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MY BRUSH WITH HISTORY
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What Ike Really Said
The photograph has been printed and reprinted far and wide. It is found in school books, history books, and encyclopedias. It is on display at the Pentagon.
It is, of course, the photograph of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower taken the evening before D-day, June 6, 1944, speaking to the men of the 101st Airborne Division. The caption always reads that he is urging his paratroopers “on to total victory.” But to this day what really occurred and what was really said is still known only to the men with whom he was talking.
The troops had been moved into the marshaling area at Greenham Common airfield during the latter part of May and had been fully briefed with aerial photos and sandbox mockups on the coming invasion of Normandy. Restricted to the area now that sensitive information had been passed along, the men had little else to do other than check their equipment and go over the plans and their final objectives.
The “go” came on the evening of June 5, 1944, after an entire day’s delay due to weather. Everyone was more than ready, in full battle gear. It was rumored that Ike was in the area, yet the men’s reaction was surprisingly calm. Until it was added, “But you ought to see his driver—a woman!”
There was a wild dash down the temporary street between the tents to see the driver of Ike’s car, Kay Summersby. As the men ran down the street, who should be heading up the same road but Ike and his group of officers and photographers? When the two groups converged, correct military courtesy prevailed, the parachutists standing at attention and Ike coming over to greet his men.
His words were not “total victory,” as might be expected before one of the war’s greatest battles, but rather, “What’s your name, lieutenant,” and “Where are you from?”
“Strobel” and “Michigan, sir,” were the replies. Ike recalled in some detail the spectacular fishing he had enjoyed there. Then, quickly, he moved on, the photographers having captured the exchange on film.
The troopers’ brief delay was over and they continued on to see Ike’s car and its beautiful driver. Then, a few minutes later, the troopers boarded planes, and just hours later they were parachuting behind the beaches of Normandy.
In the following turmoil the incident was forgotten until early July, when the same lieutenant saw a grainy picture of Ike and his troops in the pony edition of Time magazine. There he saw himself, standing in front of Ike, with camouflaged face and the identifying number 23, his plane number, hung around his neck.
Over the years the photograph has found its way into countless publications about World War II, and almost always the caption has read “Ike urging his troops on to total victory.” I have to smile along with the others who were there because we all know what was really said. You see, I was that Number 23.
—Wallace C. Strobel was a 1st lieutenant in Company E, 502d Parachute Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. He lives in Saginaw, Michigan.
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Last Time Up
On one damp and raw day in late September of 1960, I was in Boston’s Fenway Park. A great player was “hangin’ ‘em up” for the last time at the end of the game against the Baltimore Orioles. I was there in the center-field bleachers in the bottom of the eighth inning when “Old Number Nine” stepped into the batter’s box.
For the better part of twenty-two years he had been the star hitter of the Boston Red Sox. He had been through hardships and setbacks that might well have stopped a lesser man, including five years of wartime service in the Marines during the height of his career. Now it was all down to one last time at bat.
Fans stood and cheered for several minutes as the umpire held up the game. Nobody sat down. It might have been the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. It seemed as if each fan was trying to savor these last few moments. The batter did not acknowledge the ovation. He never had since his first or second year in the big leagues.
Finally Jack Fisher of the Orioles delivered his first pitch. It was low and inside for a ball. Still everyone stood. The next pitch came in high, and with a Herculean swing the hitter missed the ball. It was not like him to swing at a bad pitch. He stood there grinding the bat in his hands like someone trying to wring out a wet mop. He was a picture of tense concentration as he stared at the pitcher on the mound.
How would all this end after such a colorful career that included being the last hitter to bat over .400, two MVPs, and six batting titles? So often he seemed to hit one out in the most dramatic situations. He had belted a threerun homer to win the 1941 All-Star Game in Detroit. He homered off a Dizzy Trout pitch in his last at-bat before leaving for the Korean War, and did it again his second time at bat when he returned. Now he was like a matador standing in the middle of the ring waiting for the bull’s last charge.
