The Winds of War

  “Ye gods, Briny’s 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 Bete from Radcliffe.”

  “You’re kidding. Briny?”

  “That’s right.”

  With an eloquent look, surprised and ruefully impressed, Warren changed the subject.

  The audience at Paul Munson’s lecture was surprisingly big. There 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. Like 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 of the 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 BOQ.

  “Why?”

  “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?”

  “Well, sir, this daughter of his, Janice, and I have sort of hit 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 Lacouture, 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 English is 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 course it does. 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 this way since 1937. He’s cracked on the subject. Now I say Adolf Hitler’s neither the foul fiend 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, se
ated 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 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 Dutch 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 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 goodbye 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 some
thing 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.”

  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.