Ike and Kay

by James MacManus

  He said nothing but came round the desk and sat next to her as she lowered her eyes.

  “You do a lot for me and I just want to say thank you. That’s all. If people want to talk let them.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. I’m just doing my job, sir,” she said. She was whispering and didn’t know why.

  “And I’m doing mine. Part of that job is to look after my staff who are very special to me – all of them.”

  “I know, sir,” she said, wanting to fling herself into his arms and say, “You’re very special to me too.”

  But she didn’t. He briefly took her hand and squeezed it, then suddenly stood up, returned to the desk and said in a clenched voice, “That will be all for now.”

  Afterwards she put his words together as one might a jigsaw puzzle. She wanted to understand what this man really felt for her.

  He had told her after the Strathallen sinking that she meant something special to him, that he had missed her, that he had cursed himself for putting her at risk on a convoy vessel.

  Those words and the way he touched her, leaning on her shoulders while looking over her head at a document, holding her hand after a long shoulder massage, would be a declaration of love in any other man. But her boss fought such emotions. He recoiled from anything he said or did that might reveal inner feelings.

  The next two days were the worst any of the staff could recall in Eisenhower’s service. His temper flamed at odd moments over minor matters. He snapped at innocent remarks and snarled answers to questions raised even by senior colleagues.

  “What the hell has got into him?” said Tex to no one in particular.

  None of the staff could find logic in the sullen temper of the man they served. Montgomery had not crossed the general’s path for several days, and that other irritant, General de Gaulle, was sulking as usual over some perceived slight.

  Stranger still, the Allies had finally broken out of Normandy and the war was going well with General Patton on the rampage towards Paris.

  “Beats the hell out of me,” said Tex. “What’s up, Kay, any idea?”

  Kay shook her head. Whatever the problem was, and she had a shrewd idea, she felt it was time someone talked to the general about his behaviour.

  She went to his office, knocked on the door and entered on a barked command from within.

  “Yes?” he said without looking up.

  “I’ve decided that I do not need new uniforms, sir. They are a wartime extravagance, but thank you for the offer.”

  He looked up, frowning.

  “You’re going to get measured for those uniforms and you will do so tomorrow. The tailor will be here at 9 a.m.”

  “I would rather not, sir.”

  “That’s an order, Miss Summersby.”

  He stood up, red-faced, leaning forward on the desk on clenched fists.

  “And I am not allowed to refuse an order from my commander-in-chief?”

  “Damn right you’re not.”

  He came round the desk and stood in front of her. They glared at each other.

  “Have you got anything to say?” His voice was softer this time.

  “No, sir.”

  “You walk into my office and tell me you don’t want new uniforms when only a few days ago you told me you needed them!”

  She hadn’t said anything of the sort, but there was no point arguing.

  “I explained why, sir.”

  “No, you didn’t. What’s going on?”

  “I was going to ask you the same question, sir.”

  He looked down, shook his head, stepped back and threw his arms up in the air.

  “Sir, I ...”

  “Listen. When the signal came through that night the Strathallen went down I felt as if the ground had been cut from under my feet. I went through hell that night. I cursed myself for not having had you fly out.”

  “Sir ...”

  “Don’t say anything. I was never going to tell you how I felt, and sweet Jesus I don’t know how I’ve found the guts to do so now.”

  “Ike, I just want to say ...”

  “Goddammit!”

  He had his hands on her shoulders and shook her lightly. Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, kissing with the passion of a lovers’ farewell.

  It was Kay who broke away. What if Tex walked in as he had a habit of doing without knocking? There were lipstick smudges all over Ike’s neck and cheeks. She licked the corner of a handkerchief and began wiping his face. She tried to keep hold of her thoughts, which were tumbling over each other like flotsam in floodwater. He loved her. That was all that mattered.

  Ike looked serious and said, “I don’t want you to be hurt. I don’t want people to talk about you.”

  “It’s too late for that, sir,” she said. They were both taking risks, her boss far more than her. Eisenhower had a reputation, a career and a marriage to lose. She was just a junior who would survive the limelight of any scandal. But Ike was always hopelessly naïve about the gossip that had trailed them since they first met.

  “Maybe we should be more careful,” she said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Maybe we should stop ...”

  “Stop what?”

  “... being so close.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She waited. The question twisted slowly in the air between them like a spider hanging on the single filament of an unwoven web.

  “It’s called an affair, sir.”

  13

  July-August 1944

  On 27 August, two days after the liberation of Paris, Kay drove her boss into the city in an armour-plated limousine. Four years of German occupation had ended and Paris had gone wild. General Patton’s fast-moving armoured columns had rolled up the German flank, driven the occupying forces beyond the Seine and delivered the prize of the French capital to Eisenhower.

