GLASSFORD WATCHED THE MINUTE HAND on his watch tick down to half past nine. Then, wiping the humidity from his eyes, he nodded for his hundred officers, accompanied by several dozen Treasury agents, to begin removing the defiant Texas veterans from the condemned armory.
While his cops fanned out to their assigned positions, he pulled the eviction order from his pocket and read it again, hoping to find some overlooked illegality that might allow him to abort its enforcement. For two long days, he had negotiated with the commissioners, arguing that his department had no authority to carry out such an unprecedented operation on federal land. But the White House had finally backed him into a corner with a cynical legal loophole: the Treasury agents would handle the clearing, while his officers were to remain at their sides to insure their safety and maintain the peace.
To avoid another spectacle like the Death March, he had ordered civilian spectators roped off and the morning traffic rerouted from the Pennsylvania Avenue site. Above him, the skyline crowning the partially demolished buildings of Camp Glassford formed a jagged cut of slate. His stomach tightened every time he saw that pitiful cluster of square caves named in his honor. The block with its four stories of exposed skeletal frame resembled a grotesque Hieronymus Bosch painting. The eastern walls of the edifice were missing, revealing precarious stairwells whose railings had been hammered away. Crane operators sat waiting nearby, eager to finish the destruction with their wrecking balls. The two thousand veterans billeted there stood along the floor edges, looking down in ominous silence. Many had dressed that morning in shabby white shirts and ties, as if sensing that something momentous was about to happen.
After a tense moment of delay, the Texas veterans finally accepted the inevitable and began peacefully filing in single lines down the stairwells.
He whispered a prayer in relief. All he needed to do now was escort the veterans to the trucks that he had leased to take them out of the city. But as he walked toward to the armory, he spied a slender figure threading the throngs of the descending veterans and pushing them back up the stairwells.
Was that Waters?
He hurried closer and heard the BEF commander haranguing the veterans about how the government had lied to him. Angered, hundreds of them began jeering and making threats at the police. They halted their voluntary evacuation and began returning to the condemned buildings. Waters climbed up the stairwells with the Texans, shouting a promise to defend the armory.
This is Crosby’s doing.
With the White House’s insidious blessing, the Machiavellian commissioner had undercut Waters, forcing his hand by reneging on the promise to allow him four days to find another camp. Accused now by many of being an Administration puppet, Waters had apparently decided to turn militant in a last-ditch attempt to retain command.
Did Hoover and his advisors want violence?
Waters stood atop a pile of bricks and pointed down at him. “You d-d-double-crossed me, General! You said they’d give us four days!”
Glassford sent an aide across the street to calm him down, but the Oregon man, in a white rage, wouldn’t listen to reason. Sensing that the veterans were on the verge of an upheaval, he hurried through the surly scrum and pulled Waters aside. “I tried to get word to you. The commissioners changed the terms of our agreement at the last minute.”
“No more t-t-talking! No more!”
He firmed his grip on the BEF leader’s arm. “Keep your head. Let’s work out a solution to this situation.”
Waters broke away. Strutting off, he signaled for Bill Hruska to join him, but the Lithuanian veteran hung back. “You coming, Billy?”
“I think I’ll hang up here, Dubya. These boys need some cheering up.”
Waters glared at Hruska, as if suspecting his old friend from the rail rides no longer wanted to be seen with him. “Suit yourself.” He marched off the site and headed toward Anacostia. Several steps away, he turned back and warned Glassford, “This ain’t over, General.”
Before Glassford could demand an explanation for that threat, Waters disappeared into the swarm of men surrounding the condemned block. The environs fell silent as the Texas veterans standing on the exposed floors waited to see what would happen next. The Treasury agents below them shifted impatiently, itching to get on with the operation. Glassford reluctantly motioned for his officers to climb the first flight of wooden stairs. The protesters on the upper decks waited with fists clenched as the cops and Treasury agents came to a black veteran who lay at the top step.
The officers ordered the man to stand up, but he refused.
Glassford had anticipated that passive tactic by instructing his ranks to use the minimal amount of force necessary. Two of his cops lifted the black veteran by the hands and legs as gently as they could and slid him slowly down the steps, plank by plank. The veterans were so impressed by the care being taken to help the lame man down that they eased their scowls and silenced their threats. They began walking down the stairs without additional prodding, shaking hands and slapping the backs of the officers, many of whom they had gotten to know over the past months.
As the veterans filed past and greeted him warmly, Glassford released a held breath. His careful planning and instruction were paying off. He had defused the outburst by Waters, and the eviction was back on track. With a little luck, he just might have this distasteful task finished before lunch.
IN THE ANACOSTIA CAMP ACROSS the river, Anna was making her usual morning rounds, checking in on the sick and elderly. Lincoln and Taylor accompanied her, having offered to help bring to the clinic those residents who were too weak to walk. As they passed the speaker’s stand in the center of the grounds, she noticed that the microphone on the pole that usually played soothing classical music from a donated Victrola was silent. Feeling the camp was sadder without it, she was struck by an idea. “Why don’t you bring your oboe along?” she asked Ozzie. “Music is a great healer, you know.”
Ozzie seemed embarrassed by the suggestion.
“He’s plum out of reeds, Miss Anna,” explained Lincoln. “Some of the boys offered to collect some coffee money for the purchase, but he won’t abide it.”
“How long have you gone without playing now?” she asked Ozzie.
“Maybe a month. It don’t seem that important no more, to tell you the truth. I just keep it in the case these days. I don’t much like to be reminded of Big Jim and the band. Nobody likes ragtime now anyway.”
“That instrument gave much pleasure to your fellow soldiers. You must never abandon your calling. It’s your talisman.”
“Talisman? What’s that?”
“An object that carries mysterious and supernatural powers.”
Lincoln lifted his stovepipe hat to scratch his head. “I thought you Mennonite folk didn’t believe in that kind of hocus-pocus.”
“To be honest, I don’t know what I believe anymore.”
They continued walking until they came to a hovel at the far end of the camp. Its tin roof shook with the shrill wailing of an infant.
Lincoln knocked on the rotted baseboard that served as the door. “Miss Meyers? You got a visitor. The nurse is here.”
A consumptive mother in a dirty calico dress swung open the wormy board attached to the frame by a single rusty hinge. She barely had the strength to speak. “Bernie’s been colic all night, Miss Raber. He’s in an awful state.”
Lincoln and Taylor watched from outside as Anna crawled into the little cell and knelt aside the baby. She placed her palm on its red forehead and felt its distended belly. “He has an intestinal infection. Probably a bacteria. We need to get him some fresh milk. Where is your husband?”
“Cecil’s up at the armory,” the mother said. “All we got is some cornmeal.”
“I’ll see what I can find in the commissary. In the meantime, you need to get the child some fresh air. I know you’re not feeling well yourself, but if you can, take a walk with your babe under the shade today. This fetid air in here inflames his throat.”
The mother struggled to her elbows. “Yes, ma’am.”
Lincoln reached into his pocket and offered the woman a sliver of rabbit jerky. “Gnaw on this, Fannie. It fools my innards for awhile when the aches starting attacking.”
The mother bit on the pull with her rotted teeth. “Thank you kindly.”
Anna heard a loud commotion. She crawled from the hovel and saw Waters marching across the Eleventh Street Bridge shouting orders. The camp suddenly sprang to life, and men rushed from their tents and shacks as if shaken from a beehive. They began forming up at the speaker’s stand to learn why Waters was so agitated.
“The government’s gone and d-d-done it!” Waters shouted. “Hoover’s trying to d-d-drive us out of Camp Glassford!”
Lincoln clawed his way closer. “I thought those boys had four days yet?”
Waters rushed through the camp banging on doors. “I want every able-bodied man up to Camp Glassford right n-n-now!”
“Where’s the Chief?” Anna asked him.
“He’s up there leading the charge against us!”
She couldn’t believe that Glassford would go back on his promise to find new housing for the veterans before they were chased from the city. Had he broken the vow he had made to her never to betray these men?
“Where the hell is Angelo?” Waters demanded.
“He’s sleeping one off,” Ozzie said.
Waters marched over to Angelo’s bunkhouse and kicked the door. “Joey!”
Stumbling out shirtless and groggy, Angelo shielded his bleary eyes. “What’s all the racket?”
“Pin your medal on and get up to the Front!”
IT WAS NEARING NOON, SO Glassford decided to give his eviction officers a lunch break. He was about to issue the order when he saw two trucks barreling down Pennsylvania Avenue. The trucks, with their tailgates down, blew through the rope cordons. A dozen men scrambled out of the rear beds. The arriving gang ran at him with fists balled.
