A Fiery Peace in a Cold War

by Neil Sheehan

  Joni had refused to send him to a nursing home after he became too weak to take care of himself. She had a hospital bed brought into the house and organized a team of nurses to care for him, also tending to him herself. As the end approached, she leaned over the bed and told him that he didn’t have to hang on, that he had done everything he had wanted to do, he could let go now. She didn’t know whether he understood or even heard her, but he opened his eyes and looked at her and she thought he had. He died on Monday, June 20, 2005. He was ninety-four years old.

  83.

  A REUNION WITH HAP

  Joni found the spot at Arlington National Cemetery for him—on a knoll about twenty paces from where Hap Arnold is buried. General Myers’s wife, Mary Jo, helped her to find it. Joni had known Bennie wanted to rest near his first commanding officer and great mentor, whom he had admired so much, and she had appealed to the wife of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs for assistance. The head of the staff at Arlington had led them to the grave site and thrust a stave into the ground so that Joni could judge its distance from Hap Arnold’s. He asked if that was close enough and Joni said yes, it was fine, and asked if there was room for her beside it. “That’s the last one left, ma’am,” the official said, but added that Joni’s coffin could be laid on top of Bennie’s and Joni said that would be fine too. That night, as Joni lay beside him in bed, she told Bennie what she had arranged. She heard him say “Ja,” in a tone of approval. During the final months of his long life he often reverted to saying something in the language of his childhood.

  The day before the Arlington funeral there was a special Roman Catholic service at the Cathedral of St. Matthew in Washington. Joni arranged that too as an additional tribute. Schriever had converted to Roman Catholicism after his marriage to her and the Church had made him a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, but it was the Arlington funeral, approximately three weeks after his death, that would have mattered to him. In his will, he had requested that he be buried with the full military honors due his four stars. General Jumper, the chief of staff, said that these honors were insufficient, that Schriever would go to his grave not simply as a four-star general, but with all the pomp and pageantry reserved for a chief of staff. And so on the morning of July 12, 2005, at Arlington, the Air Force spared no detail. Nine of the service’s ten four-star generals, including Myers, would march behind the coffin. The generals had been holding a conference of four-stars down in Florida and had flown up to Washington early that morning, leaving their tenth colleague behind to tidy things up, while they paid homage to Schriever.

  The original red-brick chapel at Fort Myer beside the cemetery gate has no air-conditioning and the day was typical for Washington in July. The temperature was at ninety-five degrees, with the humidity in the eighties. The large crowd of mourners therefore gathered in the newer modernistic chapel nearby to hear the funeral mass. There were hymns and prayers and readings from the Scriptures, but no eulogy during the service. Myers was to deliver the eulogy at graveside. Then the coffin of gunmetal gray, draped in the Stars and Stripes, was wheeled out. The honor guard, in parade dress uniform, came to attention as six of its members grasped the coffin and lifted it atop the old-fashioned field artillery ammunition caisson drawn by six horses. Five of the horses had riders from the honor guard. The saddle on the sixth horse was empty, as were the spurred boots placed in reverse in its stirrups. It seemed fitting that Schriever should be carried to his rest on this antique conveyance, as he had originally been commissioned a second lieutenant in the field artillery as an ROTC cadet at Texas A&M and would joke that he had been unsuited to be a gunner because his legs were too long for the stirrups. His alma mater sent a representative to the funeral. The handsome young man with close-cropped hair stood out because he was in an officer’s uniform of the same vintage as the caisson—riding breeches and well-shined brown boots of the kind in which Schriever had once stood proud and which cadet officers at A&M still wear on ceremonial occasions.

  The generals formed up in ranks behind the caisson, Jumper and Myers in the lead row. Behind the four-stars, two three-star generals formed a line. Then, standing all by himself at the end, like the woeful “tail-end Charlie” in a formation of aircraft, was a single major general, a tall, good-looking man with two stars on his shoulder tabs. Dick Henry, one of the few Oldtimers still well enough to attend the funeral, had been in that room at the Pentagon nearly fifty years earlier when men with thirty-three stars on their shoulders had gathered to decide whether the Army’s old training ground of Camp Cooke would become one of the nation’s missile centers. He had been told that day that he would never see the like again. Now he was seeing forty-four stars paying their respects to the Boss. They were doing so in the most uncomfortable circumstances possible. The generals were elegant in their blue uniforms, silver braid on the brims of their caps, their jackets tailored to fit close. It was difficult to imagine attire less suited to the ordeal that lay ahead of them, a half mile march to the grave site in this ferocious heat. One bystander remarked jokingly to a four-star that it was fortunate the modern Air Force required even its senior generals to keep fit, given the task they now faced. The general laughed and turned back into line. Michelangelo Acquaviva, Joni’s adopted son, a specialist four, the equivalent of a corporal, in the Alabama National Guard, who had served in Iraq, had come to the funeral in his Army uniform. General Jumper, to whom Joni had introduced him, invited him to join the march. He stepped in on one side of the two-star tail-end Charlie, while the Texas A&M cadet stepped in on the other. The drum major at the head of the band in front of the horses raised his silver mace high in the air. He brought it down swiftly, the band broke into a marching tune, and the cortege set off for the knoll with the waiting grave. The mourners, sheltering in the air-conditioning of their vehicles, followed the generals in a long, slow-moving stream, with Joni at their head in a black limousine.

