Warsaw Concerto, page 28
part #13 of Timeline 10_27_62 Series
Pat Brown was a West Coast operator who had just, by a whisker, got re-elected for another four-year term as Governor in Sacramento. As for Muskie, he seemed to many people to be an ‘almost’ perfect, uncontroversial nominee except that for all his ‘soundness’ he utterly lacked a popularist spark. Ironically, a man who combined Bobby Kennedy’s rhetorical skills, Pat Brown’s political nous and Muskie’s unimpeachable decency would have been the dream candidate, which was probably why the Democratic hierarchy was looking for another man to pick up the torch in 1968.
As for President Nixon’s previous avowal that he would not stand for re-election in 1968, well, everybody who was anybody in the American political establishment took that with a very large pinch of salt!
Moreover, if the show the Soviets had just put on at Tempelhof and Checkpoint Charlie was anything to go by, then it might just be that Americans would be looking – more than ever - to re-install a confirmed Cold War hawk like Richard Nixon in the White House.
All in all, the Republicans were sitting pretty.
A Nixon-Rockefeller or even a Rockefeller-Goldwater, or perhaps, Cabot Lodge platform would tick practically every conceivable box on a winning GOP ticket. Richard Nixon might have presided over the disaster of the atomic bombing of US cities, the horrors of the rebellion in the Midwest but when it had really mattered, he had stepped up to the plate, won the war and now ruled over a united administration enthusiastically rebuilding many of the international relations – both trade and military – so very nearly wrecked by his predecessors, Lyndon Johnson and Jack Kennedy, two Democrat Presidents.
The American people were not about to forget the botched ‘Peace Dividend’, the systematic neglect and paring back of the once invincible US military machine which had won the October war in a day, the blunders which had seen Korea ‘go communist’, the Chinese threaten to overrun Taiwan-Formosa, and had been powerless to contain a rebel rabble within the confines of the pre-Civil War Kingdom of Wisconsin. Tellingly, it had been a Democrat President, LBJ, who had signed the armistice with the rebels on the quarterdeck of the USS Roanoke. In retrospect, that had been the act which allowed the monstrous abomination of the Kingdom of the End of Days to murder millions of their fellow Americans only a year later, when everybody had known that at the time the Roanoke Treaty was signed the US Army was on the verge of snuffing out the contagion in a matter of weeks…
So, whatever happened in 1968 any Democrat running for the White House was going to be swimming against a rip tide. Basically, if a man had an obvious weakness, or was carrying political baggage of any kind, he was likely to be ploughing an inevitably futile furrow come election time.
“To tell you the truth,” Walter Brenckmann admitted, “we’re pretty much beat. We need a holiday, a time out. Right now, we don’t know what we think, about anything!”
Joanne changed the subject.
“Walter’s had book offers, you know!”
“Memoirs of a Yankee at the Court of Woodstock,” her husband chuckled. I’m no writer, it may be more up Dan’s street. That’s another reason we need to spend a little while stateside.”
Daniel Brenckmann, the couple’s middle son was married to a force of nature called Gretchen, old man Claude Betancourt’s favourite daughter. Dan was currently clerking for US Chief Justice Earl Warren and – for his sins, which must obviously have been egregious in a previous lifetime - the named lead drafter of the various outpourings of his boss’s Commission into the Causes and Conduct of the Cuban Missiles War. Dan and Gretchen had recently – on 19th November - been blessed with the birth of a second child Louisa Tabatha, Walter and Joanne’s fifth grandchild, all born since the October War, the night their eighteen-year-old ‘baby’, Tabatha, had disappeared in the bombing of Buffalo.
The Ambassador was suddenly looking directly at Margaret Thatcher.
“I’m also aware that the time may have come for you, for all sorts of reasons, to hear the voice of another American.” He smiled, a touch sardonically. “People in the State Department think Jo and me went ‘native’ a long time ago and that colours every word that comes out of my mouth. Like I said, personally, I don’t think the President is playing politics asking us to stay on over here but maybe, there are more important things than ‘stability’ and ‘continuity’ in this ‘special relationship’ thing between our two countries?”
