Chapter 8:
War: Hot and Cold
By 1941 the oncoming war had affected all activities
in the National Park Service and in many other bureaus of the government
as well. Although a bill had been introduced in Congress to abolish the
CCC, many of us were still clinging to the hope that it could be
sustained at a low ebb for at least a few years. In December, Secretary
Ickes wrote to the president regarding a letter the president had sent
to Social Security Administrator Paul V. McNutt that called for gradual
elimination of the army from the operation of the Civilian Conservation
Corps and that requested that legislation be framed to consolidate the
corps with the National Youth Administration. The secretary stated that
he was in full accord with the removal of the army from the CCC, but he
concluded with this appeal: "I strongly urge that instead of
transferring all War Department duties in the CCC administration to the
Federal Security Agency you consider a plan which would transfer the
bulk of these duties to the Departments of Interior and Agriculture,
leaving with the Federal Security Administrator responsibility for
determination of general policies and for program coordination." He
reported that the Department of Agriculture fully agreed with his
recommendations. That letter was forwarded to the White House on
December 6, 1941.
The next day, Sunday, December 7, the Japanese bombed
Pearl Harbor, and we were at war. The United States declared war on
Japan on December 8, and on Germany and Italy on December 11. There was
no doubt then that we were through with the CCC; it was no longer a
question of reorganizing it but rather of disbanding it. Every emergency
program began to dry up, and by the next fiscal yearJuly 1, 1942,
to June 30, 1943the only funds available for CCC operations were a
few thousand dollars to take care of the transfer of equipment and
materials to other jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, orders came for the National Park Service,
along with two other bureaus of the Department of the Interior, to move
to Chicago and make their Washington space available for war activities.
With the splendid cooperation of all concerned, all arrangements were
handled smoothly. Associate Director Arthur Demaray, his secretary, and
three or four staff members remained in Washington to carry out the
service's responsibilities there and to act as liaison for the Chicago
headquarters. An office and a secretary also were maintained in the
capital for Director Newton B. Drury, who often had to visit
Washington.
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Director Newton B. Drury and Elizabeth
Drury attending a fortieth class reunion at the University of California
in 1952. They saw the National Park Service family safely through the
trying years of the move to Chicago and back during the World War II and
cold war periods of restricted operations, 1940 to 1951.
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August 8, 1942, was our moving day. Assistant
Director Hillory A. Tolson was assigned full responsibility to organize
the move. Many railroad cars were required to transport the service's
furniture and equipment to Chicago. Arrangements had to be made to
temporarily house the service's staff in hotels and motels there until
houses and apartments could be found to rent. Quite a few of us found
living quarters along the north shore of Lake Michigan. The offices were
in the Merchandise Mart, within walking distance from the station for
me; though there were winter days when, walking into the icy wind
blowing off Lake Michigan, I didn't think I'd make it.
Those were very discouraging and trying times. Many
of our best people were the first to leave for military service, and
because of family ties many could not go to Chicago with the Park
Service. Further, the call to military service affected the individual
parks almost as much as it did the Washington office. With gasoline
rationing, travel to the parks went down. Funds for maintenance and care
of facilities were cut below the minimum needed for preservation alone.
Our appropriations in 1940regular funds together with the cost of
the CCC camps in national parksamounted to $33,577,000, but during
the war years they were rapidly reduced. The low point was reached in
the 1945 fiscal year, when funding for the service amounted to only
$4,740,000. After V-E Day our budget began to pick up until it reached
$30,111,000 in 1950. But the damage had been done so far as maintaining
park roads and structures was concerned. Moreover, our organization had
been greatly reduced, and not all who had left came back.
In June, 1945, the secretary of the interior was
asked to send representatives of the department to Berlin, Vienna, and
Rome to advise the military government on matters in which the
department was interested. I was selected to go to Berlin, but since no
definite date was set, the director sent me to the West Coast on an
inspection trip. I received word while in Yosemite that I should return
immediately and get ready to leave for Europe. I returned to Chicago,
having taken some of the necessary inoculations before I left Yosemite,
and made arrangements to move my family back to Minnesota, the home of
both our parents. We stored our furniture in Chicago and found a small
furnished bungalow in Minneapolis.
