MANHATTAN LIGHTS IN WORLD WAR II

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist

Since the maiden descent from the top of One Times Square of the New Year’s Eve Ball, only in 1942 and 1943 was the tradition put on hold, and then it was due to the wartime “dimout” of the lights of New York City. While during those pivotal years of World War II crowds still congregated at the head of the forked square, they were eerily quiet compared to previous years, and a moment of complete silence at the stroke of midnight punctuated the poignancy of the ringing chimes atop the 25 story building.

On the night of January 13, 1942, the lights of Manhattan are still alight just enough to make of her an irresistible target to those wishing her harm. As the eyes of the unsuspecting, never-sleeping city are turned westward toward their Japanese enemies in the Pacific, a deadly-hungry German U-boat lurks off Manhattan’s eastern shore. Smelling choice meat, silently it surfaces, and its commander, like an overjoyed kid let loose for the first time with his daddy’s hunting rifle, takes aim and fires a whistling torpedo into the hull of an American oil tanker moored at Gotham’s watery fringe. His Aryan face flushed red with the adrenalin-rushed blood of his coup d’ état, with an all but silent hiss, his sleek submarine breaks the frigid skin of the water once more. Stealthily it slips back down into the murky sea, noses to the warmer waters of the south, and hunts for another twelve hours off the Atlantic shore of dazzling America. The German commander of that vessel stalks his quarry well. He adds seven more defenseless American ships to his kill-score by the time the night is through.

The many years of the Great Depression hollowed out the coffers of the United States, a condition worsened by its program of providing war supplies to Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and other allies during their several years of fighting Germany and its war partners. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war against the United States of America, a sense of near hopelessness clouds the nation’s war effort, a despair owing to an American military that is almost non-existent, and what there is of it is ill-equipped and ill-trained to take on two formidable enemies in two separate theaters of war. In addition, Japan at Pearl Harbor crippled critically America’s Pacific air and sea fleet, involving the loss of life of 2,500 servicemen. In addition, Japan captured both American and British territory throughout the Asian Pacific, as well as the independent kingdom of Thailand. Between December 1941 and the spring of 1942, the Japanese are the dominant force in the Pacific and impose their will against a stretched and an anemic Allied military.

Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American military commanders believed Hawaii to be beyond the reach of the fighting forces of Japan, and the same attitude held true regarding the continental USA. But if Japanese naval and air forces are destroying Allied interests in the Pacific and German U-boats are blowing up ships on the east coast of America, what might they do to Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco, and San Diego? the American populace asks itself. Shaken to its core and in fear of a fate similar to that of Pearl Harbor, western Americans shroud their dwellings with blackout-curtains, issue official air-raid instructions, and stack the exterior walls of buildings from their foundations to rooflines with sandbags.

            His country barely holding on against German Luftwaffe bombings, in London, Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston Spencer Churchill solicits greater material aid from the United States and an increased number of escorts of Allied merchant ships as they maneuver the supply lanes of the frigid North Atlantic. Made perilous by wolf-packs of deadly German U-boats, like the oil tankers moored along America’s eastern shore, the merchant ships are easy prey for the cunning submarines.

Engaged in the bulk of the fighting against German troops along her lengthy and frozen front, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Josef Stalin resents his place at the bottom of the food chain of American aid, even as he revels in his role as the savior of the west at that time. It is a position he plans to use to his advantage at the end of the war when it comes time to divvy up the conquered territory. In his only resemblance to Stalin, other than hatred of the Nazis, Churchill has his eye on some choice new territory as well. Only Roosevelt bears no interest in gaining territory, even though his country will finance and supply the bulk of the equipment and the warriors of the conflict.

            America’s fighting men, most of whom are still in late-stage adolescence according to modern-day definitions, are called to service in the war through the first draft in the history of the country, and the people – bewildered – fearful – saddened, drop to their knees in prayer, and stunned mothers and fathers console one another as their homes systematically and rapidly empty of the brightest and best of their beloved, young sons. Reliance on their families, neighbor/friends, and faith in FDR sustains them, as well as the creed of their souls that “there never has been – there never can be – successful compromise between good and evil,” as their commander-in-chief reminded them from Washington, DC in his State of the Union Address at the opening of 1942. His cultured voice, reaching out across the radio waves and into the living rooms of his people, reassured them and inspired their commitment to the war effort.

