Winds of War (28 page)

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 halted 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 rear-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 Dutch Guiana at noon. It would dump the logs in the harbor, and lumber 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 at the 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, so 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
l’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.”

Lacouture 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.”

Lacouture puffed at his cigar. “I liked the way he talked up at dinner. Of course he’s naïve 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 shift 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 incandescence 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, they’ll make the best deal they can get. They’d be nuts to try anything else. Well, I’ve enjoyed visiting with you, Commander. What the 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 balls 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.”

“Well, in Berlin we lucked 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 racket 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. “Eeyow!” Warren exulted all the way back to the BOQ; he was in Squadron Five, and some of the hottest student pilots had not made it. He had done
something
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 good-bye here.” They stood in the square dingy lobby of the BOQ.

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 never work that hard.”

Chapter 13

From the German viewpoint, the invasion of Poland was proceeding merrily. The arrows and the pins on the military maps were closing in day by day, 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 day’s 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 light, 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 military art 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 counties, 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 flat 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 marshaling 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 million, 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.