The Yanks Are Coming! (21 page)

Patrick had his man pegged: Mitchell, he wrote, is “very likeable and has ability; his ego is highly developed and he has an undoubted love for the limelight; a desire to be in the public eye. He is forceful, aggressive, spectacular. He had a better knowledge of the tactics of air fighting than any man in this country. . . . I think I understood quite well his characteristics, the good in him—and there was much of it—and his faults.”
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Lieutenant Jimmy Doolittle—of later Doolittle Raid fame—remembered this about the deputy air chief: “I was Mitchell's aide for one day, and on that day, I've never moved as fast or covered as much country before or since. He was a veritable dynamo of energy. Everything he did, he did just as hard as he could.”
¹¹
Mitchell was
no desk jockey: he flew, a skilled and daring pilot; he pressed constantly for improvements in every aspect of aircraft design—for bombing, for flying in bad weather—and knew engines like a doctor knows the human body; he inspected planes and ground crews frequently (sometimes passing out five-dollar bills for good work); he kept tabs on foreign air services; he read constantly (he had three pairs of reading glasses so that he was never without one); and he kept a rapid stream of recommendations flowing to General Patrick.

In December 1921, he embarked on a European tour. He found the French terrified of a resurgent Germany. Italy was full of technical geniuses but unlikely to build a significant air force. The Germans were disarmed but as militarist as ever, openly chafing under Allied restrictions on their military development. They remained a powerful, dynamic people, almost certain to absorb Austria and be a force in the center of Europe. When it came to aeronautics, Mitchell thought German engineers were the best in the world. He was also impressed by the airplane manufacturer Anthony Fokker of the Netherlands, who, during the war, had sold thousands of planes to the Germans after the Allies declined to buy them. In Britain, Mitchell renewed his friendship with Sir Hugh Trenchard. Mitchell rated British airmen among the best but thought the British were too conservative in aircraft design.

Mitchell's wife disliked his incessant working, flying, traveling, and alleged erratic behavior (linked in her mind to overwork and drinking), and when he returned from Europe the couple divorced; Mitchell bought a fast car that he drove at speed; and Mitchell's mother and his sister Harriet came to live with him until his mother's death in December 1922. He deferred to his mother (far more readily than he deferred to senior officers), and his sister enjoyed his parties, was impressed by his aura of celebrity, and despite the
emotional toll of the divorce on him
¹²
thought he was tremendous fun to be around.

Mitchell was pessimistic about government support for the Air Service, especially after President Warren Harding's death in August 1923. That meant the elevation of Vice President Calvin Coolidge, whose campaign for government economy specifically targeted Billy Mitchell and military aviation. Mitchell angered the Navy again with more bombing tests—and pleased himself by taking a new bride, Betty Miller, a woman who shared his love of horses. They were married in October 1923.
¹³
Their honeymoon was combined with intelligence duty, taking them from San Francisco through Hawaii (whose defenses he thought outdated, an opinion that won him the lasting enmity of the Army's commander of the Hawaiian Department, General Charles P. Summerall), Guam,
¹⁴
the Philippines, Java, Singapore, India, Siam, China, Japan, and Korea.

COURT-MARTIAL

Mitchell's 1924 report of his findings is famous for its detailed prediction of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. He thought that war between Japan and the United States, the two great powers of the Pacific, was inevitable. It would be an epic clash, a war not just of nations but of civilizations, with enormous consequences for the region's future.
¹⁵
Mitchell's prophetic report was dismissed by the Army as nothing more than propaganda for the Air Service. Indeed, for all his many talents, Mitchell was increasingly regarded by his superiors as erratic, flamboyant, impulsive, and opinionated, a difficult subordinate and a martinet to his men (though his junior officers were terrifically loyal to him). At the same time, because he was ever the star witness at congressional hearings
on air power, and gave speeches and wrote articles on the topic, he was rarely out of the public eye. He continued to goad the Navy and annoy the Army by asserting that voices like his own were being silenced. Proving Mitchell's contention, Secretary of War John Weeks refused to reappoint Mitchell as assistant chief of the Air Service despite a recommendation from Air Service chief Mason Patrick. Losing the position meant a demotion in rank, to colonel; Mitchell was also denied his preferred posting (Chicago) and instead sent to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he took up his new duties in June 1925, after turning down an offer to run for Congress from Wisconsin. An article he wrote that summer ran with the headline, “Exploding Disarmament Bunk: Why Have Treaties about Battleships When Airplanes Can Destroy Them?” He would not go quietly into the Texas desert.

