Proof that Eisenhower DID have an affair with the British ex-model who was his wartime driver . . .
For years, historians have dismissed her as a fame-seeking fantasist. But top author JAMES MacMANUS presents
Wartime love affairs have been the making of great films (Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca) and some fine books (Graham Greene’s the end Of the affair). But these fictional stories pale before the drama of the real-life romantic liaisons that blossomed amid the carnage of World War ii. One such affair stands out both because it was an open secret at allied Command and because many reputable historians have long denied it happened at all. Now we know it did — but perhaps not quite as people assumed.
in September 1939, 31-year- old Kay Summersby saw the outbreak of war as an opportunity to change her life. that meant putting behind her a failed marriage and a soul-destroying job as a model for the Worth fashion house in London. She resisted all appeals to return home to County Cork.
Proudly anglo-irish, she was determined not to spend the war ‘sitting on a horse properly and pouring tea correctly’.
armed with a driving licence — then rare for women — her liberation came in a job with the motor transport Corps, where she was put on ambulance duty. it was a routine post — until the Blitz began in September 1940.
She described it as: ‘ Living, driving and working in a bomb-made hell where blood and death were as commonplace as a cigarette . . . driving ambulances loaded with bodies, the stench of burnt flesh, being turned away by morgue after morgue with “sorry we’re full” . . . a cinema with the lights on but the front row stalls filled with bodies, all headless . . .’
Later, she was switched to the safer job of driving visiting american officers around London and the South east — which is how, in may 1942, she met a two- star general at Paddington Station.
Dwight David ‘ike’ eisenhower had been sent to begin planning for a cross-channel invasion.
For a hectic two weeks, Kay drove eisenhower from dawn to late at night, before finally delivering him to Northolt airport in West London for his return to Washington.
Carrying his briefcase, she accompanied him to the steps of the aircraft, where he turned and presented her with a rare wartime luxury: a box of chocolates.
three weeks later, eisenhower was back with three stars on his shoulders. His first action was to insist that Kay be released from other duties. He would accept no other driver.
a day later, a large basket of tropical fruit appeared on her desk. the unlikely affair between an irish divorcee and a married american general — at 51 some 18 years her senior — had begun.
What followed would cause amazement in the higher echelons of the allied Command, raised eyebrows in No 10 and the White House — and anguish to eisenhower’s wife mamie back in Washington.
FOR the rest of the war, Kay was at eisenhower’s side from early morning, when she would join him for breakfast, to late at night, when he looked to her for a relaxing chat, an occasional shoulder massage and long, weak whiskies.
She was often photographed at his side with a large Packard or Buick staff car in the background. When Life magazine carried a cover story on eisenhower in 1943, Kay was in shot behind him.
to many senior British and U.S. officers, it seemed obvious that ike was having an affair with his driver. No one objected. if that was what it took to keep him sane amid the crushing burdens of high command, who could argue?
and eisenhower did nothing to conceal his need for Kay — whom he nicknamed ‘irish’ — to be at his side. in addition to her striking looks, she was an efficient organiser who knew how to manage his occasional moods — typically, with that glass of iced whisky.
She accompanied him to appointments, first as driver, later as official aide, and often sat in on meetings, taking notes.
in the autumn of 1942, ike insisted on leaving his quarters at the Dorchester hotel and moving to telegraph Cottage in richmond Park, west of London. Kay moved in with him, along with two aides.
With just three bedrooms, the cottage must have been crowded, but ike loved the place. Kay became hostess of telegraph Cottage, welcoming guests, partnering ‘the boss’, as she called him, at bridge in the evenings and riding out with him most mornings.
His attachment to her was such that he made sure his cherished black Scottish terrier’s name contained a reference to her.
Kay had given him the puppy for his 52nd birthday in November 1942. He named it telek, in tribute to the two things in life that gave him the most happiness: his life at telegraph Cottage and Kay.
