“For God’s sake,” David protested to Kate. “I feel like a damned peacock.”
“You’re a very handsome peacock, my darling,” Kate assured him. “When you get home, you can walk around naked.”
He took her in his arms. “I can’t wait.”
At dinner, the news came that Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, had been slain by an assassin.
Their host, Lord Maney, said, “Nasty business, shooting a woman, what? But no one is going to war over some little Balkan country.”
And the conversation moved on to cricket.
Later in bed, Kate said, “Do you think there’s going to be a war, David?”
“Over some minor archduke being assassinated? No.”
It proved to be a bad guess. Austria-Hungary, suspecting that its neighbor, Serbia, had instigated the plot to assassinate Ferdinand, declared war on Serbia, and by October, most of the world’s major powers were at war. It was a new kind of warfare. For the first time, mechanized vehicles were used—airplanes, airships and submarines.
The day Germany declared war, Kate said, “This can be a wonderful opportunity for us, David.”
David frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“Nations are going to need guns and ammunition and—”
“They’re not getting them from us,” David interrupted firmly. “We have enough business, Kate. We don’t have to make profits from anyone’s blood.”
“Aren’t you being a bit dramatic? Someone has to make guns.”
“As long as I’m with this company, it won’t be us. We won’t discuss it again, Kate. The subject is closed.”
And Kate thought, The bloody hell it is. For the first time in their marriage, they slept apart. Kate thought, How can David be such an idealistic ninny?
And David thought, How can she be so cold-blooded? The business has changed her. The days that followed were miserable for both of them. David regretted the emotional chasm between them, but he did not know how to bridge it. Kate was too proud and headstrong to give in to him because she knew she was right.
President Woodrow Wilson had promised to keep the United States out of the war, but as German submarines began torpedoing unarmed passenger ships, and stories of German atrocities spread, pressure began to build up for America to help the Allies. “Make the world safe for democracy,” was the slogan.
David had learned to fly in the bush country of South Africa, and when the Lafayette Escadrille was formed in France with American pilots, David went to Kate. “I’ve got to enlist.”
She was appalled. “No! It’s not your war!”
“It’s going to be,” David said quietly. “The United States can’t stay out. I’m an American. I want to help now.”
“You’re forty-six years old!”
“I can still fly a plane, Kate. And they need all the help they can get.”
There was no way Kate could dissuade him. They spent the last few days together quietly, their differences forgotten. They loved each other, and that was all that mattered.
The night before David was to leave for France, he said, “You and Brad Rogers can run the business as well as I can, maybe better.”
“What if something happens to you? I couldn’t bear it.”
He held her close. “Nothing will happen to me, Kate. I’ll come back to you with all kinds of medals.”
He left the following morning.
David’s absence was death for Kate. It had taken her so long to win him, and now every second of her day there was the ugly, creeping fear of losing him. He was always with her. She found him in the cadence of a stranger’s voice, the sudden laughter on a quiet street, a phrase, a scent, a song. He was everywhere. She wrote him long letters every day. Whenever she received a letter from him, she reread it until it was in tatters. He was well, he wrote. The Germans had air superiority, but that would change. There were rumors that America would be helping soon. He would write again when he could. He loved her.
Don’t let anything happen to you, my darling. I’ll hate you forever if you do.
She tried to forget her loneliness and misery by plunging into work. At the beginning of the war, France and Germany had the best-equipped fighting forces in Europe, but the Allies had far greater manpower, resources and materials. Russia, with the largest army, was badly equipped and poorly commanded.