Fisher was into his motion, and the next pitch was a fastball about thighhigh. The hitter, with a quick hitch and his fluid swing, made contact with the ball. It flew off the bat and headed in a straight line, almost in my direction. The Baltimore center fielder, already playing deep, slowly faded back and glanced over his shoulder to see how much room he had to the fence. He looked as if he had the ball in his sights and was ready to make the catch. Everything seemed to shift into slow motion. The ball hung in the air, the fielder’s face was turned up, another step, another, and finally the ball sailed over the fence.
The batter raced around the basepath with his head down, never looking up. This was typical of him.
For minutes fans stood and yelled for him to come out of the dugout, but he refused. A man to my right kept screaming “The old man is still number one!” The hitter wouldn’t come out and wave good-bye. He had made a vow years before that he would never again tip his hat to the crowd. Only when Pinky Higgins, the Red Sox manager, sent him out to left field the next inning and brought him back in before the first batter stepped to the plate did he raise his head and look my way for just an instant. With his head down again, Ted Williams loped toward the infield, across the first-base foul line, and disappeared into the dugout and into baseball immortality.
—Paul Blandford lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
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Beyond Civil Rights
In the late 1960s I was a reporter on the staff of a big-city daily newspaper in the border South. My beat was local politics, which at the time had edged into civil rights and sometimes racial confrontations. The issues were clear. The nation had ended slavery and declared segregated schools to be illegal. Now we were about to proceed into more personal matters.
During the debates over equal accommodations and such, time after time I was told by black and white, rich and poor, young and old that the speaker himself/herself had no problem with sharing a lunch counter or water fountain or study hall or locker room with those of other races but that the rest of the population wouldn’t stand for it. Sure, I muttered to myself, the problem is always other people.
The people marched and shouted, the laws were passed and went into effect, and it turned out that the people who’d claimed to have no problem … didn’t. The people of the South changed their beliefs about race virtually overnight. It may have been that the racists, the obstructionists, knew all the time in their hearts that they were wrong. In any case, where I was, that form of bigotry became something no longer expressed in public.
A few years later I was assigned to report on a luncheon meeting called by backers and alumni of what used to be my home state’s black college.
In the time of segregation, naturally the only college for blacks got all the black honor students as well as the sports equivalent of the 3.00 average athlete. The dumber kids didn’t make the cut, so the college had a good reputation and had no problem keeping pace. The cross section was vertical; there were all kinds of blacks there.
With the end of sanctioned racism, the cut became horizontal. The best black students were welcome at the other state colleges and even at Northern and Eastern universities. The college that used to get smart kids who couldn’t go elsewhere lost those kids.
The average dropped. The lunch meeting I was covering was actually an appeal for support from the well-to-do black community.
By luck I was seated next to a voice from the sit-in era, the principal of the (formerly) black high school in our city. He was intelligent, affable, dedicated, and shrewd.
What he wasn’t on this occasion was on the program. He’d declined, he told me, because he was not comfortable with what hinted of racism. Asking parents to send their kids to a black college instead of a good college wasn’t what he’d worked for.
I knew the family, so I cocked my head and gave him my cynical, knowing look. Yup, he said, his son had been accepted at the University of Michigan. Mom and dad had worked and saved and kept their mouths shut and looked the other way, getting ready for this. The son had done his part. He was poised on the springboard, movin’ on up.
For a leader and an example to his people, his choice was clear: send the kid to a school he’d improve.
For a father and a man who’d paid his dues, his choice was equally clear: send the kid to a school that would improve him.
Would he sacrifice his child for a vague principle? No, and he looked me in the eye and we both knew I’d do the same thing in his shoes.
So the son went off to Michigan, the principal went home without making a speech, and I was left with the realization that we’d gone beyond civil rights. We were going to have to deal with people now, and it was going to be a lot more complicated than I’d thought.
—Allan Girdler is editor at large for Road & Track magazine.
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