I admit that the only element of this story that truly surprised me was that the assassian planned to use a congregation as a cover for his get away. After he had murdered his target, he intended upon blending into the parisoners leaving Wednesday evening services. It was diabolical and inspired plan. And it was about the last smart thing he did, and the first.
*
The target lived in a two story Craftsman style home at 4011 Turtle Creek Boulvard, in Dallas Texas. The assassian realized the boulvard was too busy for a safe shot and the front of the house set back too far from the street to provide a reliable shot. But his reconsisence revealed there was a dead end alley in the rear which would get him to within a hundred feet of the windows. At that range the shooter couldn't miss.
And for an escape, running north through the alley would lead the shooter to the parking lot behind a Presbaterian Church, which fronted on the next street over, Oak Lawn Avenue. And just past the church, on Oak Lawn, was a bus stop, which would provide an inconspicous getaway. It was, again, diabolical and inspired. By using the bus, he would not have to borrow a car. And his overcoat would hid the rifle from fellow riders.
*
The target was Edwin (Ted) Anderson Walker, a man with many enemies, most of them of his own choosing. A West Point graduate, he had been a hero in two wars, being awarded both the silver and the bronze star, the latter with an oak leaf cluster, and the Legion of Merit. He had risen to the rank of Major General. But he had failed at the transition to peace time. And he remained unmarried into his fifties.
*
In 1957 the six foot two inch combat veteren had been ordered by President Eisenhower to take command of the 82nd Airborne and the Arkansas National Guard to oversee the court ordered desegrigation of Little Rock’s Central high school. So personally repulsive was this task that the general had tendered his resignation. The President had refused to accept it, and reluctantly General Walker had followed orders, seeing to it that 9 black teenagers were admitted and attended classes at the public high school.
*
But Walker remained a racist and a radical. He tried to resign from the Army a second time in 1959, in protest of American participation in the United Nations, and, he wrote, of the "fifth column conspiracy and influence in the United States" of communists. Again his resignation was rejected. Instead the Joint Chiefs transferred him to Augsburg, Germany, where he took command of the 24th Infantry Division.
*
It was there, in the spring of 1961, that Walker delivered a series of lectures to the troops on a program called "Pro-Blue". As Dick Thornton rembered it over fifty years later (at the web site http://bobrowen.com/... "As Gen Walker addressed us, he pulled down a huge wall map of the world. It was rendered in various shades of red and pink. This was, he said, to show the degree of communist influence in each country. The United States got off easy with only a medium red color. We all looked at each other...rather mystified and uneasy with this commanding officer who seemed, to all intents and purposes, to be flat out crazy. Gen Walker stated that it wasn't enough to be anti-red - you must be PRO-BLUE! He gave us a list of books to be placed in all the dayrooms - required reading for everyone." The required readings were straight from the publications of the John Birch Society.
*
Then, a small civilian newspaper aimed at U.S.Servicemen, the "Overseas Weekly" (coloquially known as the "Oversexed Weekly") quoted Walker as calling President Harry Truman, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of State Dean Acheson as being "definatly pink". The paper quoted Walker as calling journalist Edward R. Murrow a "confirmed Communist" and charging that 60% of the American press was Communist controled. Walker counter attacked, calling the paper "immoral, unscruplous, corrupt and destructive" (three of which it definatly was), but the two star general had stepped over the line when he published a list of "Pro-Blue" politicians his soldiers should vote for. They were all conservative Republcians, of course.
*
Walker was relieved of his command and ordered to report for a psychiatric examination. Instead, on November 2, 1961 Walker resigned from the Army a third time. And this time the Pentagon accepted. Having resigned, Walker would receive no pension and no benefits. Said Walker, he wanted to be "free from the power of little men who, in the name of my country, punish loyal service to it. It will be my purpose now, as a civilian, to attempt to do what I have found it no longer possible to do in uniform."
