American Lady : The Life of Susan Mary Alsop (9781101601167) Read Online Free PDF Page B

statements on the European war during the presidential campaign in the fall of 1940. They both declared their support of Great Britain by all means except armed intervention, promising to keep the United States out of the war.
    American involvement grew during 1941 with the passing of the Lend-Lease Act, placing seven billion dollars at the disposition of the British, followed by the proclamation of the Atlantic Charter between Roosevelt and Churchill. But it was the Japanese attack on the naval base at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, that finally led Roosevelt to request and obtain the declaration of war on Japan from a nearly unanimous Congress. In turn, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11. The massive American warmachine quickly rolled into motion and nearly ten million men were called up, trained, and sent into combat.
    Bill’s asthma made him a category 4F, which meant he was unfit for military service. He refused to move to Arizona as his doctors had recommended, and looked for a way to earn a little money so as to be less dependent on his mother. He also wanted to serve his nation out of uniform. First, he worked on the presidential campaign for the Republican candidate, Willkie, who was considered more supportive of the Allies; then, after Roosevelt’s victory over Willkie, he found a job organizing civil defense for the city of Boston. In November 1942, thanks to his mother-in-law, he was hired by the State Department in the service of Sumner Welles, the undersecretary of state to Cordell Hull and a former colleague of Peter Jay’s. The Pattens left Boston for Washington. Susan Mary was glad to return to the capital and relieved that Bill could finally stop feeling useless and comparing himself unfavorably to his enlisted friends. Joe Alsop was a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp in Hong Kong, Charles Adams was in the marines, and Desmond FitzGerald had been drafted as a simple soldier.
    In November 1944, the State Department offered Bill a job as an economic analyst for the foreign service with a salary of thirty-eight hundred dollars a year. His first assignment was to the American Embassy in Paris.

III
Paris
    A Voyage to Paradise
    The ticket cost a hundred and fifty dollars, very cheap for a voyage to paradise.
1
    —Susan Mary Alsop,
To Marietta from Paris
    Bill left for Paris in January 1945, and Susan Mary went to stay with her mother in Georgetown while she waited for clearance to join her husband, no simple matter in wartime. Their time apart dragged on. Susan Mary was eager to begin her new life as a diplomat’s wife in a city where both her father and grandfather had once served America’s interests. She was also looking forward to a greater degree of financial and psychological autonomy. Mrs. Jay always seemed to disapprove of her daughter’s decisions, and her generosity inevitably came with tiresome lectures about thrifty housekeeping. For Susan Mary, Paris was a promise of independence and peace, a haven far from her meddling mother, a link with the family’s past.
    The itinerary for the journey eventually arrived, indicating a date, time, and location that had to be kept secret until the last minute. At ten in the evening on March 31, 1945, a friend dropped her off on a pier in New York. She boarded the long military ship with two suitcases, a handbag, a typewriter, a hatbox, and a few orchids. The next morning, her ship joined twenty others to form a convoy on the high seas under the protective escort of destroyers and Catalina seaplanes. Rules were strict. Passengers had to drink their sherry out of toothbrush mugs, dine at five in the afternoon, and wear life jackets all the time. Still, the officers were perfect gentlemen, and Susan Mary rather enjoyed obeying them, and disobeying them too. One night, she stepped out of her cabin when the convoy was under fire from one of the last German attacks and was soundly reprimanded.
    Twelve days later,