PLAINTEXT OF "BARE-FACED MESSIAH: THE TRUE STORY OF L. RON HUBBARD" This file is encoded with the ISO-8859-1 character set. In particular, these non-ASCII characters appear: Decimal Hex Octal 163 a3 243 "£" British currency (pound sterling) 189 bd 275 "½" fraction 1/2 (one half) 201 c9 311 "É" capital E' (acute accent) 231 e7 347 "ç" c, (c cedilla) 233 e9 351 "é" e' (e with acute accent) 239 ef 357 "ï" i" (i with umlaut) 241 f1 361 "ñ" n~ (n with tilde) 252 fc 374 "ü" u" (u with umlaut) IN THIS FILE: Plaintext Errata Dust cover, front Dust cover, spine Dust cover, back Dust cover, front end flap Dust cover, back end flap Photographs i. Title page ii. "Also by" page iii. Extended title page iv. Copyright page v. Dedication vi. Contents vii. List of illustrations viii. (blank page) ix-x. Author's note Preface Chapters 1-22 Bibliography Index [Plaintext Errata:] *Bare-Faced Messiah* was separately published in the United Kingdom (cloth and paperback), Canada, Australia, and the United States. Each publisher produced a distinct text -- usually by accident, but sometimes intentionally, as was the case for the U.S. edition. This plaintext hews closely to the version that Russell Miller regards as definitive: the cloth edition published by Penguin subsidiary Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom on 22 October 1987. However, a few trivial errors found in the cloth edition have been noted or corrected. The intentional alterations to the text of the U.K. cloth edition are listed below. ITALICS are indicated with *asterisks* around the italicized phrase. FOOTNOTES In the U.K. edition, the chapter notes are collected on pp. 376-381. In this plaintext, they appear as footnotes at the bottom of each page. Reference numbers are surrounded with square brackets. CHAPTER 1 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 12): May did not have long to wait for the 'blessed event'. She went into labour during the afternoon of _Sunday_ 10 March, ... In this plaintext: Because 10 March 1911 fell on a *Friday*, the correct weekday is reported. CHAPTER 4 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 66): In 1934, with the country still in the stranglehold of the Depression, ... Frank Gruber, the only pulp writer resident when Ron arrived, accurately characterized his fellow _quests_ as `all-round no-goods and deadbeats'. In this plaintext: "guests" is spelled correctly. CHAPTER 5 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 89): The `expedition' departed its Yukon Harbor `base' in July, with May, Marnie, Toilie and _Midge_ and their various children waving farewell from the quayside.... In this plaintext: "Midgie" is the familiar name of Hubbard's aunt. Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 94): `He writes under six names in a diversity of fields from political economy to action fiction and if he would make at least one of his pen [top of page] names public he would have little _difficult_ entering anywhere. He has published many millions of words and some fourteen movies. In this plaintext: Because it is not clear whether "difficulty" was misquoted in the book or misspelled by Senator Ford, the author of the letter being quoted here, this spelling error was *not* corrected. CHAPTER 12 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 202): The word Scientology was derived from the Latin *scio* ... twenty years earlier in 1934, a German scholar by the name of _Dr A Nordenholz_ had written an obscure work of philosophical speculation ... In this plaintext: A period follows the initial "A", in conformance with punctuation in the rest of the book. CHAPTER 15 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 248): On 5 January, L. Ron Hubbard issued a statement from Saint Hill [top of page] Manor: `All I can make of this is that the United States Government ... has launched an attack upon religion and is seizing and burning books of philosophy ... Where will this end? Complete censorship? A complete ignoring of the First Amendment? Are churches to be _attached_ and books burned as a normal course of action?' In this plaintext: Because it is not clear whether "attacked" was misquoted in the book or misspelled in Hubbard's quoted statement, this spelling error was *not* corrected. Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 250): At Saint Hill Manor, Hubbard at first professed himself to be pleased about the Australian inquiry and even hinted that it bad been set up at his instigation. But it soon became evident that the inquiry was basically antagonistic to Scientology and when an invitation arrived from Melbourne _from him to appear_, he contrived to find compelling reasons to refuse. In this plaintext: "_for_ him to appear". CHAPTER 16 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 266): It was important for Hubbard to be discovered in this dramatically debilitated condition at this time, ... Hubbard, it was said, was the `first person in millions of years' to map a precise route through the `Wall of Fire'. Having done so, his OT power _has been increased_ to such an extent that he was at grave risk of accidental injury to his body; indeed, he had broken his back, a knee and an arm during the course of his research. In this plaintext: "_had_ been increased". Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 271): While Hubbard was fulminating against international conspiracies ... He immediately [top of page] instructed von Staden and _Pool_ to start negotiating the purchase and to make arrangements for the *Royal Scotsman* ... In this plaintext: von Staden and _Pook_ CHAPTER 17 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 290): The harbourmaster quickly grasped the message, ... Appraised of this warm welcome, the Commodore began to look upon the island and the Greek people with particular favour, even to the extent of granting an interview ... on the subject of the recent _coup d'etat_ in Greece ... In this plaintext: "coup _d'état_" (with acute accent, as elsewhere in the book) CHAPTER 18 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 298): In frequent communiqués from the ship ... Out in the Atlantic, cruising on his flagship, the Commodore's _pre-occupatioon_ with Communist conspiracies ... In this plaintext: "pre-occupation" is spelled correctly. Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 302): From 1970 onwards, messengers attended Hubbard day and night, ... When he was asleep, _two messenger_ sat outside his state-room ... In this plaintext: "two messengers", plural CHAPTER 19 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 321): To the relief of the entire crew, the Commodore was more or less recovered ... and the ship resumed its aimless wandering, this time on a triangular course _bettween_ Portugal, Madeira and the Canaries.... In this plaintext: "between" is spelled correctly. CHAPTER 20 Original paragraph from the U.K. edition (page 342): Overland Avenue was a wide tree-lined street ... Special decoder equipment was installed to provide direct secure _communicatirons_ with Clearwater and the Guardian's Office ... In this plaintext: "communications" is spelled correctly. [Dust cover, front:] ["Russel Miller" is underlined] _RUSSELL MILLER_ BARE-FACED MESSIAH [picture of L. Ron Hubbard] THE TRUE STORY OF L.RON HUBBARD [Dust cover, spine:] BARE-FACED MESSIAH RUSSELL MILLER MICHAEL JOSEPH [Dust cover, back:] CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR RUSSELL MILLER'S PREVIOUS BOOKS Bunny: The Real Story of Playboy `If you like a good story that has corporate intrigue, sex, power plays, triumphs and disasters - here's your stuff. I ought to know. I lived it.' VICTOR LOWNES, *TATLER* `Miller tells this hypnotic tale with style, wit and irony' *OBSERVER* `Brilliant, the best study of American success encapsulated in one sad shell-shocked shell since Albert Goldman's *Elvis*' JULIE BURCHILL *LITERARY REVIEW* The House of Getty `Mr Miller has produced a most enjoyable account of this monster' *GLASGOW HERALD* `Russell Miller's account...is uncompromisingly direct, astringent in style and that kind of detailed factual reporting which needs no build-up for its impact' *LLOYD'S LIST* `Professionally researched and entertainingly written' *LITERARY REVIEW* [bar code] 9 781550 130270 [Dust cover, front end flap:] £12.95 BARE-FACED MESSIAH tells, for the first time, the extraordinary story of L. Ron Hubbard, a penniless science-fiction writer who founded the Church of Scientology, became a millionaire prophet and convinced his adoring followers that he alone could save the world. In the words of his `official' biography, Hubbard was an explorer, engineer, scientist, war hero and philosopher. In the words of a Californian judge, he was schizophrenic, paranoid and a pathological liar. What is not in dispute is that Hubbard was unquestionably one of the most bizarre characters of the twentieth century. His was a unique life. While writing pulp science-fiction, he claimed to have made discoveries about the workings of the human mind that would enable cures to be found for everything from cancer to the common cold. He soon founded his own `church' and then rampaged around the world variously pursued by the CIA, the FBI and outraged governments. He tried and failed to take control of at least one continent and several countries. For nearly ten years he sailed the oceans as the commodore of his own private navy, served by nymphet messengers in hot-pants who dressed and undressed him and were trained like robots to relay orders in his tone of voice. Back on shore in the US, he directed an operation aimed at infiltrating government offices to launder their bulging files on the Church of Scientology. In 1980, fearing arrest, he disappeared. He was never seen again. Russell Miller, author of *The House of Getty*, has written the first book to expose the myths surrounding the fascinating and mysterious founder of the Church of Scientology. Using all his skills as a top investigative journalist, he reveals that the true life of L. Ron Hubbard - a man of hypnotic charm and limitless imagination - is even more astounding than the fiction. Jacket photograph: Chris Yates [Dust cover, back end flap:] [picture of Russell Miller] Russell Miller was born in East London and left school at sixteen. He was a Fleet Street reporter by the time he was twenty-one and became a freelance writer nearly twenty years ago. His work, notably for *The Sunday Times*, is syndicated throughout the world. He is the author of *Bunny*, a widely-acclaimed biography of Hugh Hefner and, more recently, the bestselling *The House of Getty*. Married with four children, he lives in the peace of the Chiltern Hills. [Photographs:] [Eight plates of photographs come between pp. 198 and 199] [PLATE 1:] [PHOTO: Abram Waterbury] Abram Waterbury, L. Ron Hubbard's great-grandfather, playing the fiddle carved with a negro's head that became part of the family legend. [PHOTO: Lafayette Waterbury with wife & child in horse-drawn buggy] Ron's grandfather was supposed to have owned a quarter of the state of Montana. Here he is seen as he really was, a struggling veterinarian, pictured with his wife and their first child (Ron's mother) at Tilden, Nebraska, around the late 1880s. [PLATE 2:] [PHOTO: The Waterbury family] Ledora May Waterbury, Ron's mother (left), with an unknown relative, her sisters Toilie and Midgie and brother Ray photographed in their home town of Helena, Montana. [PHOTO: L. Ron Hubbard's parents] Ron's long-suffering mother. He remembered her sometimes with affection, sometimes with deep dislike. Harry Ross Hubbard in the dress uniform of an officer of the US Navy. Promotion eluded him and debtors pursued him. [PLATE 3:] [PHOTO: Ron's birthplace] The hospital in Tilden, Nebraska, where L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911. His aunt Toilie, who worked in the hospital, is second from the right. [PHOTO: A very young Ron] Little Ron in a sailor hat. One day he would be the self-appointed commodore of his own private navy. [PHOTO: 18-year-old Ron seated at typewriter] The budding science-fiction writer poses at his typewriter during a visit to his parents on the island of Guam in 1928. [PLATE 4:] [PHOTO: L. Ron `Flash' Hubbard, glider pilot] Hubbard learned to fly a glider while at George Washington University. He acquired the uniquely appropriate nickname of `Flash' and liked to be described as a `daredevil speed pilot and parachute artist'. [IMAGE: Cover of Astounding Science Fiction, May 1950] Dianetics makes its inauspicious début, in the pages of a pulp science fiction magazine. [PLATE 5:] [PHOTO: Barbara Kaye] Between his second and third marriages, Ron dallied with his public relations assistant, luscious Barbara Kaye. She would soon conclude that he was paranoid. [PHOTO: de Mille and Kaye leaning on fence] Richard de Mille and Barbara Kaye at the house in Palm Springs where Hubbard plotted to kidnap his daughter Alexis. [PHOTO: LRH and `Nibs' standing with two friends] The portly Nibs (second from right) posing with his father and friends in a London garden in the 1950s - the smiles would soon turn to tears when father and son fell out. [PLATE 6:] [PHOTO: Hubbard peers intently at metered tomato plant] Hubbard as `revolutionary horticultural scientist', proving that plants can feel pain. *(Rex Features Ltd)* [PHOTO: Hubbard on the steps of Saint Hill] Dr Hubbard, the `nuclear scientist', on the steps of Saint Hill, the Georgian manor house he bought out of the proceeds of Dianetics. *(Photo Source Limited)* [PHOTO: Ron & Mary Sue with their four small children] Hubbard as genial family man. From the left Suzette (4), his wife Mary Sue, Quentin (5), Arthur (1) and Diana (7). All were to suffer in various ways. *(Photo Source Ltd)* [PLATE 7:] [PHOTO: Hubbard & Kemp seated at a table] Hubbard with his friend Ray Kemp on a two-day trip to Ireland during which he hoped to solve the `Irish problem'. [PHOTO: Hubbard wearing flat-brimmed hat] Hubbard believed he was a reincarnation of Cecil Rhodes and liked to sport the kind of hat worn by the founder of Rhodesia. Fortunately, he did not know Rhodes was homosexual. [PHOTO: Royal Scotman, moored at port] Rare picture of the `mystery ship', the *Royal Scotman*, in which the commodore sailed the Mediterranean. *(Granada Television Ltd)* [PLATE 8:] [PHOTO: Teenagers Arthur and Doreen with rifles] Arthur Hubbard and Doreen Smith, one of the messengers, playing with fire in the Californian desert. Like his father, Arthur collected guns. [PHOTO: Hubbard and crew with camera] Hubbard directs a `photo-shoot' in Curaçao, 1974. Later, he would progress to making movies in California. [PHOTO: Sea Org awards ceremony] Under a portrait of a benign L. Ron Hubbard, an officer of the Sea Org hands out certificates at Gilman Hot Springs in 1981. The founder of Scientology had already gone to ground. [Page i. Title page:] *Bare-Faced Messiah* [Page ii. "Also by" page:] *Also by Russell Miller* BUNNY, THE REAL STORY OF PLAYBOY THE HOUSE OF GETTY [Page iii. Extended title page:] *Bare-Faced Messiah* THE TRUE STORY OF L. RON HUBBARD Russell Miller [publisher's logo] MICHAEL JOSEPH LONDON [Page iv. Copyright page:] MICHAEL JOSEPH Penguin Books Ltd 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ (Publishing and Editorial) Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England (Distribution and Warehouse) Viking Penguin Inc., 40 West 23rd Street, New York, New York 10010, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R 1B4 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand First published in Great Britain 1987 Copyright (c) Russell Miller All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book Typeset in 11/12½pt Imprint by Goodfellow & Egan Ltd., Cambridge Printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk *British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data* Miller, Russell Bare-faced Messiah: the true story of L. Ron Hubbard. 