The Aviators: Eddie Rickenbacker, Jimmy Doolittle, Charles Lindbergh (40 page)

Back inside the embassy he spoke with his mother on a transatlantic radiophone linkup, and he was introduced to the first of the enormous amount of personal mail and tributes that would inundate the embassy in the coming days. The first thing he was shown was a congratulatory telegram from President Calvin Coolidge, and next a huge floral spray, about which Lindbergh laughingly remarked from the height of his own experience with aviation that “I am glad to be able to receive it personally,” since “a lot of times flowers come the wrong way, and you aren’t able to appreciate them.” It was his first public joke and everyone broke out in cheers.

There was much pulling and tugging at Lindbergh’s sleeves but to his credit the first thing he insisted on doing was pay a visit to Charles Nungesser’s mother. In an apartment up six flights of stairs, Mrs. Nungesser was waiting for Lindbergh at the door, and a teary embrace ensued, while Lindbergh told her not to give up hope.
^†
The afternoon was spent in press conferences, including a session with the
New York Times
, with which the St. Louis syndicate had arranged to have an exclusive interview.

Next day, after inspecting the
Spirit of St. Louis
and finding everything in reasonably good order, Lindbergh was driven to the Élysée Palace, where the president of France pinned the French Legion of Honor cross on his lapel, the first ever such distinction for an American civilian. Riding past throngs of cheering Parisians, he went to a luncheon at the Aéro-Club and was bestowed its gold medal, as well as his first glass of champagne, which he could hardly turn down after a lengthy toast was offered on his behalf and a waiter in livery served the sparkling glass conspicuously up to him on a silver platter. This showed a rare flexibility in Lindbergh’s character, because he almost religiously shunned alcohol. In this case he was canny enough to realize it was diplomatically important to observe the customs of the French rather than adhere to his principles. There were times in the future, to the regret of many, when he would not prove so adaptable.

Lindbergh turned down a gift of 150,000 francs that the Aéro-Club had offered him, instead (once more) diplomatically asking that it be given to help the families of French fliers who had died “for the progress of aviation” (doubtless with the mother of the missing Charles Nungesser in mind). Then he was taken to the window, where thousands of people in the streets cheered the sight of him, and, to the delight of Ambassador Herrick, he gave a short speech praising the attempt by Nungesser and Coli to fly the Atlantic.

That night, Lindbergh was astonished and angered to find that the
Times
reporter he’d been talking to had used Lindbergh’s information to create a first-person account of the transatlantic flight that ran all over the front page of the
New York Times
—under
Lindbergh’s byline!
He considered it a violation of trust, as well as blatantly dishonest, because the reporter had put words in his mouth in an ingratiating, hayseed style. The incident had a lasting effect on Lindbergh; he concluded that the press “had an agenda all its own” and would exploit him for their own ends. They were not to be trusted—even those publications with the stature of the
New York Times
.
⁴

The celebrations, ceremonies, luncheons, dinners, and interviews went on until Lindbergh was exhausted. Americans wanted him home and President Coolidge had sent the U.S. Navy battlecruiser
Memphis
to fetch him at Cherbourg. The Belgians wanted a piece of him also, as did the English. On May 29, a week after he’d landed in Paris, Lindbergh took off from Le Bourget. A million Parisians gathered in the streets to watch his departure. He did not disappoint, performing a breathtaking repertoire of stunts: loops, rolls, Immelmanns, dives, and spins from his barnstorming days, and dropping a French flag with a note attached—“Goodbye! Dear Paris! Ten Thousand Thanks for Your Kindness to Me!”—before proceeding north toward Belgian Flanders.
⁵

Some of the hardest fighting of the war had taken place there, and many of the scars remained: shell-hole-pitted fields, jagged remains of trench lines, demolished towns and villages, and entire forests blown completely to splinters. When he landed near Brussels, Lindbergh and his plane were not mobbed as in Paris: King Albert had thoughtfully ordered five thousand Belgian soldiers with fixed bayonets to guard the field when the
Spirit of St. Louis
came down.

