BERT HOOVER THREADED HIS WAY across the crowded train platform, determined to find out what all the excitement was about. On a trip through the Midwest promoting his Food Administration’s campaign to save grain for the troops, he had been informed that morning that his meeting with the local civic leaders would have to be rescheduled due to the fact that the entire city had decided to shut down in order to welcome home a native son returning from France. He was relieved to find that no one recognized him here, but he couldn’t fathom which general or war hero was famous enough to supersede such a pressing national crisis as food conservation.
Right on time, the Zephyr from Chicago pulled into the station, causing people on the platforms to become so jubilant that they threatened to push the stevedores into the track pits. The locomotive braked to a steaming halt and set the First Class car directly in front of a temporary grandstand filled with politicians and ward chairmen. Crouched below them hovered dozens of newspapermen and photographers. The door to the train stairwell opened, and a Marine Corps band marched out playing a rousing rendition of Stars and Stripes Forever. Next off came an impressive array of military officers, followed by an Irish piper who bellowed Danny Boy with such melancholy fervor that it brought tears to the eyes of the most hardened pols.
Hoover shook his head, bemused by the spectacle; he had witnessed traveling carnivals arrive with less fanfare. He half-expected Buffalo Bill to ride forth from the train car on his stallion.
Instead, a husky man in a khaki leatherneck uniform and campaign boots appeared at the door. Bundled with a black patch over his left eye and a sling holding his left arm, he swept his good hand across the crowd in a dramatic greeting worthy of a London thespian. Then, bringing to his side an elderly matron in a fur coat, he kissed her cheek and proclaimed, “Mother!”
The crowd applauded deliriously, and the Marine band struck up Home, Sweet Home as the man of the hour walked down the steps. Smothered with backslaps and kisses, he allowed himself to be escorted by an honor guard to a lectern waiting on the dais.
Hoover turned to a top-hatted spectator standing next to him and asked, “Is that fellow a movie actor?”
The man regarded him coldly, as if suspecting he might be a German spy. “Heavens, sir. Do you not read the papers? That is Floyd Gibbons. The hero of Belleau Wood.”
Hoover narrowed his eyes with disapproval at the adulation. Of course he knew about the reporter who had made a name for himself in Mexico and France. But until now, he had never seen him in person. His opinion of the flamboyant risk-taker had never been very high, for he had always believed that newspapermen, like government officials, should remain hidden behind the story rather than become the center of it. Now that he saw Gibbons in the flesh, the war correspondent impressed him as being more P. T. Barnum than a humble Fourth Estate defender of the Constitution.
Reaching the podium, Gibbons thrust his fist into the sky and shouted, “I have returned to the most patriotic city in the great United States! The city that first welcomed me into the Order of the Knights of the Written Word so many years ago! Home, I tell you with all my heart! I am home at last!” As the crowds stomped and threw garlands at him, he swept his gaze over the vast assembly and fixed his eyes on three ranks of blue policemen on his flank. He pointed at them in a taunt. “I’m thinking it’s rather funny, don’t you, lads? Here I am with all these cops ahead of me. In the old days, they used to always be behind me, chasing my sources!”
The crowd roared again, drawing a grimace from the police chief.
Gibbons next aimed his rapier smile at his fellow newshawks, who were scampering like rats along the railing below him. “Ladies and gentlemen, as I lay wounded for two hours in the mud of France on that hot June day, not knowing if I would ever again see the clarifying light of God’s wondrous creation, one thought kept coursing through my fevered mind.” He hesitated, turning his gaze inward in a studied pose of troubled contemplation.
“Tell us, Gib!” shouted an eager admirer.
Gibbons puffed out his chest to display his military ribbons. Then, slathering on a thick Scot-Irish brogue, he went on. “Aye, I kept athinking of me beloved editor from me formative years. There he is among us now. Stand up and take a bow, Bob Lee.”
A crusty old desk editor, heartened at being singled out by his now-famous protégé, stood to acknowledge the recognition.
“Why old man Lee?” asked a cad who worked at a competitor’s newspaper. “He's never shot at anything but empty whisky bottles.”