Later that year, and against regulations, ike arranged for Kay to join him in North africa after the torch landings, a hugely successful amphibious assault by the allies on North africa.
it was there that ike introduced Kay to Prime minister Winston Churchill at a lavish desert picnic and, when U.S. President Franklin D. roosevelt flew in to congratulate his commander, he sat Kay next to the President.
Both great leaders, in slightly different words, said the same thing to Kay: ‘make sure you look after our general.’
in her book, Past Forgetting, written as she was dying of cancer aged 66 in 1975, Kay confirmed her affair with eisenhower was sexual. With telling detail, she recounts how they had first kissed in the darkened hold of a transport plane over North africa.
the very public life of the allied commander did not prevent discreet holding of hands, the touching of feet under tables and ‘explosions of stolen kisses’ when they were alone.
But it was at night in a command trailer, tent or private quarters of a requisitioned house that the lovers were able to express their true feelings for each other.
these passionate encounters are described by Kay in a way that makes clear they were not the fantasies of an attention-seeking woman, as some have claimed.
indeed, one description of notsogentle love- making reveals what i believe is a key element in a credible relationship.
eisenhower had just returned from a brief visit to Washington. Fog had forced his plane to divert to Prestwick in Scotland and a train had been sent to take him and his entourage to London, where he arrived just after midnight. Kay drove him to a swish townhouse off Berkeley Square.
ike sent his exhausted staff to bed, but proclaimed himself ready for a nightcap. He and Kay were alone in the drawing room where, as she wrote many years later, ‘there were no peering eyes’.
He gave her a photo portrait of roosevelt personally signed to her and said the President had asked after her. as they talked, ike refilled their glasses several times. ‘i suppose inevitably we found ourselves in each other’s arms in an unrestrained embrace. Our ties came off. Our jackets came off. Buttons were unbuttoned. it was as if we were frantic. and we were.
‘But this was not what i had expected. Wearily, we slowly calmed down. He snuggled his face into the hollow of my neck and shoulder and said: “Oh God, Kay, i am not going to be any good for you.” ’
Kay described their mutual embarrassment as they struggled back into their clothes. ‘Finally we dressed. ike looked troubled. “i don’t want to let you go,” he said. “God, i’m sorry.” ’
this description of a passionate, but unsatisfactory, meeting between two wartime lovers has the ring of truth.
Kay alludes several times in her book to the fact that late-night whiskies, the demands of high command and eisenhower’s sheer exhaustion meant the lovers never actually consummated their affair,
an admission that makes a nonsense of claims by Kay’s detractors that she invented the relationship.
If that were the case, why would she admit the affair was never fully realised? Indeed, why would Eisenhower later have arranged for Kay to receive American citizenship and the rank of captain in the U.S. Army?
Why, also, did he insist that she joined him in the famous photo, in May 1945, showing Ike with his senior officers holding up the pens with which the German surrender had just been signed? Kay is there, just over Ike’s shoulder, smiling.
But when the photo was later issued to the media by the Pentagon, Kay had been airbrushed out.
In all the time they were together throughout the war, Eisenhower returned home just once to see wife Mamie. The visit, in January 1944, was a disaster. Twice, he mistakenly called his wife ‘Kay’, apologising profusely with the limp explanation that Kay was the only woman he ever spent any time with in London.
The apology did not impress Mamie. She was well aware of the gossip about her husband and his driver and had ample evidence, from friends in the military, as well as from Press reports, of their close working relationship.
Mamie’s wartime letters to Eisenhower were later destroyed, quite by whom is not clear.
What is clear, from his letters to her, is that she complained bitterly about the presence of Kay in his life. For a man in command of two million men and faced with agonising decisions on which tens of thousands of lives depended — D-Day, of course, among many others — it is understandable that Ike should seek social, emotional and, to some extent, sexual comfort with a woman who was so much a part of his wartime life.
The loneliness of high command meant Eisenhower only had Kay to turn to at the end of the day and he made clear his feelings for her in many little ways — scribbled notes to ‘Irish’, the gift of a silver-plated Beretta pistol. They were tokens of love that did not go unnoticed among his staff, but Eisenhower did not seem to care.
