Getting The Word (July/August 1995 | Volume: 46, Issue: 4)

Getting The Word

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July/August 1995 | Volume 46, Issue 4

The gray stone mansion that housed the Swiss Legation in Washington was a virtual Tower of Babel in the week after the atomic bombs exploded over Japan. Everyone knew that war’s end was imminent and the official surrender note from Emperor Hirohito would come through our mission at any hour. French, German, Italian, and English dialogues rattled the eardrums.

As Minister Charles Bruggmann’s private secretary for English correspondence, I had high hopes that the honor of typing the final message would rest with me. But I wasn’t sure. The minister himself was in Bern for conference, and his chargé d’affaires, Max Grassli, had an efficient Swiss secretary with long seniority in their foreign service.

But two points were in my favor. Besides being equally efficient, I was the only American on the staff, and this was an opportunity for diplomatic recognition. Furthermore, First Secretary Fritz Real, whom I was dating at the time, spoke in my behalf. I heard him tell Grassli in Schwyzer Dutsch, the German patois the Swiss from Bern or Zurich often spoke to one another, “ Fraulein Helfenstein? Ist gut, aber ist neut so schnell .” (She’s good, but not as fast.) And everyone knew that as soon as the coded message arrived, speed was of the essence. The world was waiting. I was told to be ready at a moment’s notice.

The divorced mother of two small sons, I decided shortly after Pearl Harbor to flee a government secretarial pool for a job with better hours and pay. My mother had moved in with me, but she, too, was working, and juggling child care and living expenses was no easy task.

Through a friend at the State Department, I heard that the Minister of Switzerland was searching for an American secretary to help with English correspondence, and I immediately applied. With the cockiness of youth, I boasted that I was “a proficient grammarian” and made passing reference to the fact that I had studied French. I signed my name, “Ruth Leonard,” with a flourish. Dr. Bruggmann, a serious man, was impressed enough to send for me. In our interview he explained the important role of his neutral country as a go-between for the warring powers, and I was intrigued.

By 1945 my older brothers were both in service—one already in the Pacific and the other stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, awaiting shipment to Japan. For us, as for millions of others, surrender could come not a minute too soon. Now, finally, I might be able to make my own small contribution.

Friday night, August 10, the Swiss Federal Political Department in Bern (the equivalent of our State Department) was reported to have cabled Grassli that the Japanese were willing to surrender, provided their emperor’s “prerogatives would remain undisturbed.” This message was conveyed to U.S. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes, and on Saturday acceptance by the Allied powers was cabled back