by Bill Mesce
In a little-known incident the RAF preferred to keep tactfully quiet — and which Anderson saw no reason to resurrect, and Markham was too discreet to reveal — Markham taught Anderson a lesson in responsibility the second time he found his wingman off hunting down a kill and leaving him vulnerable. Taking off after Anderson, Markham sent a short burst through Anderson’s tail. “Now,” Markham supposedly told him, “you know how it feels.”
That took care of the obedience issue. It did not take Anderson long, flying on Markham’s wing during those exhausting, countless sorties that made up the Battle of Britain, to develop respect. And, finally, as Anderson began to curb his more erratic and extreme tendencies — in the air, at least — the respect became mutual. From there it evolved into friendship. When the first of the RAF’s three all-American Eagle Squadrons was formed in September 1940, Markham and Anderson transferred together.
During his RAF days, Markham came of age. His flying had always been capable, but over the months of combat his instinctive talents became honed. His actions in the air, even wrhen appearing rash and desperate, were always based on calm consideration of the capabilities of his machine and skills, and those of his adversary. More than one RAF colleague described Markham’s removal of enemy aircraft from the sky as “surgery.”
It was not only Markhams expertise that was maturing. Flying with the Spanish, and later the French, had been different from his RAF service. The separations of culture and language did not allow anything more than a superficial fraternity between him and his fellow pilots. But with the RAF, and especially in his days with the Eagles, Markham experienced that iron bond that occurs between men who fight and face death together. If that brotherhood was fueled on the one hand by the spirit of adventure that brought so many young men across the sea, and on the other by their repugnance for the indiscriminate devastation inflicted during the Blitz, then Markham could add, in his own case, what he’d lived through at Guernica and in France.
The rhetoric tossed about by political and military leaders on all sides was just background static in his ears. While Markham was too truly humble to think of himself as in the service of the Forces of Good, he had seen too much to think of the enemy as anything less than truly evil. That belief strengthened not only the conviction of his fight, but the bond between him and his comrades, for that belief positioned them as the thin, defensive line between what — with all its foibles and frailties — still passed for decency and what was certainly obscene.
Anderson learned at Markham’s elbow and became not a perfect officer but an inspiring leader. In the air, his rabid energy compensated for his deficiencies at the stick. He still gloried in his reputation as a reckless madman with no concept of mortality, but from his mentor he took on a semblance of discipline and teamwork. Perhaps it was precisely those peculiarities of his nature, including his earth-bound peccadilloes, that were part of his attraction to the more staid Markham. One was the free spirit the other envied; the other the all-American hero one aspired to be.
Perhaps their most defining difference came in their relationship to fear. Fearlessness is the product of romantic fable-tellers more interested in box-office receipts and book sales than truth. Only certified nutters are without fear. Markham understood fear. When the 351st became operational, he took the mechanics aside and quietly told them that after a mission there would always be some red-faced pilots who climbed out of their cockpits and left some mess behind. Perhaps they’d been sick, or their bowels had shuddered loose when they felt Luftwaffe bullets punching through the thin aluminum skin of their ships. The mechanics were to clean the mess and be silent. “One wisecrack,” Markham warned, “and the guy who says it spends the duration shoveling snow in the Aleutians.”
Anderson, like so many other young and eager types with a head full of myths gleaned from the flickers and pulp novels, denied his fear. The camouflage was the rows in pubs, the constant run-ins with the military and civilian constabulary, the female conquests, the Apache yell over his wireless in combat (issued even as his cockpit filled with the bodily smells of fear).
One wag, describing their differences, said, “Watchin’ those two was like watchin’ your grandpa walking his grandkid’s new puppy. There’s this little pooch strainin’ at the leash, and Grandpa’s doin’ his best to get it to heel.”
After Pearl Harbor, Markham, Anderson, and the other Eagles were absorbed into the U.S. Air Corps as part of the Fourth Fighter Group. However, by dint of their collective experience, they were singled out and transferred to teach aerial combat tactics in Oklahoma. There they had their premier encounter with Frank Adams.
