by James Philip
Curtis LeMay badly needed to kick something or better, drop a bomb on somebody. The trouble was that neither of those things was going to do any good.
FUBAR!
Fucked Up Beyond All Repair!
Sometimes things were so screwed up it didn’t do any good shouting. Punching out somebody’s lights didn’t help. Neither did starting the witch hunt early. There would be plenty of time for that later.
“What went wrong in the Malta raid?” He asked suddenly, his tone gruffly sour but utterly without bluster.
“We don’t know. The Brits had fighters at altitude when our boys came onto the target. Beyond that, we’ve no idea what happened, sir.”
Curtis LeMay forced himself to take a very deep breath.
Every which way this gets worse!
He’d been wading through ever deeper shit ever since he’d arrived at Barksdale four hours ago. They’d be blaming him in DC by now. Assuming they hadn’t already sent out the lynch mob!
“Why didn’t the 3rd Bomb Wing press home the attack on Gibraltar?”
“The operations protocol was to abort the mission if the Spanish hadn’t suppressed the Brits’ carrier based air within a hundred mile radius of the designated IP for the bomb run...”
“Where was the initial point?”
“Thirty-eight thousand feet five miles north of the centre of Cadiz, sir.”
“Fuck!” The Chief of Staff of the Air Force spat. “My people in DC say the Brits have gun camera footage of their fighters chewing up our birds over Malta! With fucking thirty-millimetre cannons! Our birds!”
“Yes, sir.”
“You better have this place locked down so hard anybody trying to take a leak on the perimeter fence gets his dick shot off or I’ll want to know why, Slim!”
Barksdale AFB had in fact been locked down ever since the first B-52 took off three days ago.
“How’d our birds refuel in flight, Slim?”
“According to the operations order,” Babcock belatedly realised that asking his old friend to read every word of every sheaf of paper he had just liberally distributed on the desk probably wasn’t a good idea. “There were two KC-135s out of Anchorage on the way out; and two pre-positioned KC-135s out of Aviano AFB in Italy on the way back. The mission parameters assumed airspace over the Austria, Czechoslovakia and West Germany was safe...”
“Safe?” Curtis LeMay glared.
That was when there was a staccato knock at the door.
When this was ignored the banging became almost frantic.
“What?” The Chief of Staff of the Air Force bellowed like an enraged Bison with a Lacota warrior’s arrow sticking in his rump.
Lieutenant-Colonel Harvey Goldsmith, Curtis LeMay’s Communications Officer, stumbled into the room. He was a little dishevelled and he was breathless.
“General Wheeler ordered me to inform you,” the newcomer gasped, “that unless you take,” another gasp, “his call in the next five minutes he will order your arrest for...”
“Aw, shit!” Curtis LeMay groaned. “I don’t believe this!” He got up, shaking his head like a heavyweight picking himself off the canvass wondering where the haymaking left hook had just come from. “Calm down, son,” he said wearily to his Communications Officer. “Bus Wheeler ain’t going to do no such thing. Not unless he was suddenly born yesterday, and take it from me, that ain’t the case.”
It was several minutes before the Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force arrived in the underground Command and Control Centre of Barksdale Air Force Base and raised the violent red scrambler handset to his head.
“If you’ve tracked me down to Louisiana just to tell me that we’ve got a problem, Bus,” he drawled laconically, “you ain’t telling me anything I don’t already know.”
General Earle ‘Bus’ Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces of the United States of America had, it seemed, been biting off and spitting out pieces of the Bakelite phone in Washington.
The public image of Curtis LeMay was of a fearless, fire-eating, cigar-smoking, red-necked martinet who was always the first man over the top, laughing in the face of the enemy. But Old Iron Pants LeMay, the man who’d been Bombs Away LeMay as the commander of one of the first B24 Groups in England in 1942, the Demon to anybody who got on his wrong side, or the Big Cigar to his airmen; was not just that man. Curtis LeMay had advanced from a lowly First Lieutenant in 1940 to a Major-General in 1945 commanding the great B-29 fleets that had ravaged the ancient cities of Japan in the last months of the World War II. In 1948 he’d commanded the United States Air Force in Europe during the Berlin Airlift. Until 1961 he’d been the commander of Strategic Air Command for a decade, the primary architect of the force that had won the October War in hours. During the Second World War his current political Chief, Robert McNamara, had been a relatively junior officer assigned to the Office of Statistical Control serving in Indian, China and the Marianas, coincidentally following Curtis LeMay from one command to the next, applying statistical analytical techniques to the operations of the Big Cigar’s bombers. LeMay and McNamara were antipathetic characters who’d never really seen eye to eye; and not surprisingly the drastic cut backs in the Air Force budget had promoted a widening rift between the two men. When LeMay had found out that McNamara had described him as ‘extraordinarily belligerent, many thought brutal’ he’d ignored the subsequent caveat, offered freely and generously by the Secretary of Defence that ‘he [LeMay] was the finest combat commander of any service I came across in the war’. In many ways McNamara hugely respected LeMay, not least for his inclination to lead from the front. Curtis LeMay was after all, the man who led the B24 component of the 1943 bloodbath attack on Schweinfurt and Regensburg. The problem lay in LeMay’s opinion, frequently stated - both verbally and in writing - that he believed a pre-emptive nuclear war was in some sense winnable. After the events of the night of 27th-28th October 1962 the two men could never trust each other again.
