After locating my room at the Park Lane Hotel, I went into the lobby to check at the ticket agent's office to see what shows I might find with seats available. I wasn't much surprised to discover I was able to get the best seat in the house, or very nearly the best, at any show in town. I wasn't so thoroughly imbued with the fear of the robomb as those who had been longer subjected to its horror. Consequently, I went to two movies that in earlier days were continually sold out. In the afternoon I saw The Song of Bernadette and in the evening, For Whom the Bell Tolls. As I went up to the ticket window of the theater where the latter was showing, a buzz bomb went over quite close. It grew suddenly silent for a space and let out a roaring explosion not far away. I did get a fair glimmer of the stolidity of the British as the girl in the window smiled at me and said, “I don't believe he likes us.”
As I went back to my hotel I thought a good deal about these missiles. They seemed to embody the superiority of the Germans as military technicians. I loathed Nazis, but in loathing them I regretted the fact that we had failed to push development of jet and rocket propulsion. This had long been so obviously the next great development in motive power that its importance seemed utterly inescapable. At least it was to the Germans.
I noticed as I walked in the door of the hotel that the clouds were lower on the tops of the buildings than when I went out. It was very dark, but the fog dipped down into the streets and I could see that that night London was like the city of Sherlock Holmes. In these conditions the buzz bombs were at their worst. The countermeasures the British had taken against them, chiefly antiaircraft fire and fighter planes, were pretty successful in good weather. They prevented a large number of the missiles from reaching their targets. But in bad weather there was very little to stop them. Some would still fall to radar-directed antiaircraft fire or snarl up in barrage balloon cables. But many more would get through to blast large parts of London.
I went up to my room, turned the light out, and went to the window. Throwing back the blackout curtain, for the first time I saw the frightful weapons flying over. Two passed within plain view of the window. When I had seen them I went to bed. But I admit that my pulse leaped high every time I heard a bomb go over, and the closer it came the harder was the pounding of my temples.
The next day the fog was heavy most of the daylight hours. The bombs came with only brief respite—an all clear for twenty minutes maybe—then another alert. One of the sirens was very near my hotel room. It jarred my nerves much more than sirens I had previously heard at a distance. I don't know why. Both carried the same warning.
That day I talked to people and walked about in the streets. I found a number of officers and other persons with whom Hitler's newest weapon was a ready and catching topic of conversation. I found it considered foolhardy to stand in a window, as I had done the night before. It seems there are two effects of the blast. The first, a positive effect, is an outward push of air from the spot where the explosion occurs. This covers a narrower radius than the second, negative thrust. This is a suction formed by air rushing in to fill the partial vacuum caused by the initial blast. In this secondary thrust many gawpers in windows had been pulled out into the street. Clothes had even been torn off pedestrians. The route of the most intensive effect of the blast was unpredictable. On one street leading from a corner which had been hit windows might be out for blocks. On another street leading from the same corner the effect of the bomb might carry a much shorter distance. Why? I never got the answer. Apparently it had something to do with the configuration of the buildings, though it was difficult to predict avenues of blast effect from an advance look at an area.
I found that many of the people of London spent every night in shelters where their rest was inadequate to prepare them for a normal day's work. Many others, for pride or some other reason, wouldn't go to the shelters but lay in sleepless terror in their beds. Many people slept in their clothes because they wanted to spare themselves the embarrassment of being seen on the street in nightclothes in case a bomb blew them out the window. Many were afraid to take a bath except during an all clear. If an alert were sounded they would get out of the tub in a hurry to avoid any risk of being taken at a crisis in the nude.
The afternoon after I arrived I was walking along Berkeley Street near Berkeley Square. I could hear a buzz bomb approach closer and closer. It sounded as though it were coming directly toward the spot where I was. There were a half dozen people on the street near me, among them a couple of American GIs. An elderly man dashed for the entrance of a nearby shelter. The bomb came closer—closer than any I'd ever heard. The two GIs walked on looking nervously upward. A lone woman stepped back to place herself up against the wall of a substantial looking building and shut her eyes. Yes, she was praying; there was no mistake about that. The others appeared to continue down the street a little more quickly than normally. The bomb passed over. Just as it did, its engine stopped. Poor someone, I thought. I knew when it got almost directly overhead with its engine still going it wouldn't harm us. Then there was a great explosion. The breeze of the concussion was very sharp on my cheek.
That night the air cleared a little. There were one or two bombs over early in the evening and one alert close to dawn during which I heard a few bombs. But that was nothing like it had been. I had planned the next day to return to my station and I knew I would be glad when the time of departure arrived. I'd seen the people of London show the same courage which they showed in the face of many severe trials. This time they had the Americans as their guests to face the same hardship, and their guests also bore it well. From what I heard and from my own personal observation the Americans bore the bombing as well as everyone else. There were many cases reported of American soldiers being the first to the scene of an incident to help with the rescue work. Frequently, there were cases where they labored to the point of exhaustion to assist in saving trapped victims. But in fairness I must admit the Americans made much less than the British of pretending to be unmoved by the bombs. When an American doesn't like something, especially an American GI, you can expect to hear him sound off about it. An Englishman won't. I have seen two types of hound dogs in my time. One bays to the scent and another hunts mute. Both have sporting hearts. It is in their background and the way they are trained that they behave differently.
