They turned into a dark square, the car crawling around the corner from the main road. A man in American uniform flagged them down. Another uniformed man took Miller’s bag as he turned, shook hands with Harcourt and thanked him. The doormen glanced at each other as the black man saluted.
‘They’ll tell you when I need you, Benji,’ said Miller. ‘I think we may be doing a little travelling, you and me.’
He turned to the two doormen. ‘Would you direct my driver to … where was it, son?’
‘Place called Wormwood Scrubs,’ said Harcourt.
‘Transit camp or the prison?’ smirked the man with Miller’s bag.
Harcourt fixed him with a steady eye. ‘The camp – at this moment,’ he said. ‘I ain’t done nothing yet.’
Chapter Eleven
There was a reception area in the American Officers’ Club, warm, well lit and comfortable, like a hotel. Bright lights were reflected in mirrors from a cocktail bar in one corner and in the lobby was the sound of a subdued Tommy Dorsey dance tune. At the desk was a message that Miller was to report to Colonel Henry Jeffries at eight o’clock that evening. An escort would pick him up. It was now six thirty.
He hesitated, then went straight to the bar and gratefully drank the first Manhattan he had tasted since leaving the United States. He felt like having another, but thought maybe he’d better not. Colonel Henry Jeffries might not like it. He found his room, narrow but neat, tested the bed and had a shower. At seven he was back in the lobby.
An army chaplain was also standing waiting. ‘Just got here?’ he enquired.
‘A couple of hours ago. I’ve been in Western England. What’s it like?’
‘London? Speaking as a man of God I could tell you it is like Sodom and Gomorrah,’ said the padre. ‘Sin everywhere. But in these times quite a lot of folks believe in sin. Deeply.’
He was from Maine. ‘I’ve been getting around some of the churches here,’ he said. ‘What’s left of them. They’ve been rocked about and whole pieces have been blown away, masonry and so forth, bell ropes gone missing. So until the war’s over they mostly don’t want to risk using them. They’ve got this great, darn bell at St Paul’s Cathedral and the first time they tolled it, they say everybody – clergy, choir, congregation – dived for cover.’
Cautiously Miller said: ‘I heard the Germans have started bombing again.’
‘And how. Are you feeling nervous?’
‘Nobody else seems to be. It’s one way of getting to know what it’s like to be under fire, I guess.’
The chaplain pointed a long clerical finger. ‘See that door marked with a letter “S”. That’s the air-raid shelter. If it gets too hot, get your ass down there quick. I’ll be right ahead of you. Even God has His limits.’
‘How is it? The bombing.’
‘Noisy. But to see it, kinda beautiful. Two nights ago I got brave and, with some English people who were visiting, I went outside on the veranda on the upper floor and took it in. The bombers, four Nazi bombers, were clear like crosses in the moonlight over the park across the street. The searchlights had fixed them, shining up from all over London, and you could see the puffs of anti-aircraft shells exploding. It was almost heavenly, if it hadn’t been such a helluva racket.’
‘How about the British?’
‘Now and then they duck. Nothing more. When the air-raid warning sounded, and that’s enough to scare the pants off you, most folks in this building scuttled for the shelter. But not the British barman or the cocktail waitresses. They just carried on. It gave them a laugh, I guess, but once you’ve been hunched in the shelter about an hour and nothing’s happened, no direct hits, no bombs nearby, then you come out kinda embarrassed, and in the end you don’t go down at all unless the racket gets really close.’
‘Do you know where there’s a Southern Baptist Church?’ asked Miller.
The chaplain blinked but then reached for his pocket. ‘My driver’, said Miller, ‘is anxious to locate one.’
‘There’s a Baptist chaplain, Billy Longo, who’s a good preacher. Not Southern Baptist, but as near as dammit. They have a church, somewhere …’ He had produced a list. ‘Right, Wandsworth, not too far from the centre of town. The building was damaged in the big raids of 1940, but the GIs have patched it up. It’s been turned into an American church. I went to a service there. Great choir, great singing.’
‘And everybody gets along, no colour barriers?’
