“Why, yes.” Clay was surprised. George VI was the titular head of the British armed services, but was not known as a military theoretician. “In fact, I assigned it to my division commanders, so I hope Rommel will be surprised when he finds some of his own tactics used against him. The most telling insight into his character is that he commands from the lead tank. His command of the 7th Panzer in the sweep across France was brilliant, using some of those tactics you read about.”
The king said wearily, “I suppose we can expect no less from him in England.”
“He’ll do the unexpected,” Clay replied. “He’ll drive his troops, and, above all, he’ll be fast. His plan will be to hit the beach running and not stop until he gets to the Irish Sea.”
“The German people believe Rommel is invincible,” his majesty said. “Is he?”
“I know better, and so does Rommel. His invincibility is a creation of the German propaganda machine, with assistance from the British and American press. He is a fine general, and that’s all.”
“Better than our Allied commanders?” The king plainly wanted reassurance.
“Erwin Rommel has his talents. On the battlefield, he seems to know precisely which second to commit himself. He is persistent, a talent in itself. And he has what Frederick called the coup d’oeil, the ability to grasp salient features and advantages of terrain at a quick glance.”
“This doesn’t sound promising for us, General.”
“Rommel has another gift, sir,” Clay said gloomily. “His men will follow him anywhere.”
“Surely any general insists on no less.”
“There’s more to it than just ordering the troops. A mysterious charisma is involved, and I’ve tried to understand it and tried to develop it in myself, if I may admit. Our General Grant was a brilliant tactician, but Union soldiers didn’t love him, as they did Pap Thomas. Ludendorff was an effective chess player with his units, but German soldiers worshipped Hindenberg. Confederates respected Longstreet, but they would have followed Lee into hell. Rommel has what Lee and the others had. Their devotion to him will cost us, I’m afraid.”
The king seemed perturbed. “Then what are Churchill and Barclay and you and the others going to do about him?”
Clay smiled grimly. “General Rommel hasn’t passed through this war invisibly, sir. He has left tracks, and I’ve studied them. It took Napoleon’s enemies twenty years to learn his tactics. Rommel won’t have that luxury.” Clay glanced at the wall, and said in a low voice, as if to himself, “I know Erwin Rommel better than his mother does.”
Now it was the king’s turn to smile. “You speak with some confidence, General.”
Clay retreated into modesty, an occasional ruse, dragged out with some effort. “Well, we’ll do our damnedest, sir.”
“I know you will, General.” The king finished his drink and set the glass on the desk. He rose and stepped to the door. Deep lines of worry under his eyes seemed etched into the skin.
We stood also. Forgetting deference and tact, Clay asked, “Sir, you haven’t said what you were doing in our neck of the woods tonight.”
“Kings go anywhere they want, anytime they want. It’s one of the better benefits of the position.” He smiled quickly. “And the prime minister said you might need a boost, after news of the Queen Mary and all.”
“Well, I’m grateful. It has been a boost.”
“Good night, then, General.” He nodded at me, then left the trailer. His driver, bodyguards, and other retainers had been waiting in the garden.
Clay undid his tie, pulled it through the collar, and said to me, “I thought monarchs were always preceded by trumpet fanfares, so they can’t sneak up and startle us common folks.”
He began with the buttons of his uniform blouse. “I’m hitting the hay, Jack. This’ll be a long, nervous night for all of us. Let’s hope tomorrow is a little brighter.”
“It will be, sir,” I answered without conviction.
I left him in the trailer. Because I had been summoned in the middle of the night many times before, I stood by on the gravel for a few minutes in case he remembered something else for my notebook. Only a slit of light was visible below the blackout curtain on the window of his bedroom. When the light blinked out, I started toward the manor house. It was two in the morning. I wondered if I’d sleep. The anxious waiting was grinding at me.
But our long wait was soon to end.
The largest armada in history had just set sail for the English shore.
PART TWO
War, “the business of barbarians.”
MAP
10
Researching this manuscript, I tried to find the first person in all of England who knew with certainty the invasion had begun. After the long, gnashing months of waiting, who received the dubious honor of knowing first?
It was Henry Hathaway, a dairyman and widower, who was asleep in the bedroom of his cottage that morning. “Double Summer Time was wicked on us dairy farmers, and we always need our sleep,” he told me after the war. “I didn’t get a right proper amount that night, I should tell you.”
Hathaway awoke to a tearing sound coming from his garden. He bolted upright in bed, clutched the blanket to his chest, and leaned forward to peer out his window toward the pasture. It was too dark to see, but the commotion swiftly closed, a peculiar, muted rasping and splintering. “I had this sudden, dotty fear my milk cows were coming for me, to pay me back for my cold hands all those mornings.”
The splintering grew to a roar, and then Hathaway’s bedroom buckled inward. Stones and plaster flew in at the dairyman, bowling over his chest of drawers and coat rack, shattering his wash stand and its mirror, and sending a framed, yellowed print of Queen Victoria soaring across the room. The roof beams near the wall collapsed, showering Hathaway with dust and bits of wood. The dairyman’s August Junghans pendulum clock dropped to the floor, stopping at 2:32.
“Quite on their own, my legs began working,” Hathaway remembered, “and they pushed me up the headboard almost to standing, as an enormous metal nose slid through the rubble and into the room.”
It was the prow of a Gigant glider, which, by the time it entered Henry Hathaway’s sleeping quarters, was badly mangled. Sheets of the fuselage were twisted and bent, the windshield was ripped out, and the forward airframe was bent into sharp angles. The pilot and copilot were crushed against the cockpit bulkhead, and their legs dangled over Hathaway’s bed, their controls and instruments a tangled knot in front of them.
“It’s fortunate my wife Elizabeth was long dead, because this would have killed her.”
An anti-landing post in the pasture had already ripped off the Gigant’s starboard wing, and Hathaway’s raspberries, eight rows of old woody vines, had slowed the glider, saving him. Hathaway squinted through the dust and darkness. A German commando, “the most frightening rotter I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, “with his face painted black, coal scuttle helmet, stick grenades in his belt, and carrying a machine pistol,” climbed out the aircraft’s nose, crossed the room, and disappeared through the door. “He didn’t even look at me.”
Other German soldiers followed, clambering through the glider’s wreckage, stepping over several stilled comrades who were pinned in the wreckage. Hathaway heard moaning from inside the glider, then heard shouted commands. The Gigant held over a hundred solders, and they poured out the midships hatch, carrying mortars and machine guns, filling the dairyman’s garden. More pushed their way through the damaged prow and quickly left the bedroom.