Lindbergh was feted by Albert and made a Knight of the Order of Leopold. He spent the night and next day was received by cheering tens of thousands as he was paraded through the capital city. That afternoon he flew away, but not before dropping a wreath of flowers over the American cemetery near Ghent. When he reached the Channel he headed for Croydon Field, a dozen miles south of London, with perfect flying weather in the merry month of May.

If Lindbergh had believed that the usually sedate British would, like the Belgians, give him a hearty but formal welcome, he was sorely mistaken. An estimated hundred and fifty thousand people crashed through ropes and barricades and ignored the frustrated whistles of hundreds of bobbies. They so mobbed the flying field that Lindbergh was compelled to do a touch-and-go landing when he feared he might plow into the crowd. When at last the field was cleared and he put down for good, police and other officials arrived in cars to spirit him away, but not far. He was taken to the control tower where he climbed to the top and addressed the surging masses. “I just want to tell you this is worse than I had in Paris!” he said delightedly and to great cheering.
⁶

When he reached the American embassy in London Lindbergh was informed that the king wanted to see him, and on the morning of May 31 he was driven to Buckingham Palace and presented to King George V. The U.S. ambassador was away and the chargé d’affaires was a “boiled shirt who was in rather a state because I was in an ordinary business suit and not a frock coat!” Lindbergh said. As it turned out, it was just the two of them, Lindbergh and the king, who, Lindbergh said, showed a remarkable knowledge of aviation. Right off, the king leaned forward and said, “Now tell me, Captain Lindbergh, there is one thing I long to know. How did you pee?”
⁷

Lindbergh addressed this startling inquiry by explaining that he carried with him “a sort of aluminum container,” which he said he threw out of the plane in France before landing at Le Bourget.
⁸
The king seemed satisfied with this explanation and they moved on to other topics. Soon Queen Mary swept into the room and watched as the king pinned a medal on Lindbergh, the Air Force Cross, “for great flying achievement.” Before he left, Lindbergh was taken into a room and introduced to the king’s granddaughter the baby Princess Elizabeth, who had just turned one year old.

What followed were the now customary rounds of celebrations, ceremonies, and presentations, and the adulation reached dizzying heights. Lindbergh was taken to Parliament by Lord and Lady Astor, where the entire House of Commons recognized his exit by rising to their feet in a standing affirmation believed to be the only such demonstration ever extended to an American. Afterward, on the terrace, he met Winston Churchill, then chancellor of the exchequer, who later told the Parliament, “From the little we have seen of him, we have derived the impression that he represents all that a man should say, all that a man should do, and all that a man should be.”
⁹

E
VERY DAY NEWSPAPERS WERE QUOTING
this person or that on what Lindbergh should do with the rest of his life. Some said he ought to start a flying school, others that he ought to be appointed to some high official position in government, and others still with the predictable suggestion that he should become a movie star. Much of the to-do was similar to what Eddie Rickenbacker had endured when he came home a hero from World War I. Huge financial offers were made if Lindbergh would endorse everything from cigarettes to shaving cream to hats and gloves. During the first months it was estimated that these offers totaled at least $6 million.
¹⁰

Will Rogers, the midwestern humorist, wrote, “There is a hundred and twenty million people in America all ready to tell Lindbergh what to do. The first thing we want to get into our heads is that this boy is not our usual type of hero that we are used to dealing with. He is our prince and our president combined, and I will personally pay benefits to him for the rest of my life to keep him from having to make exhibitions out of himself. We only get one of these in a lifetime.”
¹¹
Will Rogers notwithstanding, however, and as the
New Republic
put it, Lindbergh was “ours. He is no longer permitted to be himself. He is the U.S. personified.”
¹²
In other words, for better or worse—and to his eternal regret—Lindbergh had become public property.

People soon began to argue as to what Lindbergh’s accomplishment “meant,” and two schools of thought emerged. One claimed the feat was the heroic achievement of man over nature; the other asserted it was the ultimate triumph of “the machine,” or science. In either case Lindbergh was the hero, but of exactly what was not clear.

