Speed Kings (40 page)

On the other side of the airfield, Dr. Courtney Willey was working in his makeshift sick bay, now overflowing with the dead and dying. The ambulance carrying Billy had to wait until Willey could turn his attention to it. When he climbed in through the back doors, he found Billy was badly burned but still conscious. He dosed him up with morphine and told the driver to take him to the Royal West Sussex Hospital in Chichester. Before they could set off, they had to wait twenty minutes until the roads around the station were clear. Billy, doped and delirious now, began muttering to himself. He kept asking, over and over again, “Is my airplane OK? Is my airplane OK?”

It seems odd that this particular thought was so fixed in his mind as he faded in and out of consciousness, until you consider the question all his friends
were asking themselves and each other that evening: Why didn't he bail out? Billy's mother-in-law was sure the fire “must have started too low, and his one chance was to try and land and get out the minute it touched the ground—but I'm afraid he must have been semi-conscious by then.” But 601 pilots Mouse, Archie, and Little Bill disagreed, as did the ground crew. They felt, instinctively, that he had flown home through the flames because he was determined to save his aircraft. He knew that they were too precious to write off. “Just how Fiske managed to fly and land his plane in such atrocious pain it is impossible to say,” records the official history. “But the Legion knew why he did it, and within days his Hurricane was back in the sky.”

The only thought in Billy's head in those minutes was to get his Hurricane back to Tangmere in one piece. He had drawn on all his skill, courage, and experience to get that plane home, all the while enduring agony more extreme than most can know. His final act at the wheel, when he pulled the fighter out of a dive and brought it down into a crash landing, was perhaps the most astonishing of the many remarkable drives, rides, flights, and races he had made in his life.

And where was Rose? She wasn't at Chidmere. She'd decided to drive up to London that morning, to go shopping on Piccadilly. She had called Tangmere at noon to check in with Billy. “We weren't supposed to call the field,” she said. But she always did. This time he wasn't free, so she called again, right after lunch. “I couldn't get any information, except that I could hear over the phone that the field had been bombed. Our husbands always warned us not to be dramatic if an air raid came, and not to phone the aerodrome. But I couldn't keep away from the phone.” She called back again, fifteen minutes later, “even though I knew Billy would be angry.” They told her that he had been taken to hospital. Her first thought was “Thank God, Billy's been hurt. He won't have to fight any more.” Later, it pained her to think about how flippant she had been, even though she knew “every woman whose man is fighting wishes that, whether she admits it or not.” She jumped into the Morris and drove out of London as fast as she could. It took her three hours to reach Chichester. “And all the time I told myself that this was so lucky because surely he had done no more than perhaps break an arm or a leg and that would keep him out of the war for a while, and maybe he would get through the whole war all right. Over and over I said that.” The refrain ran through her head. If she said it often enough, it would be true. “I had told myself again and again that Billy could never die.”

By the time Rose got to the hospital, Billy was out of the operating theater.
When she walked into his room, she saw him, his skin swathed in “black goo” to treat his burns. He looked up as the door opened and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“He was conscious for a little while,” Rose remembered. “And when he was delirious, all he would talk about was his plane. He wanted me to go and see if it was all right.” Rose's mother said, “It was so dreadful for her seeing him looking so different. And though the burns on his face were superficial compared to those on his legs, it wasn't, of course, the Bill she knew. I would have died to have saved her that memory. Tho' she knows he wasn't conscious or suffering.”

As he slipped away into sleep, Rose stepped outside to talk to the doctors. It was going to be OK, they told her; he was going to pull through. While he slept, she drove down to the post office and sent a telegram to the Dillon, Read & Co. office in New York. It was the best way she could think of to reach his parents, who were now living at the Waldorf-Astoria, having come back from Lisbon by boat.

Bill had bad crash this morning his legs and hands severely burned doctor thinks very good chance pray to god stop will keep in constant communication love Rose Fiske.

