The Story of a Trip

For Franklin Roosevelt it was a special treat--not merely his first chance since Pearl Harbor to put the administrative labyrinths of Washington far behind him, but a trip with all the kind of drama and secrecy that he loves best. For a fortnight he could chuckle at the amazement on the faces of those who saw him touring, for a fortnight savor the headlines that would sweep the country when he returned to let down the bars of censorship.

On the first night the President's train sped north, then west. Morning brought Detroit. At the Chrysler Tank Arsenal, 300 soldiers swiftly took their posts. FBI agents blocked the doors, the overhead cranes jolted to a sudden stop. Out of the Presidential train rolled the White House phaeton, its top down, the bulletproof windows up. Franklin Roosevelt stepped in. Chrysler's wise, bulky President K. T. Keller eased into one of the jump seats.

The secret had been well kept. Young Robert T. Keller, who works for his father as an engineer, arrived panting for breath just as the phaeton pulled away. "My God, it's the President," he cried. "Why didn't my old man tell me?"

"Good Drive!" The President rode between two giant assembly lines, where a hundred General Lees--the new all-welded medium tank--were abuilding. He waved to 5,000 astounded workmen, who lined up in a solid wall to greet him. On the testing ground, he watched 50 tanks roar through mud and dust. One tank drove straight at him, slogged through a muddy testing hole, ground to a stop ten feet away. The young Polish driver stuck his dirty face from the turret and grinned. "A good drive!" shouted the President.

At Willow Run he rode with Henry and Edsel Ford down the half-mile assembly line. It was unbearably hot under the miles of mercury-vapor tubes that light the huge plant; the radiator of his car began to boil.

When he was gone, the phone calls poured in at newspaper switchboards. Some of them were from wives whose husbands had arrived home three hours late from Willow Run. The newspapers had to plead ignorance, couldn't support the husband's alibis.

Shoot to Kill. At the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, sailors were routed out of bed an hour early: no reason given.

Guards had orders to challenge once, then shoot to kill. The President's train sat on a siding for hours, with machine guns bristling from the car tops--but days later public-relations officers still denied that he had been anywhere near.

In Milwaukee, he watched steam turbines and propeller shafts spring to life at the Allis-Chalmers plant. Once his car stopped only six feet from three girls in coveralls; their hands shook so that they could not go on working.

The train moved up into Minnesota's lake country, through the little cattle towns of North Dakota, through Montana and high up into the Rockies. When the train stopped at Billings, a railway clerk saw a Scottie out for an airing on the platform, read its identification tag. It was the President's Fala. Soon all Montana buzzed with a rumor that Franklin Roosevelt was on his way to a mid-Pacific conference with Joseph Stalin, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Wendell Willkie.

Actually he was on his way, at the moment, to the Navy's new training station at Idaho's beautiful Lake Pend d'Oreille. There, in the midst of pine forests where bear and deer roam wild, he examined the bright new barracks and the tent city of 20,000 construction workers.

Mahlum's Scoop. In Seattle, he went through the bustling Boeing aircraft plant, spent the night at the home of his daughter Anna and her husband, Publisher John Boettiger of the Post-Intelligencer. Across the Sound, he visited Bremerton's great Navy yard. For the first time news of his trip got into print. An A.F. of L. newspaper which goes to 40,000 Boeing employes scare-headed his appearance, added a sound trade-union angle: "The main thing that was on the lips of most of the members . . . was will he do anything about our wage situation?"

Army, Navy and FBI recalled most of the copies, burned them, demanded to know why Editor W. N. Mahlum had not followed the lead of other Seattle papers which kept the secret. Said Mahlum: "I pay no attention to the kept press."

In Henry Kaiser's Portland shipyards, the President watched the launching of the Joseph N. Teal--first ship in the world ever to hit the water ten days after keel laying (TIME, Oct. 5). He and bald Henry Kaiser sat in the open automobile, atop a wooden ramp, while torches burned through the steel plates that held the Teal in place. Down slid the ship. Mrs. Boettiger swung a champagne bottle so hard that she was drenched.

The 14,000 workers who watched the ceremony cried Speech! Someone pressed a portable microphone into the President's hands. Said he: "I am very much inspired by what I have seen, and I wish that every man, woman and child in these United States could have been here today to see the launching and realize its importance in winning the war."

His voice took on a rich, confidential note. "You know, I'm not supposed to be here." There were loud cheers. "So you are possessors of a secret--a secret that even the newspapers of the United States don't know.-I hope you will keep it a secret. . . ."

They kept it as well as any 14,000 people are likely to.

The Wounded. Over San Francisco's Mare Island, barrage balloons turned slowly in a cold wind. The white collars of sailors lined up to greet the President whipped about their necks. From the windows of the Navy hospital, scores of men in pajamas watched while the President shook hands with men in wheel chairs on the lawn. The President spoke to Marine Leo Lopacinski, who killed 36 Japanese in the Solomon Islands before he himself was wounded. He examined a U.S. submarine which had nine little Japanese flags painted on the conning tower--one for each ship it had sunk.

In Long Beach he visited the Douglas aircraft plant. In San Diego he rode through the streets so often--on his way to Tom Girdler's Consolidated Aircraft plant, to the Navy's Camp Pendleton, to the home of Son John Roosevelt--that the whole city turned out to watch. One rumor had it that General Douglas MacArthur, in mufti, was a member of his party.

The train turned back east. The President passed the new airfields in Arizona's desert, watched the smoke of distant mine smelters, stopped in Uvalde, Tex. to chat with his onetime colleague John Garner. ("Well, what do you know! Gosh, you look well," said the President. "God bless you; I'm glad to see you," said Cactus Jack.)

In Fort Worth he picked up some more members of the Roosevelt clan, Daughter-in-law Mrs. Elliott Roosevelt and two young grandchildren, and took them through the big Consolidated bomber plant. In New Orleans he inspected one of Shipbuilder Andrew J. Higgins' subchaser and landing-boat plants.

So, two weeks and 8,754 miles after he had left the White House, the President returned. He had seen the sweeping expanse of America which must some day be the despair of landbound Germany and slandbound Japan. He had glimpsed dozens of the nation's war plants and military camps, thousands of its workmen, soldiers and sailors, many a fighting man who had been wounded in body but not in spirit. He had seen America at its best: the prairies for food and the factories for armaments, the men & women who worked with their hands, the young men who trained hard for battle.

*They knew it very well, but didn't tell.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.