W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

Admiral Rockwell was displeased with me, too, and you may hear about that. There was a scene that in other circumstances would have been humorous, during which he kept demanding to know who was my immediate superior, to which I kept answering "Secretary Knox," to which he kept replying, ad infinitum, "You’ re not listening to me. I mean your immediate superior. During all this, he simply refused to look at my letter of authority from you until I answered the simple question of who was my immediate superior.

This little farce came to an end when Mrs. MacArthur recognized me. Not as a Naval officer, but as my wife‘s husband. Apparently, they had met in Manila, and Mrs. MacA. regards Patricia as a friend. Or at least a social peer. She told her husband of my connection with Pacific and Far East, and I was permitted to approach the throne.

I had met MacArthur only briefly once or twice before, and I am sure he did not remember those occasions; but he greeted me warmly and told me he was anxious to learn (these are his words as closely as I can remember them) "details of the buildup in Australia; troop and naval dispositions; and the tentative timetable for the recapture of Luzon. "

I explained to him that there was no buildup; that there were only about 34,000 troops of any description in Australia ; that the only unit of any size was the understrength 1stBrigade of the 6thAustralian Division; and that the strategic problem as I understood it was to attempt to keep the Japanese from taking Australia which might not be possible and that, consequently, nothing whatever had yet been done about attempting to take Luzon back from the Japanese.

His eyes glazed over. He turned to another of his aides, a brigadier general named Sutherland, and said, "Surely he is mistaken." Then he marched off to a small shack where breakfast (baked beans and canned peaches) was served.

Brigadier Royce, who is a nice fellow, followed him into the shack. And later he emerged from it looking dazed. Mrs. MacArthur did not wish to fly anymore, perhaps ever again, and General MacArthur had therefore ordered Royce to immediately form a motorcade to transport the party to the nearest railhead. Royce had informed MacArthur that the nearest railhead was in Alice Springs, about as far away across the desert (1,000 miles or so) as Chicago is from New Orleans, and that, among other things, there were no vehicles available to form a motorcade.

MacArthur’s response was, "You have your orders; put them into execution. "

This apparently impossible situation was resolved by Major Charles H. More-house , an Army doctor who had come out of the Philippines with them. He told Royce that such a trip would probably kill the MacArthur boy, Arthur, who is five or six, and who was ill. Morehouse was feeding him intravenously. Morehouse also said that he could not guarantee whether MacArthur himself would live through a 1,000-mile automobile trip across the desert.

Royce somewhat forcefully suggested to Dr. Morehouse that he make this point emphatically to MacArthur. So Morehouse went into the shack. After several minutes MacArthur came out and announced, "We are prepared to board the aircraft. " It was the royal "we, " Frank.

We got on the airplanes. As the engines were being started, the air-raid sirens went off; several of the Japanese bombers attacking Darwin had broken off their attack and were headed for Batchelor Field. Whether or not they knew the MacArthur party was there, I don’t know.

All the same, we got off safely, and made the trip to Alice Springs without incident. Alice Springs looks like a town in a cowboy movie, and it’s the northern terminus of the Central Australian Railway . . . and it lies a good deal beyond the range of the Japanese Mitsubishi bombers.

Alice Springs, MacArthur announced, was as far as he intended to fly. He could not be moved from this position even after he was told that the next train would not come for six days. And then Ambassador Hurley flew in to tell MacArthur that MacA. had been named Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific , by Prime Minister Curtin and President Roosevelt. He also tried to get MacA. to take a plane to Melbourne, but he had no more luck than anybody else.

So a special train was ordered up. We still had the Air Australia DC-3s. So Hurley and most of MacA.‘s staff-except Huff, Sutherland, and Dr. Morehouse, the intimate guardians of the throne-flew off to Melbourne. I was sorely tempted to fly with them, and I might have gone-until General Sutherland imperiously ordered me to do it.

I guess I "m learning the Machiavellian rules of the game : I did not think the Personal Representative of the Secretary of the Navy should place himself under the orders of an Army officer.

‘Patrick Jay Hurley, formerly Secretary of War and then Ambassador to New Zealand.

The train arrived the next morning. It too looked like something from a cowboy movie: a tiny locomotive, two third-class coaches, and a caboose. The tracks there-between Alice Springs and Adelaide, a thousand-odd miles-are three feet between the rails. Should the Japanese invade Australia, this single-track, narrow-gauge railroad, with rolling stock to match, will simply not be adequate to supply, much less to transport, anything close to an infantry division. Which doesn’t matter, I guess: we don’t have an infantry division to transport; and if we did, one division would obviously not be adequate to repel a Japanese invasion.

The first coach of the train had wooden seats; and the second held an Australian Army nurse, a couple of Australian Army sergeants, an army field stove, and a supply of food. It was a three-day trip. For the first twenty-four hours, no one spoke to me but the sergeants.

Then MacArthur sent for me. He ran Sutherland and Huff off and began a nonstop lecture that lasted several hours. Obviously, he was playing to you, vicariously , through me. He began with Japanese economics and politics and how these made the war in the Pacific inevitable. Then he discussed Japanese strategy generally and in the Philippines specifically. He had at his fingertips a literally incredible encyclopedia of dates, names, and figures (tonnages, distances, etcetera).

By the time it was over, I was dazed. Using the word very carefully, the man is clearly a genius. I shall never think of him again as just one more general. It seems to me now that he fits in the same category as Roosevelt and Churchill. I also believe that, like Roosevelt and Churchill, he sees himself as a latter-day Moses, divinely inspired to lead his people out of the desert. In this connection, he feels a personal obligation to the Filipinos.

MacA. seems to understand that Roosevelt’s decision to aid Britain (and the Russians) first is irrevocable and that, as a good soldier, he will of course support it. But he also makes it plain that he believes the decision was the wrong one, made because (a) Churchill can play Roosevelt like a violin (and I rather agree with that), and (b) George Marshall, who has Roosevelt’ s ear, is determined that MacArthur shall not be allowed to demonstrate his military genius (which, of course, is absurd).

General Marshall (MacA. ‘s Deputy C/S; not the other one, obviously) boarded the train at a small station several hours before we got to Adelaide the next afternoon. I started to leave, but MacA. motioned for me to stay. Marshall then confirmed what I had told MacA. in Darwin ; that there were no troops to speak of in all of Australia; and that there was doubt that Australia itself could be held.

Marshall said something to MacA. about creating a "Brisbane Line" ; the Australian General Staff was planning to abandon the northern ports, including Darwin, to the Japanese, and attempt to hold the population centers along the southern and eastern coasts.