The Commodore

By John D. Lowe

What if you had to be at a particular train station in England at a particular time on a particular day and you didn't know why? What if you met that one person there that meant everything to you but you hadn't met before and she had been compelled to be at that station at that time on that day as well? What if many things between you were familiar but yet you didn't know why? In The Commodore these are the questions that Jack and Emma ask themselves as they meet for the first time in a train station in Fleet, England in June of 2001. They had to be there and as they talk they inadvertently bring up connections between themselves that they had not been familiar with until they met on this day.

As a train arrives at Fleet Station in December of 1942, in war torn England, military analysts Sam Harbour and Madison Bell are quietly joking with each about something that becomes familiar to Jack and Emma on that June day in 2001.

From Eisenhower's secret London bunker to FDR's Hyde Park estate Madison Bell and Sam Harbour try to change history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2008
• ISBN: 9780595633005

John D. Lowe

Mr. Lowe, who comes from the world of Wall Street, has lived in England where he worked on special projects. At the age of 13 he first visited the Normandy Beaches and the Ardennes, and has spent years since walking the battlefields in Europe. He now lives in Cresskill, NJ.

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Contents

December 1942

Boxing Day 1942

January 25, 1943

January 31, 1943 Stalingrad, Russia

Sunday, March 14, 1943

Sunday, March 22, 1943 ---- The Chimney Sweep Cottage

Spring 1943

July 1943 --- The Kursk Offensive

August 1944 On The Continent

September 1944 ---- Hyde Park, New York

September 9, 1944 ----- England

Sunday, September 10, 1944 ---- Fleet Road

September 15, 1944 --- Invasion-Holland

September 19, 1944 --- Montgomery’s XXX Corp

October 3, 1944 --- Near ‘Hell’s Highway’, Holland

Home-------

This Book is Dedicated to:

Julia, who I have loved through time;

Inge Wulff Grayson, whose Father died with Paulus’s 6th Army at Stalingrad;

Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris who tried to save his country and the world from Hitler, as early as 1938;

and

All of those left behind, who will be forever young

Glossary of Allied Code Names

Franklin Delano Roosevelt*****ADMIRAL Q or VICTOR

The Russians **************** ALI BABA

The US Army ************* DESTINY

Eisenhower ***************** DUCKPIN

Churchill *FORMER NAVAL PERSON or COLONEL WARDEN

Stalin ************** GLYPTIC

Free French ******** GOLLIWOG (not referenced)

Cordell Hull ******** SINBAD (not referenced)

Build-Up of American Troops in Britain******** Bolero

Across-Channel Invasion in 1943*********** Round-Up

Commodore Code Names

Emergency Message ************* FLASH

Unquestionable Source *********** CLASSIFIED-U

Immediate Emergency ************ CODE BLACK

D-Day Carte Blanc Initiating Phrase **

THREE PENCE BROKEN CANDLESTICK

D-Day Carte Blanc Counter Recognition Phrase **

THAT CURRENCY SOUNDS ABOUT RIGHT

German Military Tactical Predictions ** CRYSTAL BALL

Referenced World War II Code Named Conferences

ARCADIA **** December 22 1941 – January 14, 1942; Washington, D.C.

Europe First declaration

SYMBOL **** January 14 – 24,1943; Casablanca, Morocco

Unconditional Surrender

declaration

Italian Campaign plans

Cross Channel Invasion in 1944

TRIDENT **** May 12 – 27,1943; Washington, D.C.

Italian Campaign

Increase Air Attacks on

Germany

Increase War in Pacific

QUADRANT **** August 17 – 24,1943; Quebec, Canada

D-Day set for 1944

Re-organization of South East

Asia Command

Secret Agreement on nuclear

information

SEXTANT **** November 23 – 26,1943; Cairo,Egypt

Declaration for Post War Asia

December 4 – 6,1943; Cairo,

Egypt

Agreement to Complete Air

Bases in Turkey

EUREKA **** November 21- December 1,1943; Tehran, Iran

First Meeting of The Big Three

Date for Operation Overlord

(D-Day) Set

OCTAGON **** September 12 – 16,1944; Quebec, Canada

Occupation of Post War

Germany

Continued US Financial Aid to

the UK

Invasion of Japan

General Glossary

COI **** Coordinator of Information (Forerunner to OSS)

OSS **** Office of Strategic Services (American Wartime Intelligence and Forerunner to CIA)

MI5 **** (British Domestic) Military Intelligence Section 5

MI6 **** (British Foreign) Military Intelligence Section 6

Fleet Train Station, England; 12 noon Tuesday June 26, 2001

Our eyes met and it seemed as though they had met before. It seemed as though it had been a long time in the past but only yesterday. It was the first time that I saw her but I had this strange sense that we both felt that we had only taken a brief absence from each other until we could meet again. It was all rather odd but strangely not unsettling. Actually; an unusual warmth, which I had never experienced before, swept over me and I felt contentedly whole. It was a feeling of wholeness that I had never felt before, at least not in this lifetime.

