THE LAST WEEK - THE ROAD TO WAR
Chapter 9 - Part 2
August 30, 1939

Loaded onto a stretcher on a luggage cart, FDR is taken by private rail car to New York´s Presbyterian Hospital, where the experts warn that full or partial recovery may take years – or never happen. Dr. George Draper, a brilliant young specialist, takes charge of the case, and reports that the legs are paralyzed. For Roosevelt, the pain, both physical and mental, is intense. Once a highly active athlete, he is now immobile, as are his political ambitions.

On October 28, the day before Tameichi Hara comes to New York, FDR is discharged from hospital, with a notation of "not improving." After that, the pain gets worse, and the medics have to shove wedges into his casts, to force his legs to become unlocked. But finally, Roosevelt´s back muscles unlock, and he can again sit up.

Then comes a massive battle between Eleanor and FDR´s mother, Sara Delano Roosevelt. The domineering Sara wants FDR to live at Hyde Park and give up public life. Eleanor, however, having tasted the scent of politics from the 1920 election, and still loving her husband, will not see him turned into a vegetating invalid. No, she tells Sara. FDR will stay at the family home on East 65th Street and fight his way back.

Eleanor wins, showing massive steel in the face of both her mother-in-law and adulterous husband´s illness. By spring of 1922, FDR is hobbling around on crutches and doing some work. Dr. Draper teaches Roosevelt to "stand," held up by heavy, immense, braces and an aide (often a son) as a prop. He can only rise from a chair, even with the braces on, with the greatest effort.

Yet he maintains his spirits…building ship models that can sail in the Hudson River…cataloguing his books…sorting his stamp collection…figuring out pincers to help him reach for books and making sure he has the smallest wheelchair possible, to navigate Hyde Park´s small corridors…and that the wheelchair has an ashtray for his cigarettes.

FDR lays down rules: he can never be carried in public, although his servants often have to do so at home, and he tells his family and advisors: he will return to public life.

In 1923, Roosevelt takes a cruise on a houseboat off Florida with his new companion, secretary Missy LeHand, who will replace Eleanor as the love of his life. Then he hears in 1924 that the waters at Warm Springs, Georgia, have provided recuperation to victims of polio. The pool there is fed by a subterranean spring that maintains a constant temperature of 88 degrees, and patients can stay in it for extended periods, without the fatigue of swimming or bathing. Roosevelt goes there in autumn 1924, and for the first time in three years, feels life in his toes.

While FDR battles his polio, another American officer is actually advancing his career. After a tour as instructor at the Cavalry School at Fort Riley in Kansas, Maj. Jonathan Wainwright is ordered in 1921 to serve on the General Staff. At age 38, it´s a great honor, serving on the planning and operations team for the whole Army. His main work is developing War Plan Orange, the US plan for defense of the Philippines against Japan. The scenario Wainwright develops calls for US and Filipino troops to withdraw into the Bataan peninsula and fight a delaying action, with the fortress of Corregidor and its nearby islands blocking access to Manila Bay. The defenders will hold until the US Pacific Fleet steams out from Hawaii and the West Coast and annihilates the Japanese Navy in a great battle of dreadnoughts somewhere around Guam. The defenders of the Philippines need only hold out for six months.

Everyone agrees the scheme is sound, and Wainwright believes that should the balloon go up, "I could do a good job." He hopes to be the operational man, not the grand strategist. In 1923, he goes to George Patton´s 3rd Cavalry at Fort Myer for two years, then back to the General Staff.

It´s not recorded, but it´s possible that while Wainwright is in the Philippines, he runs into a young company officer with the 15th Infantry, named Irvin Alexander. This veteran of the Great War and West Pointer spends most of his career with the 15th in Tientsin, before going back to the Point in 1924 as an instructor in Military Law, despite his lack of a law degree.

Also teaching is Maj. Omar Nelson Bradley, having been spared duty in Russia by having to serve on a court-martial board. Bradley arrives at West Point in September 1920, teaching mathematics to a huge class of 400 (many Great War veterans), and coaching a company in football. Bradley finds he learns logic and reasoning skills from mathematics, and endures housing shortages. Since he and his wife Mary neither drink nor smoke, they avoid the innumerable bathtub gin parties. Bradley approves of MacArthur´s emphasis on physical fitness and athletics, less so when MacArthur lets borderline cadets who star on the athletic field get passing grades.