The man leading their charge was waving a large American flag. “Give the cops hell!”
Glassford didn’t recognize any of the attackers. The streets were teeming with onlookers, and hundreds more veterans were coming up from Anacostia on foot. He didn’t have time to muster a defense line. His officers, who had just settled down to open their delivered sandwiches and iced tea, hustled to their feet and pulled their nightsticks. He rushed into the scrum. “Hold off!!”
Bricks and scrap iron filled the air. Outnumbered, he and his officers turned and took the brunt of the assault on their backs. One of the rioters rushed across the no-man’s land of rubble and tore the badge off the chief’s shirt. A cop grabbed the flag from the ringleader, but he was pummeled back with a lead pipe. Bricks flew in both directions. One officer, bleeding from a split skull, fell to the ground.
Angered by the theft of his badge, Glassford hurled himself into the midst of the brick throwers. He took a brick in the chest, and staggered. A collective gasp, followed by a tense hush, froze the fight. The veterans, stunned at seeing the chief take a hit, stopped their throwing. Regaining his breath, Glassford arose from one knee and forced a worried smile. “Come on, boys!” he pleaded. “Let’s call an armistice for lunch.”
The veterans, impressed by his courage and humor in the face of danger, nodded and backed off, their faces cast down in shame.
Glassford ordered Lt. Edwards to fan out through the new agitators and make arrests.
Edwards handcuffed one of the instigators and prodded him up. “Is he the one who hit you, Chief? He says his name’s McCoy.”
Glassford studied the man’s features. The attack had happened so fast, he couldn’t be sure who had nearly brained him.
“I didn’t do it, General! I swear! I got hit by a billy club!”
“Who told you to come up here?”
The arrested man seemed genuinely addled. “I don’t rightly know. Some of the fellas said everyone was heading to the armory. I just joined in.”
“Are you a Red?” demanded Lt. Edwards.
“No sir!”
Glassford scanned the demolition site, determined to put down any more brewing attacks. He recognized a couple of faces, but most of these new arrivals were unfamiliar to him. Were they some of Pace’s men from the Communist camp across the Mall? From the corner of his eye, he saw one of his uniformed cops slip away and hurry into the alley toward City Hall. He pointed to the retreating officer. “Who was that man?”
Lt. Edwards traded a knowing glance with a couple of his fellow officers. “Lieutenant Keck.”
“What was he doing here?”
The lieutenant didn’t look eager to answer that question, but finally he admitted, “He’s been reporting to Commissioner Crosby.”
Glassford’s face drained. They have a spy on my force.
He walked a few steps away to gather his frazzled thoughts. How could he be sure who stood with him? Had Pace and his Communists instigated this attack? Or had someone else?
Officer Shinault came hurrying up from the communications car. “We just got an order delivered from Attorney General Mitchell’s office.”
“What does he want?”
Shinault looked elated. “We’ve been commanded to evacuate the veterans from all federal property, not just these buildings.”
Glassford couldn’t fathom that change in his orders. Surely the Attorney General wouldn’t have issued such a sweeping and dangerous directive without White House approval. The screws were being tightened on him, minute by minute. He didn’t have the force necessary to launch such an expanded operation, and Hurley and Crosby knew it.
Glancing with triumph at Shinault, Lt. Edwards pressed the chief, “What do you want us to do about these men we’ve arrested?”
Glassford studied the contrite veteran in handcuffs, trying to understand what was really happening. He had the situation back under control, but it was clear that someone was trying to undercut his operation. “Take them to headquarters and hold them. And call in for more reinforcements.”
SUMMONED TO THE WHITE HOUSE, MacArthur strode down the sidewalk from the War Department building and saluted the guard as he entered the West Wing.
In the corridor, Patrick Hurley rushed up to him. “He won’t sign it.”
“You told him of the situation?”
Hurley nodded. “You’re the only one who can convince him.”
Escorted into the Oval Office, MacArthur found Hoover and Secretary of State Stimson hovering over a draft copy of a speech. In the corner stood George Drescher, the president’s personal Secret Service agent.
“Mr. President,” Hurley announced. “The Chief of Staff has arrived.”
Aggravated by the interruption, Hoover slapped his palm to the desk. “I don’t have time for that now.”
MacArthur took a step forward. “Sir, I’m afraid the situation in the city has seriously deteriorated. The nation’s security is at risk.”
Skeptical, Hoover shook his head in vexation. Then, reluctantly, he whispered a request to Stimson that they take a break. After the Secretary of State left the room, Hoover walked to the window and looked north toward Pennsylvania Avenue. Clutching at the ache in his left forearm, he demanded testily, “What it is now?”
Hurley nodded at MacArthur, cueing him to the task.
MacArthur set his brow in that famous leer of military authority. “Sir, there is a riot in progress at the old District armory. As we feared, Communist elements in the camps have taken root and are now bearing their venomous fruit.”
“I will not sign a proclamation declaring martial law!”
“Sir, an insurrection,” MacArthur insisted.
Hoover turned slowly, looking as if an announcement of the Apocalypse’s arrival would have surprised him less. “What does Glassford say about this?”
MacArthur stole an uncertain glance at Hurley. “Glassford has lost control of the situation.”
Hoover studied the two advisors hard. “Has he requested federal troops?”
“That would be an admission of defeat on his part, sir.”
“Have you been down there to assess the danger?”
MacArthur hesitated. “I can personally attest to the need for troops.”
Denied a direct answer, Hoover paced the length of the room, trying to make sense of these dire pronouncements. After nearly a minute of troubled contemplation, he told Hurley. “I will not sign a proclamation of insurrection.”
The corners of Hurley’s eyes twitched slightly. “With all due respect—”
“I will draft an order authorizing limited and humane use of federal troops to restore the peace on the condemned federal property along Pennsylvania Avenue. These troops will be placed under the direction of Chief Glassford. He alone will determine if they are needed to complement his police force. Women and children in the area must and will be accorded every consideration and kindness.”
Hurley blanched at such constraining terms. “Sir, this unduly ties our hands. Army officers will not take orders from a civilian police chief.”
“The man once commanded Army troops, did he not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Perhaps we should have the soldiers carry only police sticks. That would help prevent accidents.”
Hurley was livid at having his counsel questioned. “I must protest this.”
MacArthur circled the desk to force Hoover to look at him directly. “There is no time to arrange for the delivery of police sticks, Mr. President. I think we can manage under the conditions you’ve set forth.”
Hurley glared at MacArthur, stunned that he would surrender so easily.
MacArthur slapped his hand to his thigh. “Now, if you will excuse us, Mr. President. Time is pressing.”
Hoover waved them away. When the two men had left the room, Secret Service agent Drescher closed the door and returned to his station in the corner. Hoover tried to resume his editing of Stimson’s speech, but after several minutes in distracted effort, he threw the paper aside. He looked over at Drescher. “George, am I doing the right thing?”
“Sir?”
“Giving MacArthur and Hurley these troops.”
Drescher was reluctant to answer. “Sir, it’s not my place.”
“I trust you every day with my life. I’m no longer sure I can trust anyone else in this building except my wife. I’d welcome your opinion.”
“Sir, between you and me, I don’t see what good can come of it.”
Hoover slumped into his chair. “Well, they say MacArthur was the luckiest man in the war. Maybe some of that luck will rub off on me today.”
WHEN OZZIE AND LINCOLN FINALLY REACHED the old armory around one o’clock, their feet were blistering from the hot walk up from the river. Things looked pretty quiet, with most of the boys just milling around under the shade of the overhangs and scrounging for something to eat while the cops stood back along the newly planted trees on the Mall. The blocks on all sides of the demolished structures were filling up with the thousands of veterans that Waters had mustered from Anacostia and the other camps.
Ozzie squinted through the dripping haze, looking for a familiar face. “Hey, there’s Billy! Maybe he knows where we can find some coffee.”
He and Lincoln weaved their way through the claques of men lounging on the hardpan. They reached the old Ford showroom and found Hruska sitting against an exposed beam, chewing on a blade of sawgrass.
“Billy boy!” Ozzie cried. “Where’s this war we heard about?”
“Yeah,” Lincoln chimed. “Waters was yelling like the Boche had invaded.”
“No war,” said Hruska. “Infiltrators.”
Ozzie blinked hard. “Infiltrators? What you talking about?”
“Bad types. Never see them before. They attack the General.”