Her name was Emma and for just an instant I saw her someplace other than in this small train station in Fleet, England; a town I had been drawn to on this day at this hour by powers beyond my understanding. I saw her for an instant, in my mind’s eye, dressed in a striking emerald green dress suit from the 1940’s with squared shoulders, white trim and holding a matching wide brimmed hat. She had blonde hair flowing in waves to her shoulders with a little shock of hair coming close to her right eye like Veronica Lake, and her lipstick was a beautiful deep red which highlighted her clear white skin and gray-green eyes. I saw this in a flash and in an Art Deco setting. There was also the image of a large clock in the background highlighted with blue light and the word Commodore came to my mind, and then it was all gone in a second, other than this beautiful woman sitting across from me.

She was wearing a simple white summer dress and powder blue blouse with very little make-up, if any, other than a slight touch of lip-gloss; and her hair, parted in the middle and not on the side, was blonde and barely shoulder length. We found ourselves staring at each other and the momentary vision that I had just had, of this same woman in the 1940’s, left me both startled and enraptured.

I had stood and, without taking my eyes off of her during that first encounter, walked the 10 yards to her without a second thought.

Hi, I’m Jack, I stated simply with my hand extended.

She took my hand softly, staying seated, and looked at me with warm curiosity as she slowly questioned, in an American accent which I could not place, Where have we met before?…………. I’m Emma.

I don’t know, I said as I pondered the possibilities, but I know that we’ve met someplace ………… sometime.

That’s curious, she nervously laughed, you say that as though it were another lifetime.

Strangely enough, that’s what it feels like, I muttered just above a mumble without truly thinking about it.

Strangely enough, I ………. feel the same, she stammered nervously.

Where are you from in the States?, I stated, changing the subject.

I’m not from the States.

You’re kidding.

No, I’m German.

It’s amazing, you also sound so familiar, besides sounding like an American.

I get the ‘..sound like an American’ quite a bit but never the ‘…familiar’, I’ve just always been good with languages and even though I grew up in Germany American English always felt familiar; maybe it was American movies, She said averting her eyes and then looking back at me with confused emotion now visibly showing in them.

What brings you to Fleet of all places? I questioned, suddenly feeling as though I should know.

Oddly enough, I can’t say, she said as I took a seat next to her while her eyes followed mine, I’m a doctor and I had this compelling need to work in the Cambridge Military Hospital this summer. That’s in the next town over from this one. And stranger still, I had a compelling need, for some reason, to be by the last door of the fourth car back on the first ‘slammer’ to London leaving at noon, or just after, on this day but instead I decided to stay in this waiting room. You may find all of that odd and I don’t know why I just told you all of this. It’s strange but I just had this need to be here ……………… as though my happiness depended on it.

’Slammer’, I’ve not heard that term in a long time if ever but just as you said it I knew it referred to the trains with the access doors along its sides which slam behind the last person to board or get off.

Laughing intuitively, Emma said, Very deductive of you having traveled on them, I would assume many times.

Smiling with embarrassment I had to admit, I’ve never actually been on one, I flew into Farnborough right down the way; I just knew it strangely enough. I too felt compelled to be here.

At this we both just looked at each other in brief silence. Then this ridiculous rhyme came out of my mouth without forethought: ‘Slammers are old and certainly cold and when one hears that old familiar door it reminds one of home.’

Startled, Emma commanded, Why did you say that? Where did you hear that?

I don’t even know what it means, I said with confused concern.

The scary thing is that I do. The door of the ‘slammer’ sounds like the walk-in freezer door of an ice cream shop someplace in New York where I have dreams, strangely enough, of being home, even though New York is far from my home.

I felt chills as I knew what she was talking about but I couldn’t quite put it together. I knew at that moment that I loved this woman deep inside of myself beyond all reason. I started to feel comfortable with the idea that I had always loved her even before this life and that I would protect her with my own life. I found myself at peace in a strange and frightening way. I could see the same feeling in her eyes as I heard the 12:10 train for London pull out of the station. What was going on?

