Engineer Memoirs
"G-damn it," he exploded, "Why don't you find out?"
"Because," I said, "I couldn't. One was never allowed to say much to Gruenther;
he wanted onlv answers to his questions.
`Why n o t " he asked.
"Because," I said," Mrs Gruenther has the keys to the attic where the toys are
locked up. She says that they are her toys."
Gruenther got quite annoyed: "They're not her toys, they're my toys. She wants
to give them to charity. But charity begins at home," he said. "We have to give
them to children of those who have served at SHAPE. The poor we will always
have with us," he said, "but there will only be one NATO.
I needed to get out of the middle of this one and asked Mrs. Gruenther to let me
count the toys. I said I would draw up a plan whereby she got half and General
Gruenther got the other half. She readily agreed, but General Gruenther only
agreed reluctantly. There were 800 toys. She got 400 for her charities, and
General Gruenther got 400 for NATO.
By 11 a.m. we had developed a plan which General Gruenther approved, saying
he wanted the toys delivered later that day. General Gruenther personally wrote
notes in five different languages to the parents of the children. We left the office
at midnight, exhausted, having gotten most of the toys distributed. We didn't have
the nerve to tell him that some of the recipients were not at home. I told this
story to my wife, who became quite annoyed with me. "With all the other things
you have to do of a serious nature," she said, "why are you wearing yourself and
your staff out on trivial matters?"
The next day was a Sunday. As we were returning home from church, General
Gruenther's driver drove up with a big box. With it was a note addressed to my
wife: "Dear Rita: Your husband worked very hard on the plan for distributing toys
to my wonderful people of SHAPE. I gave none to the Americans, but for Marcia,
age six, is a doll, and for Peter, age four, is a train, and for Paul, age two, is a set
of building blocks.
My wife beamed and said: "Isn't he wonderful?" It was my turn to be annoyed
with her. I later learned that our three toys had come out of Mrs. Gruenther's
quota for her charities.
General Robert J. "Bob" Wood, one of my predecessors as secretary of the general
staff, kept a collection of some of the more interesting Gruenther-grams. One
m-