Read The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt Online
Authors: Eleanor Roosevelt
I imagine every mother felt as I did when I said good-by to the children during the war. I had a feeling that I might be saying good-by for the last time. It was a sort of precursor of what it would be like if your children were killed. Life had to go on and you had to do what was required of you, but something inside of you quietly died.
At the time of World War I, I felt keenly that I wanted to do everything possible to prevent future war, but I never felt it in the same way that I did during World War II. During this second war period I identified myself with all the other women who were going through the same slow death, and I kept praying that I might be able to prevent a repetition of the stupidity called war.
I have tried, ever since, in everything I have done, to keep that promise I made to myself, but the progress that the world is making toward peace seems like the crawling of a little child, halting and slow.
May was a busy month in 1943. The President of Bolivia and his foreign minister stayed at the White House on two separate occasions. President Benes of Czechoslovakia and Prime Minister Mackenzie King each spent a night with us, and later the President and the President-elect of Liberia came. Their visit was a direct result of my husband’s visit to Liberia on his way back from Casablanca.
Early one morning in July I was called on the telephone and guardedly told that there had been an engagement in which Franklin Junior’s ship had been bombed. They thought it was getting into Palermo safely. That was all. It was long before I heard the details. After the ship had been bombed, it was taken into Palermo, where it continued to be shelled at intervals. It was tied to another ship, and men were injured on both of them. Franklin Junior had the good luck to be able to save one boy’s life by carrying him down to the other ship’s doctor. At the time he did not notice that he himself was hit in the shoulder, but to this day little pieces of shrapnel are there to remind him of it.
Eventually Franklin Junior’s ship went to Malta for repairs and was still at Malta when he got word that he was to meet his father, who was on his way to Cairo. He was delighted at the chance of seeing him, but when Franklin told him he would like him on the trip as his aide, young Franklin’s joy changed to determination that nothing of the kind was going to happen. After the repairs on his ship were completed, it would have to get home, and he knew it would be an anxious trip because the ship would not really be in top-notch condition. He felt he could not let the ship go back without him, after all he and his shipmates had been through together.
Franklin Junior and his father had quite an argument about where his first duty lay. The ship won in the end and his father gave him a letter of orders to return to it. Young Franklin realized that he could never show those orders to anyone, because security demanded that no one know his father was in the area. He had a difficult time getting back to Malta with no orders that he could show to get priority for the return trip.
I DO NOT REMEMBER
when my husband first suggested that it would be a good idea for me to take a good-will trip to the Pacific, though I do remember the suggestion came because he felt that Australia and New Zealand, being so far away, had been rather neglected in the matter of visitors. Both countries were exposed to attack and the people were under constant strain and anxiety. We had had to send a great number of our servicemen out there, an influx which had added considerably to the strain and which had been, for people whose own men were fighting in Africa and Italy, a disrupting even though reassuring occurrence.
Another reason for the trip was that I had received a number of letters from the women of New Zealand and Australia suggesting that, since I had seen the work of the women of Great Britain, I might be interested in coming out to see what was being done in their far-off countries.
At once I put up a strong plea to be allowed to see our men on Guadacanal and other islands. I had done considerable visiting in the West Coast hospitals to which the early wounded from Guadalcanal and some from the 1st Marine Raider group (with which Jimmy served) were being returned; and I told my husband that it would be hard to go on doing it if, when I was to be in the Pacific area anyway, I were not permitted to visit the places where these men had left their health or received their injuries. He finally broke down and gave me letters to the commanding generals and to Admiral Halsey, saying that he was willing to have me go to Guadalcanal “if it did not interfere with the conduct of the war.”
Franklin was going to the conference at Quebec on the 17th, the same day I was to leave for San Francisco, but we had a little time together at Hyde Park first. It was decided that my visit should be kept secret, so I went on about my daily business as usual. Prime Minister Churchill, who was staying with us, still speaks occasionally of how surprised he was when I casually mentioned at dinner one night that I was leaving the next day for the Southwest Pacific.
He looked aghast. “What have you done about your trip?” I said all the plans had been made and the itinerary worked out. He asked who was going with me, and I said no one, because, having been subjected to much criticism on my return from Great Britain, I thought I would avoid some of it on this trip by taking up as little room as possible. I later found to my regret that some columnists were none too kind anyway, and that I might just as well have taken several people. Nothing more disagreeable could have been said. Mr. Churchill insisted on cabling to all his people in the Pacific, and they were most kind wherever I met them. I have always been grateful to him for his thoughtfulness.
I had gone to see Norman Davis, chairman of the American Red Cross, as soon as the trip had been decided on, and had asked if it would be of any assistance to him if I went to look over the various Red Cross installations and trouble spots. I hoped in this way to show that I was doing a serious job and not just running around the war area causing trouble. He said that I could be most useful, because he had been planning to send someone out there to inspect the Red Cross work. He asked me if I would be willing to wear a Red Cross uniform and make a report to him on my return.
I talked this suggestion over with my husband, since it seemed to offer a number of advantages. In the first place, uniforms meant less luggage, an advantage when traveling by air; in the second place, in a familiar uniform I would feel easier visiting hospitals and meeting servicemen. Franklin decided it would be a good idea, so I bought at my own expense the thinnest uniforms I could find, also a heavy one with a warm top coat, because I knew I would encounter extremes of weather. I conscientiously inspected every Red Cross activity in every area I visited and I hope that my reports were some compensation to Mr. Davis for the criticism heaped upon him for permitting me to go in uniform as a Red Cross representative.
