Editor's Note:

This is the final excerpt from Thomas Lippman's new book, "Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East." Today's offering, from chapter five, is the story of Eddy's assignment to the American Legation in Jeddah starting in early 1944. Later that year Eddy was named by FDR as his envoy to Saudi King Abdul Aziz who was told by the American President that Eddy "is well informed of the relative interests of the two countries and of the sincere desire of this government to cultivate to the fullest extent the friendship which has so long subsisted between them." Those sentiments were borne out by Eddy's key role in building the foundations of America's official relationship with the Kingdom.

Thomas Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and a former Washington Post Middle East bureau chief. He is author of a number of books on U.S. foreign affairs including "Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Relationship with Saudi Arabia," published in 2004. A number of articles and interviews featuring Mr. Lippman are available in the SUSRIS archives and are listed below. The following SUSRIS items are also available concerning "Arabian Knight":

• Exclusive - "Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East" - A Conversation with Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS Interview

• "Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East" - Book Intro - Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS IOI

• Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia - An Excerpt from Chapter 5 (Part One) -Thomas Lippman 

Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East
Assignment Arabia - An Excerpt from Chapter 5 (Part Two)
Thomas Lippman

At the end of 1943, his work in North Africa done, Bill Eddy was instructed to return to Washington for "temporary additional duty." This turned out to be an assignment from the Secretary of State to report to Saudi Arabia by February 15, 1944, "where you will be attached to the American Legation at Jidda in the capacity of Special Assistant to the American Minister resident," James Moose. 

As for his duties, "It is desired that you visit other parts of Arabia, including Bahrein and Kuwait, also Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Transjordan, and Egypt. Your capacity in each of the countries above mentioned to which you will go will be that of Special Assistant to the Chief of Mission or to the principal consular officer.. ..Your duties are in general to establish contact with both official and nonofficial persons for the purpose of acquainting yourself with local personalities, problems, currents of thought, wants, needs, and aspirations, both political and nonpolitical, with particular reference to American interests, friendly and helpful relations between the United States and the local governments and peoples, and the attitude of their governments and their respective nationals regarding these matters. Your estimates, interpretations and proposals in these respects will be of especial value to the department." He was authorized to travel as much as he wished, by any means available. A copy of this order was sent to the U.S. diplomatic mission in each of the countries mentioned, to make sure that the personnel there understood the scope of Eddy�s mandate and did not undermine him.

This was an amazingly broad writ for one individual; it was even broader than the mission that the State and Navy departments had envisioned when Eddy was first sent to Cairo in 1941. As on that earlier occasion, however, Eddy was diverted away from this wide-ranging assignment because a more urgent task came up.

In April 1944, the State Department's Wallace Murray met with Hafiz Wahba, an Egyptian schoolteacher who was Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Britain. (The Saudis at the time lacked a diplomatic corps of their own and often used favored foreign-born Arabs in this role.) Murray said the U.S. government was "very anxious to have direct contact" with the King. Wahba replied that "We would certainly welcome that idea," but he told Murray there was an obstacle: James Moose was not showing sufficient enthusiasm. He said Moose had missed opportunities to work more closely with the Saudis and with the King himself, leaving the field of influence to the British.

Eddy's promotion effectively terminated his regional reporting assignment; he was now the president's full-time emissary to Saudi Arabia. Thus it fell to Eddy to carry out the unprecedented task of orchestrating the meeting of the president he served and the King to whose government he was accredited. Given that the two leaders were so far apart in background, education, language, religion, and knowledge of the world that they might have been from different planets, it was going to require all of Eddy's skill and experience to bring it off.

