chapter 1: call to colors
Then let brave men on iron ships at sea
For all keep ocean lanes forever free.
For all keep ocean lanes forever free.
At the roast organized by my daughter Nancy on the occasion of my 70th birthday in 1982, my brother Mark remarked, "The glory of the military was always exciting to Paul."
There is an element of truth in that statement. My first indoctrination in things military was in Switzerland, when, as a child, I would open a closet door in any home and could see a uniform and rifle, handily located to facilitate a call to the colors that made possible the mobilization of the entire Swiss Army within 24 hours.
Later, recitals of Napoleonic exploits, and those of other great generals, stirred my blood. Much later, the realization of the cost in human suffering of those campaigns cooled my ardor for the generals. Then I became convinced that national service by the individual was needed by the State, and that the training required to perform this service was beneficial in developing a sense of discipline in the individual.
In any case, except for a minor lapse when I was in graduate school, I was, indeed, actively involved with the military from my senior year in high school, in 1928-29, when I served as a corporal in the ROTC, until March 1972, when I was retired from the U.S. Navy as a captain of the line in its reserves.
Part-time employment and participation as cornetist in the high school band precluded earlier involvement in the ROTC, where, in addition to being a squad leader, I played the bugle at reveille and at retreat. Our PMS&T was a retired U.S. Army captain named Gunn(!), a former Governor of the Virgin Islands, and a strict disciplinarian. The uniform was the khaki of WWI, wool, wrap-around leggings, and the hard felt campaign hat after which the boy scout hat was patterned.
When I entered the University of Kansas, it seemed natural to enroll in its ROTC program. There was the added incentive of earning nine dollars per month for doing so, making it easier to face the economic reversals threatening us all.
KU was not a land grant university. ROTC was therefore an optional matter. Thus, the enrollment was limited, but the quality of the units high because we were there by choice. The organization of the ROTC during my early years was as a regiment of two battalions, a battalion of engineers and a battalion of coast artillery. By the time I was a senior, the regimental organization had been dispensed with, and the unit constituted two independently organized battalions.
I served as the cadet major commanding the engineers. On graduation I was commissioned second lieutenant of engineers in the U.S. Army reserve, a prerequisite for which commission was a month's summer attendance at Fort Riley, Kansas, certainly one of the hottest and dustiest places on earth. The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote, "University Men Find They're in the Army Now," which appeared in the October 1933 issue of The Kansas Engineer:
"The men have all left camp by now. Each one will probably cherish a different moment above the others. They will not forget all about the demolitions, bridges, rifle practice and other technical features. But in the foreground will remain the vivid recollections of the mess hall, the griping of the first-sergeant's whistle, jokes, dances, the heat, the bugs, the pranks. The 'fall in, someone has lost a knife, fall out,' gold-bricking, and the fellowship of the other students and officers, the feeling of something worthwhile come to pass – memories of four weeks well spent."
My time in the army reserves was one of quiescence. Things picked up, however, in the fall of 1935, when change of employment brought me to Kansas City again. I was working for Black & Veatch, consulting engineers. An associate of that firm was J. F. Brown, colonel, commanding the 110th (Combat) Engineers regiment of the Missouri National Guard. He was anxious to have graduate engineers as his officers and invited me to join the regiment. He had no current vacancy for an officer, but promised that I would be put in the first available opening, if I was willing to resign my commission in the U.S. Army reserves and enlist in the National Guard. This I did.
This was an interesting experience. Not long after I had joined, there was a vacancy for an officer. Missouri remained one of two states to choose its national guard officers by election of the unit to be commanded. This resulted in considerable interplay between the regimental commander, who had his nominee, and the troops, who favored one of their old line sergeants. Of course the nominee of the regimental commander had to win. But this put an added burden upon the winner, though useful in testing qualities of leadership.
So I was elected by the platoon as its commanding officer and was commissioned second lieutenant in the Missouri National Guard. One night each week we drilled at the armory on Main Street. On weekends we often went to the country, both to qualify our men in the use of firearms and to ride, for engineer officers were mounted.
Come August the regiment participated in brigade maneuvers at Camp Clark, near Nevada, Missouri. It was at such maneuvers that I was formally presented my commission by Missouri's governor Guy Park, he being flanked on one side by U.S. Senator Bennett Champ Clark and on the other by U.S. Senator Harry Truman. (I would appear before Senator Clark in 1954 for admission to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, of which he was then a judge. And I would join Senator Truman as naval officer when he, as President, raised the American flag in Berlin in July 1945.)
A hiatus in my military career occurred during my two years at the Harvard Business School, for, not being able to remain active with my platoon, I had to resign my commission. But while at school, I met among my classmates a number of naval officers, and was well impressed by them. Once finished with my studies, I decided to renew some kind of ties with the defense establishment. My association with the naval officers and my memories of army maneuvers in heat and dust led me eventually to write the Navy to ascertain of its possible interest in me. The Navy was interested. Thus, in 1939, I was commissioned ensign in the Supply Corps of the Naval Reserve and sent correspondence courses so that I might qualify as paymaster and supply officer.
I continued my career with Phillips Petroleum Company, and that fall I married. How much I was influenced by the clouds of war, I do not know. Probably very little. I know that I made no attempt to avoid call-up and, when a year later the call came, I went, believing that if you wear the uniform, you go when needed. The call came late fall 1940, shortly after Miriam and I learned we might expect our first child. Mixed emotions there were, but in December 1940, one year before Pearl Harbor, I bade my comrades at Phillips goodbye and took leave of my parents and wife. I had been ordered to Washington, D.C. to "attend the Supply Corps Naval Reserve Officers School, National University, 825 Thirteenth Street, Northwest . . . for active duty under instruction." I was not to remain there long; but, unpredictably, it would be six years before my release from active naval service.
