Ike and Kay
Page 28
Tellingly, Professor Smith cites another distinguished academic, Professor Garrett Mattingly, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Armada, as a source for the divorce story. Mattingly, who was Professor of History at Columbia when Eisenhower was president there, had been a junior naval intelligence officer in the war with the job of monitoring outgoing cables from senior commanders for censorship purposes. According to Professor Smith, Mattingly told colleagues at Columbia that he had seen Marshall’s cable to Eisenhower in May 1945 in which he threatened to force him out of the army if he went ahead and divorced Mamie. Professor Henry F. Graff of Columbia is cited as the source for the Mattingly story.
Since many real people are portrayed in this book it might be helpful to explain what happened to the leading characters.
David Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, died from heart failure in Washington in March 1969 aged seventy-eight.
Kay Summersby died from cancer in January 1975 aged sixty-six. She spent her last days in Southampton, Long Island. Her ashes were scattered where she grew up, at Innis Beg, Co Cork, Ireland.
Field Marshal Montgomery died aged eighty-eight in Hampshire, England. His post-war years were beset by controversy not least over his criticism of Eisenhower’s conduct of the final stages of the war.
General Omar Bradley died in April 1981 aged eighty-eight. His successful post-war career included a fine memoir, A General’s Life, co-authored with Clay Blair and published posthumously in 1983. In the book he criticised Field Marshal Montgomery.
General Patton died on 21 December 1945 after a car accident in Germany. He was sixty. He was buried in a military cemetery in Luxembourg alongside men of his Third Army.
Apart from the books mentioned above, I found the following useful in my research:
Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: Allied Supreme Commander (Henry Holt and Co., 2002).
Michael Korda, Ike: An American Hero (Harper Collins, 2007).
David Eisenhower, Eisenhower at War 1943-45 (Vintage Books, 1987).
Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier and President (Simon and Shuster, 1997).
Susan Eisenhower, Mrs Ike: A Biography of Mamie Eisenhower (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996).
Norman Gelb, Ike and Monty: Generals at War (William Morrow and Co., 1994).
Mark Perry, Partners in Command (Penguin Books, 2007).
Ed Cray, General of the Army: George C. Marshall (Simon and Shuster, 1991).
Omar Bradley and Clay Blair, A General’s Life (Simon and Shuster, 1983).
Harry C. Butcher, Three Years with Eisenhower (Heinemann, 1946).
Acknowledgements
Never have I written a book which has required more help and advice from friends, colleagues, editors, and my long-suffering agent Annabel Merullo. To her I owe a debt of thanks that only the success of this book will repay. To my first editor Juliet van Oss I owe warm thanks, and more so to my colleague Karen Robinson of The Sunday Times who has a critical editorial eye and never lets friendship interfere with some hard but vitally helpful judgements. My final editor and friend Sue Robertson showed me the light at the end of the tunnel.
No book goes to press without a copy edit to remove all the small but embarrassing mistakes that inevitably creep into the text. The fine eye of Deborah Blake did just that for this author and he is profoundly grateful.
Gesche Ipsen, who then headed the Duckworth office in London, supported the book from the start, as did that grand old man of British publishing, the magisterial Peter Meyer, who has guided three of my previous novels into the bookshops. Thank you Peter. I am also grateful to Matt Casbourne, now publishing director of Duckworth, for answering my endless queries.
Mrs Deborah Keegan, who fills the role in my life of a cross between matron and mother superior, could not have been more helpful and encouraging even if she disapproves of my sending her emails in the middle of the night.
Katherine Raymond Hinton has been wonderfully generous in taking time off from her busy life with her husband, Les Hinton, in New York to read and comment kindly on my previous books. Her praise has always been the light that shines through the dark moments.
It is an invidious task to thank friends for just “being there” in the course of writing a book, because inevitably one cannot name them all. However, to Colin Adamson, Alex Shulman, Victoria Silberbauer, Graham and Sue Paterson, Mrs Yash Patel and the late Chris Buckland, who I hope will read this on whatever celestial perch he has alighted – thank you. I may not have seen much of you in the course of writing this book but trust me – you helped.
To Dotti Irving, counsellor, friend, critic and a lady who bestrides the London PR scene – I owe a lot, including another lunch.
Finally to my children Emily, Elizabeth and Nicholas, my gratitude and my love for doing more for me as a writer and father than they will ever know.
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