Halt of Wilcox’s troops in Caroline Street, Fredericksburg, previous to going into battle. Photo courtesy The Saturday Evening Post (January 17, 1863).

No country can win a war if its military strength isn’t matched by the determination of its people. If a war lasts too long, the public’s resolve runs out before the ammunition does. Case in point: it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible for the administration to maintain public support for the Vietnam War for its entire 14 years. More recently, our country’s determination has been challenged by 11 years in Afghanistan that have produced no decisive victories.

It was no easier 150 years ago, when the Union Army was still recovering from its December 1862 defeat at Fredericksburg. A growing number of Americans were demanding that President Lincoln negotiate with the Confederate government.

In this winter of discontent, the Post responded to the “gloom and dissatisfaction which secessionists are striving to spread over the land” by comparing the achievements of the Northern and Southern armies. In “What We Have Done and What the Rebels Have Done” (February 14, 1863), the editors credited the Union with 33 victories and the Confederacy with just 17.

This ratio of battlefield successes—nearly two-to-one—gives the impression the Union Army was outfighting its Confederate counterpart. But, if truth be told, Post editors were fiddling with the numbers for reasons that were hardly journalistic. The publication had an agenda to stir up waning enthusiasm for Lincoln’s war efforts.

There had been plenty of support for the war when it began in March 1861. Young men throughout the North rushed to enlist, their only worry being the war would be over before they had a chance to prove themselves. After all, they presumed, this would be a short, decisive war.

Then the long list of Union defeats began. In July 1861, the Confederates defeated General McDowell at Bull Run. In March 1862, they defeated General McClellan on the Virginia Peninsula. In August, they defeated General Pope, again at Bull Run. In December, they threw back General Burnsides at the battle of Fredericksburg.

The only place where the Union seemed to advance was in the western states, where Ulysses Grant was making a name for himself with a string of river victories. But Kentucky and Tennessee were a long way from Richmond, Virginia, the seeming invulnerable Confederate capital.

So Post editors rewrote the war to put the Union Army and Navy in a more positive light, using standards that consistently favored the North. For example:

• Three of the Union “victories” were not achieved by combat but reflected territories fell into Federal hands after the Confederates abandoned them.
• The “Evacuation of Manassas” was, in fact, a retreat.
• Two of the Confederates’ major wins at Bull Run were listed as just one victory.
• The editors counted five Union victories in the Peninsula Campaign, but gave the Confederates just one for winning the entire campaign. Moreover, everything the Union gained at Yorktown, Williamsburg, Hanover Courthouse, Fair Oaks, and Malvern Hill, they lost when driven from these battlefields as they retreated down the peninsula.
• Overall, the editors also didn’t weigh the Union and Rebel successes on the same scale: the South’s victories at Bull Run, the Virginia Peninsula, and Fredericksburg were a greater feat of arms than the minor battle of Drainesville or Mill Spring, but reading the Post article, you’d never know that.

Southerners would have recognized the true disparity in the two armies’ successes. They knew that, for all the North’s small victories, the South had kept them from advancing into Virginia for two years. What they couldn’t see in 1863 was how these little victories were quietly adding up and reducing their ability to wage war. The Confederacy still put its faith in winning with a decisive victory in one, big battle. It had been true in Napoleon’s day, but was no longer. Modern wars, waged across the breadth of a nation, were won by countless small wins with little glory and savage fighting.

But a campaign that relies on countless small wins, as we’ve seen in our current fighting in the Middle East, doesn’t look like progress.

The Post’s Civil War Half-Time Report The Saturday Evening Post

Maj. Jimmy Stewart talking with the crew of a B-24 named "Betty." Photo courtesy Library of Congress

No movie is more closely associated with the Christmas season than It’s a Wonderful Life. For many people, it is the essential holiday movie, and the role they most closely associate with Jimmy Stewart.

In many ways, Stewart was very much like the character of George Bailey—the congenial, folksy manager of the Bailey Building and Loan Association. But there was far more depth to the actor than his movie roles suggested, as Post readers learned in December 1945. “Jimmy Stewart’s Finest Performance,” written by Colonel Beirne Lay Jr., showed a side of the actor that had been largely kept out of the press: Colonel James Stewart of the 445th Bomber Group.

Despite being overage and underweight, Stewart was able to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941 on the strength of his flying experience. He’d received his pilot’s license in 1935, and already had 400 hours of flying time by the beginning of the war.

The armed forces were glad to sign up celebrities. Young men were encouraged to enlist when they saw famous musicians and movie stars in uniform. But the military was careful to keep the big names away from the shooting. A celebrity killed in action might discourage potential recruits. So movies stars, like Robert Taylor, Henry Fonda, and Mickey Rooney, served in uniform but saw little, if any, combat.

Clark Gable was one of the few exceptions. After enlisting in the Air Force, and completing the training, he served as a gunner on missions over Germany in a B-17.