Billy died the next morning, August 17, 1940. He was twenty-nine. The doctors said it was “post-operative shock.” And so, later that day, a second telegram arrived at Nassau Street:

Darlings Bill died this morning early from severe shock and burns from crash never recovered consciousness after I first saw him suffered no pain am trying very hard to be brave you must be too for his sake I feel he should have military funeral and be buried here but will arrange anything you wish may I come and stay when able to get away you can be very proud of him he has been so very brave all through all my love I wish I had not got to send this cable.

The doctors told Rose that if he had lived, he would have been paralyzed from the waist down. She tried to find some succor in that. “I'm glad Billy died,” she said, months later. “He loved speed, constant movement. If he'd lived he would never have walked again. That in itself would have killed him.”

They buried him on the Tuesday, at Boxgrove Priory, a mile away from the
northern boundary of Tangmere. None of Billy's friends from 601 made it. The day before, August 19, the squadron was withdrawn from the front line, moved to RAF Debden in Essex. They had suffered too much, and lost too many. Rose wore black, a fur hat, and a simple necklace, a gift he had given her for her birthday. She had been so busy the last few days she hadn't had time to stop, or think. She'd had to organize the flowers and a wreath from his family and to write notices for the papers. But more than that, she was “overwhelmed at the letters from all over the world, despite a war going on, and from people I'd never heard of, who wrote to me with so much feel of loss.” There were telegrams from Hollywood, St. Moritz, New York, San Francisco, London, and even Lake Placid. Representatives from the Air Ministry were at the funeral and from the US embassy. Lord Beaverbrook sent a wreath. So, they say, did Winston Churchill.

Lord Brabazon of Tara, who knew Billy from St. Moritz, wrote an appreciation that was published in the
Times
. “A very gallant gentleman—Billy Fiske has given his life for us,” “Brab” wrote. “As a racing motorist, as a bobsleigh rider, as a flier he was well known, but as a Cresta Rider he was supreme. Taking some years to become first class, his fame eventually was legendary. No record he did not break, no race he did not win, he was the supreme artist of the run; never did he have a fall, he was in a class by himself. As an American citizen, blessed with this world's goods, of a family beloved by all who knew them, with a personal charm that made all worship him, he elected to join up in the ranks of the Royal Air Force and fight our battles. We thank America for sending us the perfect sportsman. Many of us would have given our lives for Billy, instead he gave his for us. The memory of him will live long in the Alps where he had his great successes. In the hearts of his friends it will endure forever.”

They draped his coffin in two flags, the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes, then loaded it onto a trailer and drove it across to the church. The pallbearers walked beside the coffin, a marching band came after. And once they had lowered his casket into the ground, they fired a final salute over his grave.

Later that very same day, the prime minister addressed Parliament, and the nation. “The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and their devotion,” he said. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

“I am at last beginning to realize I shall never see Bill again,” Rose wrote that night. “I am so proud to have been his wife.” She needed to get out. Away from Tangmere, away from Britain, away from the war. She booked a ticket on the
Scythia
, bound for New York, and put in an application for a travel permit. She wanted to go and visit Billy's family. But there was one thing she had to do before she left.

A fortnight later, on a warm weekday afternoon, she arrived at the Moorfields Eye Hospital in East London. She asked to see Mouse Cleaver. Of course he wasn't listed under that name, but they looked and found that they had him listed as Cleaver, G. N. Up she went. Mouse's eyes were bound entirely in bandages. They were picking the shards of Perspex out of his pupils piece by piece, one operation at a time. They talked for a while. “She was, by then, over the initial shock,” he said, and though he couldn't see, from what he heard she sounded “comparatively cheerful, maybe for my benefit.” She paused a while, then said, “We must keep on being brave.” They both fell silent. And then he felt her tears fall on to the back of his
hand.

