American Caesar

by William Manchester

  MacArthur’s early November communiques were those of a commander shifting between optimism and pessimism. On November 1 he said that he “frankly” did not know “whether or not actual Chinese Communist units—as such—have been committed to the Korean War,” or, if they had been, “whether they represent the Chinese government.” It was his impression that they had “only limited objectives in mind.” The next day, after sifting fresh reports, he said that his analysis “removes the problem of Chinese intervention from the realm of the academic and turns it into a serious proximate threat.” Two days after that he concluded that the massing Chinese were sufficient in number “to threaten the ultimate destruction of my command.” Having predicted doom, he then backed away from it. Although it was “impossible . . . to . . . appraise the actualities of Chinese Communist intervention,” he told Washington, there were “many logical reasons” against it. Suggesting three possible explanations for the presence of the newcomers—Mao’s units were giving the In Min Gun logistical support, they were “more or less” volunteers, or they were there to provide a buffer south of the Yalu—he said: “I recommend against hasty conclusions which might be premature and believe that a final appraisement should await a more complete accumulation of facts.” But that accumulation was mounting hourly. The next day he appealed to world opinion, asking that it censure Peking, and the day after that he submitted a curious claim of victory. With the capture of Pyongyang, he said, the defeat of Kim II Sung’s army had been “decisive,” whereupon the Chinese had “committed one of the most offensive acts of international lawlessness of historic record by moving, without any notice of belligerence, elements of alien Communist forces across the Yalu River into North Korea.” Thus “a possible trap” had been “surreptitiously laid.” Luckily the UN had detected the trap by “skillful maneuvering” executed “with great perspicacity and skill.”124

  Unaware that the real trap had not been sprung—that it had not even been discovered—the General told the Chiefs that he was resuming his offensive “to take accurate measure . . . of enemy strength.” It wasn’t necessary. Before his men could move out, they were hit by new attacks. Pilots reported heavy traffic on six Yalu bridges; Mao’s Manchurian troops were swarming southward to join Chinese units already in Korea. On Monday, November 6, MacArthur ordered Stratemeyer—who had told Sebald that he was confident his bombers could “flatten” China—to mount a strike of ninety B-29S, taking out the bridges at Sinuiju at the northwestern tip of Korea. As the fliers suited up, SCAP sent a copy of the order to Washington and went to bed.125

  At 2:00 A.M. he was awakened by an urgent directive from the Joint Chiefs instructing him “to postpone all bombing of targets within five miles of the Manchurian border until further notice.” This was the first real rift between the General and the Chiefs. Bradley, assuming that Moscow and Peking were acting in tandem, suspected that the United States was being drawn into an Asian war of attrition to give the Soviets a free hand elsewhere. The other Chiefs agreed, but MacArthur didn’t see it that way at all. Sitting by his night table, he scrawled a sharp reply. “Men and material in large force are pouring across all bridges over the Yalu from Manchuria,” he wrote.

  This movement not only jeopardizes but threatens the ultimate destruction of the forces under my command. . . . The only way to stop this reinforcement of the enemy is the destruction of these bridges and the subjection of all installations in the north area supporting the enemy advance to the maximum of our air destruction. Every hour that this is postponed will be paid for dearly in American and other United Nations blood . . . I am suspending this strike and carrying out your instructions. . . . [But] I cannot overemphasize the disastrous effeet, both physical and psychological, that will result from the restrictions which you are imposing. I trust that the matter be immediately brought to the attention of the President as I believe your instructions may well result in a calamity of major proportion for which I cannot accept the responsibility without his personal and direct understanding of the situation.126

  The Chiefs were stunned. First MacArthur had found it “impossible” to evaluate Chinese intentions, and now men were “pouring” across the Yalu. Moreover, he was threatening to go over their heads to the President. Bradley read the message to Truman over the phone. It would have been in character if the peppery chief executive had dictated a reprimand. Instead he said mildly that since MacArthur felt “so strongly,” he should be given “the go-ahead.” Therefore the Chiefs cabled Tokyo, lifting the five-mile restriction and authorizing him to bomb Sinuiju and the bridges up to the middle of the river, adding: “The above does not authorize the bombing of any dams or power plants on the Yalu River.” MacArthur wasn’t satisfied: fliers couldn’t attack half a bridge. There was no way the spans could be demolished without violating Manchurian airspace. “It cannot be done,” Strate-meyer told him, “and Washington must know that it can’t be done.”127

