“On or about 22 January 1944 General Patton received orders to go to England without delay. He was authorized to take no one with him except his aides. Later practically all of his staff were released to General Patton and were flown to England. Headquarters, Third Army—General Patton’s new command—was established in Peover Hall, Knutsford, England. His troops, consisting of the VIII, XII, and XX Corps, were widely dispersed over England and Ireland. The XV Corps, General Haislip commanding, consisting of the 2d, 5th, 8th Infantry Divisions, was bivouacked near Belfast, Ireland. These were the first troops visited and inspected by General Patton. His presence in England and his command were kept a secret in order that the enemy could be made to believe that the landing in Normandy was to be made in two different places, with the feint near Cherbourg and the real attack near the mouth of the Seine. General Patton himself did not move to the Continent until July.”
M A R R A K E C H
January 25, 1944. It seems like a long time ago that I was sitting in this garden of the Villa Taylor with Bob Sherwood and my host Ken Pendar, but it looks very much the same and is certainly one of the beauty spots of the world. This evening it has a slightly hollow feeling, though, a little as if it had been sucked dry by all the va-et-vient and the famous people of immense vitality who, as they pass through, absorb and carry off a part of the garden’s essence.
I had to go and take a look at the Mamounia Hotel for old times’ sake and it is lovely, the snow mountains, the tropical verdure, the stateliest of all minarets and—that balcony where one breakfasts in the sun.
One way or another I’ve seen a good deal of this strange continent during the last year and maybe I got it a bit in my blood. Anyhow, this evening I feel the way I did on leaving Rabat for good.
January 26, 1944.
“A groggy night o’er this old town
It had me low and damn near down
I viewed the morning with alarm
Blind instrument flying had lost its charm
How long, I wondered, must this thing last
But the age of miracles hadn’t passed
For suddenly—Adele Astaire
And in soggy so-and-so
The sun was shining everywhere.”{31}
L O N D O N
February 3, 1944. Yesterday, after spending two days at General Wood’s headquarters near Badminton, where he inspected the 4th Armored Division, the General drove to London to see his old friend General Patch,{32} just in from the Pacific and on his way to North Africa to take command of the Seventh Army. In order to discuss impending staff changes in privacy, General Patch was to meet General Patton at the new Mount Street flat recently assigned the latter by S.O.S. for his personal use when in town. It was around 4 P.M. when Sergeant Mims brought the car to a halt before a low three-story building on a quiet street back of Grosvenor Square.
“Is this it?” the General said as we got out.
“Yes, sir.”
The entrance was unobtrusive, the vestibule small and dark.
“Since they mean to keep me under wraps, this should do fine,” the General said.
But he was in for a surprise. The door of the second-floor landing was opened by an S.O.S. corporal who saluted smartly. Paneled hallway. Exotic prints on the wall. Thick carpet. Soft indirect lighting. Period sitting room, more boudoir than salon.
“Who the hell picked this place?” the General said.
“General Lee himself, I believe, sir,” the corporal said.
“I might have known,” the General muttered. Then crisply, “Where’s my room?”
We followed the corporal down another hallway leading to a closed door. The corporal threw it open.
“Your room, sir,” he said, stepping aside and to attention.
Rooted to the threshold, the General surveyed the white bear rug, the walls and curtains of pink brocade, the triptych-mirrored dressing table, and beyond through an open door the glint of nickel fixtures and two-tone seafoam tile. Then, as his eye caught the reflection in the mirror on the ceiling of the enormous bed lying low and lascivious under its embroidered silk coverlet, the silence was broken by a single highly charged exclamation.
“JESUS,” the General said.
It seemed like an appropriate time to ease back along the corridor and inspect the floor above. Three more master bedrooms. Two baths. Servants’ quarters. By the time I got down again, General Patch had arrived. Over a couple of Scotches he and the Old Man were deep in Generals’ talk.
“This morning at SHAEF,” General Patch was saying, “Beetle claimed that particular matter was high-level stuff. He said I would get instructions in due course.”
