Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

by The Winds Of War(Lit)

  We set the sea ablaze with petroleum, and fry the Germans we don't drown."

  Barrage balloons came in sight over the hills to the west. 'Ah.

  Here we are." Tillet pulled up under a spreading old tree.

  'Tortsmouth has two possible restaurants, but the city's taken a pasting. They may be short of crockery. I have some sandwiches and coffee in the boot."

  'Perfect." Pug trotted up and down the road, restoring circulation to his numb heavy legs, then sat beside Tillet under the tree. They ate the lunch wordlessly. Tillet appeared to have no small talk whatever. Pug did not mind, being more or less like that himself.

  "Look there," Tillet said, gesturing with the last of his sandwich. In the blue sky a patch of orange was flowering over the city, a barrage balloon on fire. "they're back today, after all.

  More coffee?"

  "No thanks."

  "Now, what's the damned fool doing hitting poor Portsmouth again?

  Yesterday he was going inland, where he should be." Tillet deftly packed the lunch things and got his binoculars. The air vibrated with the distant thump of A.A. firing and the hum of planes. "Shall we get along down there? I imagine it's a feint. It doesn't look like much of a show."

  "Right."

  Climbing in the car, Pug paused, and scanned the sky high to the east. "Look there, General." Tillet squinted skyward, saw nothing, and used his binoculars. His eyes widened. "Yes. That's more like it."

  He passed the binoculars to Victor Henry. The binoculars resolved the gray moving dot into swarms of airplanes moving north in tight V's across the cloudless blue.

  "Heinkels, a lot of log's, and some no's," Pug said. "More than a hundred of them."

  "No Stukas? They're sitting birds. Our pilots say it's hardly sporting to go after them."

  "I don't see any crooked wings up there. But they're pretty far off."

  "Care to join our observer corps, Captain Henry?" Tillet's Voice to him was slightly more cordial.

  More barrage balloons over Portsmouth burst into flame and went writhing lazily down in black smoke. Fires were burning on the docks; white smoke trails crisscrossed the blue sky. The car passed a black plane nose down, burning in a grassy field, its markings hidden by flames, By the time they reached Portsmouth, fire fighters were streaming water on the blazes, and people were out in the streets gawking. Though buildings were smashed and burning and rubble heaps blocked many streets, the town did not look anything like Rotterdam, or even some of the badly hit French towns.

  "Care to inspect the damage? You're welcome to, but it's a dreary sight. I'm thinking we might go straight on to the Chain Home station.

  Since Jerry does seem to be coming over today, you might find it interesting."

  "Sure thing."

  They had the ferry to themselves. The old wooden boat rolled nauseatingly on the little stretch of open water to the Isle of Wight.

  "People forget how choppy this Channel is," Said Tillet, clinging to a stanchion and raising his voice above the mind and the engine thump.

  "If the Germans do cross, they may arrive too seasick to fight.

  It's a factor."

  An olive-painted military car awaited them at the landing they drove across the bucolic island, passing one mansion after another shuttered and dead amid rolling wide lawns and shrubbery sprouting and flowering rankly. they saw no other car on their way to a cluster of iron and wooden huts around steel towers thrusting toward the sky, a grim blotch on the green holiday island.

  A tubby man with a scarlet face, the group captain in charge of the station, offered them tea in his little office, chatting about the raid On Portsmouth. He also mentioned with some pride a large sea bass which he had hauled from the surf at dawn. "Well, shall we have a look at how things are going? There's rather a large attack been laid on today, I believe."

  Victor Henry's first glimpse of British radar scopes at Ventnor, in a small stuffy room lit by one red light and foul with smoke, was a deep hock. He listened intently to the talk of the pale, slender man in gray tweed caned Dr, Cantwell, a civilian scientist, as they inspected the scopes'.

  But the sharp green pips were news enough. The British were miles ahead of the United States. They had mastered techniques that American ex.

  Plerts had told him were twenty years off.

  The R.A.F could measure the range and bearing of a ship down to a hundred yards or less, and read the result off a scope at sight. They could do the same to a single incoming airplane, or count a horde of airplanes, and give the altitude too. These instruments were marvels compared to the stuff that he had seen tested on the New York last year and that the Navy had ordered in large quantities. Pug Henry had two immediate thoughts: that the United States Navy had to get hold of this equipment; and that the British were far better prepared for war than the world knew. He admired the quiet sense of drama with which General Tillet had bowled him over. That was well done. But it all hung on the fact that they had these remarkable radars. Here was a moment of confrontation between America and England masked in a casual visit, in an offhand atmosphere, in a smoky, dim little room smelling of electric machinery, on a playground island deserted by the rich, facing the displaced Maginot Line guns.

  'We have nothing like this," he said.

  Then?" said Dr. CantweB, lighting a cigarette. "Are you sure?

  They're pretty far along at MIT, we understand, with this sort of thing."

  'I know what we've got." Pug saw on General Tillet's face, in the red fight, the shadowy gleam that comes of drawing a good hand of cards: a deepening of lines, a brightening of eyes, nothing more. "How the devil do you obtain such a sharp beam? I pressed our boys on this.

