“Well, maybe not build a house,” Ernie said. “Maybe just buy one, a small one, until we see what happens.”
[THREE]
THE WILLIAM BANNING HOUSE 66 SOUTH BATTERY CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA 1400 24 JUNE 1950
Stanley loaded the basket of fried chicken and “other munchables” Mother Banning had prepared so that Ken and Ernestine—Mother Banning could not force herself to refer to Mrs. McCoy as “Ernie”—would have something to eat on the road, in the middle seat of the Buick station wagon, and then went up the wide staircase to the house to announce that everything was ready.
He had also loaded, in the back of the station wagon, two large, tall, cardboard tubes that The Colonel had prepared. One contained a plat of the Banning property on Hilton Head Island, showing the proposed subdivision, with a triple lot (A-301, A-302, and A-303) marked in red. The triple lot was on a high bluff over the Atlantic Beach— it would be necessary to construct a stairway to the beach, but what the hell, that was better than having the Atlantic Ocean come crashing through your living room in a once-in -a-century hurricane—and when the proposed golf course was built, would have a view of the fairways, far enough away from them to prevent golf balls from crashing into the house’s windows.
The second cardboard tube contained a preliminary plat for the proposed subdivision of Findlay Island, which was south of, one-sixth the size of, and shielded from the Atlantic Ocean by Hilton Head.
The thinking was that the sooner they got things rolling on Hilton Head, the sooner there would be money to put into the development of Findlay Island. Moving cautiously, they would be ready in plenty of time for the wave of military retirees that would start in 1960, and grow for the five years after that.
Colonel Banning had made it clear that he wasn’t trying to sell anything, that it was just something Ken and Ernie should take a close look at, think about.
There would be plenty of time to do that on the way to Camp Pendleton.
Ken and Ernie had originally intended to spend only a day or two with the Bannings. Then they would have driven to Beaufort, South Carolina, outside Parris Island to spend another day—or part of one—with the Zimmermans. From there, they had planned to drive to St. Louis, Missouri, to spend a day—or part of one—with George Hart, and then from there to southern California.
Instead, after two days in Charleston, they’d gone to Beaufort with the Bannings and spent three days there, in Zimmerman’s surprisingly large and comfortable house on the water. Two days had been spent looking at the property on the islands, and on the third, the men had all put on their uniforms and taken a physical trip down memory lane to the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot, Parris Island. Captain McCoy had taken his boot camp at Parris Island, and had been back only once since then, when, shortly after he’d returned from the Makin Island raid he’d been assigned to work for General Pickering, and had gone there to jerk Private George Hart out of a recruit platoon to serve as Pickering’s bodyguard.
The next day, the McCoys and the Bannings had returned to the house on the Battery in Charleston, and a farewell dinner prepared for them under the supervision of Mother Banning.
With the time spent, they were now going to have to drive straight across the country to San Diego, and put off the visit to George Hart until after McCoy went through the separation process at Camp Pendleton.
Mother Banning surprised her son by going down the wide staircase to the Buick—instead of standing, as she usually did, on the piazza, with her hands folded on her stomach when guests left—to kiss both Ernestine and Ken goodbye.
“Drive carefully,” Colonel Banning said. “And give this some serious thought, Ken.”
“Yes, sir, we will,” Ken said, shook his hand, and got behind the wheel.
At the end of the Battery, waiting for a chance to move into the flow of traffic, he said, “I wish I could.”
“Could what?”
“Give it some serious thought. Doing what they’re going to be doing looks like a lot more fun than filling toothpaste tubes.”
There was a break in the flow of traffic, and he eased the Buick into it.
“Things will work out, sweetheart,” Ernie said. “What is it they say, ‘it’s always darkest before the dawn’?”
He laughed, but it was more of a snort than a laugh. “What time is it, honey?” Ernie asked.
He looked at his watch.
“A little after 1400,” he said.
“You’re going to have to get used to saying ’two,’ ” she said.
“I guess,” he said, and added, “Mrs. McCoy, it is now a little after two P.M.”
Ernie chuckled.
There is a fourteen-hour difference between Charleston, South Carolina, and the Korean Peninsula. In other words, when it was a little after two P.M. on 24 June 1950 in Charleston, South Carolina, it was a little after four A.M., 25 June 1950, on the Korean peninsula.
The North Korean attack against the Ongjin Peninsula on the west coast, northwest of Seoul, began about 0400 with a heavy artillery and mortar barrage and small-arms fire delivered by the 14th Regiment of the North Korean 6th Division. The ground attack came half an hour later across the 38th parallel without armored support. It struck the positions held by a battalion of the Republic of Korea Army’s 17th Regiment, commanded by Colonel Paik In Yup.
