Harry Goes to London. Chapter Four: Getting There

Five days on the PanAm Clipper, down one Atlantic coast and up the other, left Harry cooked to well done. Bracken met him with a train and they went to London. Göring's planes bombed them on the way.

This Chapter: Harry hated flying but he surrendered to spending five days in the lumbering luxury of the PanAm Clipper and thought it maybe wasn’t half-bad. He made it to Poole Harbor on England’s south coast where Brendan Bracken met him with more luxury in a five-car train that made its way north to London. As it neared the city a Luftwaffe bombardment narrowly, but successfully, failed to kill him. His mission had begun with a dose of deadly reality.

Contents of “Harry Goes to London”

1. The Lay of the Land

2. Weekend in Manhattan

3. “Make me proud, Harry Hopkins”

4. Getting There

Chapter Four: Getting There

Reading time: Twenty-one minutes

There were six new Clippers in service in January of 1941, built by Boeing as the 314A. PanAm ordered and bought them all, keeping two on the Pacific run, one based in Los Angeles and the other in San Francisco. Those crossed the ocean to Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand, by way of Honolulu and an island hop of Midway, Wake, Guam, and Manila. The other four served the Atlantic routes. PanAm originally envisioned a northerly passage to Ireland’s northwest shore, by way of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Iceland, and a more direct route by way of Bermuda and the Azores. The point of the Clippers, of their flotation, was an absence in most destinations of runways long enough to serve their size.

BOAC, the British Overseas Airway Corporation, wanted the Bermuda rights and got them, as well as the Iceland connection. PanAm received landing rights in Bolama on Africa’s west coast, from which the trip to Recife in Brazil was the shortest Atlantic crossing. That created a third Atlantic route south from New York to Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Recife. From Bolama, the Clipper would fly to Lisbon for a connection with an older BOAC flying boat to England.

Winter weather, politics, and war stymied the two northerly routes that month. The five days of the southerly passage covered 1,600 miles from New York to San Juan, then 650 more to Port of Spain, Trinidad. That was the first day. The second day logged 2,100 miles from Trinidad to Recife, the third the 1,800 miles of the crossing to Bolama, the fourth 1,800 miles north from Bolama to Lisbon, and the fifth day was a modest jaunt of 900 miles from Lisbon to Poole Harbor on England’s south shore, roughly 9,000 miles in all, 6,000 more miles than a New York-based, well-fueled crow would travel.

But the crow would experience nothing like the comfort of the Clipper. It was huge, a whale with high wings, powered by four engines of 1,600 horsepower each. It rose slowly from the water, climbing at only 500 feet per minute to altitudes from 12,000 to 16,000 feet where it cruised at 180 miles per hour. The non-stop range was 3,000 miles, made possible by stubby wings at the base of the fuselage that carried fuel, while also stabilizing the floating plane and easing pedestrian access.

At capacity, seventy-five customers could be accommodated in a series of open spaces and private compartments for dining, lounging, napping, and refreshing in large and separate lavatories for men and women, with a dressing and makeup room for women. Overnight flights slept thirty-five in full, or curtained, privacy.

The flight crew of three pilots, five navigators, and an engineer did their business on a forward deck high above the passengers. They and the service crew — eight stewardesses, a four-star chef, and kitchen help who doubled as white-coated waiters — took breaks and slept in compact quarters behind the flight crew that were reachable from the main deck by a spiral staircase. Behind those quarters, luggage and other cargo were stored.

Every passenger need was met, even to meals served on fine china at linen-draped tables of four. The effect was of a house party of strangers, who had money in common if nothing else. Or maybe not, since Harry Hopkins, whom Juan Trippe put in the Deluxe Cabin at the rear of the Clipper, had no money at all by rational standards. He was traveling at the expense of the other passengers, on their tax dollars.

Harry did the arithmetic of dividing the mileage of each leg by the plane’s cruising speed and came up with a quotient that meant he was going to arrive in England dead tired from doing nothing much at all.

