“Of course it’s true,” I retorted. “And you stink.”
“Ah. Excusez-moi.” He swept into a clumsy bow. “Last night I slept beside the corpse of a Senegalese soldier. I wish I’d been at the Ritz, instead—with you.”
I burst out laughing.
They helped us locate our American convoy, which was most displeased by our night-long absence. The major in charge scolded us. I shrugged. “I’m a major, too. You can’t put me in lockup.” That very night, without a microphone or a gown, illuminated only by flashlights held by the soldiers and dressed in my soiled fatigues, I sang as Cassino fell to the Allies. I figured if they didn’t like my performance, they just had to turn off their lights.
They demanded an encore.
With charcoal from the campfires, the men drafted leggy sketches of me on roadsides and tree trunks, pointing the way for those behind as we straggled toward Rome. Halfway there, I developed a persistent fever and a gurgle in my chest. Within hours, I was delirious. Five days later, I awoke disorientated in a camp infirmary to find Danny at my side. He hadn’t left me for a moment; I was suffering from pneumonia and severe dehydration. The doctor had injected me with a few precious doses of a new drug called penicillin, reserved for soldiers.
Without it, I would have died.
“Did the boys miss me?” I croaked.
Danny chortled. “They did. And you’ve a lot more to entertain, my golden panther. The forces ahead of us have broken into Rome. And we’ve just received word that a combined Allied force of over a hundred and fifty thousand is landing in Normandy.”
I cried then. I cried until I had no more tears left.
IN ROME, THE NAZIS WERE STILL ENTRENCHED, bolstered by Italian sympathizers. There was brutal fighting near the Forum and Trajan’s Column. With the rattle of gunfire and bombs exploding overhead, we helped ferry the injured on stretchers into a vacant palazzo. Amid peeling frescoes and looted tapestries, I sang for those who weren’t dead or undergoing surgery, threading back and forth among the makeshift cots and ignoring a resurgence of my fever.
Danny finally brought a halt to it. “Our ten weeks are up. We have to go home.”
“No.” In bed with a compress on my throat and another dose of penicillin in my veins, I was in no position to defy anyone. “I want to stay. They need us. And I—”
“I know.” He squeezed my hand. “You need them. But you’re going to die if you keep this up. You need to rest and recover. We’re returning to New York. Don’t even think of trying to stop me. I’ll carry you onto the airplane if I have to.”
He ended up carrying me anyway, as I was too weak to stand.
WHEN WE ARRIVED IN AMERICA, reporters and photographers clamored. I’d performed more shows in more war-torn areas than any USO performer before me. After granting several interviews, swaying against Danny’s shoulder, I took to my bed in Rudi’s apartment, where Tamara fussed over me. When I felt better, I phoned my agent.
Hollywood had ignored me. My last picture, the Arabian fiasco Kismet, had tanked in national previews. While MGM insisted that I must attend the official premiere and still held the option on my contract, the studio had no current plan to feature me in anything.
“You should come anyway,” Eddie said. “You’re getting amazing coverage for your USO tour. I’m sure they’ll reconsider once they know you’re back and ready to work.”
“Let me think about it,” I replied, and as soon as I hung up, I telephoned Danny, who sighed. “I adore you, Marlene. But I can’t go back. I have a family to feed.”
So did I, but mine was eating well enough without me. Ignoring the studio mandate since Carole Lombard’s death that stars under contract could not travel by airplane, I flew to Hollywood. After attending the premiere, I spent a few nights at the canteen with Bette, who kissed me fervently and roused the entire assembly to a “Lili Marleen” serenade. Eddie wanted to schedule rounds for me at the studio, saying I looked incredible.
“Eating nothing but wieners does wonders for the figure,” I said, adding that I couldn’t stay. I had to return to New York to spend time with my daughter but would call him soon.
The moment I landed in Manhattan, I filed for another USO tour of duty.
In late August, soon after the joyous liberation of Paris, I headed out to entertain troops in Labrador, Greenland, and Iceland before visiting England and France.
Unbeknownst to me, the worst lay ahead.
