She was only a woman after all and burning with eagerness to tell him this exciting story. It had occurred to her that she was missing a lot of history, and she had gone to the editor who had accepted her Palestine report and inquired, “Why don’t you send me over to do the invasion of France?” He had been interested, and there had been an editorial conference in which they had put her through a grilling. The upshot was that they had made application to Washington and the request had been granted. She was not to get near the front—no woman was to have that high privilege—but she would follow behind the armies and write what she saw, subject, of course, to the censors. She had had to fill out half a dozen documents in quintuplicate, and to take half a dozen medical shots, and then they had shipped her across.
It was going to be not merely the greatest invasion in history, but also the most completely reported. Its Commander-in-Chief was a man who believed in publicity—loved it, swam in it like a fish in water—and he had sent that impulse all the way down the line. This was a people’s war, and the people were going to know everything about it that would not give help to the enemy. Army, Navy, and Air Force, all were going to have their historians, working in teams and equipped with filing clerks and secretaries, photographing outfits, messengers and chauffeurs and jeeps. All the important newspapers and magazines would have their correspondents, and these would wear uniforms and enjoy military privileges. The women would be “simulated” WAC’s—Women’s Army Corps, and one of them would be “Captain” Laurel Creston!
“When is it coming?” Lanny asked. It was the question in everybody’s mind, if not on his or her tongue. Laurel said, “No one is told, but there are many signs. Our men have been pouring through London, and all going south. Today I noticed what I believe is the crucial sign—the correspondents are disappearing. I wanted an item of information this morning and I phoned a colleague and was told that he was out. I tried another and it was the same. My curiosity was aroused and I tried half a dozen and got the same result. They have been told to disappear, without saying a word to anybody.”
Lanny answered, “I was struck by the number of uniforms on the streets. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The day I left Madrid the newspaper Arriba reported there were fifty American divisions in Britain and the same number of British troops equipped for combat. That means something over a million and a half. Of course it comes from German sources and represents what the Germans believe.”
“Or what they want the world to think they believe,” remarked the wife sagely. “Both sides are doing their best to keep the other in the dark.”
Lanny smiled and didn’t say what part he had been playing in that effort. He thought he would try out this observant lady. “There seems to be an impression in Madrid that the invasion will be by way of Holland,” he commented.
The answer was, “It could be.” He was amused to see her doing to him what he had done to her for so many years—keeping secrets!
V
Laurel’s first article was to deal with Britain on the eve of invasion. She had been here about a week and had been going about incessantly, interviewing all sorts of people and taking notes. A wonderful people, at a great moment in their lives; they had fought for survival and endured terrific punishment; now their rations were low but their spirits were high. From top to bottom in the social scale everyone knew what was coming, and Laurel hadn’t met one who doubted the outcome. The common people expressed their feelings with exuberance, for they were the most sociable of humans and full of what they called ginger. Even the upper classes unbent in the presence of a woman soldier, but never any heroics! Laurel told with amusement of an elderly dowager who had inquired, “My dear, have you seen the tulips in Birdcage Walk?”
Lanny’s reply was, “Let’s see them!” That was after they had had lunch and had decided to treat themselves to a holiday. No use hovering over the radio, for D-day couldn’t begin until the small hours of any morning, and there wouldn’t be a whisper about it meantime.
They strolled through streets crowded with traffic and looked at landmarks which Lanny could tell about, for he had been visiting here since childhood, off and on. Many of the landmarks were gone, alas; there were whole blocks that had been laid flat, and few streets that did not have gaps in them. Lanny compared them to the mouths of the Cockneys, who couldn’t afford dentistry, and when a tooth ached, out it came and that was the end of it.
Bombing was infrequent by now; but people had heard about new weapons on the way—the Nazis had been boasting about them over the radio for a year or more. By now most people had stopped taking them seriously. Lanny said this was a great mistake. His wife repeated what she had been told, that the reason for the delay was the successful bombing of Peenemünde, where the devilish things were being contrived. Lanny could have said, “I know quite a story about that,” but he didn’t. He expressed fear that the new weapon might be ready now, to be launched against ships and beaches. All conversational roads led to D-day.
They strolled in Hyde Park and admired the lovely flowerbeds, a source of delight which war had not taken from the people. There was a long path with lawns on each side, and this was the famed place where the Britons who never would be slaves came even in the midst of war to exercise their right of free speech. On a Sunday afternoon they would bring soap-boxes or light platforms and take their stand and begin to orate, and you could stroll along and take your choice of half a dozen different social doctrines and as many religious ones, not to mention astrology and numerology, the evils of tobacco, vivisection, meat-eating, and divorce. You might laugh and jeer, or ask questions, but never enough to keep the speaker from getting his proper hearing. Here and there a bobby strolled, keeping watch, but he seldom had anything to do; he never interfered with the speakers, not even if they called for somebody to murder the King. It was the British idea that the reason they never had assassinations was that they let everybody come here and blow off steam.
