With an effort, I opened my hand.
We dropped toward the panzers. The terrain rose with sickening velocity. Just when I could make out the black cap of the German tank commander in his hatch, Norman pulled back the stick. The Cub’s struts groaned, or it might have been me. I glanced at the gauges. We were passing 180 miles an hour. Norman had once told me, in a fit of rancor about being deprived of a Mustang, that the Cub would fall apart if it ever broke 150. The fuselage creaked and the engine howled.
Norman banked the Cub into a tight circle over the panzers. He wagged the wings. With each roll the wings were almost perpendicular to the ground. My throat was packed with bile.
Around and around we went. The panzers were beneath me, then seemed to soar out of sight overhead. Then again they appeared below, to race away out of sight beyond the top of the Cub’s window. Intent on their prey, the German tank crews may never have known we were over them.
The Canadians saw us, though. Their tanks turned on their axes to cover the three-man antitank crews who ran toward the hill. Even at our height and despite Terry Norman’s gyrations with his plane, I could see their recoilless rifles. The Canadians disappeared into the trees fifty yards from the panzers. Norman calmed the plane. I swallowed and swallowed, desperately trying not to vomit down the back of General Clay’s neck.
We saw a flash, followed by smoke filtering up from the trees below.
Norman said, “One panzer down.”
“Let’s get going, Captain,” Clay intoned. “We don’t have time to direct traffic all day.”
I learned later that the Canadians successfully ambushed their ambushers. The three panzers never made it out of the woods. The Canadians of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Armored Infantry, did not suffer a single casualty during that brief engagement.
It would have been unlike General Clay not to mention his role in the affair, so he sent the Canadians’ commander, Henry Bisset, a telex: “General Bisset: I waved the wings of my plane at some of your soldiers this morning. Simple courtesy dictated a return salute, even from Canadians. s/Clay.”
Bisset’s return telex read: “General Clay: My soldiers did salute you. Did you not smell it? s/Bisset.”
We landed near Tonbridge, where AEFHQ Central met us. We spent an hour inside the truck. Again I take pains to mention that Clay received thirty-eight messages during this time and issued fourteen, all dealing with redeployment and resupply of his units. He also held radio conferences with the Defense Committee. Generals Girard and Lorenzo were also at the station, deliberating with Clay. When he spoke directly with the prime minister, he asked for privacy.
I therefore never had notes of that conversation, despite the insistence of several historians that I destroyed them.
When we emerged from the truck, we were surrounded by American soldiers, their rifles across their necks or hanging limply from their hands. Their uniforms were disheveled and a few were missing helmets or packs. It was a sea of haggard, frightened, defeated faces.
Clay waded into the soldiers. He called out, “What in hell are you men doing?”
None of them said anything. None broke pace to the rear. They would not look at him.
The general grabbed one of the infantrymen by his shoulders. “What’s your unit, soldier?”
The reply was meek. “2nd Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, sir.”
Clay held the first soldier by his uniform while he roughly handled a second, jolting him to a stop. “What’s your unit?”
“2nd Quartermaster, 2nd Infantry, sir.”
“And you?” Clay demanded of another infantryman.
“2nd Recon Troop, sir.”
“Do you men know where the goddamn front is?”
No one said anything. The only sound was the shuffling of boots and distant artillery rounds. One of the soldiers was using his rifle as a cane. Another wore his arm in a sling. One infantryman was leading another who had a blood-stained bandage over his eyes.
Clay marched back to the truck. He grabbed a trenching spade from the pack of a passing serviceman, then smacked the flat of the blade against the command truck’s hood. He struck it several more times until he had their attention. The infantrymen turned to the general, reluctantly it seemed. I doubted they would be receptive to a rousing pep talk.
I consulted with David Lorenzo before transcribing here General Clay’s next words. The general’s brief oration to the river of men drifting past AEFHQ Central has been used against him. I wanted to check my memory of it against Lorenzo’s. We agree on the following.
General Clay yelled, “Your men’s units are mixed, and that means you are running in disarray, doesn’t it?”
He was not expecting an answer.
“I didn’t give the order for any of your units to fall back as far as Tonbridge. That means you are fleeing your posts. I didn’t bring you soldiers over here for you to walk away from your duty. Don’t you SOBs know that it’s cheaper to hold ground than to retake it?”
Again Clay was met with silence. Surly silence.
“And I goddamn guarantee you that I am going to retake what you’ve lost.”
His gaze singled out a soldier. “You, where in the goddamn hell is your Ml?”
The soldier muttered something.
The general ran at him. He fairly lifted him off the ground by his collars. “It is a dereliction of duty to abandon your rifle.” Clay spun to me. “Colonel, notify 2nd Infantry MPs to arrest this man, and anyone else found without his personal weapon.”
Lorenzo and I cannot deny that General Clay was in a fury.
“Your units are still at the front, but you soldiers have left them. Deserted them.” He drew a line in the dirt with his foot, like a boy challenging another to cross it. Then he turned again to me, the dispatcher of his orders. “Colonel Royce, you are to post headquarters company MPs along an east-west line right here. Any soldier crossing that line toward London without his unit will be dealt with summarily.”
That is the phrase he used, both Lorenzo and I recall clearly: dealt with summarily. I state emphatically General Clay did not say they were to be shot. Some analysts have gone so far as to assert that Clay established drumhead courts, that firing squads roamed between London and the front.
I personally issued the order over General Clay’s signature. It directed military police to detain suspected deserters. No more, no less.
The soldiers stared at him balefully. Clay’s jaw was thrust forward and his fists were on his hips.
One soldier, a corporal with a bloodstain on his sleeve, made a step to cross the line.
Clay said in a chilling voice, “Son, you had better believe that I am worse than the German.”
The corporal hesitated, inhaled loudly, then turned back. It is also patently untrue that Clay barked Frederick’s famous phrase, “Dogs, would you live forever?”
As if a DI had called an about face, the beaten formation of stragglers turned around and began treading south, again to face the invaders.
General Clay’s day up to that hour has been set forth with particularity, beginning with the morning War Ministry meeting in London until the showdown with his own soldiers near Tonbridge at three in the afternoon. I have done so to dispute irresponsible hearsay reports that the general had forsaken his command to fight as a common soldier, that he turned viciously on his own troops, that he was touching upon madness.
There is no question, though, that General Clay was achingly aware his army was disintegrating. His place in the military history he knew so well would be as an utterly defeated commander.
I personally investigated the death of Lady Anne Percival. In light of the charges bandied about regarding her and General Clay, I decided to dig and pry and then reconstruct her last moments. I will be called ghoulish, perhaps deservedly so.