The General's Women

by Susan Wittig Albert

  “I haven’t met her,” Kay managed, and escaped as quickly as she could.

  The afternoon dragged on interminably. Kay wanted desperately to leave, but she felt that to be the first would be an admission of defeat. At last, to her great relief, two of the guests left together. As she found Mrs. Eisenhower to thank her and say goodbye, John came up to them.

  “I’m taking Kay sightseeing around Washington tomorrow,” he announced to his mother.

  Kay was flustered. “Oh, thank you, John,” she said hurriedly. “Really, you don’t have to—”

  “But I want to.” He stepped back, grinning boyishly at Kay. “And then we’re going up to New York to see Oklahoma!”

  “Oklahoma?” Kay stared at him, wide-eyed. “But I hadn’t expected—”

  Mamie broke in. “John, I am quite sure Mrs. Summersby doesn’t want to go to New York in this terrible heat. She—”

  “Of course she does, Mother,” John said easily. “Anyway, it was Dad’s idea. He arranged for the tickets. Wasn’t that thoughtful of him?” He slipped an arm around his mother’s shoulders. “Of course, we’d love to have you go along, but I know you don’t like crowds. I’ll be sure to bring you a program, though.”

  At the mention of Ike, Mamie seemed to wilt. “Of course, if it was your father’s idea . . .”

  “If you’re leaving now, I’ll give you a lift to your hotel, Kay,” John said. “I’m going downtown to meet some friends.”

  “Thank you,” Kay said. She couldn’t wait to get away from Mamie and her photo gallery—and the uncomfortable realization that, in at least one important way, she and Ike’s wife were very much alike.

  • • •

  “Well!” Pamela said, after Kay and John had left. “That woman is certainly a looker, even in uniform.” Critically, she added, “John obviously has no idea what’s going on. But then, he’s still just a boy.”

  Cookie nodded, agreeing. “I wonder if that’s the uniform she got from—” She turned around to make sure that Mamie was out of earshot. “From Ike,” she concluded, in a lower voice. “The one he had made for her when they were in North Africa.”

  “I understand that the General intends to have her commissioned as a WAC officer,” Diane Bracken said, picking the olive out of her martini. “My sister Rachel works in Colonel Hobby’s office in the Pentagon—you know, the WAC commander.” She popped the olive into her mouth. “Eisenhower’s request is apparently causing quite a flap over there.”

  “Commissioned?” Cookie rolled her eyes. “That’s ridiculous, Diane. Mrs. Summersby can’t be a WAC officer. She can’t even enlist in the WACs. She’s not an American citizen.”

  Pamela took a cigarette out of an engraved gold case. “She’s not a British officer, either, you know. She’s just a civilian volunteer.” She closed the case with a snap. “And Irish, to boot.”

  “Colonel Hobby is strongly opposed, Rachel says,” Diane replied. “She told General Marshall that it was a very bad idea. But Marshall got a note from the President, supporting the request.”

  “The President!” Pamela and Cookie exclaimed in unison.

  “That’s right,” Diane said. “It turns out that there’s no law that says a WAC officer has to be an American citizen. What’s more, there’s a precedent. Three of them, actually,” she added drily.

  Pamela tapped the tip of her Winston against the back of her hand. “Really?”

  “Really.” Diane tipped up her martini glass and drained it. “Last year, General MacArthur commissioned three Australian women—civilians, like Mrs. Summersby—as WAC officers. He didn’t even ask permission. He just did it.”

  “Well, if MacArthur got his WACs, Marshall will let Eisenhower have his,” Cookie said in a matter-of-fact tone. She flicked her lighter to Pamela’s cigarette and then lit her own. “Although you’d think he would see the request for what it is—simply a way for Ike to keep that woman on his staff, wherever he goes.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “Maybe he’ll even bring her here to Washington when the war is over.”

  “Oh, come now, Cookie,” Pamela scoffed. “You don’t really think Ike would do such a thing, do you? Not with his wife—”

  “Actually, I do think,” Cookie said. She lowered her voice again. “My Marv is working in Marshall’s office now, and he hears all the latest gossip. He says that Commander Butcher—Ike’s best friend—intends to divorce his wife and marry that American girl he met in Algiers. Molly, her name is.”