After two naval air disasters in September—a failed attempt to make the first flight from California to Hawaii, with one plane unable to take off, another crashing, and the third lost at sea (its crew was later rescued); and the crash of the Navy dirigible
Shenandoah
on an unnecessary overland flight in bad weather—Mitchell was besieged by the press demanding a statement. He gave them one, precise and deadly: “My opinion is as follows: These incidents are the direct result of the incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the Navy and War Departments.”
¹⁶
That was the short of it. His full statement was a six-thousand-word elaboration of his summary indictment. It was also more than the War Department was prepared to tolerate.

Mitchell hoped it would be. He relished the chance for a hearing, even a court-martial, which would be the biggest platform yet for him to promote the future of air power. He got all that. He was called to testify to a presidential commission (dubbed “the Morrow Board”
after its chairman, Dwight Morrow) investigating the state of American aviation—and read to its members at length from one of his books. A Navy court of inquiry into the crash of the
Shenandoah
requested his appearance. Most important, the Army announced it was going to put him before a court-martial in Washington.

The court-martial of Billy Mitchell was one of the most spectacular news events of the 1920s. Just as the War Department did everything it could to keep the court-martial from becoming a media circus, Mitchell's goal was to put his message on the front pages of the newspapers every day. He succeeded better than the War Department did.
¹⁷

Not one of his judges was an airman, though a few (like Douglas MacArthur) were good friends, and three, including General Summerall, were dismissed after the defense argued they were prejudiced against Mitchell. The trial lasted seven weeks. Mitchell's defense centered initially on his First Amendment rights and then on the accuracy of his criticisms, which were supported by a litany of his fellow airmen, including “Hap” Arnold, future five-star General of the Air Force. Mitchell himself seemed glamorous, boyishly upbeat and enthusiastic, and certain he was getting a great national airing of his ideas and would emerge victorious. He was inundated with the cards and letters of supporters, the backing of veterans' groups, and editorials in support of his case by many (though certainly not all) newspapers. He was, however, inevitably found guilty of insubordination and sentenced to a five-year unpaid suspension from duty. The conviction was approved by President Coolidge on 26 January 1926, the sentence mitigated to reduce but not eliminate his pay. Mitchell's response was to resign, effective 1 February; his resignation was accepted by the president; and so ended the court-martial and Army career of Billy Mitchell.

Far from allowing his conviction to silence him, he immediately embarked on a speaking tour to highlight the need for America to pursue a rapid development of air power for its national defense. He was urged to run as a Republican for a senate seat from Wisconsin but didn't think much of his chances and declined. He wrote articles. To supplement his speaking and writing fees, he bred horses at his retreat in Middleburg, Virginia. After a flurry of activity, however, interest in his speeches, articles, and books waned, and he dedicated himself to his rural equestrian pursuits. His health, unfortunately, declined swiftly. Heart disease was the cause, and a bad case of the flu finished him off on 19 February 1936. Ten years later, on 8 August 1946, he was awarded a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal. Mitchell, who was proud of his medals, would probably have laughed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

JOHN A. LEJEUNE (1867–1942)

J
ohn Archer Lejeune was born in Louisiana, the son of a planter whose prosperity and land were gone with the wind after the War Between the States. Nevertheless, Ovide Lejeune, whose family had emigrated from Canada to Louisiana in the eighteenth century, and his wife, the former Laura Archer Turpin, a descendant of Huguenot immigrants, made their son's education a priority. At the age of fourteen, John Lejeune was sent as a military cadet to Louisiana State University, which ran a college preparatory program. His curriculum was classical (this was Lejeune's choice; the other options were agricultural or mechanical curricula), and he was enrolled for three years, which was all his family could afford.

