Ike and Kay by James MacManus

Author:James MacManus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co
Published: 2018-02-19T16:42:23+00:00

14

August-September 1944

The slaughter in the climactic battle for Normandy which had opened the gates of Paris to the Allies cast a long shadow over the grandeur and gaiety of the city. Kay and others on Eisenhower’s staff visited the battlefield in the immediate aftermath of the fighting.

Kay had seen plenty of dead bodies before, but nothing prepared her for the sight of corpses of men and horses piled on top of one another along the roads of France. The dead were almost all young Germans. They had fought harder and resisted longer than the Allies had believed possible without the presence of their commander-in-chief, Erwin Rommel. Now their broken bodies lay in hedgerows, ditches, fields, in wrecked vehicles and tanks, faces frozen in expressions of pain and shock.

Eisenhower was silent as Kay drove his armoured vehicle through the carnage with escort vehicles front and rear. The spectacle was made worse by the birds that flocked to the carrion. Crows and occasionally larger kites would lift their bloated bodies from the corpses and flap slowly away to seek a nearby tree or ruined building from which to look down on the intruders who had so carelessly disturbed their feast; as the convoy passed they would return, their blood-red beaks stabbing into flesh, always the horses’ carcasses first, then the human flesh.

It was possible to walk for hundreds of yards over dead and decaying bodies, and in many cases, along the roadside and in small villages, it was impossible not to.

“These are scenes that could only be described by Dante,” Eisenhower said quietly. He wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular but giving vent to feelings shared by them all. In her mirror Kay saw him staring intently at the birds as they lifted lazily in flocks.

“I’ve seen plenty of dead before, especially in London during the Blitz, but never like this,” she said. “So many young men, lying there like broken dolls – and what for? Nothing.”

She put the back of her hand to her eyes. Ike fished out a handkerchief, leant forward and handed it to her. She dabbed at her eyes and handed it back to him.

“Keep it,” he said. “You’re going to need it.”

“Can’t we bury them at least?” she said.

“We haven’t got the time or the men,” he said.

Kay heard harsh words of recrimination hurled back and forth in the car as she drove away. The inquest continued in closed meetings in which she could imagine Ike thumping the table, veins throbbing in frustration. No imagination was needed to understand his fury, written in the cold black ink of the teleprinter messages that clattered day and night into the command headquarters.

More than once Kay was summoned into a meeting to take notes as Eisenhower upbraided his commanders for letting the Germans escape in such large numbers to regroup and fight again.

During August and September Eisenhower moved between two different worlds: those of the Allied Commander and military mayor of Paris. The joy of liberation could not mask the violence of revenge wreaked on those who had collaborated.

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