Because Franklin felt that, since I was traveling on a military plane, I should not keep any of the money that accrued from my column while I was on this trip, I arranged for half of my earnings to go to the Red Cross and half to the American Friends Service Committee, also dividing between them what I earned for articles written after my return. Later I discovered that certain of the Republican members of Mr. Davis’ board were afraid that if it were known I had given this money to the Red Cross some of the large donors who were strongly opposed to my husband politically would withdraw their contributions. Consequently, we never explained how I happened to go in uniform or what the financial arrangements were; however, I think it is now quite safe to give the facts.
On Christmas Island I had my first encounter with tropical bugs. When I walked into the room after supper and, putting on the light, found my floor completely covered with little red bugs, I nearly disgraced myself by screaming. Remembering that I was the only woman on the island, and that a scream would undoubtedly raise an alarm, I stamped my foot and all the little bugs scurried down through the cracks in the floor.
I saw everything the men were doing on that island, as I did on all the others I visited. Right from the beginning I followed my sons’ advice, which was none too self-flattering, considering that they were officers. They had said: “Mummy, don’t take every meal with the brass. See that you have a meal with the noncommissioned officers and get a noncommissioned officer to drive you around, and get one meal with the enlisted men themselves.” The only way to accomplish the last was to get up and eat breakfast with the men before six o’clock.
I used to wonder how the pilots ever found the little dots of coral islands in that vast expanse of ocean. Having to come down so close to the water to land was a curious sensation at first, but I became accustomed to it.
Having no one with me as a secretary, I had to write my column either at night or during flights in the daytime. I am such a slow typist that this meant an extra two hours’ work for me almost every day. However, when I had a long flight I could often write enough for two or three columns, which helped when I had an overcrowded schedule at some stop. I lost thirty pounds and when I got home I realized I was more tired than I had ever been in all my life. But I was not ill and the work got done—nothing else mattered.
When I reached Noumea and met Admiral Halsey, I presented my letters from my husband. The admiral has told his own story of how much he dreaded my coming. He did not dread it any more than I did, but I determined to do as well as I could, and if it was possible to get up to Guadalcanal. The admiral refused to give me the slightest inkling of what he had decided about that and told me in no uncertain terms that I would have to go to New Zealand and Australia first and that he would make his decision on my return. I thought I noticed a slight change in his attitude before I left; perhaps some good reports were coming to him from the hospitals and the various places I had already visited.
Wherever I went I met people I had seen before. That the many trips I had made in the United States during the depression years had an unforeseen by-product was evident as I walked through the hospital wards. Occasionally when I spoke to a boy, he would say he had seen me last when I spoke at his commencement or on some other occasion; then if I recalled something about his home town his whole face would light up, and I would feel that the endless miles I walked every day were worthwhile.
I stayed with the governor general and his wife while I was in the capital of New Zealand, and again with the governor general and his wife on Fiji, invitations I owed to Mr. Churchill’s thoughtfulness. Both visits were pleasant though, of course, I had to follow my usual routine. In New Zealand especially, I tried to see something of the people of the country and what they were doing, as well as of our own men.
By that time we had only rest camps and hospitals in New Zealand, but I could see the effects of the tremendous influx of our men who had gone from there, first to Guadalcanal and later to other parts of the Pacific. By the time I got there some of the New Zealand men were coming back and I got one amusing letter asking me if I would not see that our men left their girls alone. When I spoke of the letter to some New Zealand people I was told a story to illustrate the difference between the approach of the average American GI and the New Zealand soldier. A GI was on a bus one day and found himself sitting behind a lovely-looking girl with fair hair. He leaned forward and said: “Angel, what heaven did you drop from?” As an opening gambit, that speech probably would never have occurred to a New Zealand man.
In the Red Cross clubs there one of the girls told me: “There is a boy here who says he does not want to speak to you or even be in the same room with you, because he understands you advocate that all the marines who came to the Pacific be quarantined for six months after they return, before they are allowed to go home.” Here was a story that I had heard before leaving home. In my talk with the boys that day I mentioned the story, adding that the families of some of the boys who had written back home about it had sent the letters on to me. I told them how surprised I had been, since I had never thought of saying anything of the kind. I had a son in the marines and he certainly would never allow me to have any such ideas. Much later, after I had tested it out and found that the story was known to the noncommissioned officers and the men, some of the older officers suggested that it might have been broadcast by Tokyo Rose. Heaven knows how it started, but it plagued me for a long time, and a similar story was told in all parts of the world. The paratroopers in Italy complained that I had said the same thing about them, and I heard it again when I went to the Caribbean. Quite evidently it was propaganda designed to detract from the value of any contacts I might make, whether at home in the hospitals or on various trips.
While I was in New Zealand I visited Rotorua, the home of the Maoris, who had shown our servicemen much hospitality. The head guide, Rangi, who showed me about, was a wonderful woman, brilliant, witty and dignified.
When I reached Australia I stayed for a while at Canberra with the governor general and his wife, Lord and Lady Gowrie, who were kindness itself; I shall never feel grateful enough to them for all they did to make my visit useful and pleasant. I spoke to vast audiences and visited many hospitals, rest homes for our nurses, and recreation centers for our men. Boy after boy told me how kindly he had been treated in Australian homes, and that was equally true in New Zealand; however, Australia had a greater number of our men in proportion to her population. Nevertheless, they stood up under the strain in a remarkable manner.
In a rest home for nurses I asked one young nurse what she objected to most. She said, “The rat that sits in the middle of my floor and will not move no matter how much noise I make.” Rats, insects and snakes were things one had to contend with daily in the hospitals on the islands, and one girl told me of waking up to find a snake neatly coiled on the outside of her netting. She could not get up until someone came and did away with it.