1. Hubbard, L. Ron 2. Church of Scientology ----Biography I. Title 299'.936'0924 BP605.S2 ISBN 0-7181-2764-1 [Page v. Dedication:] *This book is dedicated to all those* *Scientologists who had the courage* *to face the truth and speak out* [Page vi. Contents:] *Contents* List of illustrations vii Author's note ix Introduction 1 Preface 2 1 A Dubious Prodigy 7 2 Whither did he Wander? 26 3 Explorer Manqué 40 4 Blood and Thunder 59 5 Science Fictions 76 6 The Hero Who Never Was 95 7 Black Magic and Betty 112 8 The Mystery of the Missing Research 131 9 The Strange Début of Dianetics 147 10 Commies, Kidnaps and Chaos 163 11 Bankrolling and Bankruptcy 186 12 Phoenix Rising 202 13 Apostle of the Main Chance 220 14 Lord of the Manor 233 15 Visits to Heaven 247 16 Launching the Sea Org 263 17 In Search of Past Lives 279 18 Messengers of God 297 19 Atlantic Crossing 313 20 Running Aground 333 21 Making Movies 348 22 Missing, Presumed Dead 365 Notes 376 Bibliography 382 Index 384 [Page vii. List of illustrations:] *List of Illustrations* 1 Abram Waterbury, L. Ron Hubbard's great-grandfather. 2 Ron's grandparents with their first child at Tilden, Nebraska, in the late 1880s. 3 Ron's mother, her brother and sisters, and an unknown relative. 4 Ron's long-suffering mother. 5 Ron's father, Harry Ross Hubbard, in the dress uniform of an officer of the US Navy. 6 The hospital in Tilden, Nebraska, where L. Ron Hubbard was born in 1911. 7 Little Ron in a sailor hat. 8 L. Ron Hubbard photographed during a visit to his parents on the island of Guam in 1928. 9 L. Ron Hubbard at George Washington University. 10 The science fiction magazine in which Dianetics made its inauspicious début. 11 Hubbard's public relations assistant, Barbara Kaye. 12 Richard de Mille and Barbara Kaye. 13 L. Ron Hubbard with his son, Nibs, and friends in London in the 1950s. 14 Hubbard as `revolutionary horticultural scientist' (*Rex Features Ltd*). 15 Hubbard as `nuclear scientist' (*Photo Source Ltd*). 16 Hubbard with his wife and family (*Photo Source Ltd*). 17 Hubbard and Ray Kemp in Ireland. 18 Hubbard posing as Cecil Rhodes. 19 The *Royal Scotman* (*Granada Television Ltd*). 20 Arthur Hubbard and Doreen Smith. 21 Hubbard directs a `photo-shoot' in Curaçao in 1974. 22 An officer of the Sea Org at Gilman Hot Springs in 1981. Copyright owners are indicated in brackets; all photographs not credited are from private sources. [Page viii. (blank page)] *Author's Note* I would like to be able to thank the officials of the Church of Scientology for their help in compiling this biography, but I am unable to do so because the price of their co-operation was effective control of the manuscript and it was a price I was unwilling to pay. Thereafter the Church did its best to dissuade people who knew Hubbard from speaking to me and constantly threatened litigation. Scientology lawyers in New York and Los Angeles made it clear in frequent letters that they expected me to libel and defame L. Ron Hubbard. When I protested that in thirty years as a journalist and writer I had never been accused of libel, I was apparently investigated and a letter was written to my publishers in New York alleging that my claim was `simply not accurate'. It was, and is. This book could not have been written without the assistance of the many former Scientologists who were prepared to give freely of their time to talk about their experiences, notwithstanding considerable risks. Some of them are named in the narrative, but there were many others who provided background information and to them all I pay tribute. I was deeply impressed by their integrity, intelligence and courage. This book could also not have been written without the existence of the Freedom of Information Act in the United States, which may give pause for thought to those who care about the truth yet are opposing the introduction of similar legislation in Britain. A special word of thanks is due to Jon Atack, a former Scientologist resident in East Grinstead, who has assembled one of the most comprehensive archives about Scientology and its founder and generously made his files available to me. I would also like to thank George Hay and John Symonds in London; Lydia and Jimmy Hicks in Washington DC; David and Milo Weaver in San Francisco; Connie and Phil Winberry in Seattle; Skip Davis in Newport, Rhode Island; Diane Lewis in Wichita; Arthur Jean Cox, Lawrence Kristiansen and Boris de Sidis in Los Angeles; Ron Newman in Woodside, California; Ron Howard of George Washington University; Sue Lindsay of the *Rocky Mountain News*, Denver; Dave Walters of the -- end page ix -- Montana Historical Society; and the ever helpful staff of the Library of Congress. Too many people to name patiently replied to queries by mail and searched their records for the answers to innumerable obscure questions. Their contribution to the whole picture was invaluable. My editor, Jennie Davies, polished the manuscript with her usual skill and diligence, despite the demands of her newly-born twins. My wife, Renate, read every chapter as it was written and always offered constructive advice. She had to put up with my long absences abroad while I was tracking down the truth about L. Ron Hubbard and then endure the misery of living with an obsessive author through the long months of writing. I could never thank her enough for her patience, love and support. Russell Miller, Buckinghamshire, England -- end page x -- *Introduction* For more than forty years, the Church of Scientology has vigorously promoted an image of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, as a romantic adventurer and philosopher whose early life fortuitously prepared him, in the manner of Jesus Christ, for his declared mission to save the world. The glorification of `Ron', superman and saviour, required a cavalier disregard for facts: thus it is that every biography of Hubbard published by the church is interwoven with lies, half-truths and ludicrous embellishments. The wondrous irony of this deception is that the true story of L. Ron Hubbard is much more bizarre, much more improbable, than any of the lies. -- end page 1 -- *Preface* *The Revelation of Ron* It was a scene that could have been ripped from the yellowing pages of the pulp science fiction that L. Ron Hubbard wrote in the Thirties ... A strangely alien group of young people who believe they are immortal set up a secret base in an abandoned health spa in the desert in southern California. Fearful of outsiders, they suspect they have been discovered by the FBI. In a panic, they begin to destroy any documents that might incriminate their leader. It is essential they protect him, for they believe he alone can save the world. Searching through the top floor of a derelict hotel, one of their number discovers a stack of battered cardboard boxes and begins pulling out faded photographs, dog-eared manuscripts, diaries written in a childish scrawl and school reports. There are twenty-one boxes in all, each stuffed with memorabilia, even baby clothes. The young man rummaging through the boxes is ecstatic. He is certain he has made a discovery of profound significance, for all the material documents the early life of his leader At last, he thinks, it will be possible to refute all the lies spread by their enemies. At last it will be possible to prove to the world, beyond doubt, that his leader really is a genius and miracle worker ... Thus was the stage set for the inexorable unmasking of L. Ron Hubbard, the saviour who never was. * * * * * Gerry Armstrong, the man kneeling in the dust on the top floor of the old Del Sol Hotel at Gilman Hot Springs that afternoon in January 1980, had been a dedicated member of the Church of Scientology for more than a decade. He was logging in Canada when a friend introduced him to Scientology in 1969 and he was immediately swept away by its heady promise of superhuman powers and immortality. During his years as a Scientologist, he had twice been sentenced to long periods in the Rehabilitation Project Force, the cult's own Orwellian prison; he had been constantly humiliated and his marriage had been destroyed, yet he remained totally convinced that L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest man who ever lived. -- end page 2 -- The dauntless loyalty Hubbard inspired among his followers was tantamount to a form of mind control. Scientology flourished in the post-war era of protest and uncertainty when young people were searching for a sense of belonging or meaning to their lives. Hubbard offered both, promised answers and nurtured an inner-group feeling of exclusiveness which separated Scientologists from the real world. Comforted by a sense of esoteric knowledge, of exaltation and self-absorption, they were ready to follow Ron through the very gates of Hell if need be. At the time Armstrong discovered the treasure trove of memorabilia at Gilman Hot Springs, Hubbard had been in hiding for years. His location was known only as `X', but Armstrong knew that it was possible to get a message to him and he petitioned for permission to begin researching an official biography, forcefully arguing that it would prepare the ground for `universal acceptance' of Scientology. He saw it as the forerunner of a major motion picture based on Hubbard's life and the eventual establishment of an archive in an L. Ron Hubbard Museum. By then Hubbard was nearly seventy years old and bad lived so long in a world of phantasmagoria that he was unable to distinguish between fact and his own fantastic fiction. He believed he was the teenage explorer, swashbuckling hero, sage and philosopher his biographies said he was. It was perhaps too late for him to comprehend that his life, in reality, far outstripped the fabricated version. He made the leap from penniless science-fiction writer to millionaire guru and prophet in a single, effortless bound; he led a private navy across the oceans of the world for nearly a decade; he came close to taking over control of several countries; he was worshipped by thousands of his followers around the world and was detested and feared by most governments. He was a story-spinning maverick whose singular life eclipsed even his own far-fetched stories. Yet he clung tenaciously to the fiction and when Armstrong's petition to research his biography arrived at his hide-out that January in 1980, he unhesitatingly gave his approval. Armstrong had no experience as an archivist or researcher, but he was intelligent, industrious, honest and enthusiastic. He moved all the relevant documentation from Gilman Hot Springs to the Scientology headquarters in Los Angeles, where it filled six filing cabinets, and began cataloguing and indexing the material, making copies of everything and reverently preserving the originals in plastic envelopes, acutely aware of their historical importance. Not long after he had started work, posters appeared in Scientology offices announcing the private screening of a 1940 Warner Brothers movie, *The Dive Bomber*, for which Hubbard had written the screenplay. Every Scientologist knew that Ron had been a successful -- end page 3 -- Hollywood screenwriter before the war and the screening was to raise funds for the defence of the eleven Scientologists, including Hubbard's wife, who had been indicted in Washington on conspiracy charges. Armstrong decided to help by finding out a little more about Ron's contribution to the film, but at the library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles he was puzzled to discover that two other writers had been credited with the screenplay of *The Dive Bomber*. Armstrong remonstrated with the librarian, then sent a memo to Ron to tell him about the mistake in the Academy records. Hubbard replied with a cheery note explaining that Warner Brothers had been in such a hurry to distribute the movie that it was already in the can before it was realized that his name had been left off the credits. He was busy at that time, closing up his posh apartment on Riverside Drive in New York and getting ready to go to war, so he just told the studio to mail the cheque to him at the Explorers Club. After the war, he used the money to take a holiday in the Caribbean. It was an explanation with which Armstrong was perfectly satisfied except for one niggling worry: like all Scientologists, he had been told that Ron was blind and crippled at the end of the war and that he had only been able to make a recovery because of the power of his mind. Clearly, Armstrong mused, he would not have taken the holiday until after his recovery. In an attempt to fit together the chronology of events, Armstrong made an application under the Freedom of Information Act for Hubbard's US Navy records. Scientologists were enormously proud of the fact that the founder of their church was a much-decorated war hero who had served in all five theaters and was wounded several times; indeed he was the first US casualty of the war in the Pacific. It was then, with a sense of mounting disbelief and dismay, that Armstrong leafed through Hubbard's records after they had arrived from Washington. He went from one document to another, searching in vain for an explanation, still refusing to believe the evidence of his own eyes: the record seemed to indicate that Hubbard, far from being a hero, was an incompetent, malingering coward who had done his best to avoid seeing action. Armstrong would not believe it. He set the documents aside and resolved to start his research at the beginning, in Montana, where Hubbard had grown up on his grandfather's huge cattle ranch. But he could find no trace of any property owned by the family, except a little house in the middle of Helena. Neither could he discover any documentation covering Hubbard's teenage wanderings through China. In Washington DC, where Hubbard was supposed to have graduated in mathematics and engineering from George Washington University, the record showed he dropped out after two years because -- end page 4 -- of poor grades. And of Hubbard's fabled expeditions as an explorer there was similarly no sign. `I was finding contradiction after contradiction,' Armstrong said. `I kept trying to justify them, kept thinking that I would find another document that would explain everything. But I didn't. I slowly came to realize that the guy had consistently lied about