Show Me a Hero Read online

  For Ramage, who dependably has rubbished nine out of ten of my ideas but nevertheless provided sound editorial advice over the course of two decades and invariably ended up paying for lunch.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1. LEADING MAN

  2. CUE THE OLD CONTENDER

  3. THE BACKER

  4. ANGELS WANTED

  5. STAGECRAFT

  6. TRY-OUT

  7. THE FINE ART OF UPSTAGING

  8. THE SHOW FOLDS

  9. FAT EXTRA BRINGS DOWN THE CURTAIN

  10. ENTER FOOL

  11. NEW SHOW OPENS TO ACCLAIM

  12. BACKING LOOKS SHAKY

  13. CHARADE

  14. THE RIVALS MEET ON STAGE

  15. FIRST POSITIONS

  16. TRIUMPH AND APPLAUSE

  17. OPERA BUFFO

  18. STRAIGHT MAN SWITCHES CAST

  19. FOOL STEALS THE SHOW

  20. STANDING OVATION

  21. LEADING MAN ASSUMES NEW PART

  22. RE-ENTER FOOL

  23. THE OLD CONTENDER MAKES A COMEBACK

  24. RESUME ICE

  25. EXIT OLD STAGER

  26. EXIT FOOL PURSUED BY JEERS

  27. STAR TURN

  28. SUPPORTING PLAYER SEEKS LEAD ROLE

  29. STRAIGHT MAN REBELS

  30. HERO’S SOLILOQUY

  31. FINAL ACT

  32. CURTAIN CALL

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  Plates

  Copyright

  Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald. Notebooks

  The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily.

  That is what tragedy means.

  Tom Stoppard

  1.

  LEADING MAN

  The blizzard that roared down from the Appalachian mountains the day before blew out to sea during the night and by dawn the eastern sky is pink and clear. Now the sun, reflected by the canopy of snow covering the Academy’s campus, strikes through the high windows to cast a grid of brilliant light across the floor of the gymnasium, where a handful of Naval cadets are hoisting weights, practising on the vaulting horse, or training on the trapeze and rings which hang on long cords from the roof. Caught in one of these bright dusty beams and framed within it as by a spotlight, a young man stands motionless with face uplifted to the blaze.

  Unconsciously theatrical, the stance is very flattering; he could be upon a stage. Graced by health and fitness he can carry off the noble pose, for he is uncommonly handsome, with firm chin and a full head of close-cropped dark hair. It’s the sort of profile you might see on a Roman coin – indeed twenty years later it will figure on a national medal. Caught in that ray of sun, his face is tilted to watch the gymnast currently performing on the high rings while he waits his own turn to use them. We can make a guess at the period of this sunlit youth from the way he’s dressed in narrow shorts and a close-fitting singlet of a cut not seen today; it elongates the line of the torso, and the erect way he holds himself gives the impression he’s taller than he is. Perhaps he’s aware of this.

  As the gymnast on the rings completes his exercise and drops to land on the mat, our man moves into position and makes ready. The feat he is about to attempt is original, devised by himself. Though he has rehearsed the choreography, he has not till now linked its moves in a single continuous routine as he now intends. Nor has any member of the college team of which he is the captain, although they have tried. By virtue of long hours spent in practice he has become a better gymnast than the rest, and to bring off this manoeuvre means much to him. He is ambitious to excel – in this, at Annapolis, in life.

  He crouches and springs to grasp the rings, hanging there for a moment before hingeing his body forward at the waist to swing into the movement. This is an intricate stunt he is essaying. It will start with a full somersault, followed by a second then a third, but – and this is the crucial move – as his feet swing upward in this third revolution he lets go to alter his grasp upon the rings, and pose dramatically weightless at the summit of his arc… before rolling forward to land gracefully upon the mat below.

  He swings into action… completes the first and second revolution, then swoops up into the third. Momentarily the impetus of his body-mass is upward and in this brief gravity-defying instant he releases the rings to change his grasp. One hand connects… the other blunders against the metal, knocking it aside. His body tilts, the sudden drop wrenches his grip from the ring. He falls off-balance, slanted to the side, hits the mat, crumples and goes down, his face a mask of shock. Those near him hear the crack as bones in his foot snap on the impact.

  The next glimpse of our hero, Richard Byrd, is four years later beneath stormy skies on an autumn day whose blustery squalls are salted with the briny tide-smells of the estuary and whiff of coal smoke from the passing river traffic. Wearing the double-breasted gold-buttoned uniform of a Naval ensign, he is standing a half-pace behind his ship’s captain among a knot of others at the head of the gangway of the presidential steam yacht Mayflower, waiting to greet the First Executive as he comes on board.

