Alternate Generals II

Wondered if the young man knew he was dead.

Dowding had never before seen a ghost, but knew one when he saw him. A little startled that he was not more alarmed.

Followed the young man into a church. Took off his cap. Slid into the pew beside him. "Are you lost, son?"

The Pilot Officer nodded, gaze far away. "I was looking for heaven, actually. It should be here."

"Here?" Dowding asked.

The Pilot Officer nodded again. "Here. This. ThisEngland." Depth of feeling in the name. "But it's not here."

"No," Dowding said sadly. "It is not." Eyes to the cross, "How could He let this happen?"

"How could you?"

Dowding floundered. "How couldI?"

The Pilot Officer looked at him at last. "It is your fault."

Deeper and deeper under water Dowding floundered. "How is this my fault?"

"You weren't here for us."

"I–I was retired." How very puny and unacceptable that sounded to his own ears.

And deeper. "Are you sure you did not ask for it?"

Dowding coughed, surprised. "I never! Would never!"

"Did you not?" said the youth, then, in a voice not his, " 'Almighty Father, anything but this. I ca

"How dare-" Stopped himself. This boy had died for England. And he, he was preparing his pretty daughter's wedding.

"Are you sure you did not ask to get out of what needed to be done? Did not say 'It is too much for me? »

A searching moment. A croaking groan, "No. I didn't. I wouldn't. I would give anything for my country. Anything."

"Would you, Abraham?"

"My name is not-oh. Oh my." Gave him pause. Felt the quiver in his chin. The sacrifice of Abraham. "My family are dearer to me than life."

"Your life is not what hung in the balance."

"But… my son!"

"Your son. Your wife. Your daughter. Your happiness. Your sanity."

"Why them? Why my wife? Why my-" Could not talk. Was dangerously near to weeping again.

The Pilot Officer produced a sheaf of papers from his boot. Dowding recognized his manuscript. Part of it. "You say you should have devoted more effort to organizing communications and to developing the capabilities of the RDF. You should have. But it was not the task for a happy man to be wholly focused on the RDF, the links between the spotter corps and Ops and dispersal and the pilots in the air." He bounced the pages. "This calls for a strict taskmaster. Detailed. Blunt. Undistracted."

A man with a loving family was not so disagreeable and difficult as the time demanded.

"You weren't there, Hugh Dowding. And you were needed. And now youdare say you could have made a difference." He presentedTwelve Legions of Angels.

"I never had the chance! I feel there is no one else who could fight as I do!"

"To make the hardest decisions ever demanded of a man, when God Himself is silent? To stay the course without knowing for sure that all would be well in the end? With only the conviction of your own rightness and trust in what you ca

"I would have. By God, I would have. Inever asked to be relieved! I neverwould ask, had I the chance."

"Your children will never have been born."

Too many thoughts ramming together. Dizzy between hope and crashing despair. Drew breath with difficulty. "You're saying it can be done again!"

"It can be done the way you decided. Whatdid you decide?"

Would have jumped at the answer, but for the cost. "What of the souls of my children? If they are never born, do I condemn them to the outer darkness?"

"None of us has the power to damn any soul but our own."

Sat silent, gazing at the stained glass windows.

The Pilot Officer stood up. "Be here Saturday at eleven o'clock if you did not ask to be spared."

"Then what will happen?"

"Then you did not ask to be spared."

"My daughter's wedding is at eleven o'clock."

Met the Pilot Officer's silent stare. Not a surprised stare. Rather disparaging.

"I can't!" Dowding blurted.

"Then don't." The Pilot Officer stalked out of the church.

Dowding ran out to the street after him, but of course he was not there.

When Dick Trafford had his report ready for delivery, the Reichsmarschall was to be found at a hunt club.

The German airman who admitted the British air attache to the hall found his name amusing-Dick.Dick was German forfat. Dick Trafford, a slight man, was notdick.

"Our Herma

The girth and breadth of Herma

Surely he did not mean to inflict that bulk upon some unhappy steed!

But no. The Reichsmarschall stood regally still, posing for an artist with two full tubes of red oils in his arsenal. In the adjoining chamber, exuberant young Luftwaffe pilots drank liberated brandy and talked with their hands under a cloud of aromatic cigar smoke.

Without breaking pose, Herma

"Not precisely," Trafford found his tongue. "No one with any knowledge of the facts would. But to a layman- Who knows? He bandies about technical terms and numbers with such authority, someone might take him at his word. What with his rank."

"He does not admit that you lost to German superiority?"

"No one ever questioned the superiority of German strength and numbers."

"So his plot to defeat my Luftwaffe was to… do what?"

"Rather a lot of nothing, from what I gather. He would avoid fighting. Reserves everything he can."

"Andthat was going to stop the Stukas!"

"The Spitfires and Hurricanes he reserved could have neutralized the Stukas. He says. Truthfully, Mr. Goering, Stukasare slow."

"Not in a dive." Goering's wide chest expanded in pride.

"Mr. Goering,you would be quick in a dive."

Silence gripped the club. The pilots' boasting from the next room, the clinking of glasses, even breathing stopped.

The thump of tails wagging became very loud.

Until Goering's lusty laughter sounded the all clear, scattered the dogs, and upset the painter.

Goering dropped his pose, shooed the painter away, and called for a drink.

Told Dick Trafford that the RAF must silence Hugh Dowding. "He is yours. You take care of him."

And he was off to join his lads with a snap of his riding crop. "Tally ho!"

Clarice turned over in the bed, shook her husband's shoulder. "Mister Dowding! You are thrashing and you've got all the covers!"

To his mumbled apologies she offered to heat some milk. He told her that would be very nice, and the two shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen.

In the mundanity of this place-of the motions of this beloved woman, no longer young, heating milk, of his own slippers on his blue-veined feet-the demons with which he wrestled lost their reality.

He had been agonizing: Did I do this? Did I sell England for my happiness?

And if I sell my happiness back for England, what of my Clarice? My Sarah? My John? Their children?

Did I really ask for the burden of command during England's darkest hour to lift from my shoulders? And itdid?