himself.' By the summer of 1981, Armstrong had assembled more than 250,000 pages of documentation about the founder of the Church of Scientology, but despite the gaping holes appearing in Hubbard's credibility, he remained intensely loyal. `My approach was, OK, now we know he's human and tells lies. What we've got to do is clear up the lies so that all the good he has done for the world will be accepted. I thought the only way we could exist as an organisation was to let the truth stand. After all, the truth was equally as fascinating as the lies.' Armstrong's pleas to clear up the lies fell on deaf ears. Since Hubbard had gone into seclusion, the Church of Scientology had been taken over by young militants known as `messengers'. When Hubbard was the commodore of his own navy, the messengers were little nymphets in hot pants and halter tops who ran errands for him and competed with each other to find ways of pleasing him. Eventually they helped him dress and undress, performed little domestic tasks like washing his hair and smearing rejuvenating cream on his fleshy features, and even followed him around with an ashtray to catch the falling ash from his cigarettes. As the commodore became more and more paranoid, beset by imagined traitors and enemies, the messengers became more and more powerful. In November 1981 Armstrong presented a written report to the messengers, listing the false claims made about Hubbard and putting forward a powerful argument as to why they should be corrected. `If we present inaccuracies, hyperbole or downright lies as fact or truth,' he wrote, `it doesn't matter what slant we give them; if disproved, the man will look, to outsiders at least, like a charlatan ...' The messengers' response was to order Armstrong to be `security checked' -- interrogated as a potential traitor. Armstrong refused. In the spring of 1982, Gerald Armstrong was accused of eighteen different `crimes' and `high crimes' against the Church of Scientology, including theft, false pretences and promulgating false information about the church and its founder. He was declared to be a `suppressive person' and `fair game', which meant he could be `tricked, cheated, lied to, sued or destroyed' by his former friends in Scientology. `By then the whole thing for me had crumbled,' he said. `I realized I had been drawn into Scientology by a web of lies, by Machiavellian mental control techniques and by fear. The betrayal of trust began with Hubbard's lies about himself. His life was a continuing pattern of -- end page 5 -- fraudulent business practices, tax evasion, flight from creditors and hiding from the law. `He was a mixture of Adolf Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and Baron Munchausen. In short, he was a con man.' -- end page 6 -- *Chapter 1* *A Dubious Prodigy* According to the colourful yarn spun for the benefit of his followers, L. Ron Hubbard was descended on his mother's side from a French nobleman, one Count de Loupe, who took part in the Norman invasion of England in 1066; on his father's side, the Hubbards were English settlers who had arrived in America in the nineteenth century. It was altogether a distinguished naval family: both his maternal great-grandfather, `Captain' I. C. DeWolfe, and his grandfather, `Captain' Lafayette Waterbury, `helped make American naval history',[1] while his father was `Commander' Harry Ross Hubbard, US Navy. As his father was away at sea for lengthy periods, the story goes, little Ron grew up on his wealthy grandfather's enormous cattle ranch in Montana, said to cover a quarter of the state [approximately 35,000 square miles!]. His picturesque friends were frontiersmen, cowboys and an Indian medicine man. `L. Ron Hubbard found the life of a young rancher very enjoyable. Long days were spent riding, breaking broncos, hunting coyote and taking his first steps as an explorer. For it was in Montana that he had his first encounter with another culture the Blackfoot [Pikuni] Indians. He became a blood brother of the Pikuni and was later to write about them in his first published novel, *Buckskin Brigades*. When he was ten years old, in 1921, he rejoined his family. His father, alarmed at his apparent lack of formal learning, immediately put him under intense instruction to make up for the time he had "lost" in the wilds of Montana. So it was that by the time he was twelve years old, L. Ron Hubbard had already read a goodly number of the world's greatest classics -- and his interest in religion and philosophy was born.'[2] * * * * * Virtually none of this is true. The real story of L. Ron Hubbard's early life is considerably more prosaic and begins not on a cattle ranch but in a succession of rented apartments necessarily modest since his father was a struggling white-collar clerk drifting from job to job. His grandfather was neither a distinguished sea captain nor a wealthy __________ 1. *Oregon Journal*, 22 Apr 1943 2. *Mission Into Time*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1973 -- end page 7 -- rancher but a small-time veterinarian who supplemented his income renting out horses and buggies from a livery barn. It is true, however, that his name was Lafayette O. Waterbury. As far as anyone knew, the Waterburys came from the Catskills, the dark-forested mountain range in New York State celebrated in the early nineteenth century as the setting for Washington Irving's popular short story about Rip Van Winkle -- a character only marginally more fantastic than the Waterburys' most famous scion. Shortly before the turmoil of the Civil War divided the nation, Abram Waterbury and his young wife, Margaret, left the Catskills to join the thousands of hopeful settlers trekking west in covered wagons to seek a better future. By 1863 he had set up in business as a veterinarian in Grand Rapids, Michigan and on 25 July 1864, Margaret gave birth to a son whom they named Lafayette, perhaps after the town in Indiana at which they had stopped on their journey before turning north to Grand Rapids. Lafayette, undoubtedly thankful to be known to his friends as Lafe, learned the veterinary trade from his father and married before he was twenty. His bride was twenty-one-year-old Ida Corinne DeWolfe, from Hampshire, Illinois. Diminutive in stature, Ida was a gentle, intelligent, strong-willed young woman whose mother had died in childbirth, with her eighth child, when Ida was sixteen. John DeWolf, her father, was a wealthy banker who clung to a fanciful family legend about the origins of the DeWolfes in Europe. Details and dates were vague, but the essence of the story was that a courtier accompanying a prince on a hunting expedition in France had somehow saved his master from an attack by a wolf; in gratitude the prince had ennobled the faithful courtier, bestowing upon him the title of Count de Loupe, a name that was eventually anglicized to DeWolfe. [No records exist to support this story, either in Britain or France; Vice-Admiral Harry De Wolf, twelfth-generation descendant of Balthazar De Wolf, the first De Wolf in America, says he has never heard of Count de Loupe.[3]] DeWolfe offered the young couple the use of a farm he owned in Nebraska on condition that Lafe would maintain and improve the property. It was at Burnett, a settlement on the Elkhorn river, one hundred miles west of Omaha, which had recently been opened up by the arrival of the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad. Burnett was an unremarkable cluster of log cabins, dug-outs and ramshackle pine huts huddled in a lazy curve of the river and surrounded by gently rolling prairie. It might never have appeared on any map had not the homesteaders persuaded the railroad to make a halt nearby. The first train arrived in 1879 and thereafter the town developed around the railroad depot rather than the river; within a __________ 3. Letter to author, 25 May 1986 -- end page 8 -- few years a general store, saloon and livery stable were in business. The Davis House Hotel, opened in 1884, was considered the finest on the whole Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad. By the time Lafe and Ida Waterbury arrived in Burnett, soon after the opening of the hotel, Ida was heavy with child; a daughter, Ledora May, was born in 1885. During the next twenty years Ida would produce seven more children and selflessly devote herself to the upbringing of a happy, close and high-spirited family. For a couple of years Lafe worked his father-in-law's farm, but a bitter family row developed when DeWolfe indicated his intention to exclude his other children and leave the property solely to Ida and Lafe. Rather than be the cause of strife in the family, Lafe moved out, opened a livery stable in town on Second Street and established himself as a veterinarian. His business was a success because he was well-liked and respected in the area, particularly after playing a starring role in a local domestic drama which briefly held the town gossips in thrall. Ida's sister, who had also moved to Burnett, woke up one morning to discover that her husband had left her and taken their infant son with him to New York. Lafe immediately packed his bags, set off for New York by train, tracked down the erring husband and returned to Burnett in triumph, his nephew in his arms. When Ida gave birth to another daughter in 1886, it was a typically warm-hearted gesture that prompted them to name the baby Toilie. A young man who used to hang around the livery stable had been engaged to a girl called Toilie before he became mentally deranged; whenever he felt `strange' he would always, for some reason, seek out Lafe and find reassurance from his company. When he learned that Ida and Lafe had had another daughter, he shyly asked if they would call her Toilie, after the sweetheart he knew he would never be able to marry. Years later the irreverent Toilie would say `I'm nuts because I was named by a crazy man' and shriek with laughter. Toilie was still a baby when hard times hit Burnett. In January 1887 a catastrophic blizzard swept across the plains west of the Mississippi, killing thousands of head of cattle; most of the local ranchers were mined overnight. The farmers fared no better, for that terrible winter was followed by a succession of blistering summers accompanied by plagues of grasshoppers which devastated the already sparse crops. But at a point when many of the despairing townsfolk were talking about giving up the struggle against the unforgiving elements, the climate suddenly improved and the detested grasshoppers disappeared; unlike many small towns in the Nebraska prairie, Burnett survived the crisis. By 1899 the local newspaper, the *Burnett Citizen*, was able to report, as evidence of increasing prosperity, that Lafe Waterbury was -- end page 9 -- among those who had built new dwelling houses in the town that year. It was a fine, two-storey, wood-frame house on Elm Street, sheltered at the front by two huge elm trees. At the rear, beyond a stand of willows, it overlooked prairie stretching away into hazy infinity; deer and antelope often ventured within sight of the back yard and at night the howls of coyotes made the children shiver in their beds. The Waterburys certainly needed the space offered by their new home, for by now May and Toilie had been joined by Ida Irene (called Midgie by the family because she was so small), a brother Ray, and two more sisters, Louise and Hope. Another two girls, Margaret and June, would follow in 1903 and 1905. Lafe and Ida doted on their children, thoroughly enjoyed their company and liked nothing more than when the house was full of noise and laughter. Ida was determined that her children would have a happier upbringing than her own -- she never forgot being constantly beaten at school for writing with her left hand -- and as a consequence the Waterburys were unusually relaxed parents for their time, encouraging their offspring to attend church on Sundays, for example, but caring little which church they attended. Surprisingly, there was considerable choice. For a small town with a population of less than a thousand people, Burnett was an excessively God-fearing community and supported four thriving churches -- Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Catholic. Lafe and Ida always claimed they were too busy to go to church themselves, although Lafe openly declared, to his children, his ambivalence towards religion: `Some of the finest men I have ever known were preachers,' he liked to say, `and some of the biggest hypocrites I have ever known were preachers.' He was a large, bluff man with an irrepressible sense of humour, a talent for mimicry and a hint of the showman about him: he often used to announce his intention to put all his children on the stage. In the evenings, when he had had a drink or two, he would sit on the porch and play his fiddle, which had a negro's head carved at the end of the shaft. Tutored by Lafe, who was considered to be one of the best horsemen in Madison County, all the children learned to ride almost as soon as they could walk and each of them was allocated a pony from the Waterbury livery stable. Also quartered with the horses was the family cow, Star, who obligingly provided them every day with as much milk as they could drink. In 1902, because of confusion with a similarly-named town nearby, the good folk of Burnett decided to change the name of their town to Tilden, thereby commemorating an unsuccessful presidential candidate, Samuel J. Tilden, who had contested the 1876 election won by Rutherford B. Hayes. May was the first of the Waterbury children to graduate, in 1904, from Tilden High School. Tall, outspoken and -- end page 10 -- independent, she was an unashamed feminist -- she was outraged when she read in the newspaper that a policeman in New York had arrested a woman for smoking in the street and thrilled to learn that deaf and blind Helen Keller had graduated from Radcliffe College the same year she graduated from Tilden. It surprised no one in the family when May announced that she wanted a career, declaring her belief that there must be more to life than caring for a husband and bearing children. Accordingly, and with the blessing of her parents, she set off for Omaha to train as a teacher. But by the time she had qualified as a high school and institute teacher, certificate of Nebraska, she was writing letters home about a young sailor she had met called `Hub'. Harry Ross Hubbard was not a descendent of a long line of Hubbards but an orphan. Born Henry August Wilson on 31 August 1886 at Fayette, Iowa, his mother had died when he was a baby and he had been adopted by a Mr and Mrs James Hubbard, farmers in Frederiksburg, Iowa, who changed his name to Harry Ross Hubbard. At school, Harry was not a high flier. He briefly attended a business college at Norma Springs, Iowa, but dropped out when he realized he had little chance of a degree. On 1 September 1904, the day after his eighteenth birthday, he joined the United States Navy as an enlisted man. While serving as a yeoman on the *USS Pennsylvania*, he began writing `romantic tales' of Navy life for newspapers back home, earning useful extra