  The General reopened his long-distance quarrel with the Pentagon the next morning. Hostile planes were rising from Manchurian airstrips in increasing numbers, attacking UN troop formations and then flying back to safety. He asked that he be permitted, under the long-established international-law rule of “hot pursuit” to follow these hit-and-run aircraft across the border for three minutes of flying time.* This time Washington was friendlier. Marshall approved; so did Acheson; so did the President. Then Dean Rusk pointed out that the United States was committed to conferring with its allies with troops in the UN army before taking any step affecting Manchuria. Consulted, all thirteen of them objected. If American warplanes flew over China, they predicted, Soviet aircraft would retaliate. They were so vehement that the matter was set aside.128

  MacArthur was furious. He had called the order not to bomb the bridges “the most indefensible and ill-conceived decision ever forced on a field commander in our nation’s history”; now, with the prohibition of hot pursuit, Manchuria and Siberia had become “sanctuaries.” Nor was that all. As he later wrote, he was then “denied the right to bomb the hydroelectric plants along the Yalu. The order was broadened to include every plant in North Korea which was capable of furnishing electric power to Manchuria and Siberia . . . . I felt that step-by-step my weapons were being taken away from me.”129

  Relations between Tokyo, Washington, and Lake Success were reaching the critical stage when, inexplicably, the Chinese suddenly went to ground. Their infantrymen disappeared into the mountains. Stratemeyer’s pilots flew unchallenged. Elements of the Seventh Fleet lay peacefully at anchor in the Sea of Japan, off Hungnam, shielding unloading transports. The General’s two wings strengthened their positions fifty miles south of the border, the Eighth Army on the Chongchon and X Corps on the Changjin-Chosen reservoir. The Supreme Commander had 100,000 seasoned men poised for a new thrust.

  The great mystery was the whereabouts of Lin Piao’s inscrutable Chinese. Either they had withdrawn from the battlefield or they were regrouping. MacArthur characteristically took the cheerier view. He had plenty of company. Afterward his G-2 would be roasted in the world press, though a review of the cable traffic between the Dai Ichi and the Pentagon partially vindicates Willoughby. His facts were essentially correct. He noted that the Inchon landing had left some forty thousand PA guerrillas behind UN lines and pointed out that they might join forces with an “alien army” from Manchuria. In staff briefings he identified major Chinese units, assessed their capabilities, and drew up accurate analyses of their order of battle. His interrogations of Chinese prisoners continued right up to November 26, when Lin Piao struck and the roof fell in on the UN Supreme Commander. Willoughby’s error lay in failing to anticipate the strength and direction of this blow. The Central Intelligence Agency made the same mistake. The CIA reported to Truman that there were “as many as 200,000 Chinese troops” in MacArthur’s path, but as late as November 24 the agency assured the President that “there is no evidence that the Chinese Communists plan major offensive operations in Korea.”130
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  If Truman’s spies were slack, those on the other side weren’t. Almost certainly the enemy was now being provided with MacArthur’s battle plans. Had the General known of this, he would have paused, but probably nothing short of that would have held him back. Winston Churchill, a keen observer of world events though his party was out of power, had expressed the hope that MacArthur would halt his advance at the “neck” or “waist” of Korea. The Supreme Commander rejected the suggestion. He was determined to throw his whole army, including his reserves, into one big push. “Asiatics love a winner and despise a loser,” he had said; “they respect aggressive leadership.” Sinologists may disagree with him there, especially in light of what was to come, but his military arguments for a great drive now were more plausible. The mountainous terrain is ruggedest at the waist, and stopping there would have limited maneuver, supply, and coordination of his two wings. In addition, he felt that time was his enemy. “There were but three possible courses,” he later wrote. “I could go forward, remain immobile, or withdraw.” Withdrawal meant acknowledgment of defeat and the failure of his mission, which, as he saw it, was “to clear out all North Korea, to unify it and liberalize it” as he had Japan. Immobility, he believed, was impossible. It is difficult to fault him here. Great offensive commanders, lacking Maginot alternatives, are accustomed to achieving much with little. Once one of Napoleon’s marshals proudly laid before him a plan under which French troops would be carefully lined up from one end of the border to another. The emperor replied pitilessly: “Are you trying to stop smuggling?” Like Napoleon in most of his campaigns, MacArthur in Korea lacked the force necessary for a defense in depth. If the Chinese meant to attack him, each passing day would bring more troops over the Yalu’s bridges. He realized he was taking a “tremendous gamble,” he told his staff, but his only hope was to strike before the Chinese superiority was too great. Therefore he cut orders for the advance, telling Sebald that “in the event of the failure of this offensive” he saw “no alternative, from the military point of view, to bombing key points in Manchuria.”131

