Searching for Pemberley (9 page)

“In the basement, there was a place called the Dunker's Den where you could get doughnuts and a decent cup of coffee. They had Coke with ice in it and a hamburger made with Grade-A American beef and someone who knew how to cook it. It had great bands like the Flying Forts and the Hepcats, and some of those couples jitterbugging rocked the joint. There was a huge ballroom on the top floor, and the Red Cross hired hostesses to dance with
the men. But there was this unwritten rule that the Rainbow Corner was for enlisted men only. If an officer hung around too long, he'd have a hundred eyes staring him out of the place, so I'd head over to the Red Cross Officer's Club in Knightsbridge.

“All around Piccadilly Circus were the Piccadilly Commandos. One look at those girls, and you understood why the Army made you watch movies about venereal disease. Because everything was blacked out, the girls held flashlights, what they called torches, up to their faces, so you could see what you were getting into. You'd walk by doorways and see the most interesting silhouettes. It was the same thing in Hyde Park. With the blackout, you had to watch out, or you'd plow right into someone guarding an anti-aircraft battery, or step on a couple lying in the grass getting acquainted with each other. I tried to navigate around London with nothing more than a Zippo lighter. The closest I came to getting killed while I was in England was the night I fell down the stairs leading to an Underground station.

“My favorite dance hall was in Covent Garden. This joint wasn't just a hangout for Americans. Every branch of service from every country danced there. The prettiest girl I ever danced with, excluding present company, was a WREN from Wales in navy blue.”

At home, women in the military were often the butt of sexual jokes, and the British were no different. “Up with the lark, to bed with a WREN” was the one I had heard about women who had joined the Woman's Royal Naval Service. It was the old story of one bad apple spoiling the reputations of the many women who had served honorably, but there was that occasional girl who went above and beyond the call of duty.

“Another time,” Rob said, continuing his story, “a bunch of us took the train into the city, and we met eight girls from
the East End, who were in the British Land Army and had been working on farms near Cambridge. The homes of all but one of the girls had been bombed out, and their families were scattered all over London. We went with them to Covent Garden. There wasn't much conversation because I couldn't understand their Cockney accent. But I'm pretty sure a lot of it had to do with sex, and I'm positive I figured out what 'cobblers' meant.

“Everyone on leave in London went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum at least once. They had a chamber of horrors and death masks from guillotine victims made during the French Revolution, and because so many Americans went there, they added a bunch of U.S. military brass, including one of Eisenhower saluting. It was so real I saw guys return the salute. The museum had been bombed during the Blitz, and according to the cab driver, 'They found Mary Queen of Scots' head in one place and her arse in another.'

“The Parliament buildings and Big Ben were protected with barbed wire, and all the important buildings had sandbags around them. The moat around the Tower of London had a Victory garden in it, as well as huts for the women in the RAF who operated the barrage balloons.

“Out on the street, there were thousands of servicemen looking for the best show in town. I saw Sikhs wearing turbans, Aussies wearing bush hats, and West Indians, who were as black as the ace of spades, all mixed in with the local residents. The government encouraged the Brits to walk, so there would be more room on the buses for all the servicemen on leave in London.”

Rob could have been describing wartime Washington, D.C. Because the hotels were filled to capacity and then some, many of the men simply walked around all day long until they were so tired that they curled up on a bench in Union Station or fell asleep on
the stairs leading to the different monuments. When they were awake, they were out looking for action and usually finding it. The newspapers reported that there were enough venereal disease cases in the city to overfill the 30,000-seat Griffith Stadium, and a few of my co-workers found themselves in a family way.

Rob informed me with a straight face that Air Corps officers usually got the best looking girls. “I'm not kidding. We were envied or hated, depending on your point of view, because we were the glamour boys. There was more than one fight between a groundpounder and a flyboy. Because we had triangles on our faces, we were easy to pick out. Above 10,000 feet, you have to go on oxygen, and you might have to stay on it for several hours. Because of the cold air and the sweating, and believe me you can break out into a sweat, even at 25,000 feet, the mask leaves chafe marks around your nose and mouth, making us look like raccoons.