Excerpts from letters to my wife best recapture my state of mind and activities during my early days in the Navy:
. . . I made a safe trip, although plane connections forced me to go to New York, then down to Washington. This did not entail any additional expenses, however. [TWA Flight 40 via Stratoliner flying 200 mph at 7,000 feet.] I stayed at a hotel [Harrington] last night and today, after much waiting around, registered for the school and found a room [1400 Massachusetts, N.W.] . . . . I am very weak. It seems even hard to think and move the pen. I may have to go to the Naval hospital here since I could not begin classes tomorrow feeling as I do. . . . (6 Jan 41)
. . . The announcement was made today that the school would not be limited to 16 weeks, but would probably last about 20. They plan, however, to pull men out as they need them for service afloat. That would be even worse for the married boys. If such a life is all I have to look forward to it will be difficult to feel happy about any part of school life. It's all my fault for ever messing with the Navy business. Of course, in an emergency I probably would have been called sooner or later. . . . It's just that it's all so indefinite. My health, though not good, is somewhat better than when I last wrote you. . . . Perhaps when I have recovered I shall have a better outlook on life. I must not burden you with problems. I should be the one to cheer you up. Wish I could have you here with me. If we found an apartment it would be so far out that a car might be necessary and with all our debts, incurring another would be unwise. I'm going to look around, however. If we are to be separated later, we should be together now if at all possible. (8 Jan 41)
How happy I was to get your wonderful letter and then to hear your dear voice last nite. Though many miles away it made you seem close to me. It is always difficult to know what to say over the telephone but it is a comfort to know that you have contact with one you love and sorely miss. . . . It is a relief to know you are getting along well with the unpleasant tasks which I left you. You will undoubtedly feel a relief when you finally reach Chicago. . . . My health is gradually improving. I am regaining my appetite. . . . The apartment situation here is most discouraging. People must pay $65-$70 a month for small three room apartments. Groceries are not so bad, although milk is 14 cents per
quart. . . . My pay is not as liberal as I had hoped. This is due to my low rank and short time in the service. [Monthly: base pay $125; rental allowance $40; subsistence $18; for total of $183.] My expenses are at present – room and two meals per day $45 per month; lunches $12; laundry $4; miscellaneous (?) $8, for a total of $69 per month. In addition, [we must pay] Harvard $40; insurances, etc. $23.20; CIT $13.42; interest $5, for a total of $81.62. Grand total $150.62 per month. . . you see it will be a tight squeeze. (11 Jan 41)
Your wonderful letters have been a tonic to me. . . . You and [your mother] have been grand about the moving. You did a swell job and I'm proud of you. I'm just as glad you didn't sell the pieces we still have – especially the desk. We'll have a home again before you know it. Now I've a surprise for you. I am no longer at the school. I have been transferred to a new duty. Tonight, in a couple of hours, I leave for New York to inspect an aircraft corporation on Long Island for about three days. Then I pick up my stuff for a last minute conference and report to my new post. Guess what it is. I'm to be Cost Inspector of Naval Aircraft at the Curtiss-Wright company's St. Louis plant. Isn't that swell? The contract will keep me there until September next. . . . Saw President Roosevelt after the inaugural parade yesterday. . . . (20 Jan 41)
Just a few lines to tell you I am thinking about you and loving you constantly. I have had an interesting and enjoyable three days in New York. In addition to my work, I have looked up several old [Harvard] Business School classmates with whom I shall have dinner within the hour. . . . My heart takes an extra leap when I think that it is possible we shall soon meet. Even in the streets here, when I see a young lady with a coat having a leopard skin collar, I am startled, until I realize the improbability of my love being so near. (Taft Hotel 24 Jan 41)
The Washington episode remains somewhat blurred. I had in a short time been uprooted from Texas, gotten leave of absence from Phillips Petroleum, visited a sick mother in Kansas City, fallen ill myself, left a wife in Kansas City who had to return to Texas to dispose of our furnishings, and tried in a few days to make myself feel I was in the Navy.
Classes started, I was sent to a civilian tailor (Visek) to be measured for uniforms, bought the necessary accouterments, including a dress sword, all of which I needed and for which I would ultimately be reimbursed by the Navy. So new was I to the ways of the service that it never occurred to me to report in sick rather than begin on the appointed day, for I had fallen ill after passing the physical exam which was a prerequisite to beginning my travel.
Washington was entirely new to me. The main Navy building on Constitution Avenue, a huge concrete warren of bureaucrats, had been built as a temporary building during WWI (and would survive until mid-1970). The city had a small town atmosphere, and military uniforms were not yet much in evidence. Such familiar ground as I found was in reestablishing contact with friends of times past living in the area.
But things military were stirring, and the Roosevelt administration was expanding the "arsenal of democracy." One day after class I shared with my instructor the view that there must be more interesting things to do in the Navy than disburse pay to a bunch of sailors. The next thing I knew I was in the office of the Navy Paymaster General, where an assistant told me of their need for cost inspectors to monitor cost-plus-fixed fee contracts in the greatly expanding defense effort. He had looked at my record and concluded that my engineering plus MBA degrees and cost analysis ex¬perience at Phillips qualified me for such a post. Thus came my premature departure from the school and my assignment to St. Louis, where I was to remain for two years, a period of enormous change for the world, the U.S., the Navy and for me.
In St. Louis, I found an apartment so my wife could join me. The Navy had one civil servant, Leonard Story, working on its contract as part of an Army air corps audit staff supervising aircraft construction at Curtiss-Wright. I found Story to be a superb accountant, a CPA who was a tireless worker and who became a faithful friend. The two of us worked in an office provided in the plant by Curtiss-Wright. Starting with the production of trainers, SNC-ls, contracts expanded greatly as we approached and then found ourselves at war. The Hell Cat dive bomber became our main product.