PAGE 27
U.S. ARMY IN THE KOREAN WAR
OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF MILITARY HISTORY
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1960
V
[ONE]
THE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER THE PENTAGON WASHINGTON, D.C. 1710 24 JUNE 1950
The first “official” word of the North Korean incursion of South Korea was a radio teletype message sent to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Department of the Army in Washington by the military attaché of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul at 0905 Korean time 25 June 1950. It entered the Army’s communications system a relatively short time afterward, probably “officially”—that is to say, was “logged” in—in a matter of minutes, say at about 1710 Washington time 24 June 1950.
25 June 1950 was a Saturday. While the Pentagon never closes down, most of the military and civilian personnel who work there during the week weren’t there, and only a skeleton crew was on duty.
There was a bureaucratic procedure involved. The message was classified Operational Immediate, the highest, rarely used, priority, and on receipt the senior officer on duty in the communications room was immediately notified that an Operational Immediate from Korea for the G-2 had been received, and immediately sent to the Cryptographic Room for decryption.
The signal officer on duty telephoned the duty officer in the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, giving him a heads-up on the Operational Immediate, and informing him that he would deliver the message personally as soon as it was decrypted.
In turn, the G-2 duty officer immediately telephoned the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, and caught him at his quarters at Fort Myer, Virginia.
The Army’s chief intelligence officer told his duty officer that he was just about out the door to attend a cocktail and dinner party at the Army and Navy Club in the District, but would stop by the Pentagon en route to have a look at the Operational Immediate from Korea.
Then he called the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, and found him at his quarters—Quarters 1—at Fort Myer. He told the Chief there was an Operational Immediate from Korea, and that he was en route to the Pentagon to have a look at it. And where would the Chief be in case it required his immediate attention?
The Chief said he was going to Freddy’s retirement party at the Army and Navy, and since the G-2 was going there, he could see no point in he himself going to the Pentagon. Sometimes, the Operational Immediate classification was applied too easily.
By the time the G-2 reached his office, the Operational Immediate from Korea had been decrypted. He read it, and after a moment ordered his duty officer to see if he would reach
the Chief, who was probably en route to the Army and Navy Club, over his car radio.
It was possible, even likely, that somewhere in the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or in the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Czechoslovakia, or in the Embassy of the Democratic Republic of Albania, or elsewhere, there was a man sitting at a radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the police-type shortwave radio in the Chief’s car, so the conversation was phrased accordingly:
“Chief, that message we were talking about? I think it might be a good idea if you had a look at it yourself.”
“I’m on my way. Thank you.”
In the G-2’s office, twenty minutes later, the G-2 read the message and reached for the red telephone on the G-2’s desk. In twenty seconds, he had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the secure line.
“Sir, I’ve got an Operational Immediate from Korea that I think you should have a look at right away.”
“Okay.”
“I think you might want to give the Secretary a heads-up, and with your permission, I’m going to do the same to mine.”
“Okay. On my way. You’re in your office?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Meet me in the Ops Room.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I’m in the car. You give the Secretary a heads-up.”
“Yes, sir.”
The G-2 telephoned, on the secure circuit, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the Army, in that order, and gave both the same message:
He had just spoken to the Chairman about an Operational Immediate he had just received from Korea, and the Chairman was en route to the Ops Room to have a look at it, and had ordered him to relay that information to the Secretary.
The Secretary of the Army said he was on his way, and the Secretary of Defense said that it would take him ten minutes to shave and get dressed, and then he’d be on his way.
Before he left his home, the Secretary of Defense called the Secretary of State and said he had no idea how important it was, but there had been an Operational Immediate from Korea, and everybody was headed for the Ops Room to have a look at it, and maybe it might be a good idea for the Secretary to send somebody to the Pentagon, if not come himself.
The Secretary of Defense also called the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and on being told the Director would not be available for thirty minutes, got the Assistant Director and told him there was an Operational Immediate from Korea that he thought the Director should have a look at, and that everybody was en route to the Ops Room. The Assistant Director said he would leave word for the Director, and leave for the Ops Room himself immediately.
Less than an hour after that, having read the Operational Immediate in the Ops Room, and assessing other intelligence data available to the Ops Room, it was more or less unanimously agreed that the matter should be immediately brought to the attention of Harry S. Truman, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of its armed forces.
The Assistant Secretary of State personally agreed that the President should be informed, but felt that he could not concur in the decision to do so until the Secretary of State had been brought up to speed on the situation and gave his concurrence.
It took another hour to get that concurrence, whereupon the White House Signal Agency was directed to put in a secure call to the President of the United States at his home in Independence, Missouri.
The President took the news almost stoically, and ordered that he be kept up to date on any new developments, regardless of the hour.