  She drove slowly through the cheering crowds surging up and down the Champs Élysées, taking Eisenhower to the Arc de Triomphe to pay their respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  She saw him smile for the first time in all the weeks since D-Day, weeks that had flickered past like a newsreel film. Then he laughed right out loud. She knew the grin well enough, he was famous for it, but very few people had seen Eisenhower laugh; and now here he was, leaning back on his jeep and laughing at the sight of General Omar Bradley emerging from a mob of French women well-wishers with his hat askew, buttons torn off his uniform and lipstick smeared all over his face.

  The military police had formed a tight ring around Eisenhower as a huge crowd tried to get their first sight of the man whose troops had liberated Paris two days earlier. General Bradley, recently promoted to take charge of the 12th American Army Group with almost a million men under his command, had decided to leave the cordon and talk to the crowd. Back at the jeep, bruised, breathless and not a little shaken, he said, “I didn’t think I would get out of that alive.” Eisenhower laughed all over again.

  The fall of Paris in August threw up problems for Eisenhower that no American general had ever had to face, nor had they ever made their way into a military manual. After four years of German occupation during which the swastika flew over every public building, the city lost its collective sanity at the sight of the Stars and Stripes, Union Jacks and occasionally the Canadian Maple Leaf flags of the Allied forces.

  The brothels, bars and restaurants did no greater business than the back-street Parisian entrepreneurs turning out national flags of all the triumphant Allied nations in every shape and size: to be waved in streets, flown from every flagpole in the city, hung from buildings, laid across the tables of pavement cafes, and attached to every vehicle that managed to move through the throng of people on all ma
jor streets and avenues.

  In the first days of celebration it was as if time had retreated with the defeated Germans. The city’s clocks stopped, no one bothered to look at their watch, night became day and day night.

  The weather was hot. A heat haze hung over the city in a misty cupola that beamed a translucent light on the streets below. Nothing looked or felt real. People acted as if they had stumbled into a new play without learning their lines.

  There was no shortage of cheap wine or beer, the only comfort lacking was accommodation. Americans had taken over every single hotel and guest room in the liberated city and they seemed to have done so on the basis that the Parisians would be happy to provide such service free to the liberating army.

  Eisenhower told his own staff to find him a headquarters decently removed from the city. He pointed a finger on the map.

  “Versailles,” he said. “That will do.” And that is where Kay and the rest of his family moved to, leaving with some sadness the apple orchard calm of rural France for the splendour of the Trianon Hotel, which had until only days earlier been occupied by the German military headquarters in France

  The Trianon had once been the stables for the nearby Palace of Versailles where the Sun King, the great Louis XIV, lived during his reign of seventy-two years. The whirligig of history now placed Eisenhower’s staff in the former stables while he was quartered rather more comfortably in the palace itself.

  Eisenhower’s staff found evidence everywhere of the speed and surprise of the German departure. Confidential papers were lying half-burnt in fireplaces, clothes were still hanging in the wardrobes, and shaving equipment and toiletries were scattered about in the bathrooms.

  While the protection unit set up a security perimeter in the woodland around the Trianon, Kay and the rest of the staff cleaned up their new quarters.

  For a man who read nothing but pulp cowboy fiction outside his official reading, Eisenhower often showed a surprising interest in history, or rather, as Kay noted, he became interested when he was face-to-face with it. The first orders of the day issued from the Trianon ended with a final addendum to his staff.

  “I want a detailed brief on this whole shebang,” he said, waving his hand vaguely towards the windows of the opulent room in which they were meeting. He either did not notice, or paid no attention to the fact that everyone in the room was staring at Kay. She enjoyed the attention. Eisenhower would explain soon enough.

  “Shebang, sir?”

  It was Walter Bedell Smith, the chief of staff, teasing the supreme commander.

  “Yeah, Versailles. I told you all to learn your European history. We’re going to have a lot of visitors here, and we might as well know something about the past of this place.”

  Bedell Smith had anticipated the question.

  “Apparently, when Hitler paid a flying visit to Paris in 1940, his staff wanted to take him to Versailles but he said he had no interest in old royal palaces. He preferred the Eiffel Tower. He thought that was wonderful.”

  “Is that true?” asked Eisenhower.

  “It falls in the category of good historical gossip which is probably true because it is likely to be so, but which can be neither proved nor disproved,” said Bedell Smith.

  “You should have been a lawyer,” said Eisenhower.

  “If I’d had any sense, I would have been.”

  “Well, that’s history for you,” said Eisenhower. “Now, let’s get some facts – Kay?”

  She stepped forward and began reading from a piece of paper on which she had hurriedly scrawled some notes.

  “Versailles was once an old hunting lodge which Louis the Fourteenth, the Sun King of France, had turned into the most famous palace in the world. It was from here that he ruled for seventy-two years, much of it spent fighting wars to ensure that France became the greatest power in Europe. Louis is famous for centralising the power of the French and for many well known quotations ...”

  Eisenhower interrupted.

  “Après moi le deluge – right?”

  “I think that was another French king,” said Kay, looking at Bedell Smith.

