In praise of Herman Wouk
Author of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance
“Wouk’s real genius lies not just in the narrative power of his books, but in his empathy with the people and the times of which he writes…. The genius of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance is that they not only tell the story of the Holocaust, but tell it within the context of World War II, without which there is no understanding it.”
—Ken Ringle, Washington Post
“Herman Wouk is an American legend.”
—Gerald F. Kreyche, USA Today
“The whole two-volume work constitutes a very good popular history of the Second World War and the Holocaust…. The quality of the military reasoning in this document is impressive, and so is Wouk’s scholarship in contemporary history…. As a historian of naval warfare Wouk is as good as Samuel Eliot Morison, while as an analytic narrator of land battles, particularly Soviet here, he invites comparison with someone like B. H. Liddell Hart…. When he turns from people to significant public environments and ‘things,’ Wouk is also wonderful…. He does even the inside of the cattle cars superbly: give him an environment of any kind—the Kremlin, Hitler’s Wolfsschanze in the East Prussian forest, the president’s private quarters in the White House, a gas chamber posing as a mass showerbath, the flagplot room on a battleship, an atomic pile, the interior of a submarine or a bomber—and he renders it persuasively. There’s hardly a contemporary writer so good at depicting locales authentically, places as varied as Honolulu, Bern, Lisbon, Leningrad, Columbia University, and London. They are perfect.”
—Paul Fussell, New Republic
“Herman Wouk has the touch… the ability to tell a story that grips you from beginning to end.”
—Donna Levin, San Francisco Chronicle
Books by Herman Wouk
Novels
AURORA DAWN
CITY BOY
THE CAINE MUTINY
MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR
YOUNGBLOOD HAWKE
DONT STOP THE CARNIVAL
THE WINDS OF WAR
WAR AND REMEMBRANCE
INSIDE, OUTSIDE
THE HOPE
THE GLORY
Plays
THE TRAITOR
THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL
NATURE’S WAY
Nonfiction
THIS IS MY GOD
THE WILL TO LIVE ON
Copyright
COPYRIGHT © 1971 BY HERMAN WOUK
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE U.S. COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1976, NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, OR STORED IN A DATABASE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER.
Back Bay Books/Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group,
237 Park Avenue,
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
www.twitter.com/littlebrown
First eBook Edition: November 2008
ISBN: 978-0-316-05009-8
Contents
In praise of Herman Wouk
Books by Herman Wouk
Copyright
The Author to the Reader
Preface to the First Edition
PART ONE: Natalie
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
World Empire Lost
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
PART TWO: Pamela
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
PART THREE: The Winds Rise
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Also by Herman Wouk
With love to my sons
Nathaniel and Joseph
The Author to the Reader
Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, has requested a special author’s introduction to this new edition of the novels in a changed format. The two books tell one overarching story—how the American people rose to the challenges of World War II, the first global war, after fearsome setbacks forgotten today in the shining memory of final victory.
As I write these words late in October 2001, a new war is just beginning, global again in scope but totally different in character. In the last global war, before VE day and VJ day came, there befell the collapse of France, the Bataan death march, the fall of Singapore, the siege of Stalingrad, bloody Tarawa, and bloodier Guadalcanal; and at the hidden heart of that global war, concealed by the smoke of battle, there burned the Holocaust. That eternal benchmark of barbarism, let us remember, was set not by a Third World country, not by Orientals, not by the Muslims, but by the Germans, an advanced European nation. The evil in human hearts knows no boundary, except the deeper, stronger human will to freedom, order, and justice. In the very long run, that will so far has prevailed.
Now it is the destiny of America—for all its faults and weaknesses, the greatest free society in history—to lead the world against a new grim outbreak of evil, a savage stab at the core of freedom on earth, a dark, shocking start to a new millennium. May the Father of all men prosper our arms in the new fight, as He prospered—in the end—the cause of men of good will in World War II, the great and terrible global battle that these two novels portray.
—Herman Wouk
Preface to the First Edition
The Winds of War is fiction, and all the characters and adventures involving the Henry family are imaginary. But the history of the war in this romance is offered as accurate; the statistics, as reliable; the words and acts of the great personages, as either historical, or derived from accounts of their words and deeds in similar situations. No work of this scope can be free of error, but readers will discern, it is hoped, an arduous effort to give a true and full picture of a great world battle.
