WW II - SO LONG FDR

A PAINFULL DEPARTURE

It’s a brash claim but I knew Franklin Delano Roosevelt personally.  We came across each other first when I was seven.  And I was there when he died. 

Ours was a very distant relationship, but I like to see it as being in an extended clan of family and friends.  

At our first meeting he waved back to me and my fellow grade school students.  We had been marched out to Ocean Avenue and furnished with American flags to flourish as he rode by in a big convertible along Ocean Avenue.  He waving back to express his joy at being our newly elected president. 

After that FDR and I spent 13 years relating to each other from afar as he raised the country up out of misery, until the two of us became even more thoroughly bonded when he, and then I, entered a just war.

Here's what both of us were up to at the time of my friend’s death: He was resting in Warm Springs, GA.  I was at Alamogordo Army Air Force Base near Los Alamos New Mexico.  He was posing for a portrait.  I was learning the intricacies of a B-29 with my newly assembled crew. 

It was April 12, 1945.  The recent turbulent  years had passed like minutes.  FDR was sitting at the helm of our world-encompassing ship-of-state. We, passengers and crew alike, were more unified and confident than ever.  But the radio announcing his death tore us from our moorings like an angry sea.  It was so alarming to be set adrift.  We huddled and settled quickly into grief. 

There are many ways to mourn.  Surely my tiny circle’s keystone cops response was trivial.  But, also as sweetly innocent as bending to savor the aroma of a late blooming flower.  In hindsight I like to think that Mr. Roosevelt, outward bound, would have stopped to laugh, cigarette holder in hand, and tossed off an appreciative wave.

When the news of FDR's death came, my associates and I were living very casually, a cool bunch in a hot desert. Though soldiers of a sort, the real war was a distant rumble, far from our specialized B-29 training base. Though not an element of that momentous day I can’t omit mentioning the world-shattering secret Roosevelt had placed almost beneath our feet. Unbeknown to us a phantom crew in neighboring Los Alamos labored in their grove with piles of mysterious elements. From here, a few months later, they would appear like Captain Ahab’s Fedallah and his dusky crew to harpoon the sky with  the first  bright atomic mushroom, assuring that this isolated territory would be in the limelight of history.

However, no one told us about that upcoming event, and we didn’t drink in much from FDR’s administration, or the rest of the extended family, about anything else, except that things were going well in Europe; slowly but surely in the Pacific. For the moment, battle losses and gains were far away. We went from day to day, pleased to be at this unexciting base because it was rumored that a few of the other unadvertised “superfortress” training facilities had much higher accident rates.

We were vaguely optimistic about our futures as we took off on daily training missions.  These started early.  The thin desert air wouldn’t support heavy planes after about 10 AM, so we rushed yawning out to the flight line around 5:30.  That was OK though because many of the practice bombing missions to one or the other coast and back took many, many hours.  The take-off strips were far from our quarters, so to ease our daily trips another navigator and I split $100 to buy a recycled 1933 convertible Chrysler with freewheeling and a missing windshield from a member of a departing crew.  The car was undoubtedly more dangerous than flying.  And its spare tire was a thing of the past. But it had a Coney Island  Ride flavor to it and broke the monotony. (We sold the jalopy to incoming crew members when we were about to leave.)

So there you have it. Fifteen officers from three crews, living in compartmentalized sections of a Quonset hut BOQ, certain that all was well.  If it’s not already clear, we were an informal bunch having a quiet time, telling jokes, drinking beer;  neckties pulled loose in the desert air.  No parades.  Other than training missions, no duties except a few flight-related classes to break the routine.  There was  little to amuse us on the base; nor much in town either. We wore dress hats without wire stiffeners, a departure from regulation theoretically to accommodate earphones but, since we never wore hats while flying, actually to add casual swagger for the girls.  Of course, we outnumbered the females and I never actually met one.  Worse, I was distressed  when our skipper, the old man – literally, he was 26 -- returned bragging about the fun-loving girl he had hooked up with.  He was married, you see, and at age 19, I was not world wise.

Things turned serious On April 12th.  The radio announced my friend and leader’s death. As I drank this bitter news about FDR my eyes welled with tears.  Others’ too. The barracks became quiet.  No one knew what to say, so no one talked.  We listened, unwilling to believe.  How could he be sitting, probably drink in hand, one minute and dead the next? The man I had known since I was a kid.  What would happen now?  What should we do?

I like to think that intense sorrow commanded us to shape a meaningful act to honor and remember him.  If so, it added a stage whisper “and also do something foolish to lighten the burden”   

What did happen is that one of us suggested mustering a small memorial parade.  We would all go outside and have a moment of silence and remembrance to honor the president.  Murmured approval.  But who to lead?  Only one of us, a captain,  was higher in rank than first lieutenant.  He rose to the occasion.  OK, he proposed, let’s go out and line up.  We slouched our melancholy bodies to  the front of the building  and stood in two seven man rows, the captain facing us. He barked “Attention!” and we all snapped to. Next he called “Present Arms.”  We all saluted.   

He searched for a fitting sermon and in my memory began ”We want to honor our president, may he rest in peace”  when, at that moment a bugle joined our private assembly, sounding Retreat, the mournful and routine days-end ritual, from a nearby loudspeaker, The early evening  sun was in slow descent, the dessert chill soon to embrace us. 

http://www.riciok.com/Sounds/Retreat.mp3

Could any moment have moved us more?

The Captain completed his brief peroration. We stood, our hands still above our right eyes, saluting. He faced us, silent, and apparently perplexed.  Let’s face it, he was an Air Corps pilot not long out of college, one without a grommeted service cap, one who had perhaps not once paraded since becoming a commissioned officer.  No surprise that he was momentarily  unable to remember “Order Arms,” the correct command to release a salute.  Moments passed.  My arm tired.  At last it came to him.  But not quite correctly.  In his distant memory he had found “By the Numbers,” a drill instructor training method.   For a salute it would begin: “By the Numbers, Salute - one!” at which point all were to do so.  Then, to get all hands down the instructor would follow with “two!”  That’s what the captain finally recalled.  Gratefully he chirped “two.”  We dropped our hands, disassembled without further notice, and straggled back to the barracks.  Sad, but grateful to have been amused by the Captain’s improvisation.

I could not have joined a better memorial for the dear dead friend who for so many years had presided over such trying times.  So long FDR.