Reclaiming History (136 page)

Other than the Tijuana visit, the trip on the train to LA, two dates in Santa Ana that had been arranged by a squad mate who thought Oswald would like to meet his attractive aunt, an airline stewardess who was studying Russian preparing for a U.S. Department of State foreign-language test,
³⁹⁰
and one time to apply for a passport, there doesn’t seem to be any other evidence of Oswald leaving his El Toro base in eight months.

One of Oswald’s fellow marines, Mack Osborne, once asked Oswald why he never went off base, and Oswald told him he was saving his money “because one day he would do something which would make him famous.”
³⁹¹
†

At some point after Oswald’s probable contacts with the Cuban embassy or consulate in Los Angeles, he abruptly mentioned other plans to Delgado—to attend a college in Switzerland.
³⁹²
As early as March 19, he had applied to Albert Schweitzer College in Churwalden, Switzerland, a small institution in the central canton of Graubünden that specialized in religion, ethics, science, and literature. He wrote to the school that he hoped to attend it for the third term, running from April 12 to June 27, 1960. Still only nineteen, he gave his age as twenty (possibly because he would be that age by the starting date), described his occupation as “student,” and claimed fluency in Russian equal to a year’s schooling. He boldly lied that he had completed high school by correspondence with an 85 percent average, equal to a B+. His special interests, he wrote, were “Philosophy, Psychology, Ideology” and “Football, baseball, tennis, Stamp collecting.” His private reading consisted of “Jack London, Darwin, Norman V. Peal, Sciencetific books, Philosophy, ect.” He had taken part in a “Student body movement in school for controll of Juvenile Delinquency” and claimed membership in “Y.M.C.A. and A.Y.A. associations.” His vocational interest was “To be a short story writer on contemporary American life.”
³⁹³

He wished to attend Albert Schweitzer “in order to aquire a fuller understanding of that subject which interest me most, Philosophy. To meet with Europeans who can broaden my scope of understanding. To recive formal Education by Instructers of high standing and character. To broaden my knowledge of German and to live in a healthy climate and Good Moral atmosphere.” He also claimed, “I do speak a very little German” and gave the names of two fellow marines as his references.
³⁹⁴
He was accepted, and on June 19 he sent the college a letter enclosing his registration fee of twenty-five dollars.
³⁹⁵
In the meantime, on March 23, he took steps to cover his lack of a high school diploma by taking a General Educational Development (GED) test from the Armed Forces Institute, often accepted by colleges in lieu of the diploma. The standard scores on five tests were correlated to a percentile of the population: in English literature, on which he scored best, he placed in the 34th percentile; in English composition, in the 76th; in social sciences, in the 69th; in physical science, in the 79th; and in mathematics, in the 58th percentile. The results were then reduced to three grades, unsatisfactory, satisfactory, and with distinction—Lee passed, being rated satisfactory.
³⁹⁶

Since Oswald’s passion for Castro and the Cuban Revolution was white-hot at the time, his intention to attend the staid Albert Schweitzer College is jarring to say the least, and cannot be taken at face value. On the other hand, it is equally hard to see, if it were all a ruse, what the purpose of that ruse would be.

On June 6, Lee wrote to his brother Robert, “Well, pretty soon I’ll be getting out of the corp and I know what I want to be and how Im going to do it, which I guess is the most important thing in life.” He offered, however, no further details.
³⁹⁷

At that time, Lee did not expect to leave the Marine Corps until December 8, 1959, six long months later, since the forty-five days of his confinement in the brig had to be added to the term of his enlistment, which otherwise would have been up on October 24.
³⁹⁸
But something that offered a quicker out occurred to him. The previous December, while Lee was home on leave, Marguerite had injured herself while working at the candy counter at the Fair Ridgelea store in Fort Worth. She had dropped a large glass jar of candy while trying to get it from a shelf above her head, and it hit her on the nose.
³⁹⁹
Marguerite had presented a workman’s compensation claim
⁴⁰⁰
that she was getting nowhere with, and wrote Lee to tell him of her woes. In her letter he saw his opportunity to get an early discharge. He wrote back,

Dear Mother

Recived yur letter and was very unhappy to hear of your troubles, I contacted the Red Cross on the base here, and told them about it. They will send someone out to the house to see you, when they do please tell them everything they want to know, as I am trying to secure an Early (hardship) discharge
in order to help you
such a discharge is only rarely given, but If they know you are unable to support yourself than they will release me from the U.S.M.C.
and I will be able to come home and help you.

