Colonel Lewis Pick, the architect of the tribes’ inundation, was the embodiment of a no-nonsense military man. Pick liked to punctuate his conversation with Cagney-style “See? See?”s; these were not questions—they were commands. When first assigned to the Missouri River Division during the early part of the Second World War, he ordered all of his staff to work a series of continuous seven-day weeks. On the first Sunday after the order was given, Pick spied on all his top officers and summarily dismissed those who were not at their desks. Later, when he was in Burma, he fired a whole team of
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