“The British girls figured out pretty quickly that officers had more money to spend, and they'd get to go to nicer places. Remember, the Brits had been at war since '39, and for some girls, this was the best way to get a decent meal. Pat Monaghan, a bombardier and crew mate, and I went into London and hooked up with two swell girls, and we took them to see the play,
The Man Who Came to Dinne
r, and then to the Savoy Grill for dinner. The Savoy Hotel was a hangout for American reporters, and one of them interviewed us for the hometown papers. The Savoy had been hit several times during the Blitz, but even so, it was a real classy place.

“Here I was, a guy from Flagstaff, a town of about 20,000 people. Even when the Air Corps was training me, I was stationed in rural areas. Except for a weekend pass in Chicago, I had never been to a big city with clubs, the theater, and girls falling all over you. It
was a very strange existence. One day you were dancing at Covent Garden, and the next day you were dropping bombs on Germany.”

The cab driver dropped us off in front of Rob's building. His flat was on the top floor of a four-story walk-up, and Ken and he shared a hallway bathroom with the two men living in the opposite flat. Their co-workers had warned them that it was in a dodgy neighborhood, but that was all they could get for the time being. Despite the drawbacks, rooms in London were so scarce that Rob was glad to have it even if it meant spending every spare minute he could out of it.

As soon as we stepped inside the door of the building, Rob informed me that Ken had moved out and that we had the flat all to ourselves. We stood in the foyer facing each other and holding hands. It was understood that if we started going up the stairs, we would make love. What I had to decide was did I love this man, and, more importantly, did he love me. He had never said so.

Rob was trying to help me along because he had unbuttoned my coat and had put his arms around me. If he started kissing me now, it was a done deal. We started kissing.

I was so inexperienced that I didn't know what to do. I was just starting to think I might not be ready for this when I saw that Rob had placed a single red rose on the pillow. There was something so sweet in that gesture that I decided I did want to be with this man. We made love until the early hours of the morning when I had to go back to Mrs. Dawkins's house or risk my “good girl” status. Standing outside my front door, Rob said, “You do know that I love you, don't you?” I hadn't been sure, but now I was. And all was right with the world.

LETTERS FROM THE CROWELLS came at regular intervals all through the dark of my second Northern European winter. London is located at a latitude that is even farther north than Newfoundland in Canada. It was dark when I went to the office and dark when I left. The combined mixture of fog and coal smoke created an atmosphere right out of a Dickens novel, and the leaden skies and the cold, dreary days were something you had to get used to, or you could find yourself checking sailing dates back to the States.

I felt comfortable enough with the Crowells to share with them that I had fallen in love with a young man from Arizona. I gave them all the particulars: six feet, sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, even tempered, intelligent, and a better conversationalist than Mr. Darcy.

On a rare sunny Saturday morning, Rob and I were sitting in Trafalgar Square feeding the pigeons when he told me about growing up in Flagstaff in Arizona's High Country. If you were heading to the Grand Canyon or traveling the Lincoln Highway
between Chicago and Los Angeles, you probably drove by his uncle's Sinclair gas station on Route 66 where he had a part-time job. At home, Rob wore dungarees, boots, and a Stetson, and he could ride a horse and rope a calf. He considered his childhood of growing up in the big-sky country of the American West to be idyllic, with its clean air and mountain backdrops, especially in light of what he had seen and experienced in Europe.

When the war broke out, Rob had joined the Army where his high scores qualified him for the Air Corps. Unlike most other airmen, Rob did not want to be a pilot, and when I asked him why, he said, “The most important factor in the success of a mission, at least the things you can control, is the skill of the pilot and co-pilot. If they screw up, you're dead. Formation flying, when you have hundreds of planes going up at the same time, is an exact science, and there isn't any room for error. I didn't want the responsibility for the lives of nine other guys. I felt the best position for me was as a navigator, and the Army agreed.”