He went on to stress the importance of making the “right impresstion” on the visitor from the Red Cross and suggested that she make it clear that “I have been your only source of income.”
⁴⁰¹

That was pure scam, since he had not been a source of any income to her, much less the only one, but he immediately moved to give that claim some credibility by opening, on July 22, two allotments to her from his service pay, a Q Class and a D Class allotment. The latter was a fixed amount deducted from the serviceman’s pay and sent directly by the government to whomever the serviceman designated. The Q allotment could be made only to dependents, and the government, after verifying the dependency, contributed part of the amount. Marguerite would receive her first—and last—monthly checks for August, $91.30 on the Q allotment and $40.00 on the D.
⁴⁰²

Though it had all started from the injury to Marguerite’s nose that her son Robert noticed, “a little swelling” in the upper part,
⁴⁰³
Marguerite rose to the occasion, supplying Lee with compelling documentation to use with his application for an early discharge. When he filed for a dependency (popularly known as a hardship) discharge on August 17, he attached a letter from Marguerite’s attorney and two affidavits from friends, one of whom stated that Marguerite’s doctors had told her that “there is no cure for her.” The other friend noted that Marguerite “was very nervous and has a great deal of trouble breathing.” Both stated that her health did not permit her to hold down a job. Her doctor, a doctor of osteopathy, described her condition as “traumatic arthritis of tempero-mandibular and cervical joints and also right maxillary sinusitis and 5th cranial nerve neuritis.” Marguerite’s affidavit stated that as a result of her injury she had for awhile received disability payments of twenty-one dollars a week, but they had been discontinued because the insurance company doctors thought there was nothing wrong with her. With no income she had to sell all her furnishings for two hundred dollars and work for two weeks as a housekeeper at twenty-one dollars a week plus room and board, but had to quit because her employer was a drunk. She was incapable of holding an eight-hour-a-day job because she could not breathe or sleep at night, and “also, I must constantly blow my nose.” Neither of her two older sons, Robert or John, were able to help her because they had families of their own. “I have no money to use for living expenses and I must have my son at home now to provide for me.”
⁴⁰⁴

It worked. The application passed up the chain of command swiftly, and on August 28, 1959, the Dependency Discharge Board recommended that Oswald “be released from active duty…for reasons of dependency.”
⁴⁰⁵
When the men in Oswald’s squadron learned about his mother’s financial hardship, they offered to pitch in, but Oswald turned down their offer.
⁴⁰⁶

On September 4, he was transferred out of MACS-9 to the H & HS MCAS Squadron, which would process the discharge.
⁴⁰⁷
That same day he left the base to apply at the Superior Court in Santa Ana for a passport. He gave as his purpose for travel “to attend the college of A. Schweitzer, Chur, Switzerland, and the Uni of Turku, Turku, Finland. To vist [visit] all other country as a tourist.” His proposed destinations were Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Switzerland, Germany, Finland, and Russia; his length of stay four months. He expected to depart from New Orleans by ship on the Grace Lines on September 21.
⁴⁰⁸

The passport, requested on September 4, was granted on September 10, 1959.
⁴⁰⁹
The next day, September 11, Lee Oswald was released from active duty
*
on a “Dependency Discharge” and was on his way home to Fort Worth.
⁴¹⁰

Lee arrived at Marguerite’s apartment in Fort Worth at two in the morning on September 14. Marguerite wanted to stay up and talk about their future, but Lee said they could talk in the morning. She set up half of a studio couch in her tiny apartment for him, and in the morning, Marguerite, who was not working because of her “injury” at work, excitedly told Lee of her plan to find a better place with more room for them. “We will be able to manage,” she said. “I can babysit or pick up a few dollars,” and Lee could “get a job.” But Lee had no intention of staying in Fort Worth or, for that matter, helping to support her. He told her he was going to get a job on a cargo ship. She was let down and didn’t like the idea, even when he proposed a crafty inducement—he would make much more money on a ship than he could hope to make in Fort Worth and would consequently be able to send money home to her.
⁴¹¹