The Prime Minister contemplated this without comment.
“If it is going to mean anything going forward,” her friend continued, “the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom needs to be based on more than just personal friendship, chemistry, whatever. You know that I think, I’ve always thought, that we ought to stand shoulder to shoulder on everything before, during and after Hell freezes over, Margaret. But that needs to be based on more than just you and me trusting each other; it needs to be ingrained in our two political and cultural identities. I like to think we’ve laid down some foundations for the future but it has to be for other people to build on the solid ground we’ve given them. That’s the way of things. We do our best and then we step aside and let our kids get on with it. Three years over here is probably enough but like I said, we’re still thinking it through. For one thing, I’m still in the US Navy Reserve and that means the President isn’t just the guy who sits in the White House, he’s my Commander-in-Chief. He’s asked me to think about staying on longer; so, I’m thinking about it.”
Joanne Brenckmann put down her Sherry, apologised and went off to supervise the ‘kitchens’. This was unnecessary of course, and she knew it but she had been a very pro-active housewife half her life, and there were times she missed being in real control of the way the Embassy household and family functioned. Besides, she knew her husband wanted to talk more privately with the British Prime Minister. Much that they were all friends together; business always came first.
“I have asked Roy Jenkins to take on the responsibility of being our permanent representative at the United Nations, Walter,” she confided, lowering her voice because she had not even briefed the full Cabinet yet.
“He’s a very good man,” her host acknowledged guardedly, knowing that the appointment of a man DC insiders regarded, wrongly, as a ‘champagne socialist’ to such a high-profile diplomatic post was going to send a decidedly mixed signal to the State Department. Especially, given that Margaret Thatcher’s trusted Foreign Secretary was seen – wrongly - by some parties in the Administration as a crypto-communist.
“So, say we all,” Frank Waters murmured, sipping his drink.
“Admiral Collingwood visited the Embassy when he was down in Oxford last week,” the Ambassador moved on.
Rear Admiral Simon Collingwood, VC, (Flag Officer Submarines, Development, Operational Planning and Training) only came down from his fiefdom in Scotland on very special occasions. Among his other responsibilities, he was the man charged with tying together the Joint Nuclear Strike Command.
Presently, the Royal Navy had three nuclear hunter-killer boats (SSNs) in the water, of which only the Dreadnought (pennant number S-101) was fully operational. Both Warspite (S-102) and Valiant (S-103) were trialling and working up, the former some three months ahead of the latter operating out of Malta. Three further SSN hulls were on the slipways of the Vickers works at Barrow-in-Furness where shortly, perhaps as soon as March 1967, the keel of the first British-built Polaris Missile boat (SSBN) – HMS Nelson (S-107) – would be laid down.
In the meantime, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (SSBN-600) with a joint USN-Royal Navy crew was anticipated to be rated as fit to commence ‘deterrent patrols’ sometime within the next three to four weeks although it was unlikely that she would be relieved of her training and familiarisation role any time soon, unless of course, there was some unexpected new global crisis. When a second American boat, the Ethan Allen class USS John Marshal (SSBN-611), was transferred to Simon Collingwood’s command it was planned that one of the two boats would be ‘on patrol’ for at least four months in any one-year operational cycle ensuring that by the time the Royal Navy commissioned its first SSBN – probably in late 1969 or early 1970 - built to an improved Ethan Allen class design incorporating all the operational lessons learned by the US Navy, the service would have a pool of experienced SSBN-men sufficient to ‘double crew’ HMS Nelson.
Simon Collingwood had wanted to personally report to the US Ambassador that the ‘remarkable level of co-operation at all levels with the US Navy had meant that the Royal Navy’s first SSBN would commence its first deterrent patrol ‘around the end of this decade’, rather than mid-way through the next.’
