by Steve Vogel
Lunching with Roosevelt at the White House several months later, Ickes warned the president that two Army generals were potential “men on horseback,” military strongmen who might seize power: MacArthur and Somervell. “He agreed as to MacArthur but said that he had not thought of Somervell,” Ickes recorded in his diary. “I told him that he would bear watching, pointing out that he was ambitious, ruthless and vindictive.” Roosevelt—more than likely to appease his volatile interior secretary—replied mildly that it would be “perfectly easy to shift a lieutenant general if necessary.”
Many in Washington “would gleefully have seen [Somervell] boiled in oil,” Roosevelt adviser Rexford Tugwell later wrote. “But he was just what Marshall needed, and so long as Marshall and the President were behind him he could not be reached.” Somervell occasionally needed to be “curbed,” Stimson later wrote, but his “driving energy was an enormous asset to the Army.” Those who accused Somervell of being an empire builder were absolutely right, but they missed a larger, more important truth—that the centralized and efficient empire he had established over mobilization, production, and supply of the U.S. Army would be absolutely critical in winning a global war.
Somervell was “one of the few Americans who really understand total war,” said Bernard Baruch, financier and adviser to many U.S. presidents. It was Somervell, perhaps more than any other leader, who made the case that America’s situation was desperate, and that sacrifice was required from all citizens. “We must face the truth, no matter how bitter the truth may be—we’re not winning the war,” he thundered in a speech in July to Detroit industrialists. To another audience in St. Louis he warned, “We’ve lost ships by the hundreds, men by the thousands. We’ve lost the freedom of the seas. We’ve lost everything except a smug sense of complacency. And that’s one thing we’ve got to lose, and lose fast, or we’ll lose our independence.” If American industry could out-produce the Axis, Somervell promised, “we’ll kick the living hell out of Hitler and the Japs.”
Somervell was driven by what one subordinate described as an “abiding sense of urgency,” one so compelling that he stopped signing his middle initial once the war broke out. The same techniques that had marked the Somervell Blitz in Army construction were now applied to logistics. Somervell declared war on what he called the Army’s “muzzle-loading” mentality. Officers who did not move fast enough were shuffled to obscure posts or forced into retirement. He fired or demoted more than a dozen generals “not to mention whole squads of colonels,” Life magazine noted.
“For cutting red tape and getting things done there had never been anyone like him,” Tugwell wrote.
A request for munitions was not paperwork to be pushed around on a desk, Somervell told his staff. “That is no piece of paper,” he said. “It is life or death, victory or defeat, for hundreds of our men in some stinking jungle.” With the Army in need of a good antitank weapon, Somervell went out to a range to observe a new shoulder-launched rocket-propelled weapon that had been fired only a few times and ordinarily would need much more development and testing before it was put in production. Somervell watched it fire and on the spot ordered ten thousand of them for the Army. “That damn thing looks just like Bob Burns’ bazooka,” an officer watching the demonstration remarked, referring to a popular radio comedian known for playing a crude wind instrument made out of gas pipes. The bazooka, as the weapon was soon also known, proved very effective in the hands of American soldiers.
None of it came cheaply. Somervell was going through phenomenal amounts of money—on weapons, on pipelines, on buildings—but complaints had been stifled since the outbreak of war. The muted response Somervell received in May when he belatedly notified the appropriations committees about the $14 million overrun at the Pentagon was typical. Renshaw marveled at Somervell’s ability to keep Congress in line, later describing the general’s methods: “Prominent members of the Appropriations Committee were invited to the Somervell home for a quiet evening of talk and a few drinks,” according to a summary of Renshaw’s remarks written by Army historians. “When the right glow of good fellowship was evident, he would casually mention a problem he was trying to solve and let it be known that the cost would probably be a little higher than had been anticipated. Things like this were difficult to estimate with dead accuracy. Thus, there was no shock when the bill reached them officially. Somervell liked it that way.”
The obstacle course
The glow of good fellowship was not going to work with Albert Engel, however. Groves would later say that Somervell had deceived Congress about the true cost of the Pentagon, and that this had provided good grounds for opponents such as Engel to attack him. Yet Groves himself was at least as guilty of deception.
In July 1942, Renshaw informed Groves that the Pentagon project had exceeded the $49 million figure Somervell had reported as the amended total cost for the project.
“And there’s no way to cover it up?” Groves asked Renshaw.
There was, though the idea Groves and his aides came up with was hardly foolproof. Lieutenant Colonel Gar Davidson, the former West Point football coach, telephoned Renshaw on the afternoon of July 10 with details of Groves’s plan. “He wanted the report on the building not to show any amount in excess of $49,250,000,” Davidson told Renshaw. “And then, he wanted a supplementary report on the roads and the parking area.”
“In other words, handle it like two projects,” Renshaw said.
“That’s the idea,” Davidson replied.
Never mind that Somervell had expressly promised Congress that his estimate would cover everything but parking. They would subtract the $8.6 million the War Department was paying for roads from the project total, and thereby keep the cost at $49 million. The only problem was Engel was hardly as stupid as Groves believed. (Groves later conceded that Engel “was stupid in a lot of ways but sharp in others.”)
