A Visitor Calls
DECIDING THAT deep within your upper-crust bosom has suddenly sprouted the patriotic passion of a latter-day Boadicea, then getting someone in authority to view that fact as having relevance for the country’s war-making efforts, are of course two entirely different matters. At least they are in the real world, if not Hollywood’s. And if you doubt that, ask poor Joan of Arc.
And to be right up front about it, given what I’d read about Boadicea at university, she might not have been my best role model anyway. For a start, there was that odd habit of hers of hitting upon the correct tactics for any potential battle by pulling a rabbit from out her skirts, then leading her army off in whatever direction it headed. Then there was the fact that whenever she conquered a Roman town, London included, she had the inhabitants summarily slaughtered, and had the noblest Roman women, the upper crust of their society if you like, impaled on spikes with their breasts cut off and sewn to their mouths. Now I know that when her husband died and the Romans turned against her she had an awful time, and she deserved some sort of slack. After all, wasn’t the poor woman flogged, and she and her daughters raped? But still, any hint in my curriculum vitae that I condoned that kind of un-American behavior was not good for my employment prospects, even if all this was just if you believe Tacitus and Cassius Dio. And just like Constantine’s historians you’re probably best not to, seeing as they were Roman too. No, when America goes to war we fight clean and that’s why we always win. They told us at Sarah Lawrence that we always win anyway, except at the Little Big Horn, and that was different, because the Indians cheated.
But anyway, by this time I had come up with a far better idea about how I would contribute to our cause, one that didn’t require having rabbits up your skirts, or impaling any folk on anything.
You see, there was a photograph published in a U.S. magazine I happened to come across in early 1943. It was taken in London by a U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer, and was of seven female civilian war correspondents working in something called the European Theatre of Operations, or the ETO as they seemed to prefer calling it. I didn’t know their names, but what caught my attention was that all seven of them were in the same kind of uniform, a rather natty, well-cut one too if you ask me, with a dark hip length jacket, a lighter skirt, a field hat at a rather cocky angle hair-pinned on their head, and an armband that said “C” for Correspondent. And there they were the seven of them sitting on a wall as happy as pigs in… well, wherever it is pigs in the ETO are supposed to be at their happiest in.
So intent on finding out what the scoop was, I later learned that they’re forever saying that in the news reporting business, I phoned the War Department, threw my father’s name around, and eventually landed up talking to someone in their Bureau of Public Relations about it. I told him I maybe wanted to go out and cover the war just like them, like these girls I meant. He muttered something that sounded like, “Oh you do, do you.”
Then he asked me if I’d ever been an athlete. I said, “No, why?” He didn’t answer, and instead enquired if I’d ever been in the girl scouts or gone camping with my family. I said, “No,” to both questions, and asked him why again. No response forthcoming to that enquiry either, he then wanted to know how familiar I was with firearms. He got a “Not at all, I’m afraid,” for that rejoinder, so then he tried to find out if I was ever a member of a secret society at school, you know the kind where they hazed plebs and engaged in midnight rides round the countryside terrorizing the locals. I told him that Shady L wasn’t quite that sort of an establishment, and our idea of an exciting time was to creep down to the local library and read extracts of dirty books to each other. Of course we sometimes did other things that were secret, like in the village cemetery, but no need to tell him about that. Then I asked why he thought that kind of thing was useful anyway. He said because correspondents have to know how to keep a confidence, and being a member of a secret society was good practice for that. So I responded that, “I wouldn’t be keeping much of a confidence if I admitted I had been a member of one of those societies, would I, given they were meant to be secret?” There was a distinctly stony silence on the other end of the line, I recall, and for the first time in my life I wondered whether my fondness for glib remarks, designed of course to demonstrate how smart I was, could possibly be coming across as a lack of patriotism. So better to change the subject completely, and I said how interesting all this was, but the answer was still no, and how exactly did one go about getting accredited by the U.S. Army for such a job if I hadn’t done any of those things. And he told me rather brusquely that the best thing was I should find an employer first, and they’d handle faking the right answers for me, and how I should have a good day, because he had more important matters to be about.
So there I was sitting at the expensive Louis Quinze Rococco writing desk my father had given me for my twenty-first, in my Washington apartment in summer 1943, writing a letter to every English language magazine and newspaper I could think of in the western world, asking if they would take me on as a civilian war photographer. I’m pretty organized when I want to be, and I’d researched everything I could about it. I’d made a list of over thirty possibilities, predominantly press outlets that already had correspondents in London, North Africa and Sicily, which we’d by this time liberated from German occupation in July 1943, not London, I mean, Sicily. I had drafted a very nice model letter to use, including my photographic experiences, a mention of that book I’d had published on Roman antiquities, and the prizes I’d won in this picture competition and that. It’s surprising how impressive you can make your C.V. look if you’re willing to be a little flexible with the truth. I was also busy personalizing the application a little bit for each of them, you know dropping in some compliment about this piece or that which they’d recently published. As I did I would lay each letter by the correct envelope till I finished, and could fold them all up and place them inside it. Soon I had letters to Life Magazine, the United Press, the Associated Press, the International News Service, Reuters, Scripps Howard and a whole bunch of newspapers like the News-Chronicle, the New York Times, the New York Herald-Tribune, the Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, and even Newsweek and Time. Of course Life Magazine was the one I really wanted to join, as it specialized in photographs, and was as suitably gung-ho about the whole war effort as I had by now decided I was. More importantly, Life Magazine prided itself in having photographers in every theatre of that war, and most importantly of all, and to my pleasant surprise, some of them were girls.
