The Steel Wave - Jeff Shaara [62]
Churchill stood. Eisenhower knew the look, knew the prime minister would hold nothing back. Churchill began to pace, then stopped and pointed the cigar toward Eisenhower’s face.
“Do you know what I go through every damned night? I wake up at five o’clock in the morning, and I see bodies floating in the English Channel. The cream of our youth gone, washed out to sea. That’s what I see! You tell me it’s going to work, and I can’t just accept it. I see the cost!” Churchill paused. “I know. All that drivel about generals accepting casualties. Sounds good, the stuff of textbooks. You have to think that way. It’s your orders that send men to die. I’m just the…what? I’m the one who has to answer to the people. I have to look English mothers in the eye and tell them why their boys aren’t coming home, why it was a good idea to send them into France. Again! How many Englishmen are going to die trying to save Frenchmen? Dammit! Tell me again it’s going to work! Tell me!”
Eisenhower heard genuine emotion in Churchill’s voice and realized Churchill expected an answer.
“It’s going to work. I know there are people against this; I know you have doubts. But we’ve done the organizing, we’ve put good people in the right places. Next week—”
“Yes, yes, I know all about next week. St. Paul’s School, the briefing. Yes, I’ll be there. Everyone will be there. Everyone will be on his best behavior, all sticking up for the cause, showing support. There’s a time for bitching and a time for shutting up. I know it’s time to shut up. But I can still have my doubts, can’t I?”
Churchill seemed much calmer now, and Eisenhower took the cue, tasted the brandy, watched Churchill light another cigar. The smoke covered Churchill’s face, the room filling with the powerful smell. The lights were dim, the room warm, the chair beneath him soft, and Eisenhower, feeling a glow from the brandy, fought against sadness, the gut-churning anxiety he could never escape. No matter how good the planning, he thought, there is always the chance it will all go wrong. God help us.
Churchill said, “I’ve gotten more reports about their secret weapon, you know.”
The words were jarring.
“More reports?”
“Stronger confirmation. Rockets of some kind. Hitler’s telling his people the entire war is about to change.”
“All I know is what the air people have said about Calais,” Eisenhower said. “We started seeing what looked like ski jumps or something, scattered all over the place. We’ve been hitting them hard, but they’re easy to rebuild, apparently.”
“Scares hell out of me, Ike. What’s that damned Nazi cooked up?”
“Could be fabrication. Just propaganda.”
Churchill put the cigar down. “Could be. Can’t assume that. If there really is some kind of weapon, it could be very bad here. I’m not sure how much more people can take. It’s one thing to rally them around our boys in the sky, all of that. Worked miracles four years ago. Show them a fight in the air, blow some Jerry pilot to hell right over their heads. But rockets? We talking about explosives? Poison gas? What the hell does it mean?”
Eisenhower had heard the reports too, word coming through the Ultra intercepts, the system that had broken the German Enigma communication codes. But the reports weren’t specific, nothing about when, only loud talk of Hitler’s new secret weapon, and then those strange platforms suddenly appearing on the northern French and Belgian coastlines. Eisenhower had kept his focus on the impact some kind of new weapon would have on the invasion,