On The Train to Fleet, England December 12, 1942

The Allied landings in North Africa had just taken place in November and there was now a damp bone-numbing chill in England as Sam looked across the short distance between seats at Madison. They smiled knowingly at each other and did not speak loudly as it would be odd to hear a young American couple talking intimately on a train in England in December 1942, unless they were in uniform and then it was still not yet all that common.

Madison the military/political analyst and person, at the end of the first full year of WWII for the United States, was taking on the weight of every Allied setback in North Africa and Sam was worried about her. Seeing her eyes wonder off into a daydream, as he knew she thought of home, Sam leaned over and, moving Madison’s wavy blonde hair aside, whispered in her ear, Slammers are old and certainly cold and when one hears that old familiar door it reminds one of home. Then he kissed her lightly.

You’re so ridiculous and definitely not a poet, she whispered back with a smile. Then she squeezed his hand across the short distance of the seats and continued, but you always know what to do to make me feel safe, 3 letters ‘3 letters’ was their own oral cryptogram for ‘I love you’ as they were lovers in the middle of a clandestine affair which started as a young romance back in 1938 while they were finishing their undergraduate work in Boston.

  

Both Sam Harbour, she called him her safe harbor on rare occasion, and Madison Bell had obtained their Phd’s in their early twenties. Sam had gained his in statistics from MIT with a good dose of history in undergraduate studies at Boston University. Madison had gone to Radcliff undergraduate where they had met and the source of her doctorate in history was a well kept secret as it was arranged as a low profile audit of classes in predominately all male courses. She already had a US government security clearance while in graduate school due to a paper she had written in her last year at Radcliff in concert with a Sam Harbour. The paper was written in 1938 and was prophetic of events to come in 1939 with Hitler’s move into Poland and the new concept of Blitzkrieg.

Madison was ahead of her time in her thinking and this left her in a state of suspended animation at times. By 1942 she had a fairly sound idea of what was coming in the future of the war. She would confirm this through Sam’s statistical work and submit the analyses to the Allied High Command, and spin the wheel hoping it would land on the proper reaction to their, by this time, joint work. But inter-Allie politics were not pragmatic and much of their analyses contradicted the British strategic mapping of the war, which they found themselves combating in 1942.

Just before U.S. entry into the war, and through the early years of U.S. involvement, President Roosevelt seemed to react to Prime Minister Churchill as the older brother to look up to, unlike his true older half brother James Roosevelt Roosevelt, who had little if any contact with his younger half brother Franklin. This reaction by the President helped to give more weight to the British war strategy. But Madison and Sam were not politicians nor where they psychologists. Massive numbers of lives were on the line and they, and in particular Madison, felt responsible for them. But on too many occasions, recently, they had been left helpless with regard to positively affecting this responsibility. They wanted to use their abilities and influence to end the war as soon as possible in order to save lives, and to save themselves and live life. Madison felt driven to create a better world to live in, a better world to live in before she and Sam could possibly have a family.

Sam and Madison had fallen in love while working on that 1938 paper. Actually, they knew they were in love the first time that their eyes had met. Madison had always joked about the proverbial ‘eyes meeting across a smoke filled room’ but in this case it became reality. She was sitting in the Boston Gardens in early spring of that year 1938 and in deep thought over a political research paper on Otto von Bismarck, which she was reading, when the voice of a research colleague snapped her back in time to the present. As she looked up she noticed another man standing next to him. As soon as her eyes met Sam’s the sounds around her faded and she did not even hear the introduction other than the name Sam. As she stood Sam extended his hand and simply said, I’ve heard so much about you but………….but I didn’t expect you to be so beautiful.

Madison just blushed and said, And I’m a historian too, ‘how ridiculous’ she thought just as she said it, as they still held hands in an unfinished handshake. She didn’t know what else to say, nor did he.

Their mutual friend John was caught standing in the middle of the two watching their awkwardness and he just laughed, For two of the brightest people I have ever known you both sound like bumbling school children.

They laughed as well and released each others hands but they both knew that day that they had traveled far in their lives just to meet each other and a happy warmth enveloped them both. They were able to collaborate on the paper that had so impressed the government that Madison was moved into a graduate program set up by the Department of State as a result of conversations with the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division, better known as G-2.

Both Madison and Sam were later given security clearances as they started contributing to US intelligence analysis of European activities. By the summer of 1941, even while finishing their graduate work, and doing it in record time, they would be working for the newly formed Coordinator of Information (COI), who was a man by the name of ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan. And near the end of the summer of 1941 they submitted their first report to the President of the United States on Europe, through what was then called the Research and Analysis Branch of the COI.

