by Paula Byrne
Jack’s sailing experience proved invaluable to him, and he joked to Kick that ‘this job is somewhat like sailing in that we spend most of our time trying to get the boat running faster, although it isn’t just to beat Daly for the Kennedy cup – it’s the Kennedy tail this time’. He was his usual upbeat self with that vein of self-deprecating humour that Kick shared and loved: ‘That bubble I had about lying on a cool Pacific island with a warm Pacific maiden hunting bananas for me is definitely a bubble that has burst.’ He told her that he couldn’t even swim because of a fungus in the water ‘that grows out of your ears’.7 He asked her to say hello to some of their English friends.
Kick wrote back to say that she was sunning herself in the garden of Sissy Gore: ‘still recovering from a rather hectic trip over. That’s about all I can say on that point!’8 She told Jack that London seemed quite unchanged: ‘food is very good – blitzed areas are not obvious’. Lady Astor had written her a note of welcome but was away at Plymouth. Many of her friends were in the country: ‘Everyone is very surprised & I do mean very surprised to see me.’ She confided in Jack that ‘There’s much more anti-Kennedy feeling than I imagined and I am determined to get my stories straight as I think I’ll get it on all sides.’9
While she was waiting to see what she was going to be assigned to, she was having a ‘terribly gay’ time. ‘Party about every week’, she told Jack. What she didn’t tell him was that one of the first people who had rushed to see her was Billy Hartington.
She had seen Tony Rosslyn (the former Lord Loughborough, who had now inherited his grandfather’s earldom) who, as soon as he heard that she was back, had come to call at Hans Crescent, clutching a bottle of champagne. Tony played ping-pong with some of the GIs and chatted to them. ‘I thought how amazed some of them would have been if they knew they were talking to a real live English Lord.’10
Tony then took her on to the 400 Club where she bumped into many old friends. She told her family that she had made a resolution not to discuss anyone ‘because people do nothing but gossip these days. They are just so sick of the war that in order to get away from it they spend their time ruining people’s reputations.’11
Tony Rosslyn wrote to Jack to reassure him that Kick was being well looked after: ‘She is in great heart, looks divine & is surrounded by Beaux in her leisure time.’ He bemoaned the fact that she didn’t seem to be interested in any of her beaux, including himself: ‘she is just the sort of girl I’d like to marry but I’m not the right type for her Jack & might make her unhappy’. He talked about the religious differences and the problem of raising children together: ‘however . . . I don’t suppose she’d have me if I was the last thing on earth’.12
Tony also wrote to Joe, telling him how popular Kick was at Hans Crescent: ‘I also saw her beat the pants off an American sergeant at “pingpong”.’ He lent her a bicycle to get around town. He little knew that this would soon help to make her the poster girl of the American war effort: the American Red Cross Girl riding her bike. He took her to the cinema and when they left she jumped on her bicycle, wobbled and then fell off, smashing a bottle of pine essence he had given her as a present. The liquid spilt over her uniform and she and Tony descended into tears of laughter. He thought her unchanged except she was prettier than ever with the new hairstyle and a ‘greater air of poise and self assurance’.13 She teased him about having acquired a few grey hairs since she last saw him.
Kick couldn’t understand the GIs who disliked the British and everything about them, ‘the warm beer, the climate (I’ve slept with three blankets every night)’. She only ever experienced the British and England through rose-coloured glasses. Despite rationing, the cold weather and the privations of war, she saw only what she wanted to see, telling her family that she was dining on ‘lobster, ice cream, chocolate cake, chicken salad’ and sipping cocktails most nights.14 After a party for the Free French, she wrote in her diary that ‘It staggered me that a party here in London after four years of war could resemble the old days so much.’ She was blind to the deprivations, the dreadful food and the blackout.15 She noted that although a band called the Flying Yanks played the popular ‘jitterbug’, the ‘Britishers danced sedately on’.
