109 East Palace

by Jennet Conant

  All through the war, the mysterious little hole in the fence kept reappearing, and Indians from the nearby pueblos would climb through and come to the picture show, which cost twelve cents, and buy Cokes at the PX. There was a persistent rumor that Oppie was responsible for that hole.

  For a very few, life behind Groves’ tall fences was too claustrophobic to bear. Worst affected were the recent refugees from Europe, for whom the guards, dogs, and concertina wire brought back memories of the internment camps they had recently left behind. “A few people were absolutely incompatible with Los Alamos,” acknowledged Greene. “One man arrived, his name I fortunately don’t remember, and left within twenty-four hours. One girl was actually sent away. Then there were a couple of people who didn’t get along very well but stuck it out. There always was the question [for Oppie], of whether you really should persuade someone to come because it was going to be such a close and difficult place to live and maybe they would be more trouble than they were worth.” One of the few women physicists, Jane Roberg, who worked on calculations for the fusion weapon, asked to leave because of personal problems. The Swiss-born theoretician Felix Bloch also could not stand it. He had managed to escape Hitler’s Germany and immigrate to America, only to find himself at the mercy of Groves’ restrictive policies and Oppenheimer’s equally autocratic management of the laboratory. The aristocratic Bloch made no secret of the fact that he was appalled by the experimental desert laboratory and felt the whole undertaking was a waste of time. In his opinion, radar, and not the bomb, would decide the war with Germany, and he asked to be released from the project. After weeks of simmering tension, Groves and Oppenheimer gave Bloch permission to depart, which they were loath to do given his abilities and how much he knew of the operation.

  Teller always felt that his friendship with Bloch was a mark against him, and noted that the only time Oppenheimer invited him to join his regular poker games, a gathering of considerable status, was at the precise moment that Teller had promised to drive Bloch to the station. Teller viewed this as a typically manipulative Oppenheimer ploy and chose to see his friend off instead. As a parting gift, Bloch presented him with a plaque, purchased in one of the tourist shops, which fully expressed his contempt for the project: it depicted a car driving headlong into a tree.

  SEVEN

  Summer Camp

  AS THE CHIEF ARCHITECT of their misery, Groves was blamed for everything that disgruntled the scientific populace. He had made the mesa his de facto headquarters, and he walked around the place as if he owned it and rubbed almost everyone the wrong way. He would march past Priscilla Greene’s desk heading straight for Oppie’s office and, without breaking stride, would rebuke her for the dirty fingerprints on the door, demanding, “Don’t you ever wash your hands?” Greene, who routinely listened in on all calls and took notes, as Oppenheimer could not possibly keep track of the dozens of conversations he had with people over the course of the day, would feel hurt and insulted when Groves bellowed, “Get her off the line.” She complained bitterly to Oppenheimer, who shrugged and said that the general was tough on subordinates as a matter of policy. “I remember Robert sitting me down and telling me about Groves, that he could be mean, and sometimes had a nasty tongue,” said Greene. “He said he did it on purpose, to keep people under his thumb, and to create an aura around himself.”

  Groves expected Los Alamos to operate like a military base, with the same discipline and austere living conditions. As a result of his tight-fisted, no-frills policies, Los Alamos had none of the civilizing touches found in even the smallest towns, such as paved roads or sidewalks, forcing its inhabitants to slog through the spring mud like pig farmers. The scientists were further irritated by the fact that some aspects of life on the post seemed unduly primitive. In a typical requisitioning screwup, the army had ordered enormous cast-iron coal-and wood-burning stoves, known as “Black Beauties,” which took hours to get started and which, once they got going, invariably turned the cramped quarters into saunas. Beyond the inconvenience and discomfort, there was the very real threat of fire. The flimsy wooden apartment buildings were veritable fire traps and, to make matters worse, came equipped with furnaces designed for buildings ten times the size. There was a constant danger that either the furnaces or the stoves would overheat. Every time the siren sounded, people rushed from their homes clutching their children for fear the whole block might be consumed in minutes. For many disillusioned wives, the Black Beauties were the last straw. When Jane Wilson complained that cooking on the smoke-belching monstrosities was an unnecessary hardship, Groves scoffed at her faintheartedness. The general insisted on coming over to her apartment and giving her a lesson on how it should be done, eventually getting down on all fours and blowing on the kindling for all he was worth. At 7,300 feet, however, a fire is slow to light. After an hour’s exertion, the general succeeded in coaxing a flame from the box and departed, covered in soot. Shortly thereafter, the army issued everyone electric hot plates.