The service schools are continuing to spew out recruits, despite the lack of war: Arleigh Burke graduates from Annapolis in 1923, followed by Edwin Layton in 1924.

To enter Annapolis, Layton beats out the four other Illinois candidates when they don´t show up for the test. However, he´s underweight. At the advice of a Navy Pharmacist´s Mate, Layton phones his father, who phones their congressman, who "makes things happen." Then he goes to eat some bananas. Two hours and two-and-a-half pounds later, Layton returns for his physical, and just makes the weight. His class at Annapolis includes Tommy Dyer and Hanson G. Baldwin.

Other officers fall into their jobs by chance. Elwood Quesada, son of a Spanish banker and an Irish immigrant, is working as a lifeguard at Washington´s Tidal Basin on June 11, 1924, when Millard "Tiny" Harmon, seeking football players for the Army Air Service´s team, suggests to Quesada that he join the Air Service.

Quesada, a Washington native, is a ready audience: he´s fascinated by the feats of Eddie Rickenbacker and Hap Arnold. Nest day, he goes to Bolling Field, and Harmon takes Quesada up in a two-seater, and lets Quesada try the controls. Quesada is hooked. Two years later, he´s on his way his way to Texas. When his train reaches Texas, Quesada introduces himself to three fellow recruits as "Elwood," and one of them declares, "The hell with that, you´re Pete!" And Quesada is "Pete" as he leads his airmen into Normandy.

A descendant on his father´s side of Robert E. Lee and on his mother´s side of Sam Houston, Texas-born and Louisiana-raised Claire Lee Chennault is flying in 1922 with the 1st Pursuit Group in Ellington Field in Texas, enjoying the mock dogfights, but beginning to wonder, when he is transferred to Hawaii, whether or not air interception of incoming bombers is a serious possibility.

Two Americans whose careers will take them on postwar collision course are on divergent paths. On January 30, 1922, Gen. Douglas MacArthur is relieved as superintendent of West Point by Gen. John J. Pershing, who disapproves of MacArthur´s many reforms, and MacArthur´s marriage to the dashing, attractive, divorced Louise Cromwell Brooks. Pershing has had his eye on her.

Pershing orders MacArthur about as far away from America as possible: Manila, where Philippine Senate President Manuel Quezon helps the general and his family move into No. 1 Calle Victoria, "The House on the Wall," in Manila´s 350-year-old inner city. There MacArthur commands the Military District of Manila and then the Philippine Scout Brigade, cultivates Filipino civic and business leaders, and personally surveys and maps 40 square miles of the malarial and mountainous jungle peninsula of Bataan, to support the plans that Wainwright and others are developing for the archipelago´s defense. MacArthur takes the assignment seriously, hiking Bataan´s trails personally to ensure accuracy.

While MacArthur climbs mountains in the Philippines, Harry S. Truman, back home in Missouri, opens a haberdashery with his business partner, Eddie Jacobson, at 104 West 12th Street in Kansas City, on the ground floor of the city´s Baltimore Hotel. A "first-class operation" in every way, Truman & Jacobson opens up in November 1919, and sells $70,000 worth of goods in 1920. But as the economy slumps in 1921, the haberdashery runs into trouble. By 1922, the partners have to close the store, being $35,000 in the red. However, they refuse to declare bankruptcy, and instead Truman goes on paying off his debts for the next 20 years.

But before the business collapses, Jim Pendergast, boss of the "Goat" faction of the divided Kansas City Democrats, casts his eye on Harry Truman as a candidate for eastern judge of Jackson County, a post that makes him one of the top three administrators of the county, overseeing the county´s purse strings and contract system. Truman is seen as a candidate because of his lack of Klan connections, strong war records, and personal popularity. Jim Pendergast and his brother Tom think that Truman as judge will be honest, while doing what he´s told politically. Truman needs rescuing. He agrees to run for the $3,465-a-year job in February 1922.

Facing four Democrats in the primary race, Truman runs on a platform of good roads and sound management of county business. He makes speeches and his Army buddies knock on doors to turn out the vote. The Ku Klux Klan, at the height of its political power, offers to support him if he promises to keep Catholics off the county payroll. Truman refuses. The Klan opposes him bitterly. Truman wins the primary by 279 votes. The general election in the solidly Democratic county is a formality, and Truman takes his oath of office on New Year´s Day, 1923.

