Part 17 (1/2)
He looked as me as if I were stupid. ”The need to have a full moon or be near one,” he explained patiently, ”is to ensure a time of low tide at sunrise on the invasion beaches, so that mines and tank traps and so on can be cleared. The RAF and US Air Force would prefer an outright full moon, so that gliders and other planes can land before sunrise-which doubles the odds again.”
”Not exactly making it easy, are they?”
Stagg shook his head. ”I don't think it's any less daunting for the bra.s.s hats than it is for me. I have to present to them regularly now: Eisenhower, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, General Bull, Admiral Creasy, Air Vice-Marshal Wigglesworth...and all the other chiefs and deputies of SHAEF divisions. The first time was terrifying. Eisenhower looked at me and said: 'Whenever you see a good spell that would be suitable coming along during the next month or so I want you to tell us. Give us as much notice as you can.'”
”And have you?”
”What?”
”Suggested a date.”
”Not yet. None of the forecasters can agree. And there isn't enough data. We don't have enough weather s.h.i.+ps in the Atlantic. Sir Peter has promised more.”
He stood up and went to a map on the wall, showing me where s.h.i.+ps, marked out with flags, were dispersed across the ocean. ”This whole area has no weather s.h.i.+ps. The only good news is that the Germans are in a worse position. More or less the whole remaining Atlantic U-boat fleet is now concerned with sending weather information. They know just as we do that the Atlantic weather is what will determine the weather in the Channel.”
He sat down, taking off his gla.s.ses and rubbing his eyes with the backs of his fingers. ”Where was I? We have three teams of forecasters. At Widewing-that's the main US air base near here-there is a man called Krick and another, Holzman. Both colonels.”
I smiled ruefully, remembering the Glasgow hotel. I hadn't realised they held such high rank.
”Krick has compiled a statistical index of weather patterns in northern Europe going back forty years or so. He uses the a.n.a.logue method.”
The a.n.a.logue method involved selecting weather types from past periods that most closely matched the current weather and seeing what happened before. It was a bit like case law. The future is extrapolated from the past, with the forecast extending to as long as six days ahead.
”I've met them,” I explained, remembering with a nauseous twinge the poker game and the terrible hangover which followed it. ”Krick and Holzman. By chance, at Prestwick airport. Krick seems a jolly fellow, but as for the a.n.a.logue method, if that is what he practises, I'm not persuaded. Nature does not repeat itself like a workshop press; identical patterns do not develop identically; and it's not really possible to forecast more than two days ahead. Three days, max.”
”Exactly,” said Stagg. ”That is just what Charles Douglas says. Well, he's opposed to anything over two, in fact. He's pretty much made that the rule at Dunstable, as you will know from your time under him there. Fancy some tea?”
He stood up again, unbundling his long limbs like a praying mantis on a leaf.
”Yes please.”
He flipped a switch on an electric kettle. ”A gift from the Americans,” he explained.
I remembered Douglas running round the table, his tie and the tails of his suit jacket flying behind him. I suppose it must have been what's now called stress which made him do this, as well as the aeroplane crash in which he had been involved during his combat training as a fighter pilot. He was wounded five times in incidents after the crash, and that can't have helped either.
Like Stagg, Douglas had a thin face and a moustache. Well, lots of people had moustaches in those days. I considered him a man of tremendous skill and judgement, and to some people's mind he is still the greatest British practical weather forecaster of the century, with Ryman taking the palm for theory.
Very sound, very careful. He tended to start with the present weather data then would apply weather memory and weather theory by common sense, rather than according to a particular philosophy.
”Douglas doesn't apply past situations religiously, like Krick, or rely totally on theory, like Petterssen,” Stagg continued, shaking loose tea into a pot. ”He allows a kind of jiggle, a wrinkle, into his system, a s.p.a.ce for his own intuition, and he admits of theory whatever he is personally convinced by.”
All this tallied with what I knew of Douglas from my own experience. ”That's why, even though he stammers and stutters and sometimes can hardly speak his mind,” Stagg continued, ”I listen to him most-he is very aware of the complexity of any given situation, having more experience of the vicissitudes of British summer weather than the others. He is less likely to stick his neck out, which is Krick's preferred method. If you can call it that. And the Norwegian, well, he just seems to believe he's infallible.”
”That would be Petterssen?” I ventured.
”Sverre Petterssen, yes. You'll speak to him soon. The third member of the team. Rather academic, an expert on the upper atmosphere. A member of the Bergen school who has spent time in America. Pa.s.sage of fronts, deductions from the upper air...”
Stagg's voice trailed off wearily. With sad-looking eyes he stared at the tendrils of steam coming from the kettle.
”I know more about the upper air affecting the surface than I used to,” I said, trying to be helpful. ”Ryman did a lot of work on that at one stage.”
”Did he now?” said Stagg, musing. ”Well, I wish he was here now, because I often don't have a clue what Petterssen is talking about. It would be good to have someone to vet his a.s.sertions, which are made as if backed up by tons of data. Whereas actually his findings are based on quite new stuff. And as for his habit of revisiting his successes, well, that just gets everyone's back up. Most of all Krick. He just loves it when Petterssen's forecasts are wrong.”
He took off his gla.s.ses for a third time, this time rubbing his cheeks with his palms, like someone using a flannel to clean their face.
