“Holy Christ,” Clay blurted. “Kid, I’m going to hand you over to G2, and then we’ll see how quickly you talk.”
The boy lifted his chin defiantly. “Mummy does not allow naughty words around here.”
The cottage door opened a few inches. The boy’s mother leaned out hesitantly. Her eyes widened when she recognized the visitor. “Why, you’re General Clay.”
“Could be a German, Mum,” the boy cautioned her.
Clay touched his cap. “Afternoon, ma’am. My driver here, who will be reduced to second lieutenant as soon as I can push the papers through, has gotten us lost. I’d appreciate directions to Adisham.”
“Of course.” She stepped from the doorway and raised a hand to gesture, but paused. “Would you care for a bite to eat first?”
I was surprised when the general said he’d be pleased to. He told me to use the jeep’s radio to alert HQ Adisham where we were and to tell Gene Girard, commander of II Corps, to meet with him as soon as possible. The woman informed me of our location, an intersection near Shepherd’s Close. I went back to the jeep and lifted the radio handset from its pocket. Using that day’s code names, I relayed the general’s instructions.
When I returned to the cottage, the boy opened the door for me. A table was at one end of the sitting room, and the general was already cutting into a small piece of beef. Several slices of bread were also on his plate. An apple and an orange, a cup of strawberry jam and another of butter, and two biscuits were on another plate. The woman was in the small kitchen scrambling several eggs.
She was undoubtedly serving her honored guest every carefully hoarded morsel in her kitchen. Standard fare for the English was dried eggs from America, powdered skimmed milk, which was called Household Milk and tasted like cardboard, bread made from gray wholemeal flour and with the texture of plaster, called the National Loaf, and the nearly indigestible Woolton Pie. Sugar, fruit, meat, coffee, and tea were only occasionally available.
Homemakers improvised. They made a jam resembling chutney from carrots, used cheese rind for flavoring, added corn flour to stretch dried eggs, filled sandwiches with potato crisps, replaced cooking fat with glycerin and paraffin. The green dye that marked meat unfit for human consumption was often cut out before the meat went into the pot. Rather than waste an old joint, cooks scraped away any maggots, and the meat was roasted again. Bananas were so rare that children, unfamiliar with them, often tried to bite through the skin. Not only humans endured the shortages. Dogs were fed potatoes, and a new law forbade giving bread crumbs to wild birds.
And here was General Clay gobbling down her entire larder while the boy stared steadily at the biscuits. She stepped in from the kitchen with the eggs and a slice of bread on a plate. “I’m low on meat today, I’m afraid, Colonel. I hope these eggs will do.”
She pulled out a chair opposite the general. Distressed, I sat down and lifted a fork. She nodded encouragement. I chewed slowly, trying to appear grateful. General Clay continued to eat with gusto, apparently oblivious that he was devouring a week’s food.
If this home were typical, food would not be the only privation. German propaganda leaflets were used as toilet paper. No photographic film was available, so an entire generation of British children was not being recorded. Jam jars were used as glasses, and spoons were so scarce restaurants had taken to chaining them to their tables. Only newly married couples were given priority dockets to purchase bedding, and even then a pair of sheets might cost nine guineas. To save fuel, citizens were urged to remove bulbs from all but essential sockets, to fill the tub only to five inches, and not to heat food. Many homes tried cooking with a hay box, where heat was generated from decomposing hay or grass. The list of unobtainable items was endless.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” General Clay asked around a mouthful.
“Evelyn Blaine,” she said as she sat in the third chair at the table. “My husband is Lieutenant Jeffrey Blaine of the Royal Navy.”
She said it confidently, as if Clay might have known him. The general did not pick up on it. He reached for the orange and peeled it carelessly, letting drops of juice fall to his plate. She was a striking woman, unhampered by the lack of lipstick or other cosmetics, which had almost disappeared earlier in the war. Perfume had vanished, but she had the scent of roses about her. Her face resembled one on a Victorian brooch. Her skin was the pale color of milk glass, but her peaked lips were a youthful red. She had fine, even teeth. Mrs. Blaine apparently disdained the Victory Roll hair style, because her hair swept across her forehead in the Veronica Lake fashion. She wore a pinafore that might have been made from black-out cloth and was tied around her waist with a strip of cloth. Elastic had disappeared.
“He’s on the Argyle,” she said. “Would you know of the ship, or where it is or what has happened to it?”
Clay shook his head. “I’m sorry, no. But if it’d been sunk, I’d have heard of it.”
She brightened and returned to the kitchen for a coffee pot. She emptied it, pouring each of us half a cup. The general blew on it for a moment, then drank half her weekly ration in several quick swallows. Longingly, she watched it go.
“If you’re a general, why aren’t you fighting with your soldiers?” the boy asked.
“Thomas,” his mother warned.
“Generals don’t really fight,” Clay replied, lowering the cup.
“Well,” Thomas persisted, “shouldn’t you be in front of them, leading them?”
The general pushed his empty plate away. Normally he would have used such a question to dredge up minutiae from his inexhaustible repertoire of military history. But this time his audience was a child. I thought we’d be spared. I was wrong.
“You bring up one of the great dilemmas for any military commander, Thomas. Where should he be during battle? At a rear headquarters, where he is able to best communicate with line and reserve troops, and where he can maintain contact with his superiors? Or at the front, where, leading in person, his presence will lend courage and stamina to his soldiers and he can make instant decisions?”
“But he might get killed,” the boy said. On a cupboard behind Thomas were his gas mask cannister and air raid tin, which, if it were like the tins of other English children, contained several comics, a sweet or two, and a favorite toy to keep him busy during a raid.
“It can happen, all right. Gustavus Adolphus was mortally wounded leading troops on a rescue mission to his hard-pressed left at Lützen in 1632. But these days, generals don’t lead the charge into battle or engage in hand-to-hand fighting. Vendôme at Oudenaarde in 1708 and Charles XII at Poltava in 1709 fought in person and were the last to do so.”
I couldn’t help myself. “What about Marshal Ney at Waterloo?”
He glowered at me. “Ney was deranged at the time. He doesn’t count.”
“Washington visited the front lines at the Battle of Princeton,” I ventured.
“I’m talking about Europeans,” he argued. “Washington doesn’t count, either.”
“What about La Marchant at Salamanca? He fought like a common soldier.”
“La Marchant was Wellington’s subordinate, not the commander, so you get no points on him either.”
“And George II at Dettington,” Evelyn Blaine joined in. “He was the last British monarch to lead troops into battle. And didn’t General Cardigan himself lead the charge of the Light Brigade?”
Clay threw up his hands. He turned to the boy and said solemnly, “Thomas, let this be a lesson to you. Your mother and Sergeant Royce have encircled my position, cut me off from reinforcements, and soundly whipped me.”
Mrs. Blaine laughed. Her son joined in, if only because of Clay’s scowl of defeat. She pushed the biscuits toward the general. He finished one in two bites.