Once in office, Truman does his job, for both the county and his patrons. He cuts the county´s debt, builds good roads cheaply, while ensuring that contracts and jobs go to Pendergast´s business interests and friends. And his daughter Margaret is born at home on February 17, 1924, amid a massive snowstorm.

Other Americans and Canadians are making acquaintance with their future. In 1922, Ernie Pyle is gaining his journalism degree at Indiana University in Bloomington. Morris "Moe" Berg is studying seven languages at Princeton and batting .337 for the baseball team. He gains his Bachelor´s Degree in 1923, leading the team to a 21-4. For his athletic and intellectual skills, the Newark native – one of the few Jews attending Princeton – gains a great deal of newspaper ink.

On June 26, Berg goes two for four as Princeton falls to Yale, 5-1, in the Big Three title game. After the game, he signs a contract with the Brooklyn Robins (as the Dodgers are then known), and joins the team in Philadelphia. Against major league pitching, Berg is less effective, batting .186 in 47 games, making 22 errors. After season´s end in October, he heads to Paris to study French, Italian, and Latin history and literature at the Sorbonne.

Charles Stacey is studying teaching, history, and radio equipment at University of Toronto Schools and their Royal Canadian Army Corps of Signals cadet corps. In fall 1923, he enters University of Toronto´s University College. He makes an important decision…he´s not going to be a doctor.

Seven-year-old Gregory Boyington gets his first airplane ride in 1919, flying over Washington State with barnstormer Clyde Pangborn, tossing leaflets advertising Pangborn´s air shows (and ride-alongs) over the side. That September, Jimmy Doolittle first comes to national attention when he sets a transcontinental air speed record, flying solo from Florida to California in 22 hours and 30 minutes, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Robert Scott buys a war-surplus Jenny in Americus, Georgia, and hauls the battered plane to his home in Macon on a truck, and starts putting it back together. A local streetcar conductor who flew in the war teaches Scott how to fly it.

Richard Winters is a four-year-old boy, playing in his backyard in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, in 1922. So are Robert Morgan in Asheville, North Carolina, Charles Sweeney in Lowell, Massachusetts, and William Smith in Latham, Alabama. William Ash is a five-year-old in Dallas; Dick Kinney a toddler in Endicott, Washington; Helen Cassiani also a five-year-old, in Bridgewater, Massachusetts; and Pete Galantin is a 12-year-old in Des Plaines, Illinois. Joe Enright, a 13-year-old in North Dakota, is getting postcards from his Uncle Frank, a Navy officer, from every port Frank Enright visits, all saying, "The Navy is great! Consider joining up when you´re old enough!"

The five Sullivan brothers are growing up in Waterloo, Iowa, the sons of a freight conductor on the Illinois Central railroad, while the four Rogers brothers are growing up in Brooklyn, the sons of an enforcer and bootlegger for notorious mob boss Owney Madden. George McGovern, born on July 19, 1922, is the son of a Methodist preacher and church-builder in Avon, South Dakota. And Eddie Slovik, born February 18, 1920, is the son of a punch-press operator in Hamtramck, Michigan.

Five American youngsters whose destiny will converge with one of the world´s greatest naval leaders over a Pacific Island are also kids: Besby Holmes in San Francisco; John W. Mitchell in Enid, Mississippi; Rex Barber in Culver, Oregon; Douglas Canning in Wayne, Nebraska, and Tom Lanphier in Detroit.

Jackie Robinson is a three-year-old in Pasadena, California. And Ira Hayes and James Bradley, two young men whose journeys will lead them to horror and fame atop a pinnacle on Iwo Jima, are born in 1923.

Another young man is trying to find his way in the early 1920s: Prince Albert, the Duke of York, second in line to the British throne. In July 1919, he sets up his own independent household at York House in St. James´s Palace, to escape the stultifying Victorian routine at Buckingham Palace and Balmoral, where even card-playing is banned by King George V, at the request of the Archbishop of Canterbury. On June 10, 1919, he meets Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, then 19, at a London dinner party. Elizabeth is the ninth child and fourth daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne in Scotland, a family with long traditions of money, shooting, fishing, cricket, horses, military service, and duty. Elizabeth herself has a strong, witty, confident personality, which draws Albert out of his shyness. He falls in love with her that evening. Elizabeth finds herself attracted to the shy but devoted Albert as well, asking her relatives about the realities of being married into the Royal Family.

