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V

Chapter ONE

Motor Pool, Naval Element,

SHAEF London, England

1600 Hours 24 December 1942

There were two white hats on duty in the small, corrugated-steel dispatcher’s shack when the tall, dark-haired lieutenant (j.g.) pushed open the door and stepped inside. He was wearing an overcoat and a scarf. His brimmed cap was perched cockily toward the back of his head.

The white hats started to stand up.

“Keep your seats,” the j.g. said quickly, and added, “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, sir,” the white hats said, almost in unison.

"My name is Kennedy,” the j.g. said. “They were supposed to call?”

“Yes, sir,” the older—at maybe twenty-two—of the white hats said. “You need wheels?”

“That’s right,” Kennedy said.

“I hate to do this to you, especially on Christmas Eve,” the white hat said. “But look around, there’s nothing else.”

There were three vehicles in the motor pool, a three-quarter-ton wrecker, a Buick sedan, and a jeep with a canvas roof but no side curtains. Kennedy understood the jeep was for him. Lieutenants junior grade are not given Buick staff cars, especially at the brass-hat-heavy Naval Element, SHAEF.

“Anytime you?

??re ready, Lieutenant,” the other white hat said. “Where we going?”

“Atcham Air Corps Base,” Kennedy said. “In Staffordshire. You know where it is?”

“Only that it’s a hell of a way from here,” the white hat said.

Kennedy had a sudden thought, and acted on it.

“There’s no reason that both of us have to freeze,” he said. “I’ll drive myself. ”

“Oh, I don’t know, Lieutenant,” the older white hat said. “You’re supposed to have a driver.”

“If anybody asks, tell them I gave you a hard time about it,” Kennedy said. “It’s gassed up, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir, and there’s an authorization for gas with the trip ticket.”

“Okay, then,” Kennedy said. “That’s it.”

“Lieutenant, would you mind writing down that you wanted to drive yourself?”

“Got a piece of paper?”

It was half past four when he turned the jeep onto the Great North Road. He had lived in London for several years before the war and for the first couple of hours on the Great North Road, he knew where he was. But by half past seven—about the time it had grown dark and the rain blowing through the open sides had soaked through his woolen overcoat—he was in strange territory and had to admit (which angered him) that he was lost.

He had a map, one he had drawn himself with care, even carefully listed the distance between turns in miles and tenths of a mile, but it had proved useless. And there were no road signs. They had been taken down in anticipation of a German invasion in the summer of 1940, and only a few of them had been replaced.

At nine o’clock he reluctantly gave up, and spent the night on a tiny and uncomfortable bed in a small country inn. It was a hell of a way to spend Christmas Eve, he thought.

At first light he started out again, unshaven, in a damp uniform. There had been a stove in the room, and he had hung his overcoat, jacket, and trousers over two chairs and a bedside table close to it. It had done almost no good.