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

by Herman Wouk

To begin with he wants me to abandon all claim to being an American—which I am, whether my papers are in order or not—and to enlist myself in the mob of clamoring Jewish refugees from Europe seeking admittance as hardship cases!

The Italian authorities now know my problem. That alarmingly increases my vulnerability here.

I am getting on with my work, but I had better clarify my right to go home. One can never know when or where the villain with the moustache will make his next move.

Natalie knew in thirty seconds that the handsome woman in green chiffon and rose-decorated white straw hat didn’t like her. The polite handshake outside the church, the prim smile, told all. Pug presented Natalie to Madeline as “Byron’s sidekick on the Polish jaunt,” obviously trying with this clumsy jocularity to make up for his wife’s freeze.

The robed minister appeared, book in hand, and the ceremony began.

When Victor Henry softly took her hand, she clasped his and pressed it to her thigh. What fine sons they had, standing up there together!

As Janice lifted her veil for the kiss, she and Warren exchanged a deep, knowing, intimately amused glance. “How are you doing?” he murmured. “Oh, still standing up. God knows how, you dog.” And with the minister beaming on them, they embraced, kissed, and laughed, there in the church in each other’s arms, over the war-born joke that would last their whole lives and that nobody else would ever know.

At the table Lacouture was declaring, with relish for his own pat phrases, that the President’s request for fifty thousand airplanes a year was “politically hysterical, fiscally irresponsible, and industrially inconceivable.” Even the German air force didn’t have ten thousand planes all told; and it didn’t have a single bomber that could fly as far as Scotland, let alone across the Atlantic. A billion dollars! The interventionist press was whooping it up, naturally, but if the debate in Congress could go on for more than a week, the appropriation would be licked. “We have three thousand miles of good green water between us and Europe,” he said, “and that’s better protection for us than half a million airplanes. Roosevelt just wants new planes in a hurry to give to England and France. But he’ll never come out and say that. Our fearless leader is slightly deficient in candor.”

PART TWO

Pamela

27

“I see only one way through now, to wit, that Hitler should attack this country, and in so doing break his air weapon. If this happens, he will be left to face the winter with Europe writhing under his heel, and probably with the United States against him after the presidential election is over.”

Winston Churchill, today an idealized hero of history, was in his time variously considered a bombastic blunderer, an unstable politician, an intermittently inspired orator, a reckless self-dramatizer, a voluminous able writer in an old-fashioned vein, and a warmongering drunkard. Through most of his long life he cut an antic, brilliant, occasionally absurd figure in British affairs. He never won the trust of the people until 1940, when he was sixty-six years old, and before the war ended they dismissed him. But in his hour he grasped the nature of Hitler, and sensed the way to beat him: that is, by holding fast and pushing him to the assault of the whole world, the morbid German dream of rule or ruin, of dominion or Götterdämmerung. He read his man and he read the strategic situation, and with the words of his mouth he inspired the British people to share his vision. By keeping back the twenty-five squadrons from the lost Battle of France, he acted toughly, wisely, and ungallantly; and he turned the war to the course that ended five long years later, when Hitler killed himself and Nazi Germany fell apart. This deed put Winston Churchill in the company of the rare saviors of countries, and perhaps of civilizations.

The United States was safe from air attack in 1940, but the on-rolling conquest of Europe by the Germans, combined with the growing menace of Japan, posed a danger to the future safety of the United States. The question arose: if selling warplanes to the British would enable them to go on knocking down German aircraft, killing German pilots, and wrecking German bomber factories, might not that be, for American security, the best possible use of the aging craft while new, bigger, and stronger machines were built in the inaccessible sanctuary across the ocean? The answer, from the United States Navy, the Army, the War Department, the Congress, the press, and the public, was a roaring NO! Franklin Roosevelt wanted to help the British, but he had to reckon with that great American NO!

Roosevelt, presiding over a wealthy huge land at peace, could not even sell planes to England without risking impeachment.

“Captain Henry here doesn’t know it yet, but he’s going to be in charge of getting rid of those old, useless, surplus Navy dive bombers. We badly need a housecleaning there! No sense having a lot of extra planes cluttering up our training stations. Eh, Captain? Very untidy. Not shipshape.”

“Burne-Wilke is here to try to scare up any old useless aeroplanes you happen to have lying around,” said Tudsbury.

Tudsbury turned to Henry, “You know the Nazis. Can Roosevelt afford to wait?” “What choice has he? A few months ago Congress was fighting him just on selling you guns.” “A few months ago,” Tudsbury said, “Hitler wasn’t overrunning Belgium, Holland, and France, and directly facing you across the water.” “Lot of water,” said Pug.

France has simply stagnated and rotted. England’s played its same old upper-crust butterfly comedy, while soothing the workers with gin and the dole. Meantime Roosevelt has absorbed the world revolt into legislation. He has made America the only viable modern free country. It was a stupendous achievement, a peaceful revolution that’s gutted Marxian theory. Nobody wholly grasps that yet. They’ll be writing books about it in the year 2000. Because of it, America’s the power reserve of free mankind. Roosevelt knows that and moves slowly.