  The answer was that it was a question of stepping down to shorter and shorter wavelengths. Beyond a certain point you can't do that, they say, and still get the power to shoot out the pulses to any distance."

  The scientist nodded, his eyes almost shut, his face as blank as possible. But he too, Pug thought, was a happy man.

  Then, yes, that's the problem, isn't it?" he mumbled. "But they'll certainly get around to the answer. It's a question of tube design, circuitry, and so forth. Our cavity magnetron does a pretty good job, at that. We're not entirely displeased with it." "Cavity magnetron?"

  "Yes. Cavity magnetron. One gets rid of the grid in a vacuum tube, you see, and one controls current flow with an external magnetic field.

  That allows for the more powerful pulses. It takes a bit of designing, but your people will certainly work it up in due course."

  "No doubt. Got any cavity magnetrons for sale?" Both Tillet and Dr.

  Cantwell burst out laughing, and even the enlisted men at their scopes turned around and smiled.

  The scarlet-faced group captain peered at a scope where a boyish operator was chattering into a headphone. "Hullo, looks like we have another circus heading this way. Fanning up over Le Havre again. A couple of dozen would you say, Stebbins?"

  "Thirty-seven, sir."

  Excitement thickened in the dark room as reports came in from several scopes. A young duty officer wearing headphones strolled from scope to scope, making ngtes on a clipboard, talking to the operators.

  To PLig Henry's eye this was smooth expert work, like the controlled tumult in a submarine conning tower during an attack run.

  General Tillet said, "I take it you think rather well of our cavity magnetron."

  "It's a ma or breakthrough, general."

  "Hell. Yeas. Strange, isn't it, that warfare has come down to fencing with complicated toys that only a few seedy scholars can make or understand."

  "Pretty useful toys," said Pug, watching the duty officer write down the ranges and bearings that the radar operators were barking.

  "Exact intelligence of the enemy's location and movements, without disclosing your own."

  "Well, of course. We're damned grateful for our boffins. A few Englishmen did stay awake while our PO]iticians kicked away air parity and all the rest of our m
ilitary posture. Well, now that you've had a look, would you just as soon pop back to Londonr I thought we might have to stay here a day or two to see action, but Jerry's been obliging. We can break our trip overnight at some decent hotel, then whip up to London. A couple of people there would like a word with you."

  Outside 10 Downing Street a single helmeted bobby paced in the morning sun, watched by a few sightseers on the opposite sidewalk.

  Remembering the grim arrays of SS men in front of Hitler's marble chancellery, Victor Henry smiled at this one unarmed Englishman guarding the Prime Minister's old row house. Tillet brought him in, introduced him to a male secretary in a morning coat, and left. The secretary led him up a wide stairway lined with portraits-Pug recognized Disraeli, Gladstone, and Rariisay MacDonald-and left him waiting in a broad room full of beautiful old furniture and splendid paintings. Perched on a petit-point sofa, all alone, Pug had plenty of time to grow nervous before the secretary returned to fetch him.

  In a small hot cluttered room that smelled of old books and dead cigars, the corpulent old Prime Minister stood near the window, one hand on his hip, looking down at a spread of photographs on his desk.

  He was very short and very stooped, with graceful little hands and feet; he bulged in the middle, and tapered upward and downward like Tweedledum. As he turned and went to meet Victor Henry, his walk was slow and heavy. With a word of welcome he shook hands and motioned Pug to a seat. The secretary left. Churchill sat in his armchair, put a hand on one arm, leaned back, and contemplated the American naval captain with filmy eyes. The big ruddy face, flecked and spotted with age, looked severe an d suspicious. He puffed at the stump of his cigar, and slowly rumbled, "We're going to win, you know."

  "I'm becoming convinced of that, Mr. Prime Minister," Victor Henry said, trying to control his constricted throat and bring out normal tones.

  Churchill put on half-moon glasses, took up a paper and glanced at it, then peered over the rims at Henry. "Your post is naval attache in Berlin. Your President has sent you here to have a look at our RDF, a subject in which you have special knowledge. He reposes much confidence in your judgment." Churchill said this with a faint sarcastic note suggesting that he knew Pug was one more pair of eyes sent by Roosevelt to see how the British were taking the German air onslaught; also, that he did not mind the-, scrutiny a bit.

  "Yes, sir. We call it radar."

  "What do you think of my stuff, now that you've seen it?"

  'The United States could use it." Churchill uttered a pleased grunt. "Really? I haven't had an opinion quite like that from an American before. Yet some of your best people here have visited Chain Home stations."

  "Maybe they don't know what we've got. I do."

  "Well, then, I suggest you report to your President that we simple British have somehow got hold of something he can use."

  "I've done so." "Good! Now have a look at these."

  From under the outspread pile of photographs, the Prime Minister drew several charts and passed them to the American. He dropped his gnawed stub into a shiny brass jar of sand, and lit a fresh cigar, which trembled in his mouth.