He chatted with the flight attendants and the other passengers and suspected, short of certainty, that he was the only person who was flying all the way to Lisbon. Most of them were flying south to Caribbean vacations, where the stewardesses predicted the plane would pick up Brazilians returning home from vacations of their own. He guessed any other trans-Atlantic passengers would embark from Recife, and guessed again that damn few of those would stay long in Bolama.

He made these observations in the reports to the boss that he handed off to government officials at each port of call. There was nothing in his comments that reeked of whining, but Harry knew the president would recognize the arithmetic conjunction of the length of each leg and the speed of the plane, and the intimation that everyone else seemed to be getting off as soon as they could, as sarcasm. To be certain of that, he wrote that he was taking careful notice of the passengers on each leg as they arrived and departed, and suggested that “traveling with small children seems to be the disguise of preference for exotic spies. There are no glamorous movie stars so far, but Tallulah predicted as much on the grounds of ‘Why would they?’ ”

He had Churchill’s “Step By Step,” an accumulation of his speeches and writings of the decade that ended with the war that he exactly predicted. After Munich, he told Parliament, “Faced with a choice between dishonour and war, we chose dishonour. Now we shall have war.” He gave Winston credit for making money by selling an archived anthology. The man could write, could find the core of an argument and express it in words not easily forgotten. Churchill’s critics, over the years, steadily chided him for a kind of madcap, half-drunk unpredictability, but Harry found him consistent, and concluded that his critics were attacking him for consistently proving they were fools.

He had the Time issue, out that week, declaring Churchill “Man of the Year” for 1940, saying he “shared with Lenin and Hitler a genius for the spoken word, two for ill and one, Churchill, for good but only should he prevail in the current struggle.” They said — with Time it was always “they” since the stuff was not bylined, intended to sound like it came from the sole and unidentified mouth of a hydra-headed committee — “He gave his countrymen exactly what he promised them: ‘blood, toil, tears, and sweat’ and one more thing — untold courage.”

There was also a satchel of reports and analyses and intercepts whose bureaucratic linguistics failed, Harry thought, to adequately capture the effects of four months of unceasing bombing. He would see about that soon, but not soon enough. And he had his medications, a supply of pills in a leather case. And a reserve supply.

At San Juan and Port of Spain there were many creature comforts — lodging, restaurants, bazaars — available to Clipper passengers, but Recife and Bolama had not quite caught up to their new importance. There, the overnight accommodations ran to the experimental, close to spartan. Sleeping quarters were too small to be called a room and too large for a sarcophagus, but after a dozen hours of flying Harry didn’t need anything more than a bed enclosed by walls that weren’t moving.

Lisbon, on the other hand, was a city in full flower as he learned from the flight attendants. He made the mistake of checking it out with several of them on the last night of his journey, and awoke with a hangover, cheaply acquired because it didn’t take much in his case, but no less painful for its economy. The mistake was enlarged by the circumstances of the first-generation BOAC Clipper that carried him to England that last day, Friday the 10^th. It was just a giant airplane with seats, and when the whale settled on the water of Poole Harbor and made its boatlike way to port, he was cooked to well-done.

Brendan Bracken went to Poole to welcome him and bring him to London in railway splendor, but when he couldn’t find Harry among the arrivals he thought he’d missed the plane. “Or the boat,” Bracken said with a smug and toothy cackle to the unamused man he found shivering feverishly in his seat. He let Bracken motor him to the terminal in Bournemouth and show him to his Pullman accommodations but no more.

“It’s motion sickness,” he decreed in an only partial lie. “So I want no motion for a while. None.”

“Until when?” Bracken asked.