The odds were against Stewart ever seeing combat. He was a particularly valuable property, having just won the Oscar for Best Actor after his performance in The Philadelphia Story. But Stewart was determined to fly in combat, and continued his training throughout 1942. It was only when the rest of his training unit shipped to Europe and he remained as a trainer-pilot in Boise, Idaho, that he realized the truth.

The Big Moment: As operations officer at a B-24 Liberator base in England, the then Major Stewart distributes the flight forms to heavy-bomber pilots for the all-important D-Day mission. Photo courtesy The Saturday Evening Post.

Fortunately, he was able to get his commander to intercede and get him a commission with a bomber group flying B-24s. In October 1943, his unit arrived at its airfield in Norfolk, England. Over the next year, he flew 20 missions into Germany, dodging intense anti-aircraft fire and Luftwaffe fighter planes in the most intense, and costly, air combat ever seen.

According to several accounts, Stewart wasn’t just a good pilot. He was exceptional. The Air Corps, recognizing his flying skill and ability to command, gave him the lead in several of the 1,500-plane raids into Germany. He helped plan the bombing missions and often conducted the briefings for pilots, where he would use his skills as a performer to liven up the sessions and keep the aviators’ attention. Walter Matthau, then a sergeant with the squadron, would sit through Stewart’s briefing because they were so entertaining.

He was also careful and meticulous. He would sit through briefings twice to make sure he had heard all the details.

Just back from Germany, Stewart reports on the mission. Photo courtesy The Saturday Evening Post.

But he wasn’t immune to the fears. Colonel Low knew how the pressure mounted on the pilot-actor with each mission. Stewart began suffering from recurring nightmares, and his digestion was so upset he often lived on just ice cream and peanut butter.

He admitted to Low that, in February 1944, he was convinced he would die in the next day’s bombing run. But he took off anyway, fought his way deep into Germany and returned, bringing himself and his crew unharmed back to the base.

He returned to Hollywood in the spring of 1945. The first acting job he accepted was the role of George Bailey—a nice, idealistic guy who selflessly puts his life on hold while he takes care of others.

You might gain a new appreciation for Stewart’s acting talent the next time you watch It’s a Wonderful Life and remember, one year earlier, he was flying through fierce anti-aircraft fire and seeing his comrades shot out of the sky. Yet he still seems the boyish character he’d always played. You can’t even tell how his hair had been tinted to cover all the gray he’d picked up since The Philadelphia Story.

Jimmy Stewart’s Finest Performance The Saturday Evening Post

Over 600 miles northwest of New Zealand, Norfolk was a tiny, peaceful island before the Japanese eyed it in 1942. “Norfolk Islanders, for the most part,” the article recounts, “were still dreaming about their forbears who put old Captain Bligh off the Bounty and sailed off to new lands…” The descendants of Master’s Mate Fletcher Christian and other mutineers “brought the Bounty to Pitcairn Island. By 1853, Pitcairn had become crowded and the mutineers’ descendants petitioned Queen Victoria for a new home.” They were settled on Norfolk Island (which they got for a steal, as you will read in the article).

“Fletcher Christian’s a good friend of mine,” Sergeant Lynam stated in the article. “He doesn’t look like Clark Gable, by any means, because Fletch is only twelve. But he’s a long-distance descendant of the man who led the mutiny on the bounty.”

Fast forward to World War II. A new airstrip on the island and its traffic control station were vital for supply planes heading to the Solomon Islands. Sergeant Lynam was sent to oversee things, landing “a choice job, one of the Army’s best,” according to the article. “His friends aren’t going to believe him after the war,” the author states. “One lone American with a staff of four women on a South Pacific Island.”

It was unusual that a one-man army commanded a location. So much so, that a general stopping off at Norfolk “asked to see the commanding general of American troops, and was so surprised when he was confronted by the entire garrison in the person of Sergeant Lynam that he forgot what he wanted to say.”

The American “troops” on Norfolk “can’t complain because of the lack of sports facilities,” says the article. “Sergeant Lynam shoots a neat 50 on the islands nine-hole golf course. The swimming along the sand beach is tops. There are three or four tennis courts and unlimited horses to ride.” Pretty top-notch for a former penal colony. Sergeant Lynam was also well versed in the lore and legends of the island’s times of housing convicts.

From his origins in Indiana, he settled in South Haven, Michigan. The former “one-man army” is still married to “the love of my life” after 63 years. Life hasn’t always been “cushy” – he suffered from malaria three times after serving on Guadalcanal. In South Haven “I have had 2 heart attacks and a few bad falls, but all with full recovery and am healthy and happy and will be 89 years of age on May 26.” Happy birthday from your friends at the Post, Wib!