With production multiplying, new buildings accommodated the expanding work force. My staff also grew, other contractors were added to my responsibilities: Emerson Electric Manufacturing building gun turrets; Busch-Sulzer Diesel Engineering building ammunition gun hoists and diesel engines for minesweepers; Amertorp Corporation (subsidiary of American Can) building aerial torpedoes; McDonnell Aircraft building aircraft parts; St. Louis Shipbuilding constructing landing craft (to be floated down the Mississippi to New Orleans for completion). Thus over a two-year period my staff grew from one to 75 civilian accountants and an ensign assistant auditing $330 million in cost-plus-fixed fee contracts. We were constantly involved in negotiations with contractors determining what was or was not allowable as reimbursable costs. It was a strenuous effort on the part of our government to avoid the cost overrun and financial scandals that were the legacy of the WWI production experience.
It was an exciting time. I worked closely with the Naval technical supervisors (who reported to the Bureaus for which the product was being manufactured). I reported to the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts in Washington, through the Supervisory Cost Inspector of the Ninth Naval District, who had his office in Chicago. The atmosphere was one of dedicated effort by management and workers alike. And my staff worked hard to seek for the contractor a prompt reimbursement of his legitimate expenditures under our contracts.
I kept my main office at Curtiss-Wright and, by means of a Plymouth station wagon furnished by the Navy, Story and I supervised the staffs at the various plants. We maintained a proper distance from contractor executives, but, over time, they became friends whose integrity we respected. Charles France was the Curtiss-Wright vice president in charge of St. Louis; Edward Pollister was president of Busch-Sulzer Diesel; W. Stuart Symington (later first secretary of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Senator from Missouri) was president of Emerson Electric; Harold Geneen, to become the ITT tycoon, was the accountant at Amertorp with whom I dealt. Occasionally, we got together for golf or dinner, and on one occasion attended the World Series when the Cardinals and the Yankees were contending (and the Dean brothers were local heroes).
Miriam and I were very happy in our rented apartment at 5362 B, Gladstone, Lucas-Hunt Village, in the St. Louis suburb of Normandy. There on 3 August 1941, our first child, Nancy, was born in the Booth Memorial Hospital of the Salvation Army. We made many friends, some of whom we keep in touch with to this day. And, with St. Louis midpoint between Kansas City and Chicago, we were periodically in close touch with our families, who were throughout the war years, as they indeed have always been, marvelously supportive of us.
With so much happening on the war front, and brothers shipping out to where the action was, and the establishment of a well running staff, I got restive to be more involved. For this the Navy itself was largely responsible. As new undertakings gave rise to new personnel requirements, the Navy would announce its need and encourage applicants. Nothing came of my initial, half-hearted explorations, save notice that my Bureau was still recruiting cost inspectors, and, inasmuch as I was by now one of its more experienced ones, the Bureau was not about to release me to another bureau.
Then came a call for officers for duty in military government and civil affairs, with the strong emphasis on rehabilitation in the post-hostility phase. I felt the notice had been written to me personally. My wife and I discussed it, and she, marvelously supportive as ever, encouraged me to apply if I felt an urge to do so. Several things were, as it turned out, in my favor. The classmate of the inspector of naval aircraft with whom I worked at Curtiss-Wright was chief of Naval Personnel. My superior in Chicago, Captain C. D. Bishop, had just moved to Washington to be assistant to the Navy's Paymaster General. And I had earlier obtained as my assistant Ensign Robert Trueblood, a first-class CPA, who was well qualified to replace me. When my application came through, Bishop called me to ask if this was something I really wanted, adding that, since I had done good work for him, he would see what he could do for me.
He did well. He got the Paymaster General to approve my release. I was selected, recommissioned as a line officer, ordered to the Naval Training School, Dartmouth College, for sixty days of line indoctrination, after which I would attend for one academic year the Navy's School of Military Government and Administration at Columbia University, New York City.
I reported to Dartmouth on 12 February 1943. Classes had already started, as my recommissioning to the line caused some delay, and for a few days for me some anxiety, lest all had been cancelled. I was then a lieutenant, having been promoted from ensign to lieutenant, junior grade, in May 1942, and to lieutenant in October 1942. Most of the officers at Dartmouth were newly commissioned, whereas I was already a veteran of two years active service.
Hanover, New Hampshire, is a lovely place, and cold in the winter. We were housed in college dorms, I in Fayerweather Hall. There I stayed until late March, attending classes, drilling, attending the winter carnival, as well as cultural performances on Dartmouth's regular agenda, a Lauritz Melchior concert among them.
I wrote to my wife and to my parents with some regularity. Here is an excerpt from one such letter:
Another new week has started. This weekend my roommate went to Boston, then on to New York to see his wife. I envied him that trip. At that he could only stay ten hours. I spent the time working on a long navigation problem. I was on watch again last Friday. Tomorrow I have security watch from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Bad hours, but then it is only for a short time.
Already I count the days when I'll be out of here and getting our family settled in New York. It is fortunate they keep us busy so we have less chance to be lonesome for our loved ones. Several of the wives came up to visit the boys in our Company Saturday. When the bus arrived and they got off I halfway lingered as if I were expecting to see you there also.
Occasionally, we are on our way to breakfast when the flag goes up, or on our way to supper as it is hauled down. At which time all activity ceases and all stand at attention saluting while the bugle sounds. In such moments it becomes increasingly evident the price some pay to keep this symbol of our land flying. How fortunate we have been to have our home intact during two years of havoc. To me the flag and the home are inseparable. I never think of one without the other.