I had almost finished when there was a knock on the door and who should appear but my Uncle Mark, and in a general’s uniform too. “Hope you don’t mind me dropping in,” he smiled. “I persuaded your doorman to let me come up unannounced. Fortunately he recognized me.” He was carrying a wrapped parcel under his arm, although I couldn’t see at first what was in it.
I hadn’t seen much of him the previous few months, but even if my career wasn’t yet going anywhere, I knew his was. He was now commander of the American Fifth Army in North Africa, the first field army the United States had sent overseas. It was in training so they said, but no-one was quite sure for what. He’d also recently become very famous, after having made a secret visit to North Africa to make sure the Vichy French stationed there let our landings go unopposed. There was even a celebrated photo of him slipping into a dark scary bay all alone one night in a kayak from a British submarine, before he met with them and brokered the deal. I had very carefully cut it out and pasted it in a scrapbook I kept of him, though of course I never told him about that. The Clark-Darlan agreement they called it, and it got him on every front page of every newspaper in America. No wonder my doorman recognized him, half Washington would have. “So how’s things?” he asked.
I was evasive, I remember, why I’m not sure. Maybe because I had only told Jack what I was up to, not Margaret, and not him either. Although in retrospect maybe I should have told him, as he was down as a reference in my C.V. which was included in every open letter lying on my desk in front of his face. In fact come to think of it, I had Margaret’s name down there on it too. You won’t be surprised to know she’s looking up from the typewriter shaking her head at me yet again.
But anyway I had every reason not to have told Uncle Mark, as he now had far more important things to worry about than an increasingly neurotic godchild, one who’d all of a sudden woken up to the fact that she was fast becoming the most useless citizen of her country. For by then even Lindbergh had seen the light, and got himself sent to the Pacific as a military flight instructor. So I made smoke, as I later learned the Navy forever likes to say, pushed my scrapbook under a convenient rug, and mumbled something about having kept an eye on how well things had been going for him. And he answered, “And I’ve been keeping an eye on how they’ve been going for you.”
“You have? Why?” I asked.
It was then he pulled the wrapped parcel from under his arm, I remember. It was the recently published English translation of my book, the one I’d written about Roman antiquities. “I thought you might autograph this for me,” he smiled, “I came across it in a bookstore in London.”
“Me? Autograph something for you? Shouldn’t it be the other way round?”
“That photograph you took of me in Rome at the… what was it called?”
“The Campidoglio.”
“It’s even in there.” He laid the book out on the table, and I wrote on it –‘To my dear godfather Mark Clark, the most important man of my life.’
“Aunt Maurine sends you her best by the way.” He took back the book then continued, “So how are things going?” And when I didn’t answer added, “Not too well, I hear.”
“How’d you know, not too well?”
“Your studio was a pretty popular place in Washington for promoted officers to get their photos taken. Some of them were my officers, and kept me in touch with how you looked.”
“And how did they say I looked?”
“Increasingly embarrassed you didn’t have anything better to do with your skills.”
“I need a proper job, uncle. And I need it really bad. I need to be doing something worthwhile, something that lets me play a part in all this. Like most other people have found a way to do.”
He saw all the letters on my desk. I moved to cover them up, and then thought better of it as he was already checking one out. “So you’re job hunting?”
“Civilian photographers get to cover the war. That’s useful. I was thinking of seeing if I could do that.”
“And take photos like these?” He inspected a framed Life Magazine cover on my wall of the German annexation of Austria, and Hitler driving in triumph through Vienna in 1938. “One keeps on forgetting Hitler isn’t German, don’t we, and that he’s actually Austrian.”
“But then Stalin isn’t Russian, he’s Georgian.”
“Is he?”
“And Napoleon wasn’t really French.”
“What was he?” he asked.
“Born in Corsica to Italian parents.”
He inspected another framed photo of the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and Hitler driving in triumph through Prague too. “These really are quite superb.”
“Life Magazine has some of the finest war photographers in the world.”
“And in my experience, some of the worst too.”
I didn’t fully understand his point, but after all he was a general now, and shouldn’t have to explain every little remark he made. So I let it pass and instead drew his attention to a Life Magazine cover of General George Patton walking off a landing craft on the beaches of North Arica. “Isn’t that a fine photograph?”
“If you have a soft spot for conceited officers with a penchant for pearl-handled pistols.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant there either, but whatever it was, and it didn’t sound too sympathetic, Life Magazine’s photographs now no longer seemed to hold any interest for him. “Before you go off and try emulating the kind of shots friend George delights in, I’ve a better proposal for you.”