Norfolk “was a truly fascinating experience that I will always cherish,” wrote Mr. Lynam. “At the ripe old age of 89, I am still alive and well and still live with my memories of beautiful Norfolk Island and my pride at having been featured in the article in The Saturday Evening Post.” We share this article with pride in veterans like Sergeant Lynam and our current homesick troops who will understand that, scenic Island Paradise or not, the young Sergeant was quoted as saying, “I’d trade it all for an Indiana snowstorm.”

Read “The War’s Cushiest Billet” by Capt. Carlton Zucker [PDF].

The One-Man Army The Saturday Evening Post

Coby was an Alabama lad, six feet five tall; with blue eyes and a smile that spilled over from some inner reservoir of delight. He walked around in his private cloud, always grinning, humming, chuckling, telling himself stories, slapping his thighs in gratitude for his own inexhaustible good company. “Man, oh, man,” he would chortle, “that’s mighty fine stuff. Yes, suh, yes, suh, that’s mighty fine stuff.” He was entirely at home with himself — his body, his history, his reveries. He was the happiest man I ever knew. His moods ran an exceptionally narrow gamut, being bounded at the lower end by pleasure and at the upper range by bliss. The only thing he was sensitive about was his height, which he unfailingly gave, in rueful confession, at “five foot seventeen.”

On the post we always knew when Coby was about to materialize; you could hear, in advance, the humming or whistling or chuckling of his unremittent dialogue with himself. Hear it? No. Overhear it. For his contact with any of us—with the universe beyond his own fantasies — was fragmentary, and oddly compassionate. I think he felt sorry for everyone who did not live with him in the remembered past with which he chose to replace the present.

Coby was an exceedingly co-operative soldier, but he was most oddly co-ordinated. His limbs seemed to live a life independent of his torso. When Coby drew himself to attention, he did it in pieces, as it were —as if his brain were obliged to send messages to the outlying provinces of his bodily empire; naturally it took more time for a foot to respond than, say, a hand, since the one was so much farther away from headquarters than the other.

Coby looked strong — very strong — but he did not feel strong. And a man who does not feel strong simply is not able to lift certain loads, or move certain objects, or heave, haul, toss or carry things which much weaker men manage to do because they want to be strong. This was an illusion Coby had never seriously entertained. He did not give a damn about physical strength; he wanted harmony, not power. He found himself in a world where men competed — for jobs, for women, for money, for promotions. Coby never competed for anything. He was content with himself, encouraged himself, enjoyed himself and admired himself. “His ego,” the post psychiatrist later remarked in a special report to the C.O.,” is inaccessible to conventional appeals.”

It certainly was. Coby was the only private in the United States Army who never made his bed; his sergeant made his bed for him, each and every morning. I think he is the only private in military history whom neither sergeants nor lieutenants nor captains nor majors nor colonels could prevail upon. They tried — all of them. Lord knows they tried. They tried command and cajolery, threats and bluster and reprisals, but Coby would not make his bed. He would hear out the orders, the threats, the reasoning, the appeals to sense, to teamwork, to esprit de corps. Then all he’d say, with the utmost kindliness, was: ‘”Tain’t fit for a grown man to make his own bed.”

All this broke upon our collective awareness the first morning after Coby was shipped to our installation. His sergeant came into quarters just before inspection to find Coby staring out the window happily, humming a roundelay. His bed was unmade.
Sergeant Pulaski, an uncomplicated Polish boy from Chicago, called, “Clay!”

“Yes, suh,” Coby beamed.

“Clay,” said Sergeant Pulaski sternly, “You didn’t make your bed.”

“That’s right, suh.”

Sergeant Pulaski wrinkled his brow. “Why not?”

Coby said, “‘Tain’t fit for a grown man to make his own bed.”
Sergeant Pulaski, who had a gift for unvarnished command, put his fists on his hips at once and barked, “What the hell kind of stuff is that?”

“Back home,” said Coby, “my maw always makes my bed. Ever since I been born my maw always made that bed.”

“In the Army,” said Sergeant Pulaski very slowly, “there ain’t no mommas to make no beds. In the Army, soldier, everyone except officers makes his own bed. Now make that bed.”

Coby took thought and shook his head with an air of the most amiable reluctance. “Suh, I don’t want to make no trouble for nobody, nohow, but I jest cain’t do it.”

“And why, may I ask, cain’t you just do it?”

“Because I jest couldn’t face my maw again if I made my own bed.”

Sergeant Pulaski stared at Coby, tightened his lips, said, “A guy asks for trouble he’s gonna get trouble,” and stalked out.

Coby lay down on his bed and played the harmonica. In less than five minutes, Sergeant Pulaski returned with Lieutenant Bienstock. Bienstock, a second lieutenant with fuzz on his cheek, but not on his chin, was an enthusiastic exponent of that come-on-fellows-let’s-all-put-our-shoulders-to-the-wheel-together attitude which never fails to puzzle military observers from abroad, who expect an army to be divided simply into these who command and those who obey.

