That Friday afternoon was unseasonably warm in Washington. Not quite two weeks earlier, the temperature had hovered in the low 20s for our Marine Corps Birthday parade at the Iwo Jima statue in Arlington. As I walked through the main gate of the Marine Barracks—known throughout the Corps as "8th and I" (or "Eighth and Eye" to the truly salty), named for its street location in the city's Southeast quadrant—another officer walked past me, barely acknowledging my greeting. His face was ashen.
"They killed him," he said to no one in particular. He looked as though he'd just lost his best friend.
In a sense, he had. As one of two bachelor officers from the Barracks assigned to the White House as a social aide, he was one of the family. And a special relationship had just been shattered that 22 November 1963, along with the hopes and dreams of millions of Americans, with the crack of an assassin's rifle.
In July 1962, John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts attended an evening parade at 8th and I, the first president to do so since John Adams of Massachusetts, back in the earliest days of the Barracks at the beginning of the 19th century. It was a spectacular evening, and President Kennedy said that he was pleased to report that President Thomas Jefferson's instructions—to locate the Marine Barracks near the Navy Yard and "within easy marching distance of Washington"—had been very successfully carried out. He also said he had learned recently that, despite his status as Commander-in-Chief, the only troops he controlled directly were the members of "The President's Own" Marine Band. He added, with unintended irony, that he and the Marine Band proposed "to hold the White House against all odds, at least for some time to come."
President Kennedy enjoyed the evening parade so much that he invited the Barracks to bring it to the White House. He wanted it to follow a state dinner. Some adjustments needed to be made for the slope in the South Lawn and other changes in scenery. And to prepare for the worst case—a sudden evening thunderstorm—we rehearsed two variants of the ceremony: a regular 30-minute version, and a 15-minute one, with an emergency march-off.
Sure enough, on the night of the parade the weather was threatening. The chief usher of the White House approached President Kennedy and asked:
"What'll it be, Mr. President, the 15-minute version or the 30-minute one?"
The Commander-in-Chief looked up at the sky, rocked back in his chair, and smiled a slow smile: "Give me 20."
He wants 20! The word flashed out to the staging area, where the troops were standing ready to march on in minutes. Time had run out to alter the parade sequence, but the Barracks operations officer was up to the challenge. He called over the leader of the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps, which had been scheduled for a brief stand-up concert midway through the short ceremony.
"Gunner, I want five more minutes of your concert. I want exactly five more minutes, even if you have to cut it off in mid-beat. Or I will have your hide when we get back to the Barracks."
The Drum and Bugle Corps complied, to the second. President Kennedy was pleased. He had made life complicated for the Marines, and they had come through. He liked people who could live out there on the edge with him.
On that dismal November weekend a year later, chaos reigned. Within minutes of learning about the shooting, I was on my way to Gravelly Point, near Washington National Airport, where the Military District of Washington was setting up a funeral command post. My job was to coordinate requirements for Marine Corps participation. The Army two-star general in charge was preparing for heavy going.
"We're going to be working around the clock for the next four days or so. We've brought in some cots. Sleep when you can." And with his own bit of unintended irony, the two-war veteran added, "This will be as close to a combat situation as some of you may ever get."
We were working from a long-established state funeral plan, which spelled out military requirements for a series of events that ranged from lying in state to graveside services. But the plan did not cover the events of that horrible first day, when the President's body was flown back from Dallas, transferred to a hearse in a tumultuous, televised scene at Andrews Air Force Base, taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an autopsy, then returned to the White House. For the President's body to re-enter the White House grounds without some sort of honor guard in attendance would have been a travesty, but no word had come down to establish one. So the Marines of the 8th and I Silent Drill Platoon turned in that evening with shoes and brass shined, dress blues hanging nearby, and M-1 rifles drawn already from their locked storage racks. When the call did come, well after midnight, they grabbed their gear and ran half-dressed to waiting vans. Eighteen minutes later, in an eerie scene captured by still and motion-picture photographers, this superb platoon was in position, rendering a salute as the hearse came through the gate. President Jefferson's phrase, "within easy marching distance of Washington," had taken on new significance, and the Marines' rapid response became the talk of the town.
For all its wealth of detail, the state funeral plan left flexibility to accommodate the wishes of the first family. Each day, the retired Army colonel who served as liaison officer visited the next day's ceremony sites with Kennedy family representatives, walked them through the various sequences, then took their special requests back to Gravelly Point to be incorporated in the detailed plan, late in the day. Other special requests rolled into the command post throughout each day, usually beginning with "Mrs. Kennedy wants. . . ." The President's widow, whose stoic bearing under the ordeal was awe-inspiring, actually may have wanted some of those things, but certainly not all of them. Since so little time was available to sort everything out, we tried to honor all of the requests—even to the extent of flying an Irish cadet drill team in to perform a funeral manual of arms at graveside.
On the eve of the final day, the liaison colonel brought back one last "Mrs. Kennedy wants. . . ."
"President Kennedy always had a special fondness for his Marines, and Mrs. Kennedy would like to see a platoon of Marines around the caisson bearing his casket when it enters the White House grounds en route from the Capitol to St. Matthew's Cathedral. Can you provide?"
The entire roomful of funeral planners was staring at me. There could be only one answer:
"Yessir!"
Then reality set in. Every Marine between Philadelphia and Quantico with a set of dress blues would be on the street during the final day, as part of either a ceremonial unit or security cordon. Where would I find another full ceremonial platoon? President Kennedy had taken us out to the edge one more time. In quiet desperation, I called the operations officer at 8th and I.
"Not to worry," he said. "We have a full company in the line of march coming up from the Capitol. When the procession halts near the White House, we'll quietly break off a platoon to surround the caisson as it enters the grounds and stay with it until Mrs. Kennedy and all those foreign leaders join the procession. Then the platoon can quietly rejoin the line of march. There's no need to tell the whole world about what we're doing at this late stage of the game. On second thought, we'd better tell the Secret Service—they don't like surprises."
The final day of the state funeral dawned clear and cold, as though a long winter of discontent—destined to last a decade or longer—had settled in suddenly. The horse-drawn caisson, carrying the flag-draped casket and accompanied by six enlisted body bearers, moved up Pennsylvania Avenue to the insistent beat of muffled drums. At the White House, the body bearers gave way to a platoon of Marines, as more than 200 heads of state assembled for the walk to St. Matthew's Cathedral. Our plan had worked. The whole world saw and will long remember little John-John Kennedy's final salute to his father. Less visible—and just as poignant—was the final salute of two dozen young Marines, who will never forget their historic opportunity to display that special bond with their fallen leader. But Mrs. Kennedy knew.
JFK's Marines
When President John F. Kennedy visited the "Eighth and Eye" Barracks in 1962, he verified that Thomas Jefferson's instructions had been followed faithfully. JFK's Marines showed why, 16 months later, those instructions were so important.
By Colonel John G. Miller, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)