The Adventures of Pat

Brigadier General Patrick Jay Hurley had disappeared from Washington again last week. His friends assumed that he was off once more on a mysterious war errand for the President. Washington could not get over the spectacle of Pat Hurley, every bit as anti-New Deal as his old boss Herbert Hoover, turning out to be one of Franklin Roosevelt's trusted lieutenants. Since Pearl Harbor General Hurley had spanned six continents as the President's special representative.

Not that Pat Hurley had not always been a man of mixed allegiances. Born in Indian Territory 60 years ago, he was once attorney for the Choctaw Nations. His first job was in the coal mines when he was eleven years old but he became such a rich man (through oil and the law) that John L. Lewis accused him of "betraying the union of his youth for 30 lousy pieces of silver."

When the New Deal swept the Republicans out of office--by that time Hurley was Secretary of War--Pat held on in Washington and built up a fine, fat law practice. He capped it off in 1940 by arranging a settlement between the Mexican Government and five companies whose oil the Mexicans had expropriated. For sending them a bill for something they had been getting free, the Mexicans handed Pat their highest decoration, the Order of the Aztec Eagle. Out of the oil companies Pat got such a six-figure fee that "I could afford to keep my stud horses."

To Break a Siege. One day in January 1941, Franklin Roosevelt called in Pat Hurley, then a 59-year-old reserve colonel, who had worn his first uniform 40 years before in the Indian Territory militia. The mission he assigned to -Pat was breathtaking: to break the blockade of Bataan from outside, get some food and ammunition to MacArthur's beleaguered soldiers. As a brigadier general, Pat Hurley took some millions of dollars and flew to Australia. There he hired shippers who were willing to take the slim chance. Several ships got through--for every one that made it, two were sunk--but it was too late.

At Darwin he got a Japanese bomb splinter in his head during an air raid. He met his old chief of staff, Douglas MacArthur, upon the latter's arrival in Australia. Then he took off for New Zealand as the first U.S. Minister to that Dominion (the job for which he had ostensibly been sent to the Pacific in January).

Minister Hurley made a hit in New Zealand. He made it a rule never to speak more than four minutes. When he was asked at Wellington to give the people of New Zealand some good advice, he replied: "Socrates was a Greek philosopher. He went about giving people a lot of good advice. They poisoned him."

To Break a Silence. Last fall Franklin Roosevelt sent Pat Hurley as his observer to Russia. Grey, ramrod-backed General Hurley made a hit with Stalin, who let him go to the Stalingrad front--the first foreigner so trusted. In a bomber with two other American officers, General Pat was flown over the front where the Russians were completing one of the most complicated encircling operations in military history. Pat & friends saw it all in detail. Later the Hurley party toured the front in a jeep, lived at field headquarters and had the best of Russian hospitality and cooperation. In return, Pat Hurley taught his warrior friends the high, piercing Choctaw war cry.

For bringing home some of the specific reasons why the Russian Army is now the most successful fighting force in the world, Pat Hurley got an oak leaf to add to his World War I Distinguished Service Medal -- "for exceptionally meritorious service in the Far East and Russia."

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