  “People—I know I certainly did—used to blame everything on General Groves,” said Greene. “When Hans Staub left, he wrote a letter to General Groves on the wall. I used to compose letters to General Groves in my head when things were particularly tough. I once almost set the whole apartment on fire [using] my neighbor’s Black Beauty and got too big a fire going…. Looking back on it years later,” she added, “it seems fairly adventuresome and not too difficult, but sometimes you felt a little put upon.”

  Despite all the technical matters he had to attend to, Oppenheimer tried to solve these domestic crises as they came up and to look after his staff’s welfare. His concern for their happiness was perhaps less altruistic than practical, as he realized keeping the scientists and their families content was essential to securing a stable and productive workforce. He allayed tempers and injured feelings with his patience, an informal “we’re-all-in-this-together” spirit, and warm first-name-basis relationships with everyone on the mesa. After Groves overheard some of the Italian-speaking physicists talking animatedly in their native language over lunch at Fuller Lodge, he went over to the table, which included Fermi, Bruno Rossi, and Segrè, and, as the latter indignantly recalled, informed them “he did not like us speaking Hungarian!” Groves went on to say that he expected English to be the only language spoken on the mesa. Understandably, that did not go over too well with the recent immigrants and their families—Teller among them—and the general’s recommendation was roundly ignored. But when Groves complained that he continued to hear foreign languages spoken over dinner, Oppenheimer was forced to convene a half dozen top physicists and delicately suggest they refrain from speaking in their native tongues in public spaces. What they did in their homes or off campus, he added, was their own business.

  From the beginning, Oppenheimer relied on Dorothy to deal with the more disgruntled wives—to listen to their troubles and sorrows, provide sound advice, and find ways to make their life at Los Alamos a little easier. She served as the project’s unofficial den mother, soothing frayed nerves and alleviating the loneliness that came with the desert and great distances from friends and family. She reassured skittish young faculty wives, who had never spent a day in the wilderness before, that there was little chance they would find a rattlesnake in their shoe, and promised that the project’s tall fences would keep out the coyotes they heard howling at night. Bears were occasionally sighted on the dry hills, but Dorothy advised people that the bears generally ran at the sight of humans and would not bother them if they did not bother their cubs. She told them the Rio Grande was usually too muddy to swim in, but the cool Santa Cruz Reservoir was less than an hour’s drive and would make a nice Sunday outing. Dorothy would endeavor to find out what they were missing most, going to great lengths to procure a pony for a moping youngster, pumpernickel bread for homesick Austrians, and wines that had never been seen in those parts before. “All women brought their difficulties and their checks to Dorothy,” wrote Laura Fermi in a memoir of the war
years. “She endorsed the latter so they could be cashed at the bank, and smoothed out the first…. Women always came out of Dorothy’s office with greater cheer than when going in.”

