I cannot truthfully expand my role as General Clay’s aide. I was one of those people you see walking the heavyweight champ from his dressing room to the ring. Much of the time my presence meant only that General Clay didn’t have to talk to himself. Other times I could be handy. On my uniform was the badge of a general’s aide, an eagle clutching a shield decorated with stars and stripes in colored enamels. On the shield were four stars, corresponding to Clay’s rank. After the war I returned to UCLA as a professor of history. I now keep the badge in a drawer of my desk there, and I lift it out and ponder over it and recall those days more often than I’d care to admit.
The general was not one for compliments, but he inadvertently paid me one once, and modesty won’t prevent me from passing it along here. Our wives back in Washington were lamenting our absences over wine one evening. The next day Margaret Clay wrote her husband asking if he would arrange a leave so I could return to the States and my wife for a few days. His reply, according to Margaret, was that I would be missed more at AEFHQ than I was being missed in Washington. I swelled with that one.
We arrived at Great George Street at 1:15 that afternoon. The government offices are between Whitehall and St. James Park. To the south was the half-ruin of Westminster Abbey. The Gothic Nave, built in the sixteenth century and once the tallest in Britain, had been destroyed by Luftwaffe bombs. Its soaring vaults had collapsed onto the monuments in the nave’s aisles and transepts, all of which were now piles of rock and dust. The rest of the structure, including the two western towers, the Chapter House, Cloisters, Sanctuary, and the chapels, remained undamaged, and services were still being conducted daily.
The cabinet war rooms had been built in the basement of the Great George Street offices because of the building’s proximity to Whitehall and because of its steel-framed structure. The basement complex had been reinforced with tons of concrete and steel I-beams. Engineers promised that even a direct hit on the building above would only flicker the lights and loosen dust in the subterranean rooms. Most who worked there called it “the hole in the ground.”
General Clay nodded at the guards, and I followed him down the stairs. We were joined at the bottom of the steps by Lieutenant Ed Paley, Clay’s London headquarters secretary. “Sir, Senator Longley is here to see you. Insists on it, in fact.”
Clay glared at the lieutenant. “What is he doing in London, for Christ’s sake?”
“Fact-finding tour, he claims, sir. He said he could not alert you to his arrival for security reasons. The president issued him a BIGOT, and he’s been waving it around down here.”
The BIGOT security card was the most secure in the ETO, and allowed its holder to know all details of the invasion defense.
“Lest you hadn’t already concluded this, Lieutenant, Senator Longley is the north end of a horse walking south.” Clay removed his cap and pushed it into his pants pocket. “I’ve got too goddamn many things to do to meet with a politician. Is the prime minister here yet?”
“He’s been delayed a few moments, sir.”
“Show the senator into my office.”
The general and I walked along the main corridor. It was Clay’s nature to both say he had no time and then to make time for Senator Lawton Longley, the Democrat from Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and a long-time supporter of President Roosevelt. The general was not about to have the powerful senator return to Washington to whisper negative things about the AEF commander into Roosevelt’s ear. Longley was known to imagine slights and nurse grudges. He was not anyone to toy with.
As he walked, Clay said over his shoulder at me, “Don’t stand between Longley and a mirror, Jack. It’d be too dangerous. He loves mirrors like most men love women.”
The war rooms were a series of small cubicles, most not much larger than the desks inside. They included a radio room, the shorthand-typist station, a map room, the mess, a transatlantic telephone room, a number of offices and quarters for high-ranking war personnel, the cabinet room, and the prime minister’s quarters. The long corridor was filled with soldiers and sailors, all moving briskly.
We entered General Clay’s office. He made do with an oak desk and chair, a filing cabinet, and a cot, which was placed against the wall under a clock. A light in milk glass hung from the ceiling. Also overhead was an air duct, painted tan, with adjustable nozzles. A banker’s lamp with a green glass shade was on the desk. On one wall was a curtain hiding a map. Under the cot was a bedpan. Because there was no plumbing in the war rooms, Clay loathed staying the night there and always attempted to return to his advance command post or his rooms at Grosvenor Square.
Clay had just lowered himself into the chair when Paley ushered Senator Longley into the rooms, then retreated. You’d have thought it was Margaret Clay rather than the senator. The general leaped up, a broad grin suddenly on his face. He held out both hands and charged around the desk to greet the senator.
“Lawton, if you’d have told me you were coming I would have prepared a reception, a little drum and bugle in your honor.”
The senator beamed and pumped Clay’s hand. I’d seen photographs and newsreels of the senator working his home state. He invariably wore a white suit, black suspenders, spats, and sometimes even a boater. Outside Louisiana, he dressed like a Wall Street banker. For his meeting with the general, he had chosen to wear a paratrooper’s camouflage jacket and pants. I thought I could hear Clay’s teeth grinding behind the grin.
“The president sent me over to gather information and report back, Wilson.”
Which General Clay knew meant that FDR sent him over to get him out of FDR’s hair.
“And I’m glad he did, Lawton. Those twice daily briefings the president receives from my office can’t completely keep him informed, I know. Hell, they’re only fifteen to twenty pages apiece.”
Longley helped himself to the general’s chair. Clay locked his hands behind his back and rocked on his toes, the smile frozen on his face. He introduced me. I was worth only a dip of the senator’s chin.
“Well, tell me what you need to know, Lawton,” the general said.
The senator’s black hair was two-tone, white near his ears, while the remainder was black. “A skunk’s coloring,” General Clay told me later. Longley had teeth as white and as perfectly spaced as piano keys. His eyes had friendly lines around them, giving him an avuncular appearance. He was as tall as I am, but had broader shoulders. He had played football at LSU. Eighteen of those ballplayers were appointed to federal government jobs within days of his first senate election victory, along with twelve of his immediate family and countless friends. “Sucking on the government tit, the lot of them,” Clay had said.
“Tell me, Wilson,” the senator asked, “are you positive the Germans are going to invade?”
The question was so brainless, indicative of such a vast expanse of unknowing, that General Clay’s mouth actually dropped. He recovered quickly. “Let me show you how we know, Lawton.”
He crossed quickly to his files and pulled out several folders. He leafed through them a moment, then lowered a few to the desk. He stood over Longley’s shoulder.
“These photos were taken by recon planes, usually De Haviland Mosquitoes. They’ve been analyzed by the Photographic Interpretation Unit at Wembley.” The general slid the top photo under the senator’s nose. “This was taken over a harbor near Amsterdam. What looks like a herringbone pattern are two long docks with barges tied to each side of both docks. There are over two hundred craft in this one photo.”