”It sounds as if you have a lot on your plate.”
”Yes. Krick and Petterssen are both tricky customers, They both have irreconcilable, fixed ideas, seemingly logically developed. I can hardly make them agree on the time of day, never mind next week's weather. Oh, there's another lot, too. Naval forecasters, Wolfe and Hogben, at the Admiralty centre in London. Very skilled on wave conditions, as you'd expect, and lower air. They don't have such dogmatic views as Krick and Petterssen, and tend to agree with one another, which is a G.o.dsend in one way, but...”
His voice trailed off again. I realised I was looking at an almost broken man. ”So, you all meet once a week?”
Stagg straightened up immediately. ”Good G.o.d, no. These people don't meet in person, except Douglas and Petterssen, who work together in Dunstable. No, we do it all by telephone-twice a day.”
I was puzzled. ”Why by telephone...and so often?”
Stagg chuckled. ”You know how Sir Peter is short of forecasters? Well, these people-among the best forecasters in the world-are doing lots of other work for their respective services, in different locations, as well as preparing the forecast for the invasion. And we have to talk twice a day to keep up with Eisenhower's plans. What we say to him affects a vast network of troops and vehicles, all of them waiting to go, not to mention a host of s.h.i.+ps hiding round Britain, from the coves of north Devon to the sea lochs of Argyll...That's where you were, isn't it?”
I thought of the s.h.i.+ps and subs moored outside Ryman's house. Once again, I felt deep astonishment at my role in the death of probably the one man on earth who might have been able to reconcile the competing views of Stagg's warring forecasters. It suddenly occurred to me that Sir Peter had ordered me here in spite of, not because of, my frank letter to him. He still hoped I had learned something from Ryman. Even if I had more or less given up, he was still looking for a single all-explaining answer. It was the wrong approach; but how could the multidimensional picture which Ryman conveyed to me be conveyed in turn to military men who needed relatively simple instructions?
The generals were the least of it. The thought of casualties filled me with dread again. After my Scottish calamity, was I now going to be responsible for sending thousands of men to their deaths on the beaches of Normandy because of an incorrect forecast?
”I'll take you through the charts before the phones go,” said Stagg. ”We've got about two hours.”
”Right.”
He finally produced the promised cup of tea, and we sat down in front of the charts. They showed a map of Europe and the Atlantic, covered with isobars and fronts, together with specific pressure and temperature readings from weather s.h.i.+ps and other sources.
Once we had finished going over the charts, which were more complicated than any others I had previously seen, Stagg brought up again the subject of my joining up.
”Now, I thought flight lieutenant would be the rank appropriate to your Met Office grade. I hope that's all right. You should have time to pick up a uniform from the commissary before the conference. Follow signs for Web 51. They should be able to fix somewhere for you to sleep, too. Don't be too long.”
Four.
After collecting my new blue serge uniform, which was rather itchy, and sorting out the logistics of a billet, I retraced my steps to Stagg's office. I joined him at the big oak table with the three telephones. Their chrome dials looked like flowers waiting to open. I was hungry. The timing of events was such that I had missed lunch and no one had yet mentioned dinner. I looked at the table. Next to each phone was a little black box housing a scrambler. Our conversation would be encrypted.
Stagg and I were joined by his American deputy, Don Yates. He was a spare, dark-haired little man, who would often amuse us by telling fantastic tales of his hiking, hunting and fis.h.i.+ng exploits back home in the States. He came from a wooded, mountain area of Maine, near the Pen.o.bscot river. If he was to be believed, the area was still as full of deer and fish as it had been in the days of Buffalo Bill. It sounded like paradise: sheltered coves and mossy forests where Yates had learned how to catch his supper with his bare hands. I remember him once saying how he had reached down into a stream and felt the quivering ma.s.s of a salmon there, 'like a piece of pure muscle'.
He was a patient fellow, Yates, and a good handler of men. Like Holzman, he had been a student of Krick's at Caltech, before rising quickly to become head of the US Army's weather operations in Europe. He often had to face down Krick as perhaps only a fellow American would be able to do. He had a lot of presence and, I suspect, carried great influence in the presentations to Eisenhower. He knew when to speak and when to keep quiet. When I saw Yates and Stagg arguing, as they often did, there were times when I would quite cheerfully have belted Stagg over the head with a ruler, but Yates always kept his cool.
My very first conference call followed a pattern that would become familiar. First we set up the phones, routing the calls through a knot of exchanges run by intelligence staff. Nowadays it would be a matter of pressing a couple of b.u.t.tons, but at that time to arrange a conference call on secret lines was quite a feat.
Once we had gone though this frustrating and at times amusing process, which involved a lot of ”yes, yes, yes...” and took about twenty minutes, Stagg picked up his handset and dialled. Immediately the two other phones rang and we picked up.
I heard a series of disembodied voices check in: 'Dunstable' (the Met Office), 'Widewing' (the USAAF and RAF base nearby), 'Citadel' (the Royal Navy at the Admiralty Forecasting Unit in Whitehall).
This telephone circuit became a major part of my life during May and June 1944. Krick andor Holzman speaking for Widewing; Petterssen andor Douglas speaking for Dunstable; and one or other of Lieutenant Hogben or Commanders Wolfe and Thorpe speaking for the Royal Navy from the Citadel.