The villains of Camelot.

My novel, ALL THE WAY WITH JFK: An Alternate History of 1964, is a speculation on what might have happened (‘might’ being the operative word) if John F. Kennedy had survived the assassination attempt in Dallas and run for re-election. In laying out my saga, I had a huge cast of historical personages to work with, one of the most colorful and varied of any period in American history. Not only that, but it one of the most written about as well, with virtually every participant writing their memoirs of their time with Kennedy, especially JFK’s men, who worked hard on the printed page to paint their now deceased boss in the most heroic terms. But if JFK was the hero then there had to be a villain, and outside of a Nikita Khrushchev and a large cast of Southern politicians, one of the chief bad guys has been General Curtis LeMay, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force and a hard core Cold Warrior who reportedly ordered a USAF squadron to fly over Vladivostok at high noon in an attempt to provoke a confrontation with the Soviets. LeMay has been described as a 20th Century Ulysses Grant, a man who believed that when faced with an enemy, you went all out with everything you had at your disposal. If war is inevitable, LeMay believed, then the sooner you fought it, the better, why wait for years while the Soviets grew that much stronger. He was a man with a large personality, the cigar chomping personification of the Military Industrial Complex, a persona honed since World War II when he ran the air war against Japan, a campaign that reduced most Japanese cities to smoldering ruins and killed millions. At the height of his career, he was a presence in popular culture: George C. Scott’s General Buck Turgidson in DOCTOR STRANGELOVE was supposedly modeled on LeMay; Thunderbolt Ross in THE INCREDIBLE HULK, which came out in 1962, is clearly a comic book take on LeMay. In the eyes of Kennedy’s men and admirers, LeMay’s great crime was to vociferously support a first strike on the missile sites in Cuba in October of 1962 and to hell with any negotiations with the Soviets. It all came down to peace and survival with Kennedy or World War III with Curt LeMay.

It’s all very simple black and white in many an account, yet a hard look at the historical record reveals that the truth may not be so straightforward. Many of Kennedy’s supporters imply that the Air Force Chief of Staff was a troglodyte holdover from the Eisenhower years; in truth, JFK appointed LeMay to the Joint Chiefs in 1961 and reappointed him in 1963 after the General had been near insubordinate to Kennedy’s face in the White House during the Cuban Crisis. What few want to say is that John Kennedy knew that if war with the Soviets were to come ( a real possibility in the early 60’s) then he would need a warrior like LeMay to win it, and if the man had some sharp edges, then they more than worth putting up with. When Kennedy’s infant son died in the summer of 1963, LeMay wrote the President a heartfelt handwritten note of condolence; hardly the actions of an enemy. Ultimately, LeMay retired, considered running for office and ended up on the ticket with George Wallace in 1968, an act from which his reputation never recovered. LeMay wanted a platform from which to criticize the Johnson Administration’s conduct of the Vietnam War, yet he was lumped with the racists who flocked to the Wallace banner. This was unfair, for unlike more than one senior commander from World War II, there are no racist or anti-Semitic remarks on the public record attributed to him. LeMay was also an avid hunter and outdoors man, and became an early supporter of what was to become the environmental movement, try to find a right winger with similar sentiments today.

How did I approach LeMay when I wrote my novel? What I didn’t want to do was make him cartoon caricature; while I might disagree with the man’s politics and his world view, I do think Curtis LeMay was a true patriot, a military professional who served his country well in war and peace. Yet his great out-sized personality makes him a wonderful foil for the President and the men around him. He really was a unique man, so much more than the buffoon in Kubrick’s classic movie.

In the except below, the General takes the floor in an Oval Office meeting in the wake of the invasion of Cuba where an off limits enclave of Soviet soldiers has become a bone of contention.



Excerpt:

I delivered the Oval Office briefing on Sunday, April 12th, with LeMay and the rest of the Joint Chiefs in attendance where the plans for ground operations on Cuba were discussed. General LeMay sat quietly through my positive report on the success of the air campaign so far, and the number of targets taken out, but when I mentioned the concentration of Russian forces at Camaguey and the need for this area to remain off limits, LeMay spoke up. “Cuba is a theater of war where Americans are engaged,” he said to the President, “and those Russian personnel are enemy combatants and should be treated as such. It makes no sense to allow the enemy a safe haven on their home ground.” The General was not privy to the information we had, and the President did his best to explain the arrangement reached with Andreyev. LeMay would have none of it. “The only thing the President should have done when he was on the line with this Russian General was demanded his total surrender,” LeMay said to me with the sharpest glare I’ve ever received from a superior officer in my entire career. “We have him outnumbered ten thousand to one; those Russians would be nothing but a grease spot within an hour if I could just give the order.” At this point the President reminded the General of the obvious, that the Kremlin had a say in this and Russian casualties were sure to provoke a military response from them in Europe or elsewhere; so far the only thing coming out of Moscow were fierce denunciations of American aggression which killed no one, but that could change.

“Khrushchev hasn’t mobilized one single soldier since the first bomb fell on Havana, there’s nothing he can do, and he knows it. There are tons of munitions, artillery and ordinance there with those Russian personnel in Camaguey and it will all be handed over to the Cubans as soon as the first American GI hit the beach. A lot of good boys are going to die when we go into Cuba; some them could be saved if I’m allowed to act right now.” It was how LeMay laid it out, but the President would not budge, and no bombs would fall on Camaguey. There are many differing versions of the exchange between President Kennedy and the General on the second Sunday in April, and I’ll put my hand to God that is how it happened. Curtis LeMay was the man who reduced Tokyo and Yokohama to ashes and built the Strategic Air Command, and I would never dare call him a liar, just certain other historians and hacks.

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