On September 21, 1945, I left Minneapolis, spent a
day in Chicago, and then continued to Washington. I was transferred to
another payroll but retained my civil service status and grade. I was
told that I would have to be in uniform, as were all Americans in the
foreign theater at that time, but that I would have no military rank. I
was also told the kind and amount of clothes I would need in Berlin, and
I bought them right away. But the urgency apparently was over, because
I sat in Washington checking every other day on when I was supposed to
leave and how. I found out that special planes would be provided to take
us over. The wait proved to be a long one, keeping me in Washington
until October 28. I helped Demaray around the office and renewed contact
with my brother, who was then a captain in the navy. He had been through
the Pearl Harbor attack, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and Guadalcanal,
and he had been wounded. During the month I was in Washington there was
a change in plans; on October 22 I received word that I would be sent to
Vienna, Austria, instead of Berlin.
I departed on the twenty-eighth and, after stopovers
in Bermuda, the Azores, and overnight in Paris, then proceeding via
Frankfort and Salzburg, I arrived in Vienna at 5:15 P.M. October 31.
There were about seven of us in the party, and we were the first group
of American civilians to arrive in Vienna. We were met by several
officers, including Colonel Wm. E. Caraway and General L. (Les) D.
Flory. General Flory was on General Mark Wayne Clark's staff and was
handling the military government part of Clark's command in Vienna. We
all had dinner together that evening. It was unusual for a general to
meet a group of civilians, but General Flory explained that he wanted
very much to meet me. In the late thirties, as a captain, he had been in
charge of a National Park Service CCC camp on the historic site near
Fredericksburg, Virginia, where several major Civil War battles had been
fought, the Battle of the Wilderness among them. He had read many of the
instructions the Park Service had sent out regarding the CCC work
program on the battlefield sites, and most of them had been signed by
me. We became very good friends, and I enjoyed my stay there very much.
It turned out that I was the ranking civilian, with a civil service
grade that gave me the general's commissary privileges.
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Civilian advisers to the World War II
United States military command in Vienna, Austria, wore officer's
uniforms without military insignia. Photographed at Kahlenberg the
winter of 1945-46 were, left to right, Conrad L. Wirth, Walter
Armstrong, and Fred Meyer.
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One thing I learned in Vienna was what it meant to be
on the losing side in the war. The Austrians were taken over by Hitler
against their will before the war really started, and then they were
subjected to the pounding forces of our side in driving Hitler out.
After our victory, the occupation of their country by the fighting
forces of the Allies wasn't any too pleasant for them, either, though I
believe it was absolutely necessary during the reorganization of local
government. After years of occupation by troops of several nations,
people get to the point where they give a wide berth to anybody in
uniform. My little apartment in Vienna belonged to an Austrian family of
four that had to move out so that I could live there. I found out who
they were and where they were staying and invited them over several
times. The first time they came their attitude was a little cold,
although they did say they were glad to see the Americans. Before they
left I invited them to come again and asked whether the wife would cook
dinner for the five of us if I furnished the materials. This offer was
accepted with pleasure, and we did it several times.
I had greater difficulty establishing rapport in
another instance. After I left for Austria, my wife went to the
University of Minnesota to brush up on conversational German in
anticipation of joining me in Vienna. Her professor happened to be from
Vienna, and when he found out that I was there, he told Helen that none
of his letters had gotten through to his mother since the Germans took
over and that he had not received any news from her. He gave Helen a
letter addressed to his mother in the hope that I could find her and
deliver it.
I took my trusted jeep and followed his directions
until I came to a big, heavy wooden gate between two four-story
buildings that were joined together as one building above the gate. The
only way to get to any of the apartments in that city block was through
those solid wooden gates. All the apartments faced inward, away from the
four surrounding streets, and there were no side street entrances. It
was after dark, and through a very small crack I could see a dim light
on the other side. I pulled the rope that rang a low-pitched bell
inside, and I knocked hard on the gate. I was about to give up when I
heard somebody coming down some wooden steps. Soon a male voice at the
gate asked what I wanted. I explained, and he told me to push the letter
through a little slot he would open. I objected, saying I wanted to see
the lady and give her the letter in person and explaining why. After a
few more words he told me to wait a few minutes. About five minutes
later I heard the footsteps of two people coming. They opened the gate
to let me into the courtyard, closed and locked it after I got inside,
and told me to follow them. We went up some outside stairs to the second
floor, then along a porch, and finally to a door. They knocked and were
told to come in. They didn't leave me alone for a minute. There in the
room was a very dignified, nice-looking lady sitting on a plain wooden
chair beside a large round table. She was smoking a cigarette, and
beside her was a plate containing some small cigarette butts.