The padre glanced at him. ‘The white singers in the choir sit on one side of the church and the black singers on the other.’ He looked downcast. ‘They say they like it that way.’
Lieutenant Danny Gonzales drove Miller into darkened London. ‘These women on the sidewalks,’ said Miller unbelievingly, ‘are they all… all…’
‘Prostitooots!’ exclaimed Danny. ‘That’s what they are, captain. They ain’t waiting for a bus.’
He laughed a touch sourly. ‘End-to-end sex, this town,’ he said. ‘If it’s not whores, it’s young good-time girls on the make. Try going to the movies, full houses and in the dark it’s like a rolling sea. And there’s bars and dives and dancehalls, all crowded with GI Joes and what the English call tarts.’
They drove into quieter streets, gaps between the buildings outlining them like huge tombstones against the night sky. ‘That’s old damage,’ said Danny, as if he were a long-time resident. ‘From the 1940 Blitz. But here, at the corner, is a place where a high explosive came down only last week. Nobody’s going to live there any more.’
‘Anybody killed?’ asked Miller.
‘Maybe. I didn’t hear. The British never admit to casualties anyhow. They’ll come up with some figure sometime. They generally only detail the planes they’ve shot down and nobody believes that. There wouldn’t be any Luftwaffe left.’
He swung the car into a square, blocked off and with a sentry post at the entrance. He showed his papers and said: ‘For Colonel Jeffries.’
‘He just got back,’ said the sergeant. The man with the fixed bayonet stayed motionless; only his eyes moved and they were on the sky.
‘Expecting bombers?’ asked Danny.
‘You tell me, lieutenant. They called around last night and the night before that. We had guys out helping to pull civilians from a hotel around the corner. Some dead.’ The barrier was lifted and they drove in.
Gonzales remained on the ground floor while Miller went up in an old and narrow elevator escorted by an American army girl with a big bust. There was scarcely an inch between them.
‘Where do you hail from?’ he asked.
‘Buffalo,’ she said. ‘New York.’
There were only five floors. On the landing waited a sergeant who saluted and showed him into a fine, large room, with a heavy desk in front of thick velvet curtains over the bay windows. ‘Colonel Jeffries will be right with you, captain,’ said the sergeant. ‘He asks that you take a seat.’
The furniture seemed to be from the original house, before it was requisitioned; gilt chairs with red cushions were lined along a wall with a panoramic painting of a battle above them. He had to lean close to see the title: ‘The Field at Waterloo’.
The full lights went up in the room. ‘Famous victory for the British, Waterloo,’ said Colonel Jeffries as he entered. He had a slight stoop, was greying and had dark hoods around his eyes. ‘With the help of the Austrians who arrived late but in time. They often need a little help in battle, the British.’
He indicated that Miller should sit down.
‘I’m going to have a drink,’ said the colonel. ‘I need a drink by this time of the day. Will you join me? I’m taking a rye on the rocks.’
Miller thanked him. The colonel cocked an eye at the sergeant and said: ‘Large ones.’
Jeffries sat uncomfortably behind the desk. ‘I hope to God there’ll be someplace to put my feet up at the end of D-Day,’ he yawned. ‘We’ve got to capture just one house, one house, with an easy chair. I’m getting too weary for war.’
> Miller smiled seriously and said: ‘Maybe everybody will be able to put their feet up, sir.’
‘I hope so, but I doubt it, captain. If the invasion is anything like the planning meetings we’ll be on our feet a good deal longer than that. Eisenhower seems to be running on electricity. From seven thirty this morning until now …’ He looked at his military watch. ‘Eight ten. The guy doesn’t stop.’
The sergeant brought a tray with the drinks. They raised a glass to each other. ‘And today’, said the colonel, ‘we had the added attraction of Montgomery, the British big hero. Christ, he’s got a voice like my sister’s little dog. You feel like throwing him a bone.’
‘He’s a popular commander,’ said Miller cautiously.
‘Oh, sure. He’s had a major victory. El Alamein. And they haven’t had too many of those. But the guy barks.’
He took a deep drink of the rye whiskey and closed his eyes in appreciation.
‘How long you been in this country?’
‘Eight weeks.’
