Eleanor and Franklin (150 page)

Her itinerary in New Zealand was much the same as it had been on the atolls—hospitals, Red Cross clubs, and camps, in addition to official receptions and visits to war factories where girls who were filling explosives, running lathes, and turning out precision parts paused to give her a resounding cheer. “I did the important broadcast tonight so that is behind me. Tomorrow night we leave and go to receive a Maori welcome.” The racial issue was never far away, and her response to it was impulsively honest. From the moment that she touched foreheads with her Maori guide in the Maori style of greeting, the tribesmen were enchanted by her simplicity and friendliness. They christened her “Kotoku,” or the “White Heron of the One Flight,” which according to Maori tradition is seen but once in a lifetime. But back in the southern United States the photographs of her “rubbing noses” with her Maori guide were advanced as further proof of the First Lady's “nigger-loving” propensities.

She received a radio message from the president that the reaction
to her trip so far was favorable—“but he never reads the unfavorable people,” she advised Tommy, “so I'm anxious to hear from you. I wonder if I ever will!” To be without news from home, to feel cut off from the people she loved was almost unbearable—“I feel a hundred years away as though I were moving in a different and totally unattached world”—and she asked Tommy to send messages to her special people. That night they flew to Canberra, and Major George Durno, a former newspaperman who had been assigned to her by Air Transport Command, sent Tommy a batch of unanswered letters and telegrams. “For your information,” he added, “Mrs. R. literally took New Zealand by storm. . . . She did a magnificent job, saying the right thing at the right time and doing a hundred and one little things that endeared her to the people.”
⁸

A letter to Tommy written on the way to Australia sounded a more prosaic note:

I drew a check today for two hundred dollars. Since I am counted royalty I have only spent money on tips but they are very high and the one hundred and sixty I left with will be spent by tonight. I dread Australia for thirteen days but they will come to an end. Even the British trips couldn't touch these schedules.

“My being ‘social & polite' day is over,” she wrote the president after a hectic round of official activities in the Australian capital. “Yesterday was busy & wearying—however, I like Mr. Curtin [Australian prime minister] very much & I hope you will ask him to come to the U.S. again.” She thought the government people were “very happy” that she had come, but nevertheless she was discontented. Russia and China were still on her mind. “Last night both the Chinese & Russian representatives pressed me to know when I was going to visit their countries so hurry up with your meetings Sir!” As for Australia, “Truth to tell however, I very much doubt that these trips have any real value & they certainly put our high-ranking officials to much trouble & travail of spirit!” But Nelson T. Johnson, the U.S. minister in Canberra, felt quite differently, as he wrote to her later:

The authorities expected the stiff formality which through the years has characterized the visits of members of the royal family. You gave to Canberra and Australia not only the thrill that comes from a visit of royalty but the intellectual thrill of realizing they were
meeting a very fine woman with a very warm personality of her own. . . . The success of your visit to Canberra was due very much to yourself and to the warm informality which you gave to the proceedings everywhere.
⁹

“I have walked through miles of hospital wards,” her diary read shortly after she began her tour of Australia. In Melbourne, she mounted a platform in the largest American hospital in Australia, facing tiers of wounded and hospitalized men. She brought them the president's greetings and went on to talk about the postwar world, saying that all veterans deserved what she had come to know they expected: “Jobs at a living wage and the knowledge that the rest of the world is getting things worthwhile so your children may live in a world at peace.” She did not mind the strenuous hospital schedules, and when she learned that Franklin had cabled to Australian officials suggesting that “she should not do so much,” she wrote Tommy to tell the president that “if I wasn't busy I'd go crazy or go home tomorrow.”
¹⁰

She wanted to go to New Guinea but, as she wrote sardonically to Doris Fleeson, “General MacArthur was too busy to bother with a lady.” Her letter to Franklin was irate:

Word came last night from Gen. MacArthur that it would require too many high-ranking officers to escort me in Port Moresby & he cld not spare them at this time when a push is on. This is the kind of thing that seems to me silly. I'd rather have a Sergeant & I'd see & hear more but I must have a General & I'm so scared I can't speak & he wouldn't tell me anything anyway. Generals Eichelberger & Byers & Ad. Jones are dears but I'd much rather be unimpeded. The papers here complain that I see none of the plain people. Neither do I really see any of the plain soldiers. I have an MP escort everywhere that wld do you credit. I have all the pomp & restriction & none of the power! I'm coming home this time & go in a factory!