EPILOGUE

L
ondon, July 4, 1941. Independence Day. It was a long walk to St. Paul's, especially in heels, but the sun was out, and besides, she thought the air would do her good. How bleak and broken London looked. Was it really only a year and a half ago that she'd walked these same streets and admired the pictures the chichi shops had posted up in their blacked-out windows? Back then the only thing she'd been worried about was stubbing her toe on a sandbag. She had changed; it was obvious even from the look of her. Her dark hair was already streaked gray. But there was tremendous strength in her face and determination in her walk. The papers described her as “distinguished” these days, where they had once called her “beautiful.”

While she was in New York, she had given an interview to a friend from the old days, when she'd first been in the city. “I've changed a lot,” Rose told her. “My sense of values is different. Things that used to be important don't matter any more. The clothes and jewels I used to want—all that stuff makes no difference now. I feel much softer and gentler toward people. I hope I have more sympathy and understanding for them.” It was a good piece. A little sentimental, perhaps, but better by far than a lot of the bunk that had been written about Billy since the previous August. The American press seemed so damn keen to make him out as a hero. He would have hated that. Just as he had back at Lake Placid. What got her was the way they exaggerated the details. As if what he had done wasn't enough in itself. She'd heard of one that included the most preposterous account of his death,
which had him climbing out of the wreckage of his fighter, “the old grin still on his face,” and calling for another plane so he could get back into the air. What rot.

She was on Ludgate Hill now. St. Paul's filled the horizon. It seemed a miracle that it was still standing, surrounded as it was by rubble and the shells of bombed-out buildings. Of course it was anything but. They had made extraordinary efforts to save it, on Churchill's orders. They'd installed tanks, baths, and pails of water around the roof and had special squads of firefighters patrol it with stirrup pumps. It had upset some, who felt that the services had let all the other buildings around burn just so long as they could save the cathedral. But it had been worth it, she thought. Churchill was right. He had always seemed to understand the value of things—speeches, ceremonies, symbols—and their effect on the public morale. Wasn't that what today was about, after all?

She could see a huddle of men on the steps running up to the great front doors. Journalists, radio broadcasters, even a couple of cameramen. She had been told NBC would be broadcasting the service back in the States. There were a lot of unfamiliar faces there. Officials. Young fighter pilots, from the new Eagle Squadrons, fresh-faced and wet behind the ears, as Billy and the others had once been. There weren't too many of the St. Moritz boys left now. Roger Bushell was in a prisoner-of-war camp. Mouse Cleaver was still in hospital, and still blind. Willie Rhodes-Moorhouse was dead. He had been shot down later in the Battle of Britain, finally paying for what his friend Max Aitken described as “his utter disregard for his own life.”

Rose found herself making small talk with the US ambassador, a granite-faced man named John Winant, all square jaw and side-parting. They spoke about her trip to the United States, and he offered his condolences on the death of Billy's father, William Sr. He had died of a heart attack the previous October. It had been coming, but it arrived all the sooner because he was so distraught about his son's death. Billy's mother, Beulah, had gone off to the West Coast to live near Peggy. She had asked Rose to come too. But she wanted to get back to Britain. “Billy gave his life for my country,” Rose said in the press. “I couldn't face myself if I didn't go back and do what I can to help. I've got to do it. Something inside me keeps saying that all the time.” Winant introduced her to Brendan Bracken, too, though she didn't really take in who exactly he was. “An MP,” she wrote. He was a little more than that—the minister for information, and one of Churchill's closer confidants. He was there representing the prime minister. And then Archibald Sinclair, the secretary of state for air.

The four of them led the procession down into the crypt beneath the
cathedral. Billy's plaque was on the back wall, just off Nelson's tomb. They gathered around. Sinclair gave a short speech, sweet but perhaps just a little cynical. It was written for the benefit of an audience of millions across the Atlantic, as much as for the few men and women there that day.