He hastened into the barracks now with shining eyes, alert ears and palpitating disbelief. “Which one? Where, sergeant? Which one is it? . . . That one? Oh. . . . On your feet, soldier.”

As Coby undulated himself upward, part after part, until he stood more or less at attention, Lieutenant Bienstock paled slightly.
“Mornin’, suh,” Coby smiled.

Lieutenant Bienstock glanced uneasily at Sergeant Pulaski and said, “Now, listen. Clay. You don’t want to get into any trouble, do you? And we certainly don’t want to make you any trouble. Now, what’s all this I hear about your not intending to make your bed?”
Coby looked down at his superior from bland, unruffled heights. “I don’t want to make no trouble for nobody nohow. I like it here, suh. But I never made up no bed in m’whole life. It jest don’t feel right, and I couldn’t look my maw in the eye agin.”

Lieutenant Bienstock stared at the kind, forbearing face above him, and, in a slightly strained voice, asked, “Do you realize what you’re saying. Clay? Do you know what this means? Why—you’re deliberately refusing to obey an order from a superior officer!”

“Oh, no, suh,” Coby said. “I ain’t refusin’ t’obey no one, nohow. No. suh.”

“Then you’ll go ahead and make that bed.”

“Cain’t,” said Coby.

“You certainly can. You know you can, and it’s silly to say you can’t.”

“Cain’t,” said Coby.

Lieutenant Bienstock glanced at Sergeant Pulaski nervously, wet his lips, studied the ceiling for a moment, and said, “Sergeant, take this man to Captain Howard’s office. Wait for me there.”

“Right.” Sergeant Pulaski saluted and nodded to Coby, who regarded Lieutenant Bienstock in the kindest possible way before ambling out. Bienstock lighted a cigarette quickly, inhaled deeply, and thought very hard, organizing all his thoughts. There were a great many of them. Then he hurried out and headed for Captain Howard’s office.

Coby was sitting on a long bench, one foot drawn up with his elbow on it, his hand dangling loosely, moving in lazy rhythm to his humming. Sergeant Pulaski was standing next to him in the correctest possible military posture. Lieutenant Bienstock regarded Coby sententiously, giving him one last chance to recant. Coby started to mobilize his bodily ingredients for ascent with a smile so understanding that Lieutenant Bienstock turned on his heel and strode into Captain Howard’s private office.

Captain Howard was a mint sucker. He was efficient, crisp, hard-working and mean. An automobile salesman from Wichita, he was a stern believer in fair play, cold showers and clean thoughts. His thoughts were so clean that he spent most of his free time planning a laundry service he was going to run as soon as his term of service was over. He was the kind of partial personality known as “a man’s man.” He had few friends and many doubts. When he was sure no one was watching, he bit his nails. When he went to sleep, he looked anxious.

He was tallying up some requisition forms when Lieutenant Bienstock entered. Bienstock saluted smartly, accepted Captain Howard’s cursory “Proceed,” and recited the details of Private Coby Clay’s one-man defiance of the simplest and most universal requirement of military life.

When he finished, Captain Howard looked up with an expression of incipient outrage. “He won’t make his bed?”

Lieutenant Bienstock cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. He says he won’t make his bed.”

Captain Howard stared at Bienstock as if at one who had just told him the sun had risen in the west that morning.

“He says it’s against his principles, sir,” said Bienstock.

“His principles?” Captain Howard echoed. “What the hell is he, a Mohammedan or something?”

“No, sir. He’s from the South.”

“So what? Half this installation is — “

“Says his maw always made his bed for him an it ‘tain’t — it isn’t fit for a grown man to make his own bed.”

Captain Howard leaned forward, hunched his shoulders like a fullback plowing through the line, and cried, “His maw? What the hell’s the matter with you, Bienstock?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Bienstock with a pained expression. “I was just quoting.”

“He calls his mother ‘maw’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is he a hillbilly or something?”

Bienstock hesitated. “I think he’s an illiterate, sir.”

“To hell with that. I don’t care if he’s a Mason. Do you mean to stand there and say you let a damn dogface pull something like refusing to make his own bed on you?

“Sir, I explained and insisted and argued with him, and I even –”

Howard’s face assumed various hues of impatience as Lieutenant Bienstock proceeded. This made Lieutenant Bienstock more nervous, and he began to stammer. This made Captain Howard’s lips thread themselves so that contempt replaced impatience. This made Lieutenant Bienstock blush. This made Captain Howard slap his desk with his open palm and snap, “You argued with him? What the hell’s the matter with you anyway, Bienstock? You’re an officer of the United States Army! Act like one. Throw that no-good, gold-bricking louse in the guardhouse.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me! Throw him in the can!”