Another member of the family is also pursuing marriage at the same time. Lord Louis Mountbatten, who is still on the move with the Prince of Wales. In May 1920, the Royal Tour rolls by rail through Australia, enduring huge crowds and a derailment between Sydney and Perth. The Prince of Wales takes the latter with good cheer, smoking a cigar through the crash and saying, "Well, anyway, at last we have done something which was not on the official program."

En route home on the battle-cruiser HMS Renown, Mountbatten takes the opportunity to film maneuvers at sea for instructional purposes. Later he sends the films to HMS Excellent the training station, for consideration, and they write back, "Their Lordships are unable to see any useful application for cinema films for instructional purposes in the Royal Navy."

Decades later, Mountbatten seeks out this letter from Admiralty files, writing on his request, "In view of the fact that my idea was taken up by the Admiralty, who have since spent many millions of pounds on instructional films, you can imagine how much value I place on this particular letter." Sadly for Mountbatten but happily for the original letter´s authors, the document is never found.

On October 11, 1920, HMS Renown returns to Portsmouth, and Mountbatten takes a sub-lieutenant´s course there, finished first in his class. Between classes, he meets Edwina Ashley, granddaughter of the Jewish financier Sir Ernest Cassel, one of the most attractive, elegant, and brilliant society girls in London. The two quickly fall in love.

On June 25, 1921, German scientist Friedrich Bergius succeeds in developing a process that liquefies coal into oil. The same day, Mountbatten goes back to sea to serve on HMS Repulse for three months, before going on another Royal Tour with the Prince of Wales, this time to India, to patch up relations in the wake of the Amritsar massacre. They are greeted by deserted streets in Allahabad, a boycott at the university in Benares, and protest banners in Madras. Nevertheless, Mountbatten develops a lifelong love of polo, shoots his first Tiger in Nepal, plays tennis in Rangoon, and is unimpressed by the King´s Pavilion in Kandy in Ceylon, regarding it as a "hopeless house." Too many reception rooms, not enough sleeping apartments. Twenty years later, it will become his official residence.

Next stop is Japan, and when Mountbatten arrives in Yokohama on HMS Renown, he gets a good look at the Imperial Japanese Navy, whose newest battleship, Mutsu, packing 15-inch guns, is on hand. The RAF officers training the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Service tell Mountbatten the Japanese are lousy pilots. The official British line on the Imperial Navy is that they are "mere copyists of western techniques and rather inferior copyists at that."

Mountbatten, however, wangles an invitation aboard Mutsu, something that the British Naval Attaché has failed to gain, by parlaying his royal connections. The Japanese show Mountbatten every inch of the battleship, and he comes away impressed. "Next to our own service I have never seen such fine ships," he writes. "Anyone on of them could have taken us on, on equal terms…I received the impression that here was a power to be reckoned with."

The Japanese are angry with the British – under the Washington Naval Treaty, their alliance with Britain is ended. Despite the Prince of Wales´ best diplomacy, Anglo-Japanese relations start fraying.

The 800-man crew of HMS Renown, however, has to worry about more important things than high diplomacy. Capt. The Honorable Herbert "Jimmy" Meade´s men have to keep the ship clean, tidy, and operational. Carpenters build a vaulting horse on the forecastle for the Prince of Wales to use to practice his polo strokes. Boatswain´s Mate A. Duff-Stewart cleans all of the ship´s 42 boilers. The Prince of Wales asks for a demonstration of the ship´s 15-inch guns, but is turned down – the shock of the gunfire will wreck the neat appointments of his cabin. Instead the gunnery officers show him how the rangefinders work.

After that, Mountbatten heads home, and asks Edwina Ashley to marry him on St. Valentine´s Day in 1922.The wedding takes place on July 18 at St. Margaret´s in Westminster, with the Prince of Wales as best man, the Royal Family and 1,400 guests in attendance. The King´s wedding present is to create Mountbatten as a KCVO. Sailors from HMS Renown pull the bridal car with dray ropes. The Yorkshire Post gives the wedding 13 columns, while the Daily Telegraph calls it the wedding of the year.