“You think I made it through all that just to wind up a wet-nurse?” Anderson would gripe, his standing lament concerning his removal from the war. But Markham took the posting with no misgiving. Combat was also Markham’s preference, but he understood the importance of blooded pilots mentoring new fliers. Markham was always the good soldier, and the good soldier looks after his fellows.
Some months later, they found themselves instructors in San Antonio where the 351st was being formed up. Adams had no trouble remembering the coolheaded, adept and likable Markham from Oklahoma. Had he been more forgetful, Markham and Anderson might’ve remained in Texas, and there this story could have ended much to the satisfaction of all concerned.
*
“I don’t think he heard half of what we told him that night,” Ricks related to me. “The poor old fella was nodding off right in front of us.”
Harry didn’t remember when the briefing had ended, or when Ricks and Grassi left. All he knew was that when the harsh alarm of his telephone woke him a little after eight, he found himself still wearing his wrinkled and stale uniform, and his shoulders and neck were achingly stiff. It did little for his waking irritability to find that the voice on the other end of the wire belonged to Corporal Nagel.
The corporal began with a long litany of apologies and excuses, which only vexed Harry further. “Just tell me what in hell you want!”
“It’s late, sir. I just wanted to know if you’re coming in today.”
“Of course I’m coming in today. I just overslept a — ”
“Because you got a message from General DiGarre’s office and I didn’t know what to tell — ”
“General DiGarre? What’d he want?”
“I don’t know what he wants, but his office said for you to come in.”
Harry sat up in his bed, swinging his feet to the floor and smoothing out the wayward strands of his sleep-tangled hair. “General DiGarre wants to see me?”
“It was his office, so I guess — ”
“Where and when, Nagel?”
“In his office, they said. At 1400, they said. When you didn’t come in, I didn’t know what to tell them so — ”
Oh, God, Harry thought. “What did you tell them, Nagel? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Just call them — now — and confirm I’ll be there.”
“So that means you’re coming in?”
“Why don’t I just surprise you, Nagel,” and Harry rang off.
He could think of no good reason for such a summons, but Ryan’s ranting in the G-2 latrine had demonstrated the possibility for bad ones. He lay back down on the bed, and for a half hour he forced his eyes closed and tried to clear his mind, but his thoughts kept racing ahead to the meeting. So, like a nervous student preparing to sit exams, he gave up the bed, sat at his escritoire and began going through his case notes, studying.
Around noon he shaved, showered, polished his shoes, then dressed himself carefully in a fresh set of Class A’s. He neatly packed his briefcase, then sat quietly by the window, smoking and listening to the radio until 1:30. His nervousness did not even allow him to think about lunch.
As soon as Harry’s shoes touched the cobbles of the Annex court, a gust of wind took his cap and sent it skidding across the car park. Harry lumbered after his cap, chasing it about the parked machines, and, in just a few seconds, the nea
t — if portly — image of professional deportment he’d taken so much time to compose had blown away as well.
The Ganymede Club was one of the many private clubs that had sprung up during the Victorian era like churches of a fevered religion, a shrine to The Empire. Within its carved cornices and gargoyles and colonnaded entryways was the evidence of British global hegemony: marble tabletops from the quarries of the Middle East; handwoven rugs from Egypt spread across parquet floors; mahogany wainscoting from the East Indies; lion’s-paw chairs of Malaysian teak; finishings of African ivory; embroidered napkins of Indian silk; engraved brass servants’ bells from the Middle East; and at the bar, thickly sweet rum from the Caribbean.
When Air Vice Marshal Dowding’s office requested the club members “contribute” their building to the war effort, the gray-templed ranks, too old to carry weapons themselves, were proud to do their bit. They set down their briar pipes, poured themselves a round of B & S’s, and toasted the health of the King, the Union Jack, and a quick end to the war. Then they solemnly folded up the club colors and sent a telegram to Dowding’s office, a verse of typical lordly brio: “She’s all yours, sir; have at it.”