VI
Guts and Bones” his men called him, but I felt it wasn’t a fair description. Oh, he was impressive—a harsh-featured raptor of a man in polished cavalry boots, with old-fashioned pistols at his belt. Yet he also had a big laugh, a bigger appetite, and a surprisingly delicate touch.
I was presented to General George S. Patton at 50 Grosvenor Square during a reception hosted by the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces, a branch of which oversaw high-brass requests for entertainers on tour. I was actively courting them in the hope of obtaining engagement at the front. To my frustration, the USO was no longer willing to risk sending its contracted entertainers into active war zones. With Germany cornered but defiant, the fight to capture Hitler and destroy the last vestiges of his power had turned the front into a charnel ground. Losing Paris had struck a fatal blow to the Reich; enraged, Hitler had ordered all of the city’s bridges packed with explosives and detonated, only his commander had hesitated, allowing the Americans enough time to cede liberation of the city to General de Gaulle. Now, the Nazis vowed to fight to the death in their own rubble and the USO warned me via their London office that I’d been declared a wanted enemy of the Reich. There was a price on my head; the USO could not be responsible for any danger befalling me.
“How much are they asking for my head?” I said, and the London office refused to accept my calls again.
Their refusal wasn’t about to deter me. In London, I reunited with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who was scheduled to shoot a much-delayed picture. We didn’t resume our affair—I wasn’t about to tolerate his jealous tirades again—but he proved a delightful entrée into the high military circles of the Allied forces, which were organizing a strategy to free those parts of Europe still under attack, where I wanted to be: with the boys. I also wanted to discover as much as I could about the Allied plans for Germany, as my recent attempts to contact my family had failed, the telephone lines dead and my wires gone unanswered, as if a wall had barricaded my country.
“I’m told you like to sunbathe nude,” Patton said moments after we’d been introduced. Outside the salon, London was knee-deep in the debris of the Blitz, sirens wailing as the dead and injured were unearthed, but indoors champagne flowed and everyone seemed optimistic.
I sipped from my glass. “We’re at war, General. You can’t believe everything you hear.”
“Oh, I think this particular rumor must be true.” His small blue-gray eyes scoured me in my tailored military jacket and gored knee-length skirt. “Soldiers never lie.”
“Neither do majors,” I said. He was quite a few years older than me; with the exception of his height, he wasn’t the type of man I usually gravitated to. He had something of the stern uncle in him, a dictatorial authority that made those under his command trust him with their lives, even if the look he now gave me was anything but familial. “But,” I went on, “if I did sunbathe nude, would it be enough of a qualification to get me to the front?”
He went silent for a moment. “I’d have to see it for myself.”
“The front?”
“No.” He refilled my glass. “The sunbathing.”
HE WAS A NO-FRILLS LOVER, which was fine. It was a no-frills situation. Afterward, as I smoked and he palmed his prized mother-of-pearl inlaid Colt .45s, replicas of those belonging to some long-dead general he admired, he said, “So, do you really want to go to the front?”
“Yes,” I said, turning to him eagerly.
He grimaced. He did not like me smoking in bed. “It could be arranged. You can tra
vel with my unit to Paris and then on to eastern France and Belgium, but”—he chuckled as he fended off my kisses—“only if you tell me why you truly want to go.”
“Why?” I paused in astonishment. “Why else? I’m an entertainer. I came here to entertain. Surely your boys deserve to see Marlene Dietrich after everything they have done.”
“And continue to do.” His weathered face turned somber. “It’s dangerous, more than you seem to think. This is not a Hollywood premiere. No one can guarantee your safety.”
“I survived the war in Italy. I’m sure I can survive a few shows at the front. And I don’t expect you to guarantee anything. I know what I signed up for.”
“Do you?” He went silent, chewing on his lower lip before he broke his own rule and retrieved his disgusting, half-smoked cigar from the bedside ashtray. He clamped it between his teeth; when I made to reach for my lighter, he shook his head, gnawing the cigar as he eyed me. “I think you have another reason besides this patriotic duty to show us your legs. Not that my boys would mind; I certainly don’t. But in war, mistakes are often made by those on the same side. I can’t afford to have you be my mistake.”