“I thought —“

“Don’t! Give him to the MP’s, boy—to the MP’s. Twenty-four hours in the cooler will’cool off that joker. It’s as simple as that. ‘He won’t make his bed.’ Ha! “It ain’t fit for a grown man,’” Howard repeated in disgust. “Holy Moses, man, even the communists make their own beds! Dismissed!”

Lieutenant Bienstock wiped his brow the minute he got outside the door, signaled to Sergeant Pulaski, and strode out while Sergeant Pulaski told Coby, “Up!” When they were more than fifty feet from Captain Howard’s office, Lieutenant Bienstock made a last earnest effort with Coby, who listened with the utmost consideration. You could see that he wouldn’t want to hurt Lieutenant Bienstock’s feelings for anything in the world. But what he said, after Bienstock’s moving appeal to reason, was “’Tain’t fit for a grown man to— “

“Sergeant,” said Bienstock manfully, “take this man to the guardhouse! By order of Captain Howard.”

Coby spent that day and night behind bars. He spent most of the day singing and slept through the night like a particularly contented lamb.

Sergeant Pulaski was waiting for Coby with a knowing smile when Coby returned to the barracks from the guardhouse the next day.

Coby was delighted to see him. “Man, oh, man,” he chuckled, “I caught up on plenty of shut-eye.”

Pulaski said, “O.K., Coby. Let’s us have no more trouble from you, huh?”

Coby’s eyes moved serenely around the room, coming to rest on his own bed in the far corner. It looked as neat, tight and oblong as a coffin.

“We got commended for neat quarters this morning,” said Sergeant Pulaski defensively. “O.K., O.K., so I made the bed up myself. But no more trouble from you, huh. Clay?”

“No, suh,” said Coby. “I ain’t aimin’ to give nobody—”

“— no trouble no how,” Pulaski finished. “I heard you. Now get the lead out and fall in with your squad.”

Coby spent the day training with his company, went to sleep that night, rose the next morning, helped his comrades mop the floor and sweep the stairs, lent a helping hand to one and all, humming and smiling all the while—but he did not make his bed. Sergeant Pulaski looked baffled as he went out to find Lieutenant Bienstock once more.

Bienstock gave Coby a fervent ten-minute lecture on military discipline, Captain Howard’s cold heart and the reputation of Colonel Fenshaw, a terror in disciplinary matters. Coby could not have been more interested in these novel insights into the military organization of which he was so new a part. But he would not sacrifice his principles; he would not sully his mother’s image of him; he would not make his bed. He returned to the guardhouse. And Sergeant Pulaski made his bed again, while Coby sang for his colleagues in the can.

The next day Coby was back with his fellows. That night he slept in the bed which Sergeant Pulaski had made that morning. The next morning he declined to make his bed, with real affection and regret, and went to the guardhouse again.

This went on for a week, Coby spending alternate nights at the guardhouse, sleeping alternate nights in the bed which the desperate Sergeant Pulaski so despairingly made for him. When it seemed clear that Coby Clay was willing to spend the rest of his days in this idyllic double life, Lieutenant Bienstock reported to Captain Howard with an unmistakable note of panic in his voice.

Captain Howard studied Lieutenant Bienstock with disgust mingled with disbelief, saying, between his many fine, well-brushed teeth, “Bring that soldier in to me.” He had never laid eyes on Coby Clay.

When Coby presented himself, Captain Howard was on the telephone, his back to the door, reading aloud from a report and chewing out a lieutenant in the Quartermaster Corps. Captain Howard was feeling especially curt, concise and complete that day. He slammed the phone down, turned in his chair, deliberately keeping his eyes on the report, waiting for the familiar phrase: “Private – reporting, sir,” from the erect body on the other side of the desk. He did not get the salutation, because Coby did not know it.

Captain Howard put his pencil down slowly, exactly parallel to the blotter pad, assumed an expression of icy foreboding, then lifted his eyes up the height of the private waiting for his dispensation. This calculated movement of the eyes had always before served Captain Howard’s purposes; it was a kind of slow deflation of the other’s ego, a deliberate chopping down of hope or pretension, a tactical maneuver which made it crystal-clear who was standing and who was sitting and who was going to continue standing at the sole pleasure of who was sitting. But Lieutenant Bienstock had forgotten to tell Captain Howard how tall Coby Clay was. By the time Captain Howard’s gaze had reached the unexpected height of Coby’s chin, Wilbur Howard, who was only five feet eight had his head far in the socket of his neck and his eyes were bugged into an involuntary bulge.

Coby was smiling sheepishly, us he always did when people first comprehended his height. “ I come right over here, suh, jest like that there other fellow told me.”

“Who?” asked Captain Howard.

“That there other fellow. The one brought me here before.”
Captain Howard could feel his neck getting hot. “That ‘other fellow’ is Lieutenant Bienstock, and you will refer to him hereafter by name.”

“He never told me his name,” said Coby.