  Diane tilted her head. “I hadn’t heard that. How interesting.”

  “Oh, poor Ruth!” Pamela’s hand went to her mouth. “She and Butch have been married forever. Whatever will she do?”

  “Ruth can take care of herself,” Cookie said. She tilted her head toward the wall of Eisenhower photos. “But can you imagine what would happen to Mamie if Eisenhower divorced her to marry Kay Summersby?”

  “She would have nothing left to live for,” Pamela said in a pitying tone. “She’s already thin as a rail—why, she’d simply stop eating and waste away to nothing.”

  Diane gave them both a knowing glance. “Don’t you believe it, girls. I’ve known Mamie Eisenhower for twenty years. The woman may look like a fragile pink flower but she is made out of steel. If Ike tries something like that, she’ll fight tooth and nail. Kay Summersby is the one we should feel sorry for. She doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Cookie regarded her thoughtfully. “You may be right, Diane. Mamie certainly knows how to get her way.”

  Diane looked into her empty glass. “To tell the truth, the whole thing makes me glad that I’m no longer married. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have just a teensy one for the road.”

  • • •

  New York was sheer delight. Kay had always been enchanted by musical theater, but she had never seen anything like the energy and power of Oklahoma! After her work with the Worth dress designers, she thought she knew a little about costumes, but these fit the characters and moved with the dancers in a completely new and quite thrilling way. As she watched, she thought how wonderful it would be if, after the war, she could find work in the theater again.

  In contrast to bleak, gray, war-weary London, New York brimmed with delights, and over the next several days, Kay indulged in as many as she could, devouring chocolate and fresh fruit and shrimp (shrimp!) and thick, juicy American hamburgers and rich chocolate milkshakes. The skyscrapers were impossibly tall, the streets incredibly clean, the people amazingly plump and well dressed, and nobody had to flee from buzz bombs. Kay shopped, buying a silk blouse for her mother and filling the orders given her by her the WACs she lived with—orders for little luxuries impossible to find in England: nail polish and lipstick and perfume; scented shampoo; thick, creamy writing paper; a filmy scarf, even a girdle. For Telek, she bought a red dog collar. And for Ike, his favorite fountain pen, a Parker 51, green, with a gold cap.

  Kay loved New York. The city’s vitality was infectious. She found herself walking faster, smiling at strangers, even humming under her breath. Standing in Times Square, she promised herself that whatever happened, whatever future lay ahead, when the war was over she would come to New York.

  But it wasn’t long before the abundance that had so pleased her began to seem oppressive. She couldn’t help thinking of the empty shops of London, the buzz bombs falling on people’s homes, the soldiers hunkered down under wet French hedges, eating cold rations in the chilly rain. She thought of her MTC friends driving ambulances during the Blitz, the nurses struggling in the water around the torpedoed Strathallan or slogging through the mud at Kasserine Pass, the WACs working long, weary hours in the days before D-Day—while the women she had met in the Wardman Park sipped martinis and nibbled hors d’oeuvres and gossiped. For Americans, the war was safely “over there,” while for her and Ike, it was their work, their life.

  She was ready to go home.

  • • •

  It was Saturday when Kay got back to Bushy Park. She went straight
to headquarters, took off her cap, and opened the door to the Boss’s office.

  “Doesn’t anybody ever knock around here?” he barked. Then he saw Kay and was out from behind his desk in an instant. Kay closed the door and flew into his arms.

  That night, they celebrated her return with champagne, then sat in the garden talking late into the evening. She shared the events of the trip, and then—because she thought his wife might mention the party in a letter—said, “John suggested to his mother that she invite me to meet a number of friends. I felt I had to accept.”

  Ike frowned. “I didn’t think of that possibility. I hope it wasn’t too . . . trying.”

  “I didn’t enjoy it, to tell the truth,” Kay said honestly. “Mrs. Eisenhower was very nice to me, although I—” She stopped. She didn’t want to tell him what she had learned about his wife from the photographs in her apartment—and about herself. It wasn’t something she wanted to think about. “And John, of course, was an absolute angel,” she went on. “He took me all around Washington, and then to New York. Oklahoma! was—”

  “Smashing,” Ike said.