income. He was posted to the US Navy recruiting office in Omaha in 1906 when he met May Waterbury and it was not long before her plans for an independent career were more or less forgotten. They married on 25 April 1909, and by the summer of 1910 May was pregnant; her husband, now discharged from the Navy, had found work as a commercial teller in the advertising department of the *Omaha World Herald* newspaper. The Waterburys, meanwhile, had left Tilden and moved to Durant in south-east Oklahoma, close to the border with Texas. Lafe had seen the first Model T. Ford trundle cautiously through the main street of Tilden and realized that his livery stable faced an uncertain future; when a close friend in Durant suggested to him that the warmer climate in the south would be better for all the family, he talked it over with Ida and they decided to go, making the eight hundred-mile trip by railroad. Ray, then sixteen, travelled with Star and the horses and fed and watered the animals during the journey. Only Toilie stayed behind in Tilden. She was twenty-three and working as a nurse and secretary for Dr Stuart Campbell, who had opened a small hospital in a wood-frame house on Oak Street, just a block away from the Waterbury family home. Toilie was reluctant to give up her job and her parents readily accepted her decision not to go with them to Oklahoma. -- end page 11 -- Campbell, who had set up a practice in Tilden in 1900, had delivered Ida Waterbury's two youngest children, but it was the fact that Toilie was working for him that persuaded May to return to Tilden to give birth to her first child. With only a little more than a year between them, May and Toilie had always been close, walking to and from school arm in arm, sharing a bedroom and incessantly giggling together over childhood secrets. Toilie was waiting at the railroad depot in Tilden at the end of February 1911 when May, helped by a solicitous Hub, heaved herself down from the train. Although Tilden was still no more than four dirt streets running north to south, intersected by four more running east-west, May noticed plenty of changes in the short time she had been away -- four grain elevators had been built, three saloons and two pool halls had opened, Mrs Mayes was competing with the Botsford sisters in the millinery trade and there was even a new `opera house' -- true, it had yet to stage its first operaa, but the road shows were always popular, particularly since Alexander's Ragtime Band had set the nation's feet tapping. May did not have long to wait for the `blessed event'. She went into labour during the afternoon of Friday 10 March, and Toilie arranged for her to be admitted immediately to Dr Campbell's hospital. At one minute past two o'clock the following morning, she was delivered of a son. She and Hub had already decided that if it was a boy, he would be named Lafayette Ronald Hubbard. -*- Ida and Lafe Waterbury did not see their first grandchild until Christmas 1911, when Hub, May and the baby arrived to spend the holiday with them in Durant. Lafe, who had been out treating a neighbour's horse, burst into the house, threw his hat on the floor and leaned over the crib to shake his grandson's hand. Baby Ron smiled obligingly and Lafe whooped with pleasure, trumpeting at his wife: `Look, the little son of a bitch knows me already.' The biggest surprise for the family was that Ron had a startling thatch of fluffy orange hair. Hub was dark-haired and the Waterburys had no more than a hint of auburn in their colouring -- nothing like the impish little carrot-top who gurgled happily as he was passed from one lap to another. Seven-year-old Margaret, known in the family as Marnie, spoke for everyone when she proclaimed her new nephew to be `cute as a bug's ear'. During that Christmas May told her parents that Hub had got a new job on a newspaper in Kalispell, Montana, and that they would be moving there from Omaha in the New Year. She was hopeful that it would prove to be a step up for them. In the spring of 1912, May began writing long and enthusiastic -- end page 12 -- letters from Kalispell. Perhaps missing the family, she often hinted that they might consider joining her and Hub in Montana. Kalispell was a fine, modern city, she wrote, with paved streets, electric lighting and many fine houses. The surrounding Flathead Valley was famous for its fruit and at blossom time the orchards of apples, peaches, pears, cherries and plums had to be seen to be believed. One Kalispell farmer, Fred Whiteside, was so confident about the quality of his fruit that he boasted he would give $1000 to anyone finding a worm in one of his apples. May's letters gave her parents much to think about, for they both recognized that the move to Oklahoma had not been a success. When they first arrived in Durant, Lafe bought a livery barn on the outskirts of town and for several months the whole family lived in the hayloft above the animals. They built a cookhouse on the property so they had somewhere to eat their meals and then started on a house. None of the children minded the privations in the least -- indeed, they rather enjoyed thinking of themselves as true pioneers -- but Lafe found the humid summers very debilitating. It made May's description of the blossom in Montana all the more enticing. Ida had been deeply disturbed by an incident that occurred soon after they moved into their new house. A negro raped a white woman in the town and while a posse was out looking for him, a rumour took hold that there was going to be a negro uprising, causing something approaching panic, particularly in remote outlying areas. At nightfall. Lafe and Ray took guns and went out on horses to protect the approaches to their property, while the girls waited behind barred windows, watching flares bounce through the night and listening to the rattle of cartwheels as farmers shepherded their families into the safety of the town. Although there was no uprising, both Ida and Lafe were concerned that there might be a `next time' and they did not want to feel that their safety depended on their willingness to protect themselves with guns. In the fall of 1912, the Waterburys once again sold their house, packed up their belongings and loaded their livestock on to railcars, this time bound for Kalispell, Montana, 1500 miles to the north-west. Long delays at railheads, while waiting with their freight cars to be picked up by north-bound trains, added days to the journey and it was a week before they were hooked on to a Great Northern Railway train labouring across the Rocky Mountains through the spectacular passes that led to Kalispell. The family reunion was the happiest of occasions and no one received more attention than Ron, who had learned to take his first faltering steps. `He was very much the love child of the whole family,' said Marnie. `He was adored by everyone. I can still see that mop of red hair running around.' -- end page 13 -- Lafe found a small house in Orchard Park, a short walk from May and Hub's home and only a block from the fairground, where he hoped to find work as a veterinarian. With only two bedrooms, it was not nearly big enough for the Waterbury tribe, but it had a barn that would accommodate all the horses and still leave enough room for the long-suffering and widely-travelled Star. Marnie and June, the two youngest children, were given one of the bedrooms and Lafe built a big wood-frame tent in the yard for the other four: inside, it was divided by a canvas screen -- Ray slept on a bunk on one side and Midgie, Louise and Hope were on the other. They had a stove to keep them warm in the winter and were perfectly content. On summer evenings, Marnie and June often heard their older sisters whispering and tittering in the tent and sometimes they crept outside to join them and share the cherries they stole almost every night from a neighbouring garden. The Waterburys were happy in Kalispell: Ida and Lafe made no secret of the pleasure they took in being able to see their grandson every day; Midgie met her future husband, Bob, in the town; and Ray developed an impressive talent for training horses. Under his careful tuition, the family ponies learned tricks like counting by pawing the ground with a hoof and stealing handkerchiefs from his pocket. The Waterbury `show horses', ridden by the Waterbury children, became a popular feature in the town parades and they always competed in the races at the fairground. Baby Ron remained the centre of the family's attention and the star of the Waterbury photograph albums -- Ron perched in an apple tree, Ron with Liberty Bill, their English bull terrier, on the porch of the Kalispell house, Ron trying to measure the back yard with a tape. Having clearly inherited something of his grandfather's showmanship, Ron thoroughly enjoyed being in the family spotlight. Lafe was walking down Kalispell's main street one day with Marnie and Ron when he bumped into Samuel Stewart, the governor of Montana, whom he had met several times. `Hey Sam,' he said, `I'd like you to meet my little grandson, Ron.' Stewart stooped, solemnly shook hands with the boy and stood chatting to Lafe for a few minutes. After he had gone, Marnie, who had been neither introduced nor acknowledged, turned furiously on her father and snapped, `Why didn't you introduce me? Don't I matter?' Lafe had the grace to apologize, but Marnie could see by his broad grin that he was not in the least repentant. As well as being favoured so shamelessly, Ron could always count on the support of his many aunts in any family dispute. While he was learning to talk, he would frequently drive his mother to distraction by running round the house repeating the same, usually meaningless, -- end page 14 -- word over and over again. One afternoon at the Waterbury home, the word was `eskobiddle'. May, at the end of her patience, finally shouted at him: `If you say that once more I'm going to go and wash your mouth out with soap.' Ron looked coolly at her and smiled slowly. `Eskobiddle!' he yelled at the top of his voice. May immediately dragged him off and carried out her threat. A few minutes later, Ida heard shrieks coming from the back yard and discovered Midgie and Louise holding May down and washing her mouth with soap to avenge their precious nephew. Less than twelve months after the Waterburys arrived in Kalispell, May broke the news that she and Hub were going to move on; Hub was having problems with his job on the newspaper and had been offered a position as resident manager of the Family Theater in the state capital, Helena. Ida and Lafe were naturally upset but, as May said, Helena was only two hundred miles away and it was also on the Great Northern Railroad, so they would be able to visit each other frequently. Nevertheless, it would not be the same, both doting grandparents gloomily concluded, as having little Ronald in and out of the house almost every day. -*- Helena in 1913 was a pleasant city of Victorian brick and stone buildings encircled by the Rocky Mountains, whose snow-dusted peaks stippled with pines provided a scenic backdrop in every direction. The Capital Building, with its massive copper dome and fluted doric columns, eloquently proclaimed its status as the first city of Montana, as did the construction of the neo-Gothic St Helena Cathedral, which was nearing completion on Warren Street. Electric streetcars clanked along the brick-paved main street, once a twisting mountain defile known as Last Chance Gulch in commemoration of the four prospectors who had unexpectedly struck gold there in 1864 and subsequently rounded the city. The Family Theater, at 21 Last Chance Gulch, occupied part of a handsome red-brick terrace with an ornate stone coping, but it suffered somewhat from its position, since it was in the heart of the city's red-light district and could not have been more inappropriately named. Respectable families arriving for the evening performance were required to avert their eyes from the colourful ladies leaning out of the windows of the brothels on each side of the theater, although it was not unknown for the occasional father to slip out after the show had started and return before the final curtain, curiously flushed. Harry Hubbard's duties were to sell tickets during the day, collect them at the door as patrons arrived, maintain order if necessary during the show and lock up at the end of the evening. Although his title was -- end page 15 -- resident manager, he chose not to live at the theater and rented a rickety little wooden house, not much better than a shack, on Henry Street, on the far side of the railroad track. May hated it and soon found a small apartment on the top floor of a house at 15 Rodney Street, closer to the theater and in a better part of town. Travelling road shows, sometimes comprising not much more than a singer, pianist and a comedian, were the staple fare of the Family Theater. Ron was often allowed to see the show and he would sit with his mother in the darkened auditorium completely enthralled, no matter what the act. Years later he would recall sitting in a box at the age of two wearing his father's hat and applauding with such enthusiasm that the audience began cheering him rather than the cast. He claimed the players took twelve curtain calls before they realized what was happening.[4] When the Waterburys paid a visit to Helena, Hub arranged for them to see the show, made sure they had the best seats in the house and solemnly stood at the door of the theater to collect their tickets as they filed in. Not long after their return to Kalispell, May heard that her father had slipped on a banana skin, fallen and broken his arm. She did not worry overmuch at first, even when her mother wrote to say that the arm had not been set properly and had had to be re-broken. Indeed, her worries were rather closer to home, for Harry had been told by the owner of the Family Theater that unless the audiences improved the theater might have to close. The news from abroad was also giving cause for concern, despite Woodrow Wilson's promise to keep America out of the war threatening to engulf Europe. On Sunday 2 August 1914, headlines in the *Helena Independent* announced that Germany had declared war on Russia and a despatch from London confirmed: `The die is cast ... Europe is to be plunged into a general war.' Closer to home, rival unions in the copper mines at Butte, only sixty miles from Helena, were also at war. When the Miners' Union Hall was dynamited, Governor Stewart declared martial law and sent in the National Guard to keep order. It was in this turbulent climate that the Family Theater finally closed its doors, for the audiences did not pick up. Harry Hubbard was once again obliged to look for work, but once again he was lucky -- he was taken on as a book-keeper for the Ives-Smith Coal Company, `dealers in Original Bear Creek, Roundup, Acme and Belt Coal', at 41 West Sixth Avenue. May, meanwhile, found a cheaper apartment for the family on the first floor of a shingled wood-frame house at 1109 Fifth Avenue. Back in Kalispell, Lafe Waterbury was still having trouble with his arm. He was not the kind of man to complain about bad luck, but no __________ 4. 