“That whole headquarters is so goddam high level you have to carry an oxygen tank to live up there.” General Patton’s voice rose. “To hell with Beetle, see Ike himself. Though by now they’ve probably got him completely isolated.”
General Patch’s serious face lit up when he smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind, George,” he said.
The General introduced me, took a sip of his drink, put it down on the table, hard.
“Look, Sandy,” he said, “I’d rather be shot than spend the evening sit-ting around this Anglican bordello. How about it, Codman?”
“What about a show?”
“Anything worth seeing?”
“Yes. The Lunts in There Shall Be No Night.”
“The Lunts are always good,” General Patch observed expectantly.
“Never saw them,” General Patton said. “What’s the play about?”
“The Russian invasion of Finland. Really about war in general Bob Sherwood’s best, I think.”
“Is he that O.W.I. individual I saw in Casablanca?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure it’s good?”
“Yes, sir. I saw it during the Boston try-out. Twice.”
“Are you game, Sandy?”
“Yes, sure.”
“All right. Get three seats.”
Phone call to Colonel Solbert of Special Services.
“You would pick the one show that is sold out for the entire engagement,” he said.
“The General knows he can depend on you, Colonel.”
“All right. All right. Call you back.”
A few minutes later, “Three in the fourth row center in your name at the box office. Curtain goes up at seventeen-thirty.”
“Funny hour to be going to the theater,” the General said, looking at his watch. “Tell that corporal to produce some sandwiches and Mims to have the car here at seventeen-twenty.”
With the faint hope of preserving the two Generals’ incognito, I phoned the theater and arranged to have them smuggled in through a fire exit. By the time we got there the show had started and they slipped unnoticed into their seats. Alfred was in the midst of the broadcasting scene. Remember? Even before he had finished and Lynn had said, “You are wonderful, darling,” both Generals were completely engrossed. What a play it is! And what acting! Not until the entrance of the German consul, however, did I realize that since you and I saw it, the locale has been transferred—for obvious reasons—from Finland to Greece and the Nazis substituted for the Russians. The changes in the text are surprisingly few and the play’s total impact is, if anything, more shattering. You remember in the next to the last scene when Alfred, learning that his son has been killed in action, prepares to accompany the other doomed occupants of the schoolhouse on their final combat mission. Halfway through his valedictory he is interrupted by off-stage gunfire. Last night the sound-effects man might just as well have taken the evening off. With perfect timing a buzz bomb crashed through the roof of what must have been a fairly nearby building. The theater shook and bits of plaster sifted down over actors and audience alike. Alfred never batted an eye.
“The Germans are only a short distance away,” he said, going right on with the lines of the play, “so please permit me to finish.” Through-out the auditorium not a cough, not a shuffle of feet. A profound hush unbroken until the scene’s end and Alfred’s exit as he rips off the Red Cross arm band. And then applause such as you have never heard, surpassed only when the final slow curtain came down on Lynn and the old uncle in the family sitting room waiting with shotguns across their knees for the Germans to come. For the next ten minutes there was a standing ovation, the like of which I would never have thought possible in an English theater.
Backstage Lynn and Alfred were quite surprised when we irrupted into their dressing room. I may say their first question was to ask after you. Their suggestion that we all adjourn to their apartment at the Savoy was accepted with alacrity and Mims got us there in record time.
“How did you arrange for that appropriate bombardment?” the General asked Alfred, who was passing the drinks around.
“You know, the same thing happened in Birmingham,” Alfred said. “Remember, Lynnie?”
“Yes, I remember,” Lynn said. “The audience loved it.”
“Curiously enough” Alfred continued, “if one is on stage it is not at all disturbing.”
“True,” Lynn said. “It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with oneself, merely with the character in the play.”
“That’s interesting,” the General said. “I have made a profound study of the fear emotion, and what you say confirms a theory of my own.”
As the evening progressed, both Generals warmed to their own subject matter. For an hour, two hours, three hours, they regaled the Lunts with tales of the Far East, of Africa, of Sicily. Something General Patch said made Lynn ask, “What exactly, General Patch, are you fighting for?”