She wrote to her ex-boss Frank Waldrop to tell him how different her life was compared to the time when she was living in Prince’s Gate as the Ambassador’s daughter. Her work as a journalist had hardened her ‘for come what may’. Her love for the British remained undiminished: ‘You will be glad to hear that I am more pro-British than ever and spend my days telling the GIs about that great institution “the British Empire”.’ ‘There’ll always be an England’ was her cheery farewell.16
Kick was excited about her reunion with Billy on 10 July 1943. How would he find her after four long years apart? He travelled down from Yorkshire and they met at the Mayfair Hotel, where they had dinner and celebrated their reunion with a bottle of champagne. They went on to the 400 Club until 3.30 and then walked home together in the rain.
36
Sister Kick
You’ll never be happy in America now that England is in your blood.
Nancy Astor to Kick Kennedy
The day after her reunion with Billy, Kick set off for morning mass at Farm Street in Mayfair. She met Billy again later that day. They visited his cousin Arthur ‘Boofy’ Gore, son of the Earl of Arran. Along with his wife Fiona, they all talked about the havoc that war had ‘wrecked with our lives’.
Back at the Red Cross, she learnt to dance the jitterbug (‘it really is difficult’) and went to bed early ‘to the sound of ping-pong balls flying across the net’.1 The next day she wrote to the ‘dearest little Kennedys’. Gossip was circulating around London that Billy and Kick were close to announcing their engagement, and some were even putting bets on when they were going to announce it publicly: ‘It really is funny to see people put their heads together the minute we arrive at any place.’ She told her siblings that ‘Some people have gotten the idea that I’m going to give in. Little do they know. Some of those old Devonshire and Cecil ancestors would certainly jump out of their graves if anything happened to some of their ancient traditions.’2
She dined with A. J. ‘Tony’ Drexel Biddle Jr, Ambassador to the Polish and other Allied governments in exile, at his residence in Brook Street (‘Only house in London where ice cream and chocolate cake are served’), where she noted drily that in the course of a spirited evening’s conversation ‘A few more characters and reputations hit the dust.’ She thought Mrs Biddle ‘very nice but rather hard’ whereas Tony Biddle was charming: ‘Adores Jack and Joe. Thinks we should rent them out.’3 On the way home, she stopped off at the Dorchester ‘for a dance or two’. The next morning she worked at the Club all day (‘After the tea dance I thought I’d die if I ever saw another GI’), and then cycled around Hyde Park: ‘the Serpentine looks as peaceful as ever’.4
The following weekend she lunched with her friend Jean Ogilvy, who was now Lady Lloyd, having married Lord Lloyd, a lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, who inherited his title following the death of his father, a former Governor-General in Bombay. On a whim, they took the train to Cliveden to see Nancy, Lady Astor. Kick felt it was like ‘old times’ to be met by Arthur the butler, and take tea on the lovely, spacious terrace. She thought that there ‘it would be easier to forget about the war than any other place I know’. She was amused that the much older Lady Astor (she was now sixty-four to Kick’s twenty-three) played three extremely active sets of tennis during which she ‘never stopped talking and rushing around the court’, though Kick ‘finally managed to beat her’. Lady Astor’s first words to Kick were: ‘the Pope is an out and out Fascist, you must marry over here. You’ll never be happy in America now that England is in your blood.’
Cliveden was now a Canadian military hospital, and Lady Astor spent much of her time helping out. Kick recorded that her hostess had sent a bottle of champagne to ‘some old soldier who literally couldn’t keep a thing down�
�. Over dinner with three Canadian doctors, Nancy regaled them with anecdotes about her time in Russia where she had met Stalin. She had asked him why his enemies were shot without benefit of trial. The interpreter went white with shock, but Stalin, nonplussed, replied: ‘this is war against the capitalist system and I am simply killing off my enemies’. She told the company that in the old days she preferred Hitler and Germany to the Bolshies and Stalin. Kick was, as ever, charmed by Lady Astor: ‘her vitality, alertness is simply unbelievable’. She wrote later in her diary: ‘This war has been a great shock to her nervous system as much as anything else. Four sons in it, and living through the horrible bombings of Plymouth are enough for any woman but she still keeps up her tremendous spirits.’5
The following morning, Kick was served breakfast in bed: ‘How glorious it felt to lie lazily on these cool, white sheets and be waited upon.’ After a quick game of tennis, she headed back to the Red Cross: ‘the club is as depressing as ever’.