1938 biography of L. Ron Hubbard by Arthur J. Burks, president of American Fiction Guild -- end page 16 -- one could have blamed him had he done so. His arm had to be set a third time and just when it seemed it was beginning to heal he was thrown to the ground by a horse he was examining. He was never to regain full strength in that arm and although he was only fifty years old he knew he would not be able to continue working as a vet, with all the pulling and pushing it involved. Only the four youngest Waterbury girls were still at home, but Lafe did not think he could afford to retire, even if that had been his ambition. (His taxable assets were listed in the Kalispell City Directory at $1550, which made him comfortably off, but not by any means rich.) No prospects presented themselves immediately in Kalispell and Lafe and Ida began considering another move. It somehow seemed natural, since they had followed May to Kalispell, that they should now think about moving to Helena. In the summer of 1915, Toilie, back home on a visit from the East, drove her father to Helena in the family's Model T. Ford so that he could take a look around. They stayed, of course, with May and Hub in their cramped apartment on Fifth Avenue and Lafe was delighted to have the company of his four-year-old grandson every time he went for a walk in town. Hub presumably talked to his father-in-law about his job and the two men almost certainly discussed the ever-increasing demand for coal and the business opportunities available in Helena. As a bookkeeper, Hub knew the figures, knew the profit Ives-Smith was making and knew the strength of the market -- it was information that undoubtedly influenced Lafe's decision to move his family to Helena and set up a coal company of his own. The Waterburys arrived in 1916 and bought a house at 736 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of Raleigh Street, just two blocks from May and Hub's apartment. Lafe considered himself very lucky to get the property, for it was a sturdy two-storey house, built around the turn of the century, with light and airy rooms, fine stained glass windows, a wide covered porch and an unusual conical roof over a curved bay at one corner. It would quickly become known by everyone in the family, with the greatest affection, as `the old brick'. The Waterbury girls had wept bitterly on leaving Kalispell, largely because their father had insisted that Bird, the Indian pony on which they had all learned to ride, was too old to make the journey and would have to be left behind. But their spirits soon lifted as they ran excitedly from room to room in their new home and imagined themselves as fashionable young ladies of substance. Fifth Avenue was not yet a paved road, but it was lined with struggling saplings which offered the promise of respectability and, more importantly, it was straddled to the east by the Capital Building, -- end page 17 -- a monumental edifice of such grandeur that the girls were all deeply awed by its proximity. To the west, Fifth Avenue appeared to plunge directly into the forested green flanks of Mount Helena and just two blocks south of `the old brick', Raleigh Street ended in grassy hummocks which led up to the mountains and promised limitless opportunities for play. Marnie, then thirteen years old, could hardly imagine a better place to be. Lafe rented a yard with a stable adjoining the Northern Pacific railroad track where it crossed Montana Avenue and put up a sign announcing that the Capital City Coal Company had opened for business. It was very much a family affair, as listed in the Helena City Directory for 1917: Lafayette O. Waterbury was president, Ray was vice-president and Toilie (recalled from the East by her father -- `It's time to come home,' he told her, `I need you.') was secretary-treasurer. Harry Ross Hubbard had also joined the fledgling enterprise, but the only vacancy was in the lowly capacity of teamster. On 2 January 1917 Ron was enrolled at the kindergarten at Central School on Warren Street, just across from the new cathedral which, with its twin spires and grey stone facade, towered reprovingly over the city. Most days he was walked to school by his aunts, Marnie and June, who were at Helena High, opposite Central School. Ron, who was known to the neighbourhood kids as `brick' because of his hair, would later claim that while still at kindergarten he used the `lumberjack fighting' he had learned from his grandfather to deal with a gang of bullies who were terrorizing children on their way to and from the school. But one of Ron's closest childhood friends, Andrew Richardson, has no recollection of him protecting local children from bullies. `He never protected nobody,' said Richardson. `It was all bullshit. Old Hubbard was the greatest con artist who ever lived.'[5] -*- Although the war in Europe, with its unbelievable casualty toll, was filling plenty of columns in the *Independent*, local news, as always, received quite as much prominence as despatches from foreign correspondents. Suffragettes figured prominently in many of the headlines and after the women's suffrage amendment was narrowly approved in the Montana legislature, the victorious women celebrated by electing one of their leaders, Jeanette Rankin, to a seat in the US Congress. Women voters also helped push through a bill to ban the sale of alcohol as the Prohibition lobby gained ground across the nation. Even the news, in February 1917, that Germany had declared its intention to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare did not fully hit home until the following month when it was learned that German __________ 5. Interview with Andrew Richardson, Helena, Montana -- end page 18 -- submarines had attacked and sunk three US merchant ships in the Atlantic. On 6 April, the United States declared war on Germany; Congresswoman Rankin was one of only a handful of dissenters voting against the war resolution. Mobilization began at once in Helena at Fort Harrison, headquarters of the 2nd Regiment, but the wave of patriotic fervour that swept the state brought in its wake a sinister backlash in the form of witchhunts for `traitors' and `subversives'. In August, self-styled vigilantes in Butte dragged labour leader Frank Little from his rooming house and hanged him from a railroad trestle on the edge of town. His `crime' was that he was leader of the Industrial Workers of the World, a radical group viewed as seditious. Although selective draft mustered more than seven thousand troops in Montana by the beginning of August, Harry Hubbard felt, as an ex-serviceman, that he should not wait to be drafted. He had served for four years in the US Navy and his country needed trained seamen. Yes, he had family responsibilities, but he was also an American. He knew his duty and May knew she could not, and should not, stop him. On 10 October, Hub kissed her goodbye, hugged his six-year-old son and left Helena for the Navy Recruiting Station at Salt Lake City, Utah, to re-enlist for a four-year term in the US Navy. Two weeks later, little Ron and his mother joined the crowds lining Last Chance Gulch to watch Montana's 163rd Infantry march out of town on their way to join the fighting in Europe. Ron thought they were just `swell'. After Hub had gone, May and Ron moved into `the old brick' with the rest of the family and May found a job as a clerk with the State Bureau of Child and Animal Protection in the Capital Building. If little Ron experienced any sense of loss from the absence of his father, it was certainly alleviated by the intense warmth and sociability of the Waterbury family. He had grandparents who considered he could do no wrong, a loving mother and an assorted array of adoring aunts who liked nothing more than to spend time playing with him. It was inevitable that he would be spoiled with all the attention, but he was also a rewarding child, exceptionally imaginative and adventurous, always filling his time with original ideas and games. `He was very quick, always coming up with ideas no one else had thought of,' said Marnie. `He'd grab a couple of beer bottles and use them as binoculars or he would write little plays and draw the scenery and everything. Whatever he started he finished: when he made up his mind he was going to do something, you could be sure he would see it through.' Hub wrote home frequently and made it clear that he was enjoying being back in the service, the war notwithstanding. He had been selected for training as an Assistant Paymaster and if he made the -- end page 19 -- grade, he proudly explained in a letter to May, it would mean that he would become an officer. On 13 October 1918 Harry Ross Hubbard was honorably discharged from enlisted service in the US Navy Reserve Force and the following day he was appointed Assistant Paymaster with the rank of Ensign. He was thirty-two years old, positively geriatric for an Ensign -- but it was one of the proudest moments of his life. Eleven days later, the front pages of the *Helena Independent* was dominated by a single word in letters three inches high: PEACE. Underneath, the sub-heading declared, `Cowardly Kaiser and Son Flee to Holland.' The terms of surrender were to be so severe, the newspaper innocently reported, that Germany would forever `be absolutely deprived from further military power of action on land and sea and in the air'. Unlike most wives whose husbands had gone to war, May knew that the Armistice did not mean that Hub would be coming home; he had already told her that he intended to make a career in the Navy. It was a decision she could not sensibly oppose, for she was obliged to admit that he had been incapable of making progress in his varied civilian jobs and he was clearly happier in the Navy. Furthermore, his position with the Capital City Coal Company was far from secure, for she knew that her father was worried about the business -- they were having difficulty finding sufficient supplies of coal from Roundup and a third coal company had opened up in town, increasing competition. The Waterbury girls were helping with the company's cash flow problems by knocking on doors round and about Fifth Avenue to collect payment for overdue bills. Lafe Waterbury never allowed his business worries to cast a shadow over his family life and for the children, Ron included, weeks and months passed with not much to fret about other than whether or not the taffy [toffee] would set. `Taffy-pulls' were a regular ritual in the Waterbury household: a coat hanger was kept permanently on the back of the door in the basement to loop the sugar and water mix and stretch it repeatedly, filling the taffy with air bubbles so that it would snap satisfactorily when it was set. Liberty Bill would always sit and watch the proceedings with saliva dripping from his jaws. Once he grabbed a mouthful when the taffy looped too close to the floor and disappeared under a bush ill the garden for hours while he tried to suck it out of his teeth. One day Marnie and June were in the basement pulling taffy with Ron when they heard their father laughing out loud in the front room. They ran upstairs to see what was going on and found him standing at the window, both hands clutched to his quivering midriff, tears streaming down his cheeks. Outside, a young lady, in a tight hobble -- end page 20 -- skirt -- the very latest fashion in Helena -- was attempting to step down from the wooden sidewalk to cross the road. To her acute embarrassment, she was discovering that while it was feasible to totter along a level surface, it was almost impossible to negotiate a step of more than a few inches without hoisting her skirt to a level well beyond the bounds of decorum, or jumping with both feet together. Eventually, shuffling to the edge of the sidewalk, she managed to slide first one foot down, then, with a precarious swivel, the other. By this time Lafe was forced to sit down, for he could no longer stand, and the entire family had gathered at the window. Laughter was an omnipresent feature of life in `the old brick'. When Toilie brought home a bottle of wine and gave her mother a glass, the unaccustomed alcohol thickened her tongue and the more she struggled with ever more recalcitrant syllables, the more her daughters howled. Then there was the time when Lafe leaned back in his swivel chair, overbalanced, fell under a shelf piled with magazines and hit his head as he tried to get up -- no one would ever forget that. On the other hand almost the worst incident any of the children could remember was the day when their mother's pet canary escaped through an open window into the snow and never returned. Ida had loved that canary when she was lying in bed she would whistle and it would fly over, perch on the covers and pick her teeth. In the summer, the children spent every waking hour after school outdoors. May, who had changed her job and now worked as a clerk in the State Department of Agriculture and Publicity, bought a small plot of land in the foothills of the mountains, about two hours' walk from the family home and paid a local carpenter to put up a raw pine shack. It had just two rooms inside, with a long covered porch at the front. They called it `The Old Homestead' and used it at weekends and holidays, taking enough food and drink with them to last the duration, and drawing water from a well on a nearby property. Most times Lafe would drive them out in the Model T. and drop them on the Butte road at the closest point to the house, from where they walked across the fields. The children loved The Old Homestead for the simple pleasure of being in the mountains, playing endless games under a perfect blue sky, optimistically panning for gold in tumbling streams of crystal clear water, picking great bunches of wild flowers, cooking on a campfire and huddling round an oil lamp at night, telling spooky stories. When they were not planning a trip to The Old Homestead, Ron pestered his aunts to take him on a hike up to the top of Mount Helena, where they would sit with a picnic, munching sandwiches and silently staring out over the sprawl of the city below and the ring of mountains beyond. One of the trails up the mountain passed a smoky -- end page 21 -- cave said to be haunted by the men who had used it as a hideout while being stalked by Indians in the mid-nineteenth century. Marnie used to take Ron, squirming with thrilled terror, into the cave to look for ghosts. Marnie and Ron, with only eight years between them, were as close as brother and sister. When she was in a school play at Helena High, taking the part of Marie Antoinette, he sat wide-eyed throughout the performance then ran all the way home to tell his grandma how beautiful Marnie was. While the children remained blithely unaware of events outside the comforting confines of `the old brick' and The Old Homestead, few adults in Montana were able to enjoy such a blinkered existence. After years of abundant crops and high wheat prices, postwar depression brought about a collapse in the market -- bushel prices halved in the space of three months -- and the summer of 1919 saw the first of a cycle of disastrous droughts. Every day brought further ominous tidings of mortgage foreclosures, banks closing, abandoned farms turned into dustbowls and thousands of settlers leaving the state to seek a livelihood elsewhere. In this gloomy economic climate, Lafe Waterbury was forced to close down the Capital City Coal Company. For a while he tinkered with a small business selling automobile spares and vulcanizing tyres, but the depression meant that motorists were laying up their cars rather than repairing them and Lafe decided to retire, thankful that he still had sufficient capital left to support his family. May helped with the household expenses, although she realized she and Ron would not be able to stay there forever. Hub had been promoted to Lieutenant (Junior Grade) in November 1919, and whenever he could, had been coming home on leave to see his wife and son. He was still intent on a career in the Navy, although he had already suffered some setbacks. He had been obliged to appear before a court of inquiry in May, 1920, while serving as Supply Officer on the *USS Aroostock*, to explain a deficiency in his accounts of $942.25. He also had an unfortunate tendency to overlook personal debts. No less than fourteen creditors in Kalispell claimed he left behind unpaid bills totalling $125; Fred Fisch, high-grade clothier of Vallejo, California, was pursuing him for $10 still owed on a uniform overcoat; and a Dr McPherson of San Diego was owed $30. All of them complained to the Navy Department, casting a shadow over Hubbard's record.