Roosevelt Papers: Telegram
The President to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union (Harriman)1
priority
Number 153, Personal and Top Secret, from the President to Ambassador Harriman.
Replying to your . . . [telegrams of December 26, 27, and 28],2 I am now preparing to leave the U. S. by warship as soon as possible after the Inauguration and by airplane from the Mediterranean to Yalta. I have so informed Churchill who is agreeable, and I will at a later day give you accurate dates of departure and arrival Yalta.
My party for which suitable arrangements should be made will be as follows:
Fleet Admiral Leahy, General of the Army Marshall, Fleet Admiral King, General of the Army Arnold, Lieutenant General Somervell, Vice Admiral Cooke, Major General Hull, Major General Wood, Rear Admiral McCormick, Rear Admiral Duncan, Brigadier General Lindsay, Colonel Lincoln, Brigadier Generals Bessell and Everest, Commodore Burrough; Aides to the Chiefs of Staff—Colonel McCarthy, [Page 26] Captain McDill, Commander Dornin, and Commander Clark; fifteen members, officers and clerks of the Secretariat of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Mr. Bohlen, interpreter.
My personal group will be Vice Admirals McIntire and Brown, Major General Watson, Mr. Harry Hopkins, six White House staff officers, sixteen Secret Service Officers, and eight servants.
I may be able to bring Stettinius and Jimmy Byrnes.
The total number from here will be about seventy.
About a week before our arrival at Crimea it is my present intention to send a naval auxiliary not a combatant man of war to anchor off Yalta or in Sevastopol if necessary to provide services, etc. She will act as supply ship and communication center. She can provide some furniture from cabins to make up for any deficiencies and also certain standard food supplies.
We will arrive in four or five airplanes of the C–54 type. There should be a daily mail plane from Cairo of the Army C–54 or smaller type.
Churchill suggests that he will want to bring some British destroyers.