But “Stuffy” Dowding had not requested the club for the home team. The old club members huddled together across Park Lane under the shade trees of Hyde Park, and nipped at toddy-filled thermoses for sorely needed comfort as they watched the pagans invade their venerable shrine.
Blasphemous gum-snapping Yanks clomped about on the handwoven rugs, scraping the parquet floors with metal file cabinets, piling the marble-topped chess tables in the cellar to make room for government-issue desks, taking down the wall hangings and life-sized portraits of venerable past Ganymedians to make way for situation maps and Status of Operations charts. The aroma of pipe tobacco and Havana cigars was replaced by the sting of American cigarettes, the civilized shuffle of whist made way for paper-pushing bother, and the soft click of billiards was exchanged for clacking typewriters, teletype alert bells, and jangling telephones.
Harry threaded his way through the clerical warren that now wound through the high-ceilinged salons. On his way up the wide, sweeping stairs to DiGarre’s top-floor office, he passed General Halverson on his way down. Halverson didn’t notice, not until Harry called after him. The general stopped and turned, presenting Harry with a face even more ashen and haunted than when Harry had seen it last in the briefing theater. The general’s eyes appeared weak and empty until they focused on Harry, then they grew hard.
“Hello, Major,” Halverson said tonelessly. “Being called before the bar?”
Harry shrugged.
“Keep this in your head,” the general said, looking up from his position several steps below. “Remember what your job is. And do it.” Then, without bothering with further explanation, Halverson headed down the stairs.
With a wave, the captain at the desk outside DiGarre’s office stopped Harry from sitting on the anteroom divan and nodded him straight through the tall double doors. Harry passed his hand a last time over his scant hair, tugged at his jacket, and entered the office. The captain closed the doors behind him.
The room within looked to have been some sort of grand salon or study at one time; high-ceilinged, thickly carpeted, the walls dark with wood paneling. There was a long conference table to one side of the room under low-slung billiard lamps, a chattering teleprinter nearby; along the other side ran tall windows overlooking Hyde Park, their panes marked by a lattice of masking tape. At the head of the room, facing Harry, was a wall map of Europe with the German-occupied territories — running from a wavering line through the Russian steppes to the English Channel; Norway to Italy — shaded in gray.
Beneath the mural-like map sat a massive desk of mirror-finished oak, a goodly portion of its vast surface covered with papers and file folders. Joe Ryan, looking humbled before the monolithic desk, was seated before it, his head turned awkwardly away from Harry. Harry could see another man sitting, against the wall under the map, in the cross-hatching formed by shadow and sun coming through the latticed windows at a sharp oblique that left half the room dark. Harry could only dimly make out an RAF captain’s uniform.
Harry stood at attention in front of the desk, but DiGarre, without rising from his studded leather chair, waved Harry to an empty seat directly before him and said, with a slight drawl, “Take it easy, Major, or we’ll never get anything done.”
Throughout his tenure in Europe, Lieutenant General Thomas Quinton DiGarre remained quite the enigma. He regularly absented himself from the usual ambassadorial activities and even the most major press briefings, socialized little, and only did so quietly among the closed circles of the upper echelons. At times, he was so rarely seen one could easily wonder the general existed at all. His official biography — three neatly typed paragraphs consigning twenty-five years’ military service to a single page — gave little clue to the man. He was “...a native of Versailles, Kentucky,” and “...a graduate of significant standing in the Virginia Military Institute’s Class of ’16.” His military career properly began with his service as a pilot with Rickenbacker’s “Hat in the Circle” squadron in the First War, but the following twenty-two years, from the Armistice to DiGarre’s promotion to brigadier in 1940, were, in that same bio, described thusly: “He was thereafter promoted regularly as he ably fulfilled his responsibilities in a variety of posts.” A woeful understatement that did not account for the military and political skills that brought a man up so steadily through the ranks in peacetime (particularly in a service, as the crucifixion of Billy Mitchell illustrated, still striving for legitimacy) and landed him an appointment to the U.S. military attaché in London during the Blitz.