EARLY DAYS IN JEDDAH

During his first five months in Saudi Arabia, Bill Eddy was still technically an officer in the Marine Corps, until his discharge from active duty in August upon his promotion to succeed Moose as head of the upgraded U.S. Legation. His duties were diplomatic and administrative in nature rather than military, but he frequently wore his Marine uniform, and the Marine Corps was very much on his mind for another reason: the Eddys' eldest child, Bill Jr., was a Marine lieutenant fighting his way across the Pacific islands in the great campaign against the Japanese, and the Eddys went many weeks without knowing whether he was alive. The younger Bill Eddy saw combat on Iwo Jima, Saipan and Tinian, where his gallantry earned him the Navy Cross and a Bronze Star. In an eerie replay of his father's career, Bill Jr. was promoted to captain and selected as the aide de camp to his division commander, Major General Clifton B. Cates. 

With the anxiety about his son out of the way, Eddy was able to throw himself into the challenging assignment of nurturing the incipient relationship between the industrial superpower he represented and the impoverished but promising country to which he was posted. Eddy's papers and correspondence and the diplomatic record for this period describe a difficult, often bizarre but rewarding life of eye-opening experiences, frustrating communications, and accommodation to local customs and traditions. 

Unlike a European nation or any outpost of European colonialism, Saudi Arabia was a country where the book on diplomatic protocol and embassy management was being written as the Eddys went along; many decisions were made through trial and error. On the Saudi side only the King had true decision-making power, and cultivation of the ruler was essential to Eddy's mission. 

In April 1944, a month after his arrival, Eddy traveled to Riyadh and met the king for the first time. Like all foreign visitors to the capital in that era, he wore Arab garb for the occasion, which he described in family letters. He saw "a review of thousands of camels; the feeding of thousands of poor who are fed daily from the king's kitchens -- bedouins whose herds have died of starvation and thirst and disease, taking away the only means of livelihood; the king's falcons chained to a rick, the falcons he uses to hunt the sand grouse and bustards." He spent 45 minutes alone with the king, who "expressed satisfaction that someone who spoke the language had come not for an official visit but to see how the people live and what they lack." From Riyadh Eddy traveled on to Dhahran, on the Persian Gulf coast, all along the way seeing the carcasses and skeletons of livestock that had perished in the drought. That trip instilled in Eddy an sense of urgency in persuading Washington to provide assistance to the King, and marked the beginning of what grew into a strong friendship between himself and Abdul Aziz that would endure until the king's death in 1953. That friendship that made it possible for Eddy to pull off the king's meeting with Roosevelt and the complicated negotiations over bilateral issues that grew out of that encounter. 

There was more to Eddy's job than high-level bilateral relations. As chief of the U.S. diplomatic mission, he had to do what he could to make life easier and healthier for his family and his staff. Jeddah was by far the most advanced city in the Kingdom, but filthy, hot and primitive nonetheless. Only a few buildings had such basic amenities as running water, electricity and indoor plumbing. In a city where summer temperatures routinely reached 120 degrees and humidity was stifling, the bedrooms of the American legation had a form of air conditioning, but other buildings did not. Water was delivered by donkey cart. The city had no street lights other than a few kerosene lanterns, and no medical clinic or doctors. When Eddy's predecessor, James Moose, had a major dental problem, he had to cross the Red Sea to Asmara to be treated. In Jeddah there was not even a barber shop. Haircuts were provided by "an old Turk who was stranded in Jidda when Ibn Saud conquered the place," according to Clarence J. McIntosh, a young communications clerk who was one of the first staff members at the U.S. legation. 

Flies and mosquitoes filled the fetid air. In the heat and dust, the few trucks and automobiles broke down. Refrigeration was scarce, making food hazardous. Office equipment wore out quickly. Because of the salty humidity, steel window screens could rust through in a week, McIntosh found. Travel conditions were onerous -- the vast kingdom had no cross-country roads and no airline. Jeddah had a rudimentary airport but Saudi Arabia had no airplanes and there was no regular air service to Cairo or Beirut. A British-controlled radiotelegraph line to Sudan provided only limited communication with the outside world.