Ozzie searched the mounds of brick rubble and saw Glassford on the far side of the demolition site, mingling with his officers and talking to the veterans. “The Chief don’t look no worse for the wear.”
“Infiltrators try to blame us!” said Hruska, furious. “They come back, I will hang them from those beams up there!”
“You get a good look at them?” asked Lincoln.
Hruska nodded and pointed at his own nose. “I remember their ugly faces.”
“Speaking of ugly faces,” Ozzie said. “Have you seen Alford lately? Dubya is looking for him.”
Hruska shook his head. “Alford never around.”
“You’re right about that,” said Lincoln. “Ol’ Georgie comes and goes like the ghost of Christmas past. I wonder if he’s got a sweet floozy stashed uptown.”
Ozzie waved off that possibility. “Georgie? With that old crow’s frightful mug? He couldn’t draw a mosquito with a pint of blood.”
“I reckon you’re right,” said Lincoln. “Now that you mention it, he never impressed me as much of a ladies man. Me, on the other hand—”
A gunshot rang out.
Ozzie nearly leapt out of his overalls. Hunched on the concrete, he looked up to see hundreds of men rushing up the exposed stairwell above him to get a better look at who was firing across the block. Two more shots fired, and the men lounging around him erupted like a tornado and charged down the stairs.
“Let’s get him!” someone shouted.
A sudden surge of men pushed Ozzie aside. Several veterans rushed at Glassford, who was climbing the stairwell to find the shooter. Garbage cans and bricks flew everywhere. Two police officers followed their chief up the stairs. A brick hit Officer Shinault, who was standing a few steps behind Glassford on the stairwell. Dazed from the blow to his head, Shinault drew his gun and fired into the crowd.
“Stop that shooting!” Glassford ordered.
Wild-eyed, Shinault aimed his pistol at Glassford.
The police chief dropped down behind a pillar. Moments later, he risked inching his head out. Shinault stood looking at his weapon, as if trying to convince himself that he hadn’t discharged it.
Glassford rushed the officer and stole the pistol from his hand.
Stunned by the gunshots, the veterans fell silent.
Ozzie looked around to inspect the damage. When the smoke cleared, he saw Hruska lying against a rail in a pool of blood. “Billy!” He rushed to his friend and tried to revive him.
The men converged around Hruska, muttering threats.
Ozzie lifted Hruska’s lifeless head. “They done killed him!”
“They got Carly too!” shouted another veteran.
The men turned to find Eric Carlson, one of Robertson’s California men who had stayed on with them. He was thrumming helplessly on the ground, a bullet hole in his gut. Several of the men lifted Carlson and carried him toward an arriving ambulance while four injured police officers retreated to the protection of their comrades.
Glassford hurried among the angry veterans, trying to calm them. “Let’s stop this now, before it’s too late.”
“The General’s right!” shouted Lincoln. “Don’t let the Reds and them government agents turn us against the police! The cops have been our friends!”
Hundreds of the veterans pressed against the cordon ropes, picking up rocks and promising vengeance for Hruska, whose blood was pooling into a halo around his head.
In the confusion, Jesse Essary, a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, slipped under the cordon ropes. The reporter came aside a shaken Glassford. “Things are getting pretty hot down here. What happened to those fellas?”
Glassford waved off his small talk. “I don’t have time for an interview.”
“Mind if I tag along?”
“Suit yourself, but just stay out of my way.”
“It’s gonna be like the old days, eh?”
Glassford, confused, turned on the reporter. “Old days?”
“With the Army back in Sam Brownes and field leggings.”
“What are you talking about?”
The reporter realized that the police chief hadn’t been told the latest news. “A couple of infantry regiments are sailing up the river by steamer from Fort Washington. I just saw the cavalry on Memorial Bridge with tanks a half-hour ago. Mac’s mustering them all down at the Ellipse. Looks like it’s going to be a hell of a show. We were told you requested them.”
Glassford ran past his officers and jumped on his motorcycle.
IN HIS WAR DEPARTMENT OFFICE, MacArthur pulled out a drawer in his desk and opened the lock box where he kept his awards and ribbons. He pressed a buzzer to summon Eisenhower, his adjutant. “Major, drive to my house at Fort Myer on the double and retrieve my uniform and boots. They’re in my closet.”
Eisenhower just stood there, gawking as if he had misheard. “Sir?”
“MacArthur is going into action. You’ll need to change into your uniform, as well. I’ll have to cancel lunch with Mother.”
“I haven’t had my uniform out of storage since the war.”
“Let’s hope you still fit in it.” He saw his aide staring at the decorations laid out on his desk, ready to be appended. “Should I be ashamed of them?”
“No, sir, of course not.” Stunned at learning that the troops were being mobilized within the city, Eisenhower delayed at the door.
MacArthur looked up. “Something else, Major?”
“Sir, with all due respect. Putting down a local disturbance is beneath the dignity of the Army Chief of Staff.”
MacArthur fixed a withering stare on his adjutant. “Your naiveté, Major, disappoints me. We now find ourselves in the throes of a Communist conspiracy. This is a very serious test of the strength of the federal government against its enemies. MacArthur will be on the front lines, as he always has been. And you will be at his side.”
“Sir, why don’t you just fire me?”
“Fire you?
“Permission to speak freely?"
“Granted.”
“Goddammit, General. You do things that I don’t agree with. And you know damn well I don’t. Why don’t you get another officer in this job who shares your…”
“My what?”
“Your philosophy of democracy.”
MacArthur stared oddly at him, as if the observation had been offered in a foreign tongue. “Major, are you familiar with the fate of Themistocles?”
“Only vaguely, sir.”
“He saved Greek democracy from the Persian hordes by turning Athens into a fortress under martial law. Once the danger from the East was repulsed, the Athenians showed their gratitude by ostracizing him and sending him into exile.”
“I’m not sure I take the inference, sir.”
“A military leader must be prepared to take the unpopular stand to save democracy from an inherent impulse to destroy itself. I will not fire you. You will do your duty.”
Simmering at the vainglorious order, Eisenhower saluted stiffly and turned for the door.
“And Major, on your way back, stop by the Chastleton and tell Miss Cooper that MacArthur will be unavoidably detained.”
GLASSFORD SPED BLUE BESSIE WEST down Pennsylvania Avenue. When he passed the Treasury Building, his heart sank. On the grassy slopes of the Ellipse, four hundred infantrymen in full battle gear were forming up columns and collecting gas canisters from a quartermaster wagon. A squadron of cavalry on their flank hurried with preparations, tightening saddle straps and wiping their gleaming sabers with oil cloths. Behind them, trucks sat loaded with tanks. So many of his old friends and officer acquaintances, including Lucian Truscott and George Patton, were assembling a force that looked like a reunion from the war.
As he approached the gathering on his cycle, he noticed several of the officers averted their eyes, refusing to acknowledge his arrival. In the midst of this impressive array of West Pointers, MacArthur stood in full dress uniform, conferring with General Perry Miles, commander of the Sixteenth Brigade, and giving orders to his aide, Major Eisenhower.
With that old war look of keen anticipation in his agate eyes, MacArthur saw his old classmate and motioned him over. “Just look at these crack troops, Hap. Seeing them now, I can’t help but think back on my old Rainbow boys.”
Glassford parked the cycle and got off slowly, turning in disbelief as if he were caught in a nightmare. “General, several of your Rainbow men are out there on that avenue. What are you planning to do?”
“I am going to break the back of the BEF.”
“There’s no need for these troops. We had some tense moments earlier this morning, but—”
“Deaths. You had deaths, not tense moments. The insurrection has exploded into street fighting. Four of your officers were injured in it.”
“I’ve regained control of the area.”
“Battle sector control is a mercurial thing, Hap. Once the enemy gets its fighting blood up, there can be no half-measures, or all will be lost.”
Glassford’s jaw dropped. “Enemy? General, there is no enemy. Those men are Americans. Americans who fought for us in France.”
MacArthur slapped his riding crop to his thigh. “I have orders from the White House to drive the squatters out of the city.”
“The President gave his permission for the dispersal?”
MacArthur became increasingly agitated, shooting impatient glances at the slowness of the troops to form up. “Within a short time, we will move down Pennsylvania, sweep through the billets there, and clean out the other two large camps. The operation will be continuous. It will be all done by tonight.”
Standing there in shock, Glassford now understood from the reaction of the other officers that MacArthur and Hurley had been planning this military operation for weeks. “General, there are thousands of citizens on the streets down there. You’ll put innocent people in harm’s way.”
