Chapter 3

Money going out to small factories in many states-" The President lit a cigarette, deftly cupping the match against the breeze. "Very good. Let me have your notes on that Army paper, Pug. just write them up yourself, and give them to me today." "Yes, Mr. President." "Now I'm extremely interested in that landing craft problem, but I don't want you getting bogged down in it. Once the Victory Program is finished, let's detach you from War Plans, and send you out to sea. You're overdue." Victor Henry saw that he had scored with Roosevelt and that the moment was favorable. He said, "Well, Mr. President, for a long time I've been yearning to be exec of a battleship." "Exec? Don't you think you can command one?" Trying hard not to show emotion in face or voice, realizing that a lifetime might hang on the next few words, Henry said, "I think I can, sir." "Well, you've been delayed on the beach by unrewarding jobs. The Commander-in-Chief ought to have a little say in this. Let's get you command of a battleship." The President spoke lightly. But the ring in his cultured voice, the self-satisfied tilt of his head, the regal way he held the arms of his chair and smiled at Captain Henry, showed his relish for Power and his satisfaction in bestowing largesse. "thank you, Mr. President." "Now, Pug, you'll find Chief Yeoman Terry in the flag office. Will you tell him to come here?" Dazed by the last Turn of the conversation, Victor Henry walked back into the President's suite, and interrupted a chat between General Marshall, Admiral King, Admiral Stark, and General Watson, sitting relaxed on a couch and armchairs in splendid uniforms. The four elderly awesome heads turned at him. Admiral King gave him a'puzzled scowl. Pug crossed the room as fast as he could without running, and went out. the i It was for this chat, lasting less than an hour, that Franklin Roosevelt had evidently summoned Victor Henry to the Augusta. Except at a distance, the Navy captain did not see the President again all the way to Newfoundland. Pug no longer tried to fathom the President's purposes. He did not feel flattered when Roosevelt summoned him, or put out when the Presii dent forgot he was alive. He was under no illusion that be held a high place in the President's esteem, or that anything he said or did influenced the course of history. The President used other obscure men. The identities andmissions of some were fogged in secrecy. He himself knew of a marine colonel who ran presidential errands in japan, China, and India; and an elderly Oregon lumberman, a friend of his own father, whose specialty was buying up scarce war materials in South America, to deny them to the Germans. Pug counted himself among these small fry, and took the President's use of him as the result of random impulse. Roosevelt liked him because he was knowledgeable, got things done, and kept his mouth shut. A lucky guess about the Nazi-Soviet pact had earned him more credit for acumen than he deserved. There was also the odd phrase Roosevelt had used: "When you talk, I understand you." Still, the President's promise of a battleship command gave Victor Henry sleepless nights. Only two of his classmates had battleships. He went to the flag office and checked the Navy Register, to narrow down the possibilities. Of course, new construction-the North Carolina class, or the Indiana class giants-was out of the question for him. He would get a modernized old ship. The deadline for delivering the Victory Program was less than a month off. Scanning the records, he noted that places might open up within a couple of months in the California or the West Virginia. This was a heady business for Captain Victor Henry, after thirty years in the Navy, checking over the battleship roster to guess which one he might soon command! He tried to crush down his elation. Henry admired the President, and had moments when he almost loved the gallant cripple with the big grin and the boundless appetite for work. But he did not understand Roosevelt or trust him; and he did not in the least share the unlimited devotion to the warm jolly aristocratic this man of people like Hary Hopkins. Behind surface, there loomed a grim ill-defined personality of distant visions and hard purpose, a tough son of a bitch to whom nobody meant very much, except perhaps his family; and maybe not they, either. It might be that ROOsevelt would remember to get him a battleship command. It was equally likely that some new job would put the promise off until it faded. Roosevelt had taught Victor Henry what a great man was like; the captain thought time and again of the Bible's warning, that the clay pot should keep its distance from the iron kettle. Gray peace pervaded the wilderness-ringed Argentia Bay in Newfoundland, where the American ships anchored to await the arrival of Winston Churchill. Hare and mist blended all into gray: gray water, gray sky, gray air, gray hills with a tint of green. The monstrously shaped gray-painted iron ships, queer intruders from the twentieth century into the land of the Indians, floated in the haze like an ugly phantom vision of the future. Sailors and officers went about their chores as usual on these ships, amjd pipings and loudspeaker squawks. But a primeval hush lay heavy in Argentia Bay, just outside the range of the normal ships' noises. At nine o'clock, three gray destroyers steamed into view, ahead of a battleship camouiqaged in swirls