Madison was from an old Englewood, New Jersey family. She had grown up in this Victorian town just down the hill from the Palisades, which overlook the Hudson, and not too far from the new bridge into Manhattan named after the first President of The United States. Sam was from Newburgh, New York and he was only an hour and a half from Englewood by car or an hour by train, which was easier. Sam lived in the large stone Victorian home, overlooking the Hudson, which he had inherited from his parents who had been killed in a small plane piloted by his father in 1933. They both had a love of the Hudson River and sailing. They would spend their summers together on the Hudson as they completed their graduate studies.

Just as their second summer started they had found themselves once again sailing on the Hudson. It was May 31, 1939 and it had just hit 96 degrees Fahrenheit as they sailed past West Point and headed to the bend in the river near Noah Point. They waved to the cadets way up on what is known, at the Academy, as Trophy Point. As they waved a tear came down Madison’s cheek and she quickly wiped it away that day, but Sam had noticed.

I saw that, remarked Sam, what’s wrong baby?

War’s going to start and you know it just as well as I do and those young men up there are going to be in the middle of it.

They know that.

But they’re so young and bright and happy,……..I can’t stand the thought.

They’re also capable. They’re the best and the brightest and I couldn’t feel safer knowing that. One way or the other they will be alright because of their capabilities and they know this.

As calm as it was they were still making headway with Sam tacking the 26’ Wianno Senior with the name Whisper painted in white script, like a whisper, on the transom of the boat; but just as he finished speaking he looked at Madison with concern on his face, steadied the boat, got up and brought the sails down. Then sitting down again he reached over and brought Madison to him and held her tightly as she cried, her head cradled warmly by Sam between his neck and shoulder. Madison knew history too well and no matter what Sam said to try to make her feel better she knew that many of those bright young faces waving from the Point, way up above them, would not make it past their twenties.

That was the day that they sailed back instead of continuing further and around the point, partly because it was the hottest day on record for that day and partly because now they could not get those young men out of their thoughts, thoughts characterized by the secret knowledge that they both had with regard to what was going on in Europe and in the War Department.

They tied up in Newburgh at 12:59 in the afternoon and Sam told Madison that he wanted to take her to a special place on Broadway that he had never taken her to before.

So where is this special place and why have you never taken me there before?, she queried with a curious grin and her head tilted slightly sideways in the special way that she did it that would usually get Sam to reveal that which he hadn’t intended to reveal.

I can only tell you that it is 26 minutes away and I needed an appropriately hot day to make it truly special , said Sam with a cryptic smile on his face as he checked his watch, which showed exactly 1 PM. He would never tell her how she tilted her head with a completely captivating, quizzically naive look when she wanted him to reveal something; he never wanted her to change it, it would always offer him an incredible degree of warmth and she could have anything from him that she wanted at those times.

Exactly 26 minutes later they were at the front door of the Commodore.

What’s this? stated Madison with a surprised smile, seeing the display in the window advertising Breyer’s Ice Cream and malted milks with a little art deco man in an apron holding his hand open to a milkshake glass standing almost as tall as he.

As Sam opened the door they both looked at the blue neon light lined clock on the far wall, up above the door, way to the back of the building, at the same instant, and the minute hand was on 26. She turned before entering and seeing Sam’s smile said, Statisticians. 26, you’re very proud of yourself aren’t you?, and she laughed.

As she turned and they entered he just said, No, pure luck. 26 is my lucky number.

Who has a lucky number over 10 and besides, that’s my birthday?

A statistician; I like the 26th cycle of repetitive events and the fact that it’s your birth date in the sixth month is an added bonus.

And he smiled as she looked back at him again and said, You’re crazy; and she started to feel better again. This man had a way of wrapping her in his arms even when he wasn’t touching her. He made her feel safe, especially during these times, and she briefly thought how she wanted to make love to him at that moment.

Why is it called the Commodore Sam, that’s a strange name for an ice cream shop?

You’re the one with the graduate degree in history, I’ve just dabbled in it as a poor undergraduate, laughed Sam.

After no more than a couple of seconds of thought Madison blurted out, Vanderbilt.

Bingo.

But why name an ice cream parlor after Cornelius Vanderbilt?

Ah, I’m glad you ask. The ‘Commodore’, along with a fellow named Drew, finally connected northern New Jersey and Hudson Valley New York by train in 1852, before that it was two separate lines. The man facilitated the romance between a New York boy and a Jersey girl way into the future and what could be more appropriate than to name an ice cream parlor after him. The great Erie railroad, it’ll hold its own through the rest of this Depression if only to keep us easily connected.

