After a moment, Branch said, “Sir, he wants to discuss transfer of field defense command to General Durward of British V Corps.”
Clay said, “Tell him I’m unavailable.”
“Sir?” Branch asked in a pleading tone. “He’s right here on the line.”
“Tell him I’m out using the two-holer.” Clay turned to me. “Alexander could get under my skin, given enough time.”
I followed the general toward Alex Hargrave. Midway, Clay stopped and his hand shot out to brace himself on a bale of hay, as if he were faint. His knees were shaking.
I quickly stepped to him. “Sir? You okay?”
He might not have heard me. He took a long breath, then began again toward Hargrave. He said. “Alex, I’m ordering Yellow Boy.”
United States Army lieutenant generals do not like to be heard to gasp, but that is precisely what escaped Hargrave. “Yellow Boy?”
“Right now. Pass it through.”
“General, do you have the authority for such an order?”
“I’m your superior,” Clay said in a wintry tone. “Do as I tell you.”
Hargrave’s small features were a blank of perplexity. He breathed stertorously. “General Clay… Wilson, do you realize what you are doing?”
“Fully.”
“You will be the first commander in this war to break the 1925 convention against its use.”
“Pass the order to your divisions, Alex.”
Hargrave gripped the upturned fruit crate that was acting as his desk. “I must ask to see your authorization from General Marshall or the president in Washington or from the prime minister.”
“Are you failing to discharge an order from me, Alex?”
Generals Lorenzo and Jones were motionless near the barn door. The field telephone dangled from Captain Branch’s hand.
“Let me see the command from Washington or London, sir,” Hargrave said, holding out his hand.
Clay at that moment resembled a brawler. Chin down, shoulders bunched, fists clenched, neck thick and corded. He said in a voice dark with both rage and regret, “Alex, for failure to follow an order of your superior officer, you are relieved of command.”
Hargrave said softly, as if in the presence of the dead, “Don’t do this, Wilson.”
“You are dismissed.” Clay turned to the door. “Burt, are you still following your commander?”
General Jones replied stiffly, “Yes, sir.”
“Then you are promoted to I Corps commander. Issue Yellow Boy to your units. Tell me when it is underway.”
“Yes, sir.” With a last glance at Hargrave, Jones rushed to Captain Branch’s signal station.
Hargrave whispered, “For the love of God, don’t do this, Wilson. Think of what you will release upon the world.”
Clay spun on his heels. As he brushed by me, he said, “Follow me, Colonel Royce, immediately.”
I hurried after him to one corner of the barn. That command, to follow him, was the most urgent he gave me during the invasion. I feared he was going to test me as he had General Hargrave.
I had forgotten that I was nothing but his sounding board. He squared himself, nodding toward Burt Jones who was bent over a radio with Captain Branch. Clay fairly snarled, “You know why I’ve gone to Yellow Boy, don’t you, Jack?”
I was breathless from the spectacle of a commander ordering use of an outlawed weapon and from General Clay’s taut dismissal of his friend of three decades. “Sir?”
His voice softened. “When the crap begins to fly in Washington and London, no one is going to listen to anything I have to say.”
“What?”
“I think I’ve caught the German celebrating, Jack.”
“What?”
If I weren’t such a scrupulous reporter, I would make myself sound brighter throughout this narrative.
“The German has had his way for four days now, and he has begun to celebrate. He can’t help it. It’s human nature, loath though I am to credit the German with that. History teaches the danger of celebrating early.”
Then I understood him. He was going to justify himself before the court of his aide-de-camp, who was known for paroles and concurrent sentences.
“The kaiser lost his head during the first hours of the Somme in 1918 and raised the hurrahs of victory.”
I wanted to search for a box of gas masks. I couldn’t remember if I had ever been issued one.
“And the Austrian Archduke Charles after the victory at Aspern/Essling was so elated he became incapable of decision.”
I asked in a rush, “Sir, do we have gas masks? Where do we keep them?”
Clay continued, “And the Hessian, Colonel Rall, was so overconfident that he was dead drunk when Washington was crossing the Delaware toward him.”
“Maybe the quartermaster would know about the masks. I don’t think I’ve ever had one on.”
“Jack, for Christ’s sake, you aren’t listening. Forget about the goddamn gas mask a moment.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied dubiously.
“Overconfidence will throw a commander off his pace, Jack. Just before the battle, Napoleon said Waterloo would be a picnic. Bonnie Prince Charles had an unfounded belief his five thousand followers were invincible, and they were destroyed by the English in 1746. And you wrote about Burgoyne in that interminable thesis of yours. So you know that he was enthusiastic before Saratoga and that the colonials destroyed his army.”
My God, was that German gas from a retaliatory strike coming through the barn door? No, just dust blown by the wind.
“The German has had his way too long. Do you get my point?”
“What?” Maybe General Lorenzo knew where our masks were. He seemed to know everything.
“The German is overconfident. He has allowed himself to stray about three feet too far from his gas mask. So I’ve got him by the balls.”
Burt Jones left the signal station and walked toward us.
I said, “By the nose is a better metaphor in this case, sir.”
As a courtesy to you, the reader, I have omitted many of General Clay’s historical references from this narrative, although, I admit, it may not seem that way. This one is included in full because it struck me as forced, a bit frantic. He was pitiful and poignant, thinking he had to justify himself to me.
Jones said, “The orders are out, General Clay. The first shells are on their way.”
When Jones had retreated, the general said, “Jack, the Great War showed that if troops are expecting a gas attack, casualties are less than two percent, but if the enemy is surprised by chemicals, the casualty rate is seventy to ninety percent.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I think I’ve surprised them, don’t you?”
Indeed he had.
Poison gas does not discriminate in favor of civilians, of course.
The Haslemere Savings Bank was managed by John Lind. Haslemere is midway between London and Portsmouth. Wehrmacht troops had passed through the town while Lind and a teller had hidden in the bank’s cellar. When the scattered firing and artillery bombardment had lessened, they cautiously climbed up to the ground floor to peer through the window to the street. Several other civilians had ventured out. There were no Germans to be seen, until a three-vehicle convoy rumbled down the street. They were armored cars, Lind decided, and clearly German, since he saw a coal scuttle helmet poking from one of the hatches.
Then an apple-green vapor swept down the street as if it were the armored cars’ exhaust. Lind told me, “Early in the war, the greatest fear was of gas. I knew instantly what the cloud was. Bertie and I ran into our old Chubb vault and closed the door. We waited as long as the air in the Chubb held out, about an hour. Then we emerged. The gas had vanished, but it was an anguishing sight that met us.”
Lind stepped outside onto the sidewalk. Five bodies lay there. “I knew most of them. Mrs. Able, the butcher’s widow. Peter Smythe, a carpenter. Harold Laidlaw, our solicitor. Others, all dead. I started running along, stopping every few steps to turn over and recognize the dead. It was a grisly business, Haslemere’s citizens sprawled along its lanes. And I thanked God I had sent my wife and child north.”