy snifter. 'No doubt you're glad to see Warren carrying on the Navy tradition. Wouldn't want to see him smft over into business, or anything like that." The congressman smiled, showing his tongue, and good but crooked teeth like his daughter's. 'Warren goes his own way, Congressman." "I'm not so sure. He thinks the world of his dad." The talk was getting awkward for Victor Henry. He had married a girl much better off than himself, and he had doubts about such a course in life. Nor did he especially like Janice Lacouture. Once the incandessence died down, she would be as tough as her father, who was already and openly weighing the notion of swallowing Warren. He said, "Well, until the war ends he's in, and that's that." "Of course. But that may not be for long, you know. If we can just stay out, it'll be over in a year or so. Maybe less. As soon as the Allies are positive they can't suck us in, theyll make the best deal they can get. They'd be nuts to try anything else. Well, I've enjoyed visiting with you, Commander. Whatthe hell? No sense trying to anticipate what the kids nowadays will do anyway. Is there? It's a different world than when you and I grew up." "That's for sure." Next morning, promptly at six-thirty, Warren appeared in his father's room. Not saying much, and rubbing his bloodshot and baggy eyes, he drank the orange juice and coffee brought by the steward. A strong wind still blew outside, and he and his father wore sweaters as they volleyed and began to play. Pug ran up three games. The mist soared erratically here and there. "Have a good time last night?" Pug called, as Warren knocked one flying over the fence, and the wind bore it up on the roof of a nearby cottage. Warren laughed, stripped his sweater off, and won the next five games, regaining his fast drive and his mid-court smash. The father was a plugging, solid player with an iron backhand, but he had to conserve his breath. "Goddamn it, Warren, if you've got a point won, win it," he gasped. The son had passed up an easy kill to hit the ball where Pug could reach it. "The wind took it, Dad." "The hell it did." Now Pug threw off his sweater, answered several of his son's smashes, caught his second wind, and drew even. "Whew! I've got to quit. Ground school," Warren called, mopping his face with a towel. "You've really kept your game up, Dad." When in Berlin we tucked into a house with a court. You've played better." Warren came to the net. He was pouring sweat, his eyes were clear, and he looked eager and happy. "You had more sleep." "Quite a girl, that Janice." "She's got a head on her shoulders, Dad. She knows a hell of a lot of history." The father gave him a quizzical look. They both burst out laughing. 'All the same it's true. She does know history." 'What did you cover last night? The Hundred Years' War?" Warren guffawed, swishing his racquet sharply. Pug said, "Her father figures to make a lumberman of you." "He's a kidder. I'll ship out in March, and probably that'll be that." Outside the ground school building, a wooden bulletin board was almost hidden by students clustering around in noisy excitement. Warren said, 'Assignments," and dove among them. In a moment his arm in a white sweater thrust above the heads. "Eeyowl' Warren exulted all the way back to the b.O.Q; he was in Squadron Five, and some of the hottest student pilots had not made it. He had done thing right, despite his one ground loop! His father listened, smiling and nodding, remembering the day at Annapolis when he had drawn his first battleship duty.
He said at last, 'You told your mother in Washington that it's just something else to qualify in." The son looked a bit abashed, then laughed. "I hadn't flown then, Dad. There's nothing like flying. it's hard to talk about, but there's absolutely nothing like it. Nothing!' "Well, we both have to get cleaned up. Guess we'd better say goodbye here." They stood in the square dingy lobby of the b.O.Q. Warren glanced at his watch. "Gosh, already? I guess so. Say, write me about Briny from Berlin, will you? As soon as you get some real dope." 'Good enough." 'And don't worry about Madeline, Dad. She'll be fine in New York." 'I haven't decided to let her stay in New York." "Why sure, I know." Warren's grin was disingenuous. He obviously thought his father had already lost that point. They shook hands. Then Warren did something that embarrassed them both. He threw an arm around his father's shoulder. 'I feel mixed up. I'm damn sorry to see you go, and I've never been happier in my life." "Take it easy," Pug said. "That girl's fine, but the hell with the lumber business. The Navy needs officers." Paul Munson, recovering from a hard night's drinking with some old friends on the Pensacola staff, said little until his plane finished its climb and levelled off, heading northeast over Georgia. 