THE FIGHTING FIRST LADY!

By Linda Lee Greene, Author & Artist.



Well-worn suitcase in hand, her Red Cross uniform snug and no-nonsense, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, forever known as Eleanor, and as she requests to be known to me, clip-clops in her stubby-heeled pumps to the airplane that will fly us from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco, California. I would offer to unburden her of her suitcase, but I have learned that she would ignore my request. She is a self-sufficient soul—thoughtful to the extreme. She would deem surrendering her suitcase to me as an affront to my dignity as a human being, even though I serve as her assistant and helper on this trip. That her life has been one of wealth and privilege since its inception is not easily reconciled with the person I have come to know. Coddled she is not, nor does she wish it to be the case.

            Once again, she is going where her husband cannot go—he cannot go for the reason of his physical limitations, and because of the demands of his office as President of the United States of America. At this exact moment, he is at the war-planning conference in Quebec, Canada with Great Britain’s Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill. The trip will give the First Lady the opportunity to meet troops stationed on remote islands cut off from their loved-ones. In this way, she will act as a surrogate for the mothers across the land, both to bring comfort to the troops and to their mothers to whom she will report in her newspaper column, My Day.

San Francisco is our first stop on this steamy afternoon of August 17, 1943, and is the inauguration of our secret, six-week-long, twenty-five thousand miles journey into the dangerous war-zone of the South Pacific. Eleanor is not cavalier about the possible peril facing us. She wears no jewelry, having stored it away safely back home with instructions as to its distribution lest she never returns. I am breathless from her courage. Admiration of her fills me from stem to stern.

From America’s west coast, we ride the wind across the Pacific in an all-night flight, landing mid-morning in Honolulu, Hawaii, at Hickam Field. This place so near to Pearl Harbor is the portal of the anguish of America’s plunge into World War II, wrought by Japan’s attack on the American Fleet there. The base as well as aircraft at Hickam, parked wingtip to wingtip to guard against sabotage on that fateful December 7^th morning not two years ago, were also heavily damaged or destroyed. Nevertheless, the airfield has been in non-stop use since then. Viewing bullet holes and other artifacts of the attack on surviving structures is not an item on our agenda, and we press on three and one-half hours later to our initial South Pacific destination. I am not an easy flier and I busy myself with writing in my trip’s log to avoid the view outside the aircraft’s windows. “Bear in mind that the log you keep of the trip will be of great interest to me and will influence the war’s policy, no doubt,” the president said to me before he left for Quebec. I struggle to regain my equilibrium when we touch down on Christmas Island.  

The war in the Pacific stretches from the Aleutian Islands off the coast of Alaska to Australia, 6,600 miles of contested ocean in between. Our trip will concentrate on visiting Allied forces in New Zealand and Australia as well as copious time spent island hopping to call on troops. There are seventeen Pacific islands on our schedule, their melodic names spanning half of the alphabet. The initial seven are Christmas, Penhryn, Bora Bora, Aitutaki, Tutuliua Samoa, Fiji, and New Caledonia, all to be visited during six whirlwind days. Our welcome at Christmas Island is chilly and officious. U.S. Admiral William “Bull” Halsey is visibly impatient and put-off by our presence. He has a war to fight and visits by “do-gooders” are nothing but a nuisance, as well as expensive in terms of resources required to meet their agendas. This is not to mention the extra security required to keep them out of harm’s way—an impossible task in actuality. The fighting does not stop because the First Lady of the United States of America has come to town. In fact, were it known, the fighting would intensify. Eleanor and I do not escape the admiral’s displeasure.

 “Whirlwind” is an understatement in describing Eleanor. Within our twelve hours on Christmas Island, she inspects two Navy hospitals, an officer’s rest house a boat-ride away, returns and inspects an Army hospital, reviews her son James’ former Marine battalion, delivers a speech at a service club, attends a reception, and is the guest of honor at a dinner given by General Harmon. Even Admiral Halsey said, “…I marveled at her hardihood, both physical and mental. She walked for miles, and saw new patients who were grievously and gruesomely wounded. But I marveled most at their expressions as she leaned over them. It was a sight I will never forget.” She talks to the wounded, touches them, and shows them her sincere interest and concern. The admiral apologizes to her for his crustiness upon our arrival, and expresses his gratitude to her for what she has done for his men. This is a sampling of the schedule she keeps throughout the entire trip, and its impact.

In her My Day newspaper column, she describes her visit to Bora Bora: “I went through the hospital, saw the Red Cross man, the headquarters building, tents, and mess hall and day room and outdoor theater in a colored troop area. There seems to be no trouble anywhere out here between the white and colored. They lie in beds in the same wards, go to the same movies and sit side by side and work side by side, but I don’t think I’ve seen them mess together, but their food is as good and everything just as clean in their quarters. Southern and Northern Negroes are in the same outfits.” Civil rights, both for women and colored citizens, is one of Eleanor’s passions. She fights tirelessly for their equality in education, housing, employment, and voting as basic human rights. Her stance is that the status of civil rights in a country is the litmus test of its strength as a democracy. Her efforts to have our military fully integrated have been thwarted, but she will not give up, if I know her.

Eleanor can never be accused of being a chameleon. Expediency holds no store with her. What you see with Eleanor is what you get. By the end of the trip she is thirty pounds thinner and the new best friend of thousands of Allied troops and their families, a triumph of loving, kinetic energy over discord and despair.©

Note: the above is a work of historical fiction based on actual events.



Images: Mrs. Roosevelt visits World War II troops in the Pacific Theater.



Recommended Reading: Eleanor Roosevelt’s My Day newspaper columns are available for view at online web sites.



Books by Linda Lee Greene are available for purchase in eBook and soft cover at Amazon.com and by request at other booksellers.