Ike and Kay

by James MacManus

  In fact she wasn’t really sure of anything about Richard except that he loved her in that careless way that men do and that she had fallen in love with him, or rather with a pair of warm brown eyes and kisses that tasted of mint.

  Charlotte had told her it was just another wartime romance and to forget him, which was probably good advice. After all, what could any woman mean to a man about to leave for an unknown destiny in a distant war?

  Kay swerved again and swore as a creature, a cat or a large rat, ran into the beam of her dimmed headlights. Richard had said he loved her, he would miss her and that he would marry her when he got back. But every departing soldier said that, didn’t they? It was written into the script of every wartime romance, and it was a lie. What young men really wanted was the freedom to enjoy the adrenaline rush of living with danger and delivering death. That was what it was all about, wasn’t it? And where did that leave the women left behind?

  In her case it left her driving a large car through the darkened streets of London on the way to meet an unknown two-star American general. It could be a lot worse, she thought.

  She had been up since 5 a.m. and she was hungry. She parked her Packard, painted in camouflage khaki, in front of the embassy in Grosvenor Square and found a nearby café for a sandwich and a cup of tea.

  She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t found her general. The other girls had probably met theirs and were even now driving them across London to important meetings.

  She couldn’t see that it really mattered. Her man would be deep in briefings in the embassy with that strange ambassador by now. And a girl needed to have breakfast. It was the only memorable advice her mother had given her.

  There were baked beans with fried tomatoes or liver and onions on the menu. She chose the baked beans. There was no knowing where the liver came from. The beans were barely warm, but she finished the dish quickly and split open a stale roll to mop up the juices. Waste Not, Want Not was the battle cry on the home front.

  As she walked back to the embassy, she saw through the clearing fog the outline of two American officers standing on the pavement by the Packard. They were looking up and down the street and across the square. One was shorter than the other. They had small suitcases. They were looking for her.

  She ran as fast as her long skirt would allow, flying down the pavement, skidded to a stop and saluted.

  “I’m sorry I’m late ... I think I’m your driver.”

  “And you are?” enquired the taller one.

  “Summersby, Motor Transport Corps.”

  “You know where Claridge’s Hotel is?” he asked.

  She nodded. Of course she did. It was two blocks away – it would have been quicker to walk. He hadn’t introduced himself but she knew he was General Mark Clark. And the shorter one was her general.

  She ran back to the car, drove rather too fast the few hundred yards to where the generals were waiting, and braked hard, scraping the kerb with the hubcaps. Before she could get out they had got into the back without a word.

  She checked in the mirror on the five-minute drive to the hotel. He had taken his hat off and she saw a broad forehead, thinning sandy hair and that wide mouth. And there were two stars on the shoulder of his uniform. Major-General Dwight Eisenhower. What a strange first name. Dwight. Where did that come from? And a half general. Just her luck.

  2

  May-June 1942

  She was at the hotel at 9 a.m. the next morning. She held the door open as Eisenhower and Clark climbed into the back of the car carrying bulging briefcases. They said little as she drove, burying themselves in the paperwork, occasionally muttering an oath as they passed a sheet of paper to one another.

  She delivered her two generals back to the hotel at 1 a.m. the following morning. That set the pattern for the next three weeks. It was the same early morning pickup, then a drive to a government office or one of the many army or air bases around London. She would wait for hours in the canteen drinking stewed tea and trying not to chain-smoke, then maybe drive them to another base and finally back to Claridge’s long after dark.

  She could see her general was growing weary. His ruddy complexion turned sallow and the bags began to droop under bloodshot eyes. There was always someone in the car with them, usually another American general: George Marshall, Carl Spaatz or George Patton, names that were becoming familiar to the British public.

  The Americans gave no interviews and refused to answer questions tossed at them by trailing journalists, but their photographs were always in the newspapers and their faces on the newsreels. Londoners found that very reassuring. The Yanks really had come and, as the song said, they would not be going home until it was “Over, over there”.

  At first Eisenhower and his colleagues whispered in the back, but as they got used to her they talked openly and she heard a rising tone of frustration and irritation: training was delayed, supplies had run short, orders had been mis­interpreted, ships with vital equipment had been lost at sea – the list of problems grew in the weeks after they had arrived.

  It was nearly the end of June and Hitler’s invasion of Russia the previous year had placed the Wehrmacht well on the road to Moscow. Kay could hear the anxiety in their voices as the generals assessed Hitler’s next move. If Moscow fell before the winter snows it would be Britain next.

  Her general was always polite, thanking her courteously at the end of the day and asking her, rather than ordering her, to return the next morning. He called her Kay and made sure she was offered something to eat and drink when they vanished into their endless meetings.

  He seemed quieter than the others, listening carefully to what was said around him, chain-smoking, making notes in a large foolscap pad that he carried in a leather attaché case. She watched him in the rear-view mirror, the broad forehead wrinkled with concentration, the blue eyes closed as he leant back to consider a problem, the face opening into a brief smile when someone suggested an answer then turning to a scowl when the idea proved impractical.

