Warday

Over the years, untended chemical-storage facilities deteriorated, especially along the Harlem River and on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. The whole of southern New Jersey is now uninhabitable, and Manhattan and the Bronx are severe hazard zones. People cannot remain in the Bronx for more than a few hours at a time, nor live in Manhattan north of Twenty-third Street.

Despite the dangers, we felt we had to go in. We asked for and obtained General Briggs’s permission to enter the city. I suspect that he knew we would go in, even if he didn’t give us the necessary papers. We were lucky to have gained his confidence. Had we not been under the guidance of Army and city personnel, we would not have lived through our trip to Manhattan.

Rumors from the Northeast

RUMOR: The complete records of the United States government were preserved in a mountain in Colorado, and officials are just waiting for the right moment to put them to use in getting the country reorganized.

FACT: This is one of the most persistent stories we heard in this part of the country. In fact, there was and is a redoubt in the Rockies. It is the NORAD Aerospace Defense Command in Cheyenne Mountain, and it is back in operation despite battle damage. It is being run by a joint U.S.-U.K.-Canadian command. But it contains only military equipment and electronics, most of it preserved by the mountain from EMP effects.

RUMOR: There is a Council of State Governors that will soon meet to appoint an interim Congress, which will in turn appoint an interim President, whose primary responsibility will be the reorganization of the federal government.

FACT: The federal government in Los Angeles gave no hint of any such plan, nor is there any functional national governors’ organization.

RUMOR: Even though it was terribly damaged, the Soviet Union remained in one piece while the U.S. did not. Thus the Russians won the war, but they need time to rebuild before they occupy America. Stories to the effect that the USSR has broken up are planted by Soviet intelligence to lull the Americans into complacency and create a false sense of security.

We think this rumor is false, and here’s why: First if Russia were still intact, Europe and Japan would be arming themselves as quickly as possible. There is little evidence of this. And the Russians apparently do nothing to resist the Royal Navy’s attacks on isolated Soviet submarines, of which we have an excellent account elsewhere in this book.

Second, an intact Russia would already have invaded western Europe. The Russian armies in Poland and in some of the other Eastern Bloc countries disintegrated after the war because they had no orders from Moscow and no idea what had happened at home.

Third—the smallest but most telling fact—during the clothing shortage in 88–89. the British brought in freighters loaded with uniforms. Everybody remembers them because we were all wearing them. They were dyed black, but they were Soviet summer uniforms, apparently liberated and sold to the U.K. as surplus by the Poles when the Soviet armies stationed in Poland collapsed.

Interview General George Briggs, New York Military Area

What the U.S. Army is engaged in here is the mission of protecting the property of American citizens and managing the most massive salvage operation in the history of the human race.

This salvage will continue until everything of value is physically removed from this area. And I mean everything. Let me read some statistics. In the past four years we have salvaged, among other things, 816,000 typewriters, 235,561 automobile parts, 199,021 kitchen appliances, over seven thousand tons of steel, four thousand tons of aluminum or other sheathing, more than three million meters of copper wire, eighty-eight thousand windows, 199,803 business suits and 204,381 articles of women’s clothing from stores and factories, 9,100 toupees, 6,170 pieces of bridge-work and artificial teeth, and one set of prosthetic rear legs suitable for a medium-sized dog, which were found at the Animal Medical Center. We have also saved 14,126,802 books, 2,181,709 phonograph records, and enough video and audio tape to stretch to the moon and back twice. Working in association with various art galleries and other types of museums, we are aiding in the salvage of such institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan, the Museum of Natural History, the Guggenheim, the Whitney, the Frick, and many others. Among the items we have saved are the entire contents and paneling of the Fragonard Room at the Frick, which was transferred to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. We have also saved the embalmed brain of a Mr. A. J. Carnegie, which was found in a closet at New York University. The how and why of that one remains a mystery. If you wish, you can see the brain. It’s in our collection here at the armory, along with a number of other especially unusual exhibits.