On a warm and rainy Thursday evening in July 1941, inside a War Department office in Washington, a small group of Army officers hastily assembled for a meeting and listened in disbelief to the secret plan outlined by their commander. The general spoke in the velvety Southern accent of his native Arkansas. He was not in uniform — Army policy kept officers in civilian clothes so as to disguise from Congress the burgeoning military population in Washington — but he cut an immaculate figure, with his trim build, combed-back, graying hair and neatly groomed mustache. Over the past eight months, the officers of the Army’s Construction Division had grown accustomed to bold and quick action from their chief. At age 49, Brig. Gen. Brehon Burke Somer-vell had earned a reputation as a smooth but ruthless operator. ‘Dynamite in a Tiffany box’ was how an associate later described him. Now Somervell turned his eyes — ‘the keenest, shrewdest, most piercing eyes one is likely to meet,’ in the words of one observer — toward his chief of design, Lt. Col. Hugh ‘Pat’ J. Casey. The War Department needed a new headquarters, Somervell said. The building he wanted to create […]