The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Child. Kay chuckled, not so much at the triumph over her fellow Irishman as at the name the President gave her. No one had ever called her child before. And later that evening, she and Mike Reilly buried their Irish hatchets over a beer in the kitchen. He was nervous about the President’s planned driving tour through the battlefields of the Medjerda Valley. Kay tried to tell him that the enemy had already surrendered and the area was secure and quiet, but he wasn’t easily reassured.

  The next morning, Kay met Eisenhower and Roosevelt with the Cadillac to drive the President on his tour. Their cavalcade was impressively military, with a radio car and a couple of jeeps full of armed MPs ahead of them and halftracks and weapons carriers behind, flanked by eight motorcycle outriders. As she held the car door open for Ike, she whispered, “Alone at last. Won’t we have fun today?” and Eisenhower chuckled.

  As usual, Kay had brought the General’s Scottie to Amilcar. When they left the villa, Telek sat on the front seat between her and a Secret Service agent armed with a submachine gun. But they were barely underway when Telek decided to scramble over the seat and into the President’s lap—perhaps because FDR’s jacket carried the scent of his Scottie, Fala.

  “Exactly what I wanted.” The President beamed, stroking Telek’s black ears. “All the comforts of home.” The little dog rode on FDR’s lap for the rest of the day, as they drove past one battle site and then another and Eisenhower described the hard-won fights of the previous year at Tébourba and Medjez-el-Bab and Longstop Hill, at Mateur and at Hill 609, where the untried American troops had redeemed themselves.

  Mike Reilly had given Kay a copy of the schedule they were to follow, with the time and location for the President’s picnic lunch (packed in a basket in the trunk of her car) clearly marked. But forty-five minutes and twenty miles from their planned destination, the President pointed to a grove of eucalyptus trees on the north bank of the Medjerda.

  “That’s a pretty place for a picnic,” he said. “Let’s have our lunch there.”

  Kay swung off the road. The jeep behind them followed and the vehicles in front screeched to a stop and made a quick U-turn. In a moment, the MPs had piled out and encircled the Cadillac, backs to the General’s car. The Secret Service man got out. Kay got the picnic basket and began to open it. But Ike said, “I’ll do that, Kay. I’m pretty good at passing sandwiches.”

  To Kay, the President said, “Come back here, child, and have lunch with a dull old man.” He patted the seat beside him.

  Ike grinned. “Go ahead, Kay. I don’t think he’s propositioning you.”

  “I’m disappointed,” Kay said, and the President chuckled.

  Kay and Ike traded places. Eisenhower handed out their sandwiches—ham, with cheese and lettuce—while the President asked her about driving ambulances in London during the Blitz and her life in Algiers. He had the gift, she realized, of seeming genuinely interested in the small details of an ordinary person’s life, and she found herself telling him about London, then working at Allied headquarters in Algiers and living with the WAC officers. “Your American WACs are wonderful women,” she said. “They work so hard and contribute so much.”

  “Indeed,” the President said, around a mouthful of sandwich. “Well, then, why don’t you come over to our side? You’d make a fine WAC, my dear.”

  This was a question Kay had already thought of, but when she had asked Beetle, he’d told her it was impossible. “It’s a tempting invitation, sir. But your rules make it rather difficult. I’m a British citizen.”

  “So I understand. But rules can be broken, you know. Especially when the President says so.” FDR leaned forward. “General, is there any dessert in that basket, or will I have to wave my magic wand?”

  But Mike Reilly was approaching. “Mr. President, we’ve been here longer than I like.” He cast an apprehensive glance over his shoulder. “We should move on now.”

  “Nervous Nellie,” FDR muttered. He grinned at Kay. “You’re lucky, child. You have only one boss to please. I have dozens.”

  Kay drove the President to the airfield, where they said goodbye and he was put aboard the airplane for his flight to Cairo. As they drove back to the General’s villa, Ike said, “I’m flying to Cairo tomorrow evening, to meet with the President and the Prime Minister.” He paused to light a cigarette. “General Marshall will be there, as well.”

