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

The President offered him his hand.

"Hello, Franklin," Truman said. "It's good to see you, too,"

He followed the lead two Secret Service agents into Fowler's apartment.

Richardson K. Fowler and Fleming Pickering rose to their feet.

"Good morning, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"Good morning," the President said. "Could these fel-lows wait in your study?"

"Of course, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"It's through there," the President said, pointing. "When I need you, I'll call."

The Secret Service agent was visibly unhappy with his orders to be left alone.

"It's all right," Truman went on. "Senator Fowler thinks I'm a threat to the country, but I don't think he's thinking of assassination. Go on."

"Yes, Mr. President," the Secret Service agent said, and trailed by the other, left the room, closing the door after themselves.

The President turned to Fowler.

"You can call me `Harry,' Dick. We've known each other a long time."

"A long enough time to know better, Mr. President. What is it they say, `beware of Democrats wearing smiles'?"

Truman smiled, and offered his hand to Fleming Picker-ing.

"Thank you for coming, General," he said. "And I have to say that for a man who spent the night flying across the country, you don't look very mussed."

"I was very mussed, Mr. President, when we landed at Andrews," Pickering said.

Franklin appeared with a silver coffee set and placed it on the sitting room's coffee table.

"What did you set up for breakfast, Franklin?" Fowler asked.

"A little buffet, Senator. I thought you gentlemen would rather be alone."

"Why don't you move the coffee into the dining room? Then I won't spill it on my new tie."

"Yes, sir," Franklin said, and picked up the tray and car-ried it into the dining room, with the three men following him.

He set the tray on a table that would hold sixteen diners, then left the room.

"Before we go a word further, it is agreed that this is out of school, right?" Truman asked.

"Agreed, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"Yes, sir," Pickering said.

The President looked at Pickering as if making up his mind about something.

"What is it they say in the Navy, General? `Let's clear the decks'?"

"It's something like that, Mr. President. But I'm really not a general, Mr. President. That was a long time ago."

"Let's clear that part of the deck first, General," Truman said. "Yes, you are. You are a brigadier general, USMC, Reserve."

Pickering was about to argue when he stopped.

Goddamn it, maybe I am. Probably, I am. I was never discharged, in `45. I was released from active duty and or-dered to my home of record.

"And as your commander-in-chief, General, I can order you to keep anything that's said in this room to yourself."

Pickering looked at him but said nothing.

"Unfortunately, I can't order you around, Dick," Truman went on, "as either a senator or a journalist. I can only ap-peal to your patriotism. We've said-and probably be-lieve-some unkind things about each other, but I don't think you've ever questioned my patriotism, and I certainly have never questioned yours."

"What is it you want, Mr. President?" Fowler asked, coldly.

"I don't want headlines on the front page of every news-paper in the country reading, `MacArthur Ignored Warning of North Korean Attack,'" Truman said.

"In point of fact, Mr. President," Pickering said, "I don't believe General MacArthur was aware of McCoy's assess-ment."

"He's in charge over there, General," Truman said. "He should have been made aware of this assessment. He's re-sponsible for the actions-or lack of action-of his subor-dinates."

Pickering shrugged his agreement.

"We're about to go to war over there," Truman said. "The League of Nations failed because nobody paid any attention to it. Remember when Mussolini was getting ready to in-vade Ethiopia in 1936? The Emperor of Ethiopia... what's his name, Dick?"

"Haile Selassie, Mr. President," Senator Fowler fur-nished.

"Haile Selassie went to the League of Nations," Truman went on, "and the League of Nations told Mussolini to stop. He knew the League of Nations had no teeth, so he invaded Ethiopia. And the League of Nations didn't- couldn't-do a damned thing about it."

"I remember, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"And so the dictators of the world-Italian, German and Japanese-drew the logical conclusion that since the League of Nations was a joke, they could get away with anything they wanted to do. And that gave us World War Two."

"You think the United Nations is going to be different?" Fowler asked, on the edge of sarcasm.

"For one thing, Dick," Truman said. "We belong to the UN; we didn't belong to the League of Nations. For an-other, we now face the indescribable horrors of a nuclear war. We can't afford to have the UN fail."

Fowler shrugged, in agreement.

"The UN has just told the North Koreans to get out of South Korea," Truman went on. "If the UN can't make that order stick, the whole world's likely to go up in a nuclear explosion. So the North Koreans are going to have to get out of South Korea. I've decided the United States has to do whatever is necessary to see that's done."

"By ourselves, if necessary?" Fowler asked.

"I don't think it will come down to that, but if it does, yes, by ourselves."

"Mr. President, have you read McCoy's assessment?" Pickering asked.

"Admiral Hillenkoetter told me about it."

"McCoy feels that the Army of Occupation of Japan is neither equipped nor trained for combat-that they are fac-ing a superior force."

"He's competent to make a judgment like that?"

"I have absolute faith in his judgment, Mr. President," Pickering said.

"Well, he's been right so far, hasn't he?" Truman said. "MacArthur feels he can `contain the situation.' I told him to send a team to Korea to see how bad things really are."

For a long moment, no one said a word.

"There're two possibilities," Truman said. "That once the North Koreans understand we're taking action-I've given MacArthur permission to bomb railheads and bridges, that sort of thing-they'll back down, as the Rus-sians backed down in Berlin after we ran the airlift."

"Mr. President, they may have interpreted Acheson's speech, leaving Korea out of our zone of interest, as mean-ing we would not react."

Truman looked at him, and nodded, and then went on.

"The other possibility is that they-and the Russians, who are behind this-will decide it's the League of Na-tions and Ethiopia all over again, and keep up their attack. That means the involvement of American ground forces. I think that's what's going to happen."

He looked between Fowler and Pickering.

"After Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt fired the Pearl Harbor brass-Admiral Kimmel and General Short-for what amounted to dereliction of duty. They hadn't ade-quately prepared for what happened, and they deserved to be fired. General MacArthur-if we are to believe this young captain of yours, General-has not adequately pre-pared for what is happening there now. Do I have to ex-plain the problems that would be caused if I relieved MacArthur for dereliction of duty and ordered him home?"

"No, sir, Mr. President," Fowler said.

"If I have to say so, Dick, I'm not talking about political damage to Harry Truman. I don't really give a damn about that."

"Mr. President, I will not make... Captain McCoy's as-sessment and what happened in Tokyo will not be made available to the press," Fowler said.

"Or to, for example, Senator Taft?"

Senator Robert Taft (R., Ohio) who had presidential as-pirations, was one of Truman's severest critics.

"I won't tell Bob, either," Fowler said. "Or anyone else. At least for the time being."

"The American people are going to have enough trouble with us going to war in the first place. If we start taking a whipping in the beginning, and it came out MacArthur was warned this was coming and did nothing about it..."