The President was not surprised to hear from the Secretary of Defense that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea. He had been so informed three hours previously by the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who had received a radio message from the CIA station chief in Seoul, and had immediately decided the President needed to be informed immediately, and had done so personally.
[TWO]
BLAIR HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C. 2205 25 JUNE 1950
“Unless someone can think of something else we can do tonight,” President Harry S. Truman said, “I suggest we knock this off. I suspect we’re all going to need clear heads in the morning.”
The men at the conference table—the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Advisor, and several other high-ranking advisors, rose to their feet.
Although there was nothing wrong with the conference room in Blair House, it was not as large, nor as comfortable as the conference room in the White House. If there was still a conference room across the street in the White House. In 1948, it had been discovered that the White House was literally falling down, in fact dangerous. Truman had made the decision to gut it to the walls and rebuild everything. In June of 1950, the reconstruction was two years into what was to turn out to be a four-year process. The last time the President had looked into the White House, it was a gutted shell.
The President had cut short his vacation in Independence and flown back to Washington—in Air Force One, a four-engine Douglas DC-6 known as the Independence— early in the afternoon.
His senior advisors had been waiting for him in Blair House, the de facto temporary White House, where the Army Signal Corps had set up a teletype conference facility with General MacArthur in the Dai Ichi Building in Tokyo.
It was essentially a closed, state-of-the-art radio teletype circuit, where what was typed in Washington was immediately both typed in Tokyo and displayed on a large screen so that everyone in the room could read it. And vice versa.
MacArthur had furnished the President what he knew— not much—about the situation in Korea, and the President had authorized MacArthur—after consultation with his staff, and through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—to send ammunition and equipment to Korea to prevent the loss of Seoul’s Kimpo airfield to the North Koreans, and to provide Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft to protect the supply planes. MacArthur had also been authorized to do whatever he considered necessary to evacuate the dependents of American military and diplomatic personnel in Korea from the war zone, and to dispatch a team to Korea to assess what was happening.
Truman had also ordered the Seventh Fleet (which was split between the Philippines and Okinawa) to sail immediately for the U.S. Navy Base in Sasebo, Japan, where it would pass into the control of Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Far East. COMNAVFORFE was subordinate to the Supreme Commander, Allied Powers, so what Truman had done was to take operational control of the Seventh Fleet from the Commander-in-Chief Pacific (CINCPAC) and give it to MacArthur.
Until they knew more about what was going on, there was nothing else that anyone in the room could think of to do.
Except for Admiral Hillenkoetter, the CIA Director, and he was considering his options to ask for a few minutes of the Commander-in-Chief’s time—alone—when the President seemed to be reading his mind.
“Admiral, would you stay behind a minute, please?” Truman asked.
“Yes, Mr. President,” the Admiral said.
It is entirely possible, the admiral thought, that I am about to have my ass chewed for calling him when I got the Seoul station chief’s radio. He didn’t say anything, but it’s possible the Chairman’s heard about it, and he would consider it going over his head.
The Chairman gave the admiral a strange look as he left the room, leaving him alone with the President.
In William Donovan’s Office of Strategic Services, the OSS had technically been under the command of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Donovan had paid no attention to that at all, deciding that he worked for the President and nobody else. Donovan had gotten away with that.
In the reincarnation of the OSS as the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA was a separate governmental agency, charged with cooperating with the Defense and State Departments, but not under their command. None of the military services, or th
e State Department, liked that, and they tried, in one way or another, with varying degrees of subtlety, to insinuate that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was really in charge. Hillenkoetter was, after all, an admiral detailed to the CIA, not a civilian, like J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The interesting thing, Hillenkoetter often thought, was that when I was really in the Navy, I thought the CIA really ought to be under the Joint Chiefs. A couple of months in the Agency cured me of that. The only way it can be the Central Intelligence Agency is to be independent, free of influence from any quarter. Things would probably be better if they had called it the Independent Intelligence Agency.
“That’ll be all, thank you,” Truman said to the stenographer, a Navy chief petty officer, who had been taking notes of the conference on a court reporter’s machine.
The Chief left the room, closing the door after him.
“Just as a matter of curiosity, Admiral,” the President began, “when did you pass to the Chairman the information you gave me over the telephone?”
“My deputy took that radio, Mr. President—by then there were two more of no great significance—with him when he went to the first conference in the Ops Room.”
“I didn’t tell the Chairman about your call,” the President said. “I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you weren’t trying to one-up him.”
“As I understand my role, Mr. President, I report directly to you.”
“Yeah,” the President said. “You do.” He paused. “Have you had any more radios? Even of ‘no great significance’?”
“My Seoul station chief believes Seoul will fall, Mr. President. He is moving his base of operations to the south.”
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