and splotches of color like snakeskin. This was H.M.S. Prince of wales, bigger than any other ship in sight, bearing the guns that hadhit the Bismark. As it steamed past the AUgusta, a brass band on its decks shattered the hush with "The StarSpangled Banner." Quiet fell. The band on the quarterdeck of the Augusta struck up ' Save the King.." Pug Henry stood near the President, under the awning rigged at number-one turret, with admirals, generals, and august civilians like Avse ereu Harriman and Sumner Welles. Churchill was plain to e not five hundred yards away, in an odd blue costume, gesturing with a big cigar. The President towered over everybody, stiff on braced legs, in a neat brown suit, one hand holding his hat on his heart, the other clutching the arm of his son, an Air COrps officer who strongly resembled him. Roosevelt's large pink face was self-consciously grave. At this grand nwment Pug Henryps thoughts were prosaic. BuShips experts were disputing over camouflage patterns. Some liked this British IroPical splashing, some preferred plain gray or blue horizontal bands. Pug had seen the mottled battleship through the mist before espying monochrome destroyers that were a mile closer. He intended to report this. "God Save the King" ended. The President's face relaxed. "Well! I've never heard 'My Country 'Tis of Thee' played better." The men around him laughed politely at the presidential joke, and Roosevelt laughed too. The squeal of boatswains' pipes broke up the dress parade on the cruiser's deck. Admiral King beckoned to Pug. "Take my barge over to the Prince of Wales, and put yourself at Mr. Harry Hopkins's service. The President desires to talk with him before Churchill comes to c;ill, so expedite." 'Aye aye, sir." Passing from the Augusta to the Prince of Wales in King's barge, over a few hundred yards of still water, Victor Henry went from America to England and from peace to war. It was a shocking jump. King's spick-and-span flagship belonged to a different world than the stormwhipped British vessel, where the acconunodation ladder was salt-crusted, the camouflage paint was peeling, and even the main battery guns looked pitted and rusty. Pug was aghast to see cigarette butts and wastepaper in the scuppers, though droves of bluejackets were doing an animated scrubdown. On the superstructure raw steel patches were welded here and there-sticking plaster for wounds from the Bismarck's salvos. The officer of the deck had a neatly trimmed brown beard, hollow cheeks, and a charming smile. Pug envied the green tarnish on the gold braid of his cap. "Ah, yes, Captain Henry," he said, smartly returning the salute in the different British palm-out style, "Mr. Hopkins has received the signal and is waiting for you in his cabin. The quartermaster will escort you." Victor Henry followed the quartermaster through passageways hauntingly like those in American battleships, yet different in countless details: the signs, the fittings, the fireextinguishers, the shape of the watertight doors. 'Hello there, Pug." Hopkins spoke as though he had not seen the Navy captain for a day or two, though their last encounter had been on the train to Hyde Park early in March, and meantime Hopkins had travelled to London and Moscow in a blaze of worldwide newspaper attention. "Am I riding over with you?" "Yes, sir." "How's the President feeling?" Hopkins had two bags open on his bunk in a small cabin off the wardroom. In one he carefully placed papers, folders, and books; in the other he threw clothes, medicine bottlesp and shoes as they came to hand. Hopkins looked thinner than before, a bent scarecrow with a gray double-breasted suit flapping loosely on him. In the longi curved, emaciated face, the clever, rather feminine eyes appeared enormous as a lemur's. The sea voyage showed in his fresh color and bouncy movements. "He's having the time of his life, sir." "I can imagine. So's Churchill. Churchill's like a boy going on his first date. Well, it's quite a historic moment, at that." Hopkins pulled dirty shirts from a drawer and crammed them in the suitcase. "Almost forgot these. I left a few in the Kremlin and had to scrounge more in London." "Mr. Hopkins, what about the Russians? Will they hold?" Hopkins paused, a stack of papers in his hand, and pursed his mouth before speaking decisively. "The Russians will hold. But it'll be a near thing. They'll need help." He resumed his hurried packing. "When you fly from Archangel to Moscow, Pug, it takes hours and hours, over solid green forests and bro%m swamps. Often you don't see a village from horizon to horizon. Hitler's bitten off a big bite this time." He was struggling with the clasps on his suitcase, and Pug gave him a hand. "Ah, thanks. What do you suppose Stalin wants from us most of all, Pug?" "Airplanes," Victor Henry said promptly. "'Clouds of airplanes." Same as the French were yelling for last year." 'Aluminum," said Harry Hopkins. "Aluminum to build airplanes with. Well, let me correct that-his number one item was anti-aircraft guns. Next comes aluminum. Wants a lot of Army trucks, too. Stalin isn't planning to get beaten in three weeks, or six weeks, or three years." Hopkins tidied the papers in the smaller case, and closed it. "Let's go." The way led through the wardroom, stretching granchy the width of the vessel, furnished like a London club, with dark panelling, easy chairs, rows of novels and encyclopedias, and a bar.
