Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War
COPYRIGHT 1971
With love to my sons Nathaniel and Joseph
Foreword
The Winds of War is fiction, and all the characters and adventures involving the Henry family are imaginary. But the history of the war in this romance is offered as accurate; the tics, as reliable; the ivards and acts of the great personages, as either historical, or derived from accounts of their words and deeds in similar situations. No work of this scope can be free of error, but readers will discern, it is hoped, an arduous effort to give a true and full picture of a great world battle.
World Empire Lost, the military treatise by "Arrun von Roon," is of course an invention from start to finish. Still, General von Roon's book is offered as a professional German view of the other side of the hill, reliable within the limits peculiar to that self-justifying military literature.
Industrialized arnwd force, the curse that now presses so heavili and so ominously on us all, came to full power in the Second World War.
The effort to free ourselves of it begins with the effort to understand how it came to haunt us, and how it was that men of good will gave-and still give-their lives to it. The theme and aim of The Winds of War can be found in a few words by the French Jew, Julien B: Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind. In this sense the most insignificant writer can serve peace, where the most powerful tribunals can do nothing.
PART ONE
Natalie OMMER Victor Henry rode a taxicab home from the Navy Building on Constitution Avenue, in a gusty gray March rainstorm that matched his mood. In his War Plans cubbyhole that afternoon, he had received an unexpected word from on high which, to his seasoned appraisal, had probably blown a well-planned career to rags. Now he had to consult his wife about an urgent decision; yet he did not altogether trust her opinions.
At forty-five, Rhoda Henry remained a singularly attractive woman, but she was rather a crab. This colored her judgment, and it was a fault he found hard to forgive her. She had married him with her eyes open.
During an incandescent courtship, they had talked frankly about the military life. Rhoda Grover had declared that all the drawbacks-the separations, the lack of a real place to live and of a normal family existence, the long slow climb through a system, the need to be humble to other men's wives when the men were a notch higher-that none of these things would trouble her, because she loved him, and because the Navy was a career of honor. So she had said in 1915, when the World War was on, and uniforms had a glow. This was 1939, and she had long since forgotten those words.
He had warned her that the climb would be hard. Victor Henry was not of a Navy family. On every rung of the slippery career ladder, the sons and grandsons of admirals had been jostling him. Yet everyone in the Navy who knew Pug Henry called him a corner. Until now his rise had been steady.
The letter that first got him into the Naval Academy, written to his congressman while in high school, can be adduced here to characterize the man. He showed his form early.
May 5th, 1910 Dear Sir: You have sent me three kind answers to three letters I have sent you, from my freshman year onward, reporting my progress in Sonoma County igh School. So I hope that you will remember my name, and my ambition to obtain appointment to the Naval Academy.
plete my senior year. It may seem conceited to Now I am about to co list my achievements, but I am sure you will understand why I do so.
I am year, playing fullback, and I am also on captain of the football team this the boxing tea-. e Arista SocietY- In mathematics, historyp I have been elected to th and the sciences, I am a candidate for prizes. My English and foreign language (German) marks are not on that level. However, I am secretary of the small Russian-speaking club of our school. Its nine members come from local families whose ancestors wre settled in Fort Ross long ago by the best chum was in the club, so I joined and learned some PusCzar. My ility is not deficient.
Russian. I mention this to show that my language ah officer ill the United States Navy. I can't My life aim is to serve as an my family has no seafaring background. MY actually explain this, since lumbering business. I have never liked father is an engineer in the redwood lumbering business.
I have lumbering, but have always been interestd in ships and bit, gun ri vi the naval ships gone to San Fran,isco and San Diego often just to sit diere. Out of my savings I have bought and studied about two dozen books on marine engineering and sea warfare.
I realize you have orly one appointment to make, and there must be many applicants in our district. if one is found more deserving than I am, I will enlist in the, Navy and work up from the ranks. However I have seriously tried for your nsideration, and trust that I have earned it.
. co Respectfully yours, Victor Henry With much the same directness, Henry had won his wife five years later, though she was a couple of inches taller than he , and though her prosperous parents had looked for a better match than a squat Navy fullback from California, of no means or fIY- courting Rhoda, he had come out of this single-minded shell of ambition to show much tenderness, humor, considerateness, and dash. After a month or two Rhoda had lost any inclination to say no. Mundane details like height differences had faded from sigbtstill, over the long pull it may not be too good for a pretty woman to look down at her husband. Tall men tend to make plays for her regarding the couple as slightly comic. Though a very proper woman, Rhoda had a weakness for this sort of thing-up to a point short of trouble-and even coyly provoked it. Henry's reputation as a bleak hard-fibered individual discouraged the men from ever getting out of hand. He was very much Rhoda's master. Still, this physical detail was a continuing nagThe real shadow on this couple was that Commander Henry thought Rhoda had welshed on their courtship understanding. She did what had to be done as a Navy wife, but she was free, loud, and frequent in her complaints. She could crab for months on end in a place she disvers, liked, such as Manila. Wherever she was, sheortended to fret about the servants, or taxi tin rdressers. To hear Rhoda Henry's heat, or the cold, or the rain, or the dry spell, or shop clerks, or seamstresses, or hal daily chatter, her life passed in combat with an incompetent world and a malignant climate. It was only female talk, and not in the least uncommon.