  Although he is the youngest and shortest of the handful of officers clustered on deck, and despite the fact that uniforms impose conformity, there is something about Byrd that draws the eye. He is not overawed by the present situation; the importance of the man about to arrive does not unsettle him. True, it is not every day he gets to meet the President, Woodrow Wilson, but this milieu is part of his natural habitat and has been so since infancy. His older brother is a senator; both his mother and father (a state legislator) come from first families of Virginia. A Byrd founded the town of Richmond, another settled the James River estuary, building a palatial colonial house by a plantation employing over a thousand slaves. Wealth and privilege are familiar to Richard Byrd, he has been raised in the family tradition of leadership and public service. That is his heritage and he is aware that he too is expected to achieve eminence; he expects it of himself. We know from our earlier glance at him that he is ambitious, but in the years that have passed since that sighting the seed of ambition lodged within him has hardened, developed sharp edges and grown obdurate. It is not wholly fanciful to compare it to a tumour – as yet undiagnosed and non-malignant, but exerting a pressure which is always there. It is not a desire for wealth, property or possessions which drives him but another yet more consuming motivation. He wants to make a name for himself, familiar to the world. What he craves is nothing less than fame.

  When asked what heroes risk their lives for, Achilles answered ‘Fame’. And Richard Byrd is to do the same. Nor is his situation in any way unusual – since prehistory, men and women have been drawn to celebrity’s alluring glow. Yet Byrd’s situation is singular, for at this particular moment in the pre-dawn of mass media with its demand for ‘personalities’, the nature of fame is about to change. Its value will appreciate as the desire for celebrity morphs from wistful longing into craving… finally to obsession. Fame is on its way to becoming what it is today, arguably the most significant driving force in our society. Up there with love, fear, anger and envy among the dominant emotions is a hunger for celebrity.

  But this unworthy craving is something Byrd most certainly would not admit to, even to himself. He is no fool, and already preternaturally aware of image. Yet – aged twenty-two, as he stands on the deck of the Mayflower awaiting the President – he has a problem in regard to fame: he lacks an opening. The peacetime Navy provides few opportunities for glory to a junior ensign in its service. This is 1914 and America has not yet become involved in the First World War. Nevertheless Byrd has seen action in Haiti and Santo Domingo. Whe
n the US intervened to put down revolution threatening its interests in the Caribbean. He has already proved his courage by saving the lives of two men from drowning. He has shown form in a career which has led to this plum posting on the presidential yacht – although the position is due more to a favour President Wilson owed to Byrd’s father, an influential supporter in Virginia. Still, it is a prestigious job our man is filling, and appropriately he has just married a woman with a Southern pedigree matching his own, whose political connections will be an asset to his career. Observing Byrd today on the Mayflower you would conclude that for someone who wants to become famous in an action adventure role he is in as good a position as any to go for it. Except for one defect…

  On the quay below, a stately automobile, followed by another, comes into sight from behind the dockyard buildings to pull up at the gangway. The driver springs out to open the rear door and President Wilson descends carefully onto the cobbled pier. A spare dignified figure in cutaway coat and top hat, he waits for two others similarly dressed to emerge from the vehicle, then moves to the gangway. The President’s stern Puritan face remains expressionless as he mounts it slowly, steadying himself with a hand on the rail.

  Aboard the ship sounds the shrill whistle of the bosun’s pipe. The officers at the gang head snap to attention, the Captain comes to the salute. The President lifts his hat in acknowledgement as he steps on board… then follow handshakes accompanied by a slight inclination of the waist, goodwill all round with instinctive deference, a word or two, and now it is Ensign Byrd’s assigned duty to guide the presidential party to their quarters… where in the privacy of his cabin the great man will unbend sufficiently to favour Byrd with what serves for a smile on that grim visage and ask kindly about his father… but that will be in a few minutes when they are below, just now on deck this is still a public setting. The Captain nods at Byrd, and he starts off ahead to lead them to their cabins. A couple of yards in front of the presidential party he steps across the deck… and we realise with a sense of shock that he is crippled: he walks with a limp. Our hero is flawed.

  It was a severe disability. That accident in the gymnasium had dislocated Byrd’s ankle and broken two bones in his foot. Then on his first assignment at sea he’d broken it again. An operation in Washington fixed the bones with a metal pin but the fracture did not join properly. He trained himself to walk again through a relentless regimen of exercise, overcoming the pain it caused him, yet the limp remained impossible to disguise. It raised questions about his fitness for duty at sea. He refuted his superiors’ doubts through his ability to command and organise his men. But the questions remained.

  The limp was slight but it was a grave handicap. If he was unable to pass physically A1 at his yearly medicals it restricted his promotion in the Navy. In the world conflict now threatening to involve the US he would not be permitted to serve aboard a fighting warship. No doubt he could obtain a desk job in Washington, but he could never rise far in it. When his classmates became captains of their own ships he would still remain a lieutenant. And what possibilities for action or glory in such a deskbound occupation? What chance for fame?

  In 1916 Byrd retired from the active duty list because of his disability. The Navy was good to him. He was made up in rank and given the job of lieutenant in charge of setting up a Naval militia on Rhode Island. He completed the assignment very capably while attending courses in commerce and economics at Harvard graduate school. He was then given precisely the sort of job he dreaded at the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Washington. There he was due to live with his wife Marie – plus now a son – in a pleasant rented house in Georgetown. He would leave it each morning at the same hour, pass the working day making out forms shuffling servicemen from one posting to another, and return home at four o’clock. Every evening he and Marie would attend a party – Naval, military or political in cast – where the male guests would be careful not to drink excessively and the wives not to put a foot wrong. Life would be sociable, civilised, orderly – and stultifying.

