The Ambassador didn’t immediately get his head around the magnitude of what his underling had just told him. Knowing this, Walter Brenckmann attempted to paint his boss a picture.
“The Brits asked us for help to care for their sick and injured, to feed their children, to stave off tens of thousands, perhaps, millions of deaths in the coming winter and we played politics and tried to put a price on our charity. We attempted to game their national catastrophe for our own geo-political advantage. Consequently, if they didn’t blame us for the war before they do now. Because of the short-sighted, frankly imbecilic thinking and actions of our Government, the United States of America’s oldest and most loyal ally is half-way to regarding us as its worst enemy.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II was no deep thinking internationalist, nor was he any kind of historian with any meaningful understanding of the course of either European or World history beyond the cursory State Department briefings he’d had to sit through — reluctantly and with bad grace — before he got on the plane for England. He hadn’t been sent to this cold, miserable archipelago off the ravaged coast of Northern Europe to make or to propose policy, he was a time serving mouthpiece. In a few more months they recall him, he’d go back to running the family business in Texas proudly proclaiming he’d done his duty by God and his Country.
“What are you saying, Brenckmann?”
“After 1945 Europe rose again from the ashes. It will be harder this time but Europe will rise again. However, this time there will be a difference. A year ago the Europeans got dragged into our war with the Soviets. Our war, not theirs. Our war fought because we believed that our national strategic interests had been compromised. Now that we intend to wash our hands of the consequences of our war, it is hardly surprising that our allies — those few who survive — feel betrayed. We have two choices, Ambassador,” Walter Brenckmann explained, knowing he was probably wasting his breath, “we can seek, belatedly, to make appropriate reparations for our folly, or we can continue down the road we have walked thus far. The former offers some small prospect of rapprochement. The latter will, sooner or later bring us into conflict with not just our old allies but the whole world.” He shrugged. “We dragged our friends into a fight that wasn’t theirs. They got the crap kicked out of them. Then we crapped on them.” His stare bored into the face of the American Ambassador. “How would you feel if you were the Brits, sir?”
“Whose fucking side are you on, Captain?”
“This country, England, is about the same size as New York State back home. England was hit by over twenty one megaton plus strikes. New York State got hit by one. One third of all the people living in England before the war are dead now, One-third of the survivors, eight or nine million people, are living in damaged housing with barely enough to eat. Medical services and transportation are operating at about fifty percent of pre-war levels. Thousands of people are dying of diarrhoea and the cold every day. Most of the old folk have already died. We did this to them. How dare you sit there and ask me whose side I am on, sir!”
“You’re sounding like a fucking Commie to me!”
That was when Walter Brenckmann realised that being a patriot meant more than wearing the uniform. Patriotism meant nothing if a man didn’t have the moral courage to stand up to people like Loudon Baines Westheimer II and what he represented.
“Just before I left my office,” Walter Brenckmann went on, his expression forming into an agate hard severity, “I received a summary report of a SITREP from the Task Force 27.”
“That’s the Enterprise’s Battle group, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Jeez, that must be one Helluva ship!”
“That’s as may be, sir. It now seems clear that the Brits could have sunk the Big E any time they wanted in the last week. The Enterprise and most of her escorts too, I suspect.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II was terminally bewildered.
“It seems,” the naval officer explained patiently, “that the British nuclear submarine Dreadnought was able to stalk TF27 undetected for several days. When she was finally discovered by one of our SSNs, the Scorpion, she was within two thousand yards of the Enterprise and clearly manoeuvring to conduct a simulated attack from directly astern of the Big E. Initial tactical analysis of sonar plots recorded in recent days indicate that — employing tactics presumably learned from us at Groton — Dreadnought had been ‘in company’ with TF27 for as many as seven days.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II’s jaw hung slack for a moment.
“What the fuck happened when Scorpion went up against the Brit sub?”
“Scorpion’s captain did the only thing he could do, sir,” Walter Brenckmann assured him. “Assuming that HMS Dreadnought already had firing solution on her attack board in respect of his command, the Big E and both destroyers in the carrier’s flank screen he was extremely careful not to make any sudden movements, sir.”
“What the fuck does that mean in English?”
“He signalled HMS Dreadnought in such as way as to communicate to the British captain that he had no hostile intentions towards his ship.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II lost his temper.
“How the fuck do you do that?”
Walter Brenckmann did not bat an eyelid.
“With the highest possible level of professional competence, sir.”
“Why the fuck didn’t he shoot at the Limey?”
“Probably because had he survived making a mistake like that — not that he would have — he’d have been court-martialled and drummed out of the service, sir.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II didn’t even think of attempting to moderate his increasingly vile, inflamed uncouth bad humour.
“Don’t try to be fucking clever with me!”
“Scorpion’s CO was operating under rules of engagement that specifically forbade him to fire on a British warship unless fired upon first. Those standing orders were amended by the Defence Department prior to the Enterprise’s departure from Norfolk to replace the USS Midway on station off Ireland. The relevant amendments removed the right of individual captains to vary or to re-interpret the strict letter of the rules of engagement. Under any circumstances.”
“Scorpion’s captain should be dismissed the service!”
“If you start cashiering men because they’ve obeyed their orders ‘to the letter’,” Walter Brenckmann pointed out, “that’s hardly conducive to the maintenance of good discipline in the Service in the future, sir.”
Loudon Baines Westheimer II glowered at his subordinate in fulminating silence so Walter Brenckmann carried on.
“It was my understanding that it was the policy of the Government and both Houses of Representatives that the United States of America should adopt a passive stance in Europe and the Middle East — essentially disengagement — while, simultaneously building its influence in the Americas, North, Central, and South, as well as across the Caribbean? This latter object was only to be supported by military force as a last resort? Sinking a British submarine in international waters seems to me no more consistent with the stated policy of my Government than those idiots on the Big E flying simulated bombing runs on one of HMS Ark Royal’s air defence pickets, sir. Respectfully,” he said with self-evident disrespect, “it seems to me that there appears to be something of a disconnect between the White House, the Defence Department and the Navy at present. Respectfully, sir, in my capacity as your senior naval advisor in the British Isles, I recommend that you communicate, in the strongest possible language to the State Department that if somebody over there in Washington wants to have a shooting war on his hands, he’s doing a swell job.”