The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Reaching the second floor, he turned right and followed the bundle of transmission wires and cables stretching down the corridor to the signals office, where he hoped to get some good news about the Strathallan survivors. He had known Eisenhower for a helluva long time, but he had to admit that he didn’t understand the man. If Ike wasn’t worried about Kay, he ought to be. She was a sweet girl, smart as a whip and true-blue loyal, not to mention beautiful and sexy. Unless Butch missed his guess (he hardly ever did, when it came to things like this), she was in love with Ike, in spite of being engaged to somebody else. The Boss should have put her on the plane with Tex and Telek and the rest of the official family instead of stowing her on that troopship, hoping to keep her out of sight of the photographers. Butch understood why he’d done that, although he thought it was cowardly. Ruth (Butch’s wife and Mamie’s apartment mate) had written that Mamie was really ticked off when she saw the photo in Life magazine. Ike’s little flirtation with that girl in the Philippines had apparently gotten under his wife’s thin skin. But then Butch had to admit that he’d never been crazy about Mamie, whom he viewed as a self-absorbed female who bossed everybody around her—including her husband—as if she were the three-star general.

  He opened the door to the signals office and went in, wincing against the deafening din of the teletypes and typewriters clattering under a thick cloud of cigarette smoke. The setup here was still primitive—the cryptographic machines were located in the bathroom, perched on a piece of plywood laid across a monstrous claw-footed bathtub—but if there was any definitive news about the Strathallan, Signals would have it.

  No soap. But there was one piece of news. The crippled ship, under tow, had exploded and sunk. It was reported that there were some seventeen lifeboats and an unknown number of life rafts still out there, waiting to be picked up. The HMS Verity and several other destroyers were in the area. Survivors would likely be taken to Oran.

  And that was it. Glumly, Butch went upstairs to the motor pool to find a driver for the General’s Christmas trip to the front. Kay wouldn’t be here to drive her new Cadillac.

  • • •

  “I know you told the major.” The colonel narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Tell me.”

  Shivering, Kay clutched her still-damp coat around her. She could usually find something to laugh about in even the most frustrating situation, but she was about to run out of patience—and strength. Her knees trembling, she leaned against the desk.

  “Our troopship was torpedoed at oh-two-hundred,” she said, reciting the now-familiar line. It was late in the afternoon and she had already told her story to a guard, a lieutenant, a major, and now to this colonel, sitting with a phone at his elbow at headquarters in Oran. “I spent the next ten hours in a lifeboat, floating around the Mediterranean, watching depth charges explode. I was picked up by the HMS Verity and disembarked here in Oran. I am a member of General Eisenhower’s personal staff. His office will want to know that I am safe and will issue my transportation orders. If you will just pick up the telephone and call the AFHQ at the St. George Hotel in Algiers, I would be grateful.” She took a deep breath and added, since the colonel appeared to be the boss in this place, “And if you could check and see if there is a Lieutenant Colonel Richard Arnold in this sector, I would appreciate that, as well.”

  The colonel turned to the major, who was standing by. “Cranston, be a good chap and see if you can find Arnold.” He looked up at Kay, frowning over round, metal-rimmed glasses.

  She knew how disreputable she looked. Unlike some of the survivors, she still had her shoes, but the hem was ripped out of her skirt, she’d lost her tie and two of the buttons from her blouse, and her hair was stiff with dried salt. She pulled herself up and spoke as briskly as she could.

  “If you don’t mind, Colonel. AFHQ, St. George Hotel, Algiers. General Eisenhower is probably not available, but you can ask for General Beetle Smith, his chief of staff.”

  “Uh-oh,” the colonel said under his breath, and Kay almost smiled. The Supreme Commander probably seemed safely remote, but Beetle’s reputation for unbridled ferocity must have already made itself felt. “Ah, anybody else?”

  “Major Ernest Lee,” Kay said, more kindly. “The General’s ADC. Or Harry Butcher, his naval aide.”

