May 2024

In 1969, a young college student befriends a decorated WWII veteran without realizing the French Quarter resident is at the center of an international media maelstrom. 

– by Bethany Ewald Bultman

Authors note: Since my first meeting with one of the pivotal Louisiana-born planners of D-Day, his accounts have been fleshed out by details gleaned from subsequent trips to Normandy; visits to the Museum of the Liberation of Paris; and the meticulous research of Donald H. Carpenter for his 2014 biography, Man of a Million Fragments : the True Story of Clay Shaw.

It happened in a blink of an eye on a sweltering French Quarter afternoon in 1969.

One minute I was a nineteen-year-old, way over my head in an arduous Tulane summer school history course; the next I was rescued by an eminent D-Day strategist.  I came to know the former Army officer and stately gentleman as “Cap.” Only later did I understand that he had been caught in the zipper of the confabulated investigation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

That 1969 summer seemed hell-bent on slow-roasting all the French Quarter’s living creatures within its twelve square blocks. I was a part-time researcher at the Vieux Carré Courier, a rabble-rousing French Quarter weekly. Our dilapidated Decatur Street office didn’t even have a fan. I was starving.

Sam Greco’s Grocery, across the street at the Barrack’s Street corner, made my favorite sandwich. I was such a frequent customer, they’d have it waiting when they saw me coming: thick slabs of hand-cut, fatty, baked ham on freshly baked bread – topped with slices of tart Creole tomato.

I could taste the sweet tang of a chilled Barq’s as I traversed Decatur.

But that day, the doorway was blocked by a handful of French Market tomato vendors wearing scuffed white rubber boots.  They were sharing a smoke with a tall, courtly gentleman in a seersucker suit.  In my heat-addled brain, I thought he was the movie star Joseph Cotton, who I’d just watched in the classic Orson Welles film Citizen Kane.

As I attempted to pass, one of the vendors taunted, “Hey, skinny hippie chick – it will take more than a sandwich to put meat on your scrawny bones.”

I was mortified. My cheeks were scalding. I pivoted to head back to the sanctity of my steamy office.  Then, without scolding the heckler, the handsome man calmly  said, “Now, young lady, what could we five hefty males do to beg your gracious pardon?”

In a wink of an eye, he came out of the store with an arm-length ham sandwich cut into hunks for each of us. The contrite vendors retreated with their sections of sandwich.

“Afternoon, Cap,” they farewelled us. “Evening, young lady.”

When my gallant rescuer offered to treat me to a “chilled libation to wash down the sandwich,” I didn’t hesitate to accept. There was nothing predatory in his professorial demeanor.

As we meandered over to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop on Bourbon Street, he asked me about myself.  I sensed it was more than politeness. His piercing crystal blue eyes were taking the measure of me.

As I recounted my first soon-to-be twenty years of life, it sounded utterly mundane.  I’d grown up in Natchez, Mississippi in the 1950s, dreaming of becoming a writer and living in the French Quarter. For four years I had been secluded in an Episcopal girls’ boarding school, where my days had been spent reading Tolstoy and Faulkner, isolated from the reality of current events.

After my graduation from All Saints, my parents had taken me and my brother on a trip to Europe to visit Normandy for the twenty-third memorial of D-Day. Then I spent two years in a Vista “internship” program tutoring third graders in a small community just outside Baton Rouge while enduring LSU dorm life.

Now, I told Cap, I was a junior at Tulane who had talked my way into a graduate course in WW2 history. But I soon deduced that having visited those treacherous Normandy beach heads was not going to help me pass the course. I was in way over my head. When I mentioned that the highlight of my trip to France had been drinking champagne with Princess Jacqueline Hennessy de Chimay (1903-1979) in Rheims, he grinned in disbelief. Remarkably, he had known her well before she became a celebrated author. They were still in contact.

It turned out that Cap and his commanding officer had stayed in one of Jacqueline’s houses when they arrived in Rheims in mid-September of 1944 – after the D-Day invasion – as part of the Overseas Invasion Service Expedition. He acknowledged that finding himself living in France’s champagne country in the middle of a war as the aide de camp for a general seemed utterly improbable.