“What’s that?”
“I want you to come over to Europe and join Fifth Army.”
“As what?”
“My personal photographer.”
“Come over to where in Europe?”
“ Italy. We’re about to launch our first landing on the mainland there.”
“Why Italy?”
“Because she’s about to change sides back to ours. And we’re going to make quite sure the Germans don’t try stopping her.”
“And Mussolini?”
“Replaced by their king, what’s his name, and arrested.”
“Victor Emmanuel III.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s his name, the King of Italy.”
“Well whatever it is, he put someone called Badoglio in charge instead.”
“Does that mean Italy will be an ally of ours now too?”
“Co-belligerent is the phrase we prefer.”
“But we won’t be at war with them any longer?”
“There could still be Germans stationed there. And for sure we’ll still be at war with them.”
“Sounds like quite an honor, commanding something like that.”
“Churchill thinks I need blooded before being getting a proper command.”
“A proper command?”
“In the Big One, perhaps.”
“And what’s that?”
“Our main invasion through France.”
“You could be in charge of something as important as that?”
“The land forces, certainly. I already have Eisenhower’s support, but I need his too.”
“And how tough will liberating Italy from the Germans be?”
“My Fifth Army will be responsible for the main landing south of Naples, with Montgomery’s British Eighth handling the east coast. It will be basically an American show with Eisenhower in ultimate charge. Montgomery is only there draw off any stray Germans in the area and protect my wing. Right now they don’t have very many front line troops there, just a few green divisions. And odds are that if the Italians give them enough trouble up north they won’t defend southern Italy at all.”
“Should be pretty straightforward then, shouldn’t it?”
“Like as not we’ll have Christmas lunch in Rome.”
“That would be wonderful.”
“You could start thinking about a restaurant.”
“I know a really good one on the Corso Umberto. The owner hated the Fascists.”
“Sounds good.”
“And when do you want me over there?”
“As soon as we’ve secured our beach-head.”
“What’s a beach-head?”
“The place where Fifth Army first lands.”
“And you really think I’m up to this?”
“It’s critical the American part of the campaign is reported in as favorable a manner as possible. Public Relations will be very important in this war, far more than in the First. And it will make Churchill’s decision easier if my coverage presents me in… let’s say a positive light.”
“And the civilian Press wouldn’t do that?”
“They certainly didn’t in North Africa.”
“Why not?”
“Because some of them were apt to forget that the purpose of war photography is to inspire, not just slavishly document.”
“And what’s the difference?”
“The difference is I’d prefer my photographs being taken by someone whose loyalties I can always rely on.”
“You do understand I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”
“You’re perfect for the job. You speak Italian. You know more about their history than most Italians do, and for sure far more than anyone in Fifth Army does. And if you’ve half your mother’s blood in you you’ll be a natural. She was if I recall one of the first to join the Marine Corps Women’s reserve in the First World War.” He turned back around and looked me squarely in the eye. “There’ll be a field commission in it as well. To second lieutenant.”
“A field commission?”
“It means when your war ends so does it.”
“Would this require that I have to go to Officers’ Candidate School too?”
“Just to sit through a few weeks of briefings. Nothing you won’t ace.”
He checked out one last wall, covered in prints of Howard Chandler Christy’s ‘Christy Girls’ that I’d collected. All very pretty, long-haired, and very female, but all in gorgeously tailored men’s uniforms adorning rather staged recruitment posters. So staged in fact that some might say they came close to implying that if you sign up you’ll get one of these to take home with you by way of an… incentive. “Interesting girls those are, aren’t they? I could swear they all look just like you,” he laughed and looked back at me, “Coincidence or enemy action, eh?” I had the good grace to blush as he made to go and said, “I fly back to London in two days. Let me have your answer by then.”
“It’s an awfully tough decision, uncle.”
“Think of it as your call to adventure, the opportunity to trade in the hum-drum and predictable, for the chance to see history made.”
“I’ll try.”
“You can reach me through the Department of War. If for any reason I’m unavailable, get put through to a Major Landers. He runs press relations for me.”
“But I would report directly to you?”
“In all things of importance. But Landers will make sure you’re fed and watered while you do.”
“Do you mind if I discuss this with Jack?”
“Of course not. How is he by the way? The Army treating him well?”
“He’s completing something called advanced infantry weapons training.”
“I’ve always liked him. Let’s hope he gets posted to a regular army division, and not some dreadful National Guard outfit.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Sorry, pretend I never said that.”
“Never said what?” I smiled knowingly.
“See what I mean? You really are the only one I can rely on.”
And he kissed me on the cheek and went out, leaving me looking up at the Christy girls adorning the wall. “So what do you think of that then, girls?” I said out loud to them, “My call to adventure? Sounds a little like those lectures we used to get at Shady-L, doesn’t it? The hero ventures forth from the world of the mundane into a region full of supernatural wonder to do battle there with fabulous forces and win a great victory.”
But contented in their romantic-looking uniforms they all just smiled back at me without responding, as if female recruits held absolutely no interest for them, and it was only male fish they were designed to entrap.