  The rear-view mirror was her window into their world. She quickly learnt that her general was finding little to his liking in the military arrangements in Britain. As May had given way to June and the days grew lighter and longer, frustration had turned to anger in the back of the Packard. She had watched nicotine-stained fingers jabbing into documents, seen comments scrawled angrily across secret memoranda and heard muttered oaths give way to open cursing. It was like watching lava rise to the lip of a volcano. She waited for the explosion.

  It came the morning she drove him to visit Lieutenant General Montgomery at a base in Kent near London. Monty, as he was known to all, had agreed to brief the American general but made it clear from the outset that he had little time or inclination to do so.

  Eisenhower obviously knew all about Montgomery: the coming man in the British military, destined to lead the Eighth Army in North Africa. Known to be abrasive, self-righteous, a rigid tactician who openly espoused the creed of caution in battle, Montgomery was not popular with his peers, although liked by his troops.

  Kay knew the day had not gone well when she saw the general walking across the parade ground to the car. Eisenhower never hurried anywhere. Patience was his trademark. He let others make speed around him while he moved slowly, ever watchful, waiting for the right moment to speak or act. Now he was hurrying to the car so fast that Mark Clark could hardly keep up with him. There was an unlit cigarette between his fingers.

  It was just before six on a sunlit evening and the chestnut trees that lined two sides of the square had put forth their white candle-shaped flowers. They gave the trees the appearance of exotic birthday cakes, green creamy leaves rising like icing to a peak lit by the flames of white flowers.

  The trees were one of the enduring images of an early English summer and Kay had planned to point them out as they left, but quickly changed her mind as she held open the re
ar door. Eisenhower sank wordlessly into the back seat, put the cigarette into his mouth and leant over to take the offered light from Clark beside him.

  “Sonofabitch,” he said as they drove through the camp gates.

  She could see him in the mirror, white-faced with anger, the veins throbbing in his temple, fists tightly clenched. Drawing deeply on the cigarette, he wound the window down and expelled a long stream of smoke.

  “Limeysonofabitch.”

  Clark joined in the parade of insults and Kay listened as the two men discussed their encounter with Montgomery. Their anger turned to disbelief as they repeated the story to themselves. The British commander had been briefing his American visitors in a crowded meeting room when he had suddenly stopped and barked out a question: someone was smoking, who was it?

  There was silence in the room while everyone looked around. Eisenhower dropped his cigarette, ground it out beneath his shoe and said quietly that he had been smoking: was that a problem?

  Of course that was a problem, Montgomery had snapped. Smoking was a disgusting habit and banned while men were on duty. Never do that again in my presence, he said.

  Eisenhower was livid. He had been openly rebuked in a schoolmasterly manner in front of British officers very much his junior. Rank, status and emblems on a uniform were the lifeblood of any army and, although Montgomery outranked him, he, Eisenhower, had been placed in charge of pulling together the Allied military effort in Britain by none other than the president of the United States. As such he merited Montgomery’s respect, not a public rebuke.

  The anger in the back of the car turned to rueful laughter as Eisenhower told Clark how Montgomery had said goodbye to him. Realising that he may have gone too far in his rebuke, the British general had drawn Eisenhower aside and tried to smooth matters over. He had complimented Eisenhower on his promotion and promised co-operation in the difficult tasks ahead. Eisenhower had listened politely, shook hands, and was about to leave when Montgomery lowered his voice almost to a whisper and said, “My men smoke a lot too, you know. Rationing is very tight. I don’t suppose you have any spare packs of Lucky Strikes, do you? Good for morale, you know.”

  Montgomery had not bothered to get briefed on his visitors. That much was obvious to Eisenhower. He knew from the start what Montgomery would only slowly find out: that the two men were exact opposites in background, temperament and training.

  Kay delivered the men to Claridge’s earlier than usual, at around 8 p.m. She noticed the meeting with Montgomery had changed Eisenhower. He and General Clark turned their anger to laughter by mocking Montgomery’s clipped, oh-so-English accent, his battledress beret and his habit of addressing everyone as if talking to imbecile schoolchildren. Both men relaxed. Eisenhower told Clark that he accepted Montgomery was a pompous prig, but he was also a master tactician who had laid out impressive plans for the coming campaign in North Africa. They would have to work with him.

  Kay held the car door for the general while, as usual, a crowd of dirty-faced schoolchildren, little more than five or six years old, ran up with hands out, chanting, “Got any gum, chum?”

  They should have been with other evacuees in the countryside. No one knew where they came from but they always seemed to be outside the hotel at the right moment to accost visiting Americans with demands for chewing gum or chocolate.

  Eisenhower laughed while the doormen shooed the children away. Then he turned to Kay and said, “I guess the war can do without us for a few hours. You know a good place for dinner, somewhere where they don’t serve cabbage or sprouts?”

  Kay knew what he was talking about. She spent hours in a car every day with men who were served boiled cabbage or Brussels sprouts at every meal on the army bases they visited. She had heard him mutter more than once in the back to colleagues that this must be the fartingest war in history.

