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Bush tells us in his campaign autobiography that he decided to enlist in
the armed forces, specifically naval aviation, shortly after he heard of
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. About six months later, Bush graduated
from Phillips Academy at Andover, and the commencement speaker was
Secretary of War Henry Stimson, eminence grise of the U.S. ruling elite.
Stimson was possibly mindful of the hecatomb of young members of the
British ruling classes which had occurred in the trenches of World War I on
the western front. In any event, Stimson's advice to the Andover graduates
was that the war would go on for a long time, and that the best way of
serving the country was to continue one's education in college. Prescott
Bush supposedly asked his son if Stimson's recommendation had altered his
plan to enlist. Young Bush answered that he was still committed to join the
Navy.
Henry L. Stimson was certainly an authoritative spokesman for the Eastern
Liberal Establishment, and Bushman propaganda has lately exalted him as one
of the seminal influences on Bush's political outlook. Stimson had been
educated at both Yale (where he had been tapped by Skull and Bones) and
Harvard Law School. He became the law partner of Elihu Root, who was
Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State. Stimson had been Theodore
Roosevelt's anti-corruption, trust-busting U.S. Attorney in New York City
during the first years of the FBI, then Taft's secretary of war, a colonel
of artillery in World War I, governor general of the Philippines for
Coolidge, secretary of state for Hoover, and enunciator of the "Stimson
doctrine." This last was a piece of hypocritical posturing directed against
Japan, asserting that changes in the international order brought about by
force of arms (and thus in contravention of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of
1928) should not be given diplomatic recognition. This amounted to a U.S.
commitment to uphold the Versailles system, the same policy upheld by
Baker, Eagleburger and Kissinger in the Serbian war on Slovenia and Croatia
during 1991. Stimson, though a Republican, was brought into Roosevelt's war
cabinet in 1940 in token of bipartisan intentions.
But in 1942, Bush was not buying Stimson's advice. It is doubtless
significant that in the mind of young George Bush, World War II meant
exclusively the war in the Pacific, against the Japanese. In the
Bush-approved accounts of this period of his life, there is scarcely a
mention of the European theatre, despite the fact that Roosevelt and the
entire Anglo-American establishment had accorded strategic priority to the
"Germany first" scenario. Young George, it would appear, had his heart set
on becoming a Navy flier.
Rules Bent for Bush
Normally the Navy required two years of college from volunteers wishing to
become naval aviators. But, for reasons which have never been
satisfactorily explained, young George was exempted from this requirement.
Had father Prescott's crony Artemus Gates, the assistant secretary of the
navy for air, been instrumental in making the exception, which was the key
to allowing George to become the youngest of all navy pilots?
On June 12, 1942, his eighteenth birthday, Bush joined the Navy in Boston
as a seaman second class. / Note #1 He was ordered to report for active
duty as an aviation cadet on August 6, 1942. After a last date with
Barbara, George was taken to Penn Station in New York City by father
Prescott to board a troop train headed for Chapel Hill, North Carolina. At
Chapel Hill Naval Air Station, one of Bush's fellow cadets was the
well-known Boston Red Sox hitter Ted Williams, who would later join Bush on
the campaign trail in his desperate fight in the New Hampshire primary in
February 1988.
After preflight training at Chapel Hill, Bush moved on to Wold-Chamberlain
Naval Airfield in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he flew solo for the first
time in November 1942. In February 1943 Bush moved on to Corpus Christi,
Texas for further training. Bush received his commission as an ensign at
Corpus Christi on June 9, 1943.
After this, Bush moved through a number of naval air bases over a period of
almost a year for various types of advanced trai ning. In mid-June 1943, he
was learning to fly the Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo-bomber at Fort
Lauderdale, Florida. In August, he made landings on the "USS Sable," a
paddle-wheel ship that was used as an aircraft carrier for training
purposes. During the summer of 1943, Bush spent a couple of weeks of leave
with Barbara at Walker's Point in Kennebunkport; their engagement was
announced in the "New York Times" of December 12, 1943.
Later in the summer of 1943, Bush moved on to theNaval Air Base at Norfolk,
Virginia. In September 1943 Bush's new squadron, called VT-51, moved on to
the Naval Air Station at Chincoteague, Virginia, located on the Delmarva
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