The Winds of War (The Henry Family, #1)

by Herman Wouk

“Oh, how dare you? You’re cruel, and you have a dirty mind. Do you actually think I’d play around with a married man? Why, The Happy Hour was my idea. I was so excited when Mr. Fenton told us about the rating, I’d have kissed anybody who was handy. You’re being horrible, Byron.” She took a handkerchief from her purse and wiped her eyes. “All right. I didn’t want to make you cry.” “Don’t you believe me?”

“My God, I thought we knew each other so well. We used to. I admit Hugh would sleep with me if he could. He’ll sleep with anybody, and I find that disgusting. He’s nothing but a whoremaster, and his wife’s the most miserable woman alive. I appreciate your concern for my honor. You’re very old-fashioned and sweet, like Dad. But don’t you worry ...

Byron stopped the record and spent the next hour drawing a sketch of an air compressor. Working from memory, using different colored crayons and inks, he produced a picture accurate and clear enough to be printed in a manual. To this he clipped a letter he typed in the abandoned mildewy-smelling yeoman’s cubicle, formally requesting transfer to Atlantic duty. He added a scrawled pencil note on a chit: Captain—I deeply appreciate the amnesty and the leave. The only thing I want in the world now is to see my wife and baby, and try to get them out of Europe. I’m sure you will understand. Next morning Branch Hoban congratulated Byron on his sketch, explained with regret that he couldn’t spare an officer from the watch list, declared his conviction that Natalie and her baby were quite safe in Rome, and said he would forward the request, not recommending approval.

51

Hotel National, Moscow Oct. 2, 1941

Dearest Rhoda—

Tudsbury’s here right now, dictating to Pamela his broadcast for tonight. Leave it to Talky to show up where the action is! He got the War Information Office to requisition Pamela for him; his stories and broadcasts are considered ace propaganda, and he pleaded failing eyesight. She’s on extended leave from the RAF and seems miserable about it. Her flier has been a German prisoner for over a year, and she hasn’t had word of him in months.

The Russians keep the reporters in Moscow, and every other day or so just call them in and give them some phony handout. Most of them think the war’s going very badly, but they don’t have much to go on besides Moscow rumors and Berlin shortwave broadcasts. It seems the Russians have been more or less admitting all the German claims, but two or three weeks late. The pessimists here—and there are plenty—think Moscow may fall in a week! I don’t, nor does Tudsbury; but our embassy people are nervous as hell, some of them, about Harriman being captured by the Nazis. They’ll be mighty relieved tomorrow when the mission flies out.

Russians smile only when they’re amused, never to be pleasant. It makes them seem distant and surly. I guess we strike them as grinning monkeys. This epitomizes the job of communicating with Russians. Language aside, we just have different natures and ways.

The Russians have been a hard-luck people. You can’t forget that when you talk to them. This is a point that our interpreter, Leslie Slote, keeps making.

We sit between men of two countries that are fighting the Germans for their lives, while we represent a land that won’t let its President lift a finger to help, not without outcries from coast to coast.

I said to Slote there were two things: no advertisements, and no colored people. It made him laugh. Still, it’s so. Moscow has a real American feel in the informality and equality of the people, but you don’t find such a sea of white faces in any big city in America.

Anyway, I was having a drink with them—if you get this tired you have to keep up an alcohol level in your bloodstream, it’s a sort of emergency gasoline—when a knock came on the door, and in walked a fellow in worn-out boots, a cap, a heavy shabby coat, and it was a Jewish merchant from Warsaw, Jochanan Jastrow, Natalie’s uncle! The one they call Berel. Briny and Natalie went to his son’s wedding in south Poland, you recall, and that’s how they got caught in the invasion. He’s clean-shaven, and speaks Russian and German with ease, and he doesn’t seem Jewish, though Slote remarked that in Warsaw he wore a beard and looked like a rabbi. This fellow’s escape from Warsaw with the remnants of his family is a saga. They landed in Minsk and got caught there when the Germans blitzed White Russia. He gave us only bare details of how he got himself and his family out of Minsk through the woods, but obviously this is quite a guy for maneuvering and surviving. Here comes the incredible part. Jastrow says that late one night, about a month after the capture of Minsk, the Germans came into the Jewish ghetto they had set up, with a caravan of trucks. They cleaned out two of the most heavily populated streets, jamming everybody into these trucks: men, women, children, babies, old folks who couldn’t walk. Several thousand people, at least. They drove them to a ravine in the forest a few miles out of town, and there they shot them, every single one, and buried them in a huge freshly dug dit...

Jastrow turned over these materials to Slote, and said he’d risked his life to get that stuff to Moscow, and that a lot of women and children had been murdered, so would he please guard those pictures and documents with care.