When the door to the Prime Minister's cabin was opened by his valet, a strange sight greeted them. Winston Churchill, barefoot, was contemplating himself in a mirror in morning coat, tie, and yellow silk underdrawers. "Hello there, Harry." He ignored Captain Henry, stewing a long cigar around in his mouth. "I'm not aware that His Majesty's First Minister has ever before paid a call on the President of the United States at sea. I saw the President wearing a plain brown lounge suit. But he is the head of state. I am only a minister." Churchill's fat aged face was lit with puckish relish of the unique historical problem. "This looks odd, I know. My man of protocol wants me to wear the same old brass-buttoned jacket and cap. But it's such an informal dress." "Prime Minister," Hopkins said, "you do look more like a Former Naval Person in it." Churchill grinned at the whimsical name he used in messages to Roosevelt. He said to the valet, "Very well. The Trinity House uniform again. "This is Captain Victor Henry, Prime Minister, of Navy War Plans." Pulling down his eyebrows, Churchill said, "Hello there. Have you done anything about those landing craft?" The eyes of Hopkins and Victor Henry met, and Churchill'wide mouth wrinkled with gratification. Pug said, "I'm amazed that you remember me, Mr.(s) Prime Minister. That's part of my job now. The other day I talked with the President at length about landing craft." "Well? Is the United States going to build enough of them? A very large number will be called for." "We will, sir." "Have our people given you everything you've requested?" "Their cooperation has been outstanding." "I think you'll find," Churchill rasped, as the valet helped him into enormous blue trousers, "that we simple islanders have hit on a design or two that may prove usable." Churchill spoke slowly, lisping on his s's, in a tone that was almost a growl. Hopkins said a word of farewell to Churchill, and they left. In the passageway, with an incredulous grin, Hopkins remarked, "We've been having ceremonial rehearsals for days, and yet he's fussing to the last minute about what to wear! A very, very great man, all the same." As Hopkins shakily stepped aboard King's barge from the accommodation ladder, the stern rose high on a swell, then dropped away from under him. He lost his balance and toppled into the arms of the coxswain, who said, "Ooops-a-daisy, sir." '?ug, I'll never be a sailor." Hopkins staggered inside, settling with a sigh on the cushions. "I flopped on my face boarding the seaplane that flew me to the Soviet union. That nearly endedmy mission right there." He glanced around at the flawlessly appointed barge. "Well, well. America! Peacetime! So-you're still in War Plans. You'll attend the staff meetings, then." "Some of them, yes, sir." "You might bear in mind what our friends will be after. It's fairly clear to me, after five days at sea with the Prime Minister." Hopkins held out one wasted hand and ticked off points on skeletal fingers. He seemed to be using Victor Henry as a sounding board to refresh his omen mind for his meeting with the President, for he talked half to himself. "First they'll press for an immediate declaration of war on Germany. They know they won't get that. But it softens the ground for the second demand, the real reason Winston Churchill has crossed the ocean. They want a warning by the United States to japan that any move against the British in Asia means war with us. their empire is mighty rickety at this point. They hope such a warning will shore it up. And they'll press for big war supplies to their people in Egypt and the Mddle East. Because if Hitler pokes down there and closes the canal, the Empire strangles. They'll a]SO try, subtly but hard-and I would too, in their place-for an understanding that in getting American aid they come ahead of Russia. Now is the time to bomb the hell out of Germany from the west, they'll say, and build up for the final assault. Stuff we give Russia, it will be hinted, may be turned around and pointed against us in a few weeks." Victor Henry said, "The President isn't thinking that way." "I hope not. If Hitler wins in Russia, he wins the world. If he loses in Russia he's finished, even if the Japanese move. The fight over there is of inconceivable magnitude. There must be seven million men shooting at each other, Pug. Seven million, or more." Hopkins spoke the figures slowly, stretching out the wasted fingers of both hands. -the Russian, have taken a shellacking so far, but they're unafraid. They want to throw the Germans out. That's the war now. That's where the stuff should go now.)) "Then this conference is almost pointless," said Pug. The barge was slowing and clanging as it drew near the Augusta. "No, it's a triumph," Hopkins said. The President of the United States and the British Prime Minister are meeting face to face to discuss beating the Germans. The world will know that. That's achievement enough for now." Hopkins gave Victor Henry a sad smile, and a brilliandv intelligent light came into his large eyes. He pulled himself to his feet in' the rocking boat. "Also, Pug, this is the changing of the guard." Winston Churchill came to the Augusta at eleven o'clock. Among the staff members with him, Captain Henry saw Lord Burne-Wilke, and a hallucinatory remembrance of Pamela Tudsbury in her blue W.A.A.F uniform distracted him from the dramatic handshake of Roosevelt andChurchill at the gangway. They prolonged the clasp for the photographers, exchanging smiling words. All morning, recollections of England and Pamela had been stirring Pug. The O.O.D's very British greeting at the Prince of Wales ladder, the glimpses of Undon magazines in the wardroom, Winston Churchill's voice with its thick s's, had wakened his memory like a song or a perfume. Goering's 1940 air blitz on London already seemed part of another era, almost another war. Standing well back in the rank of King's staff officers, this short unknovm Navy captain, whose face would be lost in the photographs, tried to shake irrelevancies from his brain and pay attention. In an odd way the two leaders diminished each other. They were both Number One Men. But that was impossible. Who, then, was Number One? Roosevelt stood a full head taller, but he was pathetically braced on lifeless leg frames, clinging