Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

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by The Winds Of War(Lit)


  He did a strange thing. He walked to the window and looking out at the moon, he whispered a prayer. His youthful marching to church with his father had taken that much hold. "Let me have her, and let me pass this course and be a good naval aviator. I don't ask you to let me live, I know that's up to me, and the numbers, but if I do live and get through the war, then))-he smiled at the dark star-splashed sky-"well, then we'll see. All right?" Warren was charming God.

  He went to bed without telephoning Mrs. Tarrasch. She was always ready for a call from him. But now she seemed to him like somebody he had known in high school. shortly before six in the morning a ring fromsttahffemeemebtianssgyonwothkee Victor Henry. The charge was summoning an urgent

  outbreak of the war.

  Rhoda muttered and turned, throwing a naked white arm over her crossed the bed and eyes. From a crack in the curtains a narrow sunbeam the covers. Hitler was dust motes danced in the wan light as Pug threw back having good weather for the kickoff, Pug sleepily thought; just the bastard's luck! The invasion news was no great surprise. Since the Nazi-soviet pact the Polish crisis had been skidding downhill. At the big Argentine embassy supper the night before, everybody had noticed the absence of German military men and foreign office people, and had talked of war. One American correspondent had told Pug flatly that the invasion was on for three o'clock in the morning; that man had had the dope! The world had crossed a red line in time, and Victor Henry jumped out of bed to go to work in a new era. It wasn't his war, the one he had been training for all his life; not yet. But he was fairly sure it would be. Despite of surprise, he was excited and moved.

  In the library he switched on the radio, which seemed to take a long time to warn up, and opened the french windows. Birds sang in the sunny garden, whence a mild breeze, passing through a red-flowering shrub at the window, brought in a heavy sweet odor. The radio hummed and crackled and an announcer came on, not sounding much different than any Berlin announcer had during the past week, when the air had been full of the "incredible atrocities" perpetrated against Germans in Poland: rape, murder, disembowelling of pregnalt women, cutting off of children's hands and feet. In fact, after this long diet of gruesome bosh, the news that the war had started seemed almost tame. The voice was just as strident, just as full of righteousness, describing the Fuhrer's decision to march, as it had been in denouncing the atrocities.

  The account of a Polish attack at Gleiwitz to capture a German radio station-the outrage which, according to the broadcast, had sent the Wehrmacht rolling two million strong into Poland "in self-defense"was narrated with the same matter-of-fact briskness as the report of the plunge of the Germans across Polish soil, and of the surprise collapse of the Polish border divisions. Obviously an invasion of this magnitude had been laid on for a month or more and had been surging irreversibly toward Poland for days; the Polish 'attack" was a silly hoax for childish minds.

  Victor Henry was getting used to Berlin Radio's foggy mixture of facts and lies, but the contempt of the Nazis for the intelligence of the Germans could still surprise him. The propaganda had certainly achieved one aimto muffle the impact of the new war.

  Rhoda came yawning in, tying her negligee, and cocking her head at the radio. "Well! So he really went and did it. Isn't that something!"

  'Sorry it woke you. I tried to keep it low."

  'Oh, the telephone woke me. Was it the embassy?" Pug nodded. "I thought so. Well, I guess I should be up for this. We're not going to get in it, are we?" 'Most unlikely. I'm not even sure England and France will go to bat." 'How about the children, Pug?"

  "Well, Warren and Madeline are no problem. The word is that Italy won't fight, so Byron should be okay, too." Rhoda sighed, and yawned.

  'Hitler's a very strange person. I've decided that. What a way to act! I liked his handshake, sort of direct and manly like an American's, and that charming bashful little smile. But he had strange eyes, you know? Remote, and sort of veiled. Say, what happens to our dinner for that tycoon from Colorado? What's his name? Will that be off?"

  "Dr. Kirby. He may not get here now, Rhoda." "Dear, please find out. I have guests coming, and extra help and food, you know." 'I'll do my best."