  “Oh, dear,” Kay said, half under her breath. “Do you think they’ll announce . . . I mean, will they tell you—” She looked up to catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. “About command of Overlord, I mean.”

  “They might.” Ike gave her a lopsided grin. “When it comes, it’s likely to be a big, formal announcement. The British, the French, the Russians—they’re involved, too. Cairo would be a good setting, especially with Marshall there.”

  A man was leading a camel loaded with sacks of oranges along the edge of the road and Kay moved over to pass. “It sounds like you think they’re going to name General Marshall.” Her heart felt as dark and heavy as a chunk of lead.

  “It seems likely. But who knows?” Ike pulled on his cigarette. “Anyway, there’s no point in worrying about it. We’ll find out eventually. And in the meantime, why don’t you go to Cairo with me?”

  “That would be smashing!” Kay exclaimed. Then, cautiously, she added, “But how can we? I mean, won’t it look—”

  “No, it won’t. I’ll ask a couple of the WACs, too. Not to work,” Ike added quickly. “You girls can go shopping and have some fun.”

  So that’s why Ruth and Nana were with Kay, Beetle, Mickey, and the Boss when they boarded a four-engine C-54 for the night flight from Tunis to Cairo. They flew at night because daylight flights were too risky, and the General didn’t want to have to run a fighter escort all the way to Cairo. The workday had already been long and demanding, so after the plane took off, Mickey served drinks while they played a few rubbers of bridge. Then the pilot turned the lights down and everyone took their seats and fell asleep, lulled by the loud drone of the engines.

  But not Kay and Ike. They sat together in the darkened rear of the plane, whispering, touching, kissing. For a brief hour, they were just two people in love in the midst of war, holding on to each other as the world threatened to pull them apart. Kay stopped thinking of Overlord and Ike being returned to Washington, and lost herself in the sweetness of his kiss.

  After Ike had gone to sleep, Kay moved to the seat facing him, where she watched him with a deep, yearning tenderness, thinking how wonderful it would be if she could wake beside him every morning—even as she reminded herself that all they had was today. Today, not tomorrow. Just today. Years later, she would remember the bittersweet contradictions of that hour with a poignant longing. And she would think that what she and Ike had shared in each other’s arms in the back of the darkened plane was an act of love as deeply intimate as a physical encounter.

  It was all they had. It was enough.

  • • •

  Eisenhower woke that morning to one of the world’s most memorable sights: sunrise over the pyramids. The pilot of their C-54 was flying low, giving his passengers—those who were awake—an incredible birds-eye view of the ancient Egyptian monuments to the power of dead kings.

  But the sight didn’t lighten Eisenhower’s mood. He lit a cigarette and leaned back in the seat, thinking of what lay ahead at the conference in Cairo and far to the north, in Italy, where the Fifth Army under Mark Clark was pounding the so-called Winter Line. Meanwhile, Monty was pushing his Eighth Army up the east coast of Italy, aiming to swing in behind the Gustav Line toward Cassino. It would mean bitter fighting across mountainous terrain, pushing men and equipment through cold rains, freezing mud, and icy snows. It wouldn’t be quick, and it wouldn’t be easy.

  To do the job right, Eisenhower knew that Clark and Alexander would need more men and more equipment, and more and then more, and that Churchill would back their demands with the full force of his authority. Some reinforcements were a
bout to be deployed: mountain-trained Algerian and Moroccan troops were scheduled to arrive in Naples before Christmas, and Ike himself was planning to move to a new forward headquarters at Caserta, where he could be closer to the front and to the real challenges of the war.

  But his task here in Cairo was not to argue for more troops and equipment for Clark and Alexander. He intended to report that the short-term purposes of the Italian campaign had already been achieved: the capture of the Foggia airfields and the port of Naples, important for the resupply that would ensure the taking of Rome. Now, all available troops and equipment must be dedicated to the cross-Channel invasion—the “second front” that Stalin demanded. And the commitment had to be made as speedily as possible, so the commander of the cross-Channel invasion would know what resources he had to work with.