“Hap, you’ll have to excuse me now. I must address the troops.”
Glassford stole a pleading glance at his watch. He’d give a king’s ransom for the gift of darkness, but it was only four o’clock. This day was dragging on like none he had ever experienced, even those on the Marne. “General, give me ten minutes, at least. Let me at least try to clear the avenue of civilians before you send these troops.”
“Yes, of course, my friend. I can hold my attack for ten minutes.”
AS THEY WALKED OUT OF the District morgue down near the river, Ozzie Taylor and Charlie Lincoln needed a moment to regain their bearings in the damp heat. They finally found the Washington Monument in the sweltering haze, and keeping its tip in their sights, hoofed it back north up Seventh Street. They had followed the ambulance down here to the southwest waterfront, praying that Billy Hruska had miraculously resurrected himself after the shooting. But they had discovered their buddy laid out cold naked on a slab, with a bullet hole in his chest and his gut splayed open like a butchered steer.
Lincoln took several gasping breaths as he walked into the blasts of lethally baked air. He tried to avoid the morbid subject on both their minds. “It’s hotter than a Turkish bath in Texas out here! I could've stayed in there a while longer. Coolest spot in the city.”
Ozzie glanced over his shoulder, still fascinated by the morgue’s steeple and arched, stained-glass windows. “I never seen a dead house built like a church.”
“They build ‘em like that to comfort the bereaved. Most of those fellas lying in state back there were just like us. Didn’t have a dollar to press their eyes, let alone spend for a funeral. So that iced chapel does double duty.”
Ozzie couldn’t get the ghastly image of Billy’s mutilated corpse out of his mind. “Why’d they have to fillet him like that, Charlie?”
“That’s what they do to murder victims. They gotta make sure the bullet is what got them.”
“What else would have gotten him?”
“He could have been poisoned by that river mud coffee they make us drink. Then the shooter wouldn’t have been the proximate cause of the death.”
“Prox what?”
“Proximate cause,” Lincoln said. “It’s a term of jury prudence. If I was to waylay you here and leave you for a goner, but you was still lingering when a storm brewed up and a bolt of lightning came down and struck you all the way to Paradise, I wouldn’t be criminally accountable for your demise. That would be what’s called an act of God.”
“Since when did you become Clarence Darrow?”
“I learned a little court sophistry during those thirty days I was incarcerated.”
“You spent time in the pokey?”
Lincoln nodded as he picked up the pace. “Two years ago, in Abilene. The Jayhawker state doesn’t take kindly to loitering. But I made the best of my situation, as I always do, and furthered my already extensive education by studying under the tutelage of a cellmate who was in for the larceny of a five-and-ten. Harry Collins was his name. Hell of a magician. During his arraignment, he pilfered a Bartlett’s Legal Dictionary from the clerk’s desk and secreted it out under his shirt. At night, we took turns catechizing each other on the nomenclature of the common law spoken since the signing of the Magna Carta.”
“You’re a right learned man, Charlie. I have to give you that.”
“Despite what Alford says about my lack of education, my talent for self-improvement has been passed down through the Lincoln clan’s bloodstream.” He stopped on a nonexistent dime and stared down at an empty field that bordered the river. “They did it right over there.”
Ozzie looked around but saw nothing except empty garbage cans overturned by wild dogs. “Did what?”
“This is the very ground where they hung the conspirators that conspired to murder my kinsman.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sometimes I get visions sent from my forefathers. That poor woman they swung was innocent as you and me. But the government had its bloodlust up. They made her pay for just being around at the wrong time. She took her damn time dying, too.”
Ozzie was getting the scare chills from all this death talk. “Let’s get outa here.”
Lincoln shook off his ghost vision. “Yeah, Dubya probably thinks we went AWOL by now.”
“Speaking of Dubya, I’m a little hurt he didn’t come with us to the morgue to pay his respects to Billy.”
“Dubya’s got important things on his mind.”
“That’s right, I guess. Still, if it was one of us took the bullet, I’d hope the commander would come see us off to our Maker.”
They headed across the Mall toward Camp Glassford at the old District armory. Ozzie slowed down as they passed the Communist camp at Thirteenth and C streets. Pace’s Red vets were all in a lather, hollering and running toward Pennsylvania Avenue like banshees. In the vaporous distance, he saw a column of cavalry cantering down the hallowed boulevard of inaugurated presidents. Behind the mounts rolled four tanks. Hundreds of civilian workers and residents were coming through the doors in the Old Post Office and the hotels along the avenue to see what the commotion was all about.
Lincoln squinted into the haze. “Is there a parade today?”
Ozzie quickened his faltering gait. “Look there, Charlie! That’s infantry behind the horse boys! They look right fine, don’t they? Those tanks are a might heftier than the cracker tins on wheels ol’ Georgie Patton drove in France.”
“By god, the regulars have finally come out to support us!” yelled Lincoln. “I told you those boys down at the barracks would get behind the Bonus!”
The two veterans hurried as fast as their sore feet would allow toward the spectacle up ahead. When they reached Pennsylvania Avenue, they found Chief Glassford riding his cycle up and down the lanes, pleading for the civilians to retreat north behind rope cordons that his officers were throwing up in front of the sidewalks. On the south side, thousands of their comrades had converged in front of their shacks to welcome the approaching troops.
“Hey, General!” shouted Lincoln. “Can we get across to join our buddies?”
Glassford, looking sick in the gills, waved him off. “Get out of here!”
Ozzie was thoroughly puzzled. “He’s in a sour mood, huh.”
Lincoln crawled under the restraining rope and stood on the pavement where the old streetcar rails still ran. He saluted the infantry, and motioned Ozzie over to join him.
Ozzie held back, fearful of disobeying the general’s order. But Lincoln insisted, and finally Ozzie relented. They stood there together on the avenue at attention, basking in the memories of those days when they had marched across France with guns shouldered and tin hats flashing under the sun. All around them, their fellow veterans were waving American flags and singing patriotic songs. Lincoln removed his stovepipe hat in reverence for the Stars and Stripes. He hadn’t seen a show like this since the good folks in Omaha had sent him and the other doughboys off on July Fourth of Nineteen- and-Seventeen. “By God, Oswald, it makes you proud to be an American, don’t it?”
Ozzie nodded, mesmerized by the infantry column that came to a heel-thumping halt near Gilman’s Drugstore, just beyond Sixth Street. An order was shouted from somewhere behind the regulars, and they executed a deft quarter turn. Half of them now faced the throngs of civilians to the north, and the other half stared down those veterans who were packed together along the rubble on the evacuation block below the armory. An Army officer shouted a second order, and the troops quickly fixed bayonets.
Lincoln started clapping and spurring everyone around him to join in the applause. “I ain’t seen potstickers like that since the Marne. They’re pulling out the stops for our entertainment, boys! Let’s give them a hand!”
Ozzie suddenly got a sinking feeling in his gut. “Charlie… ”
“Yeah?”
“I think they’re meaning us some trouble.”
Lincoln guffawed. “Trouble? You’re dafter than a swinging screen door in winter, Oz.” He commenced walking toward the lead soldiers in the column. “To put your hallucinating mind at ease, I’ll start up a conversation with—”
“Halt!”
Lincoln frowned at the surly sergeant. “There’s no cause for that.”
The infantry lowered bayonets and moved forward on the double. A silence of disbelief and shock froze the civilian crowds and the veterans.
“They’re attacking us!” shouted a veteran perched on the armory’s top floor.
That bellowed warning broke loose all Hell.
The cavalry spurred to the chase and fanned out on both sides of the avenue. The riders drove their horses pell-mell into the crowds, pummeling panicked spectators with the flat of their sabers and threatening to stomp on them with the hooves of their chargers if they didn’t move off.
The streets filled with screams and shouts of vengeance.
The infantry sergeant marched down the street yelling at the curious spectators, “You got three minutes to clear out! Three minutes!”
“This is America!” shouted Lincoln. “We got a right to be here!”
Ozzie backed away down the Avenue toward the Capitol, but hundreds of veterans leapt over the rope lines and tried to form a human barricade. The soldiers pulled gas masks from their packs and pulled them over their heads. Moments later, the regulars threw gas canisters at the veterans, and the air filled with smoke carrying poisonous potassium nitrate. Veterans and civilians heaved, choking and vomiting. The unarmed veterans cursed the soldiers and taunted them with indictments of cowardice, and they were answered with a fusillade of gas canisters.
