During the war there had been a combined Food Board which supervised and controlled the food resources of USA, Canada, and Australia and food supplies for all of Europe and much of Asia (in total some fifty nations of the world) were controlled by this board. After the allotment was made the food was purchased in regular commercial channels but was rigidly controlled in amounts by export licenses issued by the Commerce Department. With the end of the fighting war, the board was disbanded since nearly all of the existing food supplies were in the United States. In all of the allocations during and after the war the World Food Board operated under the so-called Joint Chiefs of Staff Memorandum 1067 (JCS 1067) which directed that in the allocation of food resources Germany and Japan would stand at the end of the line. After the Board was dissolved, there were substantial amounts of wheat, corn, cotton, and soybeans in the United States and the Secretary of Agriculture in the U.S.A. had the responsibility of making allocations to the various claimants.
By an agreement between the Army and the Department of Agriculture, I was to be stationed as a special assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Clinton Anderson, to work out the allocation of the remaining resources between some fifty claimants, including Western Germany and Japan. We were still working under JCS 1067. One afternoon, General Marshall, who had become President Truman's Secretary of State, came over to the Department to ask that Germany and Japan, "the Flag Areas" be given greater priority in food supply. When reminded of JCS 1067, Mr. Anderson picked up the white telephone on his desk with a direct connection to Mr. Truman in the White House and in a matter of minutes JCS 1067 was eliminated and these "Flag Areas" had equal status with some other fifty countries seeking monthly allotments of wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans.
When I had left Germany in 1946 there was every hoep that 1947 would have good crops. Further, there was strong evidence that there would be large crops of wheat in the U.S.A. and Canada. With the allotment system virtually abandoned and general return to ordinary commercial channels for the distribution of food products I buttoned up my work in the Department, resigned my job, which had been held open for me as General Agent of the Farm Credit Association and returned to Arkansas and joined the Arkansas Democrat, the State's second-largest newspaper as associate editor. Prior to the outbreak of war I had owned and operated a couple of newspapers in Eldorado, Arkansas which I later sold. I had retained my interest in a farm magazine and a radio station in Little Rock. Upon the outbreak of World War II and my joining the Army I sold the radio station and farm paper but was retained as a contributing editor to the farm paper for which I prepared a monthly article for the magazine. Some of these articles were widely reprinted in other publications around the state. I had long wanted to return to the newspaper business on my retirement from the Army but my small capital and the increased price of even a small daily paper was not enough to undertake such a venture -- so the opportunity to join the Arkansas Democrat was quickly accepted.
My family had moved from New Orleans back to Little Rock during the war and I was rapidly settling down too, as one described it, to being and Arkansas booster, a pillar of the community and a deacon in the church. Prior to war the Department of Agriculture had inaugurated a crop reduction program designed to reduce the vast surplus of wheat, corn, cotton, turpentine, and honey that was accumulating and depressing prices to farmers. Each year, planned production goals were set up and county committees were called upon to implement the program in their various counties. Regional meetings were held where the program was presented for discussion and eventual implementation.
With a world food shortage looming in 1947 the committee shifted to organizations promoting all-out food production for 1947. These committees met in various regions to hear and receive the plan for the next year's production. While in the Department of Agriculture I had been asked to speak to one of these regional meetings in New York State. Back in Arkansas as associate editor of an important newspaper I was asked to continue this sort of thing -- since I was one of the few freshly-returned from the front, so to speak. At one point I went to a large meeting in Memphis, Tennessee where I had presented a rather far-reaching six-point program on the situation in Western Europe, arguing that no matter how much we might dislike what Germany had done, the American people could not countenance the starvation of old men, women, and children. For the sake of Europe, Germany must be allowed to work her way back to respectability in the family of nations. The talk was widely noted by the Associated Press and considerable criticism as well as commendation came my way.
On return to Little Rock and reporting to work the next morning I found two copies of telegrams which had passed between my publisher and Washington. The first was a request by the Pentagon for my publisher to release me from my contract for one year to return to Germany -- the second was his reply which said in effect, "if there was a compelling reason for my services he would release me and protect my employment for one year." A few days prior to this, I had received a telephone call from Berlin asking me to return. I had protested rather loudly that I had been away for more than three years, that I was just getting back to being a civilian again and I thought that I had done my share. A few days after the Memphis meeting I went out to Denver, Colorado for a large meeting of farmer committeemen of the Western District. Due to the time factor I was all night getting back to Little Rock at about 6:30 in the morning. I ate breakfast uptown and did not go home but went directly to my office where I found another telegram on my desk authorizing transportation to Washington for travel at government expense to report to the Secretary of the Army at 9 o'clock on the morning of December 24. This was December 23rd and our daughter, one of the crop of debutantes in Little Rock that year was to be presented with her parents at a debutante ball. I dressed up in party clothes and as a proud father attended the dance but left at midnight to catch an overnight plane to Washington. Arriving in Washington at about 6:30 A.M. I went to the University Club, changed clothes, ate breakfast and reported to the Pentagon on the dot at 9:00 A.M.
Secretary Royal was a large six-foot two, 250 pound gentleman sitting behind a large mahogany desk piled high with papers. When I reported in he looked up and said, "Well, Clay says he must have you back in Germany, what are you going to do, go over as a civilian at the highest salary the government can pay or will I have to put you back in uniform and send you over?"