The weather is fine, the days full, & I feel fine & I'm not doing anything which couldn't better be done by Mr. Allen of the Red + who could go see their people nearer the battle front & should come out here
now
.

I grow fatter daily since we eat at every turn.

Much love

ER.
¹¹

General MacArthur would not be bothered with her, and the staff aide whom he detailed to escort her in Australia was anything but pleased when the assignment was first handed to him. However, like Admiral Halsey, the aide, Captain Robert M. White, came away a changed man. In an article he later wrote for the
Christian Advocate
he said:

As far as I was concerned, Mrs. Roosevelt or anybody else could come and go, but what I didn't like was to leave my post to accompany them. I traveled 10,000 miles to find Japanese and do what I could do to end the war, not to travel around with brass hats. . . . But wherever Mrs. Roosevelt went she wanted to see the things a mother would see. She looked at kitchens and saw how food was prepared. When she chatted with the men she said things mothers say, little things men never think of and couldn't put into words if they did. Her voice was like a mother's, too. Mrs. Roosevelt went through hospital wards by the hundreds. In each she made a point of stopping by each bed, shaking hands, and saying some nice, motherlike thing. Maybe it sounds funny, but she left behind her many a tough battletorn GI blowing his nose and swearing at the cold he had recently picked up.
¹²

She talked with the men in the military hospitals, carried her tin tray down the chow line in mess halls, and sat chatting with the enlisted men after meals. She rode with them in jeeps and was forever answering their questions. On the north coast of Australia the hospitals were filled with wounded from New Guinea, and outside Townsville she came upon troops in battle dress, heading for the front. She insisted on walking down the road, which was scarred with rocks, to tell each truckload good-by and wish the boys good luck. At one point her voice quavered, but she quickly recovered and continued on down the line.

Film actress Una Merkel was one of a group of entertainers who toured the Southwest Pacific shortly after Eleanor's trip, and she later told John Golden, the producer, what it was like to follow the First Lady. “How's Eleanor?” the boys often yelled, and Gary Cooper would reply, “Well, we saw her tracks in the sand at one of the islands where we stopped, but we couldn't tell which way they were headed.” Miss Merkel also heard at one hospital that the First Lady had been brought to the bed of a young boy whose stomach had been pretty well shot to pieces and who was being kept alive with blood plasma and tubular
feeding. Eleanor had leaned over and kissed the boy gently and lovingly, and with that, Miss Merkel was told, “the will to live revived somehow.”
¹³

As her tour of Australia ended, Eleanor was still furious over being protected by admirals, generals, and MPs who treated her

like a frail flower and won't let me approach any danger. The boys last night all asked if I wasn't coming to New Guinea & I feel more strongly than ever about their restrictions. . . . I've never been so hedged around with protection in my life. It makes me want to do something reckless when I get home, like making munitions!
¹⁴

But the next day when she arrived in Noumea, the world turned brighter, for Admiral Halsey, the New Georgia campaign finished, consented to let her visit Guadalcanal. “I feel happy to-night for we are going to Guadalcanal. . . . I left Australia friendly & happy I think. For the rest I only hope it was a good job. I know I should have gone to New Guinea.”

With the visit to Guadalcanal ahead of her, Eleanor's energy returned and she wore down her escort touring New Caledonia. “Listen, Hi,” a member of a Medical Base Detachment on the island wrote an anti–New Deal Republican at home, “do you think it is a cinch to come over here, and especially a woman? It's dangerous and tiresome and it's a wonder a person her age could stand it.” And if Eleanor's home-front critics complained that her trip cost too much and used some gasoline, “as far as our bunch is concerned we would all be willing to turn over our pay for the rest of the war to help compensate you fellows on the home front for any inconvenience you suffered by Mrs. Roosevelt's trip.”
¹⁵

At 8:00
A.M.
the flight north began. Miss Colette Ryan of the Red Cross, a friend of Admiral Halsey's, accompanied her. They landed first at Efate, on which some of the biggest hospitals were located, and again she toured acres of hospital beds with something to say to each boy. In the afternoon they flew further north to Espiritu Santo, headquarters of the Navy Air Force; there they dined with the admiral, went to an outdoor movie where Eleanor made a little speech, and got to bed at 11:00
P.M.
Two and a half hours later she was called for a 1: 30 take-off.