to his son's arm, his full trousers drooped and flapping. Churchill, a bent Pickwick in blue uniform, looked up at him with majestic good humor, much older, more dignified, more assured. Yet there was a trace of deference about the Prime Minister. By a shade of a shade, Roosevelt looked like Number One. Maybe that was what Hopkins had meant by "the changing of the guard." The picture-taking stopped at an unseen signal, the handshake ended, and a wheelchair appeared. The erect front-page President became the cripple more familiar to Pug, hobbling a step or two and sinking with relief into the chair. The great men and their military chiefs left the quarterdeck. The staffs got right to business and conferred all day. Victor Henry worked with the planners, on the level below the chiefs of staff and their deputies where Burne-Wilke operated, and of course far below the summit of the President, the Prime Minister, and their advisers. Familiar problems came up at once: excessive and contradictory requests from the British services, unreal plans, unfilled contracts, jumbled priorities, fouled communications. One cardinal point the planners hammered out fast. Building new ships to replace U-boat sinkings came first. No war materiel could be used against Hitler until it had crossed the ocean. This plain truth, so simple once agreed on, ran a red line across every request, every program, every projection. Steel, aluminum, rubber, valves, motors, machine tools, copper wire, all the thousand things of war, would go first to ships. This simple yardstick rapidly disclosed the poverty of the 'arsenal of democracy," and dictated-as a matter of hightening urgency-a gigantic job of building new steel mills, and plants to Turn the steel into combat machines and tools. Through all the talk of grand hypothetical plans-hundreds of ships, tens of thousands ofairplanes and tanks, millions of men-one pathetic item kept recurring: an innnediate need for a hundred fifty thousand rifles. If Russia collapsed, Hitler might try to wrap up the war with a Crete-like invasion of England from the air. Rifles for defending British airfields were lacking. The stupendous materiel figures for future joint invasions of North Africa or the French coast contrasted sadly with this plea for a hundred fifty thousand rifles now. Next morning, boats from all over the sparkling bay came clustering to the Prince of Wales for church services. On the surrounding hills, in sunlight that seemed almost blinding after days of gray mist, the forests of larch and fir glowed a rich green. An American destroyer slowly nosed its bridge alongside the battleship, exactly level with the main deck, and a gangplank was thrown across. Leaning on his son's arm and on a cane, Franklin Roosevelt, in a blue suit and gray hat, lurched out on the gangplank, laboriously hitching one leg forward from the hip, then the other. The bay was calm, but both ships were moving on long swells. With each step, the tall President tottered and swayed. Victor Henry, like -all the Americans crowding the destroyer bridge, hardly breathed as Roosevelt painfully hobbled across the narrow unsteady planks. Photographers waiting on the Prince of Wales quarterdeck were staring at the President, but Pug observed that not one of them was shooting this momentous crippled walk. He thought of Franklin Roosevelt as he had first known him-the young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the athletic cocksure dandy, the obvious charmer and lady-killer, full of himself, on top of the world, bounding up and down a destroyer's ladders and spouting salty lingo. The yearz, had made of him this half-disabled gray man, heaving himself one agonized step at a time over a gangplank a few feet long; but here was enough willpower displayed, Pug thought, to win a world war. A ramp could have been.jury-rigged and laid across with ease. Franklin Roosevelt might have wheeled over in comfort and with dignity. But in his piteous fashion he could walk; and to board a British battleship, at Winston Churchill's invitation for church parade, he was walking. His foot touched the deck of the Prince of Wales. Churchill saluted him and offered his hand. The brass band burst forth with The StarSpangled Banner." Roosevelt stood at attention, his chest heaving, his face stiff with strain. Then escorted by Churchill, the President hitched and hobbled all the way across the deck, and sat. No wheelchair ever appeared. As the sailors massed in ranks around the afterdeck sang "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" and "Onward Christian Soldiers, " Winston I Churchill kept wiping his eyes. The old hymns, roared by a thousand young male voices in the open air under the long guns, brought prickles to Victor Henry's spine and tears to his eyes. Yet this exalting service made him uneasy, too. Here they were, men of the American and the British navies, praying as comrades-in-arms.
But it mens a phony picture. The English were fighting, the Americans were nota The Prime Nunister, with this church parade under the guns, was ingeniously working on the President's feelings. Here was diamond cut diamond, will against will! Churchill was using everything he could, including Roosevelt's supposed religious tendency, to move him. If Franklin Roosevelt could come away from this experience without giving a promise to declare war on Germany, or at least to lay down an ultimatum to japan, he was a hard man; and the weeping old fat politician beside him was playing a damned hard game himself, for which Victor Henry admired him. The British chaplain, his white and crimson vestments -flapping in the wind, his thick gray hair blowing wildly, read the closing Royal Navy prayer: Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the lence of the enemy; that we may be a security for such as pass upon the sea upon their laujul occasions... and that we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land, with the fruits of our labors. . . and to praise and glorify Thy Holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord..." A few British sailors cautiously moved out of ranks. One, then another, sneaked cameras from their blouses. When nobody stopped them, and the two leaders smiled and waved, a rush began. Cameras appeared by the dozens. The sailors swarmed into a laughing, cheering ring around the two men. Pug Henry, watching this unwonted disorder on a warship with mixed feelings of amusement and outrage, felt a touch on his elbow. It was Lord Burne-Wilke. 