Eddy's early letters are filled with good-natured observations about the odd habits and folkways of the local people. He noted, for example, that they played chess without the bishop, for which they substituted an elephant, and without the queen, for which they substituted a "vizier." No Christians or women were going to be checkmating any king in Abdul Aziz's Saudi Arabia. But these upbeat notes made no effort to disguise the difficult conditions Mary would face once she joined him. 

In fact, of all the foreign cities to which Bill Eddy might have been posted, probably none could have been worse for Mary than Jeddah in the 1940s. These were not auspicious conditions for a heat-averse woman whose health had already broken down once in Cairo, a far more sophisticated and congenial city than Jeddah. Mary had found even Princeton to be boring and flat; she was completely comfortable only during the Dartmouth years, when she could ski and hike in the hills of New Hampshire and Vermont, the polar opposite of Saudi Arabia. The State Department's Gordon Alling had alluded to this potential problem in the March 15, 1944 letter in which he offered Eddy the Saudi Arabia job: "I know, however, that you have some question in your mind about Mary's reaction to living in such a place as Jidda. You will, therefore, have to consider this angle thoroughly."

So difficult was travel in Saudi Arabia that the State Department tried to get Eddy his own airplane. An internal memo noted that "the area to which he is assigned is one third as large as the United States." It was 550 miles from Jeddah, the diplomatic capital, to Riyadh, and 800 miles to the oil community in Dhahran where 1100 Americans were working. "Not only are there no railroads or adequate roads connecting these communities, but there are no regular air services in the country," this memo noted�a particular hardship for the embassy staff who, to go on vacation, had to pay $165 each way to fly to Cairo, assuming there were any flights on planes operated by the military or the oil company.

To visit the handful of Americans working at a gold mine 240 miles deep in the interior, Eddy wrote in one letter, "I have to wait for regular trips made by commercial companies, or by government officials, as there is no private transport, no bus service, nothing on wheels to hire for love or money." On each of these trips at least three vehicles were required to travel in convoy because breakdowns and skids into the deep sand were inevitable. At the mining camp itself, he reported, there was little to eat because this was a time of deep privation in the Arabian hinterlands; no imports were available because of the war, and the Arab workers lived on camel milk, dates and millet gruel. On the other hand, he found, these undernourished workers took comfort in their religious faith, so that "there is no insanity (except among camels.) What comes, must come."

The physical hardships were compounded by social isolation. There were only a few dozen Western residents in Jeddah, most of them male. Mary Eddy was the only American woman and there were perhaps half a dozen other foreign women; Anita Burleigh, wife of an oil company executive, lived in Jeddah before the war, but when the United States entered the war she went home, as did almost all the American women in the oil camp on the other side of the country. 

So there was basically nothing for Mary Eddy to do aside from the amusements she could create for herself. ("It is pathetic," Bill Eddy wrote to the children about the foreign women. "There is absolutely nothing for them to do all day long.") Other than the weekly movie that Eddy arranged to show on the roof of the U.S. legation, the opportunities for recreation and socializing were very limited, although there were a few tennis courts that Legation personnel could use. Across the country in Dhahran, CASOC built swimming pools and movie theaters for its American families; no such facilities existed in Jeddah, where there was no public entertainment of any kind. There was a bathing beach for foreigners on the Red Sea but sharks lurked in the water; only after Eddy's departure did his successor obtain royal permission to construct a protective steel net to keep the sharks away. 

Eventually the King authorized the Eddys to import Mary's piano, which he said was the first in "the Wahhabi blue-law Kingdom where musical instruments were prohibited along with painting and sculpture." Indeed among the Arab population no music other than ceremonial drums was permitted, whether live or recorded. 

In the same letter in which he recounted the trip to the gold mine, Eddy reported that he had finally learned to sleep through the muezzin's call to dawn prayer, which rose from a nearby mosque at about 4 a.m., but was now awakened instead by the braying of the donkey pulling the daily water delivery cart. The water itself he drank only after boiling, but even so, he said, "you will inevitably get ill from the ceremonial lemonade at some event.."