Remembering their training in the trenches, the veterans tried soaking their kerchiefs with what water they could find and pressed them against their mouths and noses. Many dropped to their knees, sneezing and tearing up and fighting for breath. Those who could still stand picked up the hot canisters and threw them back at the soldiers. The air became filled with lacing bricks, whizzing canisters, and any debris that the outgunned veterans could get their hands on.
The BEF line tried to hold, but it crumbled under the onslaught of sharp steel. Crying from the gas and the shock of betrayal, the veterans fell back as squads of infantry split off and descended on the abandoned federal buildings in Camp Glassford. The regulars drove the frightened families of the veterans out of the dark recesses at the points of the bayonets.
Lord help them poor folk, Ozzie prayed. Lord help us all.
The infantry column kept moving up the avenue and sweeping aside anyone who got in its way. The womenfolk of the veterans tried to run up to the Army officers and beg permission to retrieve what few belongings they kept in their huts, but the dragoons scattered them off with their sabers. Across the street, a cavalryman lashed with his saber at a reporter trying to call in the story on a phone at a gasoline station.
“If we had guns!” shouted Lincoln.
“Move it!” demanded a soldier who couldn’t have been more than eighteen.
Shaking with rage, Lincoln saw an American flag abandoned on the ground. He picked it up and brandished it at the insolent soldier. “Hit me now, you yellow bastard! You hit me, you hit this flag!”
The young soldier whipped his rifle butt at Lincoln’s chin. Spitting blood, Lincoln crawled off and curled into a ball to protect his head.
A few feet away, Ozzie was desperate for breathable air. He climbed a tree, but the clouds of tear gas just kept rising toward him. One thought kept coursing through his heated brain: What would Big Jim have done if he were here to witness this shameful devastation?
The wind began to turn, and the gas shot at the veterans wafted toward the civilians who were scrambling for the protection of the Mall. By now, Ozzie calculated, there had to be twenty thousand innocent people in the area, all drawn by the rumors of a battle. Below him, the American flags atop the shanties erupted in flames.
They’re setting everything afire.
He held to the limb for dear life. The whole damn place looked like the Marne again. Wounded were staggering and dropping everywhere. Women and their children ran screaming and falling into holes in the rubble. Soldiers jabbed and thrust at stragglers with their bayonets. From his high vantage, he saw one infantry squad break off from the main column and head with bayonets flashing toward the Communist camp across the Mall.
By God, he muttered, he wouldn’t want to be those Red boys right now. He searched the panorama of chaos below for Lincoln. His throat was burning, but he risked ruining his chords to yell, “Charlie! You hurt?”
There was no answer from below.
Had Charlie been worked over too badly to answer? On the Avenue, the soldiers kept marching up the canyon of heroes and raining down destruction upon anything in their path. Would they ever stop?
Lord God, protect me from this wrath of evil.
WHY THE HECK DID DUBYA want him to bring the medal? Angelo shrugged off that mystery as he climbed the bluffs from the Anacostia flats and headed for the Capitol. The orders passed through the camp around noon had called for all able-bodied men to head on up to Camp Glassford for another rally. But he had decided to take the long way around, making a circuit past the Supreme Court first to pay a visit to a friendly popcorn vendor who always saved the unexploded kernels for him. Mashed and soaked for a few hours in vinegar, those little burnt balls produced a passable substitute for peanut butter, if your expectations weren’t too lofty.
As he walked toward the shimmering dome, he felt his Distinguished Service Cross flapping against his chest. The pin holding it had frayed the wool lapel on his jacket so severely that he debated moving it down an inch. But he remembered the instructions of his mother, bless her soul, who had taught him as a boy that the accurate situating of holy medals, statues of saints, and other relics of veneration could mean the difference between divine protection and demonic misfortune. So, he decided against that breach of regulation.
He finally reached the Capitol plaza, now twice as famished for the effort. But the place was deserted. Hell, even the popcorn hawker was gone. Where was everybody? The air stung his nostrils, causing his nose to run. He wiped the snot with his sleeve.
Damn, that smells like the Marne.
He picked up his pace and hurried around to the west side of the Capitol. Below the statue of General Grant, the Mall looked like an ant farm sprayed with pesticide. Thousands of people were running and darting every which direction, and above them wafted a strange, bluish haze. He rubbed his eyes, but that only made them hurt worse. Cats were screeching and dogs were barking and howling. Pregnant women sat sobbing under trees. Mothers dragged mattresses and chairs across the Mall while crying children carried what ragged clothes they could salvage before the soldiers burned their shanties.
It looked like the Day of Judgment.
He hurried down the grassy slope toward the giant Esso gas station building, where the congressmen got their fancy Cadillacs filled and shined. When he reached the intersection of Pennsylvania and Constitution, a sea of rushing panic stopped him in his tracks. Hundreds of veterans and civilians were coughing and heaving and scattering for the abandoned Methodist Church on Fourth Street to find sanctuary.
Are those tanks down there?
He covered his mouth as he ran through the swirling gas mists to get a closer look. A few yards ahead, an open-bed truck carrying six veterans came wheeling up and braked to a skidding stop. The men behind this rolling barricade unleashed a barrage of bricks at the tanks, but their missiles bounced harmlessly off the iron plating. A squadron of cavalrymen retaliated by charging with their sabers drawn. Those khaki-clad hussars hammered at the exposed veterans, driving them to their knees and bloodying their scalps. One of the uniformed horsemen was yelping and grinning and swinging his blade as if it were Custer’s ghost given a second chance at Little Big Horn.
He froze. Where had he heard that shrill shriek before?
Crissakes…that’s Major Patton.
He ran toward his old superior officer, waving to get his attention. “Major! It’s me! Joe Angelo!”
Patton turned with wild eyes toward his shout.
Angelo remembered that crazy look. Can’t he see me?
As bricks rained down around him, Patton reined his spooking sorrel and, slapping its withers, spurred off for another attack on the retreating truck.
“Major! Over here! It’s Joe—”
A bayonet pricked his chest. Staggered to the ground, Angelo looked up and found an infantryman aiming the deadly end of a rifle at him. His dander up, he scrambled back to his feet and pointed at the medal on his chest for the soldier’s edification. “You see this? Have some respect for this!”
The private threw a hip into him. “Get moving!”
Knocked to the pavement, Angelo lurched to his scraped hands and knees. “You know where France is?”
The soldier raised the butt end of his rifle. “I know where Hell is, and you’re gonna take the chute to it if you keep flapping that mouth.”
“I was over there taking bullets when you were still in diapers!”
The soldier reached to his belt and unhooked another gas canister. “You’re gonna need those diapers again if you stick around here much longer.”
Angelo was madder than a fighting cock in a Camden pool hall. “Give us some weapons! Then we’ll see who can shoot their mouths off!”
The soldier prodded him with his bayonet across the grass like a calf to slaughter. His tormentor yelled over to one of his fellow storm troopers who was chasing a woman out of her hut. “Hey, Jimmy! Take a look at this one! He ain’t got enough flesh on him to put a hook through.”
“Throw him back into the pool!” trilled the second soldier.
Angelo crawled away, cursing and promising vengeance. “The whole country’s gonna hear about this!”
The soldier kicked at him again. “Yeah? Who’s gonna listen to you?”
Tired of the one-sided tussle, the soldier moved on to look for more challenging game. From his humiliating position of battered prostration, Angelo risked a glance over his elbow. He saw MacArthur standing across the street, slapping his riding crop while pointing officers toward the remaining pockets of resistance. He thought he saw tears coming down the general’s cheeks.
Was Mac crying from the shame of it all?
One of the soldiers yanked a flag from a retreating veteran. “Give me that, you crummy old bum!”
A few feet away, a civilian watching from behind the ropes shouted at the soldier, “The American flag means nothing to me after this!”
MacArthur turned toward the cursing spectator and ordered one of his officers, “Put that man under arrest if he opens his mouth again!”
Angelo realized that MacArthur was tearing up all right—not from emotion, but because, just like in France, he was too vain to put on a gas mask.
TWITCHING FROM FATIGUE AND FEELING faint, Waters remained fixed at the third-story window of his headquarters in the Ebbitt Hotel. For the past half hour, he had stood there watching in disbelief as the regulars scattered his battered BEF army across the city. “MacArthur lied to me, Georgie,” he muttered. “He lied to me.”
Alford kept watch on the door, in case any of the regulars came looking for them. He risked coming across the room to comfort his distraught friend with a hand to his shoulder. “They’re all lying bastards.”
“Ain’t there nothin’ at all a man can believe in anymore?”