Lieutenant-Commander Walter Brenckmann (junior), a dapper, personable and by all accounts unreasonably accomplished submariner, who was every inch a thirty-year-old version of his father to look at, had come in for lavish praise from the United Kingdom’s ‘nuclear boat Tsar’, with whom he had got on with like a house on fire, from the moment he stepped ashore in Scotland.
Margaret Thatcher’s mood brightened every time somebody mentioned submarines, or the name of the man charged with the responsibility for building her nuclear submarine fleet. Occasionally, she experienced a needle of jealousy when he jetted off to New England to finesse this or that issue or problem with his US Navy counterparts, not all of whom – especially in the Navy Department – were as invested in the Joint Nuclear Strike Command project as others, resented having to surrender two boats, and allowing ‘Brits’ to crawl all over their own boats and programmes.
Rome was definitely not built in a day!
Simon Collingwood was the man who had sold her the concept of a nuclear-powered undersea navy which might one day underpin Britain’s place in the World. He was also the man who had explained to her how the Americans had managed to build precisely that sort of fleet in less than fifteen years.
‘It doesn’t matter who it is but somebody has to be God,’ he had advised her, ‘if we are to aspire to a similar technological, industrial naval goal by the end of the decade.’
Until the last year, technological and financial restraints had completely stymied the missile boat – SSBN - side of the endeavour, while the hunter-killer programme had, after maddening delays, now kicked into full gear.
Simon Collingwood’s most recent visit to Oxford had been to quietly bend the Prime Minister’s ear upon the vexed subject of where the savings accruing to the Exchequer from the Navy estimates - resulting from the cancellation of surface warship new-builds now superfluous given the transfer of so many vessels from the US Navy Reserve Fleet - might now be spent. Margaret Thatcher had sent him away with a small flea in his ear; Simon knew very well that his projects had already been generously funded and she had made it crystal clear that there was, literally, no more money left in the national piggy bank!
‘I did not want to disappoint you by not asking, Prime Minister,” the submariner had smiled ruefully. Thereafter, he had delivered a detailed summary of the report he had just delivered to the new Secretary of Defence, Viscount De L’Isle in respect of ongoing Argentine naval operations around and on the Falklands Archipelago and South Georgia.
‘Forgive me, I had not appreciated that Lord De L’Isle was unaware that SAS and Special Boat Squadron usually have a presence on South Georgia,’ he had apologised.
Outside, the storm battered the end wall of the Residence with such ferocity that the three people around the hearth involuntarily glanced up to reassure themselves that the ceiling was still there.
“I was at sea once in a typhoon during the first Korean War,” the Ambassador recollected. “We were on passage from Cavite, that’s Manila in the Philippines to Sasebo when it hit. It got so bad all I could do was turn the ship into the weather – damned nearly broached when we turned – and put her head into the worst of the seas. People tell you about fifty, or sixty feet waves but you have no idea what that means until you have them all around you and you’re going up and down like you’re in an express elevator for three days flat!”
Margaret Thatcher remarked that: “the Channel is closed to all UK-French shipping until this storm blows through, Walter…”
“Alain won’t be happy about that!”
The Prime Minister’s brow furrowed momentarily.
“Yes, well, there is very little that General de Boissieu is happy about these days. Honestly, sometimes I swear he’s going to ask us for golden elephants next!”
“The poor fellow is trying to fight a war, my dear,” Frank Waters quietly reminded his wife.
“Yes, well, we don’t get a constant stream of complaints from our own people in France.”
The old soldier thought about reminding the Lady that the logistical problems confronting the relatively small British Expeditionary Force (BEF) operating in Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula and along the estuary of the Loire, were of a substantially different kind to those of his friend, Alan de Boissieu’s large, geographically scattered and substantially irregular Free French armies operating along an ill-defined front stretching from Normandy to Schleswig-Holstein. The British forces could be continually re-supplied from Brest, Cherbourg and Le Havre, its lines of communication - above the Loire, leastways - were relatively short and rarely interdicted by insurgents, and moreover, the BEF had a functioning dedicated logistical battalion in situ guaranteeing that everything went smoothly.
