At Nova Scotia we touched ground to refuel, the F.B.I. men left us, we took off again, and the Canadian transfighters took their stations around us. If the President representative were shot down, the dust would go to the bottom with him.
No need to tell of the crossing. I was airsick and miserable, in spite of the steadiness of the new six - engine jobs. I felt like a hangman on the way to an execution and wished to God that I were a boy again, with nothing more momentous than a debate contest, or a trace meet, to worry me.
There was some fighting around us as we neared Scotland, I know, but I could not see it, the cabin shuttered. Our pilot - captain ignored it and brought his ship down on a totally dark field, using a beam, suppose, though I did not know nor care. I would have welcomed a crash. Then the lights outside went on and I saw that we had come to rest in an underground hangar.
I stayed in the ship. The Commandant came to see me to his quarters as his guest. I shook my head. "I stay here," I said. "Orders. You are to treat this ship as United States soil, you know,"
He seemed miffed, but compromised by having dinner served for both of us in my ship.
There was a really embarrassing situation the next day. I was commanded to appear for a Royal audience. But I had my instructions and I stuck to them. I was sitting on that cargo of dust until the President told me what to do with it. Late in the day I was called on by a member of Parliament - nobody admitted out loud that it was the Prime Minister - and a Mr. Windsor. The M.P. did most of the talking and I answered his questions. My other guest said very little and spoke slowly with some difficulty. But I got a very favorable impression of him. He seemed to be a man who was carrying a load beyond human strength and carrying it heroically.
There followed the longest period in my life. It was actually only a little longer than a week, but every minute of it had that split - second intensity of imminent disaster that comes just before a car crash. The President was using the time to try to avert the need to use the dust. He had two face - to - face television conferences with the new Fuehrer. The President spoke German fluently, which should have helped. He spoke three times to the warring peoples themselves, but it is doubtful if very many on the Continent were able to listen, the police regulations there being what they were.
The Ambassador from the Reich was given a special demonstration of the effect of the dust. He was flown out over a deserted stretch of Western prairie and I slowed to see what a single dusting would do to a herd of steers. It should have impressed him and I thought that it did - nobody could ignore a visual demonstration! - but what report he made to his leader we never knew.
The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing attacks as heavy as any of the war was safe enough but I heard about them, and I could see the effect on the morale of the officers with who I associated. Not that it frightened them - it made them coldly angry. The raids were not directed mainly at dockyards or factories, but were ruthless destruction of anything, particularly villages.
"I don't see what you chaps are waiting for," a fig commander complained to me. "What the Jerry need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a lesson their own Aryan culture."
I shook my head. "We'll have to do it our own way He dropped the matter, but I knew how he and F brother officers felt. They had a standing toast, as sacred as the toast to the King: "Remember Coventry! Our President had stipulated that the R. A. F. w not to bomb during the period of negotiation, but the bombers were busy nevertheless. The continent w showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets, prepared by our own propaganda agents. The first of the called on the people of the Reich to stop a useless w and promised that the terms of peace would not vindictive. The second rain of pamphlets showed photographs of that herd of steers. The third was a direct warning to get out of cities and to stay out. As Manning put it, we were calling "Halt!" three times before firing. I do not think that he or the Pre dent expected it to work, but we were morally ob gated to try.
The Britishers had installed for me a televisor, of the Simonds - Yarley nonintercept type, the sort where the receiver must "trigger" the transmitter in order for the transmission to take place at all. It made assurance of privacy in diplomatic communication for the first time in history, and was a real help in the crisis. I had brought along my own technician, one of the F. B. I.'s new corps of specialists, to handle the scrambler and the trigger.
He called to me one afternoon. "Washington signaling.
I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar floor, wondering if it were another false alarm.
It was the President. His lips were white. "Carry out your basic instructions, Mr. DeFries."
"Yes, Mr. President!"
The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a receipt and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were finished. But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers from every independent nation and from the several provisional governments of occupied nations. The United States Ambassador designated me as one at the request of Manning.
Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all the dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least, reaching its destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than Ridpath calculated would be needed for the mission and my last job was to see to it that every canister actually went on board a plane of the flight. The extremely small weight of dust used was emphasized to each of the military observers.
We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty - five thousand feet, refueled in the air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled thirty minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut the thin air for middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and hiked up to permit the utmost maximum of speed and altitude.
Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act as a diversion. Their destinations were every part of Germany; it was the intention to create such confusion in the air above the Reich that our few planes actually engaged in the serious war might well escape attention entirely, flying so high in the stratosphere.
The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin from different directions, planning to cross Berlin as if following the spokes of a wheel. The night was appreciably clear and we had a low moon to help us. Berlin: not a hard city to locate, since it has the largest square mile area of any modern city and is located on a broad flat alluvial plain. I could make out the River Spree a we approached it, and the Havel. The city was blacked out, but a city makes a different sort of black from open country. Parachute flares hung over the city in many places, showing that the R. A. F. had been bus before we got there and the A. A. batteries on the ground helped to pick out the city.
There was fighting below us, but not within fifteen thousand feet of our altitude as nearly as I could judge. The pilot reported to the captain, "On line of bearing!" The chap working the absolute altimeter steadily fed his data into the fuse pots of the canister. The canisters were equipped with a light charge of black powder, sufficient to explode them and scatter to dust at a time after release predetermined by the fu5 pot setting. The method used was no more than an efficient expedient. The dust would have been almost a effective had it simply been dumped out in paper bag although not as well distributed.