“Well, I’m telling you his name!” Captain Howard said, slamming his open palm upon the desk. “And even if you don’t know his name, you could call him lieutenant. You understand that much, don’t you?”

“Is that what that there fella is?” asked Coby, always grateful for increment to his store of knowledge. “A lieutenan’? My!”

Captain Howard turned sideward and poured himself a glass of water, noting with relief that his hands were quite steady. He sipped the water slowly, held the glass in his hand, studied it, placed the glass back on the table to his left, leaned forward, put his palms together and said in a low, even voice. “Clay, I want you to listen very carefully to what I am about to tell you. I’ll say it slowly, so there is not the slightest chance you’ll misunderstand. It involves your making a decision that may affect your whole life. Are you ready?”

Coby drew his brows together, thinking over every word Captain Howard had uttered, and nodded.

Captain Howard took a long breath and let it out, word by word. “Either you make your bed every morning, without a single complaint, or I’ll put you in the guardhouse for a whole, solid, thirty-day month.” He fixed Coby with his deadliest I-take-no-nonsense-from-anyone stare.

“Is that clear?”

Coby nodded.

“You understand it?”

Coby nodded again.

“Any question you want to ask?”

Coby shook his head.

“Fine. Now, which will it be?”

“How’s that again, suh?” asked Coby.

Captain Howard gritted his many teeth. ‘”Which—will—it—be? Make your bed every- morning or go to the jug for thirty days?”

Coby sighed, endowing the man seated before and below him with infinite compassion. “I don’t want to make no trouble for no one nohow, suh, but ‘tain’t fit for a grown man to–

The blood drained out of Captain Howard’s face, and all sorts of evil thoughts welled up in him and had to be denied. He pressed a button on his desk crisply. “Good-by, soldier.”

Coby spent the next month in the guardhouse. It was, according to the reports that swept through our installation with the speed of a forest fire, the happiest month in Coby’s life. The MP’s and Captain Howard and Major Forman—to whom Captain Howard brought the problem, confessing defeat—simply could not believe it. They could understand it, but they could not believe it. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

For Coby Clay was behaving in such a way that the entire theory of punishment as a deterrent force was in danger. Every day Coby spent happily in the guardhouse meant that the punitive was losing its power, its symbolic warning. For the whole idea of a guardhouse, or any place of confinement, rests on the assumption that detention is hateful to man’s free spirit, crippling to man’s free soul. But now one whole sector of the United States Army was confronted with a man for whom detention held no terrors, confinement meant no deprivation, discipline represented no threat. The awful, confounding truth which was dawning on our brass was this: Private Coby Clay, of Alabama, liked the guardhouse. In fact, he preferred it to the barracks. There was something about the bounded, ordered microcosm of detention that appealed to Coby no end; life was reduced to its simplest form—devoid of conflict or the irksome necessities of choice. In the guardhouse, Coby slept like a king, ate like a horse and sang like an angel for one and all.

The fact that Coby declined to make his bed while in the guardhouse too—politely, but without uncertainly—presented its own special problem to the MP’s; after all, there was no other guardhouse to which you could send a man in punishment for not making his bed in the guardhouse in which he was. “What in hell can I do?” Major Inglehart, the MP in charge, was often heard to moan. No one knew how to answer him.

Nor was this all. The other prisoners, who regarded Coby with both affection and respect, were beginning to be converted to Coby’s unique philosophy of life; the insidious idea began to germinate in their brains that perhaps they could get away with not making their beds. To nip this development in the bud, Major Inglehart transferred Coby to a cell with one Lacy Bucks, a young enlistee from Mississippi who could not endure Yankees but felt blixid-brother lo anyone south of Kentucky. The major interviewed Private Bucks personally and, after a certain amount of shilly-shallying, ordered Bucks to make up Coby’s bed every morning. “And don’t tell anyone you’re doing it,” said Inglehart darkly.

Bucks seemed perfectly contented to do this for the major, relying on justice to reward him in the end. Coby, of course, never had reason to tell anyone who it was that was making his bed. He never needed to initiate any discussion of the bed problem at all; it was no problem to him. At home, his maw had, and so on. Then Sergeant Pulaski had; now Lacy Bucks did. It was the most natural thing in the world to Coby Clay.

We all knew that things simply could not go on this way forever. Besides, there was the problem of work details. Men being punished in a guardhouse cannot, obviously, be permitted to spend their days in happy idleness while all around them earnest comrades drill like furies, crawl through mud, contest with barbed wire, run obstacle courses with full pack under a merciless sun. The Army cannot be that naive.

