The Winds of War

back in the rank of King’s staff officers, this short unknown Navy captain, whose face would be lost in the photographs, tried to shake irrelevancies from his brain and pay attention.

In an odd way the two leaders diminished each other. They were both Number One Men. But that was impossible. Who, then, was Number One? Roosevelt stood a full head taller, but he was pathetically braced on lifeless leg frames, clinging to his son’s arm, his full trousers drooped and flapping. Churchill, a bent Pickwick in blue uniform, looked up at him with majestic good humor, much older, more dignified, more assured. Yet there was a trace of deference about the Prime Minister. By a shade of a shade, Roosevelt looked like Number One. Maybe that was what Hopkins had meant by “the changing of the guard.”

The picture-taking stopped at an unseen signal, the handshake ended, and a wheelchair appeared. The erect front-page President became the cripple more familiar to Pug, hobbling a step or two and sinking with relief into the chair. The great men and their military chiefs left the quarterdeck.

The staffs got right to business and conferred all day. Victor Henry worked with the planners, on the level below the chiefs of staff and their deputies where Burne-Wilke operated, and of course far below the summit of the President, the Prime Minister, and their advisers. Familiar problems came up at once: excessive and contradictory requests from the British services, unreal plans, unfilled contracts, jumbled priorities, fouled communications. One cardinal point the planners hammered out fast. Building new ships to replace U-boat sinkings came first. No war materiel could be used against Hitler until it had crossed the ocean. This plain truth, so simple once agreed on, ran a red line across every request, every program, every projection. Steel, aluminum, rubber, valves, motors, machine tools, copper wire, all the thousand things of war, would go first to ships. This simple yardstick rapidly disclosed the poverty of the “arsenal of democracy,” and dictated — as a matter of frightening urgency — a gigantic job of building new steel mills, and plants to turn the steel into combat machines and tools.

Through all the talk of grand hypothetical plans — hundreds of ships, tens of thousands of airplanes and tanks, millions of men — one pathetic item kept recurring: an immediate need for a hundred fifty thousand rifles. If Russia collapsed, Hitler might try to wrap up the war with a Crete-like invasion of England from the air. Rifles for defending British airfields were lacking. The stupendous materiel figures for future joint invasions of North Africa or the French coast contrasted sadly with this plea for a hundred fifty thousand rifles now.

Next morning, boats from all over the sparkling bay came clustering to the Prince of Wales for church services. On the surrounding hills, in sunlight that seemed almost blinding after days of gray mist, the forests of larch and fir glowed a rich green.

An American destroyer slowly nosed its bridge alongside the battleship, exactly level with the main deck, and a gangplank was thrown across. Leaning on his son’s arm and on a cane, Franklin Roosevelt, in a blue suit and gray hat lurched out on the gangplank, laboriously hitching one leg forward from the hip, then the other. The bay was calm, but both ships were moving on long swells. With each step, the tall President tottered and swayed. Victor Henry, like all the Americans crowding the destroyer bridge, hardly breathed as Roosevelt painfully hobbled across the narrow unsteady planks. Photographers waiting on the Prince of Wales quarterdeck were staring at the President, but Pug observed that not one of them was shooting this momentous crippled walk.

He thought of Franklin Roosevelt as he had first known him — the young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the athletic cocksure dandy, the obvious charmer and lady-killer, full of himself, on top of the world, bounding up and down a destroyer’s ladders and spouting salty lingo. The years had made of him this half-disabled gray man, heaving himself one agonized step at a time over a gangplank a few feet long; but here was enough willpower displayed, Pug thought, to win a world war. A ramp could have been jury-rigged and laid across with ease. Franklin Roosevelt might have wheeled over in comfort and with dignity. But in his piteous fashion he could walk; and to board a British battleship, at Winston Churchill’s invitation for church parade, he was walking.

His foot touched the deck of the Prince of Wales. Churchill saluted him and offered his hand. The brass band burst forth with “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Roosevelt stood at attention, his chest heaving, his face stiff with strain. Then, escorted by Churchill, the President hitched and hobbled all the way across the deck, and sat. No wheelchair ever appeared.