“We’re surrounded in this country by nothing but politicians and warmongers. We never had a chance against the big money of the Wall Street thieves who finance them.”
Waters fought back tears. “I g-g-gotta go d-d-down there and lead them.”
Alford restrained him from rushing for the hall stairs. “It’s too dangerous, Dubya. Remember those government spies who’ve been trying to assassinate you for weeks? Only thing that’s kept you alive was our moving you around each night. You go down there in that mayhem now, one of their trigger goons will sure as hell take aim at you. You’re too valuable to us.”
“But what d-d-do I do now?”
“We’ll lay low for awhile. Soon as things quiet down in a few days, we’ll get you out of town. They won’t know you’re even gone. Then we’ll muster the Khaki Shirts and come back with thousands more.”
Shaking from nerves and exhaustion, Waters staggered to the bed and pulled the covers over his head, trying to muffle the screams and shrieks in the street below. “Let me rest a moment, will you, Georgie?”
Alford closed the blinds. “Don’t you worry, Dubya. I’ll keep watch.”
HOOVER SAT STEWING AT HIS desk with the overbearing gaze of Admiral Boone fixed on him like the all-seeing Masonic eye of the dollar bill. Holding his blood pressure cuff at the ready, the physician had insisted on remaining at his side since dawn to watch for signs of cardiac distress. He didn’t know which was worse: waiting for Hurley to bring word of the military operation on Pennsylvania Avenue, or suffering the admiral’s incessant pokings and ministrations. “Joel, go ask Joslin if there have been any injuries.”
“Sir, I really shouldn’t leave you.”
“I can’t take being cooped up in here like a veal calf. I need some air.”
“That’s not wise, Mr. President. There is gas—”
“Gas?”
“There are reports that the troops have deployed tear-gas canisters.”
“My God.”
Seeing his patient dangerously agitated, the admiral moved in on the biceps for another reading, but he was repulsed. “Sir, take a few long breaths.”
Hoover erupted from his chair. “Where in the blazes is Hurley? He was supposed to report to me over—”
Ted Joslin opened to the door to the Oval Office. Before the press secretary could announce the arrival, Secretary of War Hurley marched in. The stoic New Mexican stood in silence before the president.
“Well?” Hoover demanded.
Hurley glanced at Admiral Boone to indicate that what he was about to say was for the president’s ears only.
“Joel, will you give us a moment alone?”
Admiral Boone reluctantly retreated. “Deep breaths, sir. If you experience any discomfort in the chest—”
“Close the door behind you.”
Hurley waited for an invitation to sit, but Hoover kept him standing. Finally, the war secretary reported, “The dispersal has proceeded as planned.”
Hoover grimaced at the military lingo designed to mask the bald truth. He sensed that something was amiss. “Speak plainly, Patrick. Has anybody been hurt?”
“Minor injuries, is all.”
“What does that mean?”
Hurley seemed to have difficulty looking at him directly. “Nothing you need to concern yourself with, Mr. President.”
“Is General Miles remanding the troops to Fort Myer?”
“The troops are still engaged. General MacArthur is leading them—”
“MacArthur? What’s he doing out there with them? You told me Miles would command.”
“The Chief of Staff felt it was essential that he direct the mission.”
Hoover felt his heart racing in his chest. “Where is MacArthur now?”
“Approaching the Eleventh Street Bridge.”
Hoover flushed. “My orders were clear and limited. I told you to clear only the federal properties at Fifteenth and Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Sir, it is General MacArthur’s opinion, and I agree with him, that we should expel all of the veterans from the city while we have the troops in motion.”
“Absolutely not!”
“We must close the Anacostia camp tonight. General MacArthur has received evidence from military intelligence of a Red conspiracy in the works. If we allow these traitors to regroup, they will have time to marshal their hidden weapons and mount a formidable counterattack in the morning.”
The veins in Hoover’s neck bulged. After a long silence, he managed to gather his composure and said in a low, tremulous voice boiling with emotion, “Mr. Joslin will draft an order under my signature. You will have it couriered without delay to General MacArthur by a member of your staff. That order will state in unambiguous terms that the Army is not to cross the Eleventh Street Bridge. Nor is it to enter the Anacostia camp by any means. Have I made myself sufficiently clear, sir?”
Forced to endure the lecture, Hurley replied in a clipped tone, “Yes, sir.”
IN CLEVELAND ON ANOTHER LECTURE tour, Floyd Gibbons opened a new bottle of whiskey and kicked up his heels atop the desk that the Literary Digest pooh-bahs had found for him in the offices of the Plain Dealer. With twenty minutes to spare, he had just handed in his copy for next week’s column on the rise of Japanese militarism in Asia. The only problem on his mind now was which saloon to grace that evening with his raconteur wit.
He lit up a stogie, savoring its aroma, which brought to mind a lithe señorita in Havana whose hips could have launched a thousand ships. He wondered if she was still plying her magic in those rumba halls across from the Malecon. Maybe he’d go down in the fall and stake his flag again on the white sands of Varadero beach. There had to be some story worthy of an expense-paid—
“Damn,” muttered one of the editors behind a circular copy desk. “There’s a battle raging in Washington.”
Gibbons enjoyed another sip of malt and toasted the eternal circle of life. “There’s always a battle raging in Washington, Hayward, ol’ boy.”
The copy editor watched the tape spit out from the wire-service ticker. “No, Gib. I mean there’s a real battle.”
“What the hell are you blathering about?”
“MacArthur called out the Army this afternoon. He’s attacking the Bonus vets. They’re fighting right now on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Gibbons didn’t bite on that shiny hook. “Little late for April First pranks.”
The editor checked the wire photos and shook his head. “Come over here and take a look. Maybe this will convince you.”
Gibbons ambled over to examine the photograph coming over the wire. His jaw dropped at what he saw. Infantry in soup-bowl hats were prodding unarmed veterans at the point of bayonets down a street littered with tear-gas canisters. He had seen those smoking cans up close in France. “God damn that preening peacock MacArthur! And God damn that coward Hoover!”
“Looks like you missed out on the story of the year, Gib. First time two American armies under the same Stars and Stripes ever squared off. I’d have loved to hear you burn up the airwaves on this one like in the old days.”
Gibbons fumbled for his cane—and the bottle—and lumbered for the door. “It’s not a story until I get there! Book me on the next flight to Washington! And call Benny Scalen at NBC in New York! Tell him I want the radio commentary spot for tomorrow!”
GLASSFORD HAD NEVER FELT SO helpless. He wasn’t much more than a spectator now to the unfolding horror, relegated to tagging along with the rear of the main infantry column. Flanked by roving cavalry, the regulars had made their way up Pennsylvania Avenue and had now disappeared beyond the Capitol in the blue haze of tear gas and the summer heat.
Yet the tanks had turned south onto Third Street.
He thought it odd that the troops would abandon the site of the protest, but he had no time to investigate. He prayed that MacArthur had finally come to his senses and had ordered the tanks back to Fort Myer. He darted on his motorcycle from one pitched fight to another, deploying his officers has best he could to protect and control the thousands of civilians who had poured out onto the streets from their office buildings to watch the unthinkable. Their reactions on seeing the unfair battle turned from shock to outrage.
Several spectators glared at him and shook their heads in judgment, apparently believing that he had conspired in the attack. One woman persisted in trailing him while describing in detail the varied sceneries that he would meet on his way to perdition. “Shame! Shame on you, Chief Glassford!” she shouted. “Not since Pharaoh! Not since the Israelites were driven into the desert!”
He considered reminding her that the Israelites left Egypt on their own accord, a choice that the veterans could have made weeks ago, but he knew that reason stood no chance against this chaos. He merely tipped his hat in contrition and gunned Blue Bessie toward the Capitol dome. It was nearly nine in the evening, and the sun was blessedly slipping toward the Virginia horizon behind him. On reaching the Capitol plaza, he looked around for the vanguard of the infantry. Perry Miles should have been here preparing to disperse the regulars back to the barracks. Where had they gone?
My God, no.
He sped along the railroad tracks past the Navy Yard and spun a right onto Eleventh Street. The tanks sat on the banks overlooking the river with their barrels aimed at the veteran’s camp in Anacostia. A company of infantry was marching across the span while MacArthur prowled the bridgehead, conferring with Mills and Eisenhower. Across the river, in the camp, women were screaming and children crying, and a desperate scrum of veterans appeared to be trying to form a line of defense with shovels and broom handles for weapons.
He gunned the cycle up to the officers and skidded to a stop.
