“It’s a pathfinder, then, is it?” asked General Sir Allen Barclay. Other than the first sea lord, Barclay was the ranking military officer in the room. He was chairman of AACCS and chief of the Imperial General Staff. The British are careful with precedent. Barclay sat next to Lord Lindley, who was to Churchill’s immediate left at the head of the table.
“Yes, sir. The submarine’s equipment is designed to guide other ships to it.”
“That submarine is a plant,” General Arthur Stedman exclaimed. He was commander in chief, Home Forces. With several others in the room, Stedman was convinced the increasing evidence pointing to an invasion on the east coast was part of an intricate deception. “There have been no satisfactory explanations why it foundered. The Kriegsmarine let us find it.”
“Arthur,” Churchill said mildly, “let’s hear what else General Cadogan has to say, shall we?”
Cadogan said, “There is certainly a chance it is a deception, General. We are considering that possibility. However, other evidence is mounting.”
He lifted a blank piece of paper from a display stand, revealing an enlarged photograph. He reached for a pointer. “As you know, we have recently had very few successful reconnaissance flights. But one made it through yesterday. Here is a photograph taken by a Mosquito flying from our Photographic Reconnaissance Unit base at St. Eval in Cornwall. It shows a pasture on the French coast near Dieppe. The field is apparently a staging area for tanks. Our analysts say that these twelve structures you see here,” he tapped the photo, “are supposed to be medium tanks, which the Germans call the PzKpfw III, short for Panzerkampfwagen. They are the Wehrmacht’s standard battle tank.”
“Supposed to be?” the prime minister asked.
“Sir, if you will look closely at this photograph you will see that the Wehrmacht was careful, but not quite careful enough. A tank cannot cross a field of any sort without leaving track prints. This is what these double lines are crossing the pasture.” Cadogan drew patterns with the stick. “But this one tank has left no track marks, either in front or in back of it. It has apparently sprung from nowhere onto this field.”
“What you are saying, General, is that those tanks are not tanks at all, but mock-ups?” The question came from General Alfred Alexander, commander in chief, Joint Army Operations. Alexander, an Old Harrovian and a graduate of Sandhurst, as were many in the room, including the PM, spoke with a pointed public school accent, also called a plumstone accent, meaning he spoke as if his mouth were full of plum pits.
“We are quite certain that this tank—and probably the others in this field—is in fact made of canvas and wood. These tank tracks have been cut into the ground with some sort of implement, perhaps a lawn roller. They forgot to roll on the tracks behind this one tank.”
“That doesn’t sound very German, forgetting like that, Roger,” Wilson Clay commented.
After all these British speakers, General Clay’s words sounded broad and flat, a hillbilly’s language. Several of the British officers smiled, as always at Clay’s first words at a meeting. They weren’t being unkind. People grin when someone belches in church, and I think that’s what the British heard when an American spoke.
“Granted, it does not.” He hesitated, then lowered his pointer. “But despite evidence to the contrary, the Germans are human. Here they have made a human mistake by forgetting to put tracks behind a decoy tank.”
Fairfax asked, “Then did the Luftwaffe deliberately let our reconnaissance plane through?”
“Evidence points that way,” General Crawford Douglas replied. He was commander in chief, Allied Air Forces, the only RAF officer at the meeting. “Our pilot reported only dispirited antiaircraft fire, and no chase from the Messerschmitts. No other recon flight has had such a jolly time of it lately.”
Churchill said, “So by installing the decoys, the Germans want us to believe there are more tank columns in northern France than there actually are. Or, by deliberately omitting a tank track and knowing we’d discover it, the Germans want us to believe their forces in northern France are largely phantoms. Which is it, General?”
“I cannot tell you, Prime Minister.” Cadogan’s voice was strained, as if Churchill’s question were an indictment.
Churchill summarized the endless arguments of these meetings when he added, “Do they think we think they think we think they think?” He threw up a hand as if casting away all further speculation and chuckled unconvincingly.
The prime minister always tried to allay the tension during these councils with an offhand remark. Fewer and fewer were joining him in a laugh. These men knew they were making the onerous decisions that would echo down through the generations. The British had a studied nonchalance during moments of great emotion and decision. They resumed their positions around the table each day, placid on the surface, portraits of British stoicism. But of late their facades of calm and reserve were being stripped away by the daily grind of command and their trepidation.
“Look at a man’s hands—they’re a telltale,” General Clay once told me. Around the table, fists were knotted so tightly that hands were white. Several men drummed tattoos on the table. Admiral Fairfax repeatedly pulled at his fingers, as if setting disjointed knuckles. Lord Erskine constantly rubbed his upper lip with two fingers, as if trying to wipe away a clinging bit of lunch. General Douglas endlessly rotated an ashtray.
Tension was worse during the part of the month when the tides were right, and worse again when the weather was fair. The meeting the day before had disintegrated into a shouting match, such an uncharacteristic event that it startled even those who had done the shouting.
Churchill drew his palm along the table, smoothing the cloth. “What else do you have for us, General?”
“We have heard from a reliable resistance source in Normandy that two Wehrmacht divisions, the 8th and 28th, which had been encamped in the valley of the Seine, have suddenly left the area and may be marching toward Amsterdam. And a few moments ago we received another radio report, this one from Merksem, near Antwerp, that the Wehrmacht 30th Division may be passing through to the north.”
“You say reliable,” General Barclay said. His face was so narrow and his nose so thin that his eyes almost touched. “How reliable?”
“These two contacts have sent information before that we have been able to confirm, but there is always the possibility they have been compromised, as you know.”
“And the rest of it, General Cadogan?” Churchill prompted.
“You have read my midday reports, so you know that this morning at 0600 hours Wehrmacht units from northern Germany through the Netherlands to Belgium began a complete radio silence. Their unit orders, which constitute the bulk of their coded transmissions, are now presumably being delivered over telephone lines or by messengers. And just an hour ago, German forces along the French coast also went off the air. As you know, German units underwent radio silence like this in April for several days.”
“Last month the silence turned out to be either a rehearsal or a feint,” General Douglas said. “What about this month?”
“The Germans do not trust their own radio codes. On occasion we break one, and we gain information until the code changes. Radio silence lets them rest more comfortably. Last minute orders will remain their secret. This month? Another simulation, a bluff, or the actual launch? We can only speculate, General Douglas.”
Douglas pounded his fist onto the table. “What I’m asking, General Cadogan, is if the bloody Germans are coming tonight? And where? Those two things are all I want to know. Why won’t you tell us where and when?”