*
What he did first, in February of 1961, was to run for Governor of his home state of Texas. He managed to draw only 10% of the vote in the Republican Primary. In September of 1962 he helped to organize protests to the admitance to the Univerity of Missippi of James Meredith, a young black man. Walker’s public statement, on September 29, called the use of Federal troops in defence of segregation, "a disgrace to the nation in 'dire peril,'...This is the conspiracy of the crucifixion by anti-Christ conspirators of the Supreme Court in their denial of prayer and their betrayal of the nation."
*
A 15 hour riot broke out on campus that night, during which two were killed and six federal marshales were wounded. Walker was arrested and charged with sedition and insurrection, but in January of 1963 a grand jury failed to indict him, and he returned to Dallas hailed as a hero. And that was what inspired the assassian to order his rifle, using the alias "A. Hidel".
*
In early April the the assassain insisted that his wife take his photo with his new rifle. He even told his wife, "If someone had killed Hitler in time, it could have saved many lives."
*
After 8:30, on the night Wednesday April 10, 1963, the shooter walked down the alley from Avondale Avenue. He crounched behind a wall, cradeling his Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm bolt action rifle. He balanced the rifle on the top of the chain link fence, and using the telescopic sight, aimed at his target’s head behind french doors, just 100 feet away. It was Nine O’clock when the assassain pulled the trigger.
*
Walker was sitting at his desk in his dinning room, working on his taxes. The lights were on and the shades were up. He heard a crack, sounding like a firecracker. He heard glass break, and he felt a sting in his arm. He rose and walked around the desk, and saw a hole in the wall behind where he had been sitting. Immediately Walker went upstairs to retrive a pistol, and so armed, he went into the back yard.
*
Seeing nothing, he turned to face his house, and spotted a chip in the window frame. It was only then that Walker was certain that someone had taken a shot at him, and he called the Dallas Police.
*
A Dallas Police officer dug the remains of the bullet from General Walker’s dining room wall, but it was too badly deformed to be of much value. But following the path of the bullet showed, that even after hitting the window frame, the tumbling slug had missed Walker’s head by less than an inch. It came so close that part of the disintergrating shell's metal jacket had struck Walker in the arm.
*
Seven months later the assassin pulled the trigger again. This time he hit his target twice. This time his target was riding in the back seat of a limousine. This time his target was President John F. Kennedy. It was only when the Warren Commission interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife that they stumbled upon the solution to the mysterious rifle shot taken at General Walker. Oswald had admitted the attempt, at the time, to his wife and to George De Mohrenschildt, the husband of his wife’s best (and only) friend in Dallas. Fourteen years later, a Neutron Activation Analysis of the bullet recovered from Walker’s wall confirmed its connection with ammunition used on November 22, 1963.
*
Edwin (Ted) Anderson Walker, mocked by the President and ex-five star general Dwight David Eisenhower as a "super patriot" had been long since isolated because of his close connection to the John Birch Society. He made a living from speeches to members of that group, delivered across the nation until he was arrested again, at the age of 66, on June 23, 1976.
*
On that night, just three blocks from his home, Edwin Walker followed a Dallas undercover police officer, R.J. Stevens, into a public restroom in Cole Park. There Walker made a "physical advance" and was arrested on the spot. The officer had no idea who Walker was. Like another conservative Republican decades later, Walker pleaded no contest, posted $200 bail and later paid a $1,000 fine. He received one year probation, but history repeated itself again, less than a year later. On March 16, 1977, this time in Dallas' Reverchon Park, a few blocks from his home. This time the general was charged with public lewdness and making "suggestive overtones." Now, even the John Birch Society isolated him.
*
In the 1980 the one organization he had given the most to, the U.S. Army, quietly restored his medical benefits, and in 1982 even forgave his resignation and restored his pension, in full; $45,120 a year. He died of lung cancer, in his own bed, on October 31st, 1993.
*
I thank General Walker for his service to this nation we share. But, I must admit, I also believe the world would have been a better place if Lee Harvey Oswald had not missed Edwin Walker on that April night in 1963. Perhaps the norteriety the assassian would have gained from that murder, would have been enough for him. And perhaps it would have stilled the self imposed demons that so troubled the general.
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SUNDAY: TILL THE COWS COME HOME
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