The Mountbattens head off for a six-month honeymoon, at the Ritz in Paris, with Mountbatten´s royal relatives in Spain, then to Germany, where £50 buys 26,000 marks and Mountbatten purchases his sister Louise a fur stole for just over two guineas.

On September 28, they take the liner Majestic to the United States, arriving in New York just in time for the World Series between John J. McGraw´s New York Giants and Miller Huggins´ New York Yankees, the second straight "Subway Series."

The Mountbattens attend Game Two of the "Battle of Broadway" at the Polo Grounds – home for both teams – where Lord Mountbatten eats six ice cream cones, two bags of peanuts, and drinks four bottles of soda pop, as both cheer wildly for Babe Ruth and the rest of the Yankees, probably since they are sitting with Yankee owner Col. Jacob Ruppert and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. With the game tied 3-3 in the 10th at 4:40 p.m. and the sun still shining, home-plate umpire calls the game "on account of darkness." As the fans realize this (no instant replay screen or announcers to pass the word quickly), they race down to the Landis-Ruppert-Mountbatten box to hurl insults at the commissioner, believing he has called the game.

New York´s Finest are required to escort the Mountbattens and the Commish from the ballpark, and Landis orders the day´s $120,554 gate turned over to charity. Mountbatten cheerily tells Landis with British understatement, "My goodness, Judge, but they are giving you the bird." The Giants go on to win the next three games, taking their second straight world title from the Yankees, becoming the only team ever to defeat the Yankees in consecutive World Series competition.

Pursued by fascinated pressmen, the Mountbattens head across America, describing what they see and who they meet to the media. After enjoying an Adirondack autumn and gaping with awe at the Grand Canyon, they arrive in Hollywood on October 18, staying with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, and make a private film with Charlie Chaplin.

Mountbatten tells American reporters that Prohibition is "quite all right, but I would not want it in England," that the U.S. Navy "is one of the finest bodies of men in the world," that the word hospitality "was coined here in America."

He also asks the American reporters to stop adding "by Jove" to his quotes, saying, "I am a regular guy, or at least I try to be. For the love of Mike, don´t make me talk like a bally English dude or say I wear a monocle. Why, if I wore a monocle, I couldn´t remain in the Navy half an hour." The reporters quote him, but ignore the request.

Because of this publicity, or perhaps in spite of it, Mountbatten is one Royal Navy officer who escapes the massive 1922 naval cuts that end the careers of 350 lieutenants and put 52 percent of Mountbatten´s classmates on the beach by the end of 1923. King George V tells the Admiralty that he believes it is for the good of the service that Mountbatten is kept in service. On January 14, 1923, Mountbatten joins his new command, the battleship HMS Revenge, in Constantinople, lugging 220kg of luggage, assigned to command a 15-inch gun turret and 160 men.

He does so with great determination, writing a detailed notebook on each sailor under his command, including their career and background, and then memorizing that information. To encourage his men to man the best turret on the ship, he offers prizes to his men for achievement. He serves on the battleship for 18 months, earning the respect of superiors and subordinates alike.

Mountbatten´s marriage and duty assignment is followed on January 13, 1923, by Prince Albert asking Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon to marry him while walking in a Scottish wood. The wedding takes place in Westminster Abbey on April 26, and the Duke of York becomes the first member of the Royal Family to wear a Royal Air Force uniform at his wedding. They live a low-profile social life, only going abroad in the course of duty, shooting and fishing in summer, staying out of the ritzy nightclubs and European skiing resorts frequented by Albert´s older brother, the Prince of Wales. In many ways, despite his position as second in line to the throne, the Duke of York is out of the public eye. His stammer and shyness compare unfavorably with the dashing, handsome, ebullient Prince of Wales.

Winston Churchill is another Briton in the public eye, frustrated as Secretary of War, where he presides over tighter budgets and trying to suppress terrorism in Southern Ireland. He asks Prime Minister David Lloyd George for a new job, and gets it on February 14, 1921, taking over as Colonial Secretary, inheriting the political side of the crises in Ireland, Turkey, and what will be called the Middle East. The big problem is Palestine, which Britain has promised to create as a Jewish homeland under the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Initially in 1920, Churchill worries that such a nation will be dominated by Moscow-trained Jewish Bolsheviks, but when he takes over the Colonial Office, he visits Egypt and Palestine, studies the situation and the peoples involved, and comes out strongly favoring a Jewish National Homeland in Palestine. Parliament backs him up, and so does the League of Nations, but then nobody can figure out how to actually make a Jewish State happen. Meanwhile, the Arabs in Palestine start staging violent pogroms against Jewish settlers the country, setting off a chain of violence that will continue down to the present.