This thing could backfire and keep America out of the war, he claimed, just as Hitler’s Jewish policy worked for years to paralyze the British. “Nobody wants to fight a war to save the Jews,” he kept insisting while banging the table, and Hitler still has a lot of people convinced that anyone who fights Germany is really spilling blood just for the Jews. Talky says this is one of the great war propaganda ideas of all time, and that this story about the Minsk Jews would play into German hands.

If there’s even an element of truth in Jastrow’s yarn, then the Germans really have run amuck, and among other things Natalie and her infant, unless they’re out of Italy by now, are in grave hazard.

But I assume they did get out; Slote tells me it was all set before her confinement.

Till the next time, with lots of love— Pug

Contrary to a notion popular at the time—a notion which has never quite died—the Wehrmacht was not a giant solid phalanx of tanks and armored cars, spitting flame and death as it clanked through whole nations. Hitler had a horse-drawn army. It was larger than Napoleon’s, but mainly it advanced into Russia as the Grande Armée had, by animal power and the march of men’s feet. He also had some armored divisions, spaced on the flanks of the three big groups invading the Soviet Union. The blitzkrieg worked so: the armored forces, the panzers, chugged ahead on either side of each attack front, slicing into the enemy lines, counting on surprise, terror, and punch to soften or panic the foe. The infantry came along between these two swathes as fast as it could, killing or capturing the forces which the panzer divisions had broken into or thinly encircled.

These armored divisions were a big success, and no doubt Hitler would have been glad to employ more of them. But he had started his war—as his generals had feebly grumbled—much too soon, only six years after he took power. He had not come near arming Germany to the full, though he had made frightening noises exactly as if he had, and Europe had believed him. He was therefore very low on panzer divisions, considering the vastness of the front.

In August, when his three-pronged attack had jabbed far into the Soviet Union, Hitler diverted the thin armored layers of the central formation north and south, to help wrap up the war on the flanks by taking Kiev and investing Leningrad. This done, the panzers were to come back on station and start driving again with the Center Group for the knockout blow on the capital. It was a move that military writers still argue about; but in any case, with the central armor thus peeled away, the infantry and horse-drawn artillery in the center perforce had to halt and dig in, to await the return of the panzers, the steel cutting edges, from their side excursions. This was the new “Miracle of the Marne.” The Russians were at first surprised, then immensely heartened, at this sudden stop of the huge force advancing on their capital; and disorganized though they were, they went over to coun...

That was when Harriman and Beaverbrook arrived, with the obscure Captain...

52

Fate had served him a strange, indigestible dish, Leslie Slote thought—to be beaten out first by the son and then by the father; neither of them, in his own judgment, a worthy rival. Byron Henry at least was a handsome young devil, and had much changed Slote’s ideas of the susceptibility of clever women to surface charms. But there was nothing charming on the surface of Byron’s father. The best one could say for the man was that he still had his hair, thick and dark, and that his waist showed an effort to stay trim. But his age was evident in the weary wrinkled eyes, the gnarled hands, the seamed mouth, the deliberate movements.

Then Minsk fell, then Smolensk, then Kiev—each Russian acknowledgment lagging a week or more behind the German crows of victory. Air raids started; the Luftwaffe had come into range. Nobody else in the embassy became as alarmed as Slote, because nobody else had counted much on the Russians. Moreover, nobody else had undergone the ordeal of Warsaw. Since May, the ambassador had been storing food, fuel, and supplies in a large house thirty miles from the city, to sit out the coming siege. A few of the Americans, rubbed raw by the Russians’ difficult ways, even looked forward to seeing the Wehrmacht march into Red Square. At least, after a few drinks, they said so.

That was the strange and fearful thing about them. They were like remote cold children, as docile and as cruel. Hitler’s dread secret was that he understood them.

Pug said to Slote, “Look here, Leslie, if we’re going to plan for convoys to Murmansk and Archangel, and for possible joint operations, we’ve got to swap hydrographic dope and operational codes. Hell, we’re not asking for secret combat channels. This is the stuff we need for seamanship and piloting.” “Russians are obsessed with secrecy,” Slote said. “Be persistent and patient.”

“Say, what did the ambassador think of that stuff from Minsk? Did you get it to him?” Slote nodded at Pug’s mirror image. “I wanted it to go to Secretary Hull, high priority. The ambassador quashed that. The stuff’s to be forwarded through channels to our east European desk.” Pug wrinkled his nose. “That’ll be the end of it. Your department always drags its feet on the Jews. Better show the papers to some American newspaperman here.” “The boss directly ordered me not to, in case it’s evaluated as fake atrocity propaganda.”

“Are you suggesting that I disobey orders?” “I don’t think that story should get buried.”