The program here at school, as I have mentioned, is primarily to make seagoing officers of the students. Already sea terms such as port, starboard, taffrail, forecastle, tack, bulwark, bulkhead, are taking definite form and meaning. Most things taught are of an extremely practical nature. In seamanship, for instance, we learn the rules of the road for ships, semaphore, blinker signals, flag signals, and sea terminology. In ordnance, all about guns, explosives, range finders, powder, naval history. And in navigation how to steer a ship by charts and bearings taken on land and celestial objects. (8 Mar 43)
Here, as I had in Washington, I ran into fellows I had known in school, including Jim Bausch, Olympic gold medalist for his world record setting performance in 1932 in Los Angeles, for which event I had served as pacesetter when he was practicing the 1,500 meter run at the University of Kansas. Others were known to me by name only, a movie actor, professional football players, academicians. They came from all walks of life.
The end of studies at Dartmouth led uninterruptedly into studies at Columbia. On 31 March, my wife and daughter joined me in New York. We stayed initially at the Commodore Hotel, than at the Harmony on 110th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, off the Columbia campus. There, because we had a baby to look after, the hotel permitted us a hot plate, on which we also cooked our breakfasts and suppers. It was not long before we got an apartment on Morningside Drive, occupied largely by Columbia faculty members, and there, a short walk away from classes, we experienced the full joys of family life for the remainder of 1943. We were not unmindful of the shadow of coming separation which lengthened as we progressed in our studies. But we had so much that gloom was no part of our environment.
Academically it was a wonderful year. Like other institutions of higher learning, as the student population fell because of the demands of the armed forces, Columbia turned to organizing special programs to meet special military requirements and staffed those programs with the finest professors, from its own ranks and from other faculties.
Administratively, the Military Government School was under the commandant of the vast midshipman training program also on the campus. Our military head was Captain Cleary, a naval officer of the old school who had earlier lost a leg but kept his keen mind and gentlemanly polish. The academic head was Dean Schuyler Wallace of the political science faculty.
We had top international lawyers covering the law of belligerent occupation: Charles Cheney Hyde and Philip Jessup. Those instructing us in anthropology included Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson. Our instructor on the Philippines was Grayson Kirk, who later became Columbia's president. Charles Cole, who later became president of Amherst, and Raymond Saulnier, who later became chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Eisenhower, were joined by many others in reasoning through the many problems inherent in dealing with complex international relations, both in the Pacific, in Asia and in Europe, especially in wartime. Languages too were studied.
The class was highly selective and included many who came from college faculties and had their Ph.D.s. My wife and I made fast friends, some of whom remain today our closest friends, and with whom we stay in constant touch.
It was this school that became Columbia's School of International Affairs. In 1965, Dean Cordier held a dinner at the Federal City Club of Washington, D.C. What follows are excerpts of my remarks to the assembled alumni on that occasion:
. . . For the experiences shared at the School have had their lasting effects upon us all. During an academic year there, we lived, we learned, and we hoped. . . . With nothing certain save the certainty of family separation at course's end, we savored life fully. . . . We joined the corps of midshipmen in worship at Riverside Church. The rich strains of "Eternal Father Strong to Save" ring in our ears still. . . . We danced on the Prairie State. . . . .We relaxed in friendly chess. . . in the recesses of the Century Club. . . . And we made deep and lasting friendships to be cherished to this day. . . . Where else has a faculty of such distinction been assembled?. . . . It does not matter that the substance of the formal instruction was often not used. . . . We learned that pat formulae were not available to meet the tasks ahead, because the tasks could not be predicted. We learned that the practice of the past would not avail if applied unthinkingly, even in the predictable situations. We learned to count upon our own resources and were thus freed from the fear of drawing upon them in novel situations. Flexible action confidently taken was the byword. We came to know that if we did not have this philosophy as our survival kit, we had nothing. With it, we would need no more. . . . The measure of our success cannot be taken by our contemporaries. The struggle in which we began has been altered and extended beyond recognition. But many who were in at its beginning are active in it still. . . . High posts are filled by our numbers, be they diplomats, strategic planners, aid directors, intelligence officers, congressional leaders, university leaders, teachers, or international businessmen.
In the recent Columbia Envoy (Vol. 2, No. 1), University vice president Chamberlain said of the Naval School of Military Government: "It is no exaggeration to say that in terms of its long-range significance for the University, the work of this program deserves equal rank with the work done at Columbia in the Manhattan Project [atomic bomb]."
The intensity of our training notwithstanding, life went on, and occasionally we even took a break which brought us in touch with what went on around us. We loved the subways, the rapidity with which these clanking cars followed their mole-like tunnels. We were early viewers of "Oklahoma," saw a skinny kid named Sinatra making rhythmic sounds, were entertained by Danny Thomas at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where on 27 September another daughter, Elaine, joined the family. Sunday mornings we could hear Harry Emerson Fosdick preach at Riverside Church, where, on Easter, Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Tibbetts enhanced the worship service. Alternatively, we could attend Riverside Church Sunday evening in company with hundreds of midshipmen lifting their voices in moving praise. And here, the Navy Chaplain, Leslie Glenn, baptized our two daughters together with other infants born of our classmates in that productive year.
Sometime, about half way through the course, a number of us who had thought we would on graduation like the others be sent to the Pacific theater, were, because of our background, selected to go to the European Theater of Operations. This caused a shift in our instruction. Malay and Melanesian Pidgin were put aside and we began work on French, German and Italian. Admiral Stark, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, with headquarters in London, had decided he wanted on his staff officers with our background and training.
Thus, for me, the die was cast. We graduated in late December. I took leave of my wife, two daughters and my parents, who had come to facilitate the move of my family back to the middle west.
In December, classmates Ensign Ross Berkes, Lieutenant (jg) Marion Boggs and I took the train to Norfolk, Virginia, and there boarded Navy seaplane tender USS Humboldt (AVP 21) for transportation to the United Kingdom. This was three years after my call-up to active duty. I felt I was at last really in the Navy. In answer to the call to the colors, I was heading to where the action was.