[6] He had a long spell of inactive duty at the beginning of 1921 while he was waiting for a new posting and he and May spent a great deal of time discussing their future. Hub expected May to conform, like other Navy wives, and trail around the country with him from posting to posting; when he was at sea, he wanted her to be close to his ship's __________ 6. Harry Ross Hubbard navy record -- end page 22 -- home port. May obviously wanted to be with Hub, but she was reluctant to move Ron from school to school and loath to leave her family. She had perhaps secretly hoped that Hub would tire of the Navy and return to civilian life in Helena, but the depression wiped out whatever miserable opportunities he might have had of finding work and she realized it would never happen. In September 1921, Hub was posted to the battleship *USS Oklahoma* as an Assistant Supply Officer. He anticipated serving on board for at least two years, much of that time at sea, and the opportunities for visits home to Helena would be severely curtailed. As a loyal wife, May felt she could no longer justify staying in Helena. She and Ron packed their bags, bade the family a tearful farewell and caught a train for San Diego, the *USS Oklahoma*'s home port. Although Ron must have missed the convivial domesticity of `the old brick', he did not appear to mind, in the least, being a `Navy brat' -- the curiously affectionate label applied to all children of servicemen, many of whom needed more than the fingers of both hands to count their schools. He was a gregarious boy, quick to make friends, and starting a new school held no terrors for him. After about a year in San Diego, the Hubbards moved north to Seattle, in Washington State, when the *Oklahoma* was transferred to Puget Sound Navy Shipyard. In Seattle Ron joined the boy scouts, an event that would figure prominently in a hand-written journal which he scrawled on the pages of an old accounts book, interspersed with short stories, a few years later: `The year Nineteen Hundred and Twenty-Three rallied round and found me contentedly resting on my laurels, a first class badge. For I was a boy scout then and deaf was my friend that hadn't heard all about it. I considered Seattle the best town on the map as far as scouting was concerned.' In October 1923, Lieutenant Hubbard completed sea duty on the *USS Oklahoma* and, after brief spells of temporary duty in San Francisco and New York, was assigned for further training to the Bureau of Supply and Accounts School of Application in Washington DC. The US Navy, which clearly despised any form of land transport, saved itself the cost of two long-distance train fares by giving May and Ron berths on the *USS U.S. Grant*, a German warship acquired by the US Navy after the First World War, which was due to sail from Seattle to Hampton Roads, Virginia, via the Panama Canal. It was thus December, and the snow was thick on the ground, before the Hubbards were re-united in Washington after a voyage of some seven thousand miles, three-quarters of the way round the coast of the United States. It was on this trip, it seems, that Ron met the enigmatic Commander `Snake' Thompson of the US Navy Medical Corps, a psychoanalyst he -- end page 23 -- would later claim was responsible for awakening his youthful interest in Freud, although he only made the briefest mention of the journey in his journal. His style of writing was fluent, breezy, schoolboyishly cocksure and addressed directly to the reader. `If obviously pushed upon,' he wrote, `I supposed I could write a couple of thousands [*sic*] words on that trip ... But I spare you.' He usually referred to himself in a gently ironic tone, perhaps to avoid giving an impression of thinking rather too highly of himself. When he arrived in Washington, two troops of local scouts were battling for a prized scouting trophy, the Washington Post Cup. Troop 100, he noted, belonged to the YMCA `and would therefore probably lose', so he joined the other outfit, Troop 10, `which must have sighed loudly when it perceived me crossing the threshold'. The journal also contained flashes of humour, delivered deadpan: `Visualize me in a natty scout suit, my red hair tumbling out from under my hat, doing my good turn daily. Once I saved a man's life. I could have pushed him under a streetcar but I didn't.' Intent on pushing Troop 10 to victory, Ron began acquiring merit badges with extraordinary speed and dedication. In his first two weeks, he was awarded badges for Firemanship and Personal Health, quickly followed by Photography, Life-Saving, Physical Development and Bird Study. He determinedly thrust his way into the front rank of the Washington scouts (it was absolutely not his nature to languish shyly among the pack) and he was chosen to represent them on a delegation to the White House to ask President Calvin Coolidge to accept the honorary chairmanship of National Boys' Week. He noted the invitation in his journal with characteristic cheek: `One fine day the Scout executive telephoned my house and told me I was to meet the president that afternoon. I told him I thought it pretty swell of the president to come way out to my house ...' Brushed and scrubbed ('even the backs of my hands were thoroughly washed') he waited with forty other boys outside the Oval Office until a secretary emerged and said the president was ready to receive them. ` With fear and trembling, we entered and repeated our names a few times as we pumped Cal's listless hand ... I think I have the distinction of being the only boy scout in America who has made the President wince.' The great man spoke in such lugubrious tones that Ron compared the occasion to being invited to his own hanging. In the boy scout diary he kept intermittently around this time, Ron was a lot less forthcoming than in the journal, which was clearly written with an intention to entertain. The most frequent entry in his diary was a laconic `Was bored.' Yet he would claim in later years that the four months he spent in Washington was a crucial period of his life during which he received `an extensive education in the field of the -- end page 24 -- human mind' under the tutelage of his friend Commander Thompson.[7] He also noted -- in his journal -- that he became a close friend of President Coolidge's son, Calvin Junior, whose early death accelerated his `precocious interest in the mind and spirit of Man.'[8] `Snake' Thompson was apparently a friend of Ron's father and a personal student of Sigmund Freud, under whom he had studied in Vienna. His inauspicious nickname was derived from his love of slithery creatures, but it was in his capacity as a student of the founder of psychoanalysis that he took it upon himself to give the twelve-year-old boy a grounding in Freudian theory as well as `shoving his nose' into books at the Library of Congress. [Ron would often refer to Thompson in later life, yet the Commander remains an enigma. He cannot be identified from US Navy records, nor can his relationship with Freud be established. Doctor Kurt Eissler, one of the world's leading authorities on Freud, says he has no knowledge of any correspondence or contact of any kind between Freud and Thompson.[9]] Presumably the hours that Ron and Thompson spent closeted together in the Library of Congress were somehow dovetailed into the time he devoted to scouting, for on 28 March 1924, a few days after his thirteenth birthday, Ron was made an eagle scout. `Twenty-one merit badges in ninety days,' he recorded triumphantly in his journal. `I was quite a boy then. Written up in the papers and all that. Take a look at me. You didn't know the wreck in front of you was once the youngest Eagle Scout in the country, did you?' Neither did Ron. At that time the Boy Scouts of America only kept an alphabetical record of eagle scouts, with no reference to their ages.[10] __________ 7. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard -- Things You Should Know*, Flag Divisional Directive, 8 Mar 1974 8. *Mission Into Time*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1973 9. Letter to author, 25 Mar 1986. Also US Govt Memorandum, 16 Nov 1966. 10. Letter to author, 1 Feb 1986 -- end page 25 -- *Chapter 2* *Whither did he Wander?* Fundamental to the image of L. Ron Hubbard as prophet are the tales of his teenage travels. At the age of fourteen, it seems, the inquisitive lad could be found wandering the Orient alone, investigating primitive cultures and learning the secrets of life at the feet of wise men and Lama priests. `He was up and down the China coast several times in his teens from Ching Wong Tow to Hong Kong and inland to Peking and Manchuria.'[1] In China he met an old magician whose ancestors had served in the court of Kublai Khan and a Hindu who could hypnotize cats. In the high hills of Tibet he lived with bandits who accepted him because of his `honest interest in them and their way of life'.[2] In the remote reaches of western Manchuria he made friends with the ruling warlords by demonstrating his horsemanship. On an unnamed island in the South Pacific, the fearless boy calmed the natives by exploring a cave that was supposed to be haunted and showing them that the rumbling sound from within was nothing more sinister than an underground river. `Deep in the jungles' of Polynesia he discovered an ancient burial ground `steeped in the tradition of heroic warriors and kings ... Though his native friends were fearful for him, he explored the sacred area -- his initiative based on doing all he could to know more'.[3] There appeared to be no limit to the young man's abilities: `I remember one time learning Igoroti, an Eastern primitive language, in a single night. I sat up by kerosene lantern and took a list of words that had been made by an old missionary in the hills of Luzon [Philippines]. The Igorot had a very simple language. This missionary phoneticized their language and made a list of their main words and their usage and grammar. And I remember sitting up under a mosquito net with the mosquitoes hungrily chomping their beaks just outside the net, and learning this language -- three hundred words -- just memorizing these words and what they meant. And the next day I started to get them in line and align them with people, and was speaking Igoroti in a very short time.'[4] Throughout this period, Ron was said to have been supported by his wealthy, not to say indulgent, grandfather and it was during his __________ 1. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard -- Things You Should Know*, Flag Divisional Directive, 8 Mar 1974 2. *What Is Scientology?*, 1973, p. xlii 3. *ibid.*, p. xliv 4. *Scientology: A New Slant on Life*, L. Ron Hubbard, 1965 -- end page 26 -- travels in the East that he became interested in the `spiritual destiny' of mankind. `L. Ron Hubbard learned that there was more to life than science had dreamed of, that Man did not know everything there was to know about life, and that neither East nor West, the spiritual and the material, had any full answer. To L. Ron Hubbard there was a whole field here that was begging for research.'[5] It would, to be sure, have been an impressive start to any young man's career, if only it had been true. * * * * * At the end of March 1924, the Hubbards left Washington DC and moved, once again, from one side of the continent to the other. Having finished his training at the Bureau of Supply and Accounts School, Harry Hubbard was promoted to full Lieutenant and posted back to the Puget Sound Navy Shipyard at Bremerton, in Washington State, as Disbursing Officer. Bremerton was a nice little town mushroomed around the great naval shipyard, the northern base of the Pacific Fleet, which sprawled along the shore of Puget Sound. Seagulls wheeled and cawed over the quiet high street and the fishing fleet in the harbour and a tangy aroma of salt, tar and oil scented the breeze off the Sound, where bustling white-painted ferries provided the town's main link to Seattle on the opposite shore. The Hubbards found a house two blocks from the shipyard and their son enrolled in the eighth grade at Union High School, on the corner of Fifth and High Avenues. Run liked Bremerton on sight, as would any thirteen-year-old with a taste for outdoor activities. After school in the summer he invariably joined a group of boys to swim and fish and canoe in the Sound and at weekends he cadged a ride out to Camp Parsons, the boy scout camp on the north-west shore of Hood Canal. Parsons was a permanent campsite in the heart of the Olympic National Park and was considered by thousands of boys to be paradise. There were oysters, clams, shrimp and crabs to be fished from the canal and cooked over campfires; eagles soared in the thermals high overhead and the dense forest all around the camp was alive with deer, beavers, bobcats and black bears. Like countless fellow scouts, Ron's favourite trek from Camp Parsons was the `Three Rivers Hike', which started with the `poop-out drag' -- a long climb up a sun-baked southern slope -- and ended in the late afternoon at Camp Mystery at the top of the pass, where there were meadows full of wild flowers and thrilling views over the Olympic mountain wilderness. It was a boyhood idyll that was to last for only two happy years; in the summer of 1926 his parents decided to move across the Sound back to Seattle. It was no trouble for Harry to commute to work at __________ 5. *Facts About L. Ron Hubbard -- Things You Should Know*, Flag Divisional Directive, 8 Mar 1974 -- end page 27 -- the shipyard by ferry and they felt that Ron ought