  Eisenhower stared out the window, feeling the tension rise in his gut. In his career as a professional soldier, he had become accustomed to waiting for orders, waiting to learn what the future held, or just . . . waiting. He had moved from place to place and rank to rank, not by his own volition but at the will of the men to whom he reported. Oh, he gave his share of orders; the Mediterranean campaign had gone forward under his direct command. But war, he knew, was waged between two poles: the possible and the probable. Its outcomes were always contingent, never certain. No general ever forgot, as Patton had once put it, that he was entirely the pawn of the fickle gods of battle. Whatever planning he did could be undone in the blink of an eye by the weather, by an inept subordinate or an unexpectedly adept enemy, or simply by some goddamned rotten luck. All a man could do was soldier on, take whatever came, and make the best of it.

  That was what he would do, he supposed, for Churchill had let him know what was coming. A few days before, Ike had flown to Malta to meet with the Prime Minister and his Chiefs of Staff. There, Churchill had made it clear that he was supporting General Marshall as the commander of Overlord. Ike had tried to mask his bitter disappointment. If he couldn’t have Overlord, he would much rather remain as Allied Commander in the Mediterranean, where at least he’d be close to the fighting in Italy. He had said as much to Butcher, whose journalist buddies all predicted that Ike would be going to Washington. Where, Butch said confidently, he would be “the very best Chief of Staff the army had ever had.”

  Ike was sour. “They’ll bury me at Arlington in six months.”

  “Nah,” Butch said. “You won’t like it, but you’ll do it because you’ll have to. You’ll do whatever you’re asked to do because you’re a good soldier.” He’d given Ike a slantwise look. “And it’ll make Mamie happy. No doubt about that.”

  Mamie. Eisenhower pulled on his cigarette. Butch was right. She wanted him back in Washington. She wanted the two of them to move into the army chief’s big house on Generals’ Row at Fort Myer, where she could unpack her crates of china and crystal and put up new curtains and drapes and manage the household staff and a full social calendar. He’d be sitting behind a desk at the Pentagon, hating every goddamned minute, and she’d be bustling around in her element.

  Mamie, he thought again, and sighed. If he tried, he could sometimes still see her as the vivacious young girl he had courted in San Antonio, when he was young and self-impressed and eager to find a wife who would be an asset to his army career. He’d been looking for a beautiful young woman who was above him socially (at the time, that had seemed important) and yet would devote herself unquestioningly to him and his work. Mamie had done that and more, and he was grateful for all she had given him.

  But he was more likely to think of her now with a half-puzzled, half-ironic detachment, as if she were the wife of one of his brothers. She still sparkled and charmed, but with a shallow girlishness that wasn’t entirely attractive in a fifty-year-old woman. He loved her, he supposed, but they had no common interests except their son, and John was a man now, with his own life. If Mamie had ever been interested in his work, it might have been different. But she had set down a firm rule that he was not to bring the army home with him. In all their years together, he had never shared as much of his work with Mamie as he had shared in the last months with Kay.

  Kay. He glanced at the seat opposite him, where she was still sleeping, her head tilted to one side, her mouth softly relaxed, her hair an auburn aureole around her delicate face. He had never gotten into the habit of putting words to feelings, except when he was writing to Mamie and managed to call up a few scraps of romantic endearments from the westerns he liked to read. The thought of his letters to his wife made him uncomfortable, for he knew very well that they were meant to placate and reassure her. But what he wrote in the letters weren’t lies. He was only leaving a few things out, that’s all. He and Mamie had been married for over a quarter of a century, for chrissake. She was his wife, the mother of his son. He wasn’t lying when he said he loved her. Of course he loved her.

  But not in the way he loved Kay. His glance lingered on her face. He knew how much he would miss her constant companionship, her deep interest in his work, her readiness to listen as he talked out problems. Even more, she was a desirable woman and willing. He knew that she would give herself to him without a second thought, simply because she loved him. All he had to do was ask.

  The plane was losing altitude now, lining up for the approach to Payne Airfield, south of Cairo, and he took one last, deep drag on his cigarette. Well, if he thought he could handle it, he might ask, if they were ever able to find a private moment.

