Harry Turtledove (Editor) - Alternate Generals II

And down below, within the palace gates in those chairs where Hitler's favored sat, a bunch of old men called the Few.

He did not know what the Few were. The word just popped into his grief-addled head along with the thought that it was fifty years later and he was dead.

He had become quietly unhinged.

He fled, pushing through the crowds with barely audible requests for pardon.

His picture and his name had long since disappeared from the press, so he was not a widely known figure anymore. He passed unrecognized and scarcely noticed. He was not the first grown man to leave the aerial display in tears.

Hermann Goering blew back into the palace with an energized swagger. Dashed the offending manuscript off the table with his baton. Twelve Legions of Angels strew the Persian carpet. "How did you come by this work?" he demanded of the Oberstleutnant.

"The publisher turned it over to us, Herr Reichsmarschall."

Stopped the big man mid-strut. "He is publishing it!"

"Trying to. Yes, Herr Reichsmarschall."

"Would anyone take this Dowding seriously?"

"Difficult to say. Herr Dowding is not a particularly lovable figure. His most influential supporter-one Keith Park, very popular fellow-went down with his boys in the battle."

"So the man is not lovable," Goering dismissed that. "His words-are they dangerous or lunatic?"

"I… haven't the English to say."

"Then get English!" Goering bellowed. "Tell me what all this says!" Gestured about with his baton. "Briefly!"

The Oberstleutnant glanced sorrowfully at the scattered pages of angels. Noted with some small relief that Herr Dowding was a detailed, exacting man and had the pages numbered and clearly typed.

"Tell me if what he says in this book could make sense to anyone, or does Hugh Dowding come off the complete fool he seems to me. No use shooting an old man unless we have to. Someone could decide he was lovable!"

Hugh Dowding moved without direction, oblivious to his surroundings until his soles crunched on a pavement aglitter with glass shards.

He lifted his gaze to a storefront. Had been this way before, yet was slow to recognize the jeweler's shop where Sarah's young man had bought the ring with which he had asked for her hand. The shop was dark within, all chaos and ruin.

He stepped carefully through the gaping opening that should have been a window. "Mr. Rose? Mr. Rose?" Searched the shambles.

A curt bark from the street: "Here now! You there! You there! " The silhouette of a bobby at the window. "I see you! Out with you now!"

Hugh Dowding picked his way back through the glass and splinters to the window. Inquired, "Mr. Rose. Where is Mr. Rose?"

The bobby sized him up. Decided the older gent was not the looter he had first taken him for. "Here now." Reached over the sill for Dowding's elbow. "Mind the step."

"Did Mr. Rose get out before this happened? Is he well?"

"I wouldn't worry about that much, sir, if I were you. Move along now." He motioned with his nightstick. The armband, de rigueur these days for men in uniform, waved a spidery cross.

Hugh Dowding hurried home.

Lights in all the windows welcomed him. The door opened to an oasis in the horror of the day, the house warm and alive with gay feminine chatter. Sarah and her bridesmaids practiced hooking that eternal train of satin onto Sarah's bustle.

Sarah turned at her father's entrance. Beamed, showing off her assemblage. "What do you think?"

Tears again. Found his wife at his side. His arm fit naturally around her waist. "Clarice, can this vision possibly be mine?"

She gave his chest a tender slap. "No one else's."

Their daughter was radiant.

Clarice carried a lot of sewing stuff under one arm. A work in progress. "What's all this?" Rather late to be constructing another dress.

"We've had a bit of a disaster," said Clarice. "My dress got burned at the cleaner."

Hugh Dowding bristled. What had the clot been thinking to use that kind of heat on antique silk? "I shall have words with the bounder."

But no. There were no words to be had with the proprietor.

The dress had burned along with the rest of the cleaner's establishment.

Dowding drew the curtains closed. The world outside had gone to hell.

Dick Trafford, the British air attache upon whom the task had been foisted, turned another tedious page. Groaned. Ground his teeth at every self-righteous paragraph.

What made Stuffy Dowding think that anything he did could have made a difference? He would have forced us into a defensive battle. His strategy involved avoiding casualties rather than inflicting them on the enemy. His plan was to hold out until the Channel became too rough for the Germans to launch a crossing. Not the sort of military objective that wins wars.

He found fault with everything the RAF did. Especially with the RAF's finding fault with that Heath Robinson defensive organization Dowding left behind him.

Trafford did not appreciate the accusatory tones with which Stuffy dressed down those who sabotaged his RDF system.

Sabotaged. He had the nerve to use that word!

The Radio Direction Finding system successfully detected enemy aircraft approaching England, but that information had not arrived where it needed to go. The links of Dowding's complex communication system broke down. Our fault .

He blames us for lack of intercepts. Likens us to inept runners in a relay race, bobbling the baton pass.

Does this man not realize how difficult it is to route information in times like that? There was no time! The information could change in a moment.

The system would have needed to work like a clock, and Dowding certainly had a clocklike mind. No fighting man here.

Had Dowding still been in charge, he would have eliminated standing patrols, and instead waited until his RDF detected enemy craft on their way. This (he says) would lessen the chance of the Luftwaffe catching us on the ground between patrols.

Kept harping on the harsh reality that a Spitfire needed twenty minutes to climb to effective altitude. True. But might the humble air attache point out to the esteemed ACM Dowding that the RDF apparatus point outward ? Once the Luftwaffe crossed the coast, they were out of electronic sight. What point having the altitude advantage over the enemy if you did not know whether he had turned?

To this problem, Dowding answered with his Observer Corps. A true scientific marvel there. Involved men and women with binoculars going outside and looking up.

This Stone Age organization would have telephoned vectors to Ops who would track the plots on a map. Ground Controllers would radio the course changes to fighter aircraft already aloft.

Did the man not read his own words? Could he not see how stuffy he was? The whole concept ran so counter to the RAF fighting spirit that one could not read more than a page of it without needing to get up and walk off the insult.

Dowding wrote in highly critical terms of the aggressive leadership that followed his tepid reign. He found fault with RAF attacks on the Luftwaffe bases in Normandy.

Well, Stuffy, if we had not hit their airfields, there would have been still more of them camping on the French coast in still closer striking distance of our shores. We would have lost sooner .

Dowding's contention was that we should have preyed on the weakness of the ME 109, which the Spitfire shared; its lack of range. A fighter going either direction had only minutes over enemy territory in which to do battle before it must turn around, else risk ditching in the Channel. A fighter over its own homeland could battle until it dropped out of the sky into friendly soil, the pilot free to fight again.