I replied, "Sir, you haven't the guts to put me back in uniform."
He said, with a laugh, "Well I don't know about that, we are having to do a lot of unpleasant things these days." At this point General William Draper came in -- he was now an Under Secretary of the Department of the Army. After some discussion of the food situation in Germany -- I agreed to return if my family did not object too much and if they might follow me once I got settled in Germany.
He asked how I got to Washington. I told him that I had been able to get a reservation on a midnight plane coming up but with the heavy traffic on Christmas Eve I might have some problems getting home. He pressed a button, called in a WAC Major and told her to set up a special plane to take me back to Little Rock. I was to report to Bolling Field at 4:30 P.M. for the trip home. Back home, my family was quite excited that they might follow me to Germany after I had gotten settled. They had always been wonderful in tagging along with me in my somewhat tramplike existence in the newspaper and radio business. To make a long story short, within eleven days I was back in Germany as head of the Food and Agriculture and Forestry Division of the Allied Military Government of Western Germany.
During 1947, there had been an open break between the Russians and the Western Powers over Germany and the beginning of the so-called cold war. I made no notes of this tour as a civilian except the official reports. When I left Germany as a Army officer in mid-1946 there was every evidence that every foot of soil in Western Germany would be planted to the traditional crops of wheat, rye, barley, and potatoes.
The agricultural difficulties which prompted my return to Germany stemmed from one of those long-ago perpetual arguments between Stalin, Churchill, and President Roosevelt which usually ended with a communique stating that theirs had been fruitful and frank discussions -- meaning in most cases nothing had been actually agreed upon. I did not know of the decisions or lack of decisions at their last meeting of the Big Three at Tehran in 1946 when the eventual borders of the various zones in Germany were confirmed. In the sweep of the Russian Armies across Poland in the last days of the war the Russian Armies had overrun the agreed Western borders of Poland, some 120 miles deep along a 400 mile front.
The foreign ministers meeting in Paris during the war had agreed that Russia would annex a strip of Poland's Eastern provinces 100 miles deep and 500 miles long but Poland would be compensated by taking an equal strip from Eastern Germany running roughly along a previously-designated line called the CURZON LINE or the eastern ODER NIESSE River. However, the Russian sweep across Poland overrun this CURZON line by a full 120 miles, along the 400 mile front mentioned earlier. They had settled won as had been their practice all along and embargoed the movement of all food stuffs out of the area and had kicked out the some eight and one-half million Germans living in the area. This was the area from which the British-occupied Ruhr zoen received more than 70 percent of its food supply. Churchill argued with great fervor for Russia to withdraw her troops from this area in order that the British zone might again receive the food resources from that area's residents.
President Roosevelt, sick and really dying and from a country more concerned with too much food rather than too little, took little part in the discussion but Stalin's refusal to allow food to get to the British zone set in motion a chain reaction that meant disaster for Great Britain. Britain, bled white of foreign exchange by the conduct of the war and having to import 60 percent of her food supply and then having to divide that with the 20 million Germans in her zone in the Ruhr was in a desperate situation and had to throw in the towel. The United States assumed the responsibility for the food supply to the Ruhr at a cost of some $900 million annually. In the meantime there had been almost a sharp division of Germany into two Germanies.
The Western German Republic was in formation and the Eastern Russian Zone was rather quickly set up in the Russian sector. Since Germany had already been de-facto divided into four Germanies and the new Federal Republic of Germany was being formed out of the three Western zones: U.S., British, and French, my job was to try to administer the Food and Agricultural Division of what was to become the present-day West German Republic. Berlin was still a divided city -- four zones and administered by a Four-Power Allied High Commission. This was the real beginning of the Cold War and the entual creation of two Germanies.
This brought on the Berlin blockade and the much-publicized airlift. Though there has been a lessening of tensions and harrassment in recent years, Western Germany has become the keystone of the Commmon Market and one of the major powers in Europe and staunch friend of the United States.
Such are the fortunes of war and what historians 100 years from now will report about this period of history is anybody's guess. In the meantime maybe the detente and lessening of tensions between Russia and the West will yet evolve a more peaceful world -- but the missile bases scattered over the United States with the ability to literally destroy civilization of both countries gives little hope of any more than a continuing buildup of modern weapons of destruction and a military trade totalling 240 billions of dollars annually in a world that is short of fertilizer plants gives little hope that power politics will ever be abandoned as a means of settling disputes between even the smallest and poorest nations.
CONCLUSION
For services in World War I and World War II, I was awarded several military decorations. The Soldier's Medal with four battle stars was for World War I. World War II brought the Soldier's Medal, the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, the Medal of Honor for Distinguished Civilian Service in the Army of the United States -- all deeply appreciated whether deserved or not.
But the most cherished of all was a letter from General Lucius Clay sent a few months before he died, in reply to my query on just how the decision was made to defy the Russians when they blockaded Berlin and brought on the airlift -- it reads as follows:
933 3rd Avenue
New York, 10017
April 30 1977
Mr. Stanley Andrews
Pleasant Green Plantation House
Route 1, Pilot Grove MO 65276
Dear Stan:
I'm not going to pursue you with letters which you feel
that you might have to answer. I await your book with
some interest. However, all I really have to say is --
for the help you gave me in darkest moments, thank you
and God Bless you.
Sincerely,
Lucius Clay
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