There is an element of truth in that statement. My first indoctrination in things military was in Switzerland, when, as a child, I would open a closet door in any home and could see a uniform and rifle, handily located to facilitate a call to the colors that made possible the mobilization of the entire Swiss Army within 24 hours.
Later, recitals of Napoleonic exploits, and those of other great generals, stirred my blood. Much later, the realization of the cost in human suffering of those campaigns cooled my ardor for the generals. Then I became convinced that national service by the individual was needed by the State, and that the training required to perform this service was beneficial in developing a sense of discipline in the individual.
In any case, except for a minor lapse when I was in graduate school, I was, indeed, actively involved with the military from my senior year in high school, in 1928-29, when I served as a corporal in the ROTC, until March 1972, when I was retired from the U.S. Navy as a captain of the line in its reserves.
Part-time employment and participation as cornetist in the high school band precluded earlier involvement in the ROTC, where, in addition to being a squad leader, I played the bugle at reveille and at retreat. Our PMS&T was a retired U.S. Army captain named Gunn(!), a former Governor of the Virgin Islands, and a strict disciplinarian. The uniform was the khaki of WWI, wool, wrap-around leggings, and the hard felt campaign hat after which the boy scout hat was patterned.
When I entered the University of Kansas, it seemed natural to enroll in its ROTC program. There was the added incentive of earning nine dollars per month for doing so, making it easier to face the economic reversals threatening us all.
KU was not a land grant university. ROTC was therefore an optional matter. Thus, the enrollment was limited, but the quality of the units high because we were there by choice. The organization of the ROTC during my early years was as a regiment of two battalions, a battalion of engineers and a battalion of coast artillery. By the time I was a senior, the regimental organization had been dispensed with, and the unit constituted two independently organized battalions.
I served as the cadet major commanding the engineers. On graduation I was commissioned second lieutenant of engineers in the U.S. Army reserve, a prerequisite for which commission was a month's summer attendance at Fort Riley, Kansas, certainly one of the hottest and dustiest places on earth. The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote, "University Men Find They're in the Army Now," which appeared in the October 1933 issue of The Kansas Engineer:
"The men have all left camp by now. Each one will probably cherish a different moment above the others. They will not forget all about the demolitions, bridges, rifle practice and other technical features. But in the foreground will remain the vivid recollections of the mess hall, the griping of the first-sergeant's whistle, jokes, dances, the heat, the bugs, the pranks. The 'fall in, someone has lost a knife, fall out,' gold-bricking, and the fellowship of the other students and officers, the feeling of something worthwhile come to pass – memories of four weeks well spent."
My time in the army reserves was one of quiescence. Things picked up, however, in the fall of 1935, when change of employment brought me to Kansas City again. I was working for Black & Veatch, consulting engineers. An associate of that firm was J. F. Brown, colonel, commanding the 110th (Combat) Engineers regiment of the Missouri National Guard. He was anxious to have graduate engineers as his officers and invited me to join the regiment. He had no current vacancy for an officer, but promised that I would be put in the first available opening, if I was willing to resign my commission in the U.S. Army reserves and enlist in the National Guard. This I did.
This was an interesting experience. Not long after I had joined, there was a vacancy for an officer. Missouri remained one of two states to choose its national guard officers by election of the unit to be commanded. This resulted in considerable interplay between the regimental commander, who had his nominee, and the troops, who favored one of their old line sergeants. Of course the nominee of the regimental commander had to win. But this put an added burden upon the winner, though useful in testing qualities of leadership.
So I was elected by the platoon as its commanding officer and was commissioned second lieutenant in the Missouri National Guard. One night each week we drilled at the armory on Main Street. On weekends we often went to the country, both to qualify our men in the use of firearms and to ride, for engineer officers were mounted.
Come August the regiment participated in brigade maneuvers at Camp Clark, near Nevada, Missouri. It was at such maneuvers that I was formally presented my commission by Missouri's governor Guy Park, he being flanked on one side by U.S. Senator Bennett Champ Clark and on the other by U.S. Senator Harry Truman. (I would appear before Senator Clark in 1954 for admission to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, of which he was then a judge. And I would join Senator Truman as naval officer when he, as President, raised the American flag in Berlin in July 1945.)
A hiatus in my military career occurred during my two years at the Harvard Business School, for, not being able to remain active with my platoon, I had to resign my commission. But while at school, I met among my classmates a number of naval officers, and was well impressed by them. Once finished with my studies, I decided to renew some kind of ties with the defense establishment. My association with the naval officers and my memories of army maneuvers in heat and dust led me eventually to write the Navy to ascertain of its possible interest in me. The Navy was interested. Thus, in 1939, I was commissioned ensign in the Supply Corps of the Naval Reserve and sent correspondence courses so that I might qualify as paymaster and supply officer.
I continued my career with Phillips Petroleum Company, and that fall I married. How much I was influenced by the clouds of war, I do not know. Probably very little. I know that I made no attempt to avoid call-up and, when a year later the call came, I went, believing that if you wear the uniform, you go when needed. The call came late fall 1940, shortly after Miriam and I learned we might expect our first child. Mixed emotions there were, but in December 1940, one year before Pearl Harbor, I bade my comrades at Phillips goodbye and took leave of my parents and wife. I had been ordered to Washington, D.C. to "attend the Supply Corps Naval Reserve Officers School, National University, 825 Thirteenth Street, Northwest . . . for active duty under instruction." I was not to remain there long; but, unpredictably, it would be six years before my release from active naval service.
