steers. It should have impressed him and I think that it did—nobody could
ignore a visual demonstration!—but what report he made to his leader we
never knew.
The British Isles were visited repeatedly during the wait by bombing
attacks as heavy as any of the war. I was safe enough but I heard about
them, and I could see the effect on the morale of the officers with whom I
associated. Not that it frightened them—it made them coldly angry. The
raids were not directed primarily at dockyards or factories, but were
ruthless destruction of anything, particularly villages.
“I don’t see what you chaps are waiting for,” a flight commander complained
to me. “What the Jerries need is a dose of their own shrecklichkeit, a
lesson in their own Aryan culture.”
I shook my head. “We’ll have to do it our own way.”
He dropped the matter, but I knew how he and his brother officers felt.
They had a standing toast, as sacred as the toast to the King: “Remember
Coventry!”
Our President had stipulated that the R. A. F. was not to bomb during the
period of negotiation, but their bombers were busy nevertheless. The
continent was showered, night after night, with bales of leaflets, prepared
by our own propaganda agents. The first of these called on the people of
the Reich to stop a useless war and promised that the terms of peace would
not be vindictive. The second rain of pamphlets showed photographs of that
herd of steers. The third was a simple direct warning to get out of cities
and to stay out. As Manning put it, we were calling “Halt!” three times
before firing. I do not think that he or the President expected it to work,
but we were morally obligated to try.
The Britishers had installed for me a televisor, of the Simonds-Yarley
nonintercept type, the sort whereby the receiver must “trigger” the
transmitter in order for transmission to take place at all. It made
assurance of privacy in diplomatic rapid communication for the first time
in history, and was a real help in the crisis. I had brought along my own
technician, one of the F. B. I.’s new corps of specialists, to handle the
scrambler and the trigger.
He called to me one afternoon. “Washington signaling.”
I climbed tiredly out of the cabin and down to the booth on the hangar
floor, wondering if it were another false alarm.
It was the President. His lips were white. “Carry out your basic
instructions, Mr. deFries.”
“Yes, Mr. President!”
The details had been worked out in advance and, once I had accepted a
receipt and token payment from the Commandant for the dust, my duties were
finished. But, at our instance, the British had invited military observers
from every independent nation and from the several provisional governments
of occupied nations. The United States Ambassador designated me as one at
the request of Manning.
Our task group was thirteen bombers. One such bomber could have carried all
the dust needed, but it was split up to insure most of it, at least,
reaching its destination. I had fetched forty percent more dust than
Ridpath calculated would be needed for the mission and my last job was to
see to it that every canister actually went on board a plane of the flight.
The extremely small weight of dust used was emphasized to each of the
military observers.
We took off just at dark, climbed to twenty-five thousand feet, refueled in
the air, and climbed again. Our escort was waiting for us, having refueled
thirty minutes before us. The flight split into thirteen groups, and cut
the thin air for middle Europe. The bombers we rode had been stripped and
hiked up to permit the utmost maximum of speed and altitude.
Elsewhere in England, other flights had taken off shortly before us to act
as a diversion. Their destinations were every part of Germany; it was the
intention to create such confusion in the air above the Reich that our few
planes actually engaged in the serious work might well escape attention
entirely, flying so high in the stratosphere.
The thirteen dust carriers approached Berlin from different directions,