In December 1943, Rob was sent to Kearney, Nebraska, to pick up the B-17 he and his crewmates were to fly to England. Stationed at an airfield in Hertfordshire, Rob had flown nineteen missions when his plane was hit by flak over Stuttgart killing the bombardier, his friend, Pat Monaghan. With the navigator's position right behind the bombardier's, metal and plastic fragments from the shattered Plexiglas nose of the plane had torn through Rob's right arm, with pieces of shrapnel flying into his face and shoulder. Tiny bits of metal had to be removed from his eye by a specialist in Oxford, but it healed well enough for him to resume combat status.

“After I got out of the hospital, I figured I'd be assigned to a new crew, but when I reported, the squadron commander told me I had been promoted to captain and that he had cut orders for me to
become a lead navigator for the squadron. If that wasn't bad enough, while I was in the hospital, the Air Corps raised the required missions to thirty. So instead of owing Uncle Sam six missions, I owed him eleven. The major said that too many men had completed twenty-five missions and were going home. Losing so many experienced crew members was compromising the effectiveness of the group, and so they had to raise the number of missions to keep experienced airmen flying. Also, because of better fighter support, we weren't as likely to get shot down even though planes from the 91st Bomb Group were getting shot down on a regular basis.

“Flying lead meant it would take a hell of a lot longer for me to finish the last eleven missions because you don't fly as often and because it's so god-damned dangerous. The German fighters often zeroed in on the lead plane trying to kill the pilots, so that it would mess up the whole formation. On one of my early missions, a Messerschmitt didn't pull up soon enough and flew right into the lead ship. I saw the fire, heard the explosion, and then it was gone. Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers, “ten guys were dead—ten guys from my squadron.

“On my next to last mission, I was assigned to a plane flying 'tail-end Charlie,' which is the rear of the low squadron and is as bad, if not worse, than flying lead. That's where the fighters pick you off. Our target was a factory in the Ruhr Valley where we encountered so many fighters that it was like flying through a swarm of bees. We were shot up so badly that we nearly had to bail out in the Channel. Instead, we limped into Kent and made a very rough landing in a turnip field, with a wounded tail gunner and a flight engineer with a broken leg.”

For a few minutes, we sat side by side in complete silence. It wouldn't have helped to tell Rob that, before he had even
reached England, my cousin, Pat Faherty, had died when his ship was sunk off the East Coast, or to talk about the twenty-five men from Minooka and South Scranton who were killed in Europe and the Pacific. Sharing that information would not have lessened the pain of losing Pat Monaghan and those ten men from his squadron.

As we walked toward the Underground station, Rob took my hand and put it in his overcoat pocket. “Since I'm in such a good mood, and you have asked about my girlfriend in Flagstaff, I'll tell you about Alice.” Rob found it amusing that girls always seemed to want to know about old flames, but guys never. As far as men were concerned, once a relationship was over, you were ancient history and about as interesting.

Rob had dated Alice, a waitress who worked in a café near the college, during his last year in school. Before he left for basic training, Alice had started talking about getting married, but Rob had made it clear that marriage was out of the question because just too many things could go wrong, especially when your future included flying bombers over Germany. During his training, he had witnessed a crash where the pilot had just barely gotten off the ground when something went wrong, and the fully-fueled Fortress exploded on impact killing everyone on board. While Rob was in the hospital in England, Alice had written to tell him she was marrying someone else. If their break-up had distressed him in any way, he was hiding it admirably.

While waiting for my train in the Underground station, I asked Rob if he had met anyone while he was in England, and that's when I found out about Millie. The two met at a dance at the airfield sponsored by the Red Cross, and they hit it off right away. Rob told Millie about Alice, and Millie told Rob about her
boyfriend, who was in the Royal Navy. They agreed to enjoy each other's company until her boyfriend returned to England. Millie might explain why Rob was not more upset when he got his Dear John letter. He had been stepping out on Alice.

I asked, if Millie had not had a boyfriend, would he have married her, and he said, “No way. Millie was a great girl. She lived in Royston, which was only four miles from the base. I'd ride over on my bike to see her, but that was the extent of it.”