  But maybe he wouldn’t. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Kay, because he did. He wanted her like bloody hell. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman, even Mamie, back in the beginning. It was because he wasn’t sure he could handle it. He was long out of practice, and wanting might not be enough to make it happen. He sometimes thought he didn’t know himself at all, but he knew himself well enough to know that.

  He put out his cigarette in the ashtray in the seat’s arm rest. Most of all, he wouldn’t ask because he was about to leave Kay’s life. Today or tomorrow or next week, Marshall would be named to Overlord and Eisenhower would be named to Marshall’s job. He would go back to Washington, to his wife. Another man might have exploited Kay’s willingness because he knew he was leaving. But that wasn’t the way he did things, and it wouldn’t be fair to her. Whatever was between them now would end in a few weeks. She would get on with her life, and he would get on with his.

  His gaze lingered on Kay’s sleeping face. Then he turned to look out the window again, at the desert that hid the secrets of so many dead kings.

  • • •

  In Cairo, Kay found herself, with Ruth and Nana, assigned to a private suite in the luxurious villa where the Boss was staying. Ike went off to the conference and the girls went shopping, astonished to see so many wonderful things available in the shops, as if there were no war. They were saving their money to splurge on a fine dinner, but it was fun to window shop. Later that evening, Eisenhower dined with General Marshall, while Kay and the girls went out to a nearby restaurant. Kay had gambari mashwi, whole grilled prawns, and roz bil molokhia—rice with a green vegetable cooked with garlic and coriander. It was simple but delightfully exotic, she thought.

  She had just gotten back to the villa when Mickey knocked at the door. “The General would like you to join him in a nightcap,” he said.

  Ike was waiting in the long, high-ceilinged drawing room, drinks on a table between two chairs. “Come here, Kay.” He held out his arms. She ran to him and he held her close for a long moment, his arms wrapped around her, his cheek on her hair—not a passionate embrace, just a sweet and loving closeness, and she reveled in it.

  After a moment, he let her go and stepped back. She searched his eyes. Was he about to tell her that he was going back to Washington? She pulled in her breath and held it, waiting, dreading what she might hear.

  But it wasn’t what she expected. “The conference is over and FDR and Churchill will be leaving tomorrow for Tehran, to meet with Stalin,�
� Ike said. “General Marshall has decided that I look ‘weary’ and need a little vacation.” He made a wry face, and Kay remembered that he always blew his top when anybody told him he looked tired. “Tedder has offered a C-47 for a trip to Luxor, for a tour of the Valley of the Kings. He’s even arranged for an archaeologist to be our guide. I’ll be gone for a couple of days. Will you come along?”

  “Would I!” she exclaimed happily. “Of course I would.”

  “We’ll be chaperoned.” He grinned ruefully. “I’m inviting the staff. And Elliott Roosevelt—the President’s son—wants to come with us.” He leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “I think young Roosevelt has a crush on you. And the President, too.”

  Kay rolled her eyes. “Well, they’re out of luck,” she said with a laugh. “Because I’ve got a crush on you.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear.” Ike pulled her back into his arms. After a moment, he said, in a lower, more somber tone, “I just wish things were different, Kay. If I knew I wasn’t going to Washington, I would love to . . .” He shook his head. “I hope you know what I’m trying to say.”

  “I know.” Her breath caught in her throat. Was this “little vacation” a prologue to the announcement she was dreading? She wanted to ask, but she didn’t want to hear the answer. She put her hand on his face and drew his mouth down to hers.

  Their kiss tasted like sadness.

  • • •

  In hellish heat, they landed the next afternoon in Luxor, checked into the famed Old Winter Palace Hotel, and walked through the streets, which were built on the site of the ancient city of Thebes. It was cooler in the desert evening, and after dinner, they strolled out in a group to see the temples, along what had once been a broad avenue lined with hundreds of human-headed sphinxes. In the shimmering moonlight, ruined statues of pharaohs, like pale stone ghosts, guarded the west bank of the Nile.