MacArthur, in constant motion as usual, wielded his riding crop like a lecture pointer while resting his free hand on his hip at various angles, as if testing poses for a statue. “Hap, have your men move those civilians back.”
“General, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to get this area cleared for you.”
Alarmed, Glassford turned to Major Eisenhower, who held a sickened look. The adjutant turned his eyes askance, as if to indicate that he had already lost the argument. Before Glassford could beg an explanation for this variance from the plans he had been briefed on at the Ellipse a few hours ago, a staff vehicle sped toward the bridge and braked. General Moseley got out of the back seat and marched up with an urgent scowl on his face.
MacArthur glared at him. “I thought I told you to remain at the office.”
“Hurley sent me down here.”
Shifty-eyed, MacArthur quickened his pacing while mopping the sweat from the back of his neck with a kerchief. “I don’t have time for this.”
Moseley made clear by his vinegarish sneer that he shared the disdain for the message he was now required to deliver. “The President wants you to suspend the evacuation for the night. You are not to cross the bridge and enter the Anacostia camp.”
MacArthur clenched his jaw and walked a few steps away. Finally, he turned back to Moseley and muttered, “Does that man not understand that we are in the midst of a military operation? I am too busy to deal with correspondence.”
Glassford took a step forward and caught Moseley shooting him a suspicious glance, as if questioning what he was doing here in the midst of an Army field conference. Glassford angled his head to direct Moseley’s attention toward the bridge, where an exploratory sortie of infantry was now crossing to test what opposition the veterans would try to throw up.
Moseley nodded his approval of the decision, making clear his eagerness to see the instigators get what they deserved. The deputy turned and caught up with MacArthur, who was now stalking the riverbank, his owlish eyes blinking with agitation. Glassford moved closer, just enough to overhear Moseley tell MacArthur, “I have to be able to confirm that I delivered the President’s order to you. And that you received it.”
MacArthur kept walking away, acting as if he had not heard the specifics of the White House command. He was talking faster now. “I will not allow me or my staff to be bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders. That will be all, General.”
Moseley lingered, looking uncertain what to make of the ambiguous dismissal. Shrugging at the Byzantine ways of his immediate superior, he headed back to his car to report to the White House that he had performed his duty.
Glassford was about to plead with MacArthur to follow the presidential order when they spied a lone veteran crossing the bridge while waving a white flag. He recognized the bedraggled man as Eddie Atwell, the BEF staff officer that Waters had left in charge of the Anacostia camp. The poor fellow’s hesitant manner reminded him of those Germans in 1918 who had climbed nervously from the Argonne trenches to surrender, not sure if they would be shot. He walked over and motioned Atwell across the bridge, hoping to reassure the veteran that he would not be harmed.
With worry in his eyes, Atwell nodded to him. “General.”
“Are your people okay over there, Atwell?” Glassford asked.
“They’re pretty shaken up.”
MacArthur came strutting over. “Aren’t you that mouthy fellow who said you were going to fight us to the death?”
Atwell, humiliated, hung his head. “You taught us that in France, sir.”
MacArthur lorded an air of conquest over the defeated veteran. “I am quite certain no man who stepped foot in that insurrectionist mud pit ever fought for me. Are you giving yourself up to the mercies of the authorities?”
Atwell’s hands were shaking. “I’m asking you to allow us to leave peacefully, with our dignity. It’ll take us awhile to pack. The women and children—”
MacArthur stretched his chin. “One hour.”
The punitive condition shocked Glassford. “General, my men can throw up a patrol around the camp tonight. If we give them until morning—”
“There have been too many prevarications and delays,” MacArthur snapped. “I will not allow my troops to bivouac under the guns of traitors.”
Glassford didn’t know what was more disconcerting: that MacArthur thought the veterans were armed, or that he considered them traitors.
MacArthur glared with disgust at the cowering Atwell. “It is your choice. One hour, or not. Either way, this will all be over tonight.”
Atwell looked over his shoulder toward the river, wondering how he could find the words to tell the families that they would be leaving with only those possessions they could carry. As the veteran debated the demand, additional infantry crossed the bridge and fanned out around the perimeter of the camp, taking positions for an attack if necessary. He turned and, glancing in despair at the police chief, reluctantly nodded his acceptance of the terms.
Glassford walked off down river to be alone with his troubled thoughts.
A hobbled veteran, driven from the incinerated shacks near the Mall, approached him. Assisted at the arm by his wife, he recognized the police chief and came closer. “General, you remember what the Belgian children said? They have burned our little beds. They have burned Monsieur Jesus Christ.’”
“Those were the Germans,” Glassford reminded him in a weak defense.
“And these are tin soldiers,” the veteran’s wife insisted. “They come and burn us in the night. That’s all we have to our name up there, going up in smoke.”
Glassford was at a loss how to comfort the distraught couple. He dug into his pocket and found a few dollars. “I know it’s not much, but the boarding houses north of the Capitol may have some rooms open.”
The woman declined the offer. “We’ll stay with our own people.”
ANNA RUSHED FROM SHACK TO shack in the Anacostia camp, tending to the scared families and the old men who had stayed behind, many with maladies worsened by the panic of being cast homeless again. One of the last to remain before the evacuation deadline passed, she hurried to make sure all of the infirm had managed to walk out. All around her, she heard wailing and cries of confusion and empty shouts of vengeance. She ran to the commissary and shoved as many library books as she could fit into her shoulder bag. Then, she retreated to the hovel inhabited by the Myers family and found the wife still inside, trying to nurse her colicky infant. Mother and child had bloodshot eyes and were wheezing and coughing. She warned the woman, “You have to get out of here now!”
Mrs. Meyers was too weak to stand. “Bernie’s having trouble breathing.”
Anna didn’t doubt that complaint, for her own lungs were burning from the gas. She took the baby in her arms and saw that he was in severe distress, red as a turnip and gasping. “We have to get him to a hospital.” With her free arm, she lifted the mother up, and together they staggered down the rows of abandoned huts in the dark. She looked over her shoulder one last time and saw the hovel where Ozzie Taylor and Charlie Lincoln bunked.
The oboe.
With the baby in her arms, she turned to go back and save the precious instrument. She remembered that Ozzie kept it in his case and stored up on two slats, away from the rainwater.
A young soldier armed with a rifle came around the corner. He lowered his bayonet at her. “Get out!”
“I have to go back for one last thing. It’s priceless.”
“Orders. Take another step, and I will arrest you.”
She thought about charging at the insolent soldier, but she remembered the baby. “What’s your name?”
The soldier reacted with surprise at the question. “Calvin.”
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you manners?”
“My mother?”
She brought forward Mrs. Meyers, sobbing and distraught. “Take your hat off when you pass a lady.”
The soldier was thrown on his heels by the odd demand.
“Do it!” she screamed.
The soldier slowly unbuckled his helmet and lowered it to his chest.
She leaned in to him, and the soldier flinched, as if expecting a slap. She pressed a kiss to his cheek.
Before the soldier could recover from the biblical gesture marking betrayal, Anna hurried off toward the river with the baby and Mrs. Meyers. Nearing the bridgehead, she turned around to take one last look at her home here. She saw the young soldier she had just kissed pull a tightly wrapped newspaper from his knapsack. He lit the wad with a match and held it against the cardboard roof of the house built by Ozzie Taylor and Charlie Lincoln.
In minutes, the hovel was aflame—with the oboe inside.
THAT NIGHT, PRESIDENT HOOVER STOOD at the window of his second-floor office watching the distant fireball behind the Capitol dome.
The door cracked open, and his wife Lou stuck her head inside. “Bert, Secretary Hurley and General MacArthur are downstairs.”
“Ask them to come up.”
“It’s 10:30. Can’t this wait until the morning?”
Hoover ran his hand down the drapes, testing the richness of the fabric. “Those renovations we talked about for the Stanford house?”
Lou was perplexed that he would raise the subject he always tried to avoid, especially at this hour. “Yes?”
“I think you should go ahead with the contracts.”
Realizing what he was admitting, Lou made a half-hearted protest for his sake, choosing not to reveal that she had already been making arrangements to send items to California. “But if we’re not moving for four more years… ”
He turned with his face so haggard and drawn that it startled her. “We shouldn’t delay the preparations.”
“You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
Shaking his head, he turned back toward the window.
Minutes later, an aide escorted MacArthur and Hurley into the upstairs office and shut the door behind them. The two men waited for their presence to be acknowledged, but Hoover remained frozen at the window.
Hurley coughed to indicate their arrival.