In London she improved her acquaintance with Fred Astaire’s sister Adele, who had given up her own stage career when she married Billy’s uncle. Kick found her ‘full of charm’, but noted that she was very critical of various other socialites. Then there was dinner with William Douglas-Home: ‘He is quite fantastic in his beret and as a captain. Is he a phoney? I don’t know.’6
One of Kick’s qualities, shared with Jack, was being a good listener. She was struck by the war talk of a distinguished Eighth Air Force radio operator, Charles Patrick, who had just completed twenty operations and had received his ‘Purple Heart’ when he was wounded in a raid on St Nazaire. He told her that the Germans were ‘great fighters’, to be respected, and she loved to hear the air force slang: bombs were referred to as dropping ‘eggs’. She noted, perhaps thinking anxiously of brother Joe, that the pilots ‘definitely do not fly after 25 ops’. Patrick told Kick that the European ‘theater of operations [was] much tougher than the Pacific’. She would think twice about these words when she heard the news about Jack’s near miss in the Pacific.
On 29 July 1943, responding to Jack’s reproach about telegrams, she wrote him a long, newsy letter describing how nice everyone had been to ‘Sister Kick’. She told him how overwhelmed she felt by the welcome she had received. In Washington there had been a lot of criticism of their father by her fellow Americans. By contrast,
Now here are the British who are directly concerned and not a peep out of them. Of course a lot of it I can put down to British reserve which feel that some things are better left unsaid but most I blame it on their ability to make friends which last all our lives. They are slow about it at first but once made then its lasting – wholly and completely.7
Kick had confided in Jack about the ‘anti-Kennedy’ feeling, but her return to war-torn London had done much to restore the family image. She was truly in her second home, among a people to whom she had grown devoted.
She confided in Jack that she had spent time with Billy at his Eastbourne home on the south coast, which had been heavily blitzed, but she loved it there. They had managed to get hold of some peaches, and walked on the beach: ‘For 24 hours I forgot about the war.’ She confided her feelings to Jack: Billy ‘is just the same, a bit older, a bit more ducal but we get on as well as ever. It is queer as he is so unlike anyone I have ever known at home or anyplace really.’
Billy, as handsome as ever in his uniform, had grown in stature. The war had brought out the best in him. He was trying to put the Dunkirk experience behind him, and was showing a new sense of confidence. He was now a captain in the Guards, and was shortly expected to stand for Parliament, taking leave from the army to begin his campaign. Kick, with her interest in politics, was delighted.
But she also mentioned to Jack the insurmountable barrier to their relationship: ‘I know he will never give in about the religion and he knows I never would. It’s all rather difficult as he is very, very fond of me and as long as I am about he’ll never marry.’ Having for once revealed her deepest feelings and concerns, she reverted to her jokey tone: ‘It’s really too bad because I’m sure I would be a most efficient Duchess of Devonshire in the post-war world and as I’d have a castle in Ireland, one in Scotland, one in Yorkshire and one in Sussex, I could keep my old nautical brothers in their old age.’8
She was, however, keeping her options open and dating other men, such as William Douglas-Home: ‘I can’t really understand why I like Englishmen so much as they treat one in quite an off-hand manner and aren’t really nice to their women . . . That’s your technique isn’t it?’ She closed off, ‘Well, take care Johnny. By the time you get this so much will have happened. The end looks nearer now than ever.’9
Kick could never have known how prophetic her words would be. Four days later, on 2 August, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri ploughed through PT 109, slicing it in half. The hull was ripped in two, the fuel tanks burst into flames. Just before this happened, Jack had written to his parents: ‘I myself am completely – and thoroughly convinced that nothing is going to happen to me.’10 But at the moment of impact he thought: ‘This is how it feels to be killed.’11 Of the thirteen crew members, two were killed and three others badly injured.
