World in Flames

never be a permanent thing.

She heard the click of the toolbox.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

When Parkin found him, David was all but unrecognizable, covered in the chalk dust from the direct hit on the castle high above the town. With only his eyes visible beneath the chalk, Brentwood would have looked comical had it not been for the broken child in his arms. He walked straight past Parkin and Monsieur Malmedy toward the first aid post set up by the Cafe Renoir, the child’s head, her spine snapped, lolling like a rag doll, apparently without a scratch on her, the muck and stench of body fluids causing the tiny dress to cling to her matted hair, her eyes wide open, fixed in horror. When David placed her down, taking off his tunic to cover her crumpled body, he tried to shut her eyes, but they wouldn’t. He drew the battle tunic up higher to cover her face. Old Malmedy, Parkin saw, was in tears as Brentwood lowered his head for a moment — to compose himself, to pray, or both— Parkin didn’t know which — only that when the American straightened up, he looked different. It wasn’t simply that now his tunic was off, the clean, pressed army shirt and lieutenant’s collar bars were in such sharp contrast to his bedraggled vaudevillian appearance moments before that they made him look fresher than others who had been in or near the shelter that had taken the side blast of a near hit. The difference in Brentwood’s appearance was in his eyes. They were the eyes of an old man in a young body, not wearied by age, but the determined steel blue of a man who had at one stroke lost all illusion about the fairness of life — a man who, to Parkin, looked resolved.

“What a bastard!” said Parkin, looking down helplessly at the tiny form covered by Brentwood’s tunic. Brentwood said nothing, his eyes not moving from the girl’s body, but if there was compassion in them, it had become subsumed, his look, Parkin thought, more that of a surgeon who, along with the recognition of the tragic, seemed to be standing in judgment not only of those who had done this terrible thing but of himself, of his own behavior, his competence, of how he might have prevented it. And now he had to tell the old man who was already in tears over the young girl that his daughter, too, was dead. He put his arm about the old man, and instantly Malmedy knew it was terrible news.

* * *

As Parkin watched them walking down the street, seeking a moment of quiet amid the cacophony of the rescue now near fever pitch, he saw the old man stop, burying his head in his hands, unable to go on, and Brentwood standing with him, holding him for Lili.

* * *

Before they left Bouillon, David tried to phone Captain Smythe, but all lines were down in Bouillon following the rocket attack, and he had to wait until he reached Namur.

* * *

While welcoming Brentwood’s change of heart, Smythe felt obliged to tell David that it was by no means a “foregone conclusion” that he would make it into SAS.

“Why not?” asked David. “I qualified as a marine, didn’t I?”

“Well, yes. But I think you’ll find our Special Air Service training is somewhat different. Tell you the truth, quite a few of our Red Berets and your Navy Seals have tried and failed. It’s a very concentrated training course for what we have in mind.”

“What’s that?”

“Can’t tell you that, old boy. ‘Need to know.’ If you pass the course, you’ll find out.”

Brentwood was irritated. Here he was volunteering, and now Smythe was telling him he mightn’t be good enough. And how, he wondered, could this joint British-U.S. force possibly be tougher than the U.S. Marines? What was so special about SAS training?

“Have you ever heard of Brecon Beacons?” Smythe asked him.

“No,” responded David. “What are they?”

“Mountains,” said Smythe. “In Wales.” The only thing David could remember about Wales, he told Smythe, was the Prince of Wales — and an old movie where coal miners, black with soot from head to toe, came home up a hill, singing.

“Ah!” said Smythe. “How Green was my Valley? Walter Pigeon. Well, I don’t think you’ll find there’ll be much time for singing.”

Smythe’s remark, David Brentwood was about to discover, was a classic case of British understatement.

* * *

It was Christmas Eve, snowing heavily in Washington, D.C., and Gen. Douglas Freeman’s plane at Andrews Air Force Base was delayed once again, the general standing impatiently inside the hangar as the de-icing trucks rolled out and sprayed the wings once more.

After his briefing with the president on the Korean situation, Freeman had immediately asked for the best pilot available to fly him to Honolulu, where they would have a brief refueling stopover, then on to Japan and Seoul. They had assigned a major from Andrews’ military air transport squadron, a man, they said, with more time on 747s than any other officer on duty that day. But at the last minute, Freeman, in his usually gruff and straightforward manner, asked his G-2, Colonel Norton, whether the major assigned had had any combat experience.

“General. These people are on the Air Force One flight crews. And they’re selected to fly the president. They can fly anything from a Tiger Moth to an F-18.”

“Norton,” Freeman said exasperatedly, his athlete’s bulk impressive even in his “incognito garb,” as he called the business suit and matching serge coat. “I took you on as my G-2 because you were smart enough to spot those Soviet T-90s in the reconnaissance photos didn’t have extra fuel tanks strapped to their backs. That gave me the opening to go full steam ahead for Warsaw even though we were low on gas and the fat was in the goddamned fire, Soviet artillery pounding us left, right, and center. I also hired you then because you gave me straight answers and were willing to risk my displeasure with bad news. Now, if we’re going to keep getting along, Jim, in Korea, from here on in, you’d better tell me everything I want to know without any farting about. Otherwise we’re never gonna get those Chinks’ asses back over the Yalu, where they belong.”

“He’s had no combat experience, sir.”

“Then, damn it, I want someone who has! And I want him now! I don’t want to go flying in there on a wing and a prayer with someone driving this thing who hasn’t seen a Flogger coming up his ass at Mach 2 through the blind spot.”

“Yes, sir, but we will have fighter escorts from here right on through to Seoul. Course, that doesn’t invalidate your point. I’ll get someone with combat experience.”

“How many fighters’ll be flying escort?”

“Twenty, sir. F-15s, Hornets…”

“What?” bellowed Freeman. “That’s not an escort, that’s a goddamned invitation. Draw the enemy like a bear to honey. Fewer aircraft around me, the better I like it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Norton, saluting from habit, even though the general was in civilian clothes.

“We own the Pacific from here to Japan, don’t we?” asked Freeman.

“With the exception of the Russian subs, yes, sir.”

“All right then, let’s keep the bulk of the fighters away from me. Japan to Korea’s a different story. It’s catch as catch can across the Sea of Japan. So here’s what we do when we enplane from — where will it be — Hiroshima?”

“Possibly, sir, or Matsue, if the weather’s bad on the east coast.”

“Well, wherever — when we leave, send fighters ahead on a northwesterly course. We’ll go a few minutes later with only three fighters escort, maximum. If the Russkis do know anything about me coming — which I sincerely hope they don’t— they’ll go for our big fighter formation while we slip into Seoul. And they’ll get their tails shot off.”

Norton, anxious to draw another pilot from the duty roster who had combat experience, nodded quickly in agreement to the general’s diversionary plan. It was typically “Freemanish”—deceptive but also putting himself in danger with little protection. All Freeman cared about was the importance of the presidential order to get to Korea