That’s what I love about you, among other things, whispered Madison as she wrapped her arms around Sam and buried her head into that special place between his neck and shoulder for a brief moment before they took a booth. She loved his romance and his optimism as one who, as a pure historian, tended to see the downside of most things.

The Commodore stood on the right side of Broadway coming up from the water and was quite a way up the hill and into town. It had a cool recessed door with the Art Deco letters spelling Commodore just above it. The doors were a dark wood with half moon glass forming two opposing eclipses occupying the top third of the two doors with long brass handles almost traveling the length of the glass on the inside of each door. When they walked in the soda fountain was to their left surrounded by art deco fixed swivel stools with a low art deco metal back to them and chocolate brown cushions. Over the back of the fountain was decorative laminated wood with different layers of brown moving up towards a peak, which formed an art deco square. Booths lined each side of the shop. You had to step up and into them to sit and each decorative wood table was lit by an elongated art deco sconce set against the wall in middle of the booth. The light itself was softened by the elongated and decorative smoked glass shade with art deco lines in it. The woodwork for the whole shop was lined laminated board of soft and dark browns which terminated in the back of the parlor at a short corridor to the bathrooms crowned by a large clock highlighted by a soft blue neon light running around the inside of its circumference. To the right of the door, coming in from the outside, was a floor to chest level display case filled with chocolates. The interior was lit by three art deco glass chandeliers hanging low off the ceiling and running up the middle of the shop. The whole scene was cooled by three dark colored ceiling fans, one hanging between each of these small chandeliers.

That hot day in 1939 became a special day as they had ice cream in the Commodore and laughed about things that had nothing to do with the world outside of that little world in Newburgh, N.Y. that day. They would go to the Commodore many more times and even on cold fall days they would go there to discuss theory and just to be with each other. It became their secret, their safe haven from the reality now growing around them which was highlighted by Hitler’s execution of what, they know knew, was called Case WHITE in September of that year when he invaded Poland. The time when Madison was proven correct in her assumptions, about this invasion, backed up by Sam’s statistical data.

They had worked for the Research and Analysis Branch of the COI while finishing their graduate work in the summer of 1941 and then at the end of that summer, shortly after submitting their first report to the President through the COI, Madison found herself sitting alone in the Commodore waiting for Sam. He was to have met her at exactly 1:26 that day, a time that was part of their joking with each other and part of Sam’s preoccupation with time and punctuality. They had made the date two days earlier. It was past 2 o’clock and still Sam had not arrived.

She went to the telephone booth in the back beside the clock and called Sam’s number with no answer in return. Then she called her parents in Englewood to see if Sam had called there.

Her mother told her it would be better if she came home that there had been an accident.

On the train back to Englewood that day Madison just stared out the window at the beauty of the Hudson Valley in late summer and the only thing she could hear was Sam’s laugh and feel his love of the art of The Hudson River School, which she herself learned to love. She could feel him inside her as though he were part of her and his voice was part of her voice and she could feel his face as part of her face. They were so intertwined and she was now sick with fear. She hadn’t even asked her mother what it was about, she knew in her heart that Sam was gone and her introspective demeanor, interrupted only by short periods of quiet tears which punctuated her memories, attested to this.

When she arrived home late that day she found a Colonel from the US Army Signals Corp waiting for her in her parents’ front room. He informed her that Sam was being flown back to NewYork from a meeting in Washington, D.C. in a small military plane when it went down in the Chesapeake without a trace. He was so sorry but the government would keep her informed as Sam had named her his next of kin. All she could think of was the loneliness that Sam must have experienced as that plane was going down knowing that she was his only next of kin and that he would lose her too; then she truly realized that she had lost him and then she lost her footing to fall into a heap on her parents couch in a blur of uncontrollable tears.

  

A month later in September of 1941; with impending war and FDR’s secret ‘Germany First’ or Europe First policy, as it would later be termed by some analysts, in place with Churchill, Madison was offered a position heading a small American analysis group attached to British Military intelligence in Aldershot, England. Madison took the assignment wanting to get away from her memories along with the need to wrap herself in her work.

She started her work in late September of 1941 with two Americans and they had a small office in the great dome of the Cambridge Military Hospital. They were posing as research doctors with a temporary British military intelligence liaison officer assigned to them by the name of Colonel Clive Mumfreys.

The code name for the group was Commodore.

Colonel Clive Mumfreys was a British career officer with excellent social connections, having come from the upper class, which gave him a quick boost to his current rank. He is basically a good man and an intelligent man and he temporarily starts to fill the void left by Sam. Madison is not in love with him but she quickly starts to love him for the strength that he seems to have and the protection that he