  The colonel began to put through the call and while they waited, thought to ask Kay if she wanted a chair and a cup of coffee. She accepted both gratefully, clutching the hot mug in both hands and feeling the liquid scald her throat and the weariness invade her bones. She found she was holding herself rigid to keep from trembling.

  It took nearly ten minutes, but at last Butch came on the line. “Kay?” he asked eagerly, almost shouting. “Kay, is that really you? We got word of the sinking this morning, and we’ve all been worried sick. You’re safe? You’re not hurt?”

  “Yes, it’s really me, Butch,” Kay said, hanging onto the phone as if it were a lifeline. “And yes, I’m safe—although I must say, it was all a bit . . . dodgy.”

  “Wonderful, wonderful. That’s very good news.” There was a brief flurry of voices in the background. “Hang on. I’m putting you through to the Boss. He’s just come in and he wants to talk to you.”

  Kay felt her heart race. She hadn’t expected that Ike himself would—

  “Kay,” he said gruffly. “Kay, thank God you’re not hurt. Was it bad?”

  His voice was so unspeakably dear that she wanted to cry. “Let’s just say that I’m glad you ordered Telek to go by plane.” She made her voice as light as she could. “I had to row. He might have had to swim.” She could hear the relief in Ike’s chuckle.

  “When you get here,” he said, “you’ll have to teach our boy some manners. He peed in Beetle’s hat last night.”

  “Oh, no!” Kay exclaimed, laughing. “I hope Beetle forgave him.” But her heart sang our boy.

  “He was ready to snatch him bald. But the little guy will sure be glad to see you.” Ike’s voice deepened, and there was something in it she had never heard before. “I will, too, Kay.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, holding his words close to her, smiling. “Thank you, General.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Then, briskly, Eisenhower said, “Very good. You tell whoever’s in charge there to find you a place to spend the night. Beetle is sending a plane for you first thing tomorrow.” He paused. “I’m headed for the front early in the morning. When you get here, I want you to take a day or two to rest. Then we’ve got work for you to do. A new car to drive, too. And your job as recreation director is waiting. You can start planning the New Year’s Eve party.” He chuckled again. “We have something to celebrate.”

  She was still smiling when she handed the phone to the colonel. “Thank you,” she said. “General Eisenhower said that he would appreciate it if you could find a place for me to stay tonight. He’s sending a plane—”

  “Kay?”

  That voice. Stunned, she turned. Standing in the doorway, Dick was staring at her as if she were a ghost.

  “Kay, what the hell are you doing here? Why aren’t you back in London? How—”

  “I was on my way to Algiers,” she said, “but my ship got torpedoed—”

  And then Dick’s arms were around her and his mouth was on hers, and there was nothing more she could say.

  After a few moments, the colonel cleared his throat and stood up. “Arnold, if it’s not too much trouble, do you suppose you could find this, er, soldier a billet for tonight?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Dick said with a grin. “You damn well bet I can!”

  CHAPTER EIGHT:

  “We’ve Got a War to Win”

  North Africa

  December 1942

  “I still can’t believe you’re here,” Dick said, as he bundled her into the borrowed jeep. He said it again at least twice as he drove her to the cramped apartment he was sharing with two other officers. He found her some towels and she took a bath and washed her hair, the first time since
she’d left London two weeks before. What’s more, she was able to lounge in a bathtub filled with hot water right up to her chin, not just the paltry six inches allowed in water-rationed Britain. For those moments, all she could think of was the luxury of hot, hot water and the bliss of being clean.

  While she was bathing, Dick had found a pair of pajamas for her, several sizes too large. Then he sat her down at the table while he scrambled eggs with K-ration chopped sausage and served them with toasted khobz el dar—Algerian “bread of the house,” he said—and a most welcome glass of robust Algerian red wine.

  “Eat first,” he commanded. “And then you can tell me just how in the bloody hell you managed to get to Algeria.”

  Under Dick’s constant gaze, she practically shoveled in the food, since she’d had only a sandwich and a candy bar since the shipboard farewell party. Once she was finished, she talked and he listened. She told him how Eisenhower had asked her if she wanted to go to North Africa with his command, how she had jumped at the chance to be near the front, where he was—Dick, that is—and how she and the others had escaped from the sinking ship. It had all worked out, except that she had lost her trousseau—her nighties and silk undies—when the ship went down.