I took the train for the base the next morning. I was glad to be taking it. I left the people of London my sympathy in their hardship and heroism.
7
Something to Believe In
When I got back to the base I took an early opportunity to go to General Ted with something that had been on my mind ever since June 13, 1943, over a year before, on the day I landed in Prestwick, Scotland. When I went to the wing to be operations officer, Colonel Arnold had indicated I had reason to hope that I might stay in England only about three months after the completion of my tour.
The concept of a combat tour seemed to be peculiar to the Air Corps, and I was aware of the fairness of complaints from the ground forces that there was no combat tour for them. But only a very small number of the combat people of my old group lived to the end of such a tour. When I sought to go home it was not with the firm conviction that I had fought as much of the war as anyone else. It was simply that apparently there was an avenue open, and I was less of a soldier than I was a husband and a father. Anne knew of a few combat airmen who had gone home immediately after completing their last mission. She had heard from their wives, and she naturally wondered why I couldn't come home.
Though I was told that there were great opportunities to be had by those who stayed on overseas, I didn't want another promotion: I felt it an act of generosity that I had received the last one.
I wanted to do a good job wherever the Army assigned me, but now more than anything else in the world I wanted to see my wife and child. The job I had I knew could be filled as satisfactorily by any one of a dozen possible candidates within the command. The general was generous enough to offer me an opport
unity to stay with him. He also said that if I wished, there was a chance I might be returned to the States.
About that time Colonel Larry Thomas left the wing to take command of one of the groups and the general brought Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Stewart up to the wing as his chief of staff. The fellows in the wing were delighted to get Stewart, though of course they all missed Larry. We all had seen enough of Jim to know that he was the kind of person who would quietly and efficiently do a good job.
A few days after these changes General Ted told me he had asked for orders returning me to the States. After that I worked under great difficulty. Anyone does who looks forward to something not connected with his current assignment. For many days after my conference with General Ted there was no definite news. I never failed to seek information. One time when I had asked the same question a number of times in a row he turned to me and said quietly, “Phil, you have many qualities.” And then he shouted, “One of which is not patience!” From that time on I approached the subject indirectly.
Before much time had passed I was presented with orders—the most precious I had ever seen—directing me to London for the purpose of returning to the “Zone of Interior.” Several days later I said goodbye to my friends at the base. Though I am poor at goodbyes, that one seemed particularly hard in spite of my longing to be off.
Entering London as on my last trip, I experienced an alert. I heard an explosion some distance ahead and a few minutes later came upon an apartment building cut in half. From where it stood and to the end of the block every other building was demolished. I looked up to a third-story flat cut right through the middle. There hanging over the distance of three floors to the rubble below was a closet whose door stood open, showing some small dresses hanging inside. My driver stopped without any word from me, and together we gaped at the scene. Rescue workers were digging in the ruins. An old English gentleman was walking up and down the sidewalk. His hands were placidly folded behind his back and his face was a picture of grief. I didn't realize how we, two curious Americans, must have impressed him until he stopped beside the car and quietly asked, “Can I help you?”
I was stung by the remark. Obviously that man had lost someone dear to him. I was sincerely sorry—I hadn't realized. Quickly I said what I suppose was on my mind when we stopped. “Can we help?”
“No, thank you. I believe we are being taken care of,” he replied.
We drove on.
That was another rough day in London. When I got my priority on the plane it was about noon. I was told the bus for the airport would leave at 2:30. Would I leave an address where I might be called? I explained I was not registered anywhere. I would go to the Dorchester to have lunch and come back shortly.
“Why,” I asked, “do you have to have a place where you can call me?”
The girl behind the counter shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe the building won't be here at 2:30.”
Our plane was ready on time at an airport not far from the center of town. As we took off I could see dust from the explosion of another bomb over the tops of the buildings.
When we dropped down at Scotland the sun was lying low in the sea. Scotland was at peace as much as London was at war. By the time we landed I had struck up an acquaintance with Elmer Lower of the Office of War Information. He had known my brother in the prewar newspaper world. We dined together, got quarters, and turned in. The next day we boarded a fine, big C-54 that took us out to Iceland and on to the United States.
While I flew along on the hop from Scotland to Iceland, and then from Iceland to America, I had a few much-needed hours for reflection. I thought of Pete Hughes. I thought of Ed Fowble and his fine crew. I thought of Bill Young, my colleague at the Franklin County Bar, then a German prisoner. I thought of Don Buck, my first squadron operations officer, who was reported missing and later declared killed in action. I thought of Westerbeke, of Caldwell, of Lighter, and the scores of others who proudly had gone forth and were not returning. They would leave many homes and hearts broken. Many wives and parents would be denied the last wish to have the remains of a loved one given burial.
