Feints and deliberately misleading information played a part in deceiving the Nazi intelligence system, which was led to believe that General Eisenhower was traveling to Washington when in actuality he was settling into Allied headquarters on Gibraltar to oversee landings along the North African coast. German military intelligence appears to have been convinced that the more than 150 Allied ships that sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar were on their way to resupply Malta and sent Sicily-based Luftwaffe squadrons to Malta to bomb the convoy as it arrived. Instead, it was bound for Oran and Algiers. German planes had no targets.
And then Mamie saw how she had been fooled and why, and her disappointment turned to a proud delight as she understood that Ike’s stratagems, so cleverly and deceitfully planned, had fooled Hitler too.
• • •
A couple of mornings later, Mamie was still asleep when Ruth knocked on the door and shouted, “Mamie, it’s eleven o’clock. Come on, get up, lazy-bones! You’ve got to see this!”
“See what?” Mamie asked drowsily, pulling the blanket up to her chin. She had stayed up very late the night before, clipping articles out of the newspapers and pasting them in the scrapbook she was keeping. Her husband, her very own Ike, was being credited with the successful invasion of North Africa. There had been some sort of political disagreement about a French admiral named Darlan that she didn’t understand, but other than that, it looked like everything had gone Ike’s way. He was being praised in Washington and London. She was very proud.
Ruth knocked again. “You’ve got to see Life magazine!” she said excitedly. “Ike is featured in the Close-Up section—nine whole pages. There’s even a photo of you.”
“Me? In Life magazine?” Mamie jumped out of bed and pulled on a pink ruffled housecoat over her nightgown. Of all the incredible things that were happening, this was really the most astonishing.
“Yes, you. Come on, Sleeping Beauty. I’ve mixed Bloody Marys and I’ll make us an omelet. We’re celebrating!”
A few minutes later, Mamie was at the table with coffee and a Bloody Mary, leafing through the magazine while Ruth sliced mushrooms and grated cheese. The weekly Close-Up feature was an important section of each issue, reserved for very important people. And there was her husband in a full-page photo, looking incredibly handsome and military, three stars gleaming on his shoulders. The article was subtitled GENERAL EISENHOWER, WHO HATES TO MISS ANY “GOOD CLEAN TROUBLE,” GETS SET FOR PLENTY. The writer went on for page after page after page, telling Ike’s story from his humble beginnings in Abilene to his time at West Point and his staff positions in the peacetime army, praising his genius for organizing and especially his candor—his reputation for “telling the whole truth and withholding no secrets.” Which was just a little ironic, wasn’t it? The newspapers were still applauding him for tricking the Germans into believing he was doing one thing when he was doing something entirely different. There was a lovely family photograph, with Ike and his parents and his five brothers on the front porch of the Eisenhower family home in Abilene. There was also a photo of him with MacArthur in the Philippines, and—yes—a photo of the two of them, Ike and Mamie, grilling steaks in their backyard. Ike was wearing an apron.
“Oh, what a horrible photo of me!” Mamie shuddered. “Makes me look like a dreadful old hag. I could be his mother. I wonder if they used that one on purpose.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Ruth said, breaking an egg. “It’s probably just one they had in their files.”
Cringing, Mamie turned the page. “But this is a very nice photo. ‘General Ike’s official family,’ it says.” A grim-looking Ike was seated on a leather sofa, flanked by two officers, with a row of six people, all in uniform, standing behind him. “Look, Ruth, there’s Butch, on Ike’s right! And that’s Tex Lee, on his left. Tex was with Ike in San Antonio, too.”
Skillet in hand, Ruth came to look over Mamie’s shoulder. “And there’s Mickey McKeogh in the back row, next to somebody named Lord Gilbey. But who’s that on the other side of Mickey? That attractive young woman standing right behind Ike?”
“Gilbey is his driver,” Mamie said. “Ike says the staff calls him ‘Lord’ because he has such an aristocratic British manner.” She peered closer, trying to make out the fine print without her reading glasses. “The woman’s name is Kay something. Summersby, it looks like.” She read the caption aloud. “‘Pretty Irish girl who drives for General Eisenhower.’”