  “If I’d just left everything in my torpedo bag, I’d have it now,” she said. “But we were so close to the end of the voyage. I thought we were safe.”

  “Your trousseau?” he asked disbelievingly.

  She nodded. “I came to Algeria because I hope we can get married just as soon as my divorce from Gordon is final. That’ll be in June.” She took a breath. “It’s what I want, Dick. It’s all I want.”

  It was true. She’d had a lot of time to think on board the ship and later, in the lifeboat. She was attracted to Eisenhower, yes—who wouldn’t be? He was charming and charismatic and powerful. But her future lay with Dick. They would be married by summer. The war might keep them apart for a while, but after it was over, they would have the rest of their lives together. She had a lot to say and the words tumbled out.

  But Dick seemed unusually quiet, not his normal happy-go-lucky self. In the letters he wrote after the invasion, he said he’d seen some serious skirmishes. He didn’t actually say that he had killed anyone, but she supposed he had, and that might have changed him. Mostly, though, he seemed to have trouble believing that she had actually come all the way from England just to be with him. Every now and then, he’d shake his head and mutter that he couldn’t imagine that Eisenhower would ask a civilian—a woman—to drive him in a war zone.

  Finally, he said, “You must be one helluva driver, Kay.”

  “Well, yes, I guess I am,” she said. “The General thinks so, anyway.” Like a shadow, the thought crossed her mind that Dick might be jealous. She put out a hand. “Aren’t you glad I came?”

  “Of course I’m glad,” he said defensively. “I’m surprised, that’s all. You could have given a guy a little warning.”

  “Warning of what?” she asked. “I was headed for Algiers. If you want to blame somebody for my being here in Oran, blame the German sub that torpedoed us.”

  “I’m not blaming anybody. Really, I’m glad you’re here, Kay. I love you, you know.” He looked at his watch. “Sorry, but I’m going to be late for duty if I don’t leave right now.”

  She gave him an appealing look. “You couldn’t get somebody to stand in for you—just for tonight?”

  He shook his head. “I’m the duty officer. We’re shorthanded as it is. Everybody has to do his share. We’ve got a war to win, you know.” He managed a lopsided grin. “Anyway, you need to get some sleep, precious. You’re dead on your feet.”

  It was the word precious that undid her. She had held up so far without tears, even when others in the lifeboat were weeping, but now she began to cry.

  He folded her in his arms, kissed her softly, and said, “Sleep. We’ll work it out, kid. We’ll have time. We’re on the same continent, aren’t we?” He grinned crookedly. “What else could we want—except maybe a few more hours.”

  She knew Dick had to go, and she had to get some sleep. The General’s plane was coming in early. She knuckled the tears from her eyes and whispered, “Yes, you’re right. We have time.”

  Time. As she was brushing her teeth with Dick’s toothbrush, she reflected that tonight was perhaps the sweetest time that they had spent together since they met—he scrambling eggs for her, she wearing his pajamas—but they were still a little uncomfortable with one another. That was the thing about wartime romances. She and Dick had only been able to piece together an hour here and a couple of hours there, with long stretches of empty time between the latest goodbye and the next hello. Whenever they came together, it was as if it were the first time, the first tentative touching, the first hesitant kiss, always just getting acquainted, the exhilarating magic of a first encounter lighting up all over again. Even their intimacies had been rushed, the two of them hurriedly stripping out of their clothes and, afterward, pulling them on hastily—no time to lie together, to talk softly, to linger in the sweetness. She had spent many more hours alone with Eisenhower than she had with Dick, and that would likely be true until the end of the war.

  And now, pulling Dick’s comb through her still-damp hair and looking at herself in his shaving mirror, she realized that it had been naive to imagine that coming to North Africa might allow them to spend more time together. He was in Oran and she would be with Eisenhower in Algiers. On the map, the two cities were only a couple of inches apart. But it was two hundred miles by road, and the road, Dick said, was a nightmare. And anyway, this was war. Officers had responsibilities, like his tonight. They couldn’t just hop into a vehicle and drive off for a date in another city. What’s more, he was doing his best to get a regimental command at the front in Tunisia, which would make things even harder.