As the sailors massed in ranks around the afterdeck sang “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” and “Onward Christian Soldiers,” Winston Churchill kept wiping his eyes. The old hymns, roared by a thousand young male voices in the open air under the long guns, brought prickles to Victor Henry’s spine and tears to his eyes. Yet this exalting service made him uneasy, too.

Here they were, men of the American and the British navies, playing as comrades-in-arms. But it was a phony picture. The English were fighting, the Americans were not. The Prime Minister, with this church parade under the guns, was ingeniously working on the President’s feelings. Here was diamond cut diamond, will against will! Churchill was using everything he could, including Roosevelt’s supposed religious tendency, to move him. If Franklin Roosevelt could come away from this experience without giving a promise to declare war on Germany, or at least to lay down an ultimatum to Japan, he was a hard man; and the weeping old fat politician beside him was playing a damned hard game himself, for which Victor Henry admired him.

The British chaplain, his white and crimson vestments lapping in the wind, his thick gray hair blowing wildly, read the closing Royal Navy prayer: “…Preserve us from the dangers of the sea, and from the violence of the enemy; that we may be a security for such as pass upon the sea upon their lawful occasions… and that we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land, with the fruits of our labors… and to praise and glorify Thy Holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord…”

A few British sailors cautiously moved out of ranks. One, then another, sneaked cameras from their blouses. When nobody stopped them, and the two leaders smiled and waved, a rush began. Cameras appeared by the dozens. The sailors swarmed into a laughing, cheering ring around the two men. Pug Henry, watching this unwonted disorder on a warship with mixed feelings of amusement and outrage, felt a touch on his elbows. It was Lord Burne-Wilke. “Hello there, my dear fellow. A word with you?”

Either the British worried less about fire than the Americans, or they had found a good way to fake wood panels. Burne-Wilke’s cabin had the dark, warm, comfortable look of a library den. “I say, Henry, what is your position on shipboard drinking? I have a fair bottle of sherry here.”

“I’m for it.’

“Good. You’re dry as a bone in your service, aren’t you? Yet last night the President served us an excellent wine.”

“The President is the source of all Navy regulations, sir, and can tailor them to his desires.”

“Ah? Jolly convenient.” Burne-Wilke lit a cigar, and they both sipped wine. “I suppose you know that this ship crossed the ocean without escort,” the air commodore resumed. “Our first night out of England, we ran into a whole gale. Our destroyers couldn’t maintain speed, so we zigzagged on alone.”

“Sir, I was appalled to hear about it.”

“Really? Rather sporting of the British Prime Minister, don’t you think, to give the Hun a fair shot at him on the open sea? Three thousand miles without air cover or surface escort, straight through the entire submarine fleet?”

“You had your good angels escorting you. That’s all I can say.”

“Oh, well, at any rate here we are. But it might be prudent not to overwork those good angels, what? Don’t you agree? On our way back, every U-boat in the Atlantic will certainly be on battle alert. We shall have to run the gamut.” Burne-Wilke paused, studying the ash on his cigar. “We’re stretched thin for escorts, you know. We’ve rounded up four destroyers. Admiral Pound would be happier with six.”

Victor Henry quickly said, “I’ll talk to Admiral King,”

“You understand that this cannot be a request from us. The Prime Minister would be downright annoyed. He’s hoping we’ll meet the Tirpitz and get into a running gun fight.”

“Let me start on this now, sir.” Pug drank up his sherry, and rose to his feet.

“Oh? Would you?” Burne-Wilke opened the cabin door. “Thanks awfully.”

On the afterdeck, the photographing was still going on. Officers with cameras were now shouldering sailors aside, as the two politicians cheerfully chatted. Behind them stood their glum chiefs of staff and civilian advisers. Hopkins, squinting out at the sunny water, wore a pained expression. The military men were talking together, except for Admiral King, who stood woodenly apart, his long nose pointing seaward, his face congealed in disapproval. Pug walked up to him, saluted, and in the fewest possible words recounted his talk with Burne-Wilke. The lines along King’s lean jaws deepened. He nodded twice and strolled away, without a word. He did not go