  “The Connaught,” she said. “Good food, just down the street and the tables in the restaurant are far enough apart for privacy.”

  “Good,” said Eisenhower. “Give us ten minutes to wash up.”

  She drove them slowly the two blocks through evening streets still lit by the last of the sun. It would not get dark until ten that night, which meant they were safe from the occasional raid the Luftwaffe still flung at London. That wasn’t the only reminder of the grim days of the Blitz.

  Barrage balloons hung like spaceships in the darkening sky. Cables tethered these new London landmarks to parks and gardens that had been stripped of their iron railings. The streets were potholed, with missing houses and boarded up windows. She thought London looked rather better in the blackout than by day. At night, pedestrians with masked torches shone narrow beams onto the pavements, creating the surreal effect of walking among aliens.

  Kay jumped out to open the doors at the Connaught, an ancient hotel dating back to the early eighteenth century that had changed its name from Coburg in the Great War, she told them as they got out.

  “Why?” Eisenhower asked.

  It was rather too German a name for its patrons, Kay explained. He smiled at that. She wasn’t sure why.

  The uniformed doorman stiffened, almost prepared, it seemed, to salute a man whose face and rank were becoming well known to Londoners. The general walked up the steps and turned. Clark went ahead into the hotel.

  “You’ll join us, Kay?” he said, posing the question as if it needed no answer.

  Kay looked at the doorman, who was apparently struggling to understand what he had just heard. She wondered if she dared accept, and if she did, where she would park the car. The Packard flew the US flag on the bonnet and was known as an embassy car; there were very few like it in London. If she left it outside the hotel the police could hardly object.

  But Motor Transport Corp drivers did not accompany generals to lunch, dinner or any social occasion; nor indeed were they supposed to talk to their charges beyond the usual courtesies. As she could see from the doorman’s scandalised expression, Eisenhower was about to break a social taboo. She looked at her general. There was a smile on his face.

  “I’d love to,” she said and walked past the doorman, knowing that he would probably earn half a guinea from the Evening Standard for the social travesty he had just witnessed.

  They sat at a square table in a dining room strung with chandeliers and with a single rose placed in a small vase on the crisp linen of every table. The maître d’ placed Kay between Eisenhower and Clark with a look that suggested he shared the doorman’s disapproval. She liked Clark. He and Eisenhower were like brothers, both career soldiers who had been rapidly promoted after the outbreak of war.

  Their army talk in the back of the car was quick-fire, laced with expletives and coded with references she could not understand. But Clark was the one who would break off the conversation to admire a pretty woman on the street. Eisenhower would sigh theatrically, nod and pull the conversation back to the subject under discussion.

  Kay was nervous and gratefully accepted a cigarette. Her hands shook slightly as Eisenhower held out the lighter. It was the first time she’d been face-to-face with her boss, the first time she’d looked him in the eyes, the first time she’d talked to him beyond saying good morning, good night and yes, sir, no, sir. Her world was the big Packard car and her job was to deliver her man throughout the day to meetings, lunches, dinners and back to the hotel at night.

  She had begun to run errands for him as well, picking up the evening papers from the vendor on the corner or fetching cigarettes from the hotel porter. But that was all. In the weeks she had been driving him they had hardly spoken more than a couple of sentences. Now she was going to have dinner with him, and Eisenhower quickly made clear she was going to be very much part of the conversation.

  Both Americans ordered sirloin steak, green salad and new potatoes, luxuries long forgotten by most Londoners. Kay thought it best to order the same and try and say as little as possibl
e. Clark suggested a bottle of red wine. Eisenhower looked at Kay.

  “Would you like some wine?” he asked.

  She nodded and saw him smile. She decided there was nothing to be nervous about. These two men just wanted to relax, swap stories about the roller-coaster ride of their service careers and drink a lot of wine, and they wanted to do so in the company of their driver. That didn’t seem to bother either of them, though the maître d’ barely deigned to notice her presence. Kay was wearing her Motor Transport Corps uniform. Her rank and station were obvious to everyone in the dining room.

  For an hour the war didn’t exist. The Americans cracked jokes, each trumping the other’s stories and both laughing out loud. She couldn’t help but laugh too, not so much at the jokes, which she couldn’t understand, but at the madcap way these two men enjoyed themselves.

  They teased her about her slight Irish accent and the way she drove so slowly. They ordered more wine and smoked continually. The tradition in such grand restaurants was that one did not light up until coffee, but no one bothered to rebuke the American generals.

  She had never seen her boss like this, never suspected that behind the military mask such a man existed. The grey face had recovered its colour, the eyes were blue rather than bloodshot. The grin got wider as the stories and questions flew across the table. He suddenly looked his age again, fifty-one, and not like the much older man he sometimes appeared to be after days and nights of argument and debate.

  They asked about her fiancé and she made them laugh again by saying she was forbidden to say where he was or what he was doing.

  Then Mark Clark asked, “You’re Irish, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, born in Cork. Daddy has a small place out west by the sea. We grew up there, four kids running wild on horses every day.”