  Her door was always open. Despite all the comings and goings at 109, and the piles of boxes and packages that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her small office, she always had time for a chat and a considered appraisal of any problem. She never ceased to amaze people with her promptness and ingenuity in satisfying both their urgent needs and their more whimsical requests. She kept their secrets and, as their only contact with the outside world, often helped resolve personal problems requiring the greatest delicacy and discretion. She could be counted on for her common sense and sympathetic ear, except in the case of whiners. She had little patience for sissies, and said as much. So the altitude of 7,300 feet made some people woozy. So water boiled at 198 degrees Fahrenheit, foods took forever to cook, and a simple meal of meat and potatoes might take three hours to prepare. It wasn’t the end of the world. She gave them a pressure cooker and told them to stop complaining. If she thought someone was indulging in a prolonged bout of self-pity, she would remind her that there was a war on and of the overriding importance of the work that had to be done. After all, Dorothy would scold, as a scientist’s wife she was lucky to be together with her loved ones, with a husband who was coming home every night, and she should stop talking of leaving and start making herself useful. Oppenheimer, whose own wife could be a handful, was grateful to Dorothy for lightening his load, and he increasingly relied on her for help. He understood that Dorothy’s so-called housekeeping activities encompassed hundreds of small tasks that were essential to so large an operation and that her good humor and kind ministrations went a long way toward making sure he did not lose any more employees, as he could not afford to lose a single one.

  As they settled into life on the Hill, the scientists were helped by a feeling of pent-up excitement, which Bethe likened to the exhilarating first week of summer camp. It helped that the spring weather had turned fine and mild, and that the thin dry air tasted like champagne, making them feel giddy and feverish. On April 22, 1943, Kitty Oppenheimer threw a party to celebrate Oppie’s fortieth birthday, and everyone discovered that at that altitude, a little liquor went a long way. Oppie worked his usual magic with martinis, and after just one cocktail, many of the revelers found their heads swimming and their balance seriously impaired. Records provided the music, and the drinking and dancing progressed. As was the case with most mesa parties, this was a chance to let off steam, and most of the revelers stayed until well after eleven, wandering home with the aid of flashlights to avoid falling into one of the many ditches by the side of the road and breaking an ankle. Given that everyone lived in virtually identical apartment complexes, which they called “greenhouses,” there was much hilarity and blundering about in the dark. The occasion was marred only by the McMillans absence, and the fact that Oppie grew increasingly frantic as the evening wore on and they failed to turn up. Much later that night, they learned that there had been a car accident and the convertible the McMillans had been riding in had slid off one of the steep mountain roads and flipped over. The Jensens and the Weinekes, who had been leading the way in their own car, had gone for help. Ed McMillan escaped with only a cut on his forehead, but Elsie’s skull was fractured, and she would require months of rest and hospital care. It was a cautionary tale that discouraged many Los Alamos wives from venturing down the mountain on their own, though the jolting ride up and back on the army bus, with the back end hanging over the edge on the turns, was almost as hair-raising.

  Everyone took turns visiting Elsie McMillan at the tiny, barrackslike Los Alamos hospital, turning it into a regular meeting place during her long recuperation. A statuesque redheaded nurse named Harriet (“Petey”) Peterson presided over the five-room facility, and her dog, an enormous Irish wolfhound named Timoshenko, sleepily kept guard outside the front door. The post’s lawyer, Smitty Carlisle, made regular excuses to stop by and flirt with Peterson, and despite giving him a hard time, she would marry him many years later.

  The project’s very tall, very blond medical director, Louis Hempelmann, was also in love, and he spent much of his free time conducting a telephone courtship with Elinor Pulitzer, the beautiful daughter of the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer II, the editor and publisher of the St. Louis Post Dispatch. He finally worked up the courage to propose, and Oppenheimer gave him permission to slip away to get married. When he returned shortly thereafter with his glamorous bride, whose debutante ball eighteen months earlier had made all the society columns, her lavish wardrobe was the talk of the mesa—particularly after she let it be known that one of her Palm Beach ensembles cost $500, which was more than many of the physicists earned in a month. She came from a completely different world than everyone else on the Hill and had no idea how to cook or clean or cope without staff. But she was very funny about her wartime predicament and willing to learn, and everyone admired her gumption. Not long after she arrived, she decided to throw a big dinner party. Unaware that it would take hours for a roast to cook at that altitude, she neglected to put the meat in the oven until her guests arrived. Everyone got so drunk waiting for the food that she earned a reputation as an excellent hostess. The last thing anyone could remember that night was Groves trying to negotiate the stairs of the duplex, saying, “I’ll go down first,” and Kitty Oppenheimer following right behind him, saying, “That’s just fine, General. I’ll fall on you.”

