The Day Kennedy Was Shot

by Jim Bishop

  It was the first “make” on Lee Harvey Oswald. Brennan, slow to become aroused, was now nervously communicative. Sergeant D. V. Harkness, who had been studying the area behind the Depository, stopped to listen. Harold Norman and James Jarman, Jr., walked up to listen, and Brennan pointed at them excitedly and said he had seen both of them leaning out a window on the fifth floor. The people who had not been frightened away from Dealey Plaza were now trying to draw the attention of policemen and sheriff’s deputies to individual versions of what had happened. Everyone, it seemed, had a story to which he would swear.

  Haygood got on Channel Two and said: “I just talked to a guy up here who was standing close to it and the best he could tell it came from the Texas School Book Depository building here with the Hertz renting sign on top.” Dispatcher Henslee said: “Ten four. Get his name, address, telephone number there—all the information you can get from him. 12:35 P.M.” A few moments later, Sergeant D. V. Harkness was on Channel Two. He had been approached by a “little colored boy, Amos Euins.” The student was appalled when he saw all those policemen—fourteen was his estimate—running toward the overpass to find the rifleman when he, Amos Euins, had seen him plainly in the Depository building. “He was a kind of old policeman,” Euins said of Harkness, “so I ran down and got him and he ran up here.”

  The schoolboy convinced the sergeant. Harkness was reporting on Channel Two, not realizing that he was corroborating what Officer Clyde Haygood had just concluded. “I have a witness,” Harkness said, “that says it came from the fifth floor of the Texas School Depository store.” It was at this point that Harkness began to seal the Depository building. He went to the back of the building, near the freight loading platform, and saw two men lounging. They identified themselves as Secret Service agents. Harkness did not ask for identification. He acknowledged their authority and went deeper into the railroad yards, where he found some hoboes on freight trains. The sergeant arrested all of them.

  Police cars pulled up all along Inwood and on Harry Hines Boulevard to clear the way. The dispatchers had done a good job, pulling them in from nearby areas to open the two vital roads to Parkland Memorial Hospital. They stood awkwardly, at crossroads, their red blinkers flashing, their men in the middle of the road flagging the lead car and the presidential car onward at top speed. Rubber squealed as the cars made a right turn and then another, now heading back toward downtown Dallas. Off Butler Street, Curry swung in onto the service road, and Greer followed, tipping the big car. The follow-up was directly behind them, then Johnson and the press pool car. Merriman Smith handed the phone over to Jack Bell of the Associated Press, and, at this moment, the line died.

  At the little emergency overhang, the cars skidded to a stop in attitudes of disarray and men began to tumble out, all running toward the Kennedy automobile. As the car slammed to a stop, Governor Connally hung between the jump seats, his head on his wife’s lap, his feet on the other seat. He felt a twinge of pain and, for the first time, hoped he might live. He looked across at the other jump seat and saw on his leg a piece of the President’s brain about the size of a man’s thumbnail.

  Men were running and yelling everywhere. Emory Roberts, agent in charge of this shift of Secret Service, ran from the follow-up car to the Kennedys to learn whether he still had a President to protect. He opened the door on Mrs. Kennedy’s side, saw the President face down on her leg, and said: “Let us get the President.” Mrs. Kennedy, bending over her husband’s head, said, “No.” It was firm and final. He turned to Kellerman, nominally his superior, and said: “You stay with the President. I’m taking some of my men to Johnson.”

  This was the second time in one day that many things would happen swiftly, and yet, in retrospect, they tumbled over each other in slow motion. Sometimes, as the men of government and law sped this way and that, they seemed to stop, frozen in flight. Two men hopped on the Oneal ambulance and ordered the driver to remain where he was. Three agents—McIntyre, Bennett, and Youngblood—hustled Vice-President Lyndon Johnson through the emergency door. He was flapping his arms and trying to get back to the Kennedy car. Youngblood said, “No,” and kept pushing. “We are going to another room and I would like you to remain there. . . .” Other agents surrounded Mrs. Johnson, who was looking at the Kennedy car and saw a blur of pink and the edges of some red roses.