'By the way," he shouted above the engine roar into his face mike, "how'd your boy do in those squadron assignments?" Pug held up five fingers. Munson slapped his shoulder. "Outstanding. My boy washed out of there last year. It's a tough school. Don't you have another boy? What about him?" "Naval ROTC." "Oh? Guess they'll call him up any day. Think he'll fly?" Victor Henry looked out of the window at the green fields, and a wandering brown river far below. "He'll work that hard." Rom the German viewpoint, the invasion of Poland proceedingm(never) errily. The arrows and the pins on the military maps were closing in day by day,(was) from all directions, on Warsaw and Byron Henry. All over Poland, lines of helmeted dusty Germans, miles and miles of them, walked along or rode in trucks, cars, or on horses. Tanks and motorized guns clanked with them, or rattled nearby on railroad cars. It was all going slowly and tediously, and on the whole peacefully.
This outdoors mass adventure, though not precisely a picnic-ten thousand Germans were killed along the way-was far from wholly disagreeable. After each das advance the horde ate in the fields or on the roadside, and camped under the stars or tented in black rain, peeved at the discomforts but enjoying good simple things: hard exercise, fresh air, food, drink, grumbling, jokes, comradeship, and sweet sleep. The Poles, of course, kept shooting at them. This had been planned for. The Germans returned the fire, laying down studied bombardments according to grids on maps. Howitzers flamed with satisfying roars and recoils, everybody moved fast and worked up a sweat, officers shouted orders and encouragement, some fellows got killed or hurt but most did not, trees burned, village houses crumbled, and after a while the shooting died off and the invasion trudged ahead. The front was a moving political edge; the Germans were forcing their national will on the Poles. As at a weather front, the squall line of violence was at the edge of change. The thin destructive squall churned across the flat green landscape, leaving a streaked mess behind. Even so, even in this combat zone there was mostly peace right there at the line. For every hour of firing there were many hours of camping, machine repairing, and trudging through green fields and scorched villages. But this ceased to be so when the wavering line of the front took the form of a circle shrinking in toward the city of Warsaw. As the target narrowed, the firing grew hotter, more frequent, and more concentrated. The invaders were a new generation of German soldiers who had never faced hostile bullets, though some of their senior officers had fought in the last war. At any one place where the invasion jumped off, there were only a few hundred scared young Germans crossing a border and expecting to get shot at. But they were backed by swarms of more armed youths, marching along German roads toward Poland on a neat schedule, and that was reassuring to know. Pulling down the Polish border barriers in the gray dawn fight, overpowering the few guards, setting foot on the foreign roads they had been watching through field glasses-all that was exhilarating. But once the Polish border garrisons opened fire there was much halting, panicking, running away, and stalled confusion. Luckily for the Germans, the Poles were even more panicked and confused, with the added disability of acting on the spur of the moment. World War II started in a messy amateurish style. But the Germans, however terrorized each individual may have been, were at least moving according to Plan. They had more guns at key points, more ammunition, and a clearer idea of where and when to fire. They had, in fact, achieved surprise. If two men are standing and amiably chatting, and one suddenly punches the other's belly and kicks his groin, the chances are that even if the other recovers to defend himself, he will be badly beaten up, because the first man has achieved surprise. There is no book on the militaryart that does not urge the advantage of this. It may not seem quite decent, but that is no concern of the military art. Possibly the Poles should not have been surprised, in view of the Germans' open threats and preparations, but they were. Their political leaders probably hoped the German menaces were bluster. Their generals probably thought their own armies were ready. A lot of wrong guessing goes with the start of a war. The German plan for conquering Poland, Case White, provided the scenario for what ensued. They had many such plans, like Case Green, the invasion of Czechoslovakia (which they never had to use), and Case Yellow, the attack on France. Color-coded master plans for smashing other countries, far in advance of any quarrel with them, were a modern military innovation of