To Kingdom Come (25 page)

Arnold was having a particularly frank discussion with Lord Trenchard, who had been just as instrumental in establishing the Royal Air Force in its infancy as Arnold had been in creating the modern U.S. Army Air Forces.

They were both known as the “fathers” of their respective air forces, and Arnold admired him greatly. Trenchard had been an early advocate of strategic bombing, and his words at the dinner were sweet music to Arnold’s ears. At seventy, the old man hadn’t seemed to have lost his edge.

During a lull in the general conversation, Arnold turned and asked Fred Anderson how the day’s mission had gone.

Anderson smiled and said, “The bombing results were excellent, sir.”

He had decided not to provide specifics. Thankfully, Arnold didn’t ask for any.

General Anderson added that the excellent results had come at high cost.

“We lost over thirty planes,” he said.

Strictly speaking, he was telling the truth. Eighth Air Force Bomber Command had lost more than thirty Fortresses that day. The actual number was forty-five, which Anderson well knew.

Arnold did not press him on the point. Losses were inevitable, especially now that they were going after Germany’s industrial base. To Arnold, excellent results meant the Eighth Air Force had pasted the ball-bearing factories in Stuttgart, and were that much closer to destroying Germany’s capacity to wage war.

Later, over Ira Eaker’s excellent cigars, there were toasts to General Arnold, to Prime Minister Churchill, and to President Roosevelt. At 2230, General Arnold excused himself from the gathering and headed upstairs to his suite.

All in all, he had found the inspection trip a profitable use of his time. Most important, he had lit a fire under Eaker and his staff. Back in Washington, he could never rely on the information and reports that came up through regular channels. He needed to be there to get the full story.

After retiring to bed, he was briefly awakened by something he hadn’t heard in London since his visit in April 1941 at the height of the blitz. It was pitch dark in the suite, but through the thick blackout curtains he could hear the mournful wail of air raid sirens. Unlike 1941, they were not followed by the roar of exploding bombs and the bark of antiaircraft fire.

They didn’t disturb his dreams.

The Day After

Tuesday, 7 September 1943
Magadino, Switzerland
First Lieutenant Martin Andrews
0830

A
ndy Andrews found himself tormented with guilt at what had ensued after he had landed
Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti
in the grass airfield at the edge of Lago Maggiore. For one thing, none of the four British thermite bombs he and his crew had ignited to destroy the plane had worked. They were all duds. A serviceable B-17 was now in another country’s hands.

He had failed.

He felt even greater guilt at having taken the plane out of combat. His copilot, Keith Rich, attempted to reassure him that he had made the right decision. With two engines out along with most of their fuel, they would probably have gone down over Germany. The crew was grateful, Rich told him. He had heard them cheering after
Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti
touched down alongside the lake.

None of it relieved Andy’s gloom.

After they were arrested by the Swiss troops, the crew had been brought to a Swiss military installation. In response to a question from a Swiss intelligence officer about the details of their combat mission, Andy told him that he had no idea what the man was talking about.

“Then what are you doing in our country?” demanded the Swiss officer.

“We’re tourists,” said Andy.

This appeared to amuse the Swiss, but they continued to demand answers.

“I can tell you nothing until I’ve spoken to a U.S. military attaché,” he said finally.

That evening they were transported under guard to an empty school in the nearby town of Bellinzona. They were each given blankets, and they spent the night sleeping on the floor.

The following morning they were put on a train to Zurich. Andy was told by a Swiss officer that they would be questioned further at Dübendorf Air Base, the headquarters of the Swiss Air Force.

He was sharing a compartment with the other three officers in his crew. The train had just left the station when the interior door of the compartment slid open, and a portly, middle-aged man stepped inside. Gray-haired with a trim mustache, he was wearing an expensive European-style suit.

“May I speak to the pilot of the U.S. plane that landed yesterday in Magadino?” he asked.

The Swiss had evidently agreed to allow the man to have access to them. Why? He appeared to have a refined American accent. Andy suspected that the man might be a spy.

When Andy said that he was the pilot, the man introduced himself as Allen Dulles, a fellow American, and shook his hand. He asked Andy to join him in his compartment for a private conversation. Intrigued, Andy went with him.

When they were alone, Dulles told Andy that he was the station chief of the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the American spy network in Europe. He was using neutral Switzerland as his base of operations for intelligence gathering on the Continent. His operatives ranged across Germany, France, and Italy, seeking the latest data on Axis military operations.

A cautious Andy responded by saying, “Look, Mr. Dulles, I’m sure you’re for real and I’ve heard of your brother John Foster Dulles, but until I meet the military attaché here in Switzerland, I can’t tell you anything about what I was doing yesterday. I’m perfectly willing to talk about my boyhood in Wisconsin or about my days in college, but not about what I did yesterday.”

He could tell from Dulles’s smile that the old man liked that. Andy didn’t know that Dulles was already considering using him as an undercover agent for a secret mission that would be as important as any Andy had flown with the Eighth Air Force.

Dulles wanted to know more about his personal background, and Andy spoke about his classical education at St. John’s College. Dulles seemed impressed with Andy’s facility with languages, and his ability to recall the long passages in Latin and Greek that Dulles asked him to recite.

For his part, Dulles began talking about his childhood in Auburn, New York, and his own student days at Princeton. He confided to Andy that he was returning to Bern after a clandestine meeting with Allied agents in Locarno.

In Zurich, the two men shook hands. Dulles wished him luck.

Tuesday, 7 September 1943
Entrepagny, France
384th Bomb Group
Jimmy Armstrong
0600

Jimmy awoke desperately thirsty.

It had been twenty-four hours since he had a cup of coffee in the officers’ mess at Grafton Underwood shortly before the mission briefing. Almost a lifetime ago, as it turned out.