  Rhoda said slowly, "World War Two... You know, Time has been writing about 'World War Two' for months. It always seemed so unreal, somehow. Now here it is, but it still has a funny ring."

  'You'll soon get used to it." 'Oh, no doubt it's on now. I'm supposed to have lunch with SaBy Forrest. I'd better find out if that's still on. What a mess! And my hair appointment-oh, no, that's tomorrow. Or is it? I don't function this time of the morning."

  Because of the early meeting, Pug gave up his cherished five-mile morning walk to the embassy, and drove there. Berlin was, if anything, quieter than usual. There was a Sunday morning look to the tree-lined avenues in mid-city, a slackening of auto traffic, a scarcity of people on the sidewalks. All the shops were open.

  Small trucks with machine guns at the ready, manned by helmeted soldiers, stood at some intersections, and along the walls of public buildings workmen were piling sandbags.

  But it was all a desultory business. The coffee shops were full of breaktasters, and in the Tiergarten the early morning strollers-nannies, children, elderly people-were out as usual for the fine weather, with the vendors of toy balloons and ice cream.

  Loudspeakers everywhere were Matting the news, and an unusual number of airplanes went humming across the sky. The Berliners kept looking at the sky and then at each other with cynical sad grins. He remembered pictures of the happy cheering Berliners crowding linter den Lnden at the start of the last war.

  Clearly the Germans were going into this one in a different mood.

  The embassy was a maelstrom of scared tourists and would-be refugees, mainly old Jews. In the charge's large quiet office the staff meeting was sombre and short. No special instructions from Washington had yet come in. Mimeographed sheets of wartime regulations were passed around.

  The charge urged on everyone special care to preserve a correct tone of neutrality. If England and France came in, the embassy would probably look out for their people caught in Germany; a lot of lives might depend on appropriate American conduct at this touchy moment toward the truculent Germans. After the meeting Victor Henry attacked an in-tray stuffed with paper in his office, telling his yeoman to try to track down Dr. Palmer Kirby, the electrical engineer from Colorado who bore a "very important" designation from the Bureau of Ordnance.

  Alistair Tudsbury telephoned. "nullo! Would you like to hear the bad man explain all to the Reichstag? I can get you in to the press box. This is my last story from Berlin. I have my marching papers and should have left days ago, but got a medical delay. I OWe You something for that glimpse of Swinemonde."

  "You don't owe me anything, but I'll sure come."

  "Good. He speaks at r. Pa a thee m will call for you at two.

  We're packing up like mad. I hope we don't get interned. It's this German food that's given me the gout."

  The yeoman came in and laid a telegram on the desk.

  "Tudsbury, can't I take you and Pamela to lunch?"

  "No, no. No time. Many thanks. After this little unpleasantness, maybe. In 1949 or thereabouts."

  Pug laughed. "Ten years? You're a pessimist."

  He opened the telegram, and got a bad shock. DO You KNow WHEREABOUTS YOUR SON BYRON AND MY NIECE NATALIE PLEASE WRITE OR CALL.

  It was signed: AARON JASTROW, with an address and telephone number in Siena.

  Pug rang for the yeoman and handed him the telegram. "Try to get through to Siena, to this man. Also wire him: NOT KNOWN. PLEASE WIRE LAST KNOWN WHEREABOUTS. "'Aye aye, sir." He decided not ' to tell Rhoda. Trying to go back to work he found himself unable to comprehend the substance of simple letters. He gave up, and looked out of the window at the Berliners going their ways in bright sunshine.

  Open trucks full of soldiers in gray were snorting along the street in a long procession. The soldiers looked bored. A
small silver blimp came floating across the clear blue sky, towing a sign advertising Odol toothpaste. He swallowed his worry as best he could, and attacked his in-basket again.

  The telephone rang as he was leaving the office for lunch. He heard multilingual jabber and then a cultured American voice with a faint accent, 'Commander Henry? Aaron Jastrow. It's very good of you to call."