World Empire Lost, the military treatise by “Armin von Roon,” is of course an invention from start to finish. Still, General von Roon’s book is offered as a professional German view of the other side of the hill, reliable within the limits peculiar to that self-justifying military literature.
Industrialized armed force, the curse that now presses so heavily and so ominously on us all, came to full flower in the Second World War. The effort to
free ourselves of it begins with the effort to understand how it came to haunt us, and how it was that men of good will gave—and still give—their lives to it. The theme and aim of The Winds of War can be found in a few words by the French Jew, Julien Benda:
Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind. In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve peace, where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing.
PART ONE
Natalie
1
COMMANDER Victor Henry rode a taxicab home from the Navy Building on Constitution Avenue, in a gusty gray March rainstorm that matched his mood. In his War Plans cubbyhole that afternoon, he had received an unexpected word from on high which, to his seasoned appraisal, had probably blown a well-planned career to rags. Now he had to consult his wife about an urgent decision; yet he did not altogether trust her opinions.
At forty-five, Rhoda Henry remained a singularly attractive woman, but she was rather a crab. This colored her judgment, and it was a fault he found hard to forgive her. She had married him with her eyes open. During an incandescent courtship, they had talked frankly about the military life. Rhoda Grover had declared that all the drawbacks—the separations, the lack of a real place to live and of a normal family existence, the long slow climb through a system, the need to be humble to other men’s wives when the men were a notch higher—that none of these things would trouble her, because she loved him, and because the Navy was a career of honor. So she had said in 1915, when the World War was on, and uniforms had a glow. This was 1939, and she had long since forgotten those words.
He had warned her that the climb would be hard. Victor Henry was not of a Navy family. On every rung of the slippery career ladder, the sons and grandsons of admirals had been jostling him. Yet everyone in the Navy who knew Pug Henry called him a comer. Until now his rise had been steady.
The letter that first got him into the Naval Academy, written to his congressman while in high school, can be adduced here to characterize the man. He showed his form early.
May 5th, 1910
Dear Sir:
You have sent me three kind answers to three letters I have sent you, from my freshman year onward, reporting my progress in Sonoma County High School. So I hope that you will remember my name, and my ambition to obtain appointment to the Naval Academy.
Now I am about to complete my senior year. It may seem conceited to list my achievements, but I am sure you will understand why I do so. I am captain of the football team this year, playing fullback, and I am also on the boxing team.
I have been elected to the Arista Society. In mathematics, history, and the sciences, I am a candidate for prizes. My English and foreign language (German) marks are not on that level. However, I am secretary of the small Russian-speaking club of our school. Its nine members come from local families whose ancestors were settled in Fort Ross long ago by the Czar. My best chum was in the club, so I joined and learned some Russian. I mention this to show that my language ability is not deficient.
My life aim is to serve as an officer in the United States Navy. I can’t actually explain this, since my family has no seafaring background. My father is an engineer in the redwood lumbering business. I have never liked lumbering, but have always been interested in ships and big guns. I have gone to San Francisco and San Diego often just to visit the naval ships there. Out of my savings I have bought and studied about two dozen books on marine engineering and sea warfare.
I realize you have only one appointment to make, and there must be many applicants in our district. If one is found more deserving than I am, I will enlist in the Navy and work up from the ranks. However, I have seriously tried for your consideration, and trust that I have earned it.
Respectfully yours,
Victor Henry
With much the same directness, Henry had won his wife five years later, though she was a couple of inches taller than he, and though her prosperous parents had looked for a better match than a squat Navy fullback from California, of no means or family. Courting Rhoda, he had come out of his single-minded shell of ambition to show much tenderness, humor, considerateness, and dash. After a month or two Rhoda had lost any inclination to say no. Mundane details like height differences had faded from sight.
Still, over the long pull it may not be too good for a pretty woman to look down at her husband. Tall men tend to make plays for her, regarding the couple as slightly comic. Though a very proper woman, Rhoda had a weakness for this sort of thing—up to a point short of trouble—and even coyly provoked it. Henry’s reputation as a bleak hard-fibered individual discouraged the men from ever getting out of hand. He was very much Rhoda’s master. Still, this physical detail was a continuing nag.