Those who did fall ill were in peril because of the lack of medical facilities. A true emergency required evacuation to Cairo, which was possible only if some oil company personnel or military group happened to be flying that way. One of Eddy's great administrative accomplishments was to persuade the State department to put up $54,700 -- a considerable sum in those days -- to create a medical clinic to be staffed by personnel from the hospital of the American University of Beirut; it would treat local people and pilgrims passing through Jeddah on their way to Mecca as well as Americans. 

An internal State Department memo of November 6, 1945 gives an idea of what Eddy was dealing with in trying to run a diplomatic mission in that environment. The subject was typewriters.

"Typewriters at the Legation in Jidda, as well as all other mechanical equipment, are subject to very rapid deterioration because of the excess humidity -- within a few months they become so rusted, corroded by salt air, and gummed, the operation is seriously impaired," it said. �When machines are allowed to remain in this condition for an extended time they reach a point where it is impossible to repair or recondition them. The factor of a depleted staff attempting to carry on essential work with almost inoperative machines also arises." To ship a typewriter to the United States for repairs took six months, the memo said. The writer recommended that Eddy be allowed to purchase standby machines beyond those in the budget, and to ship the ones that broke down to Cairo to be fixed rather than all the way to the United States. 

In normal conditions the chief of a U.S. diplomatic mission would not concern himself with such matters, but the Eddys were not living and working in normal conditions. They were not complainers. They made the best of it, aided by their fluency in Arabic and the fact that the king liked them. According to R. Parker (Pete) Hart, a former student of Eddy's at Dartmouth who was now a young diplomat in Saudi Arabia and would later be ambassador to the kingdom himself, Eddy's "total fluency in the king�s mother tongue and his quick sense of humor made him instantly a most welcome guest." On many occasions Eddy was invited to accompany the ruler as he roamed the country camping with the tribes. These expeditions were the defining characteristic of the king's style of one-man rule. According to H. St. John Philby, a British adventurer who ingratiated himself with Abdul Aziz and was his longtime confidant and adviser, "It certainly stands to the credit of Ibn Saud that, at whatever cost of inconvenience to himself, he never ceased to be freely accessible to all his subjects, high and low, rich and poor alike, to hear and redress their grievances, and to help them over their difficulties." It was an honor for Eddy to be invited to join the king on these forays into the hinterlands, where they slept in tents among the bedouin, and it is regrettable that he said little about them in the family correspondence preserved with his papers.

[SUSRIS thanks Mr. Lippman and Selwa Press for permission to share these excerpts from "Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East" with you.  We hope you enjoy reading the rest of the book.]

ABOUT THOMAS LIPPMAN:

Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington. In four years as the Washington Post's Middle East bureau chief, three years as the Post's oil and energy reporter and a decade as the newspaper's national security and diplomatic correspondent, he traveled extensively to Saudi Arabia. He is the author of Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East, Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy, Understanding Islam, and Egypt After Nasser. A writer and journalist specializing in U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs, he lives in Washington, DC.

Inside the Mirage: America's Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia
By Thomas W. Lippman

Book Description
The 60-year marriage of convenience between Saudi Arabia and the United States is in trouble--with potentially rocky consequences for the United States and its relationship to Islam. 

The relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia has always been a marriage of convenience, not affection. As the result of a bargain struck between President Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia's founding king in 1945, Americans bought Saudi Arabian oil, and the Saudis bought American: American planes, American weapons, American construction projects, and American know-how. In exchange, the Saudis got modernization, education, and security. The marriage of convenience suited both sides. But how long can it last? In Inside the Mirage, journalist Thomas Lippman shows that behind the cheerful picture of friendship and alliance, there is a grimmer, grimier tale of experience and repression. Saudi Arabia is changing as younger people less enamored of America rise to prominence. And the United States, scorched by Saudi-based terrorism, is forced to rethink this bargain as it continues to play the dominant role in the ever-volatile, ever-shifting Middle East. With so much at stake, this compelling and absolutely necessary account looks at the relationship between these two countries, and their future with one another. 