Churchill is also caught in the middle of the other festering postwar sores: Iraq, Ireland, and the Turkish-Greek conflict that nearly puts Britain at war to hold the Dardanelles. With a sense of déjà vu, Churchill urges peace, but prepares for war, calling on the Dominions for troops. Only New Zealand and Newfoundland wire back that they are ready to fight. But the Turks respect the British Empire, and do not attack, and the diplomats sign treaties that return the Dardanelles and Bosporus to Turkey…but not before a young American naval officer named Winfield Scott Cunningham helps mistakenly steer his ship´s 16-foot whaleboat into the side of the British battleship HMS Royal Sovereign.

The whaleboat capsizes, but no other damage is done, and Cunningham, as junior officer, is not saddled with the blame. He goes on to serve on a destroyer in the Black Sea, evacuating White Russian refugees, then on a gunboat on the Canton-Hong Kong river delta, and then in 1923 aboard the light cruiser USS Milwaukee.

But Churchill´s biggest problem is one that has bedeviled Britain for centuries, the Irish question, and in 1920, this ancient conflict takes on the most modern forms of terrorism. British Special Police – the "Black and Tans" – and Irish Republican Army fighters exchange insults, gunfire, and atrocities. The Black and Tans raze Cork on December 11, 1920, infuriating Irishmen and outraging both the Labour Party and Churchill. He calls for a truce and a new Home Rule bill, which gains Royal Assent on December 23, 1920, dividing Ireland into two states, the southern 26 counties into Eire and the northern six remaining part of the United Kingdom.

The Irish then elect a Parliament that opposes the plan, calling for a single united Ireland, and the civil war continues, consuming lives and men. The Irish rapidly become masters of the new art of guerrilla warfare, their fast-moving Flying Columns and ambushes impossible for the cumbersome British formations to counter.

It also takes up the time and energies of some of Britain´s best future leaders. Bernard Montgomery is Brigade Major of the 17th (Cork) Infantry Brigade, which has seven battalions under its command. Montgomery reveals the sides of his character: coldness in ordering his Highland battalions to fight on New Year´s, ignoring their tradition of celebration that day – and clarity of thought, by writing a comprehensive training manual, covering every aspect of the guerrilla war, in alphabetical order, from Armored Cars to Wireless. The manual explains everything: arrests, ciphers, convoys, operations, patrols, pigeons, reprisals, in crystal-clear language that even the newest subaltern can understand. "The behavior of the Army must be kept beyond reproach," he writes, banning reprisals.

As the Irish civil war rolls on, Montgomery becomes convinced that the British should withdraw, arguing that the only way to defeat the Irish Republican Army is with a level of sheer ruthlessness that no democracy could tolerate. He passes on these thoughts later to a colleague at Camberley Staff College, Major Arthur Percival, a buck-toothed Great War veteran, who disagrees…Percival has also led columns against the IRA, with success, and a reputation with the IRA for brutality. Montgomery´s reputation is that of a man who has behaved "with great correctness."

In January 1922, the Irish government ratifies their treaty of independence from Britain. The IRA denounces the treaty, and the British prepare to withdraw, still enduring attacks by IRA snipers and kidnappers. On May 19, Monty´s brigade pulls out of Cork, and he gets a new job, Brigade-Major of the 8th Infantry Brigade, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, stationed in Plymouth. Montgomery is delighted to be assigned a duty station where he does not have to travel in armored cars, and the barracks are not surrounded by barbed wire.

Montgomery´s duties are, as they will be for the next 17 years, to train his men. He turns to the topic with enormous energy, setting up his own school to help Staff College candidates prepare for the exam, and rewriting the Infantry Training Manual in light of the Great War´s lessons. Montgomery´s ideas impress Capt. Basil Liddell Hart, a young theorist of armored warfare. Montgomery maintains that gaining ground is irrelevant – the primary task in battle is to "Aim always to bring enemy to battle, and attack, and kill as many as possible." His lectures are masterpieces of brevity and clarity.