Of his attaché service, my London colleagues were able to amplify the official record. DiGarre’s role at the time was to closely study RAF operations both in fighter defense and, later, in its first bomber forays against the Germans. He became a regular nuisance to Fighter Command, poking about the entire strata of the organization, from individual aerodromes to old Stuffy’s offices; from sector station operations hutments to the Cabinet War Rooms under Parliament Square. There is an unsubstantiated but oft-told tale of DiGarre nearly instigating a diplomatic flap — the Americans then still being officially neutral — by contriving his presence aboard a Wellington to on-hand observe one of the first RAF offensive raids against German industrial targets in the Ruhr in the fall of 1940.
Summer the following year, DiGarre was using that acquired expertise to help plan the Eighth Air Force’s first tentative B-17 strikes against the European mainland. By February ’43 he was back in the States, given his second star and command of his own air division, which began operations in England that spring. “Ably fulfilled” indeed!
On the rare occasions I had glimpsed the man I felt — as Harry did on that first meeting — that Thomas DiGarre was something of a physical disappointment. Short, pudgy, practically bald, he had small, colorless eyes squinting behind steel-rimmed spectacles. He had a stubby nose and feral canines visible only during his rare, quick-flash smiles. But, also like Harry, I sensed a man well aware that he had found his place in the commander’s seat. This was not a Joe Ryan who had worked his way up on a winning way, or a Patton or Montgomery driven by an addiction to the limelight. Command came as naturally to DiGarre as breathing, and he needed no acknowledgment of his abilities — no medals, no headlines or parades — to confirm it. That ease with power made his attempt at cordiality feel feigned and unnatural to Harry.
“Nice of you to come.” The generals voice was raspy from whiskey and cigars, thick with the sound of Kentucky.
“I wasn’t aware I had a choice, sir.”
DiGarre’s smile made its momentary flash, so fleeting as to almost seem a tic. He tapped the stars on his collar. “One of the benefits of these. I never have to worry about my invites being refused. Drinks, anybody? I know it’s a bit early in the day, but if anyone’s so inclined, feel free.”
“Sc
otch and water,” Ryan said.
“I’ll pass, sir.” Harry pointed to his stomach and made uneasy motions with his hand by way of explanation.
DiGarre nodded understanding^. “Let me have that, Captain; I’ll freshen ’er up for you,” and he took a glass from the RAT officer to a brass-and-glass liquor stand in a corner. “Captain, this is the infamous Major Voss you’ve been hearing so much about. Major, Captain Leighton-Dunne, my RAF liaison.”
The British captain nodded from his seat and Harry nodded back, his eyes narrowing as he tried to piece together the figure of the RAF man, separated into slices of light and dark by the shadow of the tape on the windows. It was clear to Harry from the soft shape he could see inside the man’s blue uniform that his flying days — if there ever had been any — were long past. Harry saw the glint of wildly uneven eyes, the shadow of a skewed nose.
“Voss,” the RAF man said. “German, isn’t it?”
“Russian, actually,” Harry replied. “My family changed it when — ”
“Russian,” the RAF captain interrupted. “Yes.”
The general set a glass down in front of Harry. “In case you change your mind.” He distributed the other drinks then returned to his chair, cupping a tumbler of whiskey and water. He took a sip. “Good, but it’s not bourbon. I’m a bourbon man myself. Was raised on that good bonded stuff with a little branch water thrown in. Doesn’t get any better than that, but to each his own. Right, Captain?”
The RAF captain shrugged.
Harry cleared his throat. “I noticed General Halverson — ”
“He have anything to say?”
“Not much. But he didn’t look very happy.”
DiGarre pushed his glasses up on his nose. “General Halverson is not a very happy man. Can’t say I am, either. Of late, we’re not operating under very happy circumstances. Cigar?” No one accepted the invitation. DiGarre drew one from the embroidered humidor on his desk, snipped the end with a silver clipper, and was soon enjoying a rising cloud of bluish smoke, a lush fragrance quite a few notches above that produced by Major Van Damm’s Tampa Nuggets. The general nodded at the humidor. “Maybe in a few hundred years we’ll have that kind of — ” He looked questioningly at the RAF captain.