"A Question of Loyalty" puts readers in the middle of the epic story of Gen. Billy Mitchell--the architect of the modern Air Force--and his spellbinding trial over patriotism and treason. 16-page photo insert.

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A Question of Loyalty

Chapter One

Exile

Monday, August 31, 1925

It was evening when Billy Mitchell finally sat down in the parlor ofhis quarters at Fort Sam Houston to write to Betty (as his wife,Elizabeth, was known) about the plane accident. Shade from leafytrees, some ripe with figs and pecans in the front yard, surroundedthe home and cooled the dry air in the evening. But summer at thearmy post, just outside San Antonio, Texas, was still unbearably hotand dusty. Mitchell was glad Betty had remained with her parentsin Detroit to give birth to their first child, while he managed themoving in of their furniture and the laying of new carpets.

Quarters Number 14 was not the best on the post, certainly notas fine as the accommodations usually given to generals. But it wascomfortable. The house was built according to a two-story Italianatedesign, with limestone from the city's rock quarries. It hadthree bedrooms, a parlor, dining room, and servants' quarters inthe back. Stables nearby housed three horses Mitchell had broughtwith him from Virginia: Eclipse, Boxwood, and Flood Tide. Fromthe parlor's bay window, Mitchell had a beautiful view of a vastparade ground. He had to walk just several blocks to reach hisoffice in the post's quadrangle. His old boss in Washington, Maj.Gen. Mason Patrick, had ordered that Mitchell's personal plane, theSea Gull 3rd, be flown down to him.

Still, Fort Sam Houston, as Will Rogers saw it, was "Siberia."(The two had become fast friends after Mitchell took the famoushumorist up for his first plane ride four months earlier.) Mitchellhad been busted from brigadier general to colonel and banished to this "mosquito post in Texas," Rogers had written in one of hiscolumns, because he had angered the brass in Washington.

But Texas was far from a backwater. Fort Sam Houston was thearmy's largest post in the United States. For decades it had guardedthe country's strategically important southern flank against threatspercolating up from Mexico. As the new air officer of the EighthArmy Corps, Mitchell had an area of responsibility that stretchedfrom Texas to the West Coast. Elizabeth was thankful the armyhadn't sent him farther away, to Panama. And though Mitchell hadbeen reduced in rank, the army did not consider it a demotion.Colonel was his permanent rank, the highest he ever held duringhis career. Brigadier general had been his temporary rank duringWorld War I, when officers were promoted rapidly as the armyexpanded for combat. After the war most reverted to their permanentpeacetime ranks. Colonels went back to being captains, generalssank as low as major. The only reason Mitchell had been luckyenough to keep his star after the war was that his job as assistantdirector of the air service allowed for that rank while he held thatposition. When the job ended he stopped being a general.

But Mitchell felt humiliated by the reduction in rank. Elizabethknew his feelings had been hurt "much more than he ever will say,"she wrote to one of his sisters. John Weeks, Calvin Coolidge's secretaryof war, had refused to reappoint him as air service assistantdirector the previous March, which meant that he returned to therank of colonel. Mitchell had been so publicly critical of the WarDepartment's management of air power -- and so reckless with thefacts, as far as Weeks was concerned -- that he had practically beeninsubordinate. As far as Mitchell was concerned, he should havebeen named director of the army air service and promoted to majorgeneral a long time ago. He refused to accept the rank of colonelnow. Soldiers on post still called him “general,” and he never correctedthem.

True, the Eighth Corps territory was vast, but its air arsenal waspuny. In Washington, Mitchell had lorded over the entire air service,and his instant access to the national press and the city's powerfulallowed him to push his cause for an air force independent ofthe army. Now he was relegated to a do-nothing job far away, theWar Department hoped, from politicians and the media. In Washington. he had a platoon of air officers as loyal to him as disciplesto a prophet. His staff now consisted of two clerks and a stenographer,Maydell Blackmon, whom he'd brought from Washingtonand who spent most of her days answering the hundreds of lettersthat poured in each week -- most from admirers who thought he'dgotten a raw deal. It amused “Blackie” (the nickname Mitchell hadgiven her) that he always dictated letters while walking in wide circlesin his office. "The general," as Blackie always called him, had agood command of the language and always seemed to know whathe wanted to say. He rarely went back and edited what he had dictated.

Mitchell had wrenched his right shoulder in the plane accidentthat morning. He had scratches on his hands and face, and a plastercast was packed on his nose, which was probably broken whenhis head slammed into the cockpit's forward crash pad. He had sentBetty a quick telegram earlier that morning hoping it would reachher in Detroit before she read about the mishap in the afternoonnewspapers. In fact, reporters had already phoned her shortly afterhis Western Union message arrived, asking her for a comment."Thank heaven you are safe," she had wired back. Betty had givenbirth to their first child, Lucy, less than a month earlier. She did notneed the extra worry, not with everything else going on in this turbulentyear. "I wanted you to know ahead of any news itemsappearing that nothing had happened to your old man," Mitchellnow wrote in the peace and calm of his parlor.

Excerpted from A Question of Loyalty by Douglas C. Waller
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