'Hello there, my dear fellow. A word with you?" Either the British worried less about fire than the Americans, or they had found a good way to fake wood panels. Burne-Wilkes cabin had the dark, warm, comfortable look of a library den. "I say, Henry, what is your position on shipboard drinking? I have a fair bottle of sherry here." "I'm for it." "Good. You're dry as a bone in your service, aren't you? Yet last night the President served us an excellent wine." "The President is the source of all Navy regulations, sir, and can tailor them to his desires." "Ah? Jolly convenient." Burne-Wilke lit a cigar, and they both sipped wine. "I suppose you know that this ship crossed the ocean without escort," the air commodore resumed. "Our first night out of England, we ran into a whole gale. Our destroyers couldn't maintain speed, so we zigzagged on alone." "Sir, I was appalled to hear about it." "Really? Rather sporting of the British Prime Minister, don't you think, to give the Hun a fair shot at him on the open sea? Three thousand mileswithout air cover or surface escort, straight through the entire submarine fleet?" "You had your good angels escorting you. That's all I can say." "Oh, well, at any rate here we are. But it might be prudent not to overwork those good angels, what? Don't you agree? On our way back, every U-boat in the Atlantic will certainly be on battle alert. We shall have to run the gamut." Burne-Wilke paused, studying the ash on his cigar. 'We're stretched thin for escorts, you know. We've rounded up four destroyers. Admiral Pound would be happier with six." Victor Henry quickly said, 'I'll talk to Admiral King." "You understand that this cannot be a request from us. The Prime Minister would be downright annoyed. He's hoping we'll meet the Tirpitz and get into a running gun fight." "Let me start on this now, sir." Pug drank up his sherry, and rose to his feet. "Oh? Would you?" Burne-Wilke opened the cabin door. "Thanks awfully." On the afterdeck, the photographing was still going on. Officers with cameras were now shouldering sailors aside, as the two politicians cheerfully chatted. Behind them stood their glum chiefs of staff and civilian advisers. Hopkins, squinting out at the sunny water, wore a pained expression. The military men were talking together, except for Admiral King, who stood woodenly apart, his long nose pointing seaward, his face consealed in disapproval. Pug walked up to him, saluted, and in the fewest possible words recounted his talk with Burne-Wilke. The lines along King's lean jaws'deepened. He nodded twice and strolled away, without a word. He did not go anywhere. It was just a gesture of dismissal, and a convincing one. Amid much willing and dining, the conference went on for two more days. One night Churchill took the floor in the Augusta wardroom after dinner, and delivered a rolling, rich, apocalyptic word picture of how the war would go. Blockade, ever-growing air bombardment, and subversion would in time weaken the grip of Nazi claws on Europe. Russia and England would 'close a ring' and slowly, inexorably tighten it. If the United States became a full-fledged ally, it would all go much faster, of course. No big invasion or long land campaign would be needed in the west. Landings of a few armored columns in the occupied countries would bring mass uprisings. Hitler's black empire would suddenly collapse in rubble, blood, and flame. Franklin Roosevelt listened with bright-eyed smiling attention, saying nothing, and applauding heartily with the rest. On the last day of the conference, just before lunch, Admiral King sent for Pug. He mid the admiral in undershirt and trousers in his cabin, drying face and ears with a towel. "Task Unit 26 point 3 point i, consisting of two destroyers, the Mayrant and the Rhind, has been formed," King said without a greeting. "It will escort the Prince of Wales to Iceland. You will embark in the Prince of Wales as liaison officer, disembark in Iceland, and return with our task unit."'Aye aye, sir." 'You'll have no written orders. But we're not in the kind of spot we were in last time. In confidence, we'll soon be convoying all ships to Iceland. Maybe by next week. Hell, our own marines are occupying the place now. The President's even sending a young officer along as a naval aide to Churchill while he tours our Iceland base. Ensign Franklin D. Roosevelt, junior." King spoke the name with an expressionless face. "Yes, sir." Now, Henry, how are you at languages?" "It's a long time since I tried a new one, Admiral." "Well, a military supply missim will go to the Soviet union in September. If Russia's still in the war by then, that is. Mr. Hopkins has brought up your name. He appears impressed, and the President too, by your expertise on landing craft and so forth. Now your service record has been checked, and it seems you claim a 'poor to fair' knowledge of Russian. Hey? How is that? That's very unusual." Admiral, I put that down when I entered the Academy in 1911. It was true then. I don't remember ten words now." Henry explained the circumstances that had given him Russian-speaking chums in his Sonoma County boyhood. 'I see. Well, it's there on the record. Upon returning from Iceland you will be detached from War Plans to prepare yourself, with an intensive refresher course in Russian, for a possible trip to the Soviet union on special detached duty. You'll have interpreters. But with even a smattering, your intelligence value will be greater." 'Aye aye, sir." King put on his uniform jacket, stared at Victor Henry, and for the first time that Henry could recall, favored him with a smile. "On the record, incidentally, I see you used to be a fair gunnery officer, too." "My one hope is to get back to that." "Have you heard that extension of the draft passed the House of Representatives an hour ago?" "It did? Thank God." "By one vote." "What! One vote, sir?" "One vote." "Whew! That's not going to encourage the British, Admiral." "No, nor the President, but it's how the American people feel right now. It may be suicidal, but there it is. Our job is to keep going anyway.