Lejeune needed a free education, and that meant one of the service academies. His first choice was West Point, but the only slot open was at the Naval Academy. He won a recommendation for an appointment from his senator, crammed for the difficult entrance exams, and entered the Naval Academy in the summer of 1884. Lejeune did well academically, though he had to work hard, particularly at mathematics. He did far less well when it came to small infractions of discipline, such as smoking outside of allowed times and places. He was, indeed, a great ignorer of regulations, but was proud of the rigors of the school. On the other hand, he was not at all impressed by the moral tone of his fellow naval cadets. Perhaps he needn't have worried about them, as year by year the chaff—in the form of fellow students who failed academically or amassed even more demerits than Lejeune—was winnowed out. Of the ninety cadets of his class, only thirty-two made it through all four years. Lejeune graduated second in his class academically, thirteenth overall.

Next came two years as a midshipman.
¹
Lejeune was reluctant about his looming naval career, but his father encouraged him, and in 1889 Lejeune gained a brief taste of adventure as he was assigned to a sloop sent to Samoa as part of a show of force to keep the Germans from annexing the islands. There was no fighting, but his ship was wrecked in a storm.

THE MARINES

Lejeune was regarded as no better than a middling midshipman, but when he returned to Annapolis for his final examinations, he placed sixth, high enough to earn him a recommendation to the naval engineers. Lejeune, however, had a different career path in mind. He wanted to be a Marine. He protested his assignment all the way to
Washington, DC, where a naval officer told him, “Frankly, Mister Lejeune, you have altogether too many brains to be lost in the Marine Corps.”
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Lejeune repeated this comment to the commandant of the Marine Corps, who then specifically requested that Lejeune be commissioned in the Marines; and so it was that one Marine Corps commandant, Charles G. McCawley, ensured the career path of a future Marine Corps commandant.

The
Army-Navy Journal
took a typically dismissive attitude toward the Marine Corps of the time, saying of it, in 1886, “The Marine Corps is the oldest, the smallest, the best uniformed and equipped and most artistically drilled branch of the fighting wing of the government.”
³
Its officers were regarded as overpaid, underworked rejects from the Army and the Navy. Indeed, critics claimed the Marines' initials, USMC, stood for “Useless Sons Made Comfortable.” The Marines, it was said, had antiquated duties (guarding ships) and a body of enlisted men scraped together from seafaring immigrant toughs with nothing better to do. This was changing, though, under pressure from Commandant McCawley, the Navy, and Congress, including a provision in the August 1882 Navy appropriations bill that Marine officers be Naval Academy graduates.
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Assigned to duty in Portsmouth, Virginia, Lejeune met a judge's daughter, Ellie Harrison Murdaugh, and after a prolonged courtship married her in 1895. The courtship was prolonged because Ellie was popular with young men and because Lejeune's pursuit of her was interrupted by sea duty. He found sea duty dull and was marked down as an indifferent officer, and while marriage and family spurred him to improve his standing in the Corps, he was melancholy during his long separations from home.

In the Spanish-American War, he saw slight action in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Rather more exciting for him was landing in Colombia
in November 1903, de facto on the side of the Panamanian rebels, but with the official purpose of guarding American transit rights across the isthmus. Lejeune's detachment sailed home in December 1904, and Lejeune was made commander of the Marine Barracks in Washington, DC. He served there for a year and a half before leading a battalion back to Panama, where he contracted malaria. In 1907, he was off to the Philippines. Unlike every other Marine officer at Cavite, Lejeune brought his family—his wife and three young daughters—with him. Family life, morality, and religion (he was an Episcopalian) were central to his character, and he was determined to be as little separated from his wife and children as his career would allow; indeed, he regarded them as more important; his career was a mere irksome necessity, though he did become the Marines' brigade commander in the Philippines.