“I’ll let you know. If you need the train someplace else, find me a hotel room. If any are left standing.” He hadn’t expected, this far south of London, as much destruction from the bombs as the short drive revealed. Bracken attributed it to bad aim on the port at Poole Harbor when Harry brought it up. “All the ports have had their time as targets,” Bracken said. “It’s in keeping with their blockade strategy. Sometimes they miss and sometimes they just dump their loads and run. Still, I’m certain we can find lodging, come to that, but the train is for you, so here you may stay. Motionless.” He extracted a gold watch from a snug waistcoat pocket where it was parked as it dangled from a gold chain and checked the time as though it mattered. “Want to get there while the sun’s yet up, though, so it’s leave soon now or wait for morning.”

Harry had asked for this assignment and thought it might be better to be a little late and on his game than on time and dimwitted.

“How long’s the trip?”

Bracken said, “A few hours, three I would think would do it nicely. It’ll come dark about then. How long’s yours been so far?”

“Five. Days.”

“Looks romantic in their advertisements. I’m certain it’s not.”

“What’s the point of the daylight?”

“They come at night when they come, occasionally at twilight but no longer in full light. They’ve learned that good visibility strengthens the odds for our fighter planes and anti-aircraft emplacements. They’ve been absent for a few puzzling days, but we never know.”

“And bomb trains?”

“Bomb everything as many bombs as they’ve got. A five-car train approaching London might tempt them. Might look important. As in fact it is.”

Harry’s chin drooped chestward but he caught himself, gave his head a little shake, and said, “Let’s give it a go.”

Harry’s car was equipped with a bed, a couple of armchairs and a loveseat, assorted tables and lamps, a desk topped by a telephone that didn’t work, and a tub, a toilet, and a basin. Over the next hour or two, he gave them all a try. He slept some in both the bed and a chair and he credited the soothing motion of the train for the renewal he attained, thought he was only a good night’s sleep away from good enough. Looking for Bracken he found him in the last car, also nicely equipped, this one for eating and drinking. They sat in facing leather chairs and nibbled on what may have been crumpets for all Harry knew, moistened by warm tea and good whiskey.

Harry said, “I wish I could drink half as much as I once could.”

“Your stomach? I’m aware of your … difficulties.”

“Yes. It just puts me out long before I get the glow. Hard stuff does.”

“We have wine.”

“I’m sure you do,” Harry said with a small smile.

“Have I said we’re very pleased that you’ve come?”

“All very mutual, I assure you.”

“I’ve been somewhat brought current about you. You know how that goes. You live in the White House now. Your daughter with you. And no actual portfolio.”

“All true. Diana is one floor up. Mrs. Roosevelt sees to her. With help. I’m in … well, it’s an old sort of study, actually. The boss is just down the hall.”

“The Lincoln study, we’re told.”

“Yes, so am I. It’s where the King stayed on his visit two years ago. I took up residence at the White House the same day your boss moved in to Downing Street. The boss said he needed me at my best and whatever I had been doing wasn’t working. He said I looked like death warmed over.”

“Are you a stickler for details?”

“If they please me.”

“Then we’ll skip it,” Bracken said, until a little later when he allowed that Winston had remained at Admiralty House for a few weeks following his ascension as he had extended to Chamberlain the grace to get his household affairs in order. “And then there are the fair number of days and nights when the bombs have sent us scuttling like rats through warrens to the safety of God knows where.”

“You reside there normally? At number ten?”

“Occasionally. Usually you might say, more to the sharpened point. You enjoy your first lady’s beneficent opinions, do you?”

“Yes, generally. She liked me more when I was a social worker, and much less when I became a politician. But she’s come back around now with the focus on Hitler.”

“I do not with mine. I grate, but more than that a rumor ran wild a few years back that I was Winston’s illegitimate offspring and I encouraged it with the insouciance that is my wont. Clementine has not forgiven me. If I looked like death warmed over, she would lid the skillet and turn up the heat. By the way, my chief’s been told he met yours one day long ago and brushed him off.”

“I’ve heard that story. The president’s not much for grudges. Usually settles slights on the spot if he can.”

“So he hasn’t mentioned it?”