I introduced myself and asked her if she had a son in
the United States. She said yes, told me his name, and said she had not
heard from him for years. I gave her the letter, and she asked me to sit
down. As she read it she tried very hard not to show any emotion. When
she finished she could hardly speak, but she passed me the plate and
asked if I would like a cigarette. I took one of the butts and lit it.
We talked a little, and she offered me a glass of wine. Then she asked
me if I would mail a letter to her son. I said I would and gave her my
office address. The next day one of the men who had let me in brought me
the letter. And so I became her letter carrier.
Before I left that night, I gave her a couple of
packages of cigarettes, two bars of soap, and a half dozen bars of candy
that I had carried in my overcoat pocket. She was very grateful, because
soap and cigarettes were very hard for them to get. The cigarette butt
she had offered me had undoubtedly been picked up on the street after
some GI discarded it. In those times if you were walking along a street
smoking, pretty soon you would hear footsteps behind you, and when you
threw away your cigarette it would be picked up as a collector's item.
Later her son sent a box of food which I delivered to her.
I was assigned to work with a Colonel E. A. Norcross,
who was responsible for dealing with land matters and conservation of
natural resources. As a part of my orientation program I made a trip by
jeep to Salzburg, headquarters of the American army in the American
sector of Austria under the command of General Harry J. Collins. On my
return I wrote a memorandum on what I thought ought to be done in and
around Salzburg. It was a relatively short report and didn't say a great
deal other than that I objected very strenuously to the troops painting
the letters and numbers of their units in bright colors on old, historic
buildings. Norcross handed my report to General Flory, who called me in
to see him. He suggested that I delete from my report the part that was
critical of the field troops under General Collins, explaining that one
never criticizes a general in the field with the fighting troops. I
understood his point of view, but I told him that I had been sent over
to represent Secretary Ickes and his department, that the department
considered painting on the walls of historic buildings to be vandalism
as well as poor public relations, and that I wanted to have that
viewpoint on the record. (Actually I was serving as policy adviser to
the United States Allied Council.) Flory implied that he'd send the
report through if I wanted him to but that it might result in my being
sent back to the States. I replied that, though I was enjoying my duty
there, I would take the risk.
I had arrived in Vienna on October 31, handed in my
Salzburg report on December 8, and got my first paycheck on December 10.
On December 211 was told that I was to be transferred to the executive
division directly under General Flory, and I moved there on December 27.
Apparently I had been on the State Department payroll and now, in the
executive division, I was transferred to the War Department payroll with
the same civil service classification. The executive division
coordinated the work of the several divisions responsible for the
military government under the command of General Clark. The command of
the military government was changed every month amongst the four
alliesthe United States, England, France, and Russia. Every time
the command was changed, the chairmen of the divisions were likewise
changed. Consequently, toward the end of the month, each of the various
divisions going out of office had a farewell party, and, the first few
days of the following month, the divisions taking over would have their
incoming receptions. As a member of the executive division, I was
invited to eight or ten parties a month.
Toward the end of February it became clear that the
ranking officers would soon be able to bring their families over, and so
I notified my wife and began to look for a house. In March the ban was
lifted, and I filed a request to bring over my wife and our son Pete.
General Clark approved my request, and I selected a nice villa not far
from General Flory's home. On March 28, General Flory showed me a wire
received from the War Department to the effect that the Interior
Department was requesting my return. I knew that Secretary Ickes had
resigned, and I had heard that Oscar Chapman was the new secretary. I
wired the secretary's office for information, and on April 4 I received
a wire from Under Secretary Chapman saying it was important that I
return soon. General Flory and General Tate agreed that I should be
released from duty as requested by the Department of the Interior. All
approvals were in from Washingtonthe State Department, War
Department, and Interior Departmentby April 10. I wanted to leave
the several assignments I was working on in good order, and this task
took me about two weeks. One of my main assignments was working with two
colonels on drafting an American version of a treaty with Austria.