Thus, America begins the long and torturous journey toward victory on the battlegrounds of World War II, the conflagration that is perceived by the force of its very magnitude as the lowest point in the history of the world.©

Image: Manhattan Skyline 1942

Multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene’s eBooks and paperbacks are available for purchase through Amazon.com. A CHANCE AT THE MOON, her latest multi-genre novel featuring romance, intrigue, and paranormal elements is described below:

Amid the seductions of Las Vegas, Nevada and an idyllic coffee plantation on Hawai’i’s Big Island, a sextet of opposites converge within a shared fate: a glamorous movie-star courting distractions from her troubled past; her shell-shocked bodyguards clutching handholds out of their hardscrabble lives; a dropout Hawaiian nuclear physicist gambling his way back home; a Navajo rancher seeking cleansing for harming Mother Earth; and from its lofty perch, the Hawaiian’s guardian spirit conjured as his pet raven, conducting this symphony of soul odysseys.

Was it chance or destiny’s hand behind the movie-star and gambler’s curious encounter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas? The cards fold, their hearts open, and a match strikes, flames that sizzle their hearts and souls. Can they have the moon and the stars, too? Or is she too dangerous? Is he? Can their love withstand betrayal? Can it endure murder?

While the cards at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas fail to distract them from their troubled pasts, on the side, the actress and the gambler play a game of ‘will they won’t they’ romance. Meanwhile, an otherworldly hand also has a big stake in the game. Unexpected secrets unfold brimming with dangerous consequences, and finally, a strange brand of salvation.

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THE GHOST OF JOHN F. KENNEDY COMFORTS A GERMAN EX-PAT

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Emil’s voice cuts through the layers of my slumber like a buzz saw. It isn’t so much grating as it is insistent—overpowering! “Admiral Dönitz has called off the U-boat operations, Katrina. And the Führer isn’t fighting him on it. I will no longer be assigned to long days and nights away from you out to sea. We can be married now.” It is the same dream—too many nights the same dream! It punches me in the stomach! I jerk awake, gasping for air. “The middle of the night again,” I moan. “Emil, please let me be! Please, please go away!” But, it is useless. Nothing has changed in all these twenty years. I know from experience that I won’t be able to get back to sleep. Frustrated, I kick the quilt to the foot of the mattress and rise to my feet. “Coffee!” my weary brain insists. I paddle to the kitchen.

            It has been a long weekend in Washington DC, perhaps the longest in its history—in the history of my adopted country as a whole, actually. This capital city of the United States is closed. Across the country, businesses and schools are closed; nearly everything is closed, except for high-alert security operations and transportation systems. The grief-stricken people of the nation are parked in front of their television sets to watch the unfolding events surrounding the assassination of President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It happened shortly after noon central time on Friday, November 22, 1963—only the day before yesterday! It seems like forever. A jolt to my consciousness in an unwelcome voice reminds me that the president is now Lyndon Baines Johnson. I don’t like the idea one tiny bit.

I am one of a large community of ex-pat Germans in DC. Following the death of both of my parents, and as I had no other ties to Germany, I immigrated to the USA. That was fourteen years ago. I was fortunate to land a position right away with a German Language Institute and Cultural Center here. Mr. Kennedy, at the time Senator Kennedy, engaged the institute in helping him with his campaign for president, specifically in appearing at gatherings of ex-pat Germans. I served as the adjunct to him in that endeavor. I was taken aback when first he engaged me in conversation about the Second World War. It is usually a topic that is avoided in interchanges between Germans and Americans. I understood immediately that he wanted all barriers between himself and me erased, a desire on his part I was to see over time extended to all people everywhere.

The date of our first meeting, a lunch meeting, was Friday, January 15, 1960, only two weeks after he announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I remember it so well because it coincided with a fateful date earlier in my life. It was on that exact date in 1944 that my then fiancé, Emil came up missing. He was a crew member of the German U-boat 377 whose last radio report occurred on January 15, 1944. The submarine had departed Brest, France on December 15, 1943. U-boat 377, with Emil onboard, sailed into the mid-Atlantic, its return anticipated in early February. When it failed to arrive, it was reported, ‘lost to an unknown cause.’ Before the submarine set out on its mission, Emil had informed me while on a short leave over the Christmas holiday of Admiral Karl Dönitz’s discontinuation of Germany’s U-boat program in the Western Atlantic because of a lack of success and heavy losses. Apparently, however, Germany was not so willing to give up its U-boat program. It actually continued well into the final weeks of the war.