Those who hailed him as a pioneer were on firmer ground. He was compared with Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, two loners who struggled across the Alleghenies and opened up the western lands beyond. There were also more lofty claims. Heywood Broun in his newspaper column enthused that this “tall young man raised up and let us see the potentialities of the human spirit,” while a Harvard professor gave an address in which he described Lindbergh thusly: “He has come like a shining vision to revive the hope of mankind.” Another speaker put it a bit more succinctly: “He stands out in a grubby world as an inspiration.”

Lindbergh had, in fact, opened up a new frontier, which, in hindsight, was certainly no small feat. A
New York Times
reporter wrote that “what [Lindbergh] means by the
Spirit of St. Louis
is really the Spirit of America.” That might or might not have been so. What stands out is that Lindbergh himself at that time had little or no idea of the meaning of the flight of the
Spirit
other than to land in Paris in one piece, and he was utterly unprepared for the reception and attention that followed.
¹³

On the afternoon of June 10, 1927, the cruiser
Memphis
entered the Chesapeake Bay with Lindbergh standing on the bridge, escorted by four destroyers, with two army blimps and several squadrons of army aircraft overhead. Crated below was the
Spirit of St. Louis
, which had just as much well-earned rest as her pilot on the six-day voyage. At sunrise next morning, the battle cruiser entered the Potomac River and steamed toward Washington. As it neared the dock at the Navy Yard all the bells and whistles began to sound as they had in New York, and additionally a battery of field guns roared out a welcoming salute.

Lindbergh stood in the ship’s bow, wearing his blue serge suit, waving to the crowed on the dock with his hat. When the boarding ramp was let down, Admiral Guy Burrage, commander of U.S. Naval Forces, Europe, escorted aboard a little brown-clad lady wearing a large straw hat. He took her arm up the ramp and the crowd, including the ship’s crew, collectively gasped as they realized who she was, and when the thoroughly surprised Lindbergh ran down the ramp to embrace his mother, Evangeline, pandemonium reigned supreme. A brass band began to play, prompting some men to weep while others threw their hats into the air, women clutched their breasts, and everyone was overwhelmed with feeling.
¹⁴

Lindbergh and Evangeline were paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue in the backseat of President Coolidge’s limousine—escorted by a squadron of U.S. cavalry in full regalia—to the Washington Monument, where a quarter million cheering people awaited them. The mid-June heat bore down as Coolidge bestowed on Lindbergh the Distinguished Flying Cross as well as a full colonel’s commission in the U.S. Army Reserve. The din was overwhelming as the twenty-five-year-old pilot stood on the podium with a bemused expression. When at last the multitude fell silent he made a brief speech about how the European outpouring of affection had been not just for him, but actually a demonstration of their friendship with the United States. Hundreds of photographers took pictures while Lindbergh’s remarks were carried by radio to some thirty million Americans.

Afterward there was the usual round of celebrations and ceremonies, including the announcement by the U.S. Postmaster General that a new tencent “Lindbergh” airmail stamp would be issued depicting the
Spirit of St. Louis
, the first ever that honored a man still living.
^‡

Two days later Lindbergh took off in
Spirit
for New York City where another mind-boggling shindig awaited him. He was placed aboard Mayor Jimmy Walker’s yacht and paraded down the Hudson to the Battery while hundreds of harbor boats followed and dozens of airplanes strewed hundreds of thousands of flower petals on the procession. He was then put in the back of a touring car and, led by ten thousand marching soldiers, paraded up bunting-decorated Broadway past Wall Street, which had shut down for the occasion, through a perfect blizzard of shredded stock ticker tape tossed from thousands of windows along the route of the Canyon of Heroes.
^§
It was printed that four million people attended the celebration, including a hundred thousand who had crammed into the plaza at City Hall to witness the occasion. The loquacious Mayor Walker, wearing a black top hat, opened the ceremony by declaring, “Colonel Lindbergh, New York City is yours—I don’t give it to you; you won it!”
^‖
Walker pinned on Lindbergh the gold and platinum Medal of New York City.