The President's Week

Monday, Oct. 17, 1949

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THE PRESIDENCY The President's Week

In his 4½ years in the presidency, Harry S. Truman, onetime Field Artillery captain, had twice reviewed units of both the Navy and the Air Force. But the Army, he jokingly concluded, remained "rather timid, and remembering that I was a battery commander, has always felt a little backward about asking me to look at a review ..." Finally he picked up his telephone and told Secretary of the Army Gordon Gray that he wanted to watch the ground forces do their stuff, too.

One morning last week Defense Secretary Louis Johnson bade him Godspeed; the President climbed into an Air Force Constellation (his DC-6 Independence was undergoing an overhaul) and flew to Fort Bragg, N.C., to cast an old cannoneer's eye over the wonders of the new Army.

Gleam of Brass. He mounted an unshaded wooden reviewing stand and 20,000 men, led by the famed 82nd Airborne Division's band, poured past in his honor. They marched in ranks of twelve, brass and helmet liners gleaming, brand new company guidons bright in the hot sunlight. Behind them rumbled their tanks, guns and trucks.

It was a sight to brighten a soldier's eye and the President expressed his pleasure and satisfaction in a gracious little off-the-cuff speech during lunch at the officers' club. He also confessed that as a politician he had been completely fascinated by one of the Army's less lethal developments—a pocket loudspeaker which would project the human voice for a full two miles.

Later at a firing-range observation post he watched heavily burdened paratroopers —850 in all—come tumbling out of the sky. Tons of ammunition and equipment hit the ground as they assembled and opened fire. In the neatest trick of the day, four C-82s dropped four huge 105 mm. howitzers and four towing jeeps. All but one gun floated safely down under billowing, 100 ft. cargo chutes, and the cannon were firing within twelve minutes after delivery.

Even Money. The President flew back to Washington having obviously enjoyed himself, and went on about his business during the rest of the week with the air of a man determined to make the best of a difficult world. He reminded reporters gathered for his weekly press conference that it was his 200th formal meeting with them. He liked press conferences, he said, and though he occasionally got annoyed with their bosses, he thought most of the assembled newsmen were eminently fair.

Though he is not as much of a baseball fan as Mrs. Truman—who went to New York to watch the World Series—he watched the Yankee-Dodger games in the afternoon either on the twelve-inch television screen in the Oval Room or at Blair House. He cleaned up pressing business, solemnly signing the $1,314,010,000 European arms bill and the $5,809,990,000 foreign economic aid bill. Then, at week's end, he set out for Charlottesville, Va. by automobile to spend two days with his poker-party friend, Stanley Woodward, the State Department's chief of protocol.