to complete his high school education in a bigger and more sophisticated school than Union High. So it was that Ron began his sophomore year at Queen Anne High, a majestic seminary built in sparkling white bricks on a hilltop overlooking Seattle. He was barely into his second semester when his father received his first foreign posting. Lieutenant Hubbard was to take over as Officer in Charge of the Commissary Store at the US Naval Station on Guam, a remote, mountainous tropical island in the Pacific, three thousand miles west of Hawaii. Largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands, Guam had been ceded to the United States as a prize in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and, as far as the Hubbard family was concerned, was so far away it might as well have been on another planet. May and Hub talked long into many nights about how they should accommodate their lives to this new upheaval. Guam was a minimum two-year posting and May naturally wanted to accompany her husband, particularly as there as no chance of him returning home on leave. What most worried them was what to do with Ron, who had immediately assumed he would be going too. Then just sixteen years old, he was thrilled at the prospect of exchanging the dreary routine of Queen Anne High for life on a tropical island. But officers returning from Guam were full of lurid stories about the island and its inhabitants. Many of them concerned the charms of Guam's `dusky maidens' and the uninhibited enthusiasm with which they pursued young Americans as potential husbands. There was also much gossip about the horrendous strains of venereal disease which were endemic. Time and time again Hub was told by ex-Guam veterans that they would never let a son of theirs set foot in the place. In the end they made the painful decision to leave Ron behind. May arranged for him to move back into `the old brick' with her parents and to finish high school in Helena. Ron made no secret of his disgust When his parents broke the news, although he was slightly mollified by his father's promise to try and arrange for him to travel with his mother out to Guam for a short holiday before returning to Helena. Lieutenant Hubbard sailed to Guam on 5 April 1927; his wife and son followed several weeks later on the passenger steamship, *President Madison*, bound for Honolulu, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Manila, out of San Francisco. Ron took with him his ukulele and saxophone, two instruments he had been struggling to learn, and a headful of yarns, spun by his father's friends, about how anyone with red hair was instantly proclaimed king on arrival in Guam. To his great chagrin, his return passage was already booked for July, to get -- end page 28 -- him back in time for the start of the junior term at Helena High School. May took sufficient books to tutor her son in history and English during the trip, to make up for him not finishing the semester at Queen Anne High School. Considering he was still only sixteen, Ron's log of his trip to Guam was acutely observed and literate, even if the prose was occasionally artless and self-conscious ('Westward tugged the ship's twelve thousand horses'). It was also packed with information, reflecting the unashamed curiosity of an inquisitive and extrovert young man travelling abroad for the first time. Watching San Francisco's Golden Gate disappear from view, Ron admitted to a lump in his throat, although he was soon involved in the timeless and time-wasting pursuits that comprised life on board -- shuffle board and deck golf, a dance one evening, a movie the next, and obsessive discussion about who was seasick and who was not. Some of the crew tried to turn Ron's stomach by describing revolting meals of salt pork and slippery oysters, but he was pleased to record that neither he nor his mother succumbed. First stop, six days out, was Honolulu, where the *President Madison* was greeted in the harbour by flotillas of small boats rowed by lithe, brown-skinned urchins who dived for quarters flipped overboard from the deck of the steamship. They used to dive for pennies, Ron noted laconically, `thus has the Hawaiian developed his commerce'. Friends showed the Hubbards around the island while the ship was docked and Ron managed to get a swim and a ride on a surf-board at Waikiki beach. The waves were much longer than those in California, he wrote, and sometimes attained speeds of sixty miles an hour. Outward bound from Hawaii, Ron made friends with the second engineer who took him on a conducted tour of the ship, including the galley, `spotless with shining equipment and Chinese cooks who grinned and displayed blank teeth'. Fifty miles off the coast of Japan, they caught their first glimpse of the `celestial beauty' of Mount Fuji rising through the clouds and cloaked in a `pink robe of snow' suggesting, Ron thought, a `garment for royalty'. They stayed three days in Japan, first at Yokohama and then at Kobe. Ron made meticulous notes about everything he saw, including detailed descriptions of how the people dressed. Much of the devastation caused by the earthquake four years earlier was still evident -- including the ruin of a `hideously scrambled' fort guarding the harbour entrance in which 1700 men had died when the walls collapsed. Ron was generally unimpressed by Japan and clearly unprepared, as a young American innocent of foreign ways, for the sights and smells of the Orient -- the disease and the dirt, the stinking -- end page 29 -- slums and the beggars sleeping in the street. `It doesn't look the happy land so pictured in stories,' he concluded. `Only at cherry blossom time or in the romantic novel do I believe there is beauty in Japan.' He was rather more cheered by Shanghai, the *President Madison*'s next port of call, partly because the first flag to greet them as they entered the Yangtze river was the Stars and Stripes, flying from the stern of a US Navy destroyer. The bustling river traffic -- `millions of fishing boats and junks' -- astonished him, as did the fact that the `ragged and decrepit' coolies who unloaded the ship only earned fifteen cents a day and `fifteen cents Mex at that!' They lived, he added somewhat unnecessarily, `worse than anyone in the world'. He and his mother accompanied the ship's chief officer, who was also from Seattle, on a drive through the town. `Opening down the main avenue over which our car travelled were hundreds of narrow intriguing streets, teeming with life. Great fish floated here and there and paper banners hung overhead. The stores were stocked with every sort of junk. Dried fish rattled on strings in the wind. Queer looking foods and drygoods were side by side. Sikh policemen were everywhere. They are big dark bearded fellows and in their turbans and short trousers of khaki look picturesque. They carry great rattan sticks and a rifle across the back. Tommy Atkins was very much in evidence and the American Marines, as well as Japanese and British marines. On the outside of the British concession I saw a British tommy take a Chinaman by the coat and knock him across the street. On Bubbling Well Road is a beautiful hotel once the home of a Chinese gentleman. The grounds are laid out with pergolas and fountains and the hotel has tapestries and mosaic tile floors.' It was clear that by the time he reached Shanghai, Ron had adopted some of the more obvious colonial mannerisms, for he casually reported joining the Madison crowd for `tiffin' at the Palace Hotel later that day and would also soon be referring to the natives as `gooks'. From Shanghai they sailed for Hong Kong, a city that was `very British on the surface and very native underneath' May and Ron took a tram up to the top of the mountain overlooking the harbour, but they found the heat and humidity very exhausting, not to mention the throngs of coolies `not caring where they spit', and they were glad to leave on the last leg of their voyage on the *President Madison* to Manila in the Philippines. In Manila they were to transfer, with fifteen other Navy families, to a US Navy cargo auxiliary, the *USS Gold Star*, which was anchored across the bay at Cavite, waiting to take them to Guam. There was considerable confusion unloading the baggage from the -- end page 30 -- *President Madison*, which Ron blamed on the `lazy, ignorant natives', and it was some time before their trunks were safely on their way and May and Ron could relax with a glass of lemon squeeze at the Manila Hotel. Next day Ron went sight-seeing with a Lieutenant McCain from the Cavite Navy Yard, an acquaintance of his father. To a boy who loved blood-and-thunder adventure stories, the old Spanish forts in Cavite exercized a compelling fascination. `All the old guns have been dismantled, but the emplacements remain. Such an awful place in which to fight. The places were traps as it takes four men to even open a door. There are tunnels connecting all of them to an ancient cathedral which is un-used and filled with snakes, bats and trash. Very mysterious. I looked it over well when Mr McCain told me that millions in Spanish gold were buried in those tunnels. Some day I am going back there and dredge [*sic*] the whole place. *Maybe*.' That evening he was taken to `Dreamland', one of the more respectable bars in Manila where girls were available for hire, for dancing, at five centums a dance. `Of course we didn't dance,' Ron was at pains to record, `because by doing so one loses cast. The Charleston has just hit them, but it's too hot (I mean the weather).' Two days later, the *USS Gold Star* weighed anchor and set course for Guam, a seven-day voyage across the Philippine Sea which could not have offered a greater contrast to the comparative luxury of a passenger ship like the *President Madison*. The accommodation was spartan, the food was poor and the officers remained haughtily aloof from their luckless passengers, even eating at a separate table in the dining-room. To make matters worse, the weather was terrible and the ship pitched and rolled and wallowed in a grey, relentlessly heaving sea with the constant threat of a typhoon gathering on the horizon. It was, said Ron, a `gosh-awful trip'. When a smudge of land appeared in the far distance and word went round that it was Guam, the relief was palpable. The *USS Gold Star* hove to off Guam on Monday 6 June, thirty-six days after the Hubbards had left San Francisco. Hub was on the second tender that came out to the ship and Ron spoke for both himself and his mother when he noted: `We were sure glad to see him.' Ron's first impression of Guam, with its thickly forested green hills and little red-roofed houses, was favourable. Even the sickly sweet aroma of copra which filled the air was distinctly preferable to the stench of open drains that had predominated at all their previous ports of call. The poverty, filth and disease which had been so prevalent elsewhere were kept in abeyance in Guam by the overwhelming presence of the United States Navy, which pushed, prodded and paid the local Chamorro natives to keep the streets clean and to observe basic hygiene. -- end page 31 -- Hub had been allocated a large bungalow surrounded by banana trees in the town of Agana, about five miles from the harbour. It was still not fully furnished when May and Ron arrived, but Ron liked the cool sparse rooms with their highly polished floors of black hardwood, reflecting the light filtering through the bamboo screens. The family had two houseboys and a cook and lived in a style that none of them had ever previously experienced. May, for example, had never had servants in her life and very much enjoyed the novelty. Ron's father had arranged for him to spend part of the six weeks he was due to stay on the island teaching English to Chamorro children in the local grade school, which was run by the Navy. Ron did not object to undertaking this chore, but found it a more or less impossible task because of his red hair. Although he had not been instantly proclaimed king on arrival, he quickly discovered that his hair caused much excitement and interest, both on the street and in the classroom. The Chamorros, dark-skinned people of Indonesian stock, seemed unable to believe that a human head could sprout such a fiery crine and Ron's students spent their entire lesson staring uncomprehendingly at the top of his head. His parents laughed when he told them what was happening and his mother, drawing on her own teaching experience, softly advised him just to do his best. When he was not trying to be a teacher, Ron spent a great deal of his time satisfying his natural curiosity by researching the island's history and culture. Some of his notes about Guam and its people bear a strange similarity to stories that would later be incorporated into the L. Ron Hubbard mythology. The Chamorro dialect, for example, which had originally contained some two thousand words and idioms, had been reduced over the years to around three hundred idioms with an almost non-existent grammatical structure -- curiously akin to Igoroti, the primitive language Ron was said to have learned in a single night by the light of a kerosene lamp. And one of the Hubbards' house boys told Ron about a devil ghost called `Tadamona' which was believed to haunt Missionary Point, where a fast-flowing underground river made eerie moaning noises at night ... In Guam, as elsewhere, Ron was particularly intrigued by the forts, which held a special romance and mystery he toiled to convey in his journal: `An especially interesting one is the fort of San Juan de `Apra [*sic*] in Apra harbour. Its doors have been sealed for years and, as if to hide the structure, vines wind themselves about it. The walls were built with remarkable skill, especially the corners. Most of the prison and turret have been eroded and have falled [*sic*] into decay, but the powder house and firing steps remain. The walks that once heard the rhythm of the sentry's beat, and the crash of the evening gun are now -- end page 32 -- the running place of lizards. One cannot imagine the solitude and depression that surrounds it. All that beauty and grandeur which surrounded it yesterday has faded as the rose which dies and leaves its thorn.' Ron was due to leave Guam on Saturday 16 July 1927, on board an ammunition ship, *USS Nitro*, bound for Bremerton. His parents drove him down to the harbour in the early morning and accompanied him out to the ship to help him with his bags, now crammed with souvenirs and presents for the family back home in Helena. The three of them had a quiet breakfast together on board and at eight o'clock May and Hub said goodbye and returned ashore on a tender, hardly daring to look back at the lonely figure of their son standing at the rail. The *USS Nitro* sailed within the hour. If Ron was sad to be leaving, he made no mention of it in his journal. He `felt rather lonely' on the first day out, but the two boys with whom he was sharing a cabin, Jerry Curtis and Dick Derickson, were so homesick that both were close to tears. Ron did his best to cheer them up. He particularly liked Dick, who was from Seattle and whom