  'Dr. Jastrow, I thought I'd better tell you immediately that I don't know where Byron and your niece are. I had no idea they weren't in Siena with you."

  "Well, I hesitated to wire you, but I thought you could help locate them. Two weeks ago they went to Warsaw." 'Warsaw!"

  "Yes, to visit a friend in our embassy there."

  "I'll get on it right away. Our embassy, you said?"

  'Yes. The second secretary, Leslie Slote, is a former pupil of mine, a brilliant fellow. I imagine he and Natalie will get married one day." Pug scrawled the name. Jastrow coughed. 'Excuse me. It was a risky trip to make, I guess, but they did set out before the pact.

  She's twenty-seven and has quite a will of her own. Byron volunteered to go with her. That's really why I refuse to worry. He's a very capable young man."

  Victor Henry, dazed by the news, still found pleasure in this good word for Byron. Over the years he had not heard many. 'Thanks. I'll wire you when I find out something. And if you get any word, let me know."

  Jastrow coughed again. 'Sorry. I have a touch of bronchitis. I remember the last war SO well) Commander! It really wasn't long ago, was it? All this is giving me a strange, terribly sad feeling. Almost despairing.

  I hope we'll meet one day. It would give me pleasure to know Byron's father. He worships you."

  The long table in Borcher's restaurant was a listening post, an information exchange, and a clearing house for little diplomatic deals.

  Today, the cheery clink of silverware in the crowded restaurant, the smell of roast meats, the loud animated talk, were much the same; but at this special table there were changes. Several attaches had put on their uniforms. The Pole-a big cheerful Purple-faced man with great moustaches, who usually outdrank everybody-was gone. The Englishman was missing. The French attache, in heavy gold braid, gloomed in his usual place. The comical Dane, senior among them, white-haired and fat, still wore his white linen suit; but he was stiff and quiet. The talk was constrained. Warsaw Radio claimed the Germans were being thrown back, but nobody could confirm that. On the contrary, the flashes from their capitals echoed Gerfnan boasts: victory everywhere, hundreds of Polish planes smashed on the ground, whole armies surrounded. Pug ate little and left early.

  Pamela Tudsbury leaned against the iron grillwork in front of the embassy, near the line of sad-looking Jews that stretched around the block.

  She wore the gray suit of their morning walk on the Bremen.

  "Well," he said, as they walked side by Side, "SO the little tramp went.She gave b'len a surprised, flattered look. "Didn)t he ever!

  Here's our car. Directly after the speech we're off. We're flying to Copenhagen at six, and lucky to have the seats. They're like diamonds."

  She drove the car in nervous zigzags through side streets, to get around a long convoy of tanks on a main boulevard.

  "Well, I'm sorry to see you and your dad go," Pug said. "I'll sure miss your fireball style at the wheel. Where to next?"

  " My guess is back to the USA. The governor's well liked there, and it'll be the number-one spot, actually, with Berlin shut down."

  "Pamela, don't you have a young man in London, or several, who object to your being so much on the move?" The girl-that was how he thought of her, which showed his own age-looked flushed and sparklingeyed. The driving gestures of her small white hands were swift, sharp, and well controlled. She diffused an agreeably light peppery scent, like carnations.

  "Oh, not at the moment, Commander. And the governor does need me since his eyes have got so bad. I like to travel, so I'm happy enough to -bless my soul. Look to your left. Don't be obvious about it."

  Beside them, halted at the traffic light, Herman goering sat at the wheel of an open red two-seater, looking imperious and enormous.

  He wore a tan double-breasted business suit, with the flaring lapels that all his clothes displayed. The broad brim of his Panama hat was snapped down to the side and back, in an out-of-date, somewhat gangsterish American style. The fat man's swollen be-ringed fingers drummed the steering wheel, and he chewed at his very long upper lip.

