As everyone expected, it was requisitioned for the duration of the war by His Majesty’s Government. Fewkstately homes” escaped requisitioning.
His Majesty’s Government’s need for space was virtually insatiable.
The situation became worse when the United States entered the war and began to ship air, ground, and naval forces (and their supply depots) to the British Isles. It was generally believed that the ducal airstrip would be expanded into an aerodrome for use by the United States Army Air Corps.
At every fifty feet around the perimeter of the lands of Whitbey House signs were mounted bearing the seal of the Crown and the legendkgovernment Establishment–Entry Prohibited.” Some of the signs were nailed to trees or affixed to stone fences, and some were mounted on stakes driven into the ground. The signs were cardboard. Already, after four months in place, they were growing ragged and illegible A requisition for more-durable signs had been submitted, but it was a question of priority, and there was no telling when they would be made available.
Around the twelve-acre area that converged upon Whitbey House itself, out of sight of the roads outside the estate, was another barrier, coils of barbed wire called “concertina.” Hanging from the concertina at fifty-foot intervals, more signs were painted on oblongs of twenty-four-by eighteen inch plywood. On these signs was a representation of a skull and crossbones with a simple legend beneath it, “Persons Trespassing Beyond This Line Will Be Shot on Sight.” Once requisitioned, Whitbey House had passed from the control of H. M. Office of Properties to the War Office, and from the War Office to the Special Operations Executive, and from SOE to a little-known American organization, the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.
The mission of the OSS was known in full to no more than a handful of people. Even Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff to SHAEF Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was not fully privy to the exact mission of the OSS, nor was Eisenhower’s Intelligence Chief, although they both believed that they were.
What most senior brass did know was that Colonel William J. Donovan answered to the President by way of General George Catlett Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army, though sometimes Colonel William J. Donovan answered to the President through no intermediary at all.
That was enough to convince them that Donovan was the most powerful colonel the Army had ever known. But it did not endear Donovan to them.
The skull and crossbones and rolls of concertina were American.
Just outside the barbed wire was a tent and hut encampment housing an American infantry battalion. On rotation, one of the four companies of the battalion provided a guard force between the concertina and a third barrier, enclosing just over three acres around Whitbey House itself.
The other three companies of the battalion carried on routine training but were of course available should there be a need.
The third barrier consisted of an eight-foot fence of barbed wire, with concertina laid on either side of the fence. There were in addition flood lamps, three to a pole, every hundred feet.
A constable of the Kent Constabulary was stationed in the gatehouse of Whitbey House. His function was to turn away casual visitors to the estate, but he was also equipped with a U. S. Army EE-8 field telephone.
When the Princess and the Ford passed onto the estate, he cranked the telephone and told the sergeant of the U. S. Army Guard at the first barrier that he had just passed two authorized vehicles, one of them carrying an American colonel.
The limousine and the Ford rolled for almost a mile through a man iii cured forest on a road laid out centuries before. The road had been designed then to provide as level as possible a route for the heavy carriages of the aristocracy rather than the shortest distance between the gate and the house.
When they emerged from the forest, Whitbey House itself came into sight at the end of a wide, curving entrance drive. The House was a brick and sandstone structure three floors high. As they approached, it grew ever more impressive, and by the time they reached the final U. S. Army guard post, it was impossible to see all of it without moving the head.