Lee spent a day with Robert and Vada at their house, where they did little but sit and talk, but he told them a different story from what he had told Marguerite. He was going to New Orleans to work for an export firm—no mention of shipping out himself. Late that afternoon they went out to the yard to take pictures. Cathy, Robert and Vada’s two-year-old, wanted to show her uncle her birthday present, the swings Robert had erected in the backyard. The photo Robert took of Lee and little Cathy shows a decent-looking, smiling young man with a trim haircut, well dressed in shined shoes, slacks with a razor-sharp crease, and a plaid sport shirt, holding a blissful toddler in his arms amid the lengthening shadows. He looks like a young man with a real future.
⁴¹²

Oswald moved quickly. The same day he had arrived in Fort Worth he registered his dependency discharge and transfer to the Marine Corps Reserve with the Selective Service Board in Fort Worth. Two days later, on September 16, he emerged from Marguerite’s kitchen with his suitcase and told her he was leaving for New Orleans. He showed Marguerite his passport, gave her a hundred dollars, and ignored her entreaties.

“Lee, why don’t you stay?” she said, “we can get along” financially.

“Mother, I am off,” he said, and left.
⁴¹³

The following day he presented himself at a New Orleans travel agency, Travel Consultants Inc., where he answered questions for a “Passenger Immigration Questionnaire,” giving his occupation as “shipping export agent” and saying he would be abroad for two months on a pleasure trip. He booked passage on SS
Marion Lykes
, due to leave for Le Havre, France, the next day, and paid his one-way fare, apparently in cash, of $220.75.
⁴¹⁴
The travel agent, Lewis Hopkins, thought him ill-informed about travel in Europe and, had he known where Oswald really intended to go, could and would have recommended a ship that would have docked at a port more convenient to Russia than Le Havre.
⁴¹⁵
That night Lee registered at the Liberty Hotel on South Liberty Street in New Orleans.
⁴¹⁶

The next afternoon, still carrying his simple suitcase, he boarded the
Lykes
docked at “Army Base Berth 2” in New Orleans. The departure was delayed until early the next morning, 6:24 a.m. on September 20.
⁴¹⁷
Before departing, Lee posted a letter to Marguerite:

Dear Mother:

Well, I have booked passage on a ship to Europe, I would of had to sooner or later and I think It’s best I go now. Just remember above all else that my values are very different from Robert’s or your’s. It is difficult to tell you how I feel, Just remember this is what I must do. I did not tell you about my plans because you could harly be expected to understand.

I did not see aunt Lilian while I was here. I will write again as soon as I land.

Lee
⁴¹⁸

The
Lykes
was a freighter that, as many such ships did, also provided a half-dozen cabins for passengers, and there were three others on this crossing: a retired army officer and his wife, and a boy who had just graduated from high school in Midland, Texas, and was on his way to France to continue his education in Tours and Paris.
⁴¹⁹

Eighteen-year-old Billy Joe Lord and nineteen-year-old Lee Oswald were assigned to the same cabin, introduced to each other by a ship’s officer, and left to their devices. Billy Joe found Lee “standoffish” and even unfriendly. Although they didn’t “hit it off,” they were thrown together for the next two weeks, and Billy Joe heard that Lee was recently separated from the Marine Corps where he worked with radar, was planning to travel in Europe, possibly to attend school in Sweden or Switzerland, and would probably return to the United States to get a job. He mentioned with some bitterness that his mother had to work in a drugstore in Fort Worth and was having a hard time, but oddly, they did not discuss politics. Lee got off on another hobbyhorse, though, possibly because he noticed Billy Joe’s Bible. Lee informed his young cabin mate that there was no supreme being and that it should be apparent to anyone with intelligence that nothing existed but physical matter.
⁴²⁰