The president kept his back turned to them. “General MacArthur, do they teach grammar at West Point?”
MacArthur shot an uncertain glance at Hurley, bewildered by the question. “Grammar was a part of our literature curriculum, yes, sir.”
Hoover spun on the Army chief of staff with a fearsome glare. “In my order this afternoon, sir, did I misplace a comma, or leave a modifier dangling, that caused you to misinterpret my intent?”
MacArthur didn’t answer immediately. Instead, weary after the long day, he followed Hurley to a sofa, and the two military men sat down to rest their legs while they explained their decision to rid the city entirely of the veterans.
“Remain standing!” Hoover ordered. “Both of you.”
Stung by his harsh tone, the two advisors came slowly back to their feet.
Hoover walked the length of the room to confront MacArthur, drawing so close to the West Pointer’s practiced, lizard-like gaze that he could smell the talcum on his insolent jaw. His voice thrummed with compressed fury. “Did my order reach you this afternoon?”
MacArthur refused to meet the president’s bagged eyes. “Too late, sir. The operation was already underway.”
“An operation that I expressly rejected in our previous discussions.”
MacArthur slowly turned his withering glare directly upon the man that he had come to privately regard as a spineless mugwump. “With all due respect, Mr. President, you never served in the military. Field command must take precedence in the heat of battle.”
“You call herding unarmed men like cattle… battle?”
“We found ourselves confronting a dangerous Communist insurrection out there today,” MacArthur insisted. “To pull back my troops while they were in harm’s way would have been gross malfeasance.”
“They weren’t your troops. They belong to the country.”
“I command them.”
“General Miles commands them in the field. You interjected yourself into the situation needlessly.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see it that way.”
Hoover clenched his fists, incensed by MacArthur’s smugness. “I should fire you both for insubordination.”
Hurley bristled. “On the contrary, we have done you a great service, sir.”
The blue vein in Hoover’s right temple throbbed. “No, sir, you have not. You and your chief of staff here have dealt both the nation and me a grievous wound. A wound, I fear, that will not soon heal. Tomorrow the newspapers across the country will run headlines excoriating me for being the first American president to order regular troops to fight American veterans.”
“Most of those clochards out there were covert Reds,” insisted MacArthur. “You were on the verge of becoming another Kerensky.”
Hoover set his jaw in disgust at MacArthur’s insufferable penchant for sprinkling French into his bombast. “You will immediately issue a joint statement taking full responsibility for today’s debacle.”
Hurley took a defiant step forward. “I strongly suggest you rethink that course of action, Mr. President. With the election just a few months away, it would not be wise for your political future, or for the long-term future of our party. And it would only give our enemies cause for renewed hope. Condemn this long overdue cleansing of the city, and thousands more will descend upon us, heartened with the certainty that they will be met with appeasement.”
Hoover pinched his brow into a tighter glare. “You expect me to take the blame for your disobedience?”
MacArthur thinned his diffident smile. This ore salesman thinks he can intimidate me, after what I endured at West Point and in France? He cleared his voice. “If history teaches us anything, it is that the American people reward boldness in their leaders and look with disfavor upon those who castigate subordinates for decisions made under their authority.”
The president slouched from fatigue, offering no protest to that dire prediction. Dazed from the enervating effect of his heart medications, he walked to his desk and sat down, remaining there in agonized silence.
Hurley seized upon the president’s inexplicable loss of resolve. “We will address the press tonight, before the BEF whiners can spread their lies to the reporters. Tomorrow the country will applaud you for saving the nation from revolution. That I can assure you.”
The two architects of the expulsion operation waited tensely for the inevitable denial of that brazen proposal, but Hoover, after turning inward for several tortured moments, merely waved them from his presence.
Taking his persisting silence as acquiescence—just more of the same cowardice and indecision they had witnessed during the past two years—Hurley and MacArthur nodded to each other with suppressed triumph and walked briskly from the room before the president could change his mind.
ON THE ENTRY LANE OUTSIDE the White House, Major Eisenhower sat waiting in the driver’s seat of an Army staff car. Seeing his superior emerge, the aide jumped out and opened the rear door.
After conferring with Hurley on a plan to reconvene later that night, MacArthur climbed into the back seat and ordered Eisenhower, “Call all of the national reporters you can get hold of this late. Tell them to gather on the Anacostia bluffs in one hour. Arrange for a microphone to be set up.”
“Sir, it’s still pretty rough down there, sir. The fires are burning hot. And we haven’t finished driving out stragglers.”
“All the better. They will get to see for themselves the dangers that we were required to suppress today. I’m going to paint them a vivid picture of the battle. We have one bit of luck going for us, at least.”
“What is that, sir?”
“That blowhard Gibbons is out of town at the moment. We won’t have to put up with his mud-raking rants on the radio.”
Eisenhower started to turn the ignition key, but hesitated. “Sir, do you really think a press conference is prudent? Wouldn’t it be the better part of valor, if not wisdom, for us to keep a low profile and let the politicians handle this now?”
MacArthur watched with satisfaction as the light dimmed and finally died in the window on the second floor of the White House above him. “Major, if you learn anything during your commission in my service, let it be this: Never allow any politician to handle the Army.”
A FEW MINUTES BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Glassford stood under the shadows cast by Navy Yard wall, trying to remain aloof from the crass publicity show. He watched from afar as MacArthur and Hurley, surrounded by nearly fifty reporters and back-dropped by the flames rising from the Anacostia flats below, held their post mortem press conference at the temporary military headquarters set up near the Eleventh Street Bridge.
Jesse Essary, the hard-bitten reporter for the Baltimore Sun, shouted to be heard above a volley of questions. “How come we can’t take newsreels of the burning camp?”
MacArthur struck a Jovian pose of authority. “This is an ongoing military operation. The ban on moving pictures is standard Army regulation.”
The Sun reporter’s baritone voice boomed like a cannon. “They had cameras on the battlefield the day after Antietam! Maybe if people out in the country could see with their own eyes what you did to those veterans, they might have a different opinion on the matter.”
“Those were insurrectionists out there today.”
“How do you know that?”
MacArthur shot an admonishing glance across the street at Glassford, who slinked deeper into the shadows, trying to remain inconspicuous. “If there was one man in ten in that group today who is a veteran, it would surprise me.”
Tracing MacArthur’s eyes to Glassford in the shadows, the reporter shouted at the police chief, “What do you say about that?”
Glassford shook his head. “I’m not taking questions tonight.”
Puzzled by that demurral, Essary turned back to MacArthur and Hurley. “Did the White House give the order to clear out the veterans?”
MacArthur refused to give the reporter the honor of looking at him directly. Instead, he projected his statement into the darkness, as if addressing an imaginary assembly at West Point. “The President proved himself a strong leader today. That mob down Pennsylvania Avenue looked bad. They were animated by the spirit of revolution.” He glared down at the source of several disbelieving hoots in the crowd of civilians that had gathered along the banks. “The gentleness and consideration with which they had been treated had been mistaken by them as weakness, and they had come to the conclusion that they were about to take over the government in an arbitrary way or by indirect methods.”
Paul Anderson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shoved his way to the front. “When did President Hoover issue the order to burn the camp?”
MacArthur was becoming visibly annoyed at these attempts to pin him down on specifics. “Had the President not used force, he would have been derelict indeed in his judgment regarding the safety of the country, because this is the focal point of the world today. Had he not acted with the force and vigor which he did, it would have been a bad day for the country tomorrow.”
Anderson, who had earned his stripes investigating the race riots in East St. Louis while being subjected to repeated assassination threats, kept boring in. “Are you going to provide trucks for the veterans to leave town?”
“No,” MacArthur said. “The Army had nothing to do with this problem.”
“Did you hear the local residents booing your troops?” asked Anderson.
MacArthur turned prickly. “I have never seen greater relief on the part of a distressed populace than I saw today. At least a dozen people told me, especially in the Negro section, that a regular system of tribute was being levied on them by this insurrectionist mob.”
Anderson scribbled on his notebook with such fury that he threatened to impale the pages with his pen. “Is that a fancy way of saying the veterans were asking for donations?”
MacArthur ignored the verbal jab and stepped away from the microphone. “Now we should hear from Secretary Hurley. He was instrumental in keeping President Hoover informed of today’s success.”
Hurley came forward and placed an approving hand on MacArthur’s shoulder. “It was a great victory. Mac here did a great job. He is the man of the hour.” The war secretary seemed to catch himself, and quickly added, “But I must not make any heroes just now.”