Henry was sizing up the approaching Communists through half-closed eyes, as though he were peering at a horizon. “That’s the Politburo, Captain,” Slote said. “Very big cheeses.” Henry nodded. “They don’t look like big cheeses, do they?” “Well, it’s those terrible clothes,” Slote said.

So Leslie Slote saw for the first time in the flesh the man whose busts, photographs, statues, and paintings filled the Soviet Union like images of Christ in a Catholic land.

The Communist dictator, a surprisingly short man with a small paunch, moved through the room shaking hands and chatting.

Leslie Slote made introductions. Captain Henry said in slow Russian, with a bad American accent, “Sir, I will tell this story to my grandchildren.” Raising a thick eyebrow, Stalin said in a low pleasant voice, “Yes? Do you have any?” “Two boys.” “And your children? Do you have sons?” The dictator appeared diverted by Victor Henry’s slow, carefully drilled, mechanical speech. “I have two, Mr. Chairman. My older son flies for the Navy. My younger one is in a submarine.”

Silent, unspoken, yet almost thunderous, was this message —“Very well, you of the West, these are the things that seem to make you happy, opulence and pleasure sweated out of others. See how well we do it too, if we choose! See how our old Russian regime did it, before we kicked them out! Can you match them? Tomorrow we’ll go back to the simple life we prefer, but since you come from the decadent West, fine, let’s all get drunk together and gorge and swill. We Russians know how to live as well as you, and for the fun of it, we’ll even go you one better tonight. Let’s see who slides under the table first. VASHE ZDOROVYE!”

“My chief tells me to respond for the United States Navy. It is true we are not fighting. I drink first to the wise peace policy of Marshal Stalin, who did not lead your country into the great war before you were attacked, and so gained time to prepare.” Slote was startled by the barbed aptness of the retort. “The wise peace policy of Comrade Stalin” was the Communist cliché for Stalin’s deal with Hitler. Henry went on, with groping pauses for words that left tense silence in the vast hall: “That is the policy of our President. If we are attacked we will fight. I hope as well as your people are fighting. Now as for”—he stopped to ask Slote for the Russian word—“barnacles. Any barnacles that get on our ships nowadays are barnacles that can swim very fast. Our ships are on the move. We don’t announce everything we do. Secrecy is another wise policy of both our countries. But let’s not keep so many secrets from each other that we can’t work together. “Now, our Navy needs some”—again Henry asked Slote for a word—“some harbor data, weather codes, and so forth from you. We need them before we leave. Since this is a farewell banquet, I also drink to some fast action. Finally, I was a naval attaché in Berlin. I have now travelled from Hitler’s chancellery to the inside of the Kremlin. That is something Hitler will never do, and above all I drink to that.”

Pug strode toward Stalin, with Slote hurrying behind him. The dictator said with an amiable grin, as they met near the dais and clinked glasses amid smiles and handclapping, “I thank you for that fine toast, and in response, you can keep California.” “Thank you, Mr. Chairman,” Pug said, and they both drank. “That’s a good start, and can you do anything else for us?” “Certainly. Fast action,” said Stalin, linking his arm in Pug’s. They were so close that Pug caught an odor of fish on Stalin’s breath. “American style. We Russians can sometimes do it too.”

Stalin rose, shook hands, with a silent gracious gesture waved them to chairs, and then sat down with an inquiring look at Captain Henry. Henry handed him the letter and a round box wrapped in shiny blue paper. “Mr. Chairman, I’d better not inflict my bad Russian on you any longer,” he said in English, as Stalin carefully opened the White House envelope with a paper knife. Slote translated and Stalin replied in Russian, slightly inclining his head, “As you wish.” He passed to Pavlov the single handwritten pale green sheet, on which THE WHITE HOUSE was printed in an upper corner. Pug said, as Stalin unwrapped the box, “And that is the special Virginia pipe tobacco Mr. Hopkins told you about, that his son likes so much.” Pavlov translated this, and everything the American captain said thereafter, sometimes conveying Henry’s tone as well as a quick exact version of his words. Slote sat silent, nodding from time to time. Stalin turned the round blue tin in his hands. “Mr. Hopkins is very thoughtful to remember our casual chat about pipe tobacco. Of course, we have plenty of good pipe tobacco in the Soviet Union.” He twisted open the tin with a quick wrench of strong hands and curiously inspected the heavy lead foil seal, before slashing it with a polished thumbnail and pulling a pipe from his pocket. “Now you can tell Mr. Hopkins that I tried his son’s tobacco.” Pug understood Stalin’s Russian in this small talk, but could not follow him after that. Stalin stuffed the pipe, pu...