In my nervousness, and by way of an apology, I suppose, I blurted out this history to the senator. His handsome face broke into a reassuring smile, and he said, “My service in the war was also spent on the water, although on the Pacific fighting the Japanese.”  

“The famous PT 109 incident,” I replied.

“Yes. That happened in August of 1943.”

“I knew next to nothing of Hitler and his Nazis, or of the war,” I replied shamefacedly.

“You weren’t a member of a Hitler Youth group?”

“My father was a farmer. We lived in an extremely remote region of Southwest Germany. We lived our lives much as our ancestors had done for generations, isolated from the country’s political turmoil. We were aware of the war, but were able to keep apart from it almost entirely. And then I met Emil.”

“And he was in it body and soul?!”

“He was a Nazi, a fanatical Nazi. For a long time, I didn’t realize how dangerous he was.”

“And by the time you did recognize it, it was too late—you were in love with him, I take it.”

I broke eye contact with the senator then and looked at my folded hands in my lap. “Emil took it upon himself to indoctrinate me. It was a point of honor with him. He saw the war from the perspective of a sailor and he spared me no details about his ‘kills,’ as he called them—hundreds, thousands of American merchant ships and Allied submarines blown to bit. I didn’t keep a tally because the horror of the slaughter of all those young men on both sides was sickening to me. After a while, I couldn’t stand the sight of Emil. I vowed that if I survived the war, I would leave Germany.”

“Have you ever gone back?”

“Someday, when both Germany and I have mended a bit more.
“And Emil?”

“He haunts me still. Not a day goes by that I don’t carry the burden of my convoluted feelings for him. The weight is heavier because he lost his life.”

“I lost my big brother, Joe in the war. By rights, it should be he who is running for president. I suppose in some ways I’m doing it for him, although at times he was a royal pain in the neck to me.” The senator chuckled and then was silent for a couple of minutes, lost in his memories of his brother. “We must never forget that we are still in a state of war. We are in the Cold War, and have been since the end of World War II. In a way, it is just as insidious, maybe more so, because our enemies are so much more difficult to see. I think of it as our long twilight struggle. When I am president I intend to lead the way into the light.”

It was all I could do to keep tears from pooling in my eyes. Finally he said, “We both have our war scars. What do you say we leave it at that? Miss Berger, welcome to the righteous side of the fight.” He raised his glass and reached it out to me. I clinked my glass against his, and he added, “And now for the business of getting me elected president. What do you have planned for me?”

I have lost this morning to my memories. I think about going to Mass, but my watch tells me it is already too late in the morning to do so. I click on the TV. The president’s motorcade scrolls across the screen as it has done for the umpteenth time during the weekend, since that awful Friday, November 22^nd morning. That gorgeous head of the president, so vulnerable in the open-top limousine, slumps forward. His wife in her Chanel suit and pillbox hat draws him to her. The president is shot, and we learned soon thereafter, that he is dead!

The live television cameras switch to the latest events in the continuing coverage of the president’s assassination. Cameras are in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters this Sunday morning. Before our eyes, among a crowd of reporters and other onlookers, in handcuffs, young Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s alleged assassin, is surrounded by police guards. A big man in a fedora and dark suit steps forward from the crowd, raises a handgun, and shoots Oswald. Pandemonium breaks out and then the shooter is wrestled to the floor. Unconscious, Oswald is hustled to an ambulance and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same medical facility in which the president was pronounced dead two days ago.

Wave after wave of shock, grief, outrage, doom sweep over me! Hadn’t I left this kind of thing behind in Germany so long ago? What terrifying impacts will the loss of this president in whom the American people placed such high hopes have on the country? I am heartbroken for his wife and their little children. Was there a photograph of Jackie, Caroline, and little John-John in his wallet when he fell? I think about his mother and father and his many brothers and sisters, and his extended family, resilient and unstoppable people almost to a one, but this will give them serious pause, undoubtedly.

I perch in rigid disbelief on the edge of my sofa. “…Miss Berger, welcome to the righteous side of the fight,” JFK said to me at our first meeting, one short sentence that took me in the fold and defined so simply my role as an American, and as a German, when I return to my homeland, someday.©

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction inspired by true events

Image: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Books by multi-award-winning author, Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com.