Ironically, it had been Groves’s idea to bring Engel to the Pentagon in the first place. Groves had nothing but disdain for the congressman, considering Engel’s ballyhooed inspection tours “silly and at times almost idiotic.” Engel had been a consistent opponent of Construction Division projects on the House Appropriations Committee, yet Groves thought he could woo him with a personal tour of the Pentagon. “Groves had the idea he was going to make a friendly speech for us,” a rueful Renshaw later explained to another officer.
The congressman fancied himself an amateur builder, having recently borrowed some masonry books from the Library of Congress. When he was not on the road, Engel would get up at 4:30 in the morning and lay bricks for a six-foot-high wall around his house in suburban Washington, meticulously recording the number of bricks laid each day in a notebook he carried in his vest pocket. (The total had reached 14,391 by 1943.) To Groves, it was just proof that Engel was a dilettante who knew nothing about construction.
Groves’s strategy was to set up a construction playpen at the Pentagon and give Engel free run, figuring this would delight the congressman while wasting his energy. Before the tour, Groves directed McShain to put up an “obstacle course of scaffolding, plasterers and the like” in the area they would visit. When Groves brought Engel over to the Pentagon at 10 A.M. on June 24, “I saw to it that he had everything to climb under and over that he could,” Groves later chortled. By 2 P.M., he returned to his office and left Engel to continue his visit. Groves was quite pleased with himself, thinking he had enlisted the congressman’s support.
Groves had certainly succeeded in piquing Engel’s interest in the Pentagon. As soon as Groves left, Engel sat down with Renshaw and requested numerous confidential documents about the project. Renshaw, under the impression he was to cooperate fully with Engel, dutifully handed over everything, including weekly field reports and monthly progress reports packed with interesting details.
In the days and weeks that followed, Engel flooded Renshaw with requests for more information: lists of subcontractors, utility costs, wage scales, construction equipment, ma
ps of the site, and updated progress reports. He also wanted a breakdown on the amount of space in the Pentagon, a figure that Somervell, eager to conceal the true size of the building, had recently ordered not be made public. Renshaw complied, but he implored Engel to keep the information confidential.
When Groves finally learned all that Engel had acquired he was horrified. “Groves is very much interested in finding out how Engel got hold of those field reports,” his aide, Major Franklin Matthias, told Renshaw.
“Groves brought him over here and gave him the house,” Renshaw protested.
It was too late to point fingers. Engel was busy piecing together the truth and getting angrier by the day.
A building unique in Washington
Groves grew paranoid as Engel’s investigation continued. Inspecting the building on the morning of August 24, the colonel froze in his tracks at the Mall entrance. There, at the base and risers of the staircase leading up to the next floor, was marble. It was unmistakable.
Groves erupted. In his testimony to Congress in June two months earlier, he had expressly vowed that the Pentagon had “no marble, no marble floors, no marble walls, nothing of that character.” Yet here it was at his feet. He dispatched Matthias to search for more. “Walk down every corridor and make a note of every bit of marble that there is in the building,” he ordered.
Lieutenant Colonel Antes, another aide, called Renshaw that afternoon with orders from Groves to remove the marble. “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Renshaw protested. “He wants the marble risers cut out?”
“He wants all the marble taken out,” Antes said.
It would cost as much as $100,000 to pull all the marble out of the building, Renshaw said. In the name of appearing economical, they would waste even more money.
“That’s his orders,” Antes insisted.
Marble had been used sparingly in the building. Chief Architect David Witmer envisioned the Mall entrance, on the Pentagon’s north face looking toward the Lincoln Memorial, as the principal entry to be used by high-ranking officials and distinguished visitors. As such, he included a formal staircase, and that meant marble risers and stringers. “There was no other way to treat it that wouldn’t look like hell, or be more expensive,” Renshaw said. The marble had been in the building for months, since well before Groves testified to Congress, but he had only now noticed it. Renshaw debated painting or plastering the marble rather than cutting it out, but that hardly seemed a good option. Not only would it look terrible, it would be even more embarrassing if someone discovered that marble at the Pentagon had been covered up.
Somervell looked it over and said if anything, there was not enough marble. Groves relented after a week and said the marble already in the building could stay, but he ordered that not one more piece be installed without “my personal approval.”
Witmer had also developed grandiose plans to sprinkle the grounds around the building with fountains, paved circles, and plantings. The Mall entrance was again given elaborate treatment in the plans, with cannons and a statue at the top and a series of terraces dropping down to a long grassy mall screened with trees. The idea, Witmer wrote, was that the Pentagon “will prove in appearance symbolic of not just a neighbor strong and protective, but rather that of a powerful but friendly neighbor.”
Groves cared not a whit whether the Pentagon looked friendly. He had promised Congress that “there would be no fountains and no circles. We will have a building unique in the city of Washington.” Accordingly, Groves assigned Matthias to scrub the plans of all niceties. Statues, circles, fountains, cannons, and most of the trees—“all that crap,” as Matthias later referred to it—were cut out. Witmer was crushed and fought to reinstate his plans. “He wanted every fountain and every blade of grass and every gorgeous walk,” Renshaw said. It was to no avail, and Witmer was left to hope that improvements would be made down the road.