the Germans. all advanced nations came to imitate this doctrine. The United States, for instance, by 1939 had a Plan Orange for fighting japan, and even a Plan Red for fighting England; and it finally entered the war under Plan Rainbow Five. Historians still argue, and will long argue, the genesis of the German General Staff, which originated this new line of conduct in human affairs. Some say the German genius produced the General Staff as a reflex of the humiliations inflicted by Napoleon; others assert that a Hat country with many hostile borders, in an industrial age, had to develop such schemes to survive. In any case, it was certainly the Germans who first mastered industrial warfare and taught it to the nations: total war -the advance marshalling of railroads, factories, modern communications, and the entire population of a land into one centrally controlled system for destroying its neighbors, should the need or impulse arise. This German system was well tested in the First World War, in which, geographically, they quit while they were well ahead. When they asked for an armistice, after four years of battling bigger forces on many fronts, they stood everywhere deep in foreign territory; only their big 1918 attack had failed, and their resources were running low. Thereafter, despite their surrender and through all political changes, they continued to work up their 'Cases." Twenty-one years later, Case White paid off, quickly frightening a nation of forty millions, with an army of a million and a half or more, into obeying the Germans. That, according to Napoleon, is the whole of war-to frighten the foe into doing your will. The Germans invading Poland made mistakes, they sometimes broke and ran under fire, they disobeyed orders, they refused to advance against tough positions, they misreported gains, and exaggerated reports of the fire they were fating, to excuse retreat. They were ordinary young men. But there were good leaders and stout ows among them, and the Germans are an obedient, strong-willed people. The Poles did all these wrong things too, and the weight of fire, surprise, numbers, and Case White was all with the Germans. So the invasion went well. Soon the new companies of tanks-the panzers that became so famous-began to risk long trips into enemy ground far ahead of the front.
This was a classic military blunder. The foe closes in behind a company that has ventured too far ahead of its line, pinches it off, and wipes it out. This was precisely what the Russians did several years later to the famous panzers, whereupon their fame dimmed. But now they were a surprise. In their debut against a scared, ill-organized, smaller and weaker foe, on level country in perfect weather, they shone. They proceeded slowly, at only five or ten miles an hour, more like moving lines of large iron bugs than the dashing red arrows of the maps in popular books and magazines. But they looked to the Polish soldiers and civilians, and indeed they were lethal enough, these green machines crawling down the roads, out of the forests, and over the ripe grain, firing big shells. From the pellucid September sky, slow clumsy little planes called Stukas kept diving and shooting at soldiers, or children, or animals, or women, whoever happened to be on the roads, to add to the bloodshed and horrid noise. The tanks and Stukas killed many Poles and scared immense masses of them into quitting what looked like a useless fight. This was the blitzkrieg, the lightning war. It was halted at Warsaw. The fact was not much stressed at the time. The Germans had to inflict on the city an old-fashioned, horse-drawn, Napoleonic bombardment, while the panzer machines limped into the repair shops, low on gasoline and breaking down in large numbers. They had done their work. The Polish armies had been sliced and frightened into fragments. Allied and American newspapers were writing terrified accounts of blitzkrieg, "the new form of warfare." But the panzers arrived at Warsaw on the ninth of September. On the tenth the German supreme commander was writing in his batdc diary that the war was over. On the seventeenth Warsaw still stood. all available Luftwaffe airplanes were making unopposed runs over the city, dumping bombs and hurrying back to Germany for more bombs. Horses were dragging more and more howitzers from Prussia and Pomerania to ring the city and fire shells inside. And still Radio Warsaw played the Polonaise. Leslie Slote, heading the American embassy's skeleton staff in Warsaw, was an able and exceptionally clever man, but at the moment he was in the wrong job, because he was a coward. He did not look or act like one. At Yale he had been on the track team, and this token of manliness-which he had carefully selected, knowing the Rhodes requirements-together with his work on