November 1, 1950 was an unseasonably warm day in Washington, D.C. It's 2:20 p.m. at Blair House, the guesthouse of the White House complex where the Trumans are staying while their regular quarters are being remodeled. President Harry S. Truman is napping in a second-floor bedroom when two men in suits walk onto the property. They quickly separate.
The smaller, Oscar Collazo, approaches the steps to Blair House where Donald Birdzell stands in uniform. Coming up behind the officer, Collazo draws his Walther P38, points it at Birdzell's back and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. He struggles with the pistol, pounding on it with his other hand, and as the officer turns to face him, a shot is heard. Birdzell drops, shot through the right knee at a range of five feet.
Secret Service Agent Floyd Boring and White House Police officer Joseph Davidson are standing near a guardhouse not far away, separated from the shooting scene by a wrought iron fence. They see the shooting, draw their weapons and open fire on Collazo. Davidson triggers his Official Police rapidly in double-action mode, while Boring cocks and carefully aims his snub-nose Detective Special. Maddeningly, their bullets seem to repeatedly strike the wrought iron fence, which saves Collazo from the projectiles. The attacker moves rapidly, spinning like a dervish, firing his 9mm wildly. Birdzell pulls himself to his feet, dragging the leg with the crippled knee behind him as he hobbles after Collazo, firing his own Colt Official Police as he goes.
Boring, one of the best shots on the White House staff and fresh from a qualification where he shot an almost perfect score with .38 wadcutters in his Detective Special, holds a perfect sight picture on Collazo's hat and carefully squeezes off a single-action shot. The 158-grain Winchester round-nose lead bullet punches through the hat, strikes Collazo's skull, and ricochets away, tearing a nasty flesh wound in the scalp but not penetrating bone. Another bullet rips into Collazo's pectoral muscle, exits his chest, and goes into his right arm. This one has come from the 4"-barrel of Officer Davidson's service revolver.
Running to the sound of the guns, Secret Service agent Vincent Mroz joins the fight, but after his first shot realizes that he and the others don't have the best angle to engage the little man with the P38. Mroz sprints through an inside corridor, hoping to emerge from the building at a better angle for a clear shot.
Collazo's slide locks back empty. Bleeding from several minor wounds, he sits down on the steps of Blair House, pulls a fresh magazine from a pocket and reloads.
By now, the other conspirator has joined the fight. Griselio Torresola is armed with a Mauser-produced Luger in mint condition, and he knows how to use it. Approaching the small guardhouse where White House policeman Leslie Coffelt is seated, he whips out the 9mm and goes to a two-hand Isosceles position.
Coffelt is a gun guy, a member of the pistol team and a life-long shooter. He goes for his O.P., but is too far behind the action/reaction curve. Torresola cracks off four fast shots, moving as he fires. The muzzle is perhaps a foot and a half away from the uniformed officer. Three full metal jacket German military surplus slugs tear into Coffelt's midsection, and a fourth rips his coat sleeve. He slumps backward into the chair in the guard booth. Torresola rushes onward, toward Blair House.
He encounters Joe Downs, a White House policeman working plainclothes and on an errand to buy food for tonight's Blair House dinner. A gunfight survivor before he joined the force, Downs goes for his gun, but like Coffelt is too far behind the curve to catch up. Torresola's first 9mm slug strikes his hip, and Downs loses physical sensation and is no longer able to reach for his weapon. Torresola shoots him twice more, shoulder into chest and through the neck. Downs staggers helplessly from the scene as Torresola rushes on.
He now spots Donald Birdzell, the uniformed officer his partner has wounded in the opening of the encounter. The cop is in the middle of the street, aiming his service revolver at Collazo. Torresola raises the Luger in his two-hand stance, carefully aims and presses the trigger.
His shot strikes Birdzell square in the left knee. Shot in both knees now, and in agonizing pain, Birdzell can no longer stand. He tumbles to the pavement and momentarily loses consciousness. He is helpless to stop Torresola from finishing him off with a coup de grace, but the assassin is out of ammunition, the toggle locked open on his empty Luger. Torresola moves on. Like Collazo, he is carrying spare ammo, and as he moves he strips out the empty magazine and inserts a fresh one into his gleaming blue pistol. He's now at the edge of the Blair House steps, perhaps 20 feet from the guard booth where he shot Coffelt, has the benefit of some concealment from a large hedge.
Each of the assassins has completed a reload of his semiautomatic pistol. It won't do either of them any good.
His Walther reloaded, Oscar Collazo stands. He turns, appearing to be looking for fresh targets. But he doesn't raise the P38. Instead, he sways, pitches forward, and lands prostrate with a meaty smack, facedown. The first of the invaders to open fire is now out of the fight.
Then comes the most dramatic moment of the battle, had anyone ever made a movie about the assault on Blair House, a movie director would have had a field day. At the moment he slips the fresh magazine into his Luger, Griselio Torresola is within 30 feet of the President of the United States.
Startled out of his nap by the gunfire, clad in an undershirt, Harry Truman has come to the second-floor window of the bedroom where he has been resting. He looks down and can see Griselio Torresola, which means as soon as he looks in that direction, Torresola will be able to see him. When that happens, it will be easy for him to aim the Luger upward and assassinate the President.
But it is not going to happen, because at this moment, one more shot echoes across the manicured grass of Blair House.
A 158 grain .38 Special bullet burrows into the brain of Griselio Torresola. A witness sees him jerk like a man who has tripped, and then topple over, sprawling on the ground.