On September 11, Renshaw telephoned Groves with an update on the landscaping. “I find when we decipher the names of the trees in the center court, there are thirteen Japanese cherry trees,” Renshaw reported. “Do you think there’s any chance of criticism if we put them in?”
Groves was aghast, if slightly amused. “Good night,” he exclaimed. “We don’t want a Japanese cherry on the whole lot.” The Japanese cherry trees were summarily yanked from the courtyard, victims of war, and replaced with more acceptable American varieties.
Oddly, despite his paranoia about marble and trees, Groves fervently pushed to add recreational facilities to the Pentagon, believing Army officers manning desks in the building needed exercise. His girth notwithstanding, Groves considered himself to be in “top-notch physical condition” and indeed he was a terror on tennis courts, using a combination of cunning, physical stamina, surprising nimbleness, and a wicked slice shot to regularly defeat younger and slimmer opponents, Renshaw and Furman among them. Groves wanted to install a gymnasium with lockers and showers, squash and handball courts, even a golf driving range. “Maybe the next time we have a war we won’t have all these unfit officers that can’t do the proper amount of duty without breaking down,” he griped.
Somervell had quashed all such proposals from the beginning. For one thing, he had promised Congress the building would have no frills, but beyond that, Somervell considered athletics a waste of time for Army officers in a nation at war. It could be a public relations disaster. Groves thought Somervell’s position “a terrible mistake.” Early in the construction, apparently unbeknownst to Somervell, Groves selected a site for a gymnasium in an undeveloped basement area below a terrace approach to the building on the lagoon side. He had engineers design the space with pilings and columns spread out far enough that it could eventually accommodate “a full sized squash court or two” or even a swimming pool. Groves would get his gymnasium, but it would have to wait until the war was over.
Groves seeks peace
The job, it seemed, was burning out the indestructible Groves. By September, he was desperate to get overseas. Many of his colleagues and West Point classmates had been given combat assignments, the obvious road to promotion. “I was hoping to get to a war theater so I could find a little peace,” Groves wrote.
He had been particularly annoying on the Pentagon job in recent weeks. Even Renshaw, so adept at handling Groves, was reaching the end of his patience. When Groves issued orders September 3 to immediately remove a huge, unsightly pile of lumber from the roof, Renshaw blew up. The lumber was being used for shoring and as forms for concrete pours. If they took it down from the roof today, they would have to put it back tomorrow. Groves’s micromanagement—on everything from butter patties to marble to piles of lumber—was driving Renshaw and job superintendent Paul Hauck crazy. “What I want to get over to Groves is that he cannot interfere with the operations, or we’re going to lose the job just as sure as hell,” Renshaw told Groves’s aide, Major Matthias. Hauck was so fed up he offered to quit and let Groves take over his job.
Groves backed down on the lumber in the face of the rebellion, but he was not through. Several days later, when a walkout by carpenter foremen over wages threatened to delay the Pentagon’s completion, Groves blamed Hauck. “If we had competent management over there, maybe they’d take care of these things,” Groves told Hauck. “If you really earned your fee, in other words.”
Hauck was stunned and hurt. He was one of the best construction men in the business, and for nearly a year he had poured his heart and soul into the project. “The colonel says if there were competent management—we’ve done everything in God’s world we know to do,” Hauck said bitterly.
Harsh as he was, Groves had not asked for anything of anyone that he was not delivering himself. Most mornings he would wake up at 5:30 at his home in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington and be out the door of his yellow brick duplex by 6:15, driving himself to work in his green Dodge sedan. When not on the road he often stayed late at the office, missing dinner. He was gone so much of the time that communicatio
n with his wife, Grace, and thirteen-year-old daughter, Gwen, was often through written messages left on the hall table.
Groves fueled himself with sweets and was particularly unable to resist mints and chocolate. On those occasions when he did make it home for dinner, Grace Groves would often put him on diets of boiled food without butter and salt, but it seemed to have little effect on his waistline. His wife and daughter surmised, usually correctly, that he was hitting the candy again. “He was so amiable in the face of these meager, uninteresting groceries and so persistent in gaining weight, that we were naturally suspicious,” Gwen later wrote.
The job of constructing the domestic camps and training facilities for the mobilizing U.S. Army had peaked in July 1942, and the action was shifting overseas. Groves believed he had “most of the headaches of directing ten billion dollars’ worth of military construction in this country behind me—for good, I hoped,” he later wrote. “I wanted to get out of Washington, and quickly.”
Groves was not alone in that sentiment. Many of his colleagues wanted him shipped on the first train out of town. His rapid rise, his arrogant manner, and the roughshod way he treated other officers had made him many enemies within the Corps of Engineers. Several Construction Division engineers asked Major General Reybold, the chief of engineers, to remove Groves from the job, but Reybold declined. However, Somervell’s deputy, Major General Wilhelm “Fat” Styer, hearing the complaints, concluded it would in the best interest of Groves—and everyone else—to get him as far away from Washington as possible.