  When the cortege reached the base of the knoll and the drum major halted it, white-gloved hands of the strong young airmen of the honor guard hefted the coffin from the caisson and carried it up the slope. A sergeant followed close behind, holding aloft Schriever’s personal flag, its four white stars on a field of blue rippling in the faint breeze that was vainly attempting to lend a touch of coolness to the day. As the bearers laid the coffin on straps stretched across the open grave, straps that would be used to lower the coffin into the earth after the ceremony was over and all had departed, three jets in a horizontal line formation flew high overhead. The third jet was separated from the other two by a space wide enough for a fourth aircraft, the missing plane that would fly no more, the aviator’s salute to a fallen comrade.

  General Myers stepped forward to a lectern equipped with a microphone that had been set up off to one side of the grave. He praised Schriever as “a man of deep conviction, steady determination, bold vision … a man of action as well as a man of ideals.” Schriever, he said, “had the vision to see beyond the limits of technology and politics, to see the role space and ballistic missiles could play in deterring our enemies and preserving peace.… And he had the courage to press forward despite all the technical challenges and the critics who said it couldn’t be done.” He was glad, he said, that Bennie had lived “to see the end of the Cold War … the Berlin Wall come down … millions of people enjoying free speech and electing their own governments. These are a part of his legacy.” Myers moved to his conclusion. “At some future date the high court of history sits in judgment on each one of us … were we truly men of courage, were we truly men of judgment, were we truly men of integrity, were we truly men of dedication? History will record that General Bernard Schriever was such a man.”

  The chaplain, the Most Reverend Richard Higgins, Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop for the military services of the United States, resplendent in a pinkish-red skullcap and elegant robes, recited the graveside prayers for the dead. Brett Schriever walked to the lectern and read a short tribute to his father. Schriever’s
four-star flag was furled on its staff by the sergeant bearing it, assisted by another sergeant who slid a leather sleeve over the cloth. The band broke into a tune, then commands were shouted from where the firing party was stationed below the knoll and three rifle volleys crashed in the sultry air. A bugler played taps. A senior sergeant folded the Stars and Stripes that draped the coffin into a triangle with the stars showing in the deep blue field. He handed it to General Jumper, who had moved forward to receive it, saluting the general as he did so. Jumper walked over to where Joni was sitting in front of the coffin in the first of several rows of folding metal chairs set up for the family. She looked like a little Italian lady in mourning, her diminutive figure in a black dress with a filmy black scarf over her hair as dark as both garments. She stared at Jumper as he dropped to one knee before her. So much water was running off his face that she thought he was weeping. It was perspiration.

  “This is a small token from a very grateful Air Force to the man who helped shape the Air Force we have today. All Americans are grateful to him and to you,” he said, as he placed the flag in her hands and rose. Just then a figure in civilian clothes appeared from the back of the knoll. He bent over Joni for a few minutes with words of condolence while everyone watched in curiosity. The man was Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense since the outset of the administration of George W. Bush, doomed to a resignation in disgrace because of his fervid promotion of the catastrophic war in Iraq. In appearing at the funeral he was paying Schriever singular respect because of the level of his office, but afterward Joni, so familiar with the stage herself, could not help comparing his entrance to that of an actor “coming in from the wings.”

  The band played a recessional. Dora, Dodie and Ted Moeller’s middle daughter, named after her grandmother, who had died four years earlier, had thoughtfully brought red roses for her grandfather. She distributed them to the family and these were laid on the coffin. Then Joni stepped forward with a different rose, a yellow rose for the song “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” and placed it at the head of the coffin. The band and the honor guard marched away. Joni, the family, the generals, the friends all climbed into cars and drove to the postfuneral reception at the Officers’ Club at Fort Myer. The ice sculptures that decorated the main table in the center of the room, customarily of swans and dolphins, were Atlas, Thor, and Titan missiles on this occasion. Bernard Schriever was soon left alone in his place of honor near Hap Arnold in Arlington National Cemetery. An engraver would soon carve under his name and rank on the simple white granite tombstone: “Father of the Air Force’s Ballistic Missile and Space Programs.” Eighty-eight years before, had the six-year-old German boy, clasping his mother’s hand in the cavernous immigrants hall at Ellis Island, been able to foresee what this new country held in store for him, he might have smiled.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is a work of history written for the lay reader. It seeks to convey the essence of the Cold War and the Soviet-American arms race through the human story of the men caught up in one of the Cold War’s great dramas—the building of the unstoppable weapon, the intercontinental ballistic missile. To write the book required educating myself in unfamiliar subjects. Although I have spent the better part of my life writing of war and military affairs, my principal efforts have focused on the war in Vietnam. For me, missiles, space, and nuclear weaponry were sparsely explored terrain.