“Why, what all of us are fighting for—to resist aggression, to defend our country, to preserve our way of life.”
“And you, General Patton?”
“Sandy is talking through his hat,” the General said. He raised his glass to Lynn, the familiar enfant-terrible gleam in his eye. “I, dear lady, have been fighting all my life and hope to continue indefinitely to do so for the simple reason that I love fighting.”
Of course, both Lynn and Alfred were entranced.
February 7, 1944. So much has happened since I wrote to you last and all of it good—yet as usual I can only retail the froth—though pretty fine froth at that.
Last week Rod Tower and Joe Larocque came in and dined with me at my temporary apartment and we had a lovely evening. Rod seems very chipper and I was really awfully glad to see him. He had to go back to work, but Joe spent the night. He has a swell job, was in great form, and even with a two-day beard looked wonderful. Next evening dropped in on Lynn and Alfred, who were quite pleasantly surprised. It did seem like old times, and we laughed and wept over Alice and Alec.{33}
After that to supper at Marian Hall’s, where were Julian Allen and, believe it or not, Adele Astaire. She hasn’t changed at all as far as I can see nor has her language. I almost forgot to say that Bill Donovan was there too. It was fun seeing all those people, but now the real work begins and will continue indefinitely. Was glad to find that I remembered practically the entire score of Funny Face, though Adele was better than I on The Band Wagon. However, with no disloyalty to George Gershwin, my favorite song this year is that one of Vernon Duke’s that Evelyn Hoey used to warble—“April in Paris.”
February 22, 1944. The nicest birthday present today was three letters from you. You did see Campanole. I am so glad. Confused! Of course he’s confused—that’s his great charm. If he weren’t confused he wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.
Bunny? Yes, I miss him more than I can say, but perhaps before too long we will be reunited. As I wrote to him yesterday, we have done quite a tour together in both wars and I do so hope we can make the grande rentrée arm in arm, so to speak.
In re “the unbearable flatness of life for all returning soldiers,” I think on the contrary, much much on the contrary. For the young, the heedless, the unhappily married, the congenital misfits—sure—but for any and all with the slightest semblance of roots or human relationships or habits, return to civilized living will be sheer heaven. One of the many ironies of this war is the perverse fortitude of the Boche engendered by his own obscene way of life. He knows he is licked now. The odds have more than evened up and if he had any sense he would throw in the sponge now as he did in 1918. But he won’t for the simple reason that his upbringing and indoctrination have effectively removed from the peaceful way of life all desirability. For what, indeed, does post-war Germany hold for the young Boche? Himself void of the simplest humanities, what does the prospect of the homeland invite? Why should he want to go back to Germany? Would you? So we, who, with a few exceptions, e.g. the boss, don’t really much enjoy war, will be obliged by the Bodies’ carefully cultivated inadaptability to peace to fight to the finish—and it must be to the finish this time. Not only the Boches—and then the little yellow men—but also the cumulative desire to go home. The last will require more character than the first two put together. I know.
February 23, 1944. More letters from you today.
Think of Gus being a private in the Army. It’s all pretty remarkable. Am writing to him in New Mexico. Isn’t that one of the places we went through coming back from Hollywood?
Went to a Red Cross tea this afternoon. Very pleasant, very county—wholesome girls with the clean, crisp quality of green lettuce, as Alec once remarked. Their collective sense of humor, however, is somewhat different from our own. While I was standing in the dense crowd talking to Lady Something-or-other, a slight gesticulation with which I was trying to emphasize a point dashed a full cup of tea out of the hand of nearby somebody else—down the back and over the derrière of one of our naval commanders—a four-striper. That he didn’t think it funny was not surprising, particularly as his uniform was brand new and the cup very full—loaded beyond the normal ration allowance with sugar and cream—but after it was all over and I had wiped him off and apologized and he had moved sourly away I did think the girls might have cracked a smile. They didn’t—at least not until after I had explained to them how screamingly funny it was and even then they seemed only half convinced.
March 8, 1944. Pleasant evening in town last night. On the way home stopped in to say hello to Alfred and Lynn. The preliminary dialogue went like this:
“Desk clerk on phone: “A Colonel Codman to see you.”