But talk, not sex, constitutes most of the intercourse between a man and his wife. Henry detested idle whining. More and more, silence was the response he had Come to use. It dampened the noise.
On the other hand, Rhoda was two things he thought a wife should be: a seductive woman, and an adroit homemaker. In all their married years, there had been few times when he had not desired her; and in all those years, for all their moving about, wherever they landed, Rhoda had provided a house or an apartment where the coffee was hot, the food appetizing, the rooms well furnished and always clean, the beds propen, made, and fresh flowers in sight. She had fetching little ways, and when her spirits were good she could be very sweet and agreeable. Most women, from the little Victor Henry knew of the sex, were vain clacking slatterns, with less to redeem them than Rhoda had.
His longstanding opinion was that, for all her drawbacks, he had a good wife, as wives went. That was a closed question.
But heading home after a day's work, he never knew ahead of time whether he would encounter Rhoda the charmer or Rhoda the crab. At a crucial moment like this, it could make a great difference. In her down moods, her judgments were snappish and often silly.
Coming into the house, he heard her singing in the glassed-in heated porch off the living room where they usually had drinks before dinner.
He found her arranging
tall stalks of orange gladiolus in an oxblood vase from Manila. She was wearing a beige silky dress cinched in by a black patent-leather belt with a large silver buckle-. Her dark hair fell in waves behind her ears; this was a fashion in 1939
even for mature swo ommaedne.
Her welcoming glance was affectionate and gay. just to see her him feel better, and this had been going on all his life.
"Oh, m there. Why on EARTH didn't you warn me Kip Tollever was coming? He sent these, and Luckily he called too. I was skipping around this house like a scrubwoman." Rhoda in casual talk used the swooping high notes of smart Washington women. She had a dulcet, rather busk), voice, and these zoomed words of hers gave what she said enormous emphasis and some illusion of sparkle. "He said he might be slightly late.
Let's have a short one, Pug, okay? The fixings are all there.
I'M PARCIIED."
Henry walked to the wheeled bar and began to mix martinis. "I asked Kip to stop by so I could talk to him. It's not a social visit."
"Oh? Am I supposed to make myself scarce?" She gave him a sweet smile.
"No, no."
"Good. I like Kip. Why, I was flabbergasted to hear his voice.
I thought he was still stuck in Berlin."
"He's been detached."
"So he told me. Who relieved him, do you know?"
"Nobody has. The assistant attache for air took over temporarily."
Victor Henry handed her a cocktail. He sank in a brown wicker annchair, put his feet up on the ottoman, and drank, gloom enveloping him again.
Rhoda was used to her husband's silences. She had taken in his bad humor at a glance. Victor Henry held himself very straight except in moments of trial and tension. Then he tended to fall into a crouch, as though he were still playing football. He had entered the room hunched, and even in the armchair, with his feet up, his shoulder,-, were bent. Dark straight hair hung down his forehead. At forty-nine, he had almost no gray hairs, and his charcoal slacks, brown sports jacket, and red bow tie were clothes for a younger man. It was his small vanity, when not in uniform, to dress youthfully; an athletic body helped him carry it off. Rhoda saw in the lines around his greenish brown eyes that he was tired and deeply worried. Possibly from long years of peering out to sea, Henry's eyes were permanently marked with what looked like laugh lines. Strangers mistook him for a genial man.
"Got a dividend there?" he said at last.
She poured the watery drink for him.
"Thanks. Say, incidentally, you know that memorandum on the battleships that I wrote?"
"Oh, yes. Was there a backlash? You were concerned, I know."
"I got called down to the C.N.O's office."
"My God. To see Preble?"
"Preble himself. I hadn't seen him since the old days on the California.
He's gotten fat."
Henry told her about his talk with the Chief of Naval Operations.
Rhoda's face took on a hard, sullen, puzzled look. "Oh, I see.
That's why you asked Kip over."
"Exactly. What do you think about my taking this attache job?"
"Since when do you have any choice?"
"He gave me the impression that I did. That if I didn't want it, I'd go to a battlewagon next, as an exec.)) "Good lord, Pug, that's more like it!" "You'd prefer that I go back to sea?"
"I'd prefer? What difference has that ever made?"
"All the same, I'd like to hear what you'd prefer."
Rhoda hesitated, sizilg him up with a slanted glance.
"Well-naturally I'd adore going to Germany. It would be much more fun for me than sitting here alone while you steam around Hawaii in the Ne-w Mexico or whatever. It's the loveliest country in Europe. The people are so friendly.