Harry grinned, said, “No, actually he has mentioned it. But it was so long ago I think he’s written it off. Your boss pulled what we call a filibuster one evening at a club. Here. In London. The president wasn’t nobody at the time, Assistant Secretary of the Navy in fact, and thought he might have something in common with the former First Lord of the Admiralty. Never found out. No conversation ensued. Franklin Roosevelt, as I get it, just surrendered the room to Winston Churchill and went on his way.”

“Winston can filibuster like a runaway locomotive.”

“Bygones. Agreed?”

“Agreed from our end. We’ve been a little concerned that the president didn’t respond to the prime minister’s congratulatory telegram after his election.”

“I’m not aware of that. Must have been a slipup on our end. I’ll look into it when I get back. Don’t give it another thought.”

“Winston said some very nice things about him just today in a speech to the Anglo-American Society of Pilgrims.”

“Good choice of audience. Did you assemble them just to send the message?”

“I don’t think so, but we’re capable of that sort of thing.”

“Did you hear the president’s speech?” Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union the day before, making the case for Lend Lease.

“I did. It was most impressive. Very heartening. Were you involved in its production?”

“Somewhat. There’s a team, three of us. The other two finished the final draft after I left.”

“How is it done? The production?”

“He gathers us and talks about it. We take notes. There’s also a stenographer present. A draft is produced for his review. Then another, and perhaps another. It’s a back-and-forth process.”

Bracken said, “I especially liked the expressions of the four freedoms. I think it will be enduring.”

Roosevelt had said, “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression. Everywhere in the world. The second is the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. Everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings that will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants. Everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor. Anywhere in the world.”

“His own conception, was it?” Bracken said.

“Yes. He had come out with it last summer more or less spontaneously in a chat with the press. There was some polishing, but it was his idea.”

“One can’t help but admire the call for a worldwide reduction of armaments. I share the prayer, but doubt its effectuation. Speaking only personally, of course.”

“Me too, somewhat.” He shrugged off the thought. “And Churchill? How does he work?”

“He prowls around dictating to a team of two typists. He calls them amanuenses. Their typewriters are muffled with blankets. Their clatter annoys him. One takes it off in rough, passes the page to the other who cleans it up. He takes the output of the second and marks it up by pen.”

“Sounds like hell for the typists.”

“Yes. They each and all would agree with that characterization. He does everything that way, even his books. His favorite time of doing it is late at night as the last thing before he retires. That adds substantially to the hell, but he’s a man who gets his way.”

They left the remains of their snack to the steward and went to the rear where they stood on the train’s last platform. The villages were crowding up in the setting sun. London was imminent. Harry said, “This pickup and delivery service is excellent, quite good of you. I’m flattered.”

“You’re welcome. We’re desperate.”

“I’ve come to help with that.”

“When do you expect the Lend Lease to be settled?”

“Mid-February is my guess for when the bill will become law. The current version will be amended, unpredictably, as it goes through the hearings and the debate. The isolationist sentiment in Congress is still very strong and I suspect they will do all they can to impose constraints and restrictions. And, of course, our arsenal is far from full. Very far.” Harry paused to deflect the conversation from the political to the proximate. He thought he should give Churchill first hearing of his Lend Lease opinions and expectations. He said, with a small gesture to the landscape, “Hitler says he’s going to take this away from you.”

“He does, doesn’t he? Stomps around quite a lot, too. Odd little man.”

“Can you stop him?”

“He’ll think he ran headlong into a lamppost if he steps one foot on our soil,” Bracken said.

Bracken wasn’t much to look at, nothing to discourage someone looking for a scrap, a little overfed, a lot of teeth, a mop of curly hair. Still, a good level gaze came out from the ordinary of the rest of it. He might surprise as the last one chosen, the one you had to watch out for when the sides were drawn up.

“How long can you endure the bombing?”

“Until Hitler surrenders.”

“None of this will be his?” Harry said, flipping a hand to the fields.

“Not one blade of grass.”

“And yet you’re so besieged.”

