Walter Krueger - Later Life

Later Life

Krueger retired to San Antonio, Texas, where, in February 1946, he bought a house for the first time. Because of a large income tax bill left over from the war, he was unable to buy it outright and so some of his friends established the Krueger Fund Committee, which paid for much of the house. In retirement, Krueger was involved in a number of charity and community organizations, including the United Service Organization, the Red Cross, and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and he served as director of civil defense for San Antonio and Bexar County.

Colonel Horton White, his former intelligence officer, approached him with an offer from George Edward Brett from Macmillan to publish his memoirs. He did not wish to write an autobiography, which he felt was "invariably apt to be an apologia", but was willing to write up an account of the Sixth Army's exploits. He commenced work in 1947, but the project proceeded slowly. The result was From Down Under to Nippon: The Story of the 6th Army In World War II, which was published in 1953. Historians were disappointed with the book, as it recounted what was known from the Sixth Army's reports, but provided little insight into the reasons why operations were conducted the way they were. Krueger kept in contact with his wartime colleagues. He was proud of the subsequent accomplishments of members of his wartime staff, and traveled to New York each year to celebrate MacArthur's birthday with MacArthur and other former senior commanders of the Southwest Pacific Area. He lectured at Army Schools and civic organizations, offering opinions on subjects such as the value of training, the benefit of universal military service, and the need for a unified defense establishment.

His retirement was marred by family tragedies. His son James was dismissed from the Army in 1947 for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Grace's health deteriorated, and she suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1955, and died on 13 May 1956. Most dramatically, on 3 October 1952, Dorothy fatally stabbed her husband, Colonel Aubrey D. Smith, with a hunting knife while he slept in their Army quarters in Japan. By six votes to three, a U.S. Army court-martial found her guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her "to be confined at hard labor for the rest of her natural life". A unanimous verdict of guilty would have made the death sentence mandatory. She was flown back to the United States in a Military Air Transport Service plane and was imprisoned at the Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, in West Virginia.

The United States Court of Military Appeals rejected an appeal filed by Krueger's lawyers on the grounds that Dorothy was not sane at the time of the incident, and that the testimony that the court had heard to the contrary was military rather than medical. However, in 1955, in a similar case involving a woman, Mrs. Clarice B. Covert, who had killed her husband in England with an axe, Federal District Court Judge Edward A. Tamm ruled that civilians who accompany military forces overseas could not be imprisoned by military courts. The two cases, Kinsella v. Krueger and Reid v. Covert, went to the US Supreme Court, which affirmed that military trials of civilians were constitutional, only to reverse itself a year later in a review of the decisions. Dorothy was released, and went to live with Krueger in San Antonio.

When his old friend Fay Babson wrote a letter in 1960 complaining about not being promoted before retirement, Krueger replied that:

I wish you would compare your situation with mine for a moment. You are fortunate in having a loving wife by your side and three wonderful children. I, on the other hand, have lost my precious wife, my son Jimmie's career ended in disgrace and my only daughter's tragic action broke my heart. All the promotions and honors that have come to me cannot possibly outweigh these heartaches and disappointments. If true happiness is the aim of life — and I believe it is — then you are more fortunate that I and I would gladly trade with you.

In 1962, Krueger Middle School was established in San Antonio, Texas. Krueger's health began to decline in the late 1950s. He developed glaucoma in his right eye, and sciatica in his left hip. In 1960, he had a hernia operation, and this was followed by kidney surgery in 1963. Nonetheless, he continued to attend MacArthur's birthday in New York. He died from pneumonia at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on 20 August 1967, and was buried in Section 30 of Arlington National Cemetery, among a number of family members. His papers are in the Cushing Memorial Library at Texas A&M University.