Excerpts from letters to my wife best recapture my state of mind and activities during my early days in the Navy:
. . . I made a safe trip, although plane connections forced me to go to New York, then down to Washington. This did not entail any additional expenses, however. [TWA Flight 40 via Stratoliner flying 200 mph at 7,000 feet.] I stayed at a hotel [Harrington] last night and today, after much waiting around, registered for the school and found a room [1400 Massachusetts, N.W.] . . . . I am very weak. It seems even hard to think and move the pen. I may have to go to the Naval hospital here since I could not begin classes tomorrow feeling as I do. . . . (6 Jan 41)
. . . The announcement was made today that the school would not be limited to 16 weeks, but would probably last about 20. They plan, however, to pull men out as they need them for service afloat. That would be even worse for the married boys. If such a life is all I have to look forward to it will be difficult to feel happy about any part of school life. It's all my fault for ever messing with the Navy business. Of course, in an emergency I probably would have been called sooner or later. . . . It's just that it's all so indefinite. My health, though not good, is somewhat better than when I last wrote you. . . . Perhaps when I have recovered I shall have a better outlook on life. I must not burden you with problems. I should be the one to cheer you up. Wish I could have you here with me. If we found an apartment it would be so far out that a car might be necessary and with all our debts, incurring another would be unwise. I'm going to look around, however. If we are to be separated later, we should be together now if at all possible. (8 Jan 41)
How happy I was to get your wonderful letter and then to hear your dear voice last nite. Though many miles away it made you seem close to me. It is always difficult to know what to say over the telephone but it is a comfort to know that you have contact with one you love and sorely miss. . . . It is a relief to know you are getting along well with the unpleasant tasks which I left you. You will undoubtedly feel a relief when you finally reach Chicago. . . . My health is gradually improving. I am regaining my appetite. . . . The apartment situation here is most discouraging. People must pay $65-$70 a month for small three room apartments. Groceries are not so bad, although milk is 14 cents per
quart. . . . My pay is not as liberal as I had hoped. This is due to my low rank and short time in the service. [Monthly: base pay $125; rental allowance $40; subsistence $18; for total of $183.] My expenses are at present – room and two meals per day $45 per month; lunches $12; laundry $4; miscellaneous (?) $8, for a total of $69 per month. In addition, [we must pay] Harvard $40; insurances, etc. $23.20; CIT $13.42; interest $5, for a total of $81.62. Grand total $150.62 per month. . . you see it will be a tight squeeze. (11 Jan 41)
Your wonderful letters have been a tonic to me. . . . You and [your mother] have been grand about the moving. You did a swell job and I'm proud of you. I'm just as glad you didn't sell the pieces we still have – especially the desk. We'll have a home again before you know it. Now I've a surprise for you. I am no longer at the school. I have been transferred to a new duty. Tonight, in a couple of hours, I leave for New York to inspect an aircraft corporation on Long Island for about three days. Then I pick up my stuff for a last minute conference and report to my new post. Guess what it is. I'm to be Cost Inspector of Naval Aircraft at the Curtiss-Wright company's St. Louis plant. Isn't that swell? The contract will keep me there until September next. . . . Saw President Roosevelt after the inaugural parade yesterday. . . . (20 Jan 41)
Just a few lines to tell you I am thinking about you and loving you constantly. I have had an interesting and enjoyable three days in New York. In addition to my work, I have looked up several old [Harvard] Business School classmates with whom I shall have dinner within the hour. . . . My heart takes an extra leap when I think that it is possible we shall soon meet. Even in the streets here, when I see a young lady with a coat having a leopard skin collar, I am startled, until I realize the improbability of my love being so near. (Taft Hotel 24 Jan 41)
The Washington episode remains somewhat blurred. I had in a short time been uprooted from Texas, gotten leave of absence from Phillips Petroleum, visited a sick mother in Kansas City, fallen ill myself, left a wife in Kansas City who had to return to Texas to dispose of our furnishings, and tried in a few days to make myself feel I was in the Navy.
Classes started, I was sent to a civilian tailor (Visek) to be measured for uniforms, bought the necessary accouterments, including a dress sword, all of which I needed and for which I would ultimately be reimbursed by the Navy. So new was I to the ways of the service that it never occurred to me to report in sick rather than begin on the appointed day, for I had fallen ill after passing the physical exam which was a prerequisite to beginning my travel.
Washington was entirely new to me. The main Navy building on Constitution Avenue, a huge concrete warren of bureaucrats, had been built as a temporary building during WWI (and would survive until mid-1970). The city had a small town atmosphere, and military uniforms were not yet much in evidence. Such familiar ground as I found was in reestablishing contact with friends of times past living in the area.
But things military were stirring, and the Roosevelt administration was expanding the "arsenal of democracy." One day after class I shared with my instructor the view that there must be more interesting things to do in the Navy than disburse pay to a bunch of sailors. The next thing I knew I was in the office of the Navy Paymaster General, where an assistant told me of their need for cost inspectors to monitor cost-plus-fixed fee contracts in the greatly expanding defense effort. He had looked at my record and concluded that my engineering plus MBA degrees and cost analysis ex¬perience at Phillips qualified me for such a post. Thus came my premature departure from the school and my assignment to St. Louis, where I was to remain for two years, a period of enormous change for the world, the U.S., the Navy and for me.
In St. Louis, I found an apartment so my wife could join me. The Navy had one civil servant, Leonard Story, working on its contract as part of an Army air corps audit staff supervising aircraft construction at Curtiss-Wright. I found Story to be a superb accountant, a CPA who was a tireless worker and who became a faithful friend. The two of us worked in an office provided in the plant by Curtiss-Wright. Starting with the production of trainers, SNC-ls, contracts expanded greatly as we approached and then found ourselves at war. The Hell Cat dive bomber became our main product.