He also shared facts about his early life, before finding himself in a position of such authority, – things that have stuck with me through the years, reinforced by historians. He was an only child, born on St. Patrick’s Day (1913). His mom, Alice, had been born in Mississippi. After she married, she taught school in Kentwood and New Orleans. When the sawmill where his dad worked closed, his family moved across Lake Pontchartrain to New Orleans. There his dad got a job with the US Treasury Department as a Prohibition-era revenue agent. 

My companion admitted that his formal education ended with a 1928 graduation from Warren Easton High School when he was “a tall, naïve, chubby kid with a thatch of dark, unruly hair.”

His parents had taught him to be polite, he told me in a self-deprecating manner.  That later came in handy when he was a newly minted Second Lieutenant in early 1944, attached to Brigadier General Charles Orval Thrasher’s staff in Wiltshire, England.

Cap acknowledged that his adulthood was shaped by the general.  I still recall his explanation: “He demanded perfection in all things. Allied victory depended on it.”

They and their British counterparts had a multitude of aspects of Operation Overlord to coordinate. In particular, he was charged with ensuring that when the Normandy beaches were stormed, each of the 73,000 Americans would be supplied with ample calories, potable water and toilet paper. Their field rations had to be pocket-sized, life-sustaining, packs of nutrition.

As the ice melted in our drinks, he told me that he’d quickly been promoted to First Lieutenant, working ten to twelve hours a day as the General’s advisor and aide.  No one had any days off in the months leading up to D-Day. Strictest secrecy governed their every move.

He recalled that they endlessly had to prove themselves to their British hosts – down to the quality of shine on their boots and the snap in their salutes. Then there was maintaining the pecking order with the staff of U.S. General John C.H. “Jesus Christ Himself” Lee, a favorite of Eisenhower. It was diplomacy under fire, for sure.

That’s when Cap fully shifted his sharp focus to my history assignment.  As I recall, he pointed out that while much had been written about the guts and glory of D-Day, few historians focused on the fact that “victors march on their stomachs.”

“Let’s start with the Hershey bar – America’s secret weapon” he began in the cadence of a well-practiced storyteller.  He told me that leading up to America entering the world war, our government was secretly working with Hershey in Pennsylvania to perfect a high-energy chocolate ration that weighed less than 5 ounces and was heat-resistant to 120 degrees. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the US Army – under strict secrecy – ordered that this ration bar also had to be poison gas-proofed.

“From 1940-1945, I would bet a billion Hershey’s rations were consumed by Allied troops,” he told me as he screwed up his face. “But, regrettably it tasted like a month-old biscuit.” 

I worried that I was monopolizing too much of his time, but he assured me he was delighted to keep me company until I needed to be back to meet my Courier boss, Bill Rushton, for dinner with “a source” for an upcoming article.

Without mansplaining, he conversationally got me up to speed on the bigger D-Day picture. On June 6, 1944, after years of meticulous planning, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of Normandy beaches.  General Thrasher was the Commanding officer of the United States Forces in the southern district of England, entrusted with managing the supply chain for the upcoming Operation Overlord, the D-Day Invasion to liberate Europe from the Nazis.

Before I knew it, it was time for me to head back to Decatur Street. 

“Happy writing, Skinny,” he waved as he walked away towards Esplanade.

I couldn’t wait to regale Bill with my stories of the fascinating man I’d met. I told him I wanted to write a profile about this war hero who I described as a cross between Atticus Finch and Hemingway. Bill – my flamboyant, gay activist editor and friend – dismissed it all with a wink and decidedly provocative hand gesture. In his version, I was Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” being seduced by Humbert Humbert.

Fortunately, my history professor was more intrigued with my “insightful” paper. He filled me in on just how impressive General Thrasher really was.  He wanted more.

So did I.

One morning a few weeks later, I chanced upon Cap coming out of The Gallier House in the 1100 block of Royal Street.

“Hey, Skinny,” he greeted me.

Then, as if we were old friends, he outlined his plan to get historic landmark status for the building.  His knowledge, strategy and determination to preserve the French Quarter seemed to be a direct outgrowth of his time with General Thrasher. He asked if the Courier would assist him in this mission.