Most of the time, anyway.
De Boissieu had none of that and because there was so much chaos in his rear areas – workers committees and local councils constantly vying for influence and supplies with his frontline fighting units, things simply not countenanced in BEF country – his Staff could never know for sure what food, ammunition, fuel or equipment had actually got through to its intended recipient. De Boissieu still did not have even the bare bones of the professional commissary, transport and engineering system he so desperately needed. The poor fellow was having to re-build the whole French Army and fight a dirty, very messy asymmetric war at the same time. It was a daunting task which would have challenged any man!
In fact, it was exactly the sort of thing one would not wish upon one’s worst enemy!
One possible solution would have been to send elements of the Army’s Home Command Logistical Corps to France but the British Army only had the men it had in England, and once they were gone, they were, well, gone and the cupboard would be bare.
Likewise, although miscellaneous units of the British Army, might be sent to beef up the French sectors of the front; again, the same argument applied. The British Army was horribly over-stretched everywhere and the deal Margaret Thatcher believed that she had made with the British people in March 1965, was that conscription would not be introduced to fight new foreign wars. Besides, the Army was a professional service manned by volunteers; it was not about to throw half-trained, under-equipped conscripts into chaotic battlefields dominated by irregulars, poorly disciplined citizen soldiers and berserker enemies.
The Lady had been nothing if not unambiguous in stating the United Kingdom’s rules of engagement on the continent in Parliament earlier that year. While her Government and its Commonwealth allies were prepared to assist the French people’s ‘struggle for liberation’ in every way it could short of beggaring the country, the bulk of the fighting – in what was basically a civil war - was going to have to be done by the people who had the most to gain, and lose. Specifically, the French themselves.
The British people had already gone short taking in, protecting and feeding as many as five million French men, women and children in England and in Northern France. British sailors, soldiers and airmen had died to seize and secure safe havens along the Channel coast. The Royal Navy alone had lost several ships and over three hundred men opening up and keeping open the French Channel ports in the spring of 1965. The Army had suffered as heavily driving the gangs, clans and looters who had terrorised the population of the coastal margins far back into the hinterland.
Now it was the turn of the French people.
Every new demand for more of this or that, or outrageous slurs inferring that ‘the British ought to do their share of the fighting’, and every criticism of the performance of the Navy or the RAF, or the intransigence by the commander of the BEF, sent the Prime Minister’s blood pressure soaring.
Nowadays, she tried to leave it to others to deal with Alan de Boissieu. How many times had she had to explain to the bloody man, or to one of his insufferably arrogant underlings that one just had to get on and fight wars with what one had to hand?
What general in history had ever gone to war with the army he wanted, as opposed to the one he actually had?
‘Mon General,’ she had declared in exasperation, ‘I can either have a skilled worker turning out guns or I can conscript that man into the Army where, by the time his training is complete, there is no new rifle to issue him with because the factory where the guns are made has had to shut down because all its best men are now in uniform!’
She had promised the British people something better, something to hope for, that if they played their part the nation might be rebuilt and that their children, all their children would grow up in a better, juster World. If that was going to happen normal civil, commercial, industrial society must flourish and the country had to be as self-sufficient as possible.
In the final analysis, somebody had to pay for the guns and bullets, tanks, aircraft and ships that defended the British Isles and the global trade routes that carried the raw materials and foodstuffs that kept the nation running.
If one was being horribly pragmatic, if France fell into abject chaos tomorrow the United Kingdom would still survive as a viable nation state fully capable of defending its borders from all comers. Not that that was in any way an outcome to be desired. In fact, the thought of co-existing with a failed nation twenty miles across the Channel from Dover was a nightmare. How soon would it be before the Low Countries, Denmark, Italy, and Spain and Portugal went the same way?