Gibbons delayed for effect, waiting for the crowd to quiet. Then, he wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “I said to meself as I was lying amid those brave wounded Marines, many of whom were saying their Hail Marys for the last time, I said to meself—”
“Dammit, Gibbie,” shouted one of the reporters who was tired of scribbling in his notebook and starting over again. “You gonna tell us what you were thinking when those Boche devils were about to gut you? Or are we gonna have to wring it out of you?”
Gibbons raised his good arm again, pleading for forbearance. He shielded his unpatched eye from the sun and insisted, “Bob, turn around so that the cameras can get you!”
Amid a blast of flashes, several reporters pushed the old editor to the fore.
“Look at those lines of experience in that adorable mug!” Gibbons shouted. “Now, I ask you folks, is that not a face that could hold a seven-day rain?”
The spectators howled their approval.
“Damn it, Gibbons!” The police chief shouted. “Get on with the story.”
Gibbons placed his hand on his heart. “Where was I?’
“On the battlefield!” a hundred voices shouted.
“Ah yes. So, as I lay there wounded, I thought to meself, I can’t die like this, not when Bob Lee still owes me a quarter for that beer and sauerkraut sandwich I bought him ten years ago down at the Schnitzelbank diner!”
The roars of laughter were so thunderous that Hoover feared the crowd might threaten to collapse the grandstand. The craggy editor stood exposed to the ridicule of being a lunch poacher. Resigned to the indictment, he nodded to confess his guilt. He reached into his pocket, grabbed some coins, and paid Gibbons.
Gibbons stared at the pile of pennies just dropped into his hand. “What? After all these years, no interest?”
Hoover marveled at the performance worthy of a vaudeville stage, convinced that the rapscallion Gibbons was being wasted on the printed page. He counted charisma low on the qualities gifted to mortals by the Almighty, but he had to admit that the man possessed more syrupy charm than Douglas Fairbanks and more ambition than Henry Ford. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if some enterprising political operative drafted the silver-tongued newspaperman to run for high office.
As the regimental band played La Marseillaise, a French consul stepped forward and pinned on Gibbons's chest the Croix de Guerre with Palm, a coveted award reserved by the government in Paris for recognition of heroic military deeds. When the adoring audience finally hushed again, the mayor stood and read a poem about Gibbons that had appeared earlier that week in the Chicago Tribune:
“‘The Teutons tattooed him with bullets,
And cluttered him full of shell,
But he didn’t die and his good right eye
Will yet see the Kaiser in Hell.
And though he’s a-bloomin’ hero,
A Croix de Guerre guy and all that,
He walked right in with that same old grin
And the same old size of hat!’”
Carried out of the station on the shoulders of the swarming crowd, Gibbons doffed his tri-fold Marine cap. When he passed Hoover, he winked.
Hoover couldn’t be certain if the newspaperman had recognized him, or merely possessed that rare Mona Lisa talent for making everyone think he was looking only at him. He turned again to the gentleman aside him and remarked, “I don’t know about the size of his hat, but his head appears to have swelled. What will he do for an encore, I wonder?”
“He is on a three-month lecture tour across the country. And rumor has it he is writing a book about his experiences in the war.”
“Seems a bit crass, don’t you think?” Hoover observed. “Cashing in while our soldiers are still fighting and dying?”
Offended by the remark, the man removed his top hat to emphasize his earnest feelings on the matter. “Mr. Gibbons has helped raise thousands of dollars in war bonds. I don’t see you, sir, over in France sacrificing an eye for the cause. The Honorary Marine of Belleau Wood has given his pound of flesh. Now he is pursuing a hallowed American tradition.”
“What tradition would that be?”
“Making a profit on a war started by the Yankee bankers and Wall Street tycoons. The robber barons cash in on the bloodletting every other decade. So why shouldn’t the little fellow have his say and part of the pie?” With his diatribe finished, the man donned his top hat again and walked off.
Abandoned before he could defend the integrity of capitalism, Hoover was attacked by a hunger pang. Minneapolis was known for its superb steaks, he remembered. But then he saw, on the station wall, one of his agency’s posters reminding Americans that today was Meatless Monday.