“Pretty? Well, that’s stating the obvious, wouldn’t you say?” With a teasing laugh, Ruth went back to the stove. “My goodness, Mamie, that young woman is more than pretty. She’s beautiful. And very elegant, in that smart uniform. If I were you, I’d be just a tad bit worried about that one. What has Ike said about her?”
Her eyes still on the photograph, Mamie forced herself to echo Ruth’s laughter. “She . . . she must not be very important.” Quickly, she turned the page. “He’s never even mentioned her.”
“Never mentioned her?” Ruth went back to the stove. “My dear, that’s exactly when I’d worry.”
PART TWO
North Africa and Washington,
November 1942–December 1943
CHAPTER SEVEN:
The Strathallan
England, North Africa
November–December 1942
Kay spent the night of the invasion huddled with her mum and sister over the wireless, listening to the BBC’s news broadcast, which was intermittently punctuated by the martial melody of “La Marseillaise.” The Allies were there, after all, to liberate French North Africa. But there was frustratingly little real information—deliberately, Kay was sure. The full scope of Torch was still secret.
Two days after the invasion, Kay went to the Grosvenor Square office to find out what was really going on. The Boss’s door was closed and the place seemed forlorn and empty without his commanding presence. But she heard from Tex—who was in touch via cable with the Allied headquarters in Gibraltar—that things were going more or less according to plan. Patton had taken Casablanca, and while the landings at Oran and Algiers weren’t exactly by the book, the troops had managed to pull them off. All three cities were in the hands of the Allies—the first Anglo-American victory of the war, won from the French, not the Germans.
Kay had heard enough talk about the invasion to understand its complicated political context. The troops that the Allies confronted in Morocco and Algeria were pro-German French, under the command of the pro-German government that Hitler had established in Vichy, in the so-called “free zone” of southern France. The dangerous liaison mission that had cost General Clark his pants had encouraged the Allies to hope that the French general Henri Giraud, recently escaped from a Nazi prison, would persuade the French North African troops to come over to the Allied side without a fight. They didn’t, quite, but they didn’t have the equipment—or the will—to put up a sustained resistance.
And it wasn’t Giraud who turned the trick. The cease-fire was arranged in a behind-the-scenes agreement that Clark negotiated on Eisenhower’s behalf with the Vichy French Admiral Darlan, giving Darlan control of North African French forces in exchange for his joining the Allies.
But the agreement had come under heavy fire. The Darlan deal saved lives, Eisenhower insisted, but when word got out, the newspapers called it a deal with the devil. The French admiral was almost universally viewed as a Nazi flunky, and the General was catching flak from both sides of the Atlantic for negotiating with him. “What the hell is this all about?” snarled Edward R. Murrow, the influential American broadcaster. “Are we fighting Nazis or sleeping with them?”
Germany retaliated, sending troops to occupy southern France. The French, afraid that Hitler would seize their fleet, scuttled what was left of it in the French port of Toulon. At the same time, Allied troops had begun to push east through Tunisia, aiming to trap Rommel’s Afrika Korps between them and Montgomery’s British Eighth Army.
“Like this,” Tex said, and took her
into the Boss’s office to show her the map. “It’ll be a cakewalk,” he added with a brash confidence that Kay would remember later, when all the costs were counted. “The Germans and Italians are pushing back, but we’ll be in Tunis before Christmas.”
Looking at the map, Kay guessed that it wasn’t going to be a quick or easy victory. And if Eisenhower’s command was in for a long campaign, she desperately wanted to be where he was. Tex and several other staffers had finished packing up the office and would be flying out on Ike’s B-17 in just a few days. Kay would travel by troop transport, so she would have to wait another few weeks.
“What about Telek?” she asked worriedly. Still a puppy, the Scottie had had a bad cold. “He could hardly avoid getting wet on board a troopship. I don’t think a long sea voyage will be good for him.”
“The Old Man says he’s lonesome for the little guy,” Tex replied. “He’s flying with me.”
