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Chapter 2 - Reaching for the Skies
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Chapter 2 Reaching for the Skies orld War I “did a lot of things for a lot of men,” Richard would later write. “In a sense it saved me.” A “willing cripple suddenly became to a mad world as valuable as a whole man who might be unwilling.” Within weeks of his retirement, Richard was back in uniform as a reserve officer tasked with whipping the rapidly forming Rhode Island Naval Militia into shape for possible deployment to European seas and battlefields. His new friend, Assistant Secretary Franklin Roosevelt, applauded his grit. “Good for you. I wish everybody had come right back in as you did.” After the inevitable administrative tangles were unsnarled , Byrd reported for duty in June 1916.1 It was not an easy job. The militia belonged to Rhode Island, not the United States. Local officials acknowledged Byrd’s de facto command status but expected him to work closely with them. Byrd fulfilled his varied assignments admirably. Not only did he transform his charges into acceptable sailors, marines, and aviators , but he also won their hearts. An enlisted man wrote that he would “never be able to pay back all I owe you for your kindness and patience with me.” The handful of militia aviators forged tight bonds and begged to be sent to advanced training and overseas as a unit. Byrd wrote strong letters to Washington on their behalf and fought just as hard for those who wanted to go to sea as soon as war was declared . Both interventions were successful, and a grateful flier told Byrd how deeply the entire militia, which by this time included men from Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut as well as Rhode Island, appreciated “the loyalty you have shown us in trouble.” Richard Byrd would “always be our commander where-ever we go.”2 But once war came, the young Virginian was determined to be part of it. 30 Two days after Wilson went before Congress, Rhode Island’s adjutant general wrote to his old friend Admiral William Sims that young Byrd “is most anxious to serve under you in the event of war or any emergency.” Sims, about to embark on a critical, top-secret mission to England, ignored the message, but Byrd was soon summoned to Washington, carrying with him a glowing commendation from Governor Beekman.3 As he cooled his heels in the Bureau of Aeronautics, the impatient young man conceived the idea of establishing “a board of naval officers” that would go to France and acquaint itself with “the subject of expeditionary fighting and trench warfare.” Such knowledge would be invaluable to the navy, not only during the present war but in years to come as well. For the first but not last time, Richard came across as the quintessential eager beaver: “I could help to do this work because I am intensely and profoundly interested in the matter and am prepared and anxious to go into the trenches for the necessary knowledge.” Only one with a total ignorance of the Great War could make such a statement. Claude Swanson came down to the Navy Department from Capitol Hill to press his fellow Virginian ’s case, but Admiral Palmer, head of navigation, would have none of it. Richard Byrd could not be spared for a ninety-day trip to the European front; America was gearing up rapidly for war, and everyone was needed at home to push mobilization over the top. Secretary Daniels was out of town, and Chief of Naval Operations Benson was unavailable.4 When Daniels returned, he personally assigned the rather obstreperous young lieutenant as executive secretary of the navy’s Commission on Training Camps. Byrd later dismissed the position as simply a “swivel chair job,” moving thousands of enlisted sailors from one training camp or naval base to another.5 But the position involved more than that. According to the Navy Department’s memorandum “Commission on Training Camp Activities,” the problem of “supplying the normalities of life” to thousands of boys in training camps “loomed large.” The country had not engaged in a major war in a half century. The youngsters, wholly innocent of the world, had left sheltered homes, families, friends, clubs, churches, and colleges and had entered “a strange new life” in which everything was subordinate to the fashioning of an efficient military machine. The task of the naval commission, like that of its army counterpart, was to coordinate the various organizations that might help in reestablishing “as far as...