Pilot Officer Fiske had no obligation to fight for this country. He was not an Englishman. He was a citizen of the United States of America. Yet a fortnight after war broke out, he joined the Royal Air Force. Having passed brilliantly through all the stages of his training, he was, on March 23, 1940, granted a commission in the RAF and was posted to No. 601 Squadron on July 13, a little more than a month before his death in action. He had left a promising career and a full and useful life to serve in the Royal Air Force. He was happily married; he was a member of a famous New York firm; he was renowned for his skill and daring at winter sports. Here was a young man—he was only twenty-nine when he was killed—for whom life held much. Under no kind of compulsion to come and fight for Britain, he came and he fought, and he died. The Latin Poet said that “it is sweet and decorous to die for one's country.” In that decorum those British pilots who were killed that day with Pilot Officer Fiske were perfectly instructed. And these young men were Pilot Officer Fiske's friends. Billy Fiske was one of those people who made many friends. He had a great many friends of his own generation in this country. He played with them and when the stakes became highest he stayed with them and died with them and they, through me, thank him. So he gave his life for his friends, and for a great cause, the common cause of free men everywhere—the cause of liberty. That is why we honor his spirit today. That is why we have written the chronicle of his deed in letters of bronze in the shrine of our Empire's capital. He has joined the company of those who from Socrates to John Brown have died in freedom's name and freedom's cause. Of these men it was said more than 2,000 years ago that “Their virtues shall be testified not only by the inscription on stone at the time, but in all lands wheresoever in the unwritten record of the mind, which far beyond any monument will remain with all men everlasting.”

They sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and the two national anthems, and then it was over. As the others shuffled out, Rose stepped in closer to the
granite plaque. She saw Billy's pilot's wings, mounted on green felt in a small golden frame. And above them, the words

WILLIAM MEADE LINDSLEY FISKE III

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN WHO DIED THAT ENGLAND MIGHT LIVE.

She stayed there a moment, alone in the cool air of the crypt, and then walked out, up the steps, into the sunshine.

—

R
ose Fiske
spent the rest of the war living in London. In 1945 she married Colonel Sir John Lawson, another extraordinary man: Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery described him as “the best squadron leader in the 8th Army.” They divorced in 1950. She married for a fourth time the very next year, to Ted Bassett. It was a stormy relationship. Bassett wasn't a popular man with her friends. Mouse Cleaver described him as “a professional gambler,” and it is true that in the end she sold off many of Billy's assets, in the film company and in Aspen, to cover his gambling debts. The kindest thing Bill Taylor had to say about Bassett was that he was a “horny bastard, always hot for the hand that is nearest.” They, too, eventually divorced. Taylor himself once asked Rose to marry him, only half in jest, but she turned him down, with a laugh, because he didn't have enough money. “I don't think,” Taylor said, “that she ever really loved anybody except for Billy.” Rose died just after Christmas in 1972, at the age of fifty-nine. Among the few treasured possessions she passed on to her granddaughter, Lady Charlotte Fraser, were a pair of earrings made out of the gold collar studs of Billy's RAF uniform. “Billy,” says Lady Fraser, “was always the love of her life.”

—

B
eulah Fiske
moved out to the West Coast to live near her daughter, Peggy. In December 1942 she received, to her great surprise, a letter from the First Lady.

Dear Mrs. Fiske,

When I was going through St. Paul's they showed me with great pride the plaque which has been put up in memory of your son, the first American citizen who died “that England might live.” Incidentally, I think that the United States might live also. I thought you would like to know with what reverence and admiration they show that plaque not
only to American visitors, but to a great many other people. If you have not seen where it is placed, it is right near the pedestal on which stands the statue of George Washington in peace time. This statue, of course, is now put away. My deepest sympathy goes to you, but I must express also my pride in your son,

Very sincerely yours,

Eleanor Roosevelt.

Beulah died in 1949.

—

P
eggy Fiske
eventually divorced
Jennison Heaton
and remarried. She remained enormously fond, and proud, of her brother right through to the end of her life in 1987. She told her daughters all about how, when they were very little, their uncle Billy drove them in a horse and buggy to a park outside the Fiske family home in Paris, cooked them baked potatoes in a campfire, and scared them silly by telling them ghost stories.