  The light changed. As the red car darted forward, the policeman saluted, and Goering laughed and waved his hand.

  "How easy it would have been to shoot him," Pamela said.

  Pug said "The Nazis puzzle me. Their security precautions are mighty loose. Even around Hitler. After all, they've murdered a lot of people." The Germans adore them. The governor got in trouble over one of his broadcasts from a Party Day in Nuremberg. He said anybody could kill Hitler, and the free way he moved around showed how solidly the Germans were for him. Somehow this annoyed them." 'Tamela, I have a son I hope you'll meet when you're Statde." He told her about Warren.

  The girl listened with a crooked smile. "You've already mentioned him. Sounds too tall for me. what's he actually like? Is he like you?"

  "Not in the least. He's personable, sharp as a tack, and very attractive to the ladies." 'Indeed. Don't you have another son?"

  "Yes. I have another son." He hesitated, and then he briefly told Pamela what he had not yet told his wife-that Byron was somewhere in Poland in the path of the German invasion, accompanying a Jewish girl in love with another man. Pug said Byron had a caes way of getting out of trouble, but he expected to owe a few more gray hairs to his son before this episode was over.

  "He sounds like the one I might enjoy meeting."

  "He's too young for you." "Well, maybe not. I never do hit it quite right. There's the governor." Tudsbury stood on a corner, waving. His handshake was violent.

  He wore tweed far too heavy for the weather, and a green velour hat.

  "Hello there, my dear fellow! Come along. Pam, be back at this corner at four and wait, won't you? This won't be one of his three-hour harangues. The bad man hasn't had much sleep lately."

  A young German in a business suit met them, clicked his heels at Pug, and took them past SS men, along corridors and up staircases, to the crowded little press balcony of the Kroll Opera House, which the Nazis used for Reichstag meetings. The stylized gold eagle perched on a wreathed swastika behind the podium, with gold rays shooting out to cover the whole wall, had a colossal look in photographs, but before one's eyes it was just garish and vulgar-a backdrop well suited to an opera house.

  This air of theatrical impermanence, of hastily contrived show, was a Nazi trademark. The new Reichstag, still under construction, was dully massive, to suit Hitler's taste, and the heavy Doric colonnades were obviously of stone, but the building made Pug think of a cardboard film setting.

  Like most Americans, he could not yet take the Nazis, or indeed the Germans, very seriously. He thought they worked with fantastic industry at kidding themselves. Germany was an unstable old-new country, with heavy baroque charm in some places, and Pittsburgh-like splotches of heavy industry in others; and with a surface smear of huffing, puffing political pageantry that strove to instill terror and came out funny. So it struck him. Individually the Germans were remarkably like Americans; he thought it curious that both peoples had the eagle for their national emblem. The Germans were the same sort of businesslike go-getters: direct, roughly humorous, and usually reliable and able. Commander Henry felt more at home with them, in these points, than with the slower British or the devious talkative French.

  But in a mass they seemed to become ugly gullible strangers with a truculent streak; and if one talked politics to an individual German he tended to turn into such a stranger, a sneering belligerent Mr. Hyde.

  They were a baffling lot. In a demor4red Europe, Pug knew, t e German horde h s of marching men, well drilled and well equipped, could do a
lot of damage; and they had slapped together a big air force in a hurry. He could well believe that they were now rolling over the Poles.

  The deputies were streaming,to their seats. Most of them wore uniforms, confusing in their variety of color and braid, alike mainly in the belts and boots. It was easy to pick out the military men by their professional bearing. The uniformed Party officials looked like any other politicians-jovial, relaxed, mostly grizzled or bald-stuffed into splashy costumes; and they obviously took Teutonic pleasure in the strut and the Pomp, however uncomfortable jackboots might be on their flat feet, and gun belts on their bulging paunches. But today these professional Nazis, for all their warlike masquerade, looked less jaunty than usual. A subdued atmosphere pervaded the chamber.

 

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