  To the younger members of the project, it seemed as if they had been invited to take part in a grand adventure, along with many of the most famous scientists in the world. They were awed by the collection of talent around them and happily put up with the inconveniences and exhausting hours for the chance to sit at the feet of great physicists like Oppenheimer, Bethe, Rabi, the brilliant mathematician John von Neumann, and the incomparable Enrico Fermi, who would visit from Chicago. “We had a sense of patriotic duty, but also a sense of being privileged to be in that company,” said Harold Agnew. “That they would pay any attention to us was amazing. It was really a thrill to be there.”

  By the time Beverly Agnew caught up with her husband, the worst of the mud season was over and the town was beginning to take shape. Los Alamos struck her as an amazing cross between an alpine resort and a mining camp. She had a fleeting impression of a ski lodge, inspired by the wooden chalets and distant snowcapped peaks, and the spectacle of so many people sportily attired in Western clothes and boots. “I remember when I stepped off the train at Lamy, I was wearing a proper tweed suit, and I wore gloves, heels, a hat and carried a purse,” she said. “And here was this woman waiting to pick me up, and she had on blue jeans! At that point in my life, I had never seen anything like it. I will always remember how very shocked I was. Of course, after that, I wore them all the time.”

  Beverly rolled up her sleeves and took on the peculiarities of life on the utilitarian post as a sporting challenge. In the beginning, she and Harold more or less “camped out” in a small, two-bedroom apartment with another couple and six men whose families had not arrived yet. Each couple had their own bedroom, and six cots were set up in the living room. When they finally got their own place, she found the cramped apartment no worse than most graduate student housing. The Commissary shelves were stacked with canned goods, albeit many of them unheard-of brands and unheard-of sizes, including industrial-sized jugs of mustard and vanilla extract and two-gallon tins of peas and corn. But the meat was better and more plentiful than what was available at home because of the wartime shortages. “Those were chaotic days, but for us they were fun,” she said. “I cooked a lot, and it wasn’t unusual to have three or four Nobel Prize winners to dinner.”

  Beverly went straight to work in Oppie’s office as promised, helping Priscilla Greene get all the new arrivals sorted. By then, Oppenheimer’s original plan for thirty scientists and their dependants had long since fallen by the wayside, and the second rough estimate
of a hundred or more was already a distant dream as the number needed for the project continued to snowball. “I guess Oppie and I both had this amazed feeling—everyone did,” recalled Greene. “You didn’t know what was going to happen. It just happened, and then all of a sudden you’d say, ‘Wow, here we are 150. Wow, here we are 750.’ Once in a while you had to really make a big plan because there wasn’t any place for people to live. Nobody sat down and said, ‘Gee, we must have made a mistake; we didn’t plan it right in the first place.’ It just happened to us all. There was nothing you could do about it.”

  They soon resigned themselves to the fact that the housing construction would never stop. Huge army bulldozers continuously tore away at the rock cliffs, leveling everything in their path. One morning, Mici Teller had settled on a blanket under a shady clump of pine trees near her apartment and was preparing to feed her baby son his bottle, when a young soldier politely asked her to move. He had orders to clear the surrounding area. Determined to preserve her shade trees from the plow, she refused to budge. The soldier left, but he returned the next day insisting that he had orders “to finish this neck of the woods.” Every bit as stubborn as her husband, Mici rallied a group of wives and the women all set up chairs under the trees. There was nothing the soldier could do but report back to his commanding officer. When advised of the standoff, Groves relented and said, “Leave the trees.” As Edward Teller later observed, even their general, who was not accustomed to deferring to civilians, seems to have possessed “a little knowledge about human engineering.”