  The moment was hectic, hysterical, and historical. The nation had a new President, but he did not know it, although the men around him did. Two Secret Service men ran up the hall, with its arrow in the center of the floor to point the way to Trauma One and Trauma Two. The nurse at the triage desk didn’t know the situation—no one had told her—and she winced as she saw the men with the guns. They demanded to know where the hell the carts were. Chief Jesse Curry had asked that the hospital be alerted; now where were the carts?

  Outpatients sat on benches in the chocolate-tiled corridor, or limped on their way in or out. They were rudely pushed aside and told to stand against the wall. There was no time to explain; just get the carts and clear this damn hall. Greer, who had been within six feet of the President all the way, slid out of the driver’s seat and got his first look at the carnage in the back. The tears came and he looked at Mrs. Kennedy and kept mumbling: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  To die so suddenly; to die at the peak; to die in an alien place. William Greer looked up and saw the vast array of medical and surgical buildings, new and bright like the rest of Dallas. He knew that things would never be quite the same here again. There was a man in the back seat with a chest that seemed, every few moments, to convulse. He was dead, just as Mrs. Kennedy and Clint Hill had said, but some of the parts of the body fought the inevitable without any brain to direct them.

  The loudspeaker called for ambulance carts. The call was repeated. In the emergency section, doctors by ones and twos got off elevators, bounded down and up stairways, all heading for Trauma One and Trauma Two. The only patient waiting for treatment was Julia Cox, 14, who was admitted for an X-ray. Others were resting after treatment, or on their way out of the numberless little sheet-covered cubbyholes against both sides of the wall. Jack Price, hospital administrator, had heard the ugly news and rushed down from his office to expedite matters and to lend a hand if necessary. In the long corridor, as he passed personnel, he issued orders calling for additional skilled assistance. The call for carts was heard by Diana Bowron, a young British nurse, and she asked orderly Joe Richards to help her run one out to the ambulance port. The press pool car was parked, and Merriman Smith jumped out to take a look. Baskin and the others followed. They saw the carnage, the huddled pink suit, the Governor sagging between jump seats, the moans from the mouth of Mrs. Connally, and the whispered sibilations from Mrs. Kennedy to her husband.

  David Powers hurried to the automobile, gasped, and cried: “Oh. Mr. President!” and burst into tears. O’Donnell, the general of the palace guard, did not come. He went inside, looking for carts, came out and ordered the police to cordon the area off, to keep everybody out unless they could present White House credentials, to put special guards over the Lincoln and permit no one to touch it. Senator Yarborough was weeping. Mayor Earle Cabell beat his fists against a wall, roaring: “Not in Dallas! Not in Dallas!”

  The cart was beside the car but no one could get over Governor Connally to reach the President. Mrs. Kennedy did not want anyone to take her husband. Clint Hill whispered to her, “Please let us remove the President.” She said, “No,” Hill removed his jacket and dropped it gently over President Kennedy’s head. A security policeman, with his radio on, patrolled the front entrance of Parkland and heard ABC’s Don Gardiner cut into another program to say: “Dallas, Texas. According to United Press International, three shots were fired at President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade today.”

  Inside, Mr. Johnson was being hustled to a remote part of the emergency area. He followed the phalanx of Secret Service agents without question. He kept rubbing his sore right shoulder, which had sustaine
d Youngblood’s weight, and passing nurses saw it and spread the rumor that the Vice-President had sustained a heart attack and was in the emergency area for treatment. In downtown Dallas, people were saying that two Secret Service agents had been killed in Dealey Plaza.

  Outside, police officers were roaring: “Clear this area!” On Channel Two, other patrols were assigned to Harry Hines Boulevard to keep automobiles off the service road. Roy Kellerman snatched the first phone and dialed White House-Dallas, and asked for Jerry Behn, agent in charge of the White House detail, in Washington. He started his conversation by saying: “Jerry, look at your clock. . . .” CBS was rushing a flash to Walter Cronkite in New York, while officials were calling for a cut-in on all CBS affiliates throughout the country. Cronkite hadn’t seen it yet, but the announcement read: “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade. First reports say that the President is seriously wounded.” In Washington, David Brinkley saw the teletype flash, but was powerless to use it. His boss couldn’t be found.