‘I’ve been here eight months. I don’t like it. France, even Germany, can only be better.’Jeffries shrugged. ‘Well, captain, you’re going to be seeing some more of it. The Training Inspectorate is being expanded, and how. There’ll now be fifty inspectors of different kinds and you’ll be one.’ He rose from the desk, went to the window and stared at the folds of the velvet curtains with the same intensity as if he were examining a distant view. He kept his back turned. ‘This is because the training standards are falling way below what is acceptable in the US Military. If we send these men into action in their present state of readiness they are going to finish up dead in the ocean. Floating.’
He turned from the curtains with dismay in his face. ‘Something’s got to be done and we’re running out of time. Everybody from Eisenhower down, including the barking dog, knows this. Montgomery has even sold Ike on a scheme in the West of England where he conducted some pre-war manoeuvres, an amphibious landing in …’ He glanced at a document he ruffled on his desk. ‘… Yeah, Devon.’ He sniffed. ‘And that showed some foresight for the British, a landing from the sea prior to the war, all of six years ago. Maybe he’s cuter than we think.’
Jeffries looked into his empty glass as if he could do with another rye but desisted. Miller asked: ‘Why are the training schedules so bad, sir? I did parachuting training Stateside and everybody was pretty gung-ho. I think the rest of the military felt the same. Some guys seemed to think they could sail straight to invade France without even any build-up in this country. Right in there to the nearest beach.’
‘Tell that to Snow White,’ said Jeffries. ‘It was okay in America, the training, but this is not America. There’s no room, captain. Not enough space. It’s small this country, and rained on, and difficult, and you can’t train an army – not one this big, eventually two million men or more, not correctly, satisfactorily. There are only two areas that are any use for training. One is Salisbury Plain which the British have used for years. But they don’t have a big army. The other is somewhere in north England. In Wales and Scotland it’s mountains, or what they call mountains locally, but they’re big enough to get in the way. Christ, we’ve had paratroops practising by jumping out of God-dam trees! There’s not sufficient airspace to give them enough drops for proper training.’ He shook his head and muttered: ‘Trees,’ again and then to himself: ‘Trees.’
‘As for amphibious landings,’ he continued, ‘well, have you seen the sea around this itty-bitty island? It’s so rough that we haven’t been able to get men in the boats, let alone out of them and on to beaches.’ Now he appeared a touch embarrassed. ‘And some of the people in charge of training have not been people Uncle Sam would have wanted. There seems to be an attitude that somebody else, the next guy, will win the battle, anybody but us. Well, that’s not going to happen, captain. There is nobody else. Some, who are seriously screwy, believe that the Germans will turn tail and run like fuck. Well, that’s not going to happen either.’
He sat behind the desk, his shoulders slumped like a failed managing director. ‘You won’t believe this, Captain Miller, but two weeks ago we got a nice day and simulated a landing on a beach, walking the men to the tide line because the boats would have been sunk in the swell – and just while we mention it, there’s not enough landing-craft either, not so many as you can afford to have them wrecked. In Washington there are politicians who want them all sent to the Pacific. They think this situation, the big invasion of Europe, is nothing more than some sideshow.’
‘That’s incredible,’ said Miller.
‘It is, but keep it quiet. Morale is a factor too.’ He made a motion with his clasped hands and the sergeant appeared. Jeffries pushed his glass towards him. ‘Another one, Frank. And one for Captain Miller.’ The drinks came and Jeffries waited until the sergeant had left the room. ‘This landing we fixed, this simulated beach landing,’ he continued. ‘With the assault troops just kidding they had come ashore good and dry, and with no opposing fire, and advancing up the beach. Great, but then there was a breakdown in orders, some communications screw-up or somebody had gone for coffee or some damn story, and once they were on the beach nobody told the invaders what to do. So, d’you know what they did?’
‘Went home,’ guessed Miller.
‘Worse. They hung about for a while, then they dug cute little holes in the beach, in the dunes, and they climbed into them and hugged each other and … and they went to fucking sleep.’
Miller choked on his whiskey. ‘Exactly,’ said the colonel. ‘That was my reaction. Asleep, for God’s sake. Taking a nap in action.’