The PT was reported as lost. A few days later Motor Torpedo Squadron 2 held a funeral mass for Jack and his crew. Joe Kennedy, in Hyannis Port, was informed, but he told nobody, not even Rose. He strongly believed that Jack was still alive and was waiting to hear some news. He carried on as usual, taking the younger boys riding, not letting anyone see his concern.
And Jack was not dead. He and his men endured a gruelling seven-day ordeal waiting to be rescued. After the PT had been hit, Jack rescued one of his injured men and swam him back to the wreckage of the boat with the other survivors. In the morning, the remaining bow section began to sink, forcing the men to swim 3 miles to a tiny island in the distance. As Jack swam, he pulled ‘Pappy’ McMahon, who was clinging on to a towrope with his mouth. Exhausted, the men reached the beach and collapsed. After sleeping for most of the day, Jack swam out at night to seek help. By dawn he was so tired that he gave himself up to the current, which washed him back to shore.
The men swam to another island, where they found limited supplies of food and drink and a canoe. After a few days, two islanders arrived, scouting for Allies. One of the men handed a coconut to Jack, suggesting that he carve a message into the green husk. They took it to the nearest naval station. After six days they were rescued. The men had been without food and drink for almost a week. Jack’s back was badly hurt, and he was not in good shape.
The war needed a hero, and despite some criticism that Jack should have employed better seamanship (his was the only ‘highly maneuverable’ PT boat to be attacked by an enemy vessel), it was his conduct after the event that counted. He was front-page news and the family were ecstatic. ‘Kennedy’s Son is Hero in Pacific as Destroyer Splits his PT Boat’, screamed the New York Times.12 Telegrams and messages of congratulations poured in.
Jack scribbled a message to the family: ‘Dear Folks, This is just a short note to tell you that I am alive – and not kicking – in spite of any reports that you may happen to hear . . . Fortunately, they misjudged the durability of a Kennedy.’13 The family, without Kick and Jack, gathered at the Cape to celebrate the triumph in the Pacific and the Ambassador’s birthday. Joe Jr was on leave and had to endure endless talk about his younger brother’s heroism. Always fiercely competitive, he felt it keenly, and that night was heard weeping in his bedroom.14
Kick was especially proud of her brother. She wrote to tell the family that ‘the news about Jack is the most exciting I’ve ever heard’.15 She wrote to Jack himself: ‘Goodness, I was pleased to get your letter. Ever since reading the news in all the newspapers over here I have been worried to death about you.’ She told him how many of her friends had rung up with congratulations, and that Clare Boothe Luce (one of Joe’s former mistresses) was crediting his survival to the Catholic medal she had given him when he went to war.16
Inga got an exclusive interview with Jack for the Boston Globe, in which he modestly rejected the title of hero (the headline read, ‘KENNEDY LAUDS MEN, DISDAINS HERO STUFF’), and the wife of one of the saved men spoke to her about his courage: ‘When my husband wrote home, he told me that Lt Kennedy was wonderful, that he saved the lives of all the men and everybody at the base admired him greatly.’17 Kick, feeling out of the loop, wrote to Inga: ‘Please, please send me the article you did on Jack. I was so pleased by your letter as it was the first one I had with a report on Jack’s arrival home. Goodness I wish I had been there. I hope he doesn’t go back for a very long time.’18
37
Girl on a Bicycle
The Soldiers have been flocking in during the last two weeks. I really can’t see how this little Island is going to hold all the American troops that are arriving. Please send me any clippings from the American papers. One should be coming out soon of me on a bicycle.
Kick Kennedy1
Kick was bursting with pride about Jack’s heroism, but life at the Red Cross was much more exhausting than she had expected. Long hours and enforced cheerfulness were not easy. She wrote a letter to Jack to congratulate him and to tell him about her own war efforts: ‘It’s a great joy, a great job but sometimes you don’t know whether you are going to shoot yourself or that GI over there in the corner . . . God bless you . . .’2 She told her family that the Club Director and the Programme Director drove her ‘nuts’. The latter was a ‘Jewess, ex-stage actress, hard worker but very jealous of me’. She would tough it out, however, happy to ‘suffer them and stay in London’.3