Major Inglehart put Coby, Private Bucks and a barrel-chested Italian boy named Tony Caralucciano into a detail to police the grounds. It seemed a safe-enough assignment. But as it worked out, that threesome damn near demoralized our entire installation. For on any well-run army post every prisoner must be accompanied by an armed guard whenever he—I mean the prisoner—is allowed outside the guardhouse. Each man out of our guardhouse was followed, wherever he went, by a fully armed MP with a rifle, ammunition belt and battle helmet. This meant that as Coby, Lacy Bucks and Tony Caralucciano ambled happily across the grounds—in a memorable formation which I shall describe forthwith—three MP’s, carrying rifles und wearing battle helmets, marched stiffly behind in slow parade. And since the heat was very great on our post that summer, often clawing at our senses with shimmering hands, the three prisoners in fatigue clothes were conspicuously more comfortable than their nominally freer custodians.

The formation of the work detail added its own particular piquancy to the scene. Coby always took the middle spot, looming up above Lacy Bucks on his right and Tony Curalucciano on his left. Tony carried a long pole with a nail at the end; Lacy carried a burlap sack. As the three devoted men moved lazily across the ground they had been assigned to make bereft of trash, Tony would spear a piece of paper—a chewing-gum wrapper, an envelope, a crumpled ball of unrequited love—on the end of the nail that was on the end of the pole, and would hold the pole out toward Coby. Coby would then remove the paper from the nail with the utmost delicacy, crooking his little finger, would bring his hand across from left lo right, where Lacy Bucks was holding the sack open, and would then let the piece of paper drop daintily into the sack. He hummed or sung during the entire operation. This helped the morale of his guards considerably.

Tony Caralucciano had a fine saloon voice and, in the great tradition of the people from whom his stock flowed, was a passionate lover of Verdi and Puccini. Lucy Bucks was strictly a hot-jazz type, the kind who tries to find in life somewhere the archaic excitations of the syncopated. Coby, a man of broad and generous interests, liked to sing anything. And these three good men soon learned to float together on the sea of their common fantasies, singing or humming while they worked and as the moment moved them. It was a thing beautiful to hear and, once heard, never to be forgotten. It went like this:

Each morning when the trio moved into position ahead of their helmeted Cerberi, Coby would greet the day by humming a note—any note, whichever note best suited his mood. His mood was unfailingly happy. If Tony was feeling very operatic he would take off, using Coby’s theme note as a springboard, into anything from Tosca to Madame Butterfly. If it was Lacy Bucks who was in touch with his private muses, he would give out with anything from One o’Clock Jump to Roll, Jordan, Roll. And if Coby wanted to override his confreres, he would simply sing out his own immemorial hymns. There was no set pattern to it; whoever sang, the others accompanied; whatever one man finished, another would take up, on the last long, expiring note, for his own. It was as close to true understanding as any three men can ever get. As one of the guards was heard to mutter many months later, still struggling with his confusion and dismay: “Them was the happiest damn guys pickin’ up trash I ever did meet.”

When Coby’s month of punishment ended, he returned, refreshed and forgiving, to the jurisdiction of Sergeant Pulaski, who studied him in silence for a long, long moment before asking, “Coby, you learned your lesson? You gonna be a good guy and make your own bed?” Before Coby could ever finish shaking his head, Sergeant Pulaski threw his head back, glaring at the heavens, and cried, “Oh, hell! O.K.! All right. I give up! You win! A couple million guys in the whole damn American Army, from North and South and East and West, and I have to draw you. So O.K., Clay. That’s the way God wants it, that’s the way He’s gonna have it. I’ll make your damn bed from now on!”

And he did. Every morning. Every single morning, an American sergeant made a private’s bed for him. It was the talk of the post, naturally, and not a day passed but what Pulaski got kidded and razzed and needled about this transmogrification of the established order. Sergeant Pulaski began to get mighty edgy, I can tell you.

Then one day Coby loomed over Pulaski and said, “You got a minute maybe, for me to ask you somethin’?”

“Come on, come on,” said Pulaski crossly. “Talk fast. I got my rear in a wringer.”

Coby scratched his head. “Well, I been figgerin’ out about this bedmakin’. ‘Tain’t fit for a man to make his own bed, like my maw says. But I been thinkin’ an’ dreamin’ an’ schemin’ an’ all, an’ I don’t see no right reason why a man cain’t make up someone else’s bed. Like you been doin’ for me! I figger my maw wouldn’t hardly mind if I did the same little thing for you.”

The kidding of Sergeant Pulaski stopped after that. For from then on, until that whole regiment of brave men was shipped overseas, while Sergeant Pulaski made Coby’s bed each morning, Coby— humming of dark glades and promised lands—made Pulaski’s.

Happy Was The Soldier! The Saturday Evening Post

Douglas MacArthur is a particularly good example of these controversial Americans. Born 130 years ago on January 26, MacArthur still inspires incredible devotion and harsh criticism. Any American who sparks such extreme opinion must represent something deep and valuable in the national character.