Incidentally, Henry, I'll soon be needing an operations officer on my staff. After your Russian errand, if it comes off, that's an assignment you may get." Victor Henry kept his face rigid. "It would be an honor, Admiral." "I thought you might like it. I believe you'll measure up," King said, with an awkward trace of warmth. Compared to a battleship command, it was a crushing prospect. Desperation forced Pug to say, "President Roosevelt may have other ideas. I just never know." "I mentioned this to the President. He said it sounded like the perfect spot for you." A verse from Psalms knifed into Pug's mind: 'Put not your trust in princes." "Thank you, Admiral.Within the hour, as Victor Henry was packing, a summons came from the President. The interview this time took but a minute or two. Roosevelt appeared fatigued and preoccupied, making quick pencilled notes on one document after another at the baize-covered table. Harry Hopkins was in the room, and beside him a tall handsome ensign, with a strong resemblance to the Assistant Secretary who in 1917 had bounded around the destroyer Davey-The President introduced Franklin D. Roosevelt, junior,"to Pug, saying "You gentlemen will be travelling together. You should know each other." As the ensign shook hands, the President gave Captain Henry a poignant man-to-man glance, as much as to say "Keep an eye on him, and talk to him This human touch half dissolved Victor Henry's hard knot of mistrust for the President. Perhaps Roosevelt had turned off King with a pleasantry and meant to still give him the battleship. The President's bland manner in dismissing him was, as always, unfathomable. To brass band anthems and booming gun salutes, in a brisk breeze smelling of green hills and gunpowder, the Prince of Wales left Argentia Bay. The great conference was over. In the wardroom of the Prince of Wales, Victor Henry could sense the subtle gloom hanging over the ship. What the conference had accomplished to increase help fOr England remained undisclosed; and in itself this clearly struck the battleship's officers as a bad sign. These men, veterans of two combat years, of air attacks and gun fights, had a subdued dismal air, despite the grandeur of their ship and the stuffy luxury of their wardroom. The predicament of England seemed soaked in their bones. They could not believe that Winston Churchill had risked the best ship in their strained navy, and his own life, only to return empty-handed. That wasn't Winnie's style. But vague hope, rather than real confidence, was the note in their conversation. Sitting in the lounge over a glass of port after dinner, Pug felt quite out of things, despite their politeness to him. It struck him that his presence embarrassed them. He went to bed early. Next day he toured the Prince of Wales from flying bridge to engine rooms, notingcontrasts with American ships, above all the slovenly, overburdened, tense crew, so different from the scrubbed happy-go-lucky Augusta sailors. Major-General Tillet came up to him after dinner that evening, and laid a lean hand on his shoulder. "like to have a look at the submarine sightings chart, Henry? The Prime Minister thought you might. Quite a reception committee gathering out there." Pug had seen the forbidding old military historian here and there at the conference. Two nights ago, at a wardroom party for the American visitors, some junior British officers had started what they called a "rag, marching in dressed in kilts or colored towels, bizarre wigs, and not much else; skirting bagpipes, setting off firecrackers, and goose-stepping over chairs and tables, After a while Major-General Tillet had stood up unsmiling-Pug thought, to put a stop to the horseplay-and had broken into a long, wild jig on a table, as the bagpipers marched around him and the whole mess applauded. Now he was as stiff as ever. Red secrecy warnings blazed on the steel door that Tillet opened. Dressed in a one-piece garment like a mechanic's coveralls, stooped and heavy-eyed, Churchill pondered a map of the Russian front all across one bulkhead. Opposite hung a chart of the Atlantic. Young officers worked over dispatches at a table in the middle of the room, in air thick with tobacco smoke. "There," said the Prime Nbnister to Tillet and Pug Henry, gesturing at the map of the Soviet union with his cigar, 'there is an awful unfolding picture." The crimson line of the front east of Smolensk showed two fresh bulges toward Moscow. Churchill coughed, and glanced at Henry. 'Your President warned Stalin. I warned him even more explicitly, basing myself on very exact intelligence. Surely no government ever had less excuse to be surprised. In an evil hour, the heroic, unfortunate Russian people were led by a pack of outwitted bungling scoundrels." The Prime Minister turned and walked to the other bulkhead, with the tottering step Victor Henry had observed in his London office. At Argentia, Churchill had appeared strong, ruddy, springy, and altogether ten years YOLinger. Now his cheeks were ashy, with red patches. "Hullo- Don't we have a development here?" Little black coffin-shaped markers dotted the wide blue spaces, and an oit-icer was putting up several more, in a cluster close to the battleship's projected course. Farther on stood large clusters of red pins, with a few blue pins. "This new U-boat group was sighted by an American patrol plane at twilight, sir," said the officer. "Ah, yes. So Admiral Pound advised me. I suppose we are evading?"'We have altered course to north, sir." "Convoy H-67 is almost home, I see." "We will be pulling those pins tonight, Mr. Prime Minister." "That will be happy news." Churchill harshly coughed, puffing at his cigar, and said to Pug Henry, "Well. We may have some sport for you Yet. It won't be as lively as a bomber ride over Berlin. Eh? Did you enjoy that, Captain?" "It was a rare privilege, Mr. Prime Minister." "Any time. Any time at all." "Too much honor, sir. Once was plenty." Churchill uttered a hoarse chuckle. "I daresay. What is the film tonight, General Tillet?" "Prime Minister, I believe it is Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, in Saps at Sea." , "Saps at Sea, eh? Not inappropriate! The surgeon-general has ordered me to remain in bed. He has also ordered me not to smoke. I shall attend Saps at Sea, and bring my cigars." Pug Henry's enjoyment of Saps at Sea was shadowed by an awareness that at any moment the battleship might into a U-boat pack. German skippers were adept at sneaking past destroyer screens. B(run) ut the film spun to the end uninterrupted. "A gay but inconsequent entertainment," the Prime Minister remarked in a heavy, rheumy voice, as he plodded out. Clement Attlee's broadcast the next day packed the wardroom. Every officer not on watch, and all staff officers and war planners, gathered in the wardroom around one singularly ancient, crack-voiced radio. The battleship" plowing through a wild storm, rolled and pitched with slow long groans. For the American guest, it was a bad half hour. He saw perplexed looks, lengthening faces, and headshakes, as Attlee read off the "Atlantic Charter." The high-flown language bespoke not a shred of increased American commitment. Abuse of Nazi tyranny, praise of "four freedoms," dedication to a future of world peace and brotherhood, yes; more combat help for the British, Some sentences about free trade and independence for all peoples That meant the end of the British Empire, if they meant anything. Franklin Roosevelt was indeed a tough customer, thought Captain Henry, not especially surprised. "Umph!" grunted Major-General Tillet in the silence after the radio was shut off. "I'd venture there was more to it than that. How about it, Henry?" All eyes turned on the American. Pug saw no virtue in equivocating. "No, sir, I'd guess that was it." "Your President has now pledged in a joint communique to destroy Nazi tyranny," Tillet said. "Doesn't that mean you're coming in, one way or another?" "It means Lend-Lease," Pug said.