he had met at Camp Parsons. `Dick and I have been reading up on atheism,' he noted. `Such a terrible thing to make an issue of. Something is at the bottom of it. I'll find out in the States.' Four days out, the *USS Nitro* hove to off Wake Island so that the crew could go fishing and swimming. Ron went ashore in a whale boat and discovered that the island was inhabited by many strange and beautiful birds, apparently quite unafraid of the sailors walking round their nests. In the lagoon, he wrote, the multi-coloured tropical fish looked like `a forth [*sic*] of July parade' and the water was so clear he could see through thirty fathoms to the rocks on the bottom. Deprived of the recreations offered on board the *President Madison*, Ron found the return voyage, courtesy of the US Navy, to be unremittingly dreary. He liked to watch the stars at night ('never in my life have I seen such beauties') and during the day he enjoyed visiting the engine-room, but much of the time he was bored. Ironically, Ron had seriously discussed with his father the possibility of a career in the Navy, although he certainly did not seem much enthused by his experience on the *USS Nitro*. `If this ship is the cream of the naval duty,' he wrote, `I'll sure stick to milk. The officers work about an hour and then sit around and look bored. The enlisted personnel bear the brunt of the work.' Nevertheless, he could not have been completely deterred, for he noted that he and Dick would be going to Annapolis (home of the Naval Academy) at the same time. Off Hawaii, one of the officers told Ron he could go up to the lookout in the crow's nest. `A moment later found me staring up the forward mast which looked ungodly high. I overcame a nervous -- end page 33 -- tremor and climbed a rope up to the steel ladder ... Nice prospect a fall was. Then I tackled the first fifty feet of ladder. It surely looked and felt insubstantial. About half way up I thought I'd never been so nervous before. After that ladder came an even smaller steel ladder. Up I went all confidence by this time. In a moment I reached the nest and sure enough there was the lookout reading a `Western Story'. He invited me to climb in. The last in itself is worse than the rest of it put together. One has to dangle with nothing under him and work half way round to the other edge. Over the side of the box I swung and then in. My God what a relief!' On 6 August, in thick fog, the *USS Nitro* nosed into Bremerton and moored to Pier 4A at the Navy Yard. Ron disembarked without a moment's regret, thankful to be back on dry land and away from the cramped and stultifying atmosphere of the ship. Next day he caught a train for Helena, where he was welcomed by the Waterburys like the prodigal son. In `the old brick', savouring the heady fragrance of his grandmother's baking, which he remembered so well, he regaled everyone with the tales of his adventures and if he embroidered the account just a little, who could have blamed him? Even a local newspaper apparently felt his exploits worth reporting in a double-column story under the headline `Ronald Hubbard Tells of His Trip to Orient and Many Experiences'. The interview closely followed the notes Ron had made in his journal except for the surprising claim, somehow neglected in his diary, that he had witnessed an execution while he was in China. `Ronald Hubbard has the distinction', the story concluded, `of being the only boy in the country to secure an eagle scout badge at the age of twelve years.' [He had, in fact, been thirteen. But this small slip-up and the curious omission of the `execution' from his journal were not nearly as puzzling as the fact that it has never been possible to trace the newspaper from which the cutting was taken.[6] It appears to exist only as a photostat in the archives of the Church of Scientology labelled `Clipping from Helena, Montana, newspaper circa 1929'.] On 6 September 1927, Ron enrolled in the junior year at Helena High School, a forbidding Victorian building of rough-hewn grey stone with castellated gables and turrets, just five minutes' walk from the Waterbury home. A cousin, Gorham Roberts, who was in the same year, introduced Ron to many of his new school-mates, but no one found it easy to settle down to work, for the whole school was distracted by the frustrating knowledge that Charles A. Lindbergh was visiting Helena. He was on a triumphant tour of the country after flying the Atlantic alone in his tiny monoplane *Spirit of St Louis* and returning as a national hero, and there was not a boy or girl in the school who did not fervently wish to catch a glimpse of him. __________ 6. Letter to author from Montana Historical Society, 24 Mar 1986 -- end page 34 -- At first Ron seemed perfectly happy at Helena High, perfectly happy to be back with his grandparents. In October he joined the Montana National Guard, enlisting at the State Armory on North Main Street and claiming he was eighteen to avoid having to wait months for his parents to send consent papers from Guam. As a private in Headquarters Company of 163rd Infantry he felt he cut quite a dash as he strode through the town in his uniform -- broad-brimmed hat, khaki shirt and breeches, gloves tucked into the belt -- to report for training at the Armory, where twin flagpoles rose from perfectly manicured patches of green grass. At school, he managed to get himself appointed to the editorial staff of *The Nugget*, Helena High's bi-monthly newspaper. He would naturally have preferred to have been editor-in-chief, but as a newcomer he had to be satisfied with jokes editor, a position he held jointly with Ellen Galusha. He was photographed with the rest of the editorial staff for the year book, standing in the middle of the group on the steps of the school wearing a suit and a bow tie, eschewing the faintly raffish literary style affected by his colleagues. `*The Nugget* is a really good paper ...' the caption explained. `The name originates from the large expensive gold nuggets which the prospectors mined in previous years on the main street of Helena.' Although Ellen Galusha rather upstaged her follow jokes editor by winning first place in the district finals of the Extemporaneous Speaking Contest, Ron felt he kept his end up by having one of his essays selected to represent Helena High in the State Essay Contest. He had also written a short play which was performed by the junior branch of the Shriners and very well received. After school on 2 December, Ron and a group of his friends rushed round to the showrooms of Capital Ford hoping to see the sleek new Model A. Fords which were said to have arrived in town that day. They found a crowd of around four thousand people jamming the street outside the Ford agency, all with the same idea. Replacement for the beloved Model T., the Model A. was not only a completely new design but was also available in a number of different *colours*, a development which caused Ron and his friends to gasp with amazement. Later, over sodas at the Weiss Café on North Main Street, the boys hotly debated which of the models -- roadster, sports coupé or sedan -- was preferable and which colour each of tthem would be purchasing as soon as they had some money. That winter was the worst in living memory for the people of Helena. On 8 December, Ron woke to find the overnight temperature had dropped fifty-eight degrees [Fahrenheit] to thirty-five below zero, one of the coldest on record. Outside, a biting blizzard swept down from the mountains, obliterating the town and the surrounding country. -- end page 35 -- Morning editions of the *Helena Independent* were full of terrible stories of families marooned and frozen to death, school buses lost in the storm and entire herds of cattle wiped out. The snow had still not melted when Ron began preparing for the annual Vigilante Day Parade, the high spot of the school year, held on the first Friday in May. Although the theme of the parade always harked back to the pioneer days, Ron plumped for a more unconventional role and decided he would go as a pirate. He somehow persuaded five doubting friends, two boys and three girls, to join him, casually brushing aside any objections based on the rather obvious absence of pirate involvement in Montana's early history. Aunt Marnie helped with the costumes by taking down her drapes and removing the brass rings to provide the pirates with suitable earrings, as worn on the Spanish Main. Thus it was that as the Vigilante Day Parade, led by the Helena High School Band, progressed along Main Street on the afternoon of Friday 4 May 1928, the settlers, cowboys, cowgirls, miners, trappers, prospectors, Indians and sheriffs were inexplicably joined by a small band of ferocious pirates with eyepatches and painted beards, waving wooden cutlasses. At the dance after the parade, `Pirates by R. Hubbard' won one of three prizes in the `Most Original' category. The report on the parade in the *Helena Independent* next day positively glowed with pride: `The parade was larger, more ingenious, spectacular, striking, imaginative and suggestive of the past this year than ever before. The high school students once more covered themselves with glory -- besides having a jolly good time and communicating a lot of fun to the bystanders ... As a success the Vigilante parade was complete, and once more advertized to the world that the Helena High School and Last Chance Gulch puts on a show once a year unmatched elsewhere on the globe.' A week later, Ron disappeared. When he did not show up for school on Monday 14 May, there were excited rumours in the junior year that he had been expelled. `Certainly we believed he had left in a hurry, under something of a cloud,' said Gorham Roberts. `The story was that he had got mad at a teacher and put his butt into a waste-paper basket. Old A. J. Roberts, the principal, was a German from Heidelberg and a strict disciplinarian. Ron knew that he would never put up with such behaviour, so he didn't trouble to come back.'[7] Aunt Marnie explained it differently: `He just got itchy feet. He wanted to see something new. He was an adventurer at heart. The wanderlust was in him and he couldn't see himself staying in a little town like Helena when there was adventure ahead. He went off to Seattle to stay with my sister Midgie and her husband Bob. They __________ 7. Interview with Gorham Roberts, Helena, Montana, April 1986 -- end page 36 -- tried to talk him into staying with them, but he went south, hopped a ship and worked his way back to Guam.'[8] Whatever the truth, Ron never returned to Helena High. Two years later, he wrote two colourful accounts of the events leading up to his departure from Helena. Although they were only separated by a few pages in his journal, many of the details do not match; indeed some passages read suspiciously like the adventure stories he was constantly scribbling in his spare time. It seemed he was driving his friends home after the Vigilante Day Parade in his `mighty Ford' (presumably his grandfather's Model T.) when someone threw a baseball at them and hit him on the head. He stopped the car, chastized the offenders and dealt with them so severely that he broke four `marcarpals' in his right hand. `That was the beginning and the end. I couldn't wait and school faded from the picture. My hand was reset four times and life lost its joy. I sold the Ford and went West, taking Horace Greeley's [*sic*] advice.' He announced to his grandfather that he had decided on a `change of scenery' and caught a train for Seattle, where he stayed with his aunt and uncle for a couple of days. On 7 June, trading on his `scout prestige', he moved to Camp Parsons for about a week, until it became too crowded and he decided to move on. `I set out at noon, hiking a swift pace under a heavy pack through the lofty, virgin Olympics. At nine o'clock that night I made camp about two miles down the trail from "Shelter Rock". Twelve hours later I was limp on top of a boulder pile, saved from a broken spine by my pack. I gazed at the blood pumping from my wrist and decided it was high time I went to visit herr Docteur.' No explanation is offered for this incident or for how he managed, in such a parlous state, to find his way back to Bremerton. It was there, while being treated by a Navy doctor, he was told that a US Navy transport, *USS Henderson*, was due to leave for Guam from San Francisco in a week's time (in the first account), or two weeks (in the second account). That night (first account), eight days later (second account), he was on a Shasta Limited overnight train heading south for California, apparently intent on rejoining his parents in Guam. By the time he got to the Transport Dock in San Francisco the *Henderson* had already sailed. With only twenty dollars left in his pocket, Ron invested a nickel in a newspaper and read on the shipping page that the liner *President Pierce*, bound for China, was moored at Dock 28. An hour later he was standing in line at the dock, waiting to sign on as an ordinary seaman. While in the queue, smoking to calm his nerves, he suddenly decided it would be worth a call to Twelfth Naval District to find out where the *Henderson* was. Perhaps, he __________ 8. Interview with Mrs. Margaret Roberts, Helena, Montana, April 1986 -- end page 37 -- thought, she had not yet sailed for Guam, but had just moved down the coast to another port. His hunch was correct -- an officer at Twelfth District told him the *Henderson* was in San Diego. Within half an hour -- he appeared remarkably lucky with connections -- he was on a bus bound for San Diego, five hundred miles further south. When he finally caught up with the *Henderson* in San Diego, `faint from lack of sleep and food', he was told that Washington would need to approve his request for a passage to Guam. Nothing if not bold, Ron called on the Aide to the Commandant, who turned out to be extraordinarily obliging and agreed to telegraph Washington immediately. Satisfied there was nothing more he could do for the moment, Ron rented a cheap room near the naval headquarters and slept for eighteen hours. When he woke, he learned that a signal had been received from Washington saying that his father's permission would be needed before he could join the ship. `With fear and trembling, I had a radio sent out to Guam ... I walked the streets of San Diego all that day with Old Man Worry gnawing at my brow. Would Dad reply "No!" or would he say "Yes"? You see, I had reason to be worried. This would be the first intimation he would have of my portending return ...' Out in Guam, Lieutenant Hubbard no doubt wondered what the hell was going on when he received a message from Washington informing him that his son was in San Diego requesting passage on a ship to Guam. It was to his credit that he immediately cabled his permission, which arrived in San Diego, according to Ron, only an hour before the *Henderson* was due to sail. This does not quite accord with the deck log of the *Henderson*, which records that `L.R. Hubbard, son of Lieutenant H. R. Hubbard USN, reported on board for transportation to Guam' at 1620 hours on Saturday