Lynn’s voice, very firm: “Tell him we are not at home.”
I grabbed the phone. “How do you mean, not at home? This is Charley Codman.”
Lynn: “Darling, why didn’t they say so? Come right up,” etc.
Then after a while: “But who is this Colonel Katzman they said was downstairs?”
It invariably goes like that—none of our old friends of that monde can accept the idea of me as a militaire—I don’t know that I can.”
Very pleasant gathering. The Greek ambassador, Lady Sibyl Colfax, Mr. and Mrs. Hamish Hamilton—publisher friend of Alfred’s and Cass’s and Louis Bromfield’s. Oh, I almost forgot, also present was Bob Sherwood, as lean as life and twice as tall. He said he’s formally asked for me three times and been turned down three times. I’d never even heard about it.
March 15, 1944. I can say, I guess, that I am living in a pleasant country house, Peover Hall, Knutsford, with all the people I know and like, sharing a room with Charley Odom, and that we are working like hell and that the future should be, to say the least, interesting. We occasionally see some of the local people at Red Cross Club openings or Sunday lunch or now and then here at the house for movies. Last night, for instance, we had a showing of Madame Curie and one or two guests came in, including an American girl friend of Edgar and Hope Scott’s who had seen them recently. A nice Philadelphia girl married to a Lieutenant Bromley Davenport.
Yes, I think you would like General Patton, although about three quarters of the time you would probably be holding your ears, which would be a pity, too, because the amazing flow of language is studded with almost continuous gems. A real and literal enfant terrible—enfant (see High Wind in Jamaica) in his candor, intuitiveness, shrewdness, and unawareness; terrible in the intensity of his convictions, his self-discipline, and all the Spartan virtues. And a marvelous Thespian gift and sense of humor—the latter, of course, not to be depended upon. Yes, fate so far has been and is being good.
Last night Bunny dined with the boss and me. It is certainly grand to have him with us again.
Went to see Lord Edgerton{34} this morning. A wonderful place—like a set for The Earl of Chicago. Having got lost in the miles of driveway coming in from one direction, I asked him on leaving whether I couldn’t go out the other direction.
“You might try it,” he said. “Personally I haven’t used it for some years, seventeen to be exact—don’t fancy the view. However, it’s probably passable, though my friends tell me it is in sad need of repair.”
His friends are quite right.
March 22, 1944. No news today but I thought you would enjoy the following dialogue.
Scene: the mess.
Characters: our household of eight, plus Campanole (who is back) and Paul Harkins (his father used to be the dramatic critic of the Boston Record), a very good guy.
A great deal of kidding of Campy about the girls—he is supposed to be Casanova incarnate—quite heated stuff about the relative merits of the femmes of Casa, Palermo, Naples, et al. Towards the end of dinner it was going pretty strong when in a momentary pause Harkins, who hadn’t contributed much—and he’s no prig, either—pushed his plate away, leaned back, and said:
“Well, speaking for myself, I have yet to see in all of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Sicily, Italy, or what have you a single girl who is one tenth as attractive as my wife.”
Silence, then the boss put down his coffee cup.
“Harkins,” he said quietly—he’s wonderful at the quick switcheroo—“that was a very fine thing to say. And I have no doubt it is true—of all of us.”
March 24, 1944. No, I don’t regret any of the requests that have been made for me so far. I guess it is on the cards that I should continue with the boss. He seems to want me, and that being the case, I ought to see quite a lot of country, and familiar country at that. My job is the same, but there will be more and more to do. Yesterday he said he had started to recommend me for promotion to a full colonelcy but found that this could not be done without relieving me from my present job. I said—and meant it—that for the coming party there is nothing I would like so much as to remain with him. So that is that.
Here in the country the day-to-day life is not very different from that at the palace, except busier. Same cast, both as to principals and extras, including our faithful cooks and waiters.
Breakfast 7 to 7:30—orange juice, cereal, eggs, tea.
Lunch—soup, one entree, dessert.