  She laughed. “Yes, it was, truly. It made me see musical theater in a whole new way. After the war, I want to do theater again. But perhaps backstage this time, in costume design. I loved the costumes in Oklahoma!”

  “After the war,” Ike said, “I want to go fishing.” He put an arm around her shoulders. “How would you like that?”

  “I love to fish,” Kay said simply. She didn’t ask him what he meant by the question.

  • • •

  There was another joyful homecoming a few days later, when Telek was released from his imprisonment at the kennel. When Kay picked him up, he jumped into the front seat of the car without an instant’s hesitation, as if he had done it just the day before. At the cottage, he ran straight to Ike, rolled over on his back, and begged to have his belly scratched. Then they took Telek outdoors and sat with their drinks as the little dog—wearing his new red collar—scurried happily around the garden, hunting for the bones he’d buried before he went to North Africa.

  “Just look at him,” Kay said with a laugh. “He’s like a little boy, home after his first year away at school.”

  “It’s damned wonderful to have him with us,” Ike said. “You’re right. He’s just like a little kid.” He was silent for a moment, watching Telek chase a butterfly. “Do you ever think of having children someday?”

  Kay turned to him. He had often talked about the fun of growing up with a houseful of brothers, and he’d said that he’d wanted a big family—four children, he thought, was about right.

  “I’ve always wanted to be a mother,” she replied. And then, impulsively, quickly, “I’d love to have your child.”

  He met her eyes. “Would you?” he asked gravely.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes.” She thought of Ike with a little boy on his lap, Ike with a boy on a horse. Of the three of them, father and mother and son, riding across a wild Irish moor—they would go to Ireland, wouldn’t they? Of fishing for brown trout in the River Ilen. And then coming home to a simple cottage where they would eat and talk and read in front of the fire until the child fell asleep and Ike carried him to bed in his arms. It was a lovely dream, an enticing, treacherous dream. And only a dream.

  “But I know it’s impossible,” she said quietly. There was Mamie, waiting for her husband, the walls of her elegant apartment lined with his photographs. A child—hers and Ike’s child—was out of the question. Surely he knew that.

  “It’s impossible now,” Ike said, and reached for her hand. “But after the war . . . You never know, Kay. Things may be different after the war.” He picked up her hand and kissed her fingers.

  There was nothing at all she could say to that—except hold it to her heart like a fragile, fugitive treasure. In the meantime, there was now.

  • • •

  In the United States that summer, Franklin Roosevelt—despite national worries about his health—was nominated for an unprecedented fourth term as president. In the Pacific, American troops liberated Guam and captured the Mariana Islands. In Italy, the Allies retook the city of Florence. In France, after heavy resistance, British troops freed Caen, on the left flank of the Allied advance. And in Germany, an assassination plot failed to kill Hitler and overthrow the Nazi government. In retaliation, some five thousand people were executed.

  In England, Eisenhower was moving his headquarters from Bushy Park to Normandy, where he would be closer to the fighting. Kay was helping to pack the office equipment and necessary files when she found the note in the General’s office log. While she was in the States, Ike had made the entries in the blue leather-bound diary that she usually maintained for him. PM for lunch, he had written on July 3. On July 5, Buzz bombs chased us to cover 6 times during afternoon. Later: Must go to Portsmouth. Wish I could get time to see Telek. And in another entry: Lee in Washington to talk to Hobby about K and WACs.

  She stared at the entry for a moment, her heart hammering in her throat. Talk to Hobby about K and WACs? She picked up the diary and ran into the General’s office.

  “‘Kay and WACs’?” she demanded, holding up the little blue book. “What is this, Ike? What’s going on?”

  He looked at her over the tops of his reading glasses. “I won’t be in Europe forever, you know. When the war is over, I’ll be going back to America. If you’re a WAC officer, it’ll be easier to take you with me. So I’ve started the process. I sent Tex to the Pentagon, and a note to the President. If you’ll recall, he promised to help.” He frowned down at the stack of papers in front of him, and then up again at her. “I hope that’s what you want. To go to Washington with me.”

  “I do,” she breathed. “Oh, Ike, I do!”