German was my major, you know, aeons ago. "I know," Victor Henry said, smiling, if faintly and wryly, for the first time since arriving home. "You were very good at German." Some of the early hot moments of their honeymoon had occurred while they stumbled through Heine's love poetry aloud together.
Rhoda returned an arch glance redolent of married sex. "Well, all right, you. All I mean is, if You must leave Washington-I suppose the Nazis are kind of ugly and ridiculous. But Madge Knudsen went there for the Olympics. She keeps saying it's still wonderful, and so cheap, with those tourist marks they give you."
"Yes, no doubt we'd have a gay whirl. The question is, Rhoda, whether this isn't a total disaster. Two shore assignments in a row, you, understand, at this stage-"
"Oh, Pug, you'll get your four stripes. I know you Will. And you'll get your battleship command too, in due course. My God, with your gunnery pennants, your letter of conmendation-Pug, suppose C.N.O's right? Maybe a war is about to Pop over there. Then it would be an important job, wouldn't it?"
"That's just sales talk." Pug got up and helped himself to cheese. "He says the President wants top men in Berlin now as military attaches.
Well, okay, I'll believe that. He also says it won't hurt my career. That is what I can't believe. First thing any selection board looks for-or will ever look for-in a man's record is blue water, and lots of it."
" Pug, are you sure Kip won't stay to dinner? There's plenty of food.
Warren's going to New York."
"No, Kip's on his way to a, party at the German embassy. And why the hell is Warren going to New York? He's been home all of three days.
"Ask him,- Rhoda said.
The slam of the front door and the quick firm steps were unmistakable Warren sounds. He entered the porch greeting them with a wave of two squash rackets in a fist. "Hi."
In an old gray sweater and slacks, his tanned lean face glowing from the exercise, his hair tousled, a cigarette slanting from his thin mouth, he looked much like the lad who, on graduating from the Academy, had vanished from their lives. Pug was still not used to the way Warren had filled out on shipboard food. The boyish weediness was changing into a tall solid look. A sprinkle of premature gray in his dark hair had startled his parents on his return. Victor Henry envied Warren the deep sunburn which bespoke a destroyer bridge, tennis, green Oahu hills, and above all, duty at sea thousands of miles from Constitution Avenue.
He said, "You're off to New York, I hear."
"Yes, Dad, Is that okay? My exec just blew into town. We're going up there to see some shows. He's a real Idaho farmer. Never been to New York."
Commander Henry made a grouchy sound. It was no bad thing for Warren to be friendly with his executive officer. What bothered the father was thoughts of a woman who might be waiting in New York. A top student at the Academy, Warren had almost ruined his record with excessive trenching-out. He had ended with a bad back attributed by himself to a wrestling injury; by other reports, to an escapade involking an older woman and a midnight car crash. The parents had never raised the topic of the woman, partly from bashfulness-they were both prudish churchgoers, ill at ease with such a topic-and partly from a strong sense that they would get nowhere with Warren.
The door chimes rang. A gray-headed houseman in a white coat passed through the living room. Rhoda stood up, touching her hair and Sliding slim hands over her silk-clad hips. "Remember Kip Tollever, Warren? That's probably Kip."
"Why, sure. That tall lieutenant commander who lived next door in Manila. Where's he stationed now?"
"He's just finished a tour as naval attache in Berlin," Victor Henry said. Warren made a comic grimace, and dropped his voice.
"Jehosephat, Dad. How did he ever get stuck with that? Cookie pusher?" Rhoda looked at her husband, whose face remained impassive. "Commander Tollever, ma'am," said the houseman at the doorway, "Hello, Rhoda!" Tollever marched in with long arms outstretched, in a flawlessly cut evening uniform: blue mess jacket with medals and gold
years younger than you did in the Philippines."
buttons, a black tie, a stiff snowy shirt. "My lord, woman! You look ten
"Oh, you, ))
she said, eyes gleaming, as he lightly kissed her cheek.
&n
bsp; "Hi, Pug." Smoothing o the manicured hand over heavy wavy hair just turning gray, Tollever stared at the son. "Now for crying out loud, which boy is this?"
Warren held out his hand. "Hello, sir. Guess."
"Aha. It's Warren. Byron had a different grin. And red hair, come to think of it."
"Right you are, sir."
"Rusty Traynor told me You're serving on the Monaghan. What's Byron doing?"
Rhoda chirruped after a slight silence, "Oh, Byron's our romantic dreamer, Kip. He's studying fine arts in Italy. And you should see Madeline! All grown up."
Warren said, "Excuse me, sir," and went out.
-blue eye, widened. "Well, that is romanhandsome face, and his cobalt "Fine arts! Italy!" one heavy eyebrow went up in Tollever's gaunt I tic. Say, Pug, since when do you indulge?" Tollever inquired, accepting a martini and seeing Henry refill his own glass.
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 1