U.S. At War: Moment in Teheran

The deadlines were set, the declarations signed, the toasts drunk. Then the President reported to the U.S. people’s true ambassadors to Teheran—the American soldiers.

“Officers and men,” said he, “I got here … to meet with the Marshal of Soviet Russia and the Prime Minister of England to try to do two things. The first was to lay military plans toward the winning of the war just as fast as we can and I think we have made progress. . . . The other purpose was to talk over world conditions after the war.”

The talks were promising. The plans must be precise. To the U.S. soldiers and to the people the results of the Sphinx Conference in Cairo, and the Teheran meeting, could only mean that ahead was war in deadliest earnest. “From west and south” millions of American soldiers must descend upon the continent, their lives staked against the hope of a better world. Many will never return.

Then will come a world peace, “talked over” with Stalin, “to make it unnecessary for us again to have Americans in Iran just as long as we and our children live,” explained the President in the U.S. Camp Hospital near Teheran. “I think that is worth fighting for, and even being sick for in Iran.”