  There wouldn’t be a child; she knew that. He was married to Mamie. There would never be a child. But becoming a WAC and going to America with Ike—that was beginning to seem possible, and the hope of it made her heart hammer.

  • • •

  SHAEF’s new home was an apple orchard in Normandy. Eisenhower worked and slept in his trailer (the same one he had used at Southwick), and the rest of the house and office staff worked and lived in tents. They were only about twenty miles from the British front lines, and Kay could hear the artillery pounding away and every now and then, feel the thud of it beneath her feet. The General made his inspection trips by car, so she was behind the wheel of the big armored Cadillac nearly every day, piloting it through the narrow Normandy lanes toward the fighting. The roadsides were littered with burning tanks and the corpses of dead soldiers, sickening sights that made Kay want to retch, and frequent shelling made the trips dangerous. But the General was going, and she adamantly refused to let anyone else drive.

  August was a month of quick combat successes: the invasion of southern France, the taking of the port at Marseilles as well as Avignon and Toulon. Ike was impatient with Montgomery’s delays and petulant demands for more men and more supplies, but heartened by the crossing of the Marne and the bold advance of the American Third Army, now under Patton’s command. And then the event they had all been waiting for: the liberation of Paris—undamaged, despite Hitler’s orders to burn the city.

  They went to Paris on Sunday, August 27, just two days after the Germans surrendered the city. In a convoy of military vehicles, weapons carriers, and motorcycle escorts, Kay drove Eisenhower and Bradley down the Champs-Élysées, which looked just as it did when she had last seen it in 1939. The crowds of celebrating Parisians, drunk on freedom and French wine, spilled around the barricades and into the streets, tossing flowers and shouting “Vive la France! Vive la France!” Allied tanks and other armored vehicles filled the avenues, the Free French careened through the streets firing guns into the air, and young boys on bicycles were everywhere, attended by delirious dogs. Music filled the air, flags hung from all the windows, and the French tricolor, a joyful symbol of victory, hung from the Arc de Triomphe.

  Kay’s h
eart thrilled as she saw the flags. Freedom, they sang to the skies. Free once again! She knew there would be plenty of hard fighting before Hitler surrendered, but now that the City of Lights had been freed, the end of the war was at last in sight. The end of the war, and with it, a return to normal life. She could glimpse it here, on the streets of Paris.

  The General’s jeep had four stars on its red license plates and American, British, and French flags fluttering on its hood. By the time the convoy reached the circle around the Arc de Triomphe, people had recognized the car, and Eisenhower and Bradley were mobbed when they got out to pay their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The air vibrated with the hysterical cries of the crowd, and shouts of “Eisenhower! Eisenhower!” rang like a cannonade. Bradley managed to escape in a jeep, and a dozen MPs fought to clear Ike’s way back to the car. When he finally fell into the backseat, his face was smeared with lipstick, his tie was askew, and the sleeve of his jacket was ripped.

  “My God,” he gasped. “I didn’t think I’d get out of that alive.”

  Kay met his eyes in the rearview mirror. “They love you,” she said.

  “Nobody needs that kind of love,” he replied shortly. “They were holding on to me like grim death.” After a moment he leaned forward and put his hand on her shoulder. “Thank you for being here with me today, Kay—and for standing with me through all the hard work it took to get us here. There were times I doubted we’d make it.”

  “I didn’t doubt it,” she said, very quietly. “I never doubted it for a minute.”

  She felt the tears welling in her eyes and knew that today was a day she would never forget. The day she drove the Supreme Commander into a free Paris. The day she understood what the war was about.

  And glimpsed its end.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

  The End, But Not Quite

  France

  September 1944–May 1945

  For Kay, events moved faster that autumn, like a speeded-up newsreel, the frames flashing past so quickly there wasn’t time to see them, much less to think about them. Within a couple of months, Brussels, Lyons, Antwerp, Ghent, and Luxembourg were liberated. Operation Market Garden failed disastrously, and with it the hope that the war would end by Christmas. But in Eastern Europe, the Red Army rolled into Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, East Prussia, Romania. To the south, Allied forces landed on Crete, and Athens was liberated. In the Philippines, the U.S. Third and Seventh Fleets won the Battle of Leyte Gulf over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Philippine Islands.