“With his parachute, I suppose,” Kay said, with a quick laugh. “Let’s hope he won’t need it.”
Tex’s eyebrow went up. “If he does, I’m dead. The Old Man loves that dog like he loves his kid. Anything happens to Telek, he’ll skin me alive.” He gave her a look. “Getting everything done on your end?”
“I’m still working on it,” Kay said.
There had been complications with her assignment to Eisenhower’s North Africa command. She was a civilian, after all, and the General’s order had raised eyebrows both at Whitehall and at Grosvenor Square. But Beetle had pulled strings and the paperwork was finally complete. There were farewells to say to friends and family, goodbyes that were complicated by the fact that she couldn’t tell them where she was going.
Her mother guessed, though, and asked once more, and more plaintively: “Kathleen, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” This time, she added, “I just want you to be safe, my dear. I hate the idea that you might be where there’s fighting. I don’t want you to be hurt.”
Was she sure? No, of course not. Kay had the sense that the war had taken over her powers of decision-making. And anyway, if she was hurt, what of it? A little personal pain didn’t seem to matter when she thought of how many people were dead.
Kay’s communications with Dick had been intermittent. She had decided she wouldn’t tell him that she was coming to North Africa. If they couldn’t manage to get together, he wouldn’t be disappointed; if they could, it would be a lovely surprise. He had written the day after the invasion to say that he was safe. He couldn’t tell her where he was, of course (the censors would have blacked that out), but she knew that his unit was in Oran and was scheduled to go to the front at any time. He’d had good news from America, though. His divorce was final and they could get married when her divorce from Gordon went through in June.
“You’ll be mine, all mine,” he wrote exultantly, “for the rest of our lives.” All mine was underlined twice.
She read the letter with a curious kaleidoscope of swirling feelings: relief that Dick had gotten through the landing safely and pleasure at the thought that she might even be able to see him before he went to Tunisia. Perhaps they could be married before the summer. And as Dick’s wife, her dream of a future in the United States would finally come true. But her pleasure was complicated by the memory of those moments on the train with Ike, his birthday kiss, their goodbye kiss, the way his presence filled not only her waking hours but her dreams. Still, however powerful her attraction to him might be, it held no future. Dick was her future. Now that Ike was gone and she was no longer with him every day, it was a little easier to remember that.
So as she packed her suitcases (the same two elegant, brass-bound Vuitton cases she had taken to Europe when she was sixteen), she reminded herself that she was packing for a new life with Dick. It was pointless to try to shop for elegant things in wartime, but her friends at Worth’s had made two gorgeous ivory satin nightgowns and three precious pairs of silk crepe de chine panties for her. Those—with her grandmother’s diamond earrings, the pearl necklace her mum gave her for her sixteenth birthday, and a tiny bottle of My Sin perfume from Evie—were her trousseau. She also packed Dick’s letters and a bundle of family photographs. The rest was all military practicality: her summer uniform, woolly underwear, rayon stockings, an extra pair of regulation shoes, and the Beretta Ike had given her. And her just-issued gas mask and helmet, required accessories for travel to the war zone.
A few days later, Kay kissed Telek goodbye and sent him off with Tex on the General’s Flying Fortress. She was relieved when Tex cabled that the Scottie had arrived safely—and no, he hadn’t had to use his parachute.
Kay wasn’t so lucky. As it turned out, she had to row part of the way.
• • •
Early on the morning of December 8, Kay went to Euston Station to meet Elspeth Duncan, a stenographer on the Boss’s staff, and a contingent of five WACs newly arrived from the States. Together, they boarded a train for the long overnight ride to western Scotland. The next day, at the windswept village of Gourock on the bank of the Clyde estuary, they queued up in the icy rain, waiting to board the small tender that ferried them out to the Strathallan, moored a couple of miles offshore.