  He took the job because what else? But he did everything possible to escape from it. He applied for sea duty and was rejected due to the limp. He lobbied to be assigned to US Naval forces in the Mediterranean – and was refused. Though his marriage was good, this was a dismal time for him. Outwardly his manner remained faultless but within was bleakness and frustration. He lost a stone in weight.

  Then came enlightenment. The solution to his impediment was already there, and it lay in the air. He applied to train as a Naval aviation cadet. It meant pulling strings because of his medical category but he had not wasted his time in Washington at those innumerable parties; he had already laid down a network of contacts which would prove invaluable, now and in the future. Leaving his family in Georgetown, Byrd travelled south to report to the Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida. It was a decisive move, the first step of a series that would lead him upward to the stars. He had elevated his crippled being into another element, he had no need to limp if he could fly.

  The Wright brothers had made the first flight thirteen years before, in a machine more like a box kite on bicycle wheels than anything resembling an aeroplane. That flight had covered only 260 metres and lasted less than a minute. The newspapers and public had greeted the event with wonder and applause, it was seen as a marvellous stunt, but that this was an invention to alter the nature of warfare and the shape of the future went largely unrecognised by the Army and Navy chiefs and those in government. And by big business. No powerful backers came knocking on the Wright brothers’ door with offers to develop their precarious contraption. As a result aircraft design in the US had advanced remarkably little in the interim.

  In Europe the invention had been taken up with greater enthusiasm. France and Britain were already ahead in the infant science of aeronautics. The planes being built at that period were so primitive one marvels such clumsy structures managed to stay aloft at all – which frequently they didn’t. To date the flying machine had thrilled spectators at displays, dependably supplied newspapers with a steady stream of disasters, in warfare provided an alternative to balloons for artillery observation, and served to promote alarm among enemy forces – though inflicting negligible damage – by dropping crude bombs which the pilot hurled overboard from his open cockpit. Neither in a civil nor a military context had the aeroplane proved itself any real use.

  The seaplane in which Byrd learned to fly was built of wood with twin canvas-covered wings. Fitted with a single motor, it had a large pontoon grafted to its underbelly which resembled a flat-bottomed punt. Small floats on the wings kept their tips from dipping into the water as the machine lumbered into the air and while landing. Cruising speed was 80 mph. Instructor and student pilot sat in open cockpits, each equipped with a set of controls operating power, ailerons, and rudder worked by foot pedals. The noise of the engine was deafening, communication accomplished only by shouting down a makeshift tube.

  Byrd was quick to master the skill of flying; he was a dexterous, highly capable if never an instinctive pilot. But he was swift to get to know a plane, to understand what it could do together with its particular weaknesses and limitations. After obtaining his pilot’s wings, which he did without difficulty, he remained at Pensacola as an instructor and had opportunity to study these limitations more closely.

  Take-off and landing were when most accidents took place – almost always due to pilot error – but the greatest problem to flight at this time lay in knowing where you were once you were airborne. In cloud or out of sight of land a pilot was lost. Struggling to operate a sextant in an open cockpit and making the necessary calculations on a pad strapped to his thigh while controlling the unstable aircraft with one hand was a haphazard operation at best. And the magnetic compass on the instrument panel was wildly unreliable, for the needle was affected by the iron mass of the engine only feet away.

  Byrd applied himself to the task of simplifying the methods a pilot employed to determine his position at an
y given moment. He possessed a practical systematic brain which he focused on finding a solution. His duties at the air station, where he was now second-in-command, were relatively undemanding. He handled his share of trainee pilots and assisted in the management of the base, but he could be through with work by late afternoon. Parties at this subtropical outpost were few. He was free to spend the evenings on his project. Occupying a bachelor’s room and working at night, in the space of a few months Byrd designed three new flying instruments. One was an adapted slide-rule, simplified by removal of all but the figures required for the specific calculation, and enlarging these markings so they could be read more clearly and swiftly. Another device was a sun compass; the third a bubble sextant which utilised the same principle as a spirit-level to provide an artificial horizon if the real one was obscured. Skilled machinists were at hand on the base and he had them construct prototypes. For an amateur inventor working alone (though there were no specialists in this new field) and moreover a man uneducated in higher mathematics, it was a remarkable accomplishment. With these tools a pilot could navigate blind for the first time, but Byrd needed to prove this to the Navy board for his inventions to be taken up.

  In 1918, a year which would end with the Armistice, a new giant Curtiss seaplane was under construction in the US. The NC-1 would have twin wings with a span of 126 feet and be powered by four 400 horsepower Liberty engines delivering a top speed of 85 mph. Requiring a crew of five, it was capable of carrying a substantial bomb load – or, alternatively, additional fuel tanks to increase its flying range. It was the first of the series of giant bombers the US would adopt as their main strategic weapon to this day. When Byrd first learned of the NC-1 he dared to dream the dream: he would fly it over the Atlantic, employing his instruments to make the first America– Europe intercontinental crossing.