  The thought of Dick’s going into combat made her shiver, but what could she say? He was a career army man, keen to serve where his service would matter most, intent on putting his duty above everything—and everyone, even the woman he loved. And that woman would soon be his wife, an army wife. As long as there was a war to fight, she had better get used to coming in second.

  And as she climbed into Dick’s bed, she thought that she now knew one important thing among the many uncertainties. She was committed to Dick. She had given him her heart. He was a good man living through a hard time. It wasn’t fair to be with him and think of Eisenhower, so she wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t.

  She pulled up the scratchy woolen blanket, making herself a promise. She would put Dick first in everything she thought and felt. That was her duty. The General was out of reach and out of bounds. She would do her job for him, and that was all. That was all.

  She fell asleep thinking that she had to stop thinking about Eisenhower.

  • • •

  When the Flying Fortress landed on the muddy Maison Blanche airfield outside Algiers the next morning—Christmas Eve—Kay found Tex waiting for her in the misty rain. He was holding an umbrella over his head and an army-issue raincoat over his arm.

  “Boy, are we glad to see you!” he said, relief written all over his round, sunburned face. “I don’t mind telling you that the office was pretty dismal when we heard you’d been torpedoed. The Old Man plodded around like Gloomy Gus until he got word that you’d been picked up.” He draped the raincoat over her shoulders. “You’re all in one piece? No serious damage?”

  “No damage,” Kay said. “Just a little disreputable.” Her uniform was a wreck. The only thing about it that could pass muster was the tie. Hers had gone down with the ship and Dick had found one to replace it.

  “The uniform we can replace,” Tex said, as they walked from the plane to his car. “The Boss told me to take you straight to your billet and order you to get some sleep.” He handed her a brown paper bag. “Pajamas and cigarettes. Don’t come to the office until you’re ready.”

  “Smashing,” Kay said, taking the bag gratefully.

/>   When Tex dropped Kay at her billet, she discovered that she would be staying temporarily in the nurses’ dormitory of the Clinique Glycine, a French maternity hospital only a few blocks from AFHQ. She spent the rest of Christmas Eve sleeping in a pair of rough-cotton pajamas on a narrow bed in a spare, chilly, white-painted room. She woke briefly to the sound of women’s voices singing a French carol, then fell asleep again.

  On Christmas morning she borrowed a comb from a French nurse across the hall—the French she had learned long ago came in handy—and did her best to pull the tangles out of her hair. After breakfast in the hospital dining hall, she walked to the St. George, savoring the strangeness of this new and very foreign place. The morning sun was shining and below her, the alabaster city cradled a blue, crescent-shaped bay. Beyond, reaching to the distant horizon, lay the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean. The Germans regularly bombed the city, Tex had told her, but they usually hit the harbor area, where she could see several tethered barrage balloons, floating like silver fish in air the color of water. The streets around the hospital, lined with luxurious French villas, had been spared. If there was a war here, Kay thought, there was no sign of it in this peaceful green neighborhood.

  But AFHQ was a different matter. The elegant St. George Hotel sat behind a hedged courtyard brightened with hardy white oleanders and red geraniums and centered with a cascading fountain. A café was there, its tables topped by baskets of oranges and lemons, and the fragrance of fruit and sound of bubbling water filled the air. But the tables were empty, guards armed with machine guns stood watch over every entrance, and the place bristled with men in uniform, striding here and there as if the success of the war depended on their getting where they had to be in the shortest possible time. It was the same sort of brisk purpose, Kay thought, that General Eisenhower had imposed on Grosvenor Square when he first arrived. But here, today, she felt a taut wariness in the air, like invisible thrumming power lines, that had been lacking in London. No one was smiling, no words were exchanged. People seemed more than usually apprehensive, throwing watchful glances over their shoulders. Something must be going on, she thought as she went into the lobby and asked directions to Eisenhower’s office.