  “Louis the Fifteenth,” he said.

  “So what did the great Sun King say that was so memorable?” asked Eisenhower.

  Kay looked at her notes again, wondering briefly whether anyone would believe that in the middle of a world war General Eisenhower was asking for a history lesson about a long-dead French monarch.

  “As the Sun King was dying – I found this in a guide book – he gave this advice to his successor: ‘I have often undertaken war too lightly and sustained it for vanity. Do not imitate me but be a peaceful prince and apply yourself to the alleviation of the burden of your subjects.’”

  “No wonder Hitler didn’t want to come here,” said Eisenhower.

  He glanced around the room. No one could help looking at Kay. He smiled.

  “I guess I should have made an announcement a little earlier. If you wonder why Miss Summersby is wearing an American army uniform it’s because that’s where she is now – in the American army. Let’s give her a hand.”

  Kay acknowledged the applause with a small blushing bow. She was wearing the freshly pressed olive-green uniform of the Women’s Army Corps with the shoulder insignia of a second lieutenant.

  Kay could no more could grasp her new status as a military aide to the supreme commander, Allied Forces, than she could believe that Paris had fallen without a fight.

  She, Kay Summersby, formerly a pool driver in the Motor Transport Corps in London, now had rank in a new American army unit. What’s more, her recruitment had been officially agreed and arranged by the president of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  She kept telling herself that, because it was very difficult to believe. But it was true. When she had written to tell her mother, she had written the word in capitals: TRUE. And it was true.

  Eisenhower told her the news himself and had done so with a big grin one afternoon back at the Portsmouth headquarters.

  “You’ve always said you were interested in joining the WACs and I decided to do something about it.”

  “The president mentioned it way back, but I thought that was just talk.”

  “Kay, the president doesn’t do ‘just talk’. He wants it done and it will be done.”

  She looked at him, robbed of words, her mouth open.

  “You’re going to swallow a fly if you keep looking like that,” he said, still smiling.

  “Me? A WAC? But ... I’m not a ...”

  “You’re not a citizen. I know. It doesn’t matter. The president ordered it done.”

  “But I thought Roosevelt was ... well, I thought it was some sort of joke.”

  He laughed and said, “The president doesn’t joke about such matters. He liked you and he meant it.”

  All she could say was, “Oh my goodness.”

  Then his smile faded and he talked in that brisk way she had heard in meetings.

  “I’m planning ahead. The war is far from won, but we are going to win it, and I will not be in Europe forever.”

  “So you’ll go back to Washington?”

  “Yes. I’ve told you. And you are coming with me. We work very well together. Once you’re a WAC, I can keep you on my staff.”

  Disguised in the clipped manner of an officer outlining routine orders for the day at a staff meeting, he told her she was to join the American armed forces. Her formal induction would not take place for a few months because there was simply too much going on to complete the necessary paperwork.

  But she could wear the uniform of a second lieutenant immediately. Until she officially became a member of the American armed forces she would remain his driver. And she could continue to carry the Beretta pistol that fitted so snugly into her handbag.

  Most important of all, once she
had joined the US Army with the promise of citizenship she could join him in Washington.

  Whenever she examined the logic of this conversation – and she did so frequently – she reached the one inescapable conclusion. Eisenhower, Ike, the boss, was planning a life with her after the war. She always rebuked herself after these flights of fantasy because that is surely what they were – the febrile imaginings of a woman trying to turn dreams into reality. Then she would take the Beretta out of her bag, grip it tightly and point it at herself in the mirror. The gun made her feel good. But it wasn’t who she was. It was a useful reminder that life is not always what you see in a mirror.

  She kept the Beretta with her at all times and even slept with it on her bedside table. Ike insisted that she practise regularly on a range wherever they were and she had become a very good shot.

  He joked about the gun to his staff. “I wouldn’t argue with Kay,” he would say when an argument arose over some minor dispute. “She’s armed and dangerous.”

  The phone rang on his desk and Eisenhower turned to answer it. “Does that all make sense?” he said to her with one hand over the mouthpiece.

  “Yes,” she said, slightly dazed at the way in which such startling information had been delivered, as if he had been telling her the destination for the next day’s drive.

  Professionally speaking it made a great deal of sense. They worked well together. He had said that. She helped him do the most important and difficult job in the world. Promotion to a military role in the Women’s Army Corps would enable her to do that job more efficiently. As his driver she had never had difficulty dealing with the big men around Eisenhower: Churchill, Bradley and Patton.

  They accepted that the Allied Commander drew emotional strength from a loyal and fiercely protective team of aides who created a tightly controlled world which revolved entirely around him. Kay Summersby was an important part of that world.

  Men such as Bradley and Patton also accepted without comment or criticism that Kay provided her commander with “physical comforts”. It was a coy and very English way of saying that she was sleeping with Eisenhower, an assumption widely held in the Allied command.