I finally got things straightened around so that I
could leave on April 26. I left Vienna on the Mozart at 7:35 P.M., and
the commander of the train gave me his bed, or bunk, since there were no
other sleeping accommodations. I arrived in Linz at 2:25 A.M. and
transferred to the Orient Express, which left at 6:30 A.M. We passed
over the Austrian-German border at 9:55 A.M. and over the French-German
border at 10:20 P.M., arriving in Paris on Sunday, April 28, at 9:00
A.M. The first ship I could get back was the General Brooks,
which was to sail at 4:00 P.M. on May 4. I was assigned to share a room
with seventeen army officers. The ship was a regular navy transport, and
I was the only civilian in the officers' quarters. Everything was
crowded, because of all the military personnel heading back home, but
nevertheless it turned out to be a very enjoyable voyage. After letting
the captain know I was the brother of Turk Wirth, Naval Academy Class of
1921, I received a much-coveted invitation to dinner in the captain's
cabin, an honor usually reserved for ranking officers. The ship docked
in New York at 11:00 A.M. on May 13.
The next morning my wife and I took the train back to
Washington and started hunting for a furnished house, because Chapman's
wire had indicated I would be stationed in Washington and our furniture
was stored in Chicago. The reasons why I was in Washington were a little
vague to Helen and me, and finally I came to the conclusion that the
department must be planning to bring the whole Park Service back to
Washington within the year. The war was over, and the pressure for space
was easing. When I reported at the Washington office on the morning of
Wednesday, May 15, I found that they had no money to pay my salary until
the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1. So I stayed on the War
Department payroll until then.
I was informed several years later by Horace Albright
that Oscar Chapman had been told that he was going to be appointed
secretary of the interior and that he was calling me back to appoint me
assistant secretary; but at the last minute President Harry Truman
changed his mind and instead appointed Julius A. Krug secretary. By that
time it was too late to change the orders returning me from Austria. I
told Horace that, while I would have been very appreciative of the high
honor, I would have turned it down, preferring to remain with the Park
Service. But as I look back, it is possible that on the spur of the
moment I would have accepted.
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Newton B. Drury, director of the
National Park Service from August 20, 1940, to March 31, 1951.
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The National Park Service made a very important
contribution to the war effort, although we had to assume a defensive
attitude. We wanted to cooperate to the fullest extent possible with
the military and other federal agencies involved in war activities
without allowing the national park system to deteriorate. Many of the
facilities, especially those that belonged to the concessionaires, were
made available to the military as rest areas for recuperation of injured
men. Some park areas were used for mountain maneuvers and for training
ski troops. Others were used to train paratroopers and men who would
work as saboteurs behind the enemy lines.