“Of course,” I responded, without hesitation, knowing Bill Rushton’s passion for preservation.

Then he wanted to know how my professor liked my paper. I explained that, unfortunately, since it was so much better than he’d anticipated, that now my full grade was going to be based on expanding my D-Day research. Thus began our second conversation. This time over coffee.

We dodged large produce trucks and squashed tomatoes on the pavement as we headed to Morning Call in the French Market. There we shared cups of café au lait (made with cream, his special order), beignets, and his stories about WW2 rations.

Lighting up a cigarette to accompany his recollections, I still recall certain things he told me that day. “I don’t mean to brag,” he’d began, “but, I can safely say our American troops were the best-fed fighting force of all time. Now, I am not saying it was delicious, though.”

He gave me an overview. By early June 1944, close to two million troops from a dozen countries had gathered in England, awaiting the voyage across the channel to France.

“That’s a lot of mouths to feed,” Cap quipped.

The D-Day invasion began just after midnight on Tuesday, June 6, with the airborne assault of close to 20,000 paratroopers. Thrasher’s team stocked them up with a three-day supply of 2,830 calorie K-rations. They were packed by hand into waxed, gas-proof and waterproof cardboard boxes.  The peanut bar, bouillon powder, canned meat, chewing gum, – and, of course, cigarettes – had to sustain them for the entire day.

As I took notes on paper borrowed from a waiter, I learned those 73,000 Americans hitting the Normandy beaches battled seasickness, faced imminent death from Nazi fire and uncertainty of where their next meal would come from – if they survived. The supplies to sustain them were stashed in their eighty-pound backpacks: rations, water, bullets, grenades, and socks.

Cap lit his third cigarette and ordered us second cups of coffee. He continued to outline what sustained the Allied invaders. Foot soldiers’ K-ration boxes consisted of three meals: canned ham and eggs and a dried fruit bar for breakfast; luncheon meat with biscuits and hard cheese. They also contained Halazone water purification tablets, a four-pack of cigarettes, chewing gum, and powdered beverages to mix with water - instant coffee, lemon powder and cocoa.

By June 11, more than 326,000 Allied troops crossed the English Channel to begin their march to liberate Europe from the Nazis.   General Thrasher’s staff had marshaled the supplies for the first month. Sixty million rations had been pre-loaded in 500-ton blocks on ships from New York. They were set to arrive in Normandy by D’Day.

“As it turned out,” Cap confessed, “Our detailed shipping plans were derailed by Mother Nature.”

Due to Nazi fire and rough seas, little cargo landed on the first day. Finally, by June 18th, about 80% of the supplies had landed, but there were not enough vehicles to transport them.

Next came a major weather setback.  On June 19, the Normandy beaches were hit by the worst storm in forty years, one that lasted for four days. By the time it was over, a hundred damaged landing vehicles were strewn on the beaches, blocking every unloading point.

Despite their best efforts, General Thrasher’s staff soon learned of  an “epidemic” of blurry vision and sore throats caused by riboflavin and thiamine deficiency.  The lemon powder in K-rations was meant to be the primary sources of vitamin C. The troops utterly despised it. Those who didn’t throw it away, used it for scrubbing their gear, which is why there were cases of scurvy in those subsisting on K-rations.  To correct these problems, Thrasher’s staff had to rush vitamin enriched flour to the front and get field bakeries into operation.

After the invasion, Thrasher and his staff crossed the Channel to Rheims, 90 miles northeast of Paris, where SHAEF — the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force — under Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was headquartered.

Once in Rheims, Cap was put in charge of directing supplies to the advancing US First, Third and Ninth Armies in France and Belgium. 

Many years later, once I knew Cap’s identity, I discovered that he received honors from three nations for his work: Knight of the Order of the Crown of Belgium, Chevalier de l'Ordre du Merite of France, and the Bronze Star and Legion of Merit from the United States.*

As Cap tucked his pack of cigarettes back in his pocket, he signaled for the waiter with a $5 bill he left under the sugar shaker, chained to the counter. Wrapping up our chat, he told me that over breakfast on May 8, 1945, General Thrasher told him that Germany surrendered.  Before his discharge in January 1946, he was promoted from Captain to Major. He said he couldn’t wait to get home to the French Quarter to enjoy the peace we earned.

