Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 09 - Under Fire

"Who's he?" MacArthur interrupted.

"The Chief of the Naval Element, SCAP He's the other villain in this sad affair. He acquiesced when General Willoughby ordered the report destroyed."

"I don't believe any of this," Jean MacArthur said.

From the look on Douglas MacArthur's face, neither did he.

"We will start with the intelligence officer who allegedly prepared this report," MacArthur said. "And then..."

"Unfortunately, he's not available tonight," Pickering said.

"Why not? Where is he?"

"On Tokchok-kundo Island," Pickering said.

"Where?"

"From which, early this morning, he launched an inva-sion of Taemuui-do, Yonghung-do, and Taebu-do islands in the Flying Fish Channel, which, as of 1500 this afternoon, are under our control."

MacArthur stared at him in disbelief.

"Do I understand you correctly, General Pickering, that you have launched an operation-without any consultation, much less permission from myself or anyone on my staff- that may-without question will-seriously impact the In-chon invasion?"

Pickering didn't immediately reply. But he smiled, which caused MacArthur's face to turn white.

"I fail to see the humor in any of this, so perhaps you would be good enough to tell me why you are smiling?"

"Forgive me," Pickering said. "I was thinking about General Patton's reply to General Bradley during the Sicil-ian campaign...."

MacArthur, after a moment, chuckled and then laughed.

"I don't understand," Jean MacArthur said.

"Bradley was concerned, darling," MacArthur ex-plained, "that the mutual dislike between George Patton and General Montgomery would see Georgie take extraor-dinary-possibly too risky-steps to be in Palermo before Montgomery could get there. So he messaged him words to the effect, `Do not do not take Palermo without my per-mission.' To which Georgie replied, `I hold Palermo, should I give it back?'"

She chuckled. "I'd never heard that before," she said.

"Would that this situation were as amusing," MacArthur said to Pickering.

"General, I think I should tell you that President Truman was aware of my plan," Pickering said.

"Would you tell me why you did it?" MacArthur asked.

"General, I've been privileged to be in on the planning of many of your invasions," Pickering said. "I like to think I learned from watching you."

"Why didn't you come to me?"

"Your staff was determined to take the islands on D Mi-nus One," Pickering said. "You agreed. I thought doing so would give the enemy twenty-four hours' notice of our in-tentions. That question had come up and been decided in favor of D Minus One. If I had come to you with this, you would have been forced to choose between your trusted staff and an amateur challenging their-and your-judg-ment."

"I have overridden my staff before, and you know that."

"I wasn't sure I could carry it off. Not me. Captain Mc-Coy. I thought it was worth the risk. If we failed, only a few men would be lost. If we succeeded..."

"And what makes you think the enemy won't immedi-ately take action to retake the islands?"

"The hope is that the enemy will believe it's nothing more than the South Koreans improving their positions along the Flying Fish Channel. They may not even take ac-tion. If they do, all they're going to find on the three islands are South Korean national police."

"And when the invasion doesn't take place in the next three or four days, you think they will relax?"

"Yes, sir," Pickering said. "I spoke with Captain McCoy on the radio shortly before I came here. He said the North Koreans on the islands were not in radio contact with the mainland. So they could not have reported they were under attack by U.S. and Royal Marines. He believes the decep-tion worked."

"Royal Marines?"

"Yes, sir. From HMS Jamaica. And HMS Charity pro-vided naval gunfire for the assaults."

"So Admiral Matthews also felt D Minus One for the as-sault on the islands was not a good idea," MacArthur said. "I wonder why he didn't come to me with his objections."

"I can only guess that he felt much as I felt, sir."

MacArthur looked at him for a long moment, then asked, thoughtfully, "We have no idea what will happen between now and the invasion, do we?"

"No, sir. But McCoy feels-and I concur-that if there is an attack on the islands, and we refrain from using gunfire from the Charity to repel it, it would lend credence to the idea that the whole thing was a South Korean operation, nothing more."

"In which case, we would lose the islands."

"Not necessarily, sir. There're thirty South Korean po-lice already on the islands, and we intend to reinforce them. If an attack doesn't come for several days, We should have enough South Koreans in place to repel anything but a major effort."

"That's a pretty iffy situation," MacArthur said. "So iffy that I don't consider it wise to throw this equation-what if we already held the islands?-into the last-minute plan-ning just yet. Right now, the fewer people who know about this, the better, and we will take things as they develop. Wouldn't you agree, Fleming?"

"Yes, sir."

Don't tell me that's it?

We're back to "Fleming"? And he just wants to sit on this, "take things as they develop " ?

"Would you like another little drop before we go into supper, Fleming?" the Supreme Commander asked. "Or not?"

"I think another one would go down nicely, sir. Thank you."

[FIVE]

TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND

0530 26 AUGUST 1950

"I can stay," Lieutenant David Taylor, USNR, said to Cap-tain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC. "Kim is as good a skipper for the Wind of Good Fortune as I am, and Major Kim will be aboard."

"What, are there two last names in all of Korea-Kim and Lee?" Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman observed rhetorically.

Taylor and McCoy chuckled.

"Don't let this go to your head, Taylor," McCoy said. "But I disagree, and right now we can't afford to get in trouble with the Wind of Good Fortune. You go. We'll be all right."

"Says the eternal optimist," Zimmerman said.

"The sooner we get the militia off the islands, and Kim's national police on them, the better off we're going to be," McCoy said.

"What makes you so sure there's going to be more na-tional police?" Zimmerman asked.

"Because we now hold the islands, and I don't think any national police commander would want to take the chance of becoming known as the guy who was responsible for us losing them again, simply because he was afraid to rein-force them."

Zimmerman's shrug indicated he accepted the logic.

"I wish we could have kept the Limeys," Zimmerman said. "At least the boats."

"They couldn't swim back to the Charity," McCoy said. "They left us one of their boats, and the radio..."

"But not the guy to drive it," Zimmerman argued.

"... and we'll have to do with that," McCoy went on, ig-noring him. And then he changed his mind.

"I want you to have this straight in your mind, Ernie, so I'll go over it one more time. There is no way we can hold any of these islands if the North Koreans really want to take them back. And if they tried they would become damned curious if we put up a hell of a fight-"

"So what we're going to do is hope they stay stupid," Zimmerman interrupted.

"You're getting close to the line, Ernie," McCoy said very coldly. "What we're going to do is when they send a couple of boats-and they will-to see what happened on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do, is have the militia fire on them with rifles. They may get lucky-none of the militia can really shoot, and all they have is the Japanese Arisakas-and kill a couple of the NKs. But even if they don't, bullets will be flying, and nobody likes that. The first time that happens, the NKs may pull back. But they'll come back, and when they do, the militia takes a couple more shots at them, and then takes off into the hills. The NKs, we hope, will take a look around, see no evidence of anybody but Koreans being there, and maybe, maybe, go into the hills after them. More likely, they'll just get back in the boats. They won't have enough men, we don't think, to leave enough men on the islands to garrison them. And why should they? There's nothing on the islands but a bunch of South Koreans armed with some Jap rifles, piss-ing in the wind against the inevitable triumph of the Armies of Socialism. Their misguided brethren can be left there to be dealt with later, by somebody else."