  At the head of the list of those who educated me must come Bernard Schriever and the men who toiled alongside him in his extraordinary endeavor. They submitted to lengthy interviews with patience, never telling me I had run over my time, never showing irritation at questions that must have seemed simplistic to many of them.

  I also owe a debt to a number of Air Force historians, particularly to Jacob “Jack” Neufeld, author of the definitive documentary history of the missile programs, Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960. Over the years of research and writing, Jack never tired of answering questions about various aspects of the missile programs, and he provided me with a small library of Air Force biographical and historical publications, which proved invaluable. Mark Cleary, command historian of the 45th Space Wing at Patrick Air Force Base, generously shared with me his monographs on the history of Cape Canaveral and missile operations there; Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, chief historian of the 30th Space Wing at Vandenberg Air Force Base, did the same. Dr. Harry Waldron, chief, History Office, Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, a successor organization to Schriever’s original Western Development Division, spared no effort to unearth source documents for me, including a chronology that straightened out conflicts in the memories of the participants. Robert Young, historian at the National Air Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, assisted me in locating retired technical intelligence specialists such as Col. James Manatt of the Turkish Radar episode. George “Skip” Bradley, command historian at Headquarters, Air Force Space Command, at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, repsonded to inquiries as to when major participants in the story were given the Space and Missile Pioneers Award and named to the Hall of Fame there.

  Donald “Jay” Prichard gave me a sense of what it was like to stand next to a Thor missile on a launching pad and to sit through a countdown in a control bunker at the Space and Missile Heritage Center he founded and now directs at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

  Col. Charlie Simpson, USAF (Ret.), executive director of the Association of Air Force Missileers, guided me to men who could answer questions about specific details of different missiles from their service with various missile units.

  R. Cargill Hall, an Air Force historian who later became historian at the National Reconnaissance Office, facilitated my acquiring a copy of the declassified history of the Discoverer-Corona program.

  Dr. John Lonnquest, chief of the Office of History of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, generously shared with me his 1996 Ph.D. dissertation, “The Face of Atlas: Bernard Schriever and the Development of the Atlas Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, 1953–1960,” as well as additional details his research had uncovered.

  Michael Baker, command historian at the U.S. Army Missile Command at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, passed along his observations of Maj. Gen. John Bruce Medaris, as well as copies of Medaris’s monographs and other documents on the Jupiter-Thor competition.

  Robert Norris of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the author of Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie R. Groves, the Manhattan Project’s Indispensable Man, gave me informative publications on Soviet and American nuclear weaponry.

  Bill Burr, senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, contributed additional declassified documents on the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union.

  The late Mary Wolfskill and the staff of the Reading Room of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress were unfailingly helpful during my research into the LeMay, Twining, and von Neumann papers.

  Much gratitude goes to Ms. Sandy Smith and other members of the protocol staff at Patrick Air Force Base for their hospitality during several Oldtimers Reunions held there.

  Brig. Gen. Robert Duffy, USAF (Ret.), Lt. Gen. Richard Henry, USAF (Ret.), and Lt. Gen. Forrest McCartney, USAF (Ret.) graciously consented to read the manuscript for technical accuracy. Any errors that may remain, however, are my responsibility.

  Fred Chase copyedited the manuscript with superb exactness.

  Paolo Pepe, Tom McKeveny, and Bob Perini collaborated on the book jacket.

  Caroline Cunningham is responsible for the pleasing design of the book.

  Steve Messina guided the book through production.

  Abby Plesser and Ben Steinberg, assistants to Robert Loomis, were ever helpful to me.

  Joni James Schriever was unstinting in her hospitality.

  Harold Evans, the legendary newspaperman and former president of Random House, made it possible for me to write this book. I hope it will not
disappoint him after the long wait.

  For the past thirty-eight years it has been my good fortune to work with two princes among men in the world of publishing, my agent, Robert Lescher, and my editor, Robert Loomis. Throughout those years Bob Lescher has stood with me in joyful times and difficult ones, always supportive, never the source of a harsh word, unfailing in his fine judgment. Bob Loomis has shaped this book as he did the prior three books of my career. It would not be the book it is without him. He has an extraordinary sense for narrative train, an exquisite ear for balance and tone, and the gentle persistence and capacity for friendship to guide a writer through revision after revision until the book is right.

  And then there is Susan, always Susan, my wife, my lover, my friend. For more than forty-four years now we have critiqued everything written by each other. Through the long years of this book, she read and edited each section as it was finished, then read and edited each and every revision. When I was about to succumb to one of those bouts of dicouragement that afflict a writer, she cheered me with her love and gave me the courage to press on. There are miracles in marriage and Susan is mine.