The real shadow on this couple was that Commander Henry thought Rhoda had welshed on their courtship understanding. She did what had to be done as a Navy wife, but she was free, loud, and frequent in her complaints. She could crab for months on end in a place she disliked, such as Manila. Wherever she was, she tended to fret about the heat, or the cold, or the rain, or the dry spell, or servants, or taxi drivers, or shop clerks, or seamstresses, or hairdressers. To hear Rhoda Henry’s daily chatter, her life passed in combat with an incompetent world and a malignant climate. It was only female talk, and not in the least uncommon. But talk, not sex, constitutes most of the intercourse between a man and his wife. Henry detested idle whining. More and more, silence was the response he had come to use. It dampened the noise.
On the other hand, Rhoda was two things he thought a wife should be: a seductive woman, and an adroit homemaker. In all their married years, there had been few times when he had not desired her; and in all those years, for all their moving about, wherever they landed, Rhoda had provided a house or an apartment where the coffee was hot, the food appetizing, the rooms well furnished and always clean, the beds properly made, and fresh flowers in sight. She had fetching little ways, and when her spirits were good she could be very sweet and agreeable. Most women, from the little Victor Henry knew of the sex, were vain clacking slatterns, with less to redeem them than Rhoda had. His longstanding opinion was that, for all her drawbacks, he had a good wife, as wives went. That was a closed question.
But heading home after a day’s work, he never knew ahead of time whether he would encounter Rhoda the charmer or Rhoda the crab. At a crucial moment like this, it could make a great difference. In her down moods, her judgments were snappish and often silly.
Coming into the house, he heard her singing in the glassed-in heated porch off the living room where they usually had drinks before dinner. He found her arranging tall stalks of orange gladiolus in an ox-blood vase from Manila. She was wearing a beige silky dress cinched in by a black patent-leather belt with a large silver buckle. Her dark hair fell in waves behind her ears; this was a fashion in 1939 even for mature women. Her welcoming glance was affectionate and gay. Just to see her so made him feel better, and this had been going on all his life.
“Oh, HI there. Why on EARTH didn’t you warn me Kip Tollever was coming? He sent these, and LUCKILY he called too. I was slopping around this house like a SCRUBWOMAN.” Rhoda in casual talk used the swooping high notes of smart Washington women. She had a dulcet, rather husky voice, and these zoomed words of hers gave what she said enormous emphasis and some illusion of sparkle. “He said he might be slightly late. Let’s have a short one, Pug, okay? The fixings are all there. I’m PARCHED.”
Henry walked to the wheeled bar and began to mix martinis. “I asked Kip to stop by so I could talk to him. It’s not a social visit.”
“Oh? Am I supposed to make myself scarce?” She gave him a sweet smile.
“No, no.”
“Good. I like Kip. Why, I was flabbergasted to hear his voice. I thought he was still stuck in Berlin.”
“He’s been detached.”
“So he told me. Who relieved him, do you
know?”
“Nobody has. The assistant attaché for air took over temporarily.” Victor Henry handed her a cocktail. He sank in a brown wicker armchair, put his feet up on the ottoman, and drank, gloom enveloping him again.
Rhoda was used to her husband’s silences. She had taken in his bad humor at a glance. Victor Henry held himself very straight except in moments of trial and tension. Then he tended to fall into a crouch, as though he were still playing football. He had entered the room hunched, and even in the armchair, with his feet up, his shoulders were bent. Dark straight hair hung down his forehead. At forty-nine, he had almost no gray hairs, and his charcoal slacks, brown sports jacket, and red bow tie were clothes for a younger man. It was his small vanity, when not in uniform, to dress youthfully; an athletic body helped him carry it off. Rhoda saw in the lines around his greenish brown eyes that he was tired and deeply worried. Possibly from long years of peering out to sea, Henry’s eyes were permanently marked with what looked like laugh lines. Strangers mistook him for a genial man.
“Got a dividend there?” he said at last.
She poured the watery drink for him.
“Thanks. Say, incidentally, you know that memorandum on the battleships that I wrote?”
“Oh, yes. Was there a backlash? You were concerned, I know.”
“I got called down to the CNO’s office.”
“My God. To see Preble?”
“Preble himself. I hadn’t seen him since the old days on the California. He’s gotten fat.”
Henry told her about his talk with the Chief of Naval Operations. Rhoda’s face took on a hard, sullen, puzzled look. “Oh, I see. That’s why you asked Kip over.”