Eleanor and Miss Ryan perched on two little seats over the bomb bay as the plane took off in the darkness. It became cold, and a “youngster” handed them blankets and later brought them cups of coffee.
Landing on Guadalcanal after the three-hour flight through the darkness was for Eleanor the most exciting moment of the trip. They breakfasted at the airfield with General Nathan Twining, the commanding officer of the Thirteenth Air Force, and then the Army came to get her. Trucks loaded with Seabees were arriving at the field as she drove off, and when she leaned out to wave her presence created a sensation. “Gosh, there's Eleanor,” one boy shouted. The commanding officer was horrified that she should be treated with such levity, but she felt it was a great compliment: “They were evidently so pleased to see women there one had to laugh and go on waving.” To some her presence was not such a surprise; it had been announced at the movies the night before that no man would be allowed to walk around the following day without shirt or shorts.

She toured the island, went through the hospitals, visited the cemetery, experienced an alert, and saw a Negro boy, Cecil Peterson, in whom she was interested. The following is an account of her visit written by the author, who was then stationed on Guadalcanal:

Mrs. Roosevelt has been here and gone—a very tired Mrs. Roosevelt, agonized by the men she had seen in the hospitals, fiercely determined because of them to be relentless in working for a peace that this time will last, a very loving and motherly Mrs. Roosevelt, and despite the heat, the weariness and the tragedy, a gracious and magnificent lady.

For me it was a grand day. . . . Early in the morning I learned she was here and having breakfast with General Twining about a hundred yards away. I dashed madly out to shave and just as I finished I received a telephone call from Colonel Higgins to report to General Howard at 12:30. It was hard waiting through the morning, but I had seven letters from you, and so I wrote you and the hours passed swiftly. I did get a glimpse of Mrs. Roosevelt being photographed with the General as I was going for the mail, but I thought it best not to bollix up the Army's program and drove rapidly away.

At 2:30 I drove down to headquarters and as I sat in Colonel Higgins' tent and heard her hearty laugh—you know how it rings out and dominates the whole table—the robust Roosevelt laugh—I fidgeted impatiently. Finally the lunch with the senior officers was over, and a note was slipped to Mrs. R. that I was here, and army protocol crashed as we embraced one another. The press was there but did not get any photographs. Mrs. R. then talked to
the reporters, and then we went into the General's bedroom and talked for fifteen minutes before she had to go off to more hospitals.

General Howard gave me a note where to meet them at 3:30. Mrs. R. said she wanted to come back to our headquarters to visit the weather station and take a peek at our tents. I said the boys would greatly love that, except the tent part, if it was all right with General Twining, and he readily acceded. . . . So I dashed ahead to the Weather Station to tell them Mrs. R. was coming and then dashed to the Mobile Hospital where I was to meet her at 3:30. I had had no lunch, foolishly thinking I would be invited to lunch with the Lady, so I did in two tootsie rolls.

At 4:30 it turned out that Mrs. R. was to meet several Senators and Admiral Halsey who were arriving there. So the General told me to get into the station wagon, one of the snazziest I have ever seen, and we drove over to the rendezvous place. The poor General must have been baffled by the conversation between us which was of color schemes for the 11th Street house, furniture and a person named “Trude.”

When we arrived at the rendezvous, I stayed in the car while Mrs. R. and the General went out to greet the gentlemen, and then to my horror Admiral Halsey who is a legendary figure in these parts flanked by the Commanding-General of these parts, came over with Mrs. Roosevelt to the station wagon. Now a Sergeant doesn't smugly remain seated when a four-star Admiral comes over, so I decided to hell with the press and the Senators and jumped out and stood at attention. And then Admiral Halsey put out his hand and Mrs. Roosevelt introduced us: “So this is the young man,” he said, and inspected me critically as the photographers snapped their cameras. I hope the damn pictures were suppressed. I don't want to finish the Admiral. I can see the
Chicago-Tribune
with a caption—
THIS IS WHY OUR CAMPAIGN IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC IS NOT MOVING FORWARD
.