Five Days In November – Clint Hill with Lisa McCubbin, 2013 ★★★★

So Close and Yet So Far

Like a few professional athletes and pretty much nobody else I know of, Clint Hill’s worst day at work unfolded before an audience of millions and echoes across posterity.

No wonder he waited so long to write about it.

“Could I have reacted faster?” he wonders. “Run faster? For the rest of my life I will live with the overwhelming guilt that I was unable to get there in time.”

Having seen him in action that day myself (and, I suspect, so have you, in the most famous silent movie ever made), you wonder at his sense of guilt. We see Hill climb onto an accelerating Lincoln Continental from the rear, possibly saving a panicked First Lady from falling off and injuring herself.

Yes, there was another person in that vehicle he was unable to save, President John F. Kennedy, whose death is the other, more memorable part of what we see in that movie, but it’s hard to imagine Hill or any other mortal having the clairvoyance and footspeed to have made any difference there.

There’s another reason Hill’s questions stick out: It’s about the only time in the narrative the former Secret Service agent opens up about his feelings. In most of Five Days In November, which Hill co-authored with journalist Lisa McCubbin, soul-searching is not high on the agenda. Written in an almost-staccato, Jack-Webb just-the-facts style, the book pulls you into the early 1960s almost artlessly, with its descriptions of protocols and social manners unknown today.

The book is an account of Hill's first-hand experience as a Secret Service agent assigned to protect Jacqueline Kennedy over a tumultuous five-day period, November 21-25, 1963. It began with Mrs. Kennedy and her husband embarking for Texas to make a four-city visit in anticipation of next year's presidential election. It ended with President Kennedy being buried at Arlington National Cemetery, in a ceremony watched by many millions on television around the world.

If you don’t mind the clipped narrative, and Hill's focus on the facts over feelings, you may find like I did Five Days a book hard to put down just for the many high-resolution color photographs on offer. Many of them are familiar to me from looking through Kennedy assassination material on the web, but I’ve never before seen them rendered as vividly as they are in these pages. You can see faces of people reflected off the polished metal surfaces of the presidential limo, so clear they seem more real at that moment than you or me.

Many of the photos show Hill in action, standing just steps away from the President and Mrs. Kennedy as they greet a scrum of well-wishers in Fort Worth. Like a lot of young men of that time, he looks somehow older than his years. You can see on his face how intent and careworn he was at the time. Kennedy may have loved crowds; Hill did not.

“As the president and Mrs. Kennedy walk along the edge of the screaming mass, smiling, touching as many hands as possible, we, the agents, stick as close as possible, trying not to interfere but wishing to God they’d finish this up and get into the cars,” Hill recalls. “It’s the kind of situation that, in a split second, can so easily get out of control.”

Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, in sunglasses, looks on protectively as President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline meet well-wishers at Love Field in Dallas, November 22, 1963. [Image from clinthillsecretservice.com]

For three of the four cities visited, those worries seemed unwarranted. People were enthusiastic but not dangerously so. All the while, Kennedy was upping the ante by maximizing his exposure, telling the Secret Service not to ride the sides of the presidential limo. After hurrying through the first city, San Antonio, word came down that the limo was not to drive so quickly again. President Kennedy had come to Texas for a reason; the presidential election was a year away and Texas was a state he wanted to shore up. He wanted to work the charm.

To further this end, Kennedy was trying out a new campaign weapon: his wife. Since coming to the White House, Jackie had impressed many with her grace and beauty, but Texas was the first time Kennedy was bringing her along on what amounted to a political visit. Attending a Chamber Of Commerce breakfast in Fort Worth early on the morning of November 22, Kennedy sent word to Hill to bring Jackie over “right now.” At Love Field in Dallas, the last scheduled city, Kennedy saw his wife put on sunglasses as they settled into their limousine.

“Jackie, take those off,” he told her. “The people have come to see you.”

Dallas was the wild card of the cities, having a reputation as the Lone Star State’s right-wing epicenter. A chilly reception was anticipated. The reality proved different. The crowds were thick not just at the airfield but along the route to the Dallas Trade Mart, where Kennedy was to give a lunchtime speech. Everywhere there were signs of welcome, often handmade. Some asked the President to pull over and shake their hands; and a few times he did just that.

“It’s amazing, this crowd,” Hill recalls. “Black people and white people standing shoulder to shoulder with their children in tow, all waving and cheering for the president. There’s no hint of racial segregation or unrest here.”

All this excitement was something Hill watched with great trepidation, knowing it only took one crazy. Ironically, but perhaps inevitably, it was when the crowds thinned out in the final mile that the killing happened.

Hill makes clear he believes Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but with a caveat regarding the sequence of shots that surprised this Lone Nutter at least. Five Days In November doesn't delve deeply into this aspect of the story. It’s more concerned with the spectacle of what happened, both in its choreographed and chaotic phases.

As far as the assassination’s aftermath, Hill presents a simple recounting of his impressions as they happened: Telling Attorney General Robert Kennedy his brother was dead, the scene around the coffin as it was flown back to Washington, overhearing someone in the White House say “that bastard deserves to die” and discovering they are responding to news of Oswald’s murder moments before. At the end of the last day, Hill finds himself reminding Mrs. Kennedy that it’s her son’s birthday; a small party with cake and ice cream then follows. One accompanying photo of that gathering shows Mrs. Kennedy standing beside the table where the children are eating, looking as cheerful as possible in a black dress.

Hill certainly sheds a lot of light and no small amount of colorful detail on the assassination. No serious scholar of that event will want to do without this book. Yet Hill seems at times a reluctant reporter, telling you straight facts with no chaser, and in a manner that is notable more for concision than anything else. The more I read, the more I felt Hill would have preferred to keep his take on what happened to himself.

I’m glad he didn’t. His book is a worthy pickup for any reader with an interest in the subject. The photos alone are worth the having; the text is more pedestrian but heartstopping at times in its mere matter-of-fact retelling of this horrific chapter of our living history.