“Drawing him in. He has not yet met our like. If he comes, it will be his final folly.”

Many tracks converged and they entered their confluence, a massive railyard. The train slowed and made its way through. Crews worked at filling craters and replacing bent and twisted track. “What’s this?” Harry asked.

“Clapham Junction. One of their favorite targets, the one I wanted to put behind us before they arrived.”

The air to the east, their left as they faced the way they had come, gave off a low rumbling sound. Harry turned to it and scanned the sky, caught Bracken looking at him as he looked for the source of the sound. The railyard workers scurried to half-buried bunkers. He said, “Is that it? Are they coming?”

Bracken nodded, his face composed, almost amused. He said, “A little early. You don’t suppose they knew you were coming? We’ll take a good part of the first wave out with our fighters and ground emplacements. A little odd to see the dive-bombers. They make good targets. At full dark there’s nothing much to do but shake your fist at the high up fuckers.”

The sirens sounded, wailing. The encroaching twilight sky gave off starbursts in the distance, seen far sooner than heard, as the battle opened. Massed so densely as to defy their own safety, the vast fleet of bombers presented itself as a gray blanket slowly drawn high above the countryside. The train quickened and a dozen or more twin-engine planes left the main fleet and descended on Clapham Junction. Harry felt and heard the tightened coupling of the several railcars. It sent him to the rear rail for balance and he heard the conductor announce his rising speed with a long, steady exhalation of steam. Grounded cannon and British planes met the approaching planes with bursts that took two or three out of the sky in single blasts and sent several others off and away in smoking spirals, but many, far more than half, made their way through and dropped loads that exploded on the tracks, lifting smoke and clouds of earth that the trailing planes flew through as they passed on to the city’s West End.

As the dust settled and the planes passed, Harry said, “Did we come close to dying just now?”

“Close enough I’d say. Winston says there’s nothing quite as exhilarating as being shot at without result.”

“I’m not likely to forget it. What now?”

“We’re just minutes from Waterloo Station. What are your needs?”

“Well, safety would please me but I suppose that will come at famine prices.”

“The odds are with you. You’re being met, I believe. By Mr. Johnson.”

“Yes. That’s my expectation.”

Herschel Johnson, a career diplomat, led the American mission as the chargé d’affaires since Kennedy scuttled off to rant about Jews. Johnson had found an ally, and always an ear, in the White House in Hopkins, who sensed the man had a narrow but deep agenda. He wanted badly to stop Hitler on behalf of his adopted country and seemed to harbor no other personal ambition, such as the top job.

Bracken said, “The Prime Minister would be pleased to have you as his guest at dinner this evening.”

“Do you suppose he wouldn’t object to my settling in tonight? It’s gone six now and I should give Mr. Johnson a little time. Would lunch tomorrow suit his schedule?”

“ ‘Gone six.’ ‘Give it a go.’ ‘At famine prices.’ Aren’t you the tease?”

“Averell Harriman’s been coaching me on your lingo.”

“The industrialist? We think of him as the American version of Lord Beaverbrook.”

“Harriman’s not exactly an industrialist, more of a financier.” He rolled his shoulders and straightened his frame, said, “I think I’m experiencing the exhilaration of being shot at without result.”

Bracken chuckled, said, “I believe I can speak for His Majesty’s Government and confirm the suitability of lunch tomorrow with the schedule of the Prime Minister.”

Harry said, “Which would provide an opportunity to pay my respects at the Foreign Office in the morning. The president asked me to convey to Lord Halifax his wish for a safe passage and a … beneficent experience in America.”

“Good thinking. We may throw in a chinwag with the new Foreign Minister, Mr. Eden.”

“Chinwag? I like that.”

The train was met by a dozen newspaper reporters. Harry smiled at them, thanked them for the welcome, and said he had nothing to give them. One asked if he could provide any estimates for the kinds and quantities of weapons Roosevelt might deliver.

He said, “I can’t, and if I could I wouldn’t.”