I went still. Should I confide in him? I only hesitated because of who I was—an American citizen, yes, hailed by my adopted country, if not the studio heads, but still with the blood of the enemy in my veins, no matter how much I might declare my abhorrence of Hitler.
“It’s Germany, isn’t it?” he said, surprising me with his insight. It shouldn’t have; he was revered for his tactical brilliance. “You want to get in there. It’s why you agreed to do the wireless program with the American Broadcast System, singing ‘Lili Marleen’ and giving rousing speeches that they broadcast into occupied territories. What did you say in that last one?”
“That all my songs are dedicated to the Allied soldiers of course.”
“‘Who are about to meet up with you boys and destroy your thousand-year Reich,’” he added wryly. “Hardly music to Hitler’s ears. You must know by now how much he hates you, the homegrown star turned Allied pet. If you’re ever captured, they’ll make an example of you. Hitler will have you shot in front of the Brandenburg Gate.”
“And Goebbels, too,” I said. “Don’t forget that he hates me even more.”
“It’s not a joke, Marlene. If you’re captured, we can’t do anything about it. We can’t risk our entire operation for one person, as admirable as you may be.”
“So, there is an operation.”
“That’s classified. But you’ve just answered my question.”
I smoked, watching him in silence before I said, “I have family there. My mother, my sister, and my uncle . . . they’re not Nazis.”
“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything. That’s my point.”
“I still have to find out if they’re . . .” Suddenly, I couldn’t say the words. Was my family still alive? Or had this horrendous war killed them like so many others? My mother had said they were safe, good Germans, protected by their loyalty as long as they kept their heads down. But everything had changed. The Reich was crumbling. I’d humiliated Goebbels by turning down his proposals, filing for U.S. citizenship, and flinging my contempt in his face. The Nazis knew what I’d done in Italy; they must hear me now, singing my defiance over the wireless. I couldn’t expect my family to have escaped. But I needed to see for myself. I had to know.
Patton handed me one of his revolvers. “I’m going to teach you how to shoot. And when you’ve learned, I’m going to give these to you. I want you to carry them with you at all times. If there ever comes a time, God forbid, I want you to use them. Can you do that?”
I closed my fingers around the gun, warm from his touch. I understood what he was saying. Suicide was preferable. “Yes,” I whispered. “I can.”
“Good. Because if you’d said no, the only place you’d be showing off your legs is Piccadilly Circus.”
PARIS.
What can I say about my return to the city I’d come to love, that alabaster muse whose crowded garrets had housed some of the most daring artists of our time? She wasn’t the same. She might look the same, if a bit ragged after the deprivations of occupation, but she felt different. Tense. Like a hunted animal being lured into a snare, waiting for the Free French to haul her before their pitiless tribunals.
The savage purge had begun. Suspected collaborators, including women left to fend for themselves while the Nazis held sway, were being prosecuted, their hair shorn before they were taken through the streets in a public procession, stones and filth flung at them, with not a few spontaneous executions by the mobs, resulting in corpses in tattered negligees dangling from lampposts.
Chanel was gone, her boutique shuttered. Others had fled, as well—anyone with a reason to fear the liberators would prove more punitive than the oppressors. But in the bar at the Ritz, I found an unexpected friend: Papa Hemingway, sousing it up with fellow reporters who’d raced to the city with the Allied forces to document Paris’s liberation. Papa had also participated in D-day, flying missions with the RAF, combat being his preferred aphrodisiac.
“Kraut!” he boomed, grabbing me in his bearlike embrace. “Of all the women in the world, I should have known you’d be the only one to walk into this joint—and with pistols at your belt, too.”
The pistols might be unique, but I wasn’t the only woman. Seated at the bar next to his stool was a petite, scowling brunette. I might have told her she needn’t look so unhappy, I wasn’t competition, not with Hemingway, but her terse nod when he introduced us, “Kraut, meet Mary Welsh. She writes for the Daily Express,” made me think twice.