All of this was good, and we were happy we had
facilities and personnel to he of help, but we did not lose track of the
fact that the national park system was a heritage that should not be
destroyed, except as a very last resort. The service's main problem was
with those who wanted to exploit the resources that were being conserved
in the national parks. Some thought the sitka spruce in Glacier Bay
National Monument, in Alaska, should be cut for airplane construction or
for the use of other countries, even though they had far more sitka
spruce than we had. There were situations where certain minerals in a
park were closer to manufacturing centers than the source of minerals
the manufacturers were using, and therefore they wanted to take minerals
from the park. Many applicants would not take no for an answer but would
apply all the pressure they could muster. Although the pressures on
Director Drury were tremendous, he approached all the problems in a very
practical way. In a few places where no appreciable harm could be done,
he allowed certain surface minerals to be used if they were in short
supply. I know of one case in particular in which a valuable source of a
mineral that was in very short supply was located in one of our big
parks way up on a mountain and very close to the park boundary. No
permit was granted, but under our close supervision we allowed the
mineral to be removed. For convenience of reference and analysis, the
various kinds of proposals and authorizations have been broken down into
ten major classifications. These and the number of authorizations issued
in each classification for all areas administered by the National Park
Service, except the National Capital Parks, are as follows:
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Classification |
Number of Authorizations |
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Permanent transfer of jurisdiction | 4 |
Temporary transfer of jurisdiction | 6 |
Utilization of minerals, timber, forage, water, etc. | 31 |
Occupancy and use, involving construction or appreciable modification of landscape features or both | 71 |
Occupancy and use of existing facilities | 73 |
Exclusive occupancy of operators; facilities | 5 |
Field exercises, maneuvers, overnight bivouacking | 162 |
Temporary rights-of-way | 26 |
Loan or transfer of materials or equipment | 27 |
Miscellaneous | 58 |
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I am certain that nothing was done in the parks that
was permanently detrimental to them. When the war was over, however, we
realized very vividly what had happened. The lack of
maintenancepreventive maintenance as it is calledhad caused
deterioration of roads, buildings, and other facilities to such an
extent that they could not be repaired but had to be replaced. The
asphalt pavement on roads, for instance, had dried out and cracked in
many places, and, as traffic began to build up, the road surfaces began
to crumble. Patching a dried up and crumbling road is not feasible.
Buildings that had been used for a number of years without maintenance
had also deteriorated.
The appropriation of less than $5 million in 1945 was
barely enough to keep the heart of the park organization intact and
could not provide even ordinary protection of some 180 parks. Some units
in out-of-the-way places, especially, were left unattended. Although
there was a gradual buildup after 1945, by 1950, with 21 additional
parks and twice as many visitors as we had in 1940, the Park Service
funds were 25 per cent less than in 1940. And things were getting worse.
The shooting war was over, but the cold war and grants in aid to nations
throughout the worldallies and former enemies alikeleft very
little funding for the National Park Service. The number of visitors to
the parks had grown from 33.2 million in 1950 to 56.5 million by 1955,
while our appropriations had increased from $30.1 million to only $32.9
million. It got so bad that conservation writer Bernard De Voto wrote a
very strong column urging that half of the parks be closed and that all
funds be devoted to those left open to the public. It was quite evident
that the cold war was damaging our parks more than the war itself had.
We coined such expressions as "the people are loving the parks to
death," and "patch on patch is no longer possible," to describe the
seemingly hopeless situation in 1955. Something drastic had to be done
to protect the parks and keep them in condition for the amount of use
that people were entitled to give them. Many natural, scientific, and
historic areas that should have been added to the national park system
were being gradually destroyed and lost forever. The seashores that were
studied and recommended for parks in the thirties were disappearing;
they were no longer available. It was most discouraging.
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On an inspection trip to Big Bend
National Park, Texas, before its dedication were, left to right,
Assistant Director Conrad L. Wirth, Regional Director Miner Tillotson,
Pedro, and Director Newton B. Drury.
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A committee from Texas and a
congressional delegation called on President Harry Truman to invite him
to attend the dedication of Big Bend National Park in 1950. Director
Newton B. Drury of the National Park Service, second from right,
and the author, second from left.
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Looking back, suppose we had got double the
appropriations we were given between 1950 and 1955. Could we possibly
have done enough to heal the damage suffered during the stagnant war
years? What would have happened had we carried out Bernard De Voto's
suggestion and used the money we had for operating half of the parks,
letting the rest go to seed? I know, of course, that De Voto didn't
really mean that; it was just his way of saying how bad things were. We
were, however, in a situation where something spectacular had to be
done to awaken Congress and the administration to what had actually
happened, to rouse everybody to roll up their sleeves and go to
work.
The damage to parks during World War II was going to
require a big sum of money to bring all the various elements back into
full bloom to be of service to the public. The fact is that even twice
the amount of funds that we were getting at that time would not have
provided the answer. It was not alone a question of repairing what
existed; it was a question of rebuilding both the national park system
and the National Park Service. Conditions got so had that greater
amounts of money, up to an average of $100 million a year for ten years,
would have to be provided to do the job right. The Park Service was
ready and willing to roll up its sleeves and go to work if the
administration and Congress would only give the word. And under the
Mission 66 program, they did.
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