  At the hospital, men ran at top speed for precious telephones, to have and to hold. Merriman Smith, after a long heartrending look into the back of that automobile, had skidded inside, found a man hanging up a phone, and said: “How do you get outside?” He was told to dial nine. Smith said: “The President has been hurt and this is an emergency.” This time, in a couple of sentences, he dictated a bulletin which said that the President had been “seriously, perhaps fatally, injured by an assassin” in Dallas.

  The stretchers were going by, almost at a run. First there was Governor Connally; behind him was President Kennedy, on his back with a coat over his face. On his chest were a few bloody roses and a pink hat. Kellerman told Behn in Washington: “The man has been hit. He’s still alive in the emergency room. He and Connally were hit by gunfire. Don’t hang up. This line should be kept open, and I’ll keep you advised.” Mrs. Kennedy, as forlorn as the bloody roses, trotted beside the cart, her fingers trying to maintain contact with her husband, while visitors leaving the emergency area bumped into her. Her head was back, her dark hair swinging behind from side to side, the mouth was open in anguish, and the eyes begged for the assistance no one could give.

  A nurse found an emergency room to satisfy Roberts and Youngblood. It had one patient—a Negro. He was taken out at once. The room, closer to the emergency entrance than Traumas One and Two, had a small window. The shades were drawn. It could hardly be called a room. There were a dozen or more cubicles in one blue-tiled room. This was the one remotest from the door, and it was screened by sheets on poles. Roberts told Rufus Youngblood to remain with the Vice-President, and guards were posted at the door.

  Revolvers were drawn there and outside. Roberts convinced Youngblood and the Vice-President that, at the moment, no one knew whether this was a widespread plot to assassinate the leading men in the United States government. It could be. If it was, they would be after Johnson as well as Kennedy and the Governor. No one knew the ramifications of the plot—assuming there was a plot—and no one knew whether anything had occurred in Washington or in Hawaii, where a big part of the cabinet was. Under the law, Lyndon Johnson was next in line for the presidency; Speaker of the House John McCormack was next. The Vice-President was entreated to please do as he was told, promptly, until the matter could be cleared up. He said: “Okay, Partner.” He began to understand that this could be a broad plot. For awhile, he understood fear. Youngblood and Roberts agreed that perhaps it would be best to get Johnson out of the hospital at once and hurry him off to Air Force One at Love Field.

  The smooth continuation of government depended on Johnson. They had to keep him alive. The stark reality was that, apparently, they had lost their man in spite of the most extensive precautions. Even if he lived, could he reassume the burden of the presidency? When, if ever?

  Those who saw the head wound, who looked inside at the scooped-out brain, were doubtful that Kennedy would ever be President again. No matter how they looked at it, the burden reverted to Lyndon Baines Johnson, a huge, rough-tough master politician from this state. The republic was in his hands, and, no matter how, they had to protect this man from all harm and get him back to Washington. Kenny O’Donnell came in, head down, took a look at the Vice-President and the guards around him, and nodded. “Not good,” he said.

  Lyndon Baines Johnson’s guards told him little. He kept asking for the President, and asking if it was all right to go see him, and he received suggestions in reply. Emory Roberts said, “I do not think the President can make it. I suggest we get out of Dallas.” Youngblood asked Mr. Johnson to “think it over. We may have to swear you in.” The Vice-President held his wife’s hand, trying to infuse her with a courage he no longer had. Only she and Cliff Carter, his executive assistant, knew that Lyndon Johnson, in spite of his 1959 speeches to the contrary, never really expected to be President. He heard heels clicking in the corridor, and saw the SS men run. Mrs. Johnson saw the runners, the frantic faces, and they seemed to her to be frozen motionless.

  At the triage desk, the nurse asked both carts to stop. She wanted a history of the injuries and at least the names of the patients. The Secret Service paused for a moment, then went on. The arrow in the floor seemed endless, pointing past scores of people on their way out, swinging left and then, a little way farther, to the right. The stripe went through a door, changed color, and stopped in front of two square-tiled rooms which faced each other across four feet of hall. The one on the left said “Trauma Two”; on the right, “Trauma One.”

  The coat had slipped off the President’s head. His eyes were askew, and the jacket hung over the bottom of his nose. Mrs. Kennedy looked smaller than she had. She kept her hand touching her husband’s side, and her eyes appealed mutely. She did not beg or scream. The last words she had said had been addressed to Clint Hill, out in the car: “You know he’s dead. Let me alone.”