With the first hint of dawn, he began wriggling out of the briar patch. Reaching the end of the thicket of vines and thorns, he attempted to stand up again. The pain in his right ankle was searing, but he found he could make forward progress by taking one step at a time with his left foot, while keeping as little weight as possible on the right.

He searched the landscape for a stream or a farmer’s well. There was nothing promising as far as he could see. He began crossing the wide field. There was no one about. He wondered how a Frenchman would react to seeing him dressed in his flight suit with burned face and hands, and hobbling along like a crippled old man. Would he help or turn him over to the Germans?

A building slowly emerged from the haze at the far end of the field. It was an imposing-looking château, and he decided not to approach it. Jimmy had attended escape training classes at Grafton Underwood, and he remembered one of the instructors telling them to stay away from rich landowners, because they had more to lose and were more likely to turn him in.

His ankle was breaking down again, and he decided to head back to the protection of the briar patch while he could still make it. The sky was much lighter now. While recrossing the field, he spotted what appeared to be a shallow drainage ditch. Coming closer, he saw there was water in it. The flow was less than two inches deep, but it was welcome just the same.

Jimmy followed the ditch back to the protection of the tree line and sat down to drink. He was greedily swallowing the brackish water when he heard someone coming through the woods. His immediate thought was that it might be a German soldier who had seen him crossing the field.

When the figure emerged through the trees, Jimmy saw it was an old white-haired man wearing a black beret and knickers. He appeared to be just as startled as Jimmy.

The man took in his flight jacket and burned face.

“Allez,”
he said loudly, pointing deeper into the woods. Jimmy sensed that
“allez”
meant go. He stood up again and hobbled deeper into the woods. With the pain in his ankle, he didn’t make it far before stopping.

Turning around, he saw that the man had disappeared. He sat down with his back to a tree and waited. If the man had gone to turn him in, there was no way he could escape anyway.

Less than an hour later, the old man was back. He was carrying a pan of beef stew in brown sauce with carrots and potatoes. It was accompanied by a chunk of bread and a jug of red wine. Nothing had ever tasted better to him.

Through a combination of sign language and a few common words, Jimmy understood that the Germans were still looking for him, and had searched all the houses in the area. Taking the empty pan, the man indicated he would bring more food the next day.

Jimmy nodded and said, “Mersey bo-coop.” The man went away again.

He spent the rest of the day making a crude bed of leaves and branches. His pillow was a tree root covered by his A-2 jacket. He had another night of fitful sleep. The next morning, the man came back with more food.

His name was Gaston Viguier, and he was a French army veteran from World War I who had fought at Verdun. He detested the German occupiers. He made it clear that he would continue to bring food as long as he could.

Although Jimmy was anxious to get moving, he decided that the respite in the woods was a good thing. He would probably need to walk a long distance, and he developed a daily regimen to slowly strengthen it by walking short distances in the woods. Each day his ankle would feel a little stronger.

On the second night, he awoke to the slow, steady patter of raindrops. Soon, it became a downpour, washing away the little umbrella of branches and leaves he had erected over his sleeping place. He could only pull the collar of his leather A-2 jacket tightly around his neck and endure it for the rest of the night.

The hours passed with agonizing slowness. Apart from the old man and an occasional glimpse of another villager passing along a nearby country road, Jimmy saw no one.

He missed the familiar sound patterns of his former life. The woods were silent except for birdsong and the occasional rustling of leaves by small forest creatures. His only other stimulation was the chimes from a bell tower in the nearby village. They tolled every hour and had a calming effect on him, particularly through the long nights.

Twelve o’clock and all’s well.

Solitude wasn’t all bad, he eventually decided. He just wasn’t used to it. For all of his twenty-one years, he had been part of a family, or an athletic team, or a college club, or the air force. This was the first time he had ever been truly alone.

It gave him time to think about many things. He hoped his mother wouldn’t be too distraught when she received the telegram that he was missing in action. He thought about the guys back in the 384th and wondered if they had already forgotten him, as he had quickly forgotten other pilots after they had gone down. In combat, one never dwelt on the past, only the next mission. He wondered about the existence of God, and found comfort in prayer.

If he made it back to England, he knew there would be no more combat missions, at least over Germany. It was strict air force policy that any pilot who successfully escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe was transferred out of the theater.

All he had to do was escape.

On Tuesday, September 14, eight days after Jimmy had been shot down, Gaston Viguier brought him his daily pan of food, along with some somber news. It was hard for Jimmy to follow it all, but the Germans had apparently searched the houses in the vicinity again, and Gaston’s neighbor had come to see him after they left. He said he knew Gaston was bringing food to an escaped American, and that if the Germans asked him, he would tell them the truth to avoid being shot.

The old man said he must go.

Jimmy understood he had to go, but where?

“Paris,” the old man said, pointing across the field, as if the city were just down the road. Jimmy took out his pocket compass and the handkerchief map. After glancing at the map, Gaston pointed southeast again toward the Seine River.

“Mersey bo-coop,” said Jimmy in his slow Southern drawl.

Gaston had brought a small sack of food for the journey. They shook hands, and he headed off. After eight days, his right ankle now carried him with just a slight limp. His burned hands were still oozing fluid, but they were healing, too.

All he needed to do was reach the Seine River. It would take him straight to Paris. Once he was there, he hoped he would meet someone who could connect him to the French underground.

Regularly checking his compass, he followed a succession of paved and dirt roads for the rest of the day. No cars or trucks passed him by, and the occasional person he saw was far enough away not to take notice.

He passed through villages so small that they consisted of only a few stone cottages. They all appeared to be deserted. It began to strike him as quite amazing that a dirty, unshaven American pilot in his flight uniform could walk for miles across the French countryside without exciting the slightest curiosity. Maybe the Good Lord was looking over him after all.