There was Rotten Row, a wide bridle path, with a walk for people, and a wooden railing between. Now there were few riders, for most had gone to war, and so had the horses. “What an odd name for a bridle path!” Laurel remarked, and her husband explained that it had once been the “Route du Roi.” He took the corruption as an expression of the old-time Englishman’s contempt for foreign lingo, and indeed for everything that wasn’t on his tight little island.
And then Birdcage Walk, a rather dull parkside walk, but made lively by the beds of tulips. They were of every color and pattern, and nature offered few brighter spectacles. Lanny recalled the days before World War I when his father had been doing business with Zaharoff, the munitions king, and they had called at the Greek gentleman’s Paris mansion. He had a Spanish noble lady whom he adored but couldn’t marry because she had an insane husband; the lady had loved tulips, and she had told a little American boy about them. “I remember bizarres and bybloemens,” the grown-up boy remarked, “but I have forgotten what is which.”
The flowers bowed gently in the wind—not a gale, but what the sailors would call a stiff breeze—and that brought their thoughts back to D-day. It was from the north, and Lanny said, “That will be bad on the beaches. They’ll hardly try it tonight.” It wasn’t until later that he heard the story, that the sailing had been set for the previous night but had had to be called off on account of bad weather. Now General Ike and his staff were in a dreadful state of anxiety. Their meteorologists expected the wind to die down, but they might be mistaken, and in any case there would be swells on the beaches. On the other hand, if the landing were postponed, it would have to be for another month, on account of the tides; and here were the ships in the harbor, many with troops already on board, and all exposed to enemy bombers; here was a vast armada approaching from the Atlantic, four thousand vessels in all, and no man could guess how many U-boats lurking in wait for them. To go or not to go, that was the question.
VI
Husband and wife strolled back to their hotel. He ha
d been accustomed all his life to have what he wanted when he wanted it, and now he wanted a radio set. The hotel had none it could spare, so he went on the hunt and found a dealer who could not resist a double price for a week’s rental. It had to be brought right away, and it came to the “goods” entrance of the hotel in a wheelbarrow. After that the couple could sit and listen to news from all over the world: the Americans were swarming northward out of Rome, and it was not believed that the Germans could hold anything below what they called their Gothic Line, defending the River Po. The Japanese were being driven back in New Guinea, and oil plants were being bombed all over Germany. About that too there was a story that Lanny could have told, but his lips were sealed.
Concerning D-day you heard, from the Axis radio, speculation, skepticism, and ridicule, and from the British and American radio complete silence. Every day the BBC warned the French Partisans to make no move until they received instructions in the French voices which they had been taught to recognize. Every day the Axis threatened the conquered peoples with dire penalties and reassured their own people by quoting the victory promises of Unser Hermann, the fat man whom they adored, though not so ardently as formerly. “The invasion must be beaten off, even if the Luftwaffe perishes,” he had declared; it was that kind of war, and both sides were girded for a life-or-death struggle.
The couple talked about Göring, whom Laurel had never seen except in photographs without number. Lanny had told much about him, but nothing in recent years. He was amused to discover that he was slightly embarrassed by the thought of this old-time robber baron. Der Dicke had been his host, and Lanny hadn’t been able to help liking him in some aspects. Now, how much did Göring know, and what was he thinking about this false friend, this snake in the grass, this double-dyed deceiver? It might be that Hermann’s sense of humor would dominate, and he would burst into a loud guffaw over the idea of having been fooled. Lanny had made up his mind that that was how he himself would take it if ever he should meet the Nummer Zwei, in this world or the next.
With Hitler, of course, it would be different. Adi was a man with no trace of humor, a man who identified himself with God and took an offense not merely as lèse-majesté but as sacrilege. He was a man without mercy and, strange as it might sound, without guile. He thought of himself as a man of infinite guile, but he had gone and put it all into a book and had circulated seven million copies. To be sure, he could figure that nobody but Germans would read the book, and that if others read it, they would be unable to believe it. But in the end all the salient passages had been dug out and quoted, and all the world had caught up with this man of maniacial ego. Lanny could look forward with no pleasure to meeting him, in this or any other world. As for Laurel, she loathed him with a special and peculiar kind of horror. If Adi Schicklgruber were ever taken captive he need look for no mercy from “Captain” Laurel Creston of the Women’s Army Corps!
VII
The happy couple slept soundly, and no spirits or psychic entities came to warn them that this would be the great day. During that night a hundred thousand men boarded ships and landing craft in Southampton and other harbors on the English south coast. During that night another enormous convoy came stealing in from the Atlantic Ocean, a couple of thousand vessels, transports, freight ships, tankers, repair ships, hospital ships. Leading the way and bringing up the rear were hundreds of war vessels of every kind and size, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and small escort vessels darting here and there at speeds up to forty miles an hour. All were equipped with marvelous new devices which enabled them to detect vessels under the sea or on the surface, and planes of any sort in the air. Radio Detection and Ranging was its full name, and the ships had automatic guns of a hundred sizes which could be turned, some of them in the fraction of a second, upon an enemy object thus reported. Their anti-aircraft shells were provided with proximity fuses, incredible little radio devices which drew the shell close to the target and caused it to explode when it was near. Keep out of the way of this new scientific armada!