THOMAS LIPPMAN ON SUSRIS:

• Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East - Introduction Excerpt - Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS IOI - September 19, 2008

• SUSRIS EXCLUSIVE - Arabian Knight: Colonel Bill Eddy USMC and the Rise of American Power in the Middle East - A Conversation with Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS Interview - September 15, 2008

• Saudi Arabia Update - Thomas Lippman on "Middle East Interviews" - SUSRIS IOI - August 29, 2008

• "Good Morning, Mr. President" - Thomas Lippman's Briefing for POTUS - SUSRIS IOI - January 11, 2008

• American Influence on Modern Saudi Arabia - Thomas Lippman at the Cookeville, Tennessee Rotary Club - SUSRIS IOI - Oct 1, 2007

• Political and Economic Developments in Saudi-US Relations - A Conversation With Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS Interview - Sep 29, 2007

• Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil - Wallace Stegner - Foreword by Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS IOI - Sep 18, 2007

• Determined to Remain Friends - A Conversation with Thomas Lippman - Exclusive - SUSRIS Interview - Aug 7, 2007

• A New Regional Leadership - Thomas W. Lippman - SUSRIS IOI - May 10, 2007

• Anniversary of Historic Meeting between Ibn Saud and FDR - SUSRIS IOI - Feb 14, 2007

• Region in Crisis: Fine Lines and Consequences - A Conversation with Thomas W. Lippman - SUSRIS Interview - Aug 2, 2006

• Crawford Summit Perspective: A Conversation with Thomas Lippman - SUSRIS Interview - May 9, 2005

• Insight on the Kingdom from the Author of Inside the Mirage -- A Conversation with Thomas Lippman - Part One - SUSRIS Interview - March 30, 2005

• Insight on the Kingdom from the Author of Inside the Mirage -- A Conversation with Thomas Lippman - Part Two - SUSRIS Interview - Apr 18, 2005

• U.S.-Saudi Relations: A Glass Half Empty, Or Half Full? - An Interview With Thomas Lippman - Exclusive - SUSRIS Interview - Aug 28, 2004

• Thomas Lippman - "Inside The Mirage" - US-Saudi Relations -- SAIS Panel - SUSRIS IOI - Dec 16, 2003

MORE on the history of Saudi Arabia and relations with the U.S.:

• The Day I Met My Dad - Steve Furman - Saudi American Forum - Aug 28, 2004

• Achievements of Our Fathers - Tim Barger on 75 Years of Aramco Success - SUSRIS IOI - May 27, 2008

• Lunch with a Prince - Steve Furman - Saudi American Forum - Aug 13, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Foreword/Chapter One - Saudi American Forum - Mar 6, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Two - Saudi American Forum - Mar 13, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Three - Saudi American Forum - Mar 20, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Four - Saudi American Forum - Mar 27, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Five - Saudi American Forum - Apr 3, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Six - Saudi American Forum - Apr 10, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Seven - Saudi American Forum - Apr 17, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Eight - Saudi American Forum - Apr 24, 2004

• Honey & Onions: A Memoir Of Saudi Arabia In The Sixties - Frances Meade - Chapter Nine - Saudi American Forum - May 1, 2004

• Saudi Arabs, Americans and Oil - Robert L. Norberg - Saudi American Forum - Mar 20, 2003

• On the Turquoise Coast: Memories of a Ras Tanura Boyhood - William Tracy - Saudi American Forum - Apr 7, 2004

• Lunch with a Prince - Steve Furman - Saudi American Forum - Aug 13, 2004

• The Story of the Saudi Government Railroad - Frederick Haack - Saudi American Forum - Mar 5, 2004

Also Check:

• Aramco Expats

• Saudi Aramco at 75

• The History of Saudi Arabia - Saudi Embassy