Questions shot at him from all sides. "You're not going to stand with us against japan?" "Not now." "But isn't the Pacific your fight, pure and simple?" "The President won't give a war warning to japan. He can't, without Congress behind him." "What's the matter with your Congress?" "That's a good question, but day before yesterday it came within one vote of practically dissolving the United States Army." "Don't the congressmen know what's happening in the world?" "They vote their political hunches to protect their political hides." "Then what's the matter with your people?" "Our people are about where yours were at the time of the Munich pact." That caused a silence. Tillet said, 'We're paying the price." "We'll have to pay the price." "We had Chamberlain then for a leader, sir," said a fresh-faced lieutenant. "You have Roosevelt." "The American people don't want to fight Hitler, gentlemen," said Pug. "It's that simple, and Roosevelt can't help that. They don't want to fight anybody. Life is pleasant. The war's a ball game they can watch. You're the home team, because you talk our language. Hence Lend-Lease, and this Atlantic Charter. Lend-Lease is no sweat, it just means more jobs and money for everybody." An unusually steep roll brought a crash of crockery in the galley. The crossfire stopped. Victor Henry went to his cabin. Before disembarking in Iceland, he did not talk much more to the British officers. Atlantic Charter, like the elephant, resembled a tree, a snake, a Twall, or a rope, depending on where the blind took hold of it. Axis propaganda jeered at its gassy rhetoric about freedom, cited enslaved India and Malaya, noted the cowardice of the degenerate Americans in evading any combat commitment, and concluded that it was all a big empty bluff, tricked out with the usual pious Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy, to cover impotent hatred of the triumphant New World Order, which a thousand Atlantic Charters could no longer roll back.
In the United States, a howl went up that Roosevelt had secretly committed the country to go to war on England's side. A cheer went up-not nearly so loud-for the most glorious document in man's struggle toward the light since the Magna Carta. British newspapers implied that much more than this fine charter had been wrought at Argentia Bay; but for the moment the rest had to be hushed up'. The Russians hailed the meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill on a triumph for peace-loving battleship at sea as a urn all peoples everywhere; hinting that, as was well known, a second front in Europe now was crucial, and the Atlantic Charter, failing to mention a plan for this, was somewhat disappointing. No reaction was stronger or blinder than the one that swept the immured Jews in Minsk. The Germans had confiscated their radios. The penalty for possessing one was death. A sixteen-year-old boy had heard the Russian broadcast imperfectly on a tiny receiving set rigged in his attic. He had joyously spread the story that Roosevelt had met Churchill, and that the United States was declaring war on Germany! The effect on the ghetto of this lie was so wonderful, so life-giving, that one may wonder whether falsehood may not sometimes be a necessary anodyne for souls in torment. The spirit of the Minsk Jews had recently been shattered. They had resigned themselves, with the coming of the Germans, to be herded into a few square blocks, to be forced to register for work, to be arrested and maltreated, to endure hooligan raids and perhaps even shootings. This ia,as a pogrom time, German pogroms could be expected to be very bad. But jewry survived pogroms. Then one night gray trucks had swarmed into the ghetto, and squads of Germans in unfamiliar dark uniforms had cleared out the dwellers along two main streets, house by house, loading the people into the vans -for resettlement, they announced. Some of the Germans were brutal, some polite, as they pushed and urged the people into the trucks. In other streets, behind barred doors, other Jews wondered and shivered. 'what had happened afterward-according to reports brought by parti. sans who haunted the woods-was so hideous and unbelievable that the Minsk Jews were still trying numbly to come to grips with it. The gray vans had driven five miles away, to the woods outside a village. There in a moonlit ravine the Germans had ordered the people out of the trucks, had lined them up in groups, and had shot every last one-including the babies and the old people-and then had thrown them in a big hole already dug, and shovelled them over with sand. Peasants who had dug the huge sandy hole had seen this horror with their own eyes; so the partisan report went. The Germans had rounded them up for the job, then had ordered them to go home, and not to linger or to talk about the excavation, on pain of being shot. A few had sneaked back through the trees, all the same, to see what the Germans were up to; and they had recounted to the partisans the massacre of the "Zhids" from the gray trucks. To the Jews trapped in Minsk, three hundred miles behind the German armies approachingMoscow, this story was an unimaginable shock. The Germans were already shooting people for small offenses, after swift crude trials. Bloated smelly bodies of such victims, and of captured partisans, bung in the public squares. Such things could be expected in wartime. But the sudden murder, evidently at random, of all the people who lived in two long streets-children, women, old people, everybody-exceeded their deepest fears of what even Germans could do. Either the story was a hysterical exaggeration, or if it were true-and the reports as they trickled in began to seem overwhelming-then the Germans were far worse than the most