In early summer of 1923, Montgomery moves to the staff of 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division in York, a Territorial Army unit. There he replaces summer drill training with summer battlefield training, including sand-table exercises. He also meets up with Lt. Francis de Guingand, a subaltern 13 years younger, and the two work closely together.

Other officers are serving in Ireland, too. Subaltern Kenneth Strong is in a Royal Scots Fusiliers battalion. The CO is a returned POW, and has little interest in soldiering any more – he´s busy playing polo. The matches are cancelled when the battalion is sent to Ireland, with Strong assigned as Detachment Intelligence Officer. In Tullamore, Strong recruits and pays off local agents at £5 a month. However, inspecting generals are more interested in the battalion´s cookhouse than its intelligence reports: Mrs. Waller-Sawyer is reputed to be the best cook in Ireland. When not eating, the generals are making sure the numbers on the secret documents correspond to the entries in the big book. Strong realizes that generals are most interested in security and food, and writes an article entitled "General and Cookhouses" on the subject.

The battalion returns to Glasgow relatively intact, and gets a new CO, whose main interests are having a good regimental band and "a nice lot of good fellows in the mess." Strong finds the superficialities and trivialities of that mess boring, and works on his German instead.

Arthur Percival is still in Ireland, too, displaying the strong ability for staff work that gains him promotion and a ferocity that would amaze his subordinates in Malaya 20 years later. His methods of defeating ambushes are so successful that the IRA offers a £1,000 reward for his body. In January 1923, Percival is assigned to teach at the Camberley Staff College. Among the students: Harry Crerar, Michael Gambier-Perry, and John Smyth, Alan Brooke, Ronald Adam, Philip Neame, and "Boney" Fuller – all future generals.

Brian Horrocks is in Ireland, too. In 1921, his 1st Middlesex Battalion returns to Britain from Germany, as a reserve in case the coal strike grows ugly. It doesn´t. In fact, sailors from the battleship HMS Warspite, sent to Clydeside, wind up playing soccer with the strikers.

With the strike ended, 1st Middlesex goes to Ireland for "a most unpleasant sort of warfare." Warspite heads there, too, landing a battalion of Royal Marines at Queenstown.

1st Middlesex´s next stop is Silesia, to maintain order during the Versailles-ordered plebiscite to decide if this coal region will be part of Germany or Poland. The Polish miners, annoyed at seeing English troops, go out on strike, so Horrocks and his 1st Middlesex are once again coping with striking coal miners for the second time in two years.

In the end, the plebiscite is pointless – the Poles and Germans are too mixed to divide by majority vote – so Poland gets Upper Silesia and its coal and iron, while Germany stews, heating up Polish-German tensions.

Horrocks´ battalion returns to Aldershot, comes under 1st Guards Brigade, and resumes square-bashing. Horrocks and his fellow officers fight "TEWTs," which is British Army jargon for "Tactical Exercises Without Troops." Officers go out in the field and explain how they would deploy non-existent men on the terrain to cope with assorted military disasters. Nobody takes it seriously…under the government´s "Ten-Year-Rule," British defense spending is configured under the idea that no major war will take place for 10 years.

One young Irishman is caught in the bloody civil war – Brooklyn-born William Joyce, growing up in Galway and attending school there, later claims that at age 15 in 1921, he serves the British Army as an informer and spy. That doesn´t seem likely, but when his family moves to England in 1922, he joins the 1st Worcesters at age 16, faking his age. After four months, the British realize the truth, and boot young Joyce out. He enters Birkbeck College, London University´s night school, to read English literature. He also applies for Army Officer Training, saying in his form that he was born in America, but of British parents, and claims the same rights and privileges as if "of natural British birth." He leaves out the fact that his father has taken American citizenship while living in Hoboken, New Jersey.

But Joyce does not join the Army a second time. Instead, he becomes interested in a newly-formed organization, the seven-month-old British Fascisti Party.

Another future traitor is en route to Britain in 1922. Patrick Heenan, a New Zealander, born to Ann Stanley, a single mother in Reefton in 1910, is growing up in Burma with his widowed mother, at the same time that Eric Blair Jr. – who will later take the pen-name "George Orwell" – is a police officer there. That year, the Heenans move to England, the land of Patrick´s mother´s birth. Ann Stanley Heenan is a governess to an English family, and they fund Patrick´s education at Sevenoaks School, where he is a fine athlete but poor scholar.