With production multiplying, new buildings accommodated the expanding work force. My staff also grew, other contractors were added to my responsibilities: Emerson Electric Manufacturing building gun turrets; Busch-Sulzer Diesel Engineering building ammunition gun hoists and diesel engines for minesweepers; Amertorp Corporation (subsidiary of American Can) building aerial torpedoes; McDonnell Aircraft building aircraft parts; St. Louis Shipbuilding constructing landing craft (to be floated down the Mississippi to New Orleans for completion). Thus over a two-year period my staff grew from one to 75 civilian accountants and an ensign assistant auditing $330 million in cost-plus-fixed fee contracts. We were constantly involved in negotiations with contractors determining what was or was not allowable as reimbursable costs. It was a strenuous effort on the part of our government to avoid the cost overrun and financial scandals that were the legacy of the WWI production experience.
It was an exciting time. I worked closely with the Naval technical supervisors (who reported to the Bureaus for which the product was being manufactured). I reported to the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts in Washington, through the Supervisory Cost Inspector of the Ninth Naval District, who had his office in Chicago. The atmosphere was one of dedicated effort by management and workers alike. And my staff worked hard to seek for the contractor a prompt reimbursement of his legitimate expenditures under our contracts.
I kept my main office at Curtiss-Wright and, by means of a Plymouth station wagon furnished by the Navy, Story and I supervised the staffs at the various plants. We maintained a proper distance from contractor executives, but, over time, they became friends whose integrity we respected. Charles France was the Curtiss-Wright vice president in charge of St. Louis; Edward Pollister was president of Busch-Sulzer Diesel; W. Stuart Symington (later first secretary of the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Senator from Missouri) was president of Emerson Electric; Harold Geneen, to become the ITT tycoon, was the accountant at Amertorp with whom I dealt. Occasionally, we got together for golf or dinner, and on one occasion attended the World Series when the Cardinals and the Yankees were contending (and the Dean brothers were local heroes).
Miriam and I were very happy in our rented apartment at 5362 B, Gladstone, Lucas-Hunt Village, in the St. Louis suburb of Normandy. There on 3 August 1941, our first child, Nancy, was born in the Booth Memorial Hospital of the Salvation Army. We made many friends, some of whom we keep in touch with to this day. And, with St. Louis midpoint between Kansas City and Chicago, we were periodically in close touch with our families, who were throughout the war years, as they indeed have always been, marvelously supportive of us.
With so much happening on the war front, and brothers shipping out to where the action was, and the establishment of a well running staff, I got restive to be more involved. For this the Navy itself was largely responsible. As new undertakings gave rise to new personnel requirements, the Navy would announce its need and encourage applicants. Nothing came of my initial, half-hearted explorations, save notice that my Bureau was still recruiting cost inspectors, and, inasmuch as I was by now one of its more experienced ones, the Bureau was not about to release me to another bureau.
Then came a call for officers for duty in military government and civil affairs, with the strong emphasis on rehabilitation in the post-hostility phase. I felt the notice had been written to me personally. My wife and I discussed it, and she, marvelously supportive as ever, encouraged me to apply if I felt an urge to do so. Several things were, as it turned out, in my favor. The classmate of the inspector of naval aircraft with whom I worked at Curtiss-Wright was chief of Naval Personnel. My superior in Chicago, Captain C. D. Bishop, had just moved to Washington to be assistant to the Navy's Paymaster General. And I had earlier obtained as my assistant Ensign Robert Trueblood, a first-class CPA, who was well qualified to replace me. When my application came through, Bishop called me to ask if this was something I really wanted, adding that, since I had done good work for him, he would see what he could do for me.
He did well. He got the Paymaster General to approve my release. I was selected, recommissioned as a line officer, ordered to the Naval Training School, Dartmouth College, for sixty days of line indoctrination, after which I would attend for one academic year the Navy's School of Military Government and Administration at Columbia University, New York City.
I reported to Dartmouth on 12 February 1943. Classes had already started, as my recommissioning to the line caused some delay, and for a few days for me some anxiety, lest all had been cancelled. I was then a lieutenant, having been promoted from ensign to lieutenant, junior grade, in May 1942, and to lieutenant in October 1942. Most of the officers at Dartmouth were newly commissioned, whereas I was already a veteran of two years active service.
Hanover, New Hampshire, is a lovely place, and cold in the winter. We were housed in college dorms, I in Fayerweather Hall. There I stayed until late March, attending classes, drilling, attending the winter carnival, as well as cultural performances on Dartmouth's regular agenda, a Lauritz Melchior concert among them.
I wrote to my wife and to my parents with some regularity. Here is an excerpt from one such letter:
Another new week has started. This weekend my roommate went to Boston, then on to New York to see his wife. I envied him that trip. At that he could only stay ten hours. I spent the time working on a long navigation problem. I was on watch again last Friday. Tomorrow I have security watch from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Bad hours, but then it is only for a short time.
Already I count the days when I'll be out of here and getting our family settled in New York. It is fortunate they keep us busy so we have less chance to be lonesome for our loved ones. Several of the wives came up to visit the boys in our Company Saturday. When the bus arrived and they got off I halfway lingered as if I were expecting to see you there also.
Occasionally, we are on our way to breakfast when the flag goes up, or on our way to supper as it is hauled down. At which time all activity ceases and all stand at attention saluting while the bugle sounds. In such moments it becomes increasingly evident the price some pay to keep this symbol of our land flying. How fortunate we have been to have our home intact during two years of havoc. To me the flag and the home are inseparable. I never think of one without the other.
