His invocation of Eisenhower’s sure tenure at the wheel of state was noted for future reference by both Rockefeller and Kissinger.
Richard Nixon looked thoughtfully down into the city hundreds of feet beneath his feet.
“The real question is: what exactly are we talking to the Russians about?”
Chapter 19
General Curtis LeMay had taken exception to the Commander-in-Chief summoning him to what he regarded to be a completely unnecessary meeting. The President and other senior members of the Administration did not need further briefings on the deteriorating situation west of Lake Michigan. What needed to happen was for somebody in the Administration to start making hard decisions; hard decisions which ought to have been taken weeks and months ago.
Had the President heeded his advice back in April the Administration might have been dealing with the public backlash of a short, sharp — granted brutal — snuffing out of the smoldering fires in Chicago rather than worrying what do about a firestorm raging out of control in northern Illinois and across large tracts of Wisconsin.
At a conservative estimate something like twenty thousand square miles of Illinois and Wisconsin was now directly under the control of the insurgents and another ten thousand square miles under dire threat. There was some hope that summer storms — thundery and squally — forecast over the next few days might slow the advancing tide of rebellion spreading north west up Interstate 94 through Madison towards still — thankfully — distant Minneapolis, and west along Route 151 towards the Iowan border crossing at Dubuque. Some hope but not a lot while the roads remained intact and the majority of bridges still stood standing. Likewise, as long as the rebel horde was permitted to live off the land over which it was spreading, like a malignant plague, it was hard to envisage anything halting the nightmare short of the Mississippi.
Minnesota and Iowa ought to be under martial law by now, guarding against the possibility of rebels emerging out of the countryside to seize vital towns, railheads, airfields, bridges and road junctions deep in the interior tens or hundreds of miles behind US lines.
The Governors of Iowa and Minnesota had demanded troops and emergency supplies but thus far resisted any attempt to in any way supplant or even reduce their own summary emergency powers.
Curtis LeMay felt as if he was fighting war that his political masters were trying to pretend was happening in somebody else’s god-dammed country!
Jesus wept!
The Chiefs of Staff Committee had been fighting the war with one hand tied behind its collective back. Property was to be respected and safeguarded, infrastructure preserved and martial law was not to be imposed ‘extra-judicially’ in the Midwest. That was no way to fight any war, particularly the one LeMay was having to fight with totally inadequate forces on the ground and in the air.
The Administration had received the Chiefs of Staffs Committee’s report on the likely progression of the rebellion and the measures necessary to begin to restore order to the ‘Minnesota-Iowa-Wisconsin-Illinois-Indiana Front’.
Needless to say all the President’s men had been sitting on that report for seventy-two long hours.
The clock was ticking; and every minute of delay was costing lives.
One: lacking sufficient men and materiel on the ground it is impractical to mount a general defense, or to mount concerted offensive action likely to halt the insurgents’ advance into virgin territory; therefore, mobile forces must seek to mount delaying actions while strong points and communications hubs (like Madison) should be defended where possible unless or until they are over run.
Two: force deficiencies on the ground must be compensated for by the unrestricted use of air power; specifically, there must be no artificial political restraints placed on the use of the said air power.
Three: US Navy forces in Lake Michigan must be free to harry the enemy’s rear areas with gunfire and other weapons and given an unrestricted remit to mount hit and run amphibious combined operations against the water flanks of the rebels.
Four: it follows logically that a policy of scorched earth should be implemented ahead of the rebels’ likely lines of advance. All habitation, all utilities, all food and fuel stores should be systematically destroyed and civilian populations evacuated west of the Mississippi River. Settlements should be systematically fired and mined to impede the enemy’s line of advance.
Five: roads and railways should be destroyed in detail east of the Mississippi in Wisconsin and Illinois north of the First Army front line by bombing; and all bridges in the said area ‘dropped’. Included in the above plan all bridges across the Mississippi between Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Clinton, Iowa should be immediately prepared for demolition.
Six: the President should declare by Executive order a state of emergency in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana placing those states under unconditional martial law.
Thereafter, the US military might have an even chance — at some stage in the next weeks and months — of containing the contagion.
LeMay had hoped that the Vice President might have returned to the inner circle of the Administration in this hour of crisis but when he marched into the President’s Reception Chalet the tall Texan was absent. Presumably, he was still drinking Bourbon on his veranda watching the cattle grazing along the banks of the Pedernales River in Stonewall, Texas!
The President was flanked by Bob McNamara, LeMay’s political boss, Nicholas Katzenbach, the US Deputy Attorney General, and the Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall.
Although this was supposed to be a ‘breakfast meeting’ there was only coffee on the table.
“I was concerned to learn that no further reinforcements have been sent to Madison, General?” Jack Kennedy kicked off.
“Madison will be cut off within one, two, three days at most, sir,” LeMay growled with a veneer of respect and deference that was paper thin. “Any assets we put inside the Madison perimeter at this time will be lost to us for the rest of the campaign.”
“Governor Reynolds has complained that… ”
“The Governor of Wisconsin has had the last eighteen months to plan for a civil defense emergency, sir. If he’d got his finger out of his arse any time before the last fortnight a Helluva lot of his people wouldn’t be trapped in Madison now or dying on the roads out of it!”
LeMay became aware he was crushing his coffee cup so hard he was amazed it did not shatter in his hand.
McNamara had removed his spectacles and was carefully cleaning the lenses with a small cloth. He looked to the Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee.
“I learned that General Shoup has taken command of the forces around Minneapolis?” It was asked with quiet, solemn intensity.
“Shoup has temporarily taken command in Minnesota,” LeMay grunted. “Governor Andersen directly requested that a senior officer be appointed to co-ordinate Federal and state forces. The Adjutant General of the Minnesota National Guard had to be relieved of his duties by General Decker; he refused two direct orders to deploy units under his command across the state line into Wisconsin in support of Federal troops.”
Every man in the room knew that General David Shoup, the Commandant of the Marine Corps was possibly the finest logician and trainer of troops in the Union.