AS THE war in Europe reached a climax in March 1945, the Supreme Allied Commander’s dependence on Kay became even more obvious. He was emotionally and physically exhausted and was ordered to take a few days off in the warmth of southern France.
A lavish villa near Cannes was made available and a few handpicked staff chosen to accompany him. Kay was not invited.
Eisenhower’s response was characteristic. A photo shows him on a deckchair, wearing shorts and sipping a cocktail. Beside him, in a short sundress, is Kay. The end of the affair was, though, inevitable and it proved shattering for Kay and sobering for Eisenhower.
From his Frankfurt headquarters, where he was in charge of the occupation of Germany, Ike wrote a letter, in May 1945, to the U.S. Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, to say he wanted a divorce.
Although the letter did not say so, it was clear to Marshall that Ike wanted to marry Kay.
The existence of the divorce letter has long been dismissed by most (but not all) of Ike’s biographers — but the evidence provided by President Harry Truman, among others, suggests otherwise.
In an interview shortly before he died in 1972, Truman confirmed the Eisenhower divorce letter. According to his account, Marshall replied with a blistering cable saying that Ike would be dismissed from the Army and not welcome in the U.S. if he divorced Mamie.
Truman said that before he left office, in 1952, he had the letter destroyed. A recent Eisenhower biographer, historian Jean Edward Smith, gives credence both to the affair and Truman’s account of Ike’s desire to marry Kay.
In any event, Eisenhower returned to Washington at the end of 1945 and wrote to Kay on official paper at Allied headquarters in Frankfurt where she was working, desperate to hear from him. It began: Dear Kay, I am terribly distressed, first because it has become impossible [any] longer to keep you as a member of my personal official family, and secondly because I cannot come back and give you a detailed account of my reasons . . . I am sure you will understand that I am personally much distressed that an association that has been so valuable to me has to be terminated in this particular fashion . . . At the bottom, Eisenhower wrote in his own hand: ‘Take care and retain your optimism.’
In his book, Eisenhower In War And Peace, Jean Edward Smith describes the letter as ‘ coldblooded and ruthless’.
‘FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] would have been incapable of writing such a missive and [General] Patton would have said a warmer goodbye to his horse,’ he wrote.
KAY was determined to fight for her man. She flew to Washington, taking Telek with her, and confronted Ike at the Pentagon. She later described the meeting as an exchange of banalities that masked the true feelings of both.
Shortly after, Kay received her next U.S. Army posting — to a PR unit on the West Coast, as far from Washington as it was possible to get within the continental United States. She resigned and moved to a small apartment in New york.
The final, dismal end came on the forecourt of Columbia University in New york in 1948. Eisenhower had been made president of the university the year before.
Kay by then was enjoying a heady social life in the city. Her first book, Eisenhower Was My Boss, a purely factual account of her wartime work with Eisenhower that gave no hint of their relationship, had been a bestseller in 1948. She sent him a copy, but received no reply.
At this time, Eisenhower was being talked about as a U. S. presidential candidate in the forthcoming 1950 election. The gossip about his wartime romance had died away, but politicians from both parties were well aware of the rumours about Kay Summersby.
Eisenhower could not afford to make any contact, let alone be seen, with his former driver.
But, undeterred, she arranged ‘accidentally’ to cross Eisenhower’s path as he walked to his office at Columbia, behaviour she later admitted was like that of a lovesick schoolgirl. She suggested they meet for tea to talk over old times.
Ike said there was nothing he could do for her and walked on.
A year later, Kay married a New york stockbroker, but the marriage did not last. She remained deeply in love with Eisenhower, who went on to serve as the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961) and who died from heart failure in March 1969, aged 78.
On her deathbed, in January 1975, Kay dictated the final words of her memoir: ‘We were two people caught up in a cataclysm. Two people who shared one of the most tremendous experiences of our time. Two people who gave each other comfort, laughter and love.’
Her ashes were scattered where she grew up, at Inish Beg in County Cork.