I saw it at once in her sharp appraisal that no matter what I said, I was unwelcome. Papa was still married to his second wife, Martha Gellhorn, also a journalist, but I knew from his letters that the marriage was over. Mary Welsh must be angling to pounce as soon as he got divorced, although I’d advised him that his penchant for marriage was unhealthy, seeing that he couldn’t maintain it.
However, after a stormy Channel crossing on a U-boat and a jarring ride through the bomb-torn countryside to Paris, I was in need of some amusement. Smiling at her as I linked my arm in Papa’s, I asked, “And Martha? Is she here?”
“She was.” He pinched my underarm, apprised of my wiles. “But she left to file her report in London. She’ll be back. She won’t be able to stay away.”
“I see.” I didn’t take my gaze from Mary, who sat so erect on her stool her spine might have been made of brass. “Well, then. How lovely to see a few friendly faces.”
Mary had gone pale at the mention of Papa’s wife. “Come, dear.” I glided to her, taking Papa’s stool. “I’m desperate for information.”
“Information?” She frowned at me. “I can’t divulge my sources.”
“Even on where I might find hair bleach and razors?” I leaned closer to her, but not so close that Papa would fail to overhear. “I’ve just been with General Patton on the filthiest U-boat you can imagine. I made the mistake of visiting the latrines and caught a little—how shall I put it? A teensy bug problem? Oh, nothing to worry about,” I said. “Or at least nothing a shave and delousing powder won’t solve. Only, I forgot to pack a razor, and on top of it, my roots are starting to show. See?” I bent my head, feeling her recoil as if my little problem might leap out and infest her. “I’d be so grateful. There must be some contraband here?”
Behind me, Papa roared with laughter and bellowed at the bartender, “A drink for Miss Dietrich. The best whiskey in the house.”
Mary Welsh glowered.
What could she do? She found my razor and bleach on the black market, and I made a point of attaching myself to them. I joined Papa in the bathroom as he shaved, perched on the toilet as he regaled me with news about the war from his sources. He insisted on my company at the Allied parties, saying that whenever I showed up in my khakis, with my skirt hiked several inches above regulation requirements and sporting my newly dyed coiffure, “Som
ehow, like the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, caviar and liquor follow.”
Mary eventually warmed to me, a fellow woman in a male-dominated arena. One night as we applied lipstick together, she suddenly giggled. “He proposed to me. As soon as he’s rid of that bitch Gellhorn, we’re going to get married.” She eyed me in the mirror. “She’s no good for him. Too ambitious. She competes with him for everything. She thinks she’s the better writer.”
“Perhaps she is.” I returned her stare. “Women often do things better than men, but we also often have to go to extra lengths to prove it.”
Before I departed for my engagement with the troops, I offered her and Papa my bed, as I had a full in my suite and they were sleeping in twins. Mary was so delighted with my evident acceptance of their engagement, over the Ritz manager’s protests she helped me haul the entire bedstead to their room. Papa never slept in my bed, however, as he’d left the night before to report from the eastern front.
I couldn’t help but smile as I drove out with Patton the next day, wondering how Mary Welsh would enjoy the surprise I’d deliberately left for her, crawling within my sheets.
Perhaps a teensy bug problem of her own would teach her that if screwing another woman’s husband was acceptable, conniving to break up his marriage was not.
VII
If Italy had been purgatory, Belgium was hell.
It was one of the coldest winters on record, a fanged wind spitting sleet and snow, biting through my layers of wool and droopy fleece long johns. I caught lice, and had dysentery and frostbite; I performed for the boys in my spangled gowns and left the stage with my feet turning blue in my high heels and my teeth chattering so much, I couldn’t speak. Patton had a charcoal stove installed in my tent; he had one in his, too, which I preferred to share. Everyone knew we were lovers, and the boys only liked me more because of it. “Legs,” they dubbed me, which was also the official password Patton gave me, Legs Marlene, and their joy in seeing me singing my heart out every night before they went out to risk their lives made every discomfort bearable.
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