—

J
ack Heaton
died in Paris in 1976, at the age of sixty-eight.

—

E
ddie Eagan
never did get back into the boxing ring, or into a bobsled. He was busy enough at the bar. He spent the rest of the 1930s working as the assistant district attorney for Southern New York. When the United States entered the war, he joined up for a second time, in the Army Air Forces. He became the chief of special service in the Air Transport Command. They even made him a lieutenant colonel. After the war he became the New York State boxing commissioner. It was a hell of a job, too much even for a man like him. The boxing business was lousy with racketeers, cheats, and gangsters. The great sportswriter Red Smith summed it up: “Eddie Eagan is a genuinely sweet guy. He is profoundly honest and profoundly sincere, humble and considerate. The first two qualities are indispensable in a boxing commissioner; probably the other three are a handicap.” Eddie vowed to “clean it up or quit,” and he was as good as his word: he stepped down in 1951. “Eddie brought with him honesty, sincerity, and a passionate love of the sport,” wrote Arthur J. Daley. “But he also brought what amounted to naiveté into a sphere of hard-boiled pragmatism.” In 1956, President Eisenhower asked him to head up the People-to-People Sports Committee, and he spent the rest of his life working to encourage children to take up sport. He ran the sports program at the New York World's Fair in 1964–65 and served
two years as the president of the Boys Athletic League of New York. He and Peggy were happily married right through. They had a house on Long Island Sound, which Eddie named Happy Harbor, one son and one daughter. Eddie died of a heart attack on June 15, 1967, at the age of sixty-nine. More than 250 people turned out for his funeral, among them Jack Dempsey. “He was a good boxer,” Jack said, “and he meant a great deal to the youth of America.” Gene Tunney couldn't make it because he was in hospital after a fall. Eddie remains the only man in the history of the Olympics to have won gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Games.

—

C
lifford “Tippy” Gray
spent the war living in Hollywood, working, as he put it, as a “self-employed writer.” In the early 1950s he was living as a “permanent houseguest” of Edward Hillman Jr., a playboy who had inherited his money from his father's department store business. The two of them moved to Acapulco together in 1952, taking along another friend from the old days, the movie star Norman Kerry. Clifford never remarried. He settled back in Daytona Beach, Florida, where he became well known in local high-society circles for his immaculately accurate impressions of Winston Churchill. In his seventies he began to suffer from Parkinson's disease. He spent the final two years of his life in a care home in San Diego. He died in April 1968. Almost inevitably, the brief obituary notices he was given in the local papers confused him with his namesake, announcing that “Clifford Gray, the composer of If You Were the Only Girl (in the World), has passed away at the age of 76.”

—

T
he other
Clifford Grey
is still known in some quarters as a man who led an extraordinary double life as an English composer and an American Olympian, not least, of course, in the Old Cemetery in Ipswich, where his gravestone still marks him out as a two-time Olympic champion.

—

A
fter Jay died,
Dolly O'Brien
spent two years in mourning. “A part of Dolly died with him,” her friend Suzy Knickerbocker explained. Still, Dolly had a queue of suitors waiting. The most serious of them was Clark Gable, who was still in mourning himself, for his wife Carole Lombard. They had a long affair, and Dolly then dumped him for a Bulgarian count, Jose Dorelis, who was “suave, sophisticated, and always wore a monocle, even when playing golf.” After a year's marriage, she divorced Dorelis on grounds of cruelty, explaining to the press, “It is a result of an accumulation of little things. Separately, they were so
unimportant that I can't recall particulars. I think the underlying cause of our difficulties was that he seemed to resent, subconsciously perhaps, the fact that I knew so many people.” After that, she decided not to marry again, declaring, “Four times is enough!” She died on January 10, 1965. “She may have been a siren,” wrote Knickerbocker, “but she was nice to everyone, and she was never pompous or stuffy because she was never insecure.”