*Archivist Joseph Makkos of NOLADNA recently shared two articles from the Shreveport Times during WWII.  The first (May 25, 1944) lauds the appointment of First Lieutenant Clay L. Shaw, 31, as "aid-de-camp to Brig. Gen. Charles O. Thrasher, commanding United Sates army invasion supply base section in England." The second (June 28, 1945) mentions a flying visit Shaw paid his father in Shreveport during a 60-day "special mission" to the States.  "...the captain advised his Dad that he has been awarded a Bronze Star, also the Legion of Merit and that he has been nominated to receive the French Croix de Guerre."

I still had a few more questions. When I asked him if he had kept in touch with the General, he got a far-off look in his eyes. As if weighing each word, he told me that by the summer of 1946, the General had grown weary of war and retired.

We sat in contemplative silence, sipping the last cold dregs of our milky coffee before he said that General Thrasher had died in September 1960. Cap expressed regrets about not being there when Thrasher was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery.

When I asked if he would want to be buried in Arlington, he guffawed, coughed, and laughed some more. “Now that, Skinny, would be a real fine howdy-you-do!”

As I walked around the corner to the Courier, my head was buzzing with plans to write an article about Cap. I had so many more questions. But, on August 17, 1969, those baking summer temperatures delivered Hurricane Camille, a Category Five hurricane that struck coastal Mississippi and Louisiana. Coping with the aftermath of the catastrophe pushed Cap out of my mind.  Then in October and November 1969 hundreds of thousands marched in Washington to protest the Vietnam War and writing about a hero of a previous war lost its luster.

Epilogue

My two conversations with Cap came flooding back to me on February 13, 1970 when The Courier ran an article, “Shaw’s Seclusion.” I was filled with disbelief as Clay Shaw’s face stared back at me.

I realized that the first time Cap and I had discussed D-day had been just a few months after he was acquitted by a jury ( March 1, 1969) – in less than an hour– for conspiracy to assassinate JFK. New Orleans District Attorney,  Jim Garrison (1921-1992), had whipped up an international media frenzy by asserting that he’d solved the murder. 

His theory was that Clay Shaw was a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde villain – prominent civic leader by day; homosexual thrill killer by night. Garrison’s conspiracy theories opened doors to prime-time media outlets, and he spouted his theories to the likes of the Tonight Show and Playboy Magazine. By the time I met Cap in the French Quarter, Clay Shaw had become a household name across America, as a pervert and an assassin.  His acquittal did not end the smear campaign.

But when I met Cap I knew none of this. I was busily indulging in my self-involved life as a coed and helping my Courier editor, Bill, in his efforts to preserve the French Quarter.

All that changed when I read the 1970 Courier article outlining Garrison’s relentless pursuit. Two days after Shaw’s acquittal, he was re-arrested and accused of perjury. When I met him, he was preparing his defense, again, for the next trial.

Over the next four years, before his death on August 15, 1974, each time I encountered Clay Shaw, he enriched my life by acts of thoughtfulness. I was also welcomed into the inner circle of New Orleanians (and beyond) who unconditionally supported him in life – and after his death.

Throughout our friendship, Clay Shaw always called me “Skinny” and I called him “Cap.” Fifty years later, as I walked the deserted streets of the French Quarter during the long pandemic shutdowns, I sensed Cap beside me, escorting me on my own private celestial ghost tour. His voice is in my head even now.  It turns out his legacy lives on in a variety of different people – and a tortoise. Over the next few months I will share some untold stories of the power of friendships and back-channeling in Clay Shaw’s survival.

Next installment:  D. A. Garrison’s Homosexual Thrill Killer’s early days as a playwright.

More reading on Clay Shaw: 
Man of a Million Fragments : the True Story of Clay Shaw by Donald H. Carpenter 

Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime by Alecia P. Long