Built for peacetime pleasure cruises, the Strathallan had been designed to carry a thousand first-class and tourist-class passengers from the British Isles to India and Australia. When war broke out, the government had requisitioned her. Now a troopship, she had been repainted regulation gray and armed to defend herself against attack. On this voyage, she was crammed bulkhead to bulkhead with some 250 Scottish nurses from Queen Alexandra’s Military Nursing Reserve Service, American WACs, over 4,000 Allied soldiers, and a crew of 862. The convoy flagship, the Strathallan was joined by nearly two dozen waiting ships—troop transports, an aircraft carrier, corvettes, and destroyers. They sailed out of the Clyde and headed southeast, plowing through the stormy winter seas north of Ireland in an effort to avoid the German submarines that infested the Irish Sea.
But U-boats were still a looming menace along their route, and the convoy, sailing in formation, set a zigzag course. Lifeboat drills were held two or three times a day—and night. Kay got used to sleeping in her clothes so she could pull on her shoes and coat, grab her already-packed torpedo bag, and make her way to her lifeboat station—No. 12, B-deck, port side, aft—in under five minutes. There, they would stand in unmoving silence for fourteen minutes, exactly the amount of time (if they were ordered to abandon ship) it would take them to climb over the rail and into the boat. The frightening truth was, though, that there were only enough lifeboats for 1600 of the passengers and crew. The unlucky majority—3500 of them—would have to make do with rubber rafts, life vests, and prayer.
Crammed, Kay discovered, was the operative word. Besides herself, there were two other women in her tiny, airless D-deck cabin: Elspeth and Peggy Bourke-White, the Life photographer who had taken the “family” photos in London a couple of months before. They slept in a double-decker bunk and on a dirty mattress on the floor. There was no room to sit or dress except on the beds, and because there was no porthole and no ventilation, the cabin air was thick with clouds of cigarette smoke. They spent hours queuing up for meals and the toilets (which were unimaginably foul), doing lifeboat drills, and playing endless games of bridge. Whenever she could, Kay climbed the companionway to C-deck to fill her lungs with the fresh salt air. And every night before bed, she and the others checked their torpedo bags to be sure they had the things they’d need in an emergency: extra socks, a flashlight, candy bars, and whatever personal items they could stuff in. Kay’s bag also contained her precious silk undies, her nighties, her bits of jewelry, and Ike’s Beretta.
Three days out of port, the convoy ran into a savage Atlantic gale, with mountainous waves and bottomless troughs and rain and blowing spray so thick it hid their destroyer escorts. The Strathallan pitched and yawed and heeled at a terrifying angle. A flying sofa broke a nurse’s arm and a grand piano careened across a steeply tilted d
eck and splintered against a bulkhead. Lifeboat drills were reduced to once a day and meals to sandwiches—anyway, most of the passengers were too seasick to eat. Kay kept reminding herself that the storm was actually a bit of luck. A sub surely couldn’t hold aim long enough to torpedo them.
After days of rough seas, the weather finally calmed. On the evening of December 21, Kay and her cabin mates climbed up to B-deck for a look at the stars. But something else enchanted them.
“Lights!” Elspeth cried, clutching Kay’s arm. “Oh, look, Kay. Lights!”
“Where are we?” Kay asked wonderingly. Off to starboard, glittering lights were draped like diamonds along the shoulders of the mountainous coast and pooled in the dark throat of a bay. Lights were a magical sight, after so many long, weary months of blackout.
“That’s Tangier,” one of the ship’s officers told her. “We’ve entered the Mediterranean.”
Dawn brought more magic. A golden sun glazed an azure sea and Kay watched, open-mouthed, as a flock of majestic white pelicans circled over the ship. By mid-morning, though, the sea was churned to a frothy gray by the depth charges dropped by the convoy to discourage a pack of German subs reported to be in the area, and the pelicans flew along the tops of the waves, skimming up fish killed by the explosions. Late that afternoon, the ship’s loudspeakers announced that they would be disembarking at Algiers the next day. Kay and her friends happily unpacked their torpedo bags, tucked their valuables into their suitcases, and dashed off to celebrate at a rowdy Christmas party with popcorn, cookies, and a heavily spiked rum punch.
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