The Pentagon: A History (35 page)

Groves had certainly succeeded in piquing Engel’s interest in the Pentagon. As soon as Groves left, Engel sat down with Renshaw and requested numerous confidential documents about the project. Renshaw, under the impression he was to cooperate fully with Engel, dutifully handed over everything, including weekly field reports and monthly progress reports packed with interesting details.

In the days and weeks that followed, Engel flooded Renshaw with requests for more information: lists of subcontractors, utility costs, wage scales, construction equipment, maps of the site, and updated progress reports. He also wanted a breakdown on the amount of space in the Pentagon, a figure that Somervell, eager to conceal the true size of the building, had recently ordered not be made public. Renshaw complied, but he implored Engel to keep the information confidential.

When Groves finally learned all that Engel had acquired he was horrified. “Groves is very much interested in finding out how Engel got hold of those field reports,” his aide, Major Franklin Matthias, told Renshaw.

“Groves brought him over here and gave him the house,” Renshaw protested.

It was too late to point fingers. Engel was busy piecing together the truth and getting angrier by the day.

A building unique in Washington

Groves grew paranoid as Engel’s investigation continued. Inspecting the building on the morning of August 24, the colonel froze in his tracks at the Mall entrance. There, at the base and risers of the staircase leading up to the next floor, was marble. It was unmistakable.

Groves erupted. In his testimony to Congress in June two months earlier, he had expressly vowed that the Pentagon had “no marble, no marble floors, no marble walls, nothing of that character.” Yet here it was at his feet. He dispatched Matthias to search for more. “Walk down every corridor and make a note of every bit of marble that there is in the building,” he ordered.

Lieutenant Colonel Antes, another aide, called Renshaw that afternoon with orders from Groves to remove the marble. “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Renshaw protested. “He wants the marble risers cut out?”

“He wants all the marble taken out,” Antes said.

It would cost as much as $100,000 to pull all the marble out of the building, Renshaw said. In the name of appearing economical, they would waste even more money.

“That’s his orders,” Antes insisted.

Marble had been used sparingly in the building. Chief Architect David Witmer envisioned the Mall entrance, on the Pentagon’s north face looking toward the Lincoln Memorial, as the principal entry to be used by high-ranking officials and distinguished visitors. As such, he included a formal staircase, and that meant marble risers and stringers. “There was no other way to treat it that wouldn’t look like hell, or be more expensive,” Renshaw said. The marble had been in the building for months, since well before Groves testified to Congress, but he had only now noticed it. Renshaw debated painting or plastering the marble rather than cutting it out, but that hardly seemed a good option. Not only would it look terrible, it would be even more embarrassing if someone discovered that marble at the Pentagon had been covered up.

Somervell looked it over and said if anything, there was not enough marble. Groves relented after a week and said the marble already in the building could stay, but he ordered that not one more piece be installed without “my personal approval.”

Witmer had also developed grandiose plans to sprinkle the grounds around the building with fountains, paved circles, and plantings. The Mall entrance was again given elaborate treatment in the plans, with cannons and a statue at the top and a series of terraces dropping down to a long grassy mall screened with trees. The idea, Witmer wrote, was that the Pentagon “will prove in appearance symbolic of not just a neighbor strong and protective, but rather that of a powerful but friendly neighbor.”

Groves cared not a whit whether the Pentagon looked friendly. He had promised Congress that “there would be no fountains and no circles. We will have a building unique in the city of Washington.” Accordingly, Groves assigned Matthias to scrub the plans of all niceties. Statues, circles, fountains, cannons, and most of the trees—“all that crap,” as Matthias later referred to it—were cut out. Witmer was crushed and fought to reinstate his plans. “He wanted every fountain and every blade of grass and every gorgeous walk,” Renshaw said. It was to no avail, and Witmer was left to hope that improvements would be made down the road.

On September 11, Renshaw telephoned Groves with an update on the landscaping. “I find when we decipher the names of the trees in the center court, there are thirteen Japanese cherry trees,” Renshaw reported. “Do you think there’s any chance of criticism if we put them in?”

Groves was aghast, if slightly amused. “Good night,” he exclaimed. “We don’t want a Japanese cherry on the whole lot.” The Japanese cherry trees were summarily yanked from the courtyard, victims of war, and replaced with more acceptable American varieties.

Oddly, despite his paranoia about marble and trees, Groves fervently pushed to add recreational facilities to the Pentagon, believing Army officers manning desks in the building needed exercise. His girth notwithstanding, Groves considered himself to be in “top-notch physical condition” and indeed he was a terror on tennis courts, using a combination of cunning, physical stamina, surprising nimbleness, and a wicked slice shot to regularly defeat younger and slimmer opponents, Renshaw and Furman among them. Groves wanted to install a gymnasium with lockers and showers, squash and handball courts, even a golf driving range. “Maybe the next time we have a war we won’t have all these unfit officers that can’t do the proper amount of duty without breaking down,” he griped.

Somervell had quashed all such proposals from the beginning. For one thing, he had promised Congress the building would have no frills, but beyond that, Somervell considered athletics a waste of time for Army officers in a nation at war. It could be a public relations disaster. Groves thought Somervell’s position “a terrible mistake.” Early in the construction, apparently unbeknownst to Somervell, Groves selected a site for a gymnasium in an undeveloped basement area below a terrace approach to the building on the lagoon side. He had engineers design the space with pilings and columns spread out far enough that it could eventually accommodate “a full sized squash court or two” or even a swimming pool. Groves would get his gymnasium, but it would have to wait until the war was over.

Groves seeks peace

The job, it seemed, was burning out the indestructible Groves. By September, he was desperate to get overseas. Many of his colleagues and West Point classmates had been given combat assignments, the obvious road to promotion. “I was hoping to get to a war theater so I could find a little peace,” Groves wrote.