Dinner—soup, roast, dessert.
I have a nice room, shared with Charley Odom, open fireplace burning the old-fashioned cannel coal.
This evening a bunch of us are going to a soirée at the Leicester-Warrens’, parents of Lady Leese, wife of Sir Oliver Leese, Commander of the British Eighth Army. It’s a lovely house and ought to be quite pleasant, especially as Bunny, Charley O., and I will act as sort of ushers.
March 25, 1944. Well, this seems like old times, jaunting along over the haze with the boss in a nice new plane. Just a local flight, but very pleasant after the many long, cold motor rides of the past few weeks.
The party last night at the Leicester-Warrens’ was a great success. After it was over and we had come home to our hall the boss sat up with Charley Odom and me for a couple of additional hours—his Alpine lamp is in our room, which makes it all very cozy—and we had a post-mortem worthy of 53 Pinckney Street. Gosh, I wish you had been there. I have seldom laughed longer or harder. The boss going over his dialogue with an enormous Amazon:
“When I first came to the north country I found myself on my back most of the time,” she said.
“Have you many children?” the boss asked.
“No, no, you don’t understand,” she said. “The hunting field—fences—tossed frequently—always lit on me back. What.”
“Quite,” the boss said.
A lot more.
Also about how the boss, on the night before we sailed from America, went to see General Pershing—he was his aide in the last war.
“General,” he said, “I can’t tell you where I’m going, but I couldn’t go without coming to ask you for your blessing.”
“You shall have it,” General Pershing said. “Kneel down.”
What he said will only appear posthumously, but it was very fine stuff.
I don’t know if I am getting this over to you, but to me the straight moyen-âge quality which permeates every thought and action of the boss is terrifically exhilarating and we all so need it at this point.
April 10, 1944. Jimmy Cagney, who was to give a show in the after-noon, came to lunch. Very quiet and reserved and, like Bob Hope and all the others, played straight man for the boss. A nice, likable guy, actually a little reminiscent of Georgie Cohan.
In the afternoon it rained and then cleared up. Went over to Sir Robert Burrough’s for tea. He has two daughters—one who hunts, one who wears a monocle—and a South African daughter-in-law. It was all a little like Tolland and rather cozy and pleasant, particularly as none of them are too keen about anything. Even the hunting girl doesn’t insist that you jump on that horse which is so quiet with the children. I brought them all back to the hall for dinner and for the movies—it was supposed to be one of Cagney’s but turned out to be Joan Crawford—and then motored them all back again by the light of a sultry bomber moon. Well, that’s about all—it is six o’clock and nice and sunny and I’m going to take a walk with Bunny.
L O N D O N
May 12, 1944. From that apartment in town where the boss and I are spending a day or two, here are some random thoughts regarding my old branch of the service. No, I honestly don’t think I have any regrets whatsoever in that direction. In the first place, one way or another, I have already as it is had more time in the air in this war than in the last—not combat, of course, but then it wouldn’t have been combat flying in the Air Corps and somehow I think there would have been something just a trifle gênant about being a nonflying, or at least non-combatant, aviator. And don’t get me wrong. I have the warmest sort of feeling for all my old friends in the Air Corps and they all seem to be more than genial as far as I am concerned. If I have a real justification for being mixed up with this war it is chiefly in terms of the things you and I have been doing since the last war (our travels in France) and it is a satisfaction to feel that those qualifications have been put to some use—immediately after the original landing, on and off over the intermediate period, again now, and pretty soon more so, I imagine. Finally, there is this point—flying was the new game, the novel feature. In this war the novelty (in the present form, anyway; basically, of course, it is age-old) is the amphibious landing—and while, as you know, I like my comforts as well as the next person, there is a certain special kick in wading ashore in unlikely places, particularly in the company of a personality who I for one am convinced is a great—and a necessary—man.
May 27, 1944. Writing you in an easy-riding plane, jaunting home to Peover Hall in the cool of a lovely summer evening, after a lovely, lovely day—a day with the Air boys.