Unexpectedly, in mid-translation, Stalin uttered a short harsh laugh and began to talk fast in Russian, straight at Victor Henry. Slote and Pavlov made quick notes, and when the dictator paused, Pavlov took over and spoke with much of Stalin’s hard sarcastic tone. “That is very fine! Mid-1942. Unfortunately, this is October 1941. If Mr. Hitler would only halt operations until mid-1942! But perhaps we cannot count on that. And what will happen meantime? I regard Mr. Harry Hopkins”—Stalin said Gospodin Garry Gopkins—“as a friend and a clever man. Doesn’t he know that any operation that the British can mount now—just a reconnaissance in force of a few divisions, if they can do no better—might decide the course of this war? The Germans have only very weak reserves, mere token forces, on the French coast. They are throwing everything into the battle on our front. Any action in the west might make them pause, and draw off just the decisive margin of strength here.”

He looked up at Henry with the oddly genial expression common in his photographs, and changed his tone. “Have you enjoyed your stay? Is there anything we can do for you?” Victor Henry said, “Mr. Chairman, I have been a wartime military observer in Germany and in England. Mr. Hopkins asked me to go to the front here, if an opportunity arose, so as to bring him an eyewitness report.” At the word “front,” Stalin shook his head. “No, no. We are obliged to guarantee the safety of our guests. That we cannot do, in the present stage of fighting. Mr. Hopkins would not forgive us if some misfortune befell you.” “Mr. Hopkins has been unsparing of his own health, sir. It is wartime.” An opaque wild look, almost the look in a gorilla’s eyes, came into Stalin’s gaze. “Well, you should understand that things are bad at the front. The Germans are breaking through again in force. We may soon see the worst hours for Russia since 1812. You will hear all the news tomorrow. That is why a second front now would earn for England the friendship of my people until the end of time.” He went back to work on the wolf. Pug said soberly, “In view of this news, Mr. Chairman, I admire your cheerfulness of spirit at the banquet tonight.” Stalin shrugged his broad sagging shoulders. “Wars are not won by gloom, nor by bad hospitality. Well, if Mr. Hopkins wants you at the front, he must have good reasons. We will see what we can do. Give him my thanks for the letter and the tobacco. It is not bad tobacco, ...

In his flat Slote brewed coffee on the gas ring, and rapidly typed a long account of the banquet and the meeting with Stalin.

Captain Henry suggested that I disregard orders and expose the Minsk documents to Fred Fearing or some newspaperman. Such an act goes entirely against my grain; and entirely for that reason, I intend to do it.

53

“Who’s handling this, Lozovsky? Can’t I just tell him you said I could come? I know them all and they love me. It’s up to you.” Victor Henry did not want Tudsbury along, but he was exhausted and he was sure the Russians would refuse. “Okay.”

“Pamela, what’s this? What about Ted?” “He’s fine. Or safe, anyhow.” “But where is he?” “Oh, back in Blighty. Hardly the worse for wear, according to him. It seems he finally managed to escape—he and four French aviators—from a prison camp outside Strasbourg. He did have quite a few adventures in France and Belgium, straight out of the films. But he made it. I rather thought he would, sooner or later.”

Lozovsky finally telephoned him at the hotel, his voice ringing cheerily. “Well, Captain, will tomorrow at dawn suit you? Kindly come here to the Narkomindel, wear warm clothing, a raincoat, and good boots, and be prepared to be out three or four days.” “Right. Is the girl coming too?” “Of course.” The Russian sounded surprised and a bit offended. “That was the problem. Really it was not easy to clear, though we wanted to make the exact arrangements you desired. Our Russian girls face combat conditions as a matter of course, but we know that foreign ladies are much less hardy. Still we all know Miss Tudsbury, she is attractive, and one understands such a devoted friendship. It is arranged.” Victor Henry decided to ignore the jollying, even ribald tone, and not to try to rewrite this record. “I’m grateful, and I’ll be there.”

When they had gone about a hundred miles, their guide, a mild-faced, bespectacled tank colonel, with the odd name of Porphyry Amphiteatrov, suggested that they stop to eat lunch and stretch their legs. That was when they first heard the German guns.

“Well, this was Tolstoy’s country estate, you know,” said Amphiteatrov. “It is called Yasnaya Polyana, and there is his grave. Since it was on the way, I thought you might be interested.” Tudsbury stared at the low mound and spoke in a hushed way not usual to him. “The grave of Tolstoy? No tomb? No stone?” “He ordered it so. ‘Put me in the earth,’ he said, ‘in the woods where I played Green Stick with my brother Nicholas when we were boys…’ ”

Tudsbury said, “They should have read him a little more carefully.” “We still have to prove that. But we will.”

The colonel called, “Well, Captain, I think we go on?” Edging into the thickening traffic stream on the main road, the little black automobile rolled in the direction of the gunfire.

This was the strangest thing Pug saw all that day—these Russian ancients, building a house in the twilight, within earshot of German artillery, much louder here than at the Tolstoy estate, with yellow flashes flickering like summer lightning on the western horizon.