To begin with, none of the New Deal issued from this great revolutionary’s brain. The ideas flooded into Washington with the new people when the administration changed. They were quite derivative ideas, mostly copied from us decadent butterflies. We were a good deal ahead of you in social legislation.—Ah, thank you, Pam.—Now this slow moving can be good politics, but in war it’s a tactic of disaster. Fighting Germany one at a time, we’ll just go down one at a time.

Slote showed her, in a book, State Department rules for naturalized citizens living abroad more than five years. They forfeited citizenship, but the book listed seven exceptions. Some seemed to fit Aaron Jastrow’s case—as when health was a reason for staying abroad, or when a man past sixty and retired had maintained his ties with the United States.

The best thing now—by far—is to get the Secretary of State to drop a word to Rome.

I therefore don’t think there’s much point in your digging around in Bronx courthouses for his alien registration and his father’s naturalization records.

I’m hoping the Secretary will shake his head in amusement at the folly of absent-minded professors, and shoot off a letter to Rome.

“He just will never pull himself together and leave. You know that. He’ll dawdle and potter and hope for the best.”

“Fair enough. Leslie, I must go to Italy to get Aaron out. Honestly! I feel horrible about my father. He was worrying over Aaron the very day he died. Maybe this is irrational expiation, but I’ve got to bring Aaron home safe.” “I’ll arrange it, if it’s arrangeable.”

28

Showing a new grudging cordiality toward Victor Henry, the admiral explained that the President had elicited from the Attorney General—“probably by twisting his arm pretty damn hard”—the scheme and the ruling for selling these planes to England despite the Neutrality Act. First, the Navy was declaring the aircraft surplus. Second, Chance-Vought was accepting them for a trade-in on new F-4-U’s, at a good high price. Chance-Vought could afford to do this, because it was turning around and selling the old planes to England at a profit. The catch was that the delivery of the F-4-U’s lay far in the future. Undoubtedly President Roosevelt was evading the spirit of the Neutrality Law and the will of Congress, by allowing these planes out of the country now.

Briny, my love— Brace yourself. When you receive this letter I ought to be in Lisbon. I’m flying to Italy to fetch Uncle Aaron out of there. With luck I’ll be back in two months or less. It depends on the earliest boat passage I can get for us, and for that damned library and all those research files.

I’ve rejected repeated, almost grovelling marriage proposals from this man. I’ve told him that I love you, that I’ve promised to marry you, and that he is out. He knows it. Still he dropped everything to work on Aaron’s stupid mess.

So courage, and wish me luck. Here I go.

Love you, Natalie

Byron read her shocking letter over and over.

“If anything happens to her over there, I’ll hold you responsible, Dad, and I’ll never forget it.”

He felt guilty, an unfamiliar sensation: guilty of interfering in his son’s life and possibly of driving off the girl.

“Yes, you helped. She’s gone. I’ll never forget, Dad.”

Victor Henry left for Europe. Rhoda stayed behind, because of the worsening of the war, to make a home for Madeline in New York.

Pug found it surprisingly easy to get a plane ticket at that time into the warring continent, as Natalie had. The hard thing was to get out.

29

“God, who ever thought I’d come back here?” she said to herself.

In Siena nothing had changed.

Aaron, in his broad-brimmed white hat and yellow Palm Beach summer suit, sat in his old place in the shade of the big elm, reading a book.

“Why, Aaron, you haven’t even begun to pack!” “We’ll talk about it over tea,” he said, with an embarrassed smile.

Natalie told him about the new wrinkle in Jastrow’s situation. The day Italy had entered the war, a man from the Italian security police had visited Jastrow and warned him that, as a stateless person of Polish origin, he was confined to Siena until further notice. She mentioned, as cordially as she could, that the OVRA undoubtedly knew this fact from intercepting Van Winaker’s letter.

“Mr. Van Winaker, the Secretary of State himself wants Aaron cleared. You know that.” “Let’s get one thing straight.” Van Winaker held up a stiff finger, his round blue eyes gone sober. He puffed his pipe and waved it at her. “I have had no instructions from the Secretary. I’m extremely glad we’re doing this face to face, Natalie, instead of on paper. He couldn’t go on record as intervening for one individual against another in matters involving equal treatment under law.” The eyes relaxed in a sly twinkle. “I did hear from Rome, between you and me, that his office asked us to expedite your uncle’s departure. I was stretching way over backwards, honestly, issuing that visa, jumping him to the head of a list of hundreds and hundreds of names.”

“I want to take Uncle Aaron home tomorrow, and abandon books and everything. Please give him the passport.”

He pushed his hair straight up. “Just go.” She stared at him. “I mean that! He’s got his visa. You’ve got your passport. Hop a bus or train, or hire a car, and scoot to Naples. Ignore the confinement to Siena. The Italians are so sloppy! Get on the first boat and just leave. You won’t be stopped. Nobody’s watching your uncle.”

“You will try to find a way to give him a passport?” “Or to get him out. That’s all you want, isn’t it?” “Yes.”

30

Eagle and Sea Lion