  The hat was on her husband’s chest. The flowers looked soggy. Damp blood penetrated the white gloves and dried in the tiny swirls of her fingers. The pink wool suit was soaked blackish down the right side. The stockings of the impeccable First Lady were wrinkled, and blood matted them to her skin. The utmost in cruelty had assailed her, and more awaited her.

  The Governor was wheeled into one room, the President into the other. Dr. Charles J. Carrico, two years a physician, was ready. Nurses Diana Bowron and Margaret Hinchcliffe looked at the doctor and saw his nod. At once they took surgical shears and began to cut the clothes from the President. Carrico reached down for a pulse. There was none. The doctor tried a blood pressure cuff. There was no pressure. A huge inverted soup bowl of a lamp stared down at President Kennedy, and the young man stared back at it.

  The tie was snipped off adjacent to the knot which had been notched by a bullet. The jacket came off in sections. Each item was thrown on a chair in the corner. The striped shirt was plastered with blood from the edge of the collar all the way down the right side to the shirttail. Dr. Malcolm Perry, surgeon, hurried in. He saw a blood-spattered young woman kneeling inside the door. His impulse was to tell her to leave, but as the socks were peeled from the patient, the snowy skin, the cyanotic face, the dura mater leaking out of a massive hole in the head told him to do something and do it quickly.

  Dr. Marion Jenkins, anesthesiologist, came in. Two student nurses came in. It was a small room, pale tile, a sink in the floor, a cabinet for sterile instruments, a clock which showed the time to be 12:37. Other doctors hurried in to help. Some were directed across the hall to help the Governor. He was screaming: “It hurts! It hurts!” and he could be heard down the hall. It was the only healthful sound in the hospital wing.

  Dr. Fouad Bashour arrived. Dr. Richard Dulaney was working Trauma Two. Dr. Gene Akin rushed into the room. Dr. Kemp Clark was there. There had been no carts waiting outside in the hot Dallas sun; now all the medical help possible was jamming the two small rooms to a point where some must volunteer to leave. Dr. Don Curtis; Dr. A. H. Giesecke; Dr. Jacki
e Hunt; Dr. Kenneth Salyer; Dr. Donald Seldin; Dr. Jones; Dr. Nelson; Dr. Shaw; Dr. White; Dr. Robert McClelland; Dr. Paul Peters.

  The President was down to his shorts and his back brace. The Ace Bandage he wore was permitted to remain between the thighs. One doctor was making a cut down on the right ankle; a nurse was doing it to the left arm. The skin was cool to the touch. The work was professional. Doctors, when necessary, mumbled requests or orders. The electrocardiogram had shown a faint palpable heartbeat, hesitant, irregular, and weak. Then it stopped and the automatic pen behind the glass on the wall began to trace a steady straight line. A doctor tried to assist breathing by doing a tracheotomy and found that a bullet hole was in precisely the right spot. He enlarged it and thrust a cuffed endotracheal tube through and down into the bronchial area.

  Hunt had the President on pure oxygen. Nobody stopped working. Everybody knew he was dead, but the work went on in silence as though something magnificent was about to happen. Dr. Burkley, on the wrong bus and taken to the Trade Mart against his will, came into the room. Someone said that this was the President’s physician. Burkley had skin which matched his graying hair. Now it seemed paler. He had a black bag with him and he took out the hydrocortisone used to correct the President’s adrenal deficiency.

  The voices were soft and unhurried; priests at a White Mass, responding acolytes; the sacrifice prone on the altar. Science was trying to impose its will on God.

  Agent Lem Johns, the thin man with the basso voice, arrived at the hospital. He had been dropped off in Dealey Plaza, and the motorcade had left without him. Now he was bumping into people in a long corridor, and one he bumped was Art Bales. “Are you The Bagman?” Johns said. Bales said no, Gearhart was. Lem Johns found him and ordered him to hurry to the side of the Vice-President. It was ironic that, in the past eight minutes, no one knew where The Bagman was or who he was; and The Bagman didn’t know where the President was, or who he was. If there was a time when the United States could not retaliate instantaneously to a nuclear attack, these were the minutes.