He had been particularly annoying on the Pentagon job in recent weeks. Even Renshaw, so adept at handling Groves, was reaching the end of his patience. When Groves issued orders September 3 to immediately remove a huge, unsightly pile of lumber from the roof, Renshaw blew up. The lumber was being used for shoring and as forms for concrete pours. If they took it down from the roof today, they would have to put it back tomorrow. Groves’s micromanagement—on everything from butter patties to marble to piles of lumber—was driving Renshaw and job superintendent Paul Hauck crazy. “What I want to get over to Groves is that he cannot interfere with the operations, or we’re going to lose the job just as sure as hell,” Renshaw told Groves’s aide, Major Matthias. Hauck was so fed up he offered to quit and let Groves take over his job.

Groves backed down on the lumber in the face of the rebellion, but he was not through. Several days later, when a walkout by carpenter foremen over wages threatened to delay the Pentagon’s completion, Groves blamed Hauck. “If we had competent management over there, maybe they’d take care of these things,” Groves told Hauck. “If you really earned your fee, in other words.”

Hauck was stunned and hurt. He was one of the best construction men in the business, and for nearly a year he had poured his heart and soul into the project. “The colonel says if there were competent management—we’ve done everything in God’s world we know to do,” Hauck said bitterly.

Harsh as he was, Groves had not asked for anything of anyone that he was not delivering himself. Most mornings he would wake up at 5:30 at his home in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington and be out the door of his yellow brick duplex by 6:15, driving himself to work in his green Dodge sedan. When not on the road he often stayed late at the office, missing dinner. He was gone so much of the time that communication with his wife, Grace, and thirteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, was often through written messages left on the hall table.

Groves fueled himself with sweets and was particularly unable to resist mints and chocolate. On those occasions when he did make it home for dinner, Grace Groves would often put him on diets of boiled food without butter and salt, but it seemed to have little effect on his waistline. His wife and daughter surmised, usually correctly, that he was hitting the candy again. “He was so amiable in the face of these meager, uninteresting groceries and so persistent in gaining weight, that we were naturally suspicious,” Gwen later wrote.

The job of constructing the domestic camps and training facilities for the mobilizing U.S. Army had peaked in July 1942, and the action was shifting overseas. Groves believed he had “most of the headaches of directing ten billion dollars’ worth of military construction in this country behind me—for good, I hoped,” he later wrote. “I wanted to get out of Washington, and quickly.”

Groves was not alone in that sentiment. Many of his colleagues wanted him shipped on the first train out of town. His rapid rise, his arrogant manner, and the roughshod way he treated other officers had made him many enemies within the Corps of Engineers. Several Construction Division engineers asked Major General Reybold, the chief of engineers, to remove Groves from the job, but Reybold declined. However, Somervell’s deputy, Major General Wilhelm “Fat” Styer, hearing the complaints, concluded it would in the best interest of Groves—and everyone else—to get him as far away from Washington as possible.

If you do the job right, it will win the war

Groves was feeling uncommonly sprightly on the morning of September 17, 1942, despite the hot, muggy late-summer weather. He was scheduled to give routine testimony before the House Military Affairs Committee on a military housing bill, but that had nothing to do with his good mood.

The day before, Groves had received what he considered “an extremely attractive” offer for duty overseas. He was elated; it was exactly what he wanted. He was already making plans to move Grace and Gwen to a farm in Delaware for the duration of the war. The only thing he needed now was Somervell’s approval. Leaving the hearing room in the House office building after his testimony, Groves ran into Somervell in the corridor outside.

“About that duty overseas,” Somervell said, “you can tell them no.”

Groves was stunned. “Why?” he asked.

Somervell guided Groves to a quiet corner of the hall and spoke in a lowered voice. “The Secretary of War has selected you for a very important assignment, and the President has approved the selection,” Somervell said.

“Where?”

“Washington.”

“I don’t want to stay in Washington,” Groves protested.

Somervell spoke carefully. “If you do the job right,” he said, “it will win the war.”

Groves’s spirits sank. “Oh,” he replied, “that thing.”

Groves knew a bit about “that thing”: a secret project that the Army had taken over earlier in the summer to use uranium to build an atomic bomb of unprecedented power. From what he could tell, the project was a backwater assignment with little prospect of success.

Somervell read his mind. “You can do it if it can be done,” Somervell said. “See Styer and he will give you the details.”

Seething, Groves went straight to Styer, who formally notified him that he had been selected to head the Manhattan Project. “That’s impossible,” Groves replied heatedly. “I won’t take it. I was assured that I could go overseas where I have been promised a good job.”

In Groves’s mind, not only was he being prevented from going overseas, he had been given an assignment that was a distinct comedown from his job overseeing domestic construction in the United States, including the Pentagon. The whole Manhattan Project was not expected to total more than $100 million—an amount Groves typically went through in one week.

“Who on earth recommended me to the Secretary of War?” Groves demanded of Styer.

The answer, ultimately, was Somervell. There were Machiavellian considerations, of course, and Groves often speculated about Somervell’s true motives. Groves suspected Somervell was trying to distance himself from the Manhattan Project in case it failed by assigning an officer who was not a “Somervell stooge.” He also theorized Somervell wanted someone who would fall on his sword rather than pass around blame in the event Congress held hearings into the potential debacle.

In the summer of 1942, the program was unfocused and unguided, mostly theory with few concrete steps taken toward the production of an atomic bomb. Dr. Vannevar Bush, who as director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development was leading the push to develop an atomic bomb, was dissatisfied with the progress. In June, the Army had taken over the program from civilian control, but the man chosen to command it, Colonel James C. Marshall, had not provided the needed vigor and urgency. Bush decided a more aggressive officer was necessary.