Sunrise had come early, and the landings had begun a few minutes later. Transocean, the German radio, began telling the news at once; the Germans had nothing to lose by telling—they could be sure the enemy knew what it was doing. The Allies, on the other hand, couldn’t be sure how much the Germans knew, so they kept silent. Lanny and Laurel listened to German accounts, in the English language. They told of forces coming ashore on the beaches, all the way between Le Havre and Cherbourg, a distance of about a hundred miles, and of swarms of parachutists being dropped upon the countryside, as far back as Rouen, forty miles from the sea. They were seeking to seize strategic points, destroy bridges, mine roads; the Germans said they were being mopped up, and that, of course, was according to formula.
Three hours passed before the BBC made itself heard, and then it was only one sentence. General Ike’s press aide, who had a good voice, interrupted a program with the statement, “In ten seconds I shall make an important announcement.” He solemnly counted, “One–two–three–four–five–six–seven–eight–nine–ten.” Then, “The invasion has begun on the northern coast of France.” Exactly ten words, like a telegram; the Americans were learning reticence from the British. Nobody was going to accuse them of boasting, of making claims, or in any way resembling Hitler and Göring and Goebbels.
Later in the day the correspondents were turned loose to tell what they saw with their own eyes; all carefully censored, but no less thrilling for that. Lanny, who had been over all the war zones, talking with all sorts of men, knew the details and could supply them to his wife. He had watched the landing at Algiers and had seen the paratroopers with their faces and hands blackened for night operations—the Moors had thought them a new race of dark-skinned people, amazing to behold. He had had to bail out from a plane, but he didn’t tell Laurel that; he described it as something he had been told about. Besides the parachutists there were airborne troops, whole divisions of them, packed into glider planes, towed by elastic ropes, and turned loose to glide to the ground. During the night preceding the landing the British and Americans had dropped four such airborne divisions and two parachute divisions, somewhere between sixty and ninety thousand men. The planes which had dropped them would return for more, and for loads of supplies. The men had ground-to-air radio equipment and could tell in code where they were and what they needed; within the hour it would be dropped to them.
Such a coming and going of planes had never been in the world before. During the entire time, a couple of weeks, that Lanny spent in London, the roar of planes was never once out of his ears. It was a sound like nothing else on earth, a multiple drone made up of hundreds of individual ones, no one of which could be distinguished. The sound never died for an instant, because as some planes passed, others came on, and all going north or south, pointing the way to the war.
The correspondents told of scenes near the beaches: the transports and large landing craft trailing barrage balloons, to keep divebombers away; the PT-boats darting in every direction, searching for U-boats; the great battlewagons parading slowly, several miles offshore, their spotter planes picking out the targets and radioing the data. There were a dozen American battleships here, more than there had been at Pearl Harbor; some had been sunk there, and had been lifted and made over, better than ever. Some of the old fellows were no longer fast enough for sea fighting, but here, protected by cruisers and a swarm of destroyers, they were moving fortresses, hurling a tremendous weight of metal against the smoke-blanketed shore line.
The Germans had had three years to fortify this coast. They had surveyed and plotted every beach and knew the exact angles and distances. They had mined the entire shore and all the paths, and had blocked every approach with ingeniously constructed obstacles. But on that fateful night midget submarines had crept in and laid beach markers, and a hundred or two minesweepers had worked all night, protected by airplane bombing. Channels had been cleared to the beaches, and up on the bluffs the paratroopers were
raiding the pillboxes and dropping grenades into the firing slots.
In some places all this succeeded, and the swarms of landing craft came through the surf and let down their ramps; the combat men poured out and raced over the sand and up the pathways to the top. In other places there was less success, and men were trapped on the beaches and had to dig themselves in under a hail of machine-gun fire. Many died in the surf and in the soft sand; tanks were wrecked and landing craft sunk; but more came, and all day long the guns of six hundred war vessels and the bombs from several thousand planes found out the enemy’s hiding places and wore down his fire power.
VIII
Lanny wanted to do nothing but sit by the radio, and his wife stayed with him. Once he saw tears running down her cheeks; he knew that she was thinking about those pitiful boys, some of them no more than eighteen, trapped in the midst of that concentrated horror, pouring out their life’s blood and enduring agonies of pain and fear. He said, “You’re going over there, darling. You asked for it, and you’ll have to keep your nerve.”
“I know, I know,” she said, “and I will.” But the tears continued to flow, and he shut off the radio and put his arms about her and let her sob on his shoulder. There was something about women which made this necessary; in some mysterious way, physiological or psychological, it did them good. When Laurel dried her eyes she said, “I’m all right now; I’ll see it through.”