  The colored curves and columns of the charts showed destroyer and merchant ship losses, the rate of new construction, the increase of Nazi-held European coastline, and the rising graph of U-boat sinkings.

  It was an alarming picture. Puffing clouds of blue and gray smoke, Churchill said that the fifty old destroyers were the only warships that he would ever ask of the President. His own new construction would fill the gap by March. It was a question of holding open the convoy lines and beating off invasion during these next eight months.

  Every day danger mounted, he said, but the deal was bogging down.

  Roosevelt wanted to announce the lease of Caribbean naval bases on British islands as a trade for the destroyers. But Parliament would be touchy about bartering British soil for ships. Moreover, the PrestihdeenBtriwtiashntefldeeat written guarantee that if the Nazis invaded and won, would not yield to the Germans or scuttle itself, but would steam to American ports. "It is ability that I won't discuss, let alone publicly record," Churchill growled. -The German fleet has had considerable practice in scuttling and surrendering. We have had none."

  Churchill added-with a crafty grin that reminded Pug a bit of Franklin Roosevelt-that giving fifty warships to one side in a war perhaps was not a wholly friendly act toward the other side. Some of the President's advisers feared Hitler might declare war on the United States. That was another difficulty.

  "There's not much danger of that," Victor Henry said.

  "No, not much hope of that," Churchill said, "I quite agree." His eyes under twisted brows looked impish as a comedian's. Victor Henry felt that the Prime Minister had paid him the compliment of stating his entire war policy in one wily joke. "Here's that bad man's invasion fleet. Landing craft department," Churchill went on, scooping up and handing him a sheaf of photographs showing various oddly shaped boats, some

  air viewed in clusters from the

  , some photographed close on. "A raggle-taggle he's still scraping together. Mostly the prahms they use in inland waterways.

  Such cockleshells will ease the task of drowning Germans, as we devoutly hope to do to the lot of them. I should like you to tell your President that now is the time to get to work on landing craft. We shall have to go back to France, and we shall need a lot of these. We have got some fairly advanced types, based on designs I made back in 1917- Look at them, while you're here.

  We shall want a real Henry Ford effort."

  Victor Henry couldn't help staring in wonder at this slumping, smokey"reathed puddle of an old man, fiddling with the thick gold chain across his big black-clad belly, who with three or four combat divisions, with almost no guns or tanks left after Dunkirk, with his back to the wall before a threatened onslaught of Hitler's hundred and twenty divisions, was talking of invading Europe.

  Churchill stared back, his broad lower lip thrust out. "Oh, I assure You we shall do it. Bomber Command is growing by leaps and bounds.

  We shall one day bomb them till the rubble jumps, and invasion will administer the coup de grace. But we shall need those landing craft." He paused, threw his head back, and glared at Henry. "In fact, we are prepared now to raid Berlin in force, if he dares to bomb London. Should that occur while you're still here, and if you don't consider it foolhardy nonsense, you might go along to see how it's done." The pugnacious look faded, the wrinkled eyes blinked comically over the spectacles, and he spoke in slow jocular lisping rhythms.

  "Mind you, I don't suggest you return to your duty post by parachute.

  It would save time, but might be considered irregular by the Germans, who are sticklers for form." Pug thought it was extremely foolhardy nonsense, but he said at once, "I'd be honored, of course."

  "Well, well. Probably out of the question. But it would be fun!

  wouldn't it?" Churchill painfully pushed himself out of his chair, and Pug jumped up. "I trust General Tillet is taking good care of you?

  You are to see everything here that you've a mind to, good or bad."

  'He's been perfect, sir." 'Tillet is very good. His views on Gallipoli I regard as slightly unsound, since he makes me out at once a Cyrano, a jackass, and a poltroon." He held out his hand. "I suppose you've seen a bit of Hitler. What do you think of him?" "Very able, unfortunately."

  "He is a most wicked man. The German badly wants tradition and authority, or this black face out of the forest appears. Had we restored the Hohenzollems in igig, Hitler might still be a ragged tramp, muttering to himself in a squalid Vienna doss house. Now, alas, we must be at considerable trouble to destroy him. And we shall."

  Churchill shook hands at the desk. "You were in War Plans and you may be again. I recommend that you obtain all our latest stuff on landing craft. Ask Tillet."

  "Yes, sir." "We shall require great swarms of the things. Great.

  .. swarms!"

  Churchill swept his arms wide,
and Victor Henry saw in his mind's eye thousands of landing craft crawling toward a beach in a gray dawn.

  "Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister."

  General Tillet was waiting in his car. They went to a room in the Admiralty where huge wall charts showed the disposition of the fleet.

  In the blue spaces of the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean, the little colored pins looked sparse and lonesome, but the sowing around the home islands bristled thick. Pins in a thin line marked the great-circle convoy path across the Atlantic; Tillet traced this line with his pipe. "There's the problem. We breathe through that tube. If Jerry can cut it, we've bought it. Obviously we can use some old destroyers you've got lying around from the last war, not doing much of anything."