02-05-2009, 09:20 PM
A rare review of Nerin Gun's early contribution to the literature on the case:
Quote:News of the World, 5 July 1964, p.6
Kennedy: Will the Truth Be Told?
By Gerard Fairlie
Dr. Malcolm Perry was restfully munching salmon croquettes in the canteen of the parkland Memorial Hospital. It was shortly before one o’clock on a lovely sunny afternoon.
He was standing in for Dr. Shires, the resident head of surgery, who had taken the day off. Dr. Perry, Dr. Shire’s assistant, was meditating with an inward smile that when he himself managed a day off the weather was never so good.
The hospital loudspeaker abruptly sprang to life, “Stat for Dr. Shires.”
Dr. Perry found himself a little irritated. He moved over to pick up the telephone.
“Mary, you’re crazy,” he said. “Can’t one even eat something in peace…?”
“President Kennedy is dying. Stat. He has just been brought into Casualty.”
All lethargy left Dr. Malcolm Perry. He moved fast down a flight of stairs.
Hopeless
The doctors of Parkland Hospital are accustomed to the sight of gunshot wounds. Apparently Texans are a little apt to shoot each other.
But on reaching Casualty, where staff doctors were already at work, Dr. Perry almost flinched. Kennedy was still on the stretcher, since it was feared to move him to the operating table.
There was blood on the stretcher and in great quantities on the floor. Perry noticed a young woman in a pink dress, which was blood-stained, standing perfectly still against the wall. Her eyes were fixed on her dying husband’s face.
She stayed there all the endless, hectic minutes that the team of 14 doctors – who hurried to join in the fight for the President’s life – sweated at the hopeless task in the stifling glare of the arc-lights.
The doctors stood back, beaten. Jacqueline Kennedy said “Call a priest.” Father Huber was waiting. He administered the conditional last rites, those accorded by the Roman Catholic Church when a person is incapable of receiving the full rite of final absolution.
Last time
Then they all left the room, briefly leaving Jacqueline alone for the last time with her husband.
This scene is superbly described in a new book just written by Nerin E. Gun called Red Roses From Texas (Muller, 25s.).
Quite a few books have reached me on the subject of President Kennedy’s assassination, presumably timed to profit from the publicity which is bound to attend the publication of the Warren Commission’s report due shortly.
This is the Commission set up by the new President Johnson within days of the crime, to investigate its quite incredible features. These books are nearly all so biased against the American secret services and the famous F.B.I. that they defeat their own object.
But Red Roses is refreshingly impartial. Nerin Gun is careful to quote only from the results of his own investigations, and the known facts.
Inevitably he does ask disturbing questions, because I doubt whether even the most ingenious whodunnit has ever posed such a mystery as does this dreadful crime.
There is too much room for the most demoralising doubts.
Could it have been an American political action? Could it have been Cuban-inspired? Could it have been, perhaps, the just the impulsive, insane action of a lunatic?
Was the ex-marine, ex-Communist Lee Harvey Oswald the actual murderer? Or just a dupe? Was he in his turn shot by night club owner Jack Ruby, in full view of the television cameras, on orders “from above” to shut him up forever?
Could Oswald have been a secret agent? It’s not impossible. He might have been on the trail of the intending assassins...
Mystifying
And, perhaps more mystifying than anything, Gun asks: “Why did Earl Warren, after studying secret documents, declare publicly, ‘Probably certain facts in this affair will never be made public in our generation.’? This was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the first magistrate, chairman of the nation’s ad hoc commission – and the man entrusted by President Johnson with the task of investigating the assassination.”
Unless the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is seen to emerge when the Warren Commission reports, the whole American nation risks standing convicted of cowardice in the eyes of the rest of the world.
As often happens, the victim has suddenly been hailed, perhaps hysterically because of reaction to the crime, as the greatest of American Presidents.
The author of this fascinating and brilliantly written book is wise to write: “We ought not to anticipate the verdict of history. It will not be possible for a long time to make a true evaluation of his uncompleted work. Let us, for the moment, just note that on this Friday morning of his journey to Dallas, he was under fire for many reasons. The Republican group in the Senate had recently published a statement which called his presidency the worst since Harding’s.”
Patriotic
That is what I like about this book.
Although obviously an admirer of Kennedy, Gun is not afraid to give the other side. Although obviously a patriotic American, Gun is not afraid to state and face the haunting questions.
His fair mind adds greatly to the points he makes.
At about three o’clock in the early morning of that disastrous day last November, Mrs. Jeanne Dixon suffered a nightmare. The author writes: “She at once telephoned the White House and asked for the Secret Service. ‘You must warn the President – he’s going to be killed tomorrow. Don’t let him go to Dallas. My visions are always right. I foresaw his election, and Rockefeller’s marriage…He must be warned at once.’
“The officer on duty, furious at having been awakened, is reported to have not even thanked her and gone back to sleep on his sofa.”
The United States, and the world, waits for the Warren Commission’s conclusions. It would seem – in view of the spate of words being written prejudging the issues – that it may already have taken too long in its deliberations. But I’m quite sure that Red Roses From Texas is fair comment.