frightful rumors had ever pictured them. Yet next day Minsk looked much the same, the sunflowers bloomed, the sun shone in a blue sky. Some buildings were ruined by bombs or fire, but most stood as before; German soldiers cruised the streets, already a common sight in their gray trucks and tanks marked with swastikas. The soldiers themselves looked entirely ordinary and human, lounging with their guns and squinting in the sunshine. Some even made jokes with passersby. Russians still walked everywhere, old neighbors of the Jews, and the same bells rang at the same hours. These streets were the scenes of the Jews' lives, as familiar as faces at home. Only now all the houses on two streets stood quiet and empty. Into this stunned moment, the news broke that Roosevelt and Churchill had met at sea and that America was entering the war. The word flew from house to house. People cried, laughed, caught up their children and danced them on their shoulders, kissed each other, and found wine or vodka to drink to President Roosevelt. One fact was graven in Europe's memory: last time, the coming of the Americans had won the war. Happy arguments broke out. Would it take three months? Six months? However long it might take, there would be no more insane occurrences like the emptying of those two streets. The Germans would not dare now! The Germans were bad when they were on top, but how humble they could be when things turned around! They were all cowards. Now they would probably start being nice to the Jews, to avoid punishment by the Americans. Berel Jastrow did not try to contradict the rumor, though he knew that it was untrue. At the bakery, he still kept his shortwave radio concealed. His papers allowed him to pass the ghetto boundaries, for the Germans needed bread and the Minsk bakers were fighting hundreds of miles away. At the underground meeting of Jewish leaders that night, in the boiler room of the hospital, Berel did report the accurate broadcast he had heard from Sweden. But he was a foreigner, and he was telling the committee what it did not want to hear. Somebody cut him short with the observation that he had probably been listening to the German -controlled Norwegian radio; and the excited planning continued for the armed uprising that would take place in Minsk, in cooperation with the partisans, as soon as the Americans landed in France. A few days later Jastrow and his son, with the wife and baby, disappeared. They went silently in the night, asking nobody in the ghetto for perinion or help, or for passwords to contact the partisans in the woods. The Jewish Board had some trouble with the Gestapo about thevanished Polish baker. But they pleaded that the Jastrows were refugees, for whom they couldn't be responsible. The Germans had themselves issued Jastrow his special papers. The three Polish Jews with their infant did not come back to Minsk. The ghetto people assumed they had been shot right away by the Wehrmacht forest patrols, as most Jews were who tried to slip from the town without partisan guidance. It was the German custom to throw fresh bodies from the forest into Jubilee Square, as a warning to the other Jews. But nobody saw, in these gruesome stiff piles of dead unburied friends, the bodies of the Jastrows. That was the one reason for believing the Jastrows might still be alive somewhere. in Rome the Germans were conducting themselves very well, at least within the purview of Natalie and her uncle. A certain arrogance toward the Italians had perhaps intensified with all the conquests, but that had always been the German demeanor. Ghastly rumor of Nazi treatment of Jews had been flying around Europe for years. To these were, now added stories of the vilest atrocities against the captured hordes of Slav soldiers. Yet when Aaron Jastrow and his heavily pregnant niece dined in the hotel, or at some fine Roman restaurant, there would very likely be Germans at table on either side of them. Enough wine might spark a bit of Teutonic boisterousness; but to ascribe a capacity for mass murder to then well-dressed, careful-mannered, good-looking people-so very much like Americans in some ways-passed all belief. Jastrow at last eager to go home. He had finished the first draft of his book on Constantine;heyear(was) ned to show it to his publisher, and then finish up the revisions in the Harvard Library's Byzantine section. The Vatican Library was better, of course, and he had made charming friends there. But as shortages multiplied, Rome was getting drearier. Hitler's triumphs in the Soviet union were sending earthquake tremors through Italy and sinking the Italians in gloom. There was no real gladness even in the Fascist press, but rather some traces of alarm at these giant strides of the Fuhrer over the last unsubdued reaches of Europe. At any price, even in the best restaurants, Roman food was bad now, and getting worse. The heavy chalky bread was quite inedible; the new brown spaghetti tasted rather like mud; each month the cheese grew more rubbery; the cooking and salad oils left a loathsome aftertaste; and bottle of decent table wine hard to come by. Natalie obtained proper milk occasi(a) onallyattheembassy;Italianexpec(was) tant mothers had to drink the same blue slimy fluid that sad shrugging waiters served with the fake coffee. So Dr. Jastrow was ready to go; but he was not scared. He had read so much history that the events of the hour seemed a banal repetition of old games. He had delayed and delayed leaving Italy, almost welcoming the difficulties with his papers, because in his heart he had thought the war was going to end soon. Even if the villain with the mustache (as he loved to call Hitler) won, it might not matter so much, providing the Nazis did not march into Italy.