So when Curtis LeMay waited for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to compose his thoughts, he was asking himself if the repercussions over who exactly was responsible for the almost total FUBAR – as in fucked up beyond all repair – completely unfunny comedy of tragic errors they’d overseen that night thirteen months ago was finally about to consume the Big Cigar.
“The President,” Bus Wheeler said slowly, precisely, “is to make an unscheduled State of the Union Address tonight,” he forced it out with the ill-grace of a man pulling out his own teeth with a pair of rusty pliers, “in which he will announce that Chief Justice Earl Warren will lead ‘a Commission’ into the causes, conduct and the aftermath of last year’s war.”
Curtis LeMay digested the news unhurriedly, saying nothing.
“He’s also going to come clean about the B-52s the Brits shot down over Malta, Curtis.”
That wasn’t so good.
“When does that get to be a good idea, Bus?” The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force objected. “I didn’t order that. Neither did any of my people. Yeah, sure the mission orders and protocols have got my signature and command codes on them but that’s just standard operating procedure. It’s like blaming George Washington for embezzlement just because his face on a greenback!”
There was a hissing silence on the line.
“They think you’re behind the thing that happened in Scotland with the Queen of England, or whatever. That,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was close to hyperventilating in disbelief: “USAF personnel in Spain and Italy have been yanking chains, giving Franco and those shitheads in Italy the heads up that we – the United States of America – will back them up if they challenge the Brits.”
“You’re shitting me, Bus!”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, it is what they believe in the White House.”
“I’m out here trying to get a handle on this thing with the 100th Bomb Group...”
“Where have you been the last few day
s, Curtis?”
The Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force was momentarily struck dumb by the tersely delivered interrogative. He’d actually spent most of the last fortnight racing cars in the desert. He’d always been a car nut; lately racing fast cars was pretty much the only thing that took his mind off the madness of the World and the knowledge that even here, in America, a sizable proportion of the population regarded him not as a national saviour but as a monster, a mass murderer in the same league as Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin. A fortnight ago the World had been mostly peaceful, albeit broken; there had been no serious threats of the horizon so he’d gone on leave, driven a lot of old cars, and raced a few very fast new ones around a couple of recently abandoned air bases with his friends...
People used to tell Curtis LeMay that he never knew when to give in; that he never knew when he was beaten. People were wrong about that, too. Just like they were wrong about so much else to do with Old Iron Pants.
The big decisions were the simplest decisions.
Okay, I haven’t been sacked or arrested yet. While I’m still Chief of Staff of the Unites States Air Force I plan to carry on doing my duty. My loyal, patriotic duty consistent with the oath I took when I joined the Army Air Corps Reserve in Ohio in 1929. A lot of people lately don’t seem to be taking their oaths of allegiance seriously lately. I always have and I always will!
His tone was suddenly cool, businesslike.
“I’ll leave some of my people here to interview the base operations staff. I’ll be back in DC as soon as possible bringing the documents I’ve already impounded. Somebody ought to talk to the Head of the Secret Service and that bastard Hoover. Some of our guys – maybe a lot of our guys - have gone bad on us, Bus.”
“Yeah,” the other man acknowledged hoarsely. “It sure looks that way.”
Chapter 19
Monday 9th December 1963
Main State Building, Department of State, Washington DC
Robert Francis ‘Bobby’ Kennedy’s anxieties had not been assuaged by Dean Rusk’s unexpected, and for Dean, a mild mannered man, agitated summons to the State Department at thirty minutes notice. Everything was spiralling out of control and he desperately wanted to slow the clock, come up for air, and try to get a handle on what seemed like another ungodly rush towards catastrophe. His brother had found and demonstrated a strange, semi-cathartic calmness that morning but little of it had rubbed off on the other members of his Cabinet, most of whom thought – those who weren’t saying it out aloud – that Jack was exhibiting the first signs of madness.
“Well?” The Attorney General of the United States of America asked, walking unannounced into Dean Rusk’s office.
The Secretary of State was staring out of the windows across a grey, tired, misty vista to Theodore Roosevelt Island in the middle of the Potomac River, his hands clasped behind his back. For a moment he seemed not to have heard the younger man. Then he sighed and without moving, his gaze still lost in the dreary mid-distance said: “Every time somebody comes through that door I expect it to be somebody who has come to arrest me.”
“That’s never going to happen, Dean,” the President’s brother retorted impatiently.
The older man half-turned, flicked a look at his watch.
“Five minutes,” he muttered, before explaining that “the British Foreign Office asked for a secure telephone line to be established between Cheltenham and the State Department. The British Ambassador is talking to us via the Swedes at the moment. The call should come through some time in the next five minutes.”
Bobby Kennedy scowled.
“If the Brits want to talk to us they can pick up Jack’s phone any time they want.”
“They think we’ve started bombing them, Bobby,” the Secretary of State reminded the younger man. “What could Premier Heath possibly say to the President that might not make the situation even worse?”