As far as the air war of Europe was concerned, I knew I had seen it at its toughest. Later General Arnold, in his report to the secretary of war, expressed my thoughts about one small part of it when he said, “The week of 20–26 February 1944 may well be classed by future historians as marking a decisive battle of history, one as decisive and of greater world importance than Gettysburg.” I had seen bad weather cover our operations until the German fighter production reached a peak we never dreamed of, and I had been on hand as a command pilot in the process of doing a tour when the weather cleared. The call went out for us to break the back of that German fighter production. During that week I went out twice, and I saw many a gallant friend go down. I recalled that the trip to Gotha that week cost us more heavily than our bloody, low-level Ploesti raid had. These two were easily the roughest raids in the history of our group, and yet my good luck or someone else's bad luck had brought me home from both.
We did break the back of the Luftwaffe that winter. There was bitter, bloody fighting for the ground forces from D day on. But the biggest job of the strategic bomber force was done. The job of winning the air war was not over, but the great crisis in the air had clearly passed.
I knew I was luckier than I deserved to be.
As the plane carried me across I remembered many things in my childhood. I remembered many evenings being curled up under the kitchen table in our Bourbon County farmhouse listening to our cook Clara and friends of hers preparing dinner. Or, as we would have said then, “getting supper.” There were often two or three women and maybe a man in the kitchen, and the patois of their voices was a delight. They sang beautiful songs, but their language was what most impressed me. The blacks talked among themselves with an accent most whites couldn't understand but which I had learned well. I frequently heard slightly risque remarks about the whites in earshot of “the house” that went entirely unnoticed. There was a humor, a sentimentality, a high morality of some, and a Rabelaisian raunchiness of others that taught me early that all of us are pretty much alike.
The greatest of all my heroes as a little boy, aside from my father, was an old black man named Willis Barton. He had been in his youth a slave belonging to my great-grandfather Lafayette Ardery. Cap'n, we called him. I thought him very handsome. He was extremely wise. He couldn't read or write, but there were many things he knew about how to operate our farm, so that his word on a subject was rarely challenged.
On wintry mornings when I was too young to go to school, and later during days out of school, I would go with him to the back of the farm to load bright, golden fodder shocks onto a slide to bring to the front of the farm, where we would throw it out to the cattle. A slide was a sort of low-slung sled pulled by two mules. The bed of it was just high enough for me to sit on and let my shoes occasionally touch the frosty earth gliding under the runners.
Cap'n was full of history and told me many stories about old Lafayette Ardery and about his own recollections of the soldiers coming home from “the war.” He must have been about seven years old at the time of the surrender at Appomattox.
Of all the influences on me as a young boy, aside from that of my parents, Cap'n was undoubtedly the greatest. He was a Calvinist as much as they were, and he left me in no doubt about the superiority of that certain set of values.
Dogs chasing rabbits; pigeons flying around high up among the tier rails inside the tobacco barn; the faint and sometimes not so faint smell of a skunk on an early, frosty morning; muskrats building their homes on the banks of the spring branch; the loading of brown gravel from the creek into the wagon to put on our driveway; sometimes finding a nest of turtle eggs as our shovels hurried to make a load for the mules, Pete and Jane, to pull back to the house. Such things characterized my life as a boy, and they crowded my memory as I flew along.
I realized that as a child I had really had something to belie
ve in. I believed that people were basically decent and honest—with a few exceptions. I believed in my father and my mother and Cap'n. I had a strong view of the Tightness of things like work and saving money. I was convinced that the road ahead might be rough in spots, but it always pointed up to better things and times.
As our plane skimmed over the American suburban countryside north of New York, I kept my nose flattened against the window. The bigness of everything was overpowering—the highways, the broad expanses of fields, the spacious lawns of houses. Such bigness must be part of an explanation of the people. Space enough for all. Wealth enough for all to share. Those attributes of wealth, the automobiles, the houses, the refrigerators, the radios were better and finer than they might have been had they belonged only to a privileged few. Give opportunities to all and the privileges of the wealthiest are not lessened. That is America.
When I got to my room in the Biltmore I put in a call to Texas. It was ten in the morning of July 6, 1944. The call went through in less than five minutes. After yelling in almost frenzied excitement at Anne for a few minutes, I told her I would see her as soon as I could get there. Then I called mother and dad in Kentucky. It must have taken all of five minutes more for that call to go through. I spent the next hours taking a hot bath and getting to the airport. And then within a very short time I was in the air flying to Texas.
As I came lugging my bags at an awkward gallop up the walk to the little white house in San Angelo, I heard the sound of squeals from inside. The door swung open. It was the face I had imagined every day since I left. It hadn't changed. And as she stood a moment in the door her skirt was brushed aside and a little blond head popped up beside her.
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