the college newspaper, his Phi Beta Kappa key, and his friendships with certain useful professors, had won him the scholarship hands down. He had been one of the few popular Americans at Oxford; in the Foreign Service they talked of him as an outstanding officer in his age group. Well aware of his problem, he would never have gone knowingly into a situation requiring physical courage. He had thought much about this hole in his makeup, and he had theories about it, centered on an oversolicitous mother and some childhood accidents. The theories didn't change anything, but they served to contain the weakness in his own mind as a misfortune like a polio limp, rather than as a blight which could corrode his self-respect. Slote had a high regard for himself, his powers, and his future. Bad luck had now put him in aspot where all his broad political knowledge, all his gifts of analysis, humor, and foreign tongues were of little avail compared to the simple capacity to be brave. That, he lacked. He hid the lack with an inner struggle that was showing at the surface only in absentmindedness, continuous headaches, irritability, and a tendency to laugh for no reason. when the ambassador had asked him to stay on, he had burst out laughing. Since the first word that the Germans were coming, and especially since the first air bombs had fallen on Warsaw, he had been in a black panic, hungering for word that he and the other Americans could leave. He had bandages on several fingers where he had bitten his nails raw. And then the ambassador had asked him to stay on in this horror! The shrill laugh had welled up out of him. With a quizzical look the ambassador had let it pass. Most of the people in Warsaw had reacted well to the air attacks, swinging over to almost lighthearted determination and stoicism, once the first bombs failed to kill them. But for Slote the hell went on and on. Every sounding of an air raid alarm all but deprived him of the ability to think. Down into the thickwalled embassy cellar he would dart with everybody else, ahead of most, and invariably he would stay down until the all clear sounded. In a way, being in charge was a help. It looked proper for him to move out of his apartment into the embassy, to stay there, and to set an example of strict compliance with air raid rules. Nobody guessed his trouble. Dawn of September the seventeenth found him at the big desk, a smoking pipe clenched in his teeth, carefully redrafting his latest dispatch to the State department on the condition of the embassy and of the hundred or so Americans trapped in Warsaw. He was trying to retain all the urgency and gravity of the message, while editing out traces of his private hysteria. It was a hairline to walk, the more so as no replies were coming in to any of these dispatches, and he could not tell whether the American government had any idea of the plight of its nationals in the Polish capital. "Come in," he called to a knock at the door. "It's broad daylight outside," Byron Henry said hoarsely as he walked in. 'Shall I open the curtains?" "Anything going on out there?" Slote rubbed his eyes. 'Nothing unusual." "Okay, let's have some daylight," Slote laughed. They both pulled back the heavy black curtains, admitting pallid sunshine in broken patterns through the diagonally crossed timbers in the windows. "What about the water, Byron?" "I brought it." With the curtains open, one could hear the dull far-off thumps of Gemian artillery. Slote would have preferred to leave the curtains closed for a while longer, shutting out these daytime noises of gray, broken, burning Warsaw. The quiet of the black-curtained room lit by a desklamp might be illusory, a false conjuring up of peaceful student days, but he found it comforting. He peered between the timbers. "Such smoke! Are there that many fires?" "God, yes. The sky was terrific until the dawn came up. Didn't you see it? all red and smoky wherever you looked. Dante's Inferno. And these big orange star shells popping all over, way high up, and slowly floating down. Quite a sight! Over on Walewskaya they're still trying to put out two huge fires with shovels and sand. It's the water problem that's going to lick them, more than anything." "They should have accepted the German offer yesterday," Slote said. "They'd have had at least half a city left. There's no future in this. How on earth did you fetch the water? Did you manage to find some gasoline, after all?" Byron shook his head, yawned, and dropped on the long brown leather couch. His sweater and slacks were covered with brick dust and soot, his long shaggy hair was in a tangle, and his eyes glowed dully in purple rings. 'Not a chance. From now on we can forget about the truck. I saw fire engines stalled in the middle of the street. Gasoline's finished in this town. I just scouted around OBI found a cart and a horse. It took me most of the night." He grinned at Slote, his lower lip pulled in with exhaustion. 