This morning at a very interesting conference before a large and very interesting map, someone suddenly pounded me on the back and hissed in a low voice, “You’re looking well,” and it was Joe, whom I was particularly delighted to see as I hadn’t seen him for a long time. He nudged me again and said:
““Look who I’ve brought with me.”
Sure enough that cigar-store-Indian face and wonderful laugh—Colonel Ralph Stearley.{35} So you needn’t write Mildred to find out where he is. Has a swell job, looks wonderfully—very put out when I told him he had been reported sick.”
At lunch—I of course had lunch with him—he gave me all the gossip about the old section.
This afternoon a number of visits to outfits that seemed, oh, so natural. Except mechanically, things haven’t changed very much since the last war. The same sort of leafy dells, the same sort of nervous anxiety before the briefing—the briefing itself a great improvement here, I must say. The warming up, the take-off—a beautiful sight that—the rendezvous, and off to the target. I would have given a million dollars to have had you at that briefing, and seen your face when they flashed the picture of that particular target (Berlin) on the screen. I think you would have died with pleasure.
June 6, 1944. D Day. I can just see you listening to the radio announcement that we have just been listening to and what it will mean to you. By one of those coincidences of which the world is so full there arrived just before the broadcast a letter from St. Jean. I know you will keep it for me as it evokes so much of the essence of those fearsome days of 1940.
Yesterday I took a long walk with Bunny, who had just got news of the death of his father. Here, too, many memories of the old days came back with great clarity and little sense of lapsing time between. Time and space and strange entities.
June 8, 1944. I can still visualize you listening in on all the rushing events of the last two days and can imagine your thoughts as all those good old familiar names crowd into the teeming air. There is nothing I can write you about at the moment except the visit to our place of a big shot whose aide, when I went up to him to give the high sign, turned out to be Charley MacArthur. While he and his boss were in talking to my boss, word came that a strange female was lurking around some fairly secret precincts. Investigated and found it was Charley’s driver, a Yugoslavian WAC.
Charley’s departure in the best tradition. “How is Theodora?” “Fine.” “What do you hear from Helen...etc. Well, so long, look me up at Claridge’s.” He dashes out to his waiting boss, the Yugoslavian WAC throws her into second, Charley waves out of the window, his hat flashing with glinting stars. In the general excitement he had taken my boss’s cap.
June 14, 1944. In following all the events of the last week I can practically feel you looking over my shoulder. If I don’t answer in detail it is because there is practically nothing I can write about at the present time except to say that we are all pretty busy and watching and waiting.
You are quite right. This is the main event and all of us now are in something much bigger than any individual.
June 26, 1944. Well, here I am again on that very comfortable train in a lovely stateroom watching the late evening landscape slide by the window. Have covered a lot of ground today with the boss and General Bradley and it’s all been pretty interesting.{36} At dinner we worked on the boss’s boss to try to get Lebel attached to us and I think it may work out.
Spent a good part of the day riding with his British aide, who is a great friend of Jock Balfour’s. The world does seem to get smaller and smaller each day.
I am glad you are going to see Arch Alexander. Give him my very, very best. He did a swellissimee and I can think of no one with whom I have been thrown in this war whom I like and respect more than I do him. Both he and Jean are lovely people and I envy you seeing them, and now to sleep to the clackety-clack of those railroad rhythm blues.
July 4, 1944. If I could only explain it to you—which I can’t—you would at once realize that this job combines all the elements in a way no other that I know of does.
What do I think about things, you ask. Well, that’s a tall order, but I can tell you the essentials anyway. I think that what has been accomplished since a year ago last November, when we scrambled ashore at Fedala with 75’s whistling around in rather unfriendly fashion, to the present moment is a rather remarkable performance, and to have been even a tiny part of it, and still be, is satisfying. I think I am very lucky to have been where I have been and am and where I will be.
For me it has been so far a bonne guerre.
Yesterday I found myself at lunch next to a sympathetic Commandant. One thing led to another and such is the plethora of coincidences in this strange war that it was almost without astonishment that I learned that he was the owner of that old Voisin in which I took my first plane ride in 1915. And here we are again working the rentrèe together.