Other British officers avoid the Irish mess. Hastings Ismay is posted to the Indian Army´s staff college at Quetta, where he reads books and has to write a 15,000-word essay on the future of war. In it he protests the abolition of horsed cavalry, and derides air power and armored warfare. However, he also writes that "National war is an affair of the whole people. It demands the conversion of the whole resources of the nation into actual power, and the utilization of that power in a unified and predetermined manner." He also writes that "It is essential that the statesman and the soldier should be in the closes touch with each other, and that they should work together frankly, openly, and loyally…the soldier must realize that war is the instrument of policy, and that, in so far as any subservience is necessary, he must be subservient to the statesman."

After passing the course, Ismay is assigned to the Quartermaster General´s branch in Simla, working in a building that looks like rows of wooden cow-sheds. In the shed next to Ismay is Lt. Col. Claude Auchinleck.

By comparison, Andrew Cunningham is having a hard peace. After delivering the British Armistice party to England, he and his destroyer HMS Seafire are deployed to the Baltic, Britain´s first move to that sea since Napoleon, to support the new Baltic States´ struggle for independence. Cunningham finds starvation, poverty, and violence. On New Year´s Day in 1920, he is promoted to Captain. In 1922, he takes over command of the 6th destroyer Flotilla, and then the 1st Flotilla in the Dardanelles, commanding that until March 1923. Lt. Bertie Packer is gunnery officer on HMS Dublin in the South Atlantic. In January 1919, Royal Marine Lt. Harry Day receives his Albert Medal for saving men on his ship, HMS Britannia, when it was torpedoed by a U-Boat. Day tells everyone who will listen that he was merely trying to save the key to the wardroom´s liquor cabinet. And newly-married Lt. John Walker is studying something new in warfare, anti-submarine tactics, at the Royal Navy´s school in Portsmouth, HMS Osprey. He finds the subject fascinating.

Keith Park is also spared the Irish troubles. In April 1922, he is one of the first 20 officers to attend the world´s first Air Staff College, the RAF´s facility at Andover, headed by Air Commodore Robert Brooke-Popham, a Great War flying ace with the decorations and moustache to prove it. With Park are Sholto Douglas and Charles Portal. Not only must these men pass the 12-month course, they have to define the RAF´s "school of thought." They study the nature of war and its principles, imperial strategy, tactics and organization of air, ground, and naval forces, supply and communications, intelligence, economics, commerce, and science and how it relates to the RAF. They also learn how to write official letters, reports, and signals. In their spare time they have Bristol Fighters and De Havilland 9As to use to keep in flying practice. Brooke-Popham requests horses for exercise and gets 26 bicycles instead. Park and his fellow future Air Marshals pedal across the Salisbury Plain, surveying sites for airfields.

After passing the course in January 1923, Park is posted to Egypt with his family, arriving there in May. He is warned that European goods are expensive, vermin are everywhere, bazaars should be avoided until one gains experience, and that the tennis clubs admit officers. Good news for him: he spurns the officers´ mess and its gossip for Aboukir´s tennis courts.

Bernard Freyberg, reverting to his permanent rank of captain after leading two brigades in the Great War, graduates from Camberley Staff College in 1920, along with Capt. John Standish Sturdees Prendergast Vereker, Viscount Gort, who, like Freyberg, holds the Victoria Cross. In the summer of 1920, Freyberg attends a county house party, where one of the other guests is Winston Churchill. The two discuss their war careers and wounding, and Freyberg shows his gashes. Churchill counts 27 of them, but Freyberg points out, "You nearly always get two wounds for every bullet or splinter, because mostly they have to go out as well as in."

On November 12, 1920, Freyberg, brevetted Lt. Colonel again, is given command of the Guard of Honor of 100 fellow Victoria Cross recipients. Freyberg leads his men, in uniform or suits, wearing medals and mourning crepe, into the Abbey, escorting the Unknown Warrior to his resting place.

In 1921, Freyberg gets six months six leave, and heads home to New Zealand to recuperate. He arrives in June, and turns down a civic reception in Wellington, due to his wounds. After recovery, he returns to England in September, and next year marries on June 14, 1922, Barbara McLaren, widow of a Royal Naval Division veteran turned Royal Flying Corps pilot who was killed in the Great War. Freyberg´s best man is Sir James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, an old friend.