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

"Okay. All of this is to explain what I'm doing here, and what you all have to do with it. The day after tomorrow, Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and General Matthew B. Ridgway are going to get on a plane and come here. Item one on Harriman's agenda is to tell MacArthur that he is absolutely not, not, going to use any of Chiang Kai-shek's troops, and item two is Inchon. That has to be resolved-"

"My feelings won't be hurt-" Ernestine McCoy inter-rupted.

Howe looked at her in surprise.

"-if you tell me I'm not supposed to ask questions. But I don't understand..."

Captain Kenneth R. McCoy looked at his wife in disbelief. General Howe's eyebrows went up. General Pickering smiled tolerantly, and waited for General Howe to more or less politely put her in her place.

"Ask away, Mrs. McCoy," Howe said, surprising every-body. "I meant it when I said I think you have to be in-volved in this, and the more you understand, the better."

"Well, I know who Ambassador Harriman is," she said. "I know Ambassador Harriman. He and my father are friends. My father told me he's President Truman's ambassador-at-large. But who's General Ridgway? And what's Inchon?"

"Harriman is also the President's national security advi-sor," Howe said. "'Ambassador-at-large' is a personal rank; when Harriman goes someplace, it means he speaks for the President.

"MacArthur really wears two hats. The senior American someplace is the U.S. ambassador. There's no U.S. ambas-sador here; MacArthur fills that role. The decision about using Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers in this war is a diplo-matic decision, so Harriman will give him his orders about that.

"But MacArthur is also the senior military officer in the Pacific. Wearing that hat, he takes-at least in the-ory-his orders from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General-General of the Army, five stars, like MacArthur-Omar Bradley. MacArthur is not only se-nior to Bradley-time in grade-but outranks the Army chief of staff, General `Lightning Joe' Collins, who has only four stars. So Collins has to `confer' with MacArthur, since he can't tell him what to do. Matt Ridgway is an-other four-star general. He's the deputy chief of staff for administration, number two to Collins, and his likely suc-cessor as chief of staff, unless Truman decides to fire MacArthur, when he would be candidate number one to replace him."

"Fire General MacArthur?' Hart blurted.

"We're back to what I said before: What's said here stays in this room," General Howe said. `Truman doesn't want to fire MacArthur, for several reasons, including the fact that he's a military genius and a military hero and the political repercussions would be enormous. But if MacArthur keeps ignoring him, firing him is a genuine possibility."

"I didn't know about Chiang Kai-shek," Ernie said.

"He offered us thirty thousand troops," Howe said. "On the advice of General Bradley, Truman decided they would be more trouble than they would be worth, both because they would have to be trained and equipped, and because it would cause serious problems with the mainland-com-munist-Chinese. We don't want them in this war. Collins sent MacArthur a message ordering him not to take them. MacArthur acknowledged the message, and then-the next day-flew to Taipei to `confer' with Chiang Kai-shek. I was there when Truman found that out. He was furious. Bradley wanted him fired. Harry decided to send Harriman to bring him into line. Understand?"

Ernie nodded.

"Inchon?" she asked.

"It's the port for Seoul," Howe said.

"Ken and I have been there," Ernie said.

"Okay. What happened is that when General Collins, and General Vandenburg-the Air Force chief of staff- were here... July seventeenth, right, Charley?"

Master Sergeant Rogers nodded.

"July seventeenth. Three weeks after we got in this mess," Howe went on. "MacArthur told them he'd `come up with a plan' to stage an amphibious operation at Inchon, which would cut the North Korean line of supply. When I got here, General Pickering told me that MacArthur had told him the idea had occurred to him earlier than that, that when he went to Suwon a couple of days after the North Koreans invaded, he had thought about an amphibious in-vasion at Inchon, and had directed Almond to start the ini-tial planning.

"Collins, to put it mildly, was not enthusiastic about an amphibious invasion at Inchon, and neither was the Navy. It's not like landing on some Pacific Island, or, for that matter, Normandy. There's a long channel the invasion fleet would have to pass through to get to the beach, and it's not far from North Korea, which could quickly send re-inforcements. But the question became moot after we lost Taejon. All the troops that MacArthur wanted to use for the invasion had to be sent to Pusan, or we were going to be forced off the Korean Peninsula.

"Everybody in the Pentagon sighed in relief when the invasion was called off, but now MacArthur's brought it up again-using the words `when I land at Inchon,' not `if we decide to land at Inchon.' So Ridgway is going to `confer' with him about Inchon. If we can get away with it, General Pickering and I are going to invite ourselves to that meet-ing; I don't think we can crash the one between Harriman and MacArthur.

"What the President sent me here to do is to find out what I can about Inchon and report to him directly what I think. That poses two problems. First, I don't know any-thing about Inchon except what General Pickering has told me-"

"Based on damned little," Pickering interjected, "except my memory of taking a PandFE freighter in there before the war-and aground on the mudflats."

"Sir, there's a guy," McCoy said. "A Navy officer-I talked to him a couple of times-who was in there a lot on an LST," McCoy said. "He knows all about Inchon, and the channel islands."

"You have his name?' Howe asked. "Where is he?"

`Taylor," McCoy said. "David R. Taylor, Lieutenant, USNR. I don't know where he is. Naval Element, SCAP would probably know." He paused and added, "He's a Mus-tang."

"A what?" Howe asked.

"He was an enlisted man, sir," McCoy said.

"Yeah, that's right, isn't it? That's what the Navy and the Marines call somebody who's come out of the ranks. `Mustang' seems to suggest they're not as well-bred as somebody from the Naval Academy, a little wild, maybe uncontrollable, likely to cause trouble to the established order of things."

McCoy and Hart looked uncomfortable. General Pickering was about to reply when General Howe went on: "Well, then, he'll be right at home with this bunch, won't he? Un-less I'm wrong, we all belong to that exclusive club."

He turned to Master Sergeant Rogers.

"Charley, call SCAP Naval Element and have this guy placed on TDY to us as soon as possible. Like as of eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Have him report to the hotel. He doesn't need to know about this place."

Master Sergeant Rogers nodded, and wrote on his lined pad.

General Howe saw the look on McCoy's face.

"Yeah, I can do that, McCoy," he said. "Before I came here, Admiral Sherman-the chief of naval operations- sent a commander to see the admiral, to tell him that by di-rection of the President, I'm to get whatever I ask for from the Navy, and that SCAP is not to be told what I asked for."

"Yes, sir," McCoy said.

"What's left?" Howe asked. "Oh, yeah. Communica-tions. The problem with cryptography, sending encoded messages, Mrs. McCoy, is that the technicians who do the encoding obviously get to read the message. General Pick-ering tells me that during War Two, when he was dealing with the MAGIC business, he had his own cryptographers."

"Including George," McCoy said, nodding at Hart.

"We talked about that," Howe said. "The equipment Hart used is no longer in service. And I'm concerned that any-thing we send through the SCAP crypto room will be read by people who'll pass it on to people here. I may be wrong, but I can't take that chance. Charley called the Army Secu-rity Agency, and they're going to send us a cryptographer, one we know won't share what he's read with anybody. But I don't know how long that will take-if he can get here be-fore we start to need him. Suggestions?"