MacArthur had an extensive military career, to say the least. His military history began in 1903 when he graduated from West Point with honors. He served with distinction in the First World War, where he commanded the 84th Infantry Brigade. His soldiers were among the first to cross no-man’s land in the final advance into German-held territory.

By 1918 he was near the top ranks of the military, and was selected as the army chief of staff in 1930. The timing of this promotion was unfortunate due to the economics of the time and his efforts were mostly directed at preserving the military’s meager strength during the Great Depression. He retired from the US Army in 1937, only to be recalled to active duty in July 1941.

He is best known for his command of the Pacific Theater in World War II. After escaping from enemy encirclement in the Philippines in 1942, he directed the Allied forces that pushed the Japanese back across the Pacific, island by island. In 1945 he received the surrender of the Japanese Imperial forces and, until 1951, directed the allied occupation of Japan.

The Courting of Jean Faircloth
by Col. Sid Huff
September 8, 1951

When the Post published a series of articles about MacArthur in 1951, you would have been hard-pressed to find Americans not familiar with the man. He had commanded the first nine months of the Korean War on behalf of the United Nations forces. He had launched a decisive invasion on the Korean coast in the rear of North Korea’s army. His forces threw the communists back so decisively that a fearful Communist China launched a counterattack. President Truman ordered MacArthur to pull back American forces. MacArthur wanted to continue his advance and wage war in the style he knew best, without political complexities. He spoke out publicly against Truman’s decision, and Truman relieved him of command.

The Post published eight articles about MacArthur written by Col. Sid Huff, MacArthur’s aide for 15 years. The article presented a side of MacArthur not familiar to the American people. The series didn’t focus solely on his military leadership and war heroism, but also on his family, and the man “behind closed doors.”

In the first article from September 8, 1951, Huff talked about the General’s personal character. When asked by some if MacArthur was always the military man featured in the news and public, Huff responds,

“Actually the General is a very serious man who has been occupied for years with problems of grave import to America, and he so concentrates on what he is doing that there is little time left for any relaxation except the movies. He has no hobbies. He plays no games, such as golf or cards. He has no interest in ‘small talk.’ And he doesn’t enjoy meeting people merely for the sake of making new acquaintances. On the other hand, he has tremendous charm as well as a commanding, exciting personality; he can be tactful, gracious and even gallant, as the occasion commands, and he can and often does lean back in his favorite red-painted rocking chair and enjoys a real belly-laugh that makes the rafters ring.”

Huff describes MacArthur’s reaction to command being taken from him.

The General's Last Fight
by Col. Sid Huff
October 27, 1951

“Anybody who knows MacArthur soon realizes that he is sensitive to criticism. In a way, this sensitivity is his Achilles’ heal… MacArthur was widely criticized — much of the criticism arising from political motives — and the more he was criticized the harder he worked. He directed a masterful retirement in Korea and he seemed in public to be as unaffected by the attacks made on him personally as he had been earlier by the lavish praise he received when he was winning. But in the lonely watches of the night it hurt. It hurt him so keenly that his staff did everything possible to protect him. We even hid newspapers and magazines from him if they contained particularly unrestrained criticism…”

When notified of being relieved his military command, Huff says, MacArthur responded, “without much change of expression or demeanor. He didn’t like it, but it was an order.” MacArthur did not drag his feet. He tied up the loose ends and returned to the US.”

Even beyond the articles featured in The Post in 1951, MacArthur lived out his days rather quietly. Other than chairing the Board for the Remington Rand Corporation, he lived his final years in New York City. He died in Washington, DC in 1964.

MacArthur’s critics cannot be dismissed; they point to the general’s arrogance and self-absorption, his short-sighted preparations in the Philippines, his readiness to promote a war with China, and his political posturing in the ’40s and ’50s. They also compare MacArthur’s performance with those of Generals Eisenhower and Marshall — men who achieved greater things without his posturing or recklessness.

Still, MacArthur was a powerful figure to Americans during the war years. He became a symbol of America’s strength and determination. He inspired devotion and confidence, both of which proved valuable to our success in the World War. Any man who draws such lasting admiration from so many Americans must represent something great about our country.

In the 1977 Saturday Evening Post article “More Than A Star,” Gregory Peck described his role as the general in the movie, “MacArthur.”

“I came to this role with a grab bag full of prejudices… Now I’m full of admiration for the man. His faults were on such a grand scale they’re too obvious to discuss. They weren’t petty. There was no meanness in him and most of the things that MacArthur detractors say are based on idiosyncrasies — his long hair, his corncob pipe, his informal dress. It was kind of inverse snobbism — never wearing any medals. It was the theatricality of knowing less is more. When he stood with generals and admirals, he stood out in his simplicity. He made them all look silly.”

Read The Courting of Jean Faircloth, published on September 8, 1951 [PDF].

Read The General’s Last Fight, published on October 27, 1951 [PDF].

The Controversial Hero The Saturday Evening Post