He stood and went to the window again. ‘That’s got to stop. The breakdowns have got to stop. We’ve brought in a further twenty inspectors and you’re the most senior. There’s not a lot of time. Four months, maybe less.’ He stood up and held out his hand, still scowling. ‘Go to work, captain.’
As Miller reached his door he said: ‘As from tomorrow a number of exercises will be using live ammunition. That should stop them snoozing.’
The same busty army girl took him down again in the lift. ‘Ever been to Buffalo, captain?’ she asked on the five-floor journey. Again he was conscious of the tight space between her tunic buttons and his. He said he had never been to Buffalo.
‘I used to hate that place,’ she said sadly. ‘But now I love it. Oh, boy, I wish I was back.’
As they reached the ground floor and he stepped out, the air-raid sirens sounded. He said to Gonzales, who was waiting: ‘I’ve never heard them before, not for real.’
‘This will be for real,’ said the lift girl. ‘Every night they come back. Keep your heads down, sirs.’
He caught the lieutenant’s eye. ‘You want to stay?’ asked Gonzales.
The lift girl warned hurriedly: ‘You’d better get going. This building could get a direct hit. We’re closing up anyway.’
They went out into the dark square and found their eyes rising apprehensively to the sky. The sergeant at the gate was eyeing it too, as was the sentry. Guns began to sound very close. ‘In the park,’ said the sergeant.
‘What should we do?’ Miller asked Gonzales.
Hurriedly they got into the car. ‘I’ve not been out in a raid,’ said Gonzales, his face taut. ‘I’ve always got into a shelter. This is a time you don’t need fresh air.’
He started the car and they skidded noisily out of the gates. The sergeant gave them half a salute, half a wave, glad to see them go. The streets were deserted. ‘They’ve been targeting this area,’ muttered Gonzales, ‘because they know Eisenhower has his headquarters around here.’
Immediately there was loud gunfire overhead and a flash of explosive light that reflected against the buildings and was quickly followed by two more detonations. Shrapnel from the bursting shells showered the street. The car seemed to leap. Gonzales shouted: ‘They’re bombing us!’ but hung on to the wheel. He braked.
‘Don’t stop!’ exclaimed Miller. ‘It’s the AA
guns.’
Searchlights were swinging in the sky.
‘We might be driving right into a bomb,’ said Gonzales.
‘The bomb may drop here,’ said Miller.
To his consternation, Gonzales stopped the car and opened the door. ‘Let’s go, captain,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘They tell you to get out of your car and take cover.’ Miller felt sweat on his hands.
Another burst of vivid gunfire detonated overhead. Miller shouted and followed the lieutenant who was reinforcing his cap with his hands and running for a stone arch. Shielding his head in the same way, Miller ran after him. They crouched against the masonry of the arch and peered up fearfully.
‘Never had any training for air raids,’ said Gonzales.
‘Me neither,’ said Miller. ‘Somehow they forgot.’
‘We should have brought our helmets.’
As the shrapnel continued clinking like heavy rain, a slight woman in a fur coat and a hat with a feather appeared and sedately took shelter alongside them. ‘Fuckin’ guns,’ she said plaintively.
Miller and Gonzales stared at her. ‘’Scuse my bloody French,’ said the woman. ‘But those buggers blastin’ off like that. They’re a lot more dangerous than the soddin’ bombs.’ There was a further sharp clink of shrapnel. ‘If one of those lumps ’it you on the napper,’ she said, ‘it would go straight through you and out of your bum.’
‘Is that so,’ said Miller.
‘Is that so,’ said Gonzales.
‘I been workin’ down ’ere for years,’ she sniffed. ‘In the proper Blitz. I used to wear a tin hat on my ’ead. Only sensible. I took it off indoors, of course.’
‘You … work here?’ said Gonzales stupidly.
‘It’s my beat,’ she said in a proprietorial way. ‘I live in the East End but I come up every night on the bus.’ She turned an angry look on the sky. Her profile was abruptly illuminated. ‘Them with their searchlights and their guns. All that row and chucking down any old iron. I’d like to know ’ow many bloody bombers they shoot down.’
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