Bobby Kennedy hadn’t thought about that.
“Okay, so why talk to State?”
Dean Rusk obviously didn’t think he ought to have to be drawing a diagram for the man who’d been the President’s most ‘special’ of special personal advisors for several years.
“You ever meet Walter Brenckmann?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“He was our Naval Attaché in England.”
“If you say so, Dean.”
“He submitted a report telling State and the Navy Department that the Brits were one provocation away from declaring war on us.” Dean Rusk dragged away from the window and went to his desk, waving his visitor to take a seat in one of the three chairs next to it. “Did you know that oaf Westheimer was wining and dining the same people in England who have persistently blocked Premier Heath’s attempts to re-organise and rationalise what remains of the United Kingdom’s industrial and economic base on an emergency, command model. The same faction that attempted to veto Operation Manna on the grounds that the United Kingdom would be indebted and beholden for all time to the Commonwealth countries who made it possible?”
“LBJ recommended Westheimer?” Bobby Kennedy reminded Dean Rusk, as if this made the problem go away.
“The Vice-President recommended Westheimer for public consumption only; he made it perfectly plain that he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it if we nominated somebody better qualified.”
Finding an Ambassador to the Court of Balmoral had been a thorny issue after the October War. One likely candidate, the anglophile former Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Garfield Sumner had been killed in a car wreck. Several other strong contenders had withdrawn. In the end Loudon Baines Westheimer II had been the last candidate standing, taking up his appointment in early March.
Bobby Kennedy slumped into his chair.
“So what? This guy Brenckmann is some kind of Jeremiad whistleblower telling us what we already know?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him yet.”
One of the two black handsets on Dean Rusk’s desk rang jarringly.
He picked up the receiver.
“Rusk speaking.” He waited, pointed for his visitor to pick up the other telephone.
“Good morning, Mister Secretary,” said the man at the other end of the crackling analogue line, his words spanning the swooping peaks and troughs of amplification. “This is Walter Brenckmann. Captain, United States Navy Reserve. I was sent to England as CINCLANT Liaison to the British Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy Channel Fleet. More recently, I was promoted to my present rank and posted to the Embassy in Cheltenham as Naval Attaché. Shortly before I was declared persona non grata by the British Authorities I resigned my commission and my post and communicated my profound concerns about the state of Anglo-American relations to your Department.”
“You are speaking to Dean Rusk, Secretary of State. With me in the room is the Attorney General. What is the purpose of this call, Captain Brenckmann?”
The line hissed and exploded with distant bursts of static.
“Are you still there Captain Brenckmann?”
“Yes, sir.” The man in England wasn’t in a hurry. “May I ask you a question, sir? And the Attorney General?”
“Go ahead.” Dean Rusk shrugged at Bobby Kennedy.
“Is it the policy of the State Department to intercept, delay and mislay communication from diplomatic staff in England?”
“Don’t be impertinent, Brenckmann!”
“Are you in receipt of any of the reports I copied to both the Navy Department and to your own Department since my appointment as Naval Attaché to the United States Embassy at Cheltenham?”
“Are you some kind of lawyer, Captain?” Bobby Kennedy inquired testily.
“Yes, sir. I only put on a uniform when the people running my country deem it appropriate to participate in foreign wars and adventures.” The voice of the Navy Captain was evenly modulated, clipped and indifferent to the elevated status of his two interlocutors. “Mister Rusk,” he went on with an almost school
masterly inflexion, “after what the administration of which you are a prominent member has put us all through in the last year, neither you, nor any of your fellows in Government has the right to accuse me of impertinence, sir.”
The Secretary of State took a deep breath.
“Forgive my intemperance, Captain. These are troubled times.”
“Yes, they are, sir. I repeat my earlier question; are you personally in receipt of any of the reports I sent you in the last month?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily be on the circulation list for reports from a Naval Attaché, Captain Brenckmann...”
“These reports were of a nature where the recipient lower down the food chain would automatically pass them to his or her boss, and so on until they reached the desk of at least an Assistant Secretary of State, sir. I suggest you urgently look into who has been sitting on, or variously misdirecting or diverting diplomatic traffic between the Cheltenham Embassy and your Department. The first thing I heard when I began meeting my British counterparts, and later when I joined the Embassy Staff within the United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration compound at Cheltenham, was that communication with the State and Navy Departments seemed to be unduly ‘spotty’, and that important cables often ‘got lost’. Moreover, I was surprised to discover that there seemed to be no meaningful contacts between the British intelligence agencies and the CIA. Granted, at my pay grade I don’t see the ‘big picture’ as well as you gentlemen in DC, but frankly, sirs,” Walter Brenckmann concluded, quietly scathing, “the whole situation stank to me. If our great country had had a professional diplomat in post as Ambassador rather than a disinterested political place man, somebody in Washington might have noticed we had a problem in England.”
The President’s brother leaned forward, his face creased with undirected anger.
“This is Bobby Kennedy, Captain Brenckmann,” he declared, realising how hostile he sounded only after the event. “What are you alleging; that somebody is intercepting diplomatic mail?”