'The Government of the United States owes me one hundred seventy-five dollars. The hardest part was getting the boiler off the truck and onto the cart. But this peasant who sold me the cart helped me. It was part of the deal. A little sawed-off fellow with a beard, but strong. Jesus!" 'You'll get paid, of course. Talk to Ben." "Can I stretch out here for a minute?" "Don't you want breakfast?" 'I'm not sure I have the energy to chew. I just need a half hour or so. It's quiet in here. That cellar is a madhouse." Byron put up his feet and collapsed on the leather cushions, a meager long dirty figure. 'There's no water at the opera house corner anymore," he said, closing his eyes. "I had to go clear over to the pumping station. it's a slow horse and it sure doesn't like pulling an iron boiler full of sloshing water." 'Thank you, Byron. You're being a great help." The and Gunga Din. 'You may talk of gin and beer,"' Byron mumbled into his elbow, "when you're quartered safe out 'ere'-where's Natalie? At the hospital?" 'I daresay." Byron fell asleep. The telephone rang harshly, but he didn't stir. The mayor's office was calling; Mayor Starzynski was on his way to the embassy to discuss with the American charge a sudden development of the highest urgency. Excited, Slote phoned the marine sentry at the gate to admit the mayor. This must be news: safe-conduct for foreigners out of Warsaw, or perhaps imminent surrender! Nothing butsurrender made sense now. He thought of waking Byron and asking him to leave the office, but decided to wait. The mayor might not arrive for a while. This grimy kid needed sleep. Water had become a problem all through Warsaw; and in the embassy, with seventy people under one roof and more coming, it was-or might have been-an alarming, a disastrous problem. But from the day the water main had broken, Byron Henry had started supplying water, though nobody had asked him to. While Slote had been on the telephone to the mayor's office-twenty times on that first wretched day-demanding immediate water delivery for the Americans in his charge and swift repair of the main, Byron had gone out in the embassy's Ford pickup truck, and had retrieved from the cellar of bombed-out house a rusty broken little boiler. Somewherehehadobtainedsolderingto(a) ols to patch it up, and now he was using it as a makeshift tank to bring water to the embassy. What would have happened otherwise there was no telling. The main was still broken, mains were broken everywhere now, and the city government was overburdened supplying just the hospitals and the fire fighters from tank trucks. Day after day, as a matter of course, Byron fetched water, through bombarchnent and air attack, joking about his own terror, and often arriving much filthier than he was now, having dived into some rubble pile at the "whiffling' sound of a howitzer shell sailing through the air. Slote had never heard this 'whiffling," as many people described it, and never wanted to. Despite these scares, Byron Henry actually seemed to be enjoying himself in the siege. This state of mind Slote regarded as stupider than his own, and not particularly admirable. His fear at least was rational. Natalie had told him of Byron's remark that he was having fun. The boy was a neurotic, Slote thought; the excessively bland good nature was a mask. But his water-carrying was an undeniable blessing. Slote was also grateful to Henry, in an obscurer way, for keeping Natalie Jastrow occupied when she wasn't at the hospital. Natalie was the one person in Warsaw capable of penetrating to his secret fear. So far he was sure she had not, simply through not being around him enough. The girl's presence in Warsaw, a haunting burden, gave him pangs of hatred for her. As it was, she plagued him with guilt and aindety by existing, by not vanishing from the earth. He had a wild physical craving for this dark-haired strong-willed jewess, but he didn't want to marry her. A snooth hand at managing romantic liaisons, he had never before come up against such an iron girl. She had broken off their sexual relations in Paris and had never resumed them; she had told him half a dozen times to let her alone and forget her-the one thing he could not do. Why in the devil's name, then, had she thrust herself on him in this evil hour, in this holocaust, in city shuddering under bombs and shells, where he was saddled with the heaviest respo(a) nsibility of his life and yet felt befogged and castrated by fear? He dreaded exposure of his fear to Natalie more than anything, except getting hurt. He thought now that if they escaped with their lives, he would summon his willpower to cut this dragging business off.