Read Online Quartet for the End of Time by Johanna Skibsrud - Free Book Online Page B

demolished western wall. And once more, it was not long before they were on their way down again—a stream of veterans following steadily behind.
    The eviction carried on like this more or less without incident. By one forty-five that afternoon, the building had been cleared. Only the police were left—sweating in their summer uniforms and pacing the grounds. The veterans and their families, who had just been fed a spartan lunch (personally provided by Glassford), lounged at a distance of about hundred yards—and if it were not for the desolate backdrop and the stricken, half-starved appearance of most of the crowd, it would have looked more like a Sunday picnic than an unruly evacuation scene. Even the mass of onlookers who had gathered to witness the drama unfold were beginning to move off.
    But then a shout went up in front of the old Ford building, and several of the police officers who had been guarding the empty armory rushed over to the Ford building instead. The disturbance continued—the noise echoing into the yard below. Then two shots were fired, followed by a moment—so brief that afterward it was impossible to be certain if it had even occurred—of deep silence. Then the noise and confusion resumed. Glassford yelled, Stop that shooting! But it was too late. One of the officers, who had been hit with his own nightstick just before he’d fired, now stood facing the crowd—turning in bewildered circles. Even at the sound of Glassford’s command he did not lower his gun.
    William Hushka, age thirty-five—a Lithuanian immigrant and veteran from Chicago, who had sold his butcher shop to join the U.S. Army in 1917—and Eric Carlson—thirty-eight years old, from Oakland, California, who had survived the most brutal of the trench war fighting in France—were dead.
    Within minutes, ambulances had arrived and the bodies of the dead men, along with the injured police officers, were carried away.
    M EAN WHILE , G ENERAL M AC A RTHUR HAD called up Dwight D. Eisenhower and, despite Eisenhower’s protestations that suppressing a potential riot was “beneath the dignity” of any Army chief of staff—or even, by implication, a low-ranking aide—had begun briefing him on the full-scale combat operation he was about to put into effect. An hour later, Glassford arrived at the Ellipse on his motorcycle to find MacArthur in full dress uniform. When he asked what the plan was regarding military presence on the Hill, MacArthur replied without hesitation. We are here to break the back of the BEF, he said. We’ll move down Pennsylvania Avenue first, sweep through the billets there, then clean out the other two camps. The operation will be continuous. It will all be done tonight.
    Glassford requested a ten-minute delay, which he was granted. He raced to the Penn Ave. camp to spread the word among the veterans still billeted there. Then he ordered the message carried to the other camps, urging the immediate evacuation of at least the women and children. He then cleared Pennsylvania Avenue, where a sort of ceremonial order had fallen over the crowd who had gathered there, waiting for the troops.
    I T WAS A LONG WAIT . The troops were still being sailed upriver from Fort Washington. More were arriving from Fort Myer—having left, for the first time in its history, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier alone and unguarded. Finally, the first of them came into sight—accompanied by a half dozen flatbed trucks and tanks, which, as Judge Kelly had warned, had been transferred to Fort Myer in early June, should the occasion for their use arise.
    At four-thirty p.m., armed with tear-gas grenades, and the instructions from MacArthur to use “such force as necessary” to accomplish the task, the troops, with sabers drawn, their feet clicking like wrought iron on the hard pavement, approached Camp Glassford. Many of the veterans and bystanders along the route cheered,