The program here at school, as I have mentioned, is primarily to make seagoing officers of the students. Already sea terms such as port, starboard, taffrail, forecastle, tack, bulwark, bulkhead, are taking definite form and meaning. Most things taught are of an extremely practical nature. In seamanship, for instance, we learn the rules of the road for ships, semaphore, blinker signals, flag signals, and sea terminology. In ordnance, all about guns, explosives, range finders, powder, naval history. And in navigation how to steer a ship by charts and bearings taken on land and celestial objects. (8 Mar 43)
Here, as I had in Washington, I ran into fellows I had known in school, including Jim Bausch, Olympic gold medalist for his world record setting performance in 1932 in Los Angeles, for which event I had served as pacesetter when he was practicing the 1,500 meter run at the University of Kansas. Others were known to me by name only, a movie actor, professional football players, academicians. They came from all walks of life.
The end of studies at Dartmouth led uninterruptedly into studies at Columbia. On 31 March, my wife and daughter joined me in New York. We stayed initially at the Commodore Hotel, than at the Harmony on 110th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, off the Columbia campus. There, because we had a baby to look after, the hotel permitted us a hot plate, on which we also cooked our breakfasts and suppers. It was not long before we got an apartment on Morningside Drive, occupied largely by Columbia faculty members, and there, a short walk away from classes, we experienced the full joys of family life for the remainder of 1943. We were not unmindful of the shadow of coming separation which lengthened as we progressed in our studies. But we had so much that gloom was no part of our environment.
Academically it was a wonderful year. Like other institutions of higher learning, as the student population fell because of the demands of the armed forces, Columbia turned to organizing special programs to meet special military requirements and staffed those programs with the finest professors, from its own ranks and from other faculties.
Administratively, the Military Government School was under the commandant of the vast midshipman training program also on the campus. Our military head was Captain Cleary, a naval officer of the old school who had earlier lost a leg but kept his keen mind and gentlemanly polish. The academic head was Dean Schuyler Wallace of the political science faculty.
We had top international lawyers covering the law of belligerent occupation: Charles Cheney Hyde and Philip Jessup. Those instructing us in anthropology included Margaret Mead and her husband Gregory Bateson. Our instructor on the Philippines was Grayson Kirk, who later became Columbia's president. Charles Cole, who later became president of Amherst, and Raymond Saulnier, who later became chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Eisenhower, were joined by many others in reasoning through the many problems inherent in dealing with complex international relations, both in the Pacific, in Asia and in Europe, especially in wartime. Languages too were studied.
The class was highly selective and included many who came from college faculties and had their Ph.D.s. My wife and I made fast friends, some of whom remain today our closest friends, and with whom we stay in constant touch.
It was this school that became Columbia's School of International Affairs. In 1965, Dean Cordier held a dinner at the Federal City Club of Washington, D.C. What follows are excerpts of my remarks to the assembled alumni on that occasion:
. . . For the experiences shared at the School have had their lasting effects upon us all. During an academic year there, we lived, we learned, and we hoped. . . . With nothing certain save the certainty of family separation at course's end, we savored life fully. . . . We joined the corps of midshipmen in worship at Riverside Church. The rich strains of "Eternal Father Strong to Save" ring in our ears still. . . . We danced on the Prairie State. . . . .We relaxed in friendly chess. . . in the recesses of the Century Club. . . . And we made deep and lasting friendships to be cherished to this day. . . . Where else has a faculty of such distinction been assembled?. . . . It does not matter that the substance of the formal instruction was often not used. . . . We learned that pat formulae were not available to meet the tasks ahead, because the tasks could not be predicted. We learned that the practice of the past would not avail if applied unthinkingly, even in the predictable situations. We learned to count upon our own resources and were thus freed from the fear of drawing upon them in novel situations. Flexible action confidently taken was the byword. We came to know that if we did not have this philosophy as our survival kit, we had nothing. With it, we would need no more. . . . The measure of our success cannot be taken by our contemporaries. The struggle in which we began has been altered and extended beyond recognition. But many who were in at its beginning are active in it still. . . . High posts are filled by our numbers, be they diplomats, strategic planners, aid directors, intelligence officers, congressional leaders, university leaders, teachers, or international businessmen.
In the recent Columbia Envoy (Vol. 2, No. 1), University vice president Chamberlain said of the Naval School of Military Government: "It is no exaggeration to say that in terms of its long-range significance for the University, the work of this program deserves equal rank with the work done at Columbia in the Manhattan Project [atomic bomb]."
The intensity of our training notwithstanding, life went on, and occasionally we even took a break which brought us in touch with what went on around us. We loved the subways, the rapidity with which these clanking cars followed their mole-like tunnels. We were early viewers of "Oklahoma," saw a skinny kid named Sinatra making rhythmic sounds, were entertained by Danny Thomas at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where on 27 September another daughter, Elaine, joined the family. Sunday mornings we could hear Harry Emerson Fosdick preach at Riverside Church, where, on Easter, Metropolitan Opera star Lawrence Tibbetts enhanced the worship service. Alternatively, we could attend Riverside Church Sunday evening in company with hundreds of midshipmen lifting their voices in moving praise. And here, the Navy Chaplain, Leslie Glenn, baptized our two daughters together with other infants born of our classmates in that productive year.
Sometime, about half way through the course, a number of us who had thought we would on graduation like the others be sent to the Pacific theater, were, because of our background, selected to go to the European Theater of Operations. This caused a shift in our instruction. Malay and Melanesian Pidgin were put aside and we began work on French, German and Italian. Admiral Stark, Commander, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, with headquarters in London, had decided he wanted on his staff officers with our background and training.
Thus, for me, the die was cast. We graduated in late December. I took leave of my wife, two daughters and my parents, who had come to facilitate the move of my family back to the middle west.
In December, classmates Ensign Ross Berkes, Lieutenant (jg) Marion Boggs and I took the train to Norfolk, Virginia, and there boarded Navy seaplane tender USS Humboldt (AVP 21) for transportation to the United Kingdom. This was three years after my call-up to active duty. I felt I was at last really in the Navy. In answer to the call to the colors, I was heading to where the action was.
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