  On November 23, when Thanksgiving dinner was served to all MacArthur’s men, UN troops were deployed all over North Korea. Leading elements of X Corps, to the right, were already on the Yalu; the U.S. 7th Division had been dug in since Monday on a slope overlooking the river at Hyesanya. Two weeks of cautious probing and extensive aerial reconnaissance had produced no sighting of large Chinese formations, so the General decided to send X Corps and the Eighth Army forward in von Moltke’s classic maneuver—action by separated forces off the enemy’s axis of movement. Since each was still out of touch with the other, he would be split tactically from hell to breakfast, with a yawning vacuum in the peninsula’s hilly interior. It was risky, but he doesn’t bear sole responsibility for it. Earlier, the Joint Chiefs, as Collins later testified, “not only didn’t question, but we approved” the division of UN forces, because “at that stage of the game there was nothing but North Koreans . . . and it was a wholly reasonable proposition.”132

  The performance of the Chiefs that week was less than resolute. They had vacillated nine days before approving the drive, displaying all the weaknesses of a corporate body dealing with a strong individual, in this case an officer with epochal seniority over all of them. Bradley and Collins, though mildly critical, deferred to the man on the spot. At no time did the Pentagon actually object to MacArthur’s strategy. At most the Chiefs offered suggestions which he was free to accept or reject.

  One suggestion, advanced at the last moment, cited “the growing concern of other members of the United Nations over the possibility of bringing on a general conflict if the United Nations forces . . . seized the entire North Korean area at the boundary between Korea and Manchuria and the U.S.S.R.” The Pentagon proposed that he halt short of the border, reining in along “terrain dominating the approaches to the valley of the Yalu.” These forces would be “principally ROK troops,” with other units “grouped in positions of readiness.” MacArthur didn’t like it. The hills overlooking the river were unsuitable for digging in, he replied. It was his intention to “consolidate positions along the Yalu” and then replace GIs with ROKs “as far as possible.” Collins later testified: “I don’t agree and did not agree with General MacArthur’s reply that it would not be possible to stop upon the high ground overlooking the Yalu. ” The river, he explained, could have been controlled by artillery fire from these heights. But although Collins was MacArthur’s immediate superior, SCAP was not directed to pull back his American divisions.133

  A final, feeble attempt to stay the General’s hand came in a Joint Chiefs’ “request for information” about the gap between the Eighth Army and X Corps. In military etiquette, a “request for information” is a broad hint that a field commander is taking unnecessary chances. In this case it was fully justified; the Chinese infantrymen who had vanished so swiftly two weeks earlier were lurking in the lofty gorges between MacArthur’s two wings. But he didn’t even answer this query. Instead he flew to Eighth Army headquarters on the Chongchon to launch his “massive compression envelopment,” as he called it in his November 24 communiqué, one which would “close the vise” around the enemy. He said: “If successful, this should for all practical purposes end the war.”134

  Wrapped in a gaily checkered muffler, he chatted with officers in the snowy, bitter weather as Eighth Army GIs moved toward the ominously silent precipices between them and Manchuria. The struggle would be ended “very shortly,” he predicted; all that was left was a “clean-up.” Within earshot of several war correspondents, he said to Major General John B. Coulter: “If this operation is successful, I hope we can get the boys home by Christmas.” Later he lamely explained that the remark was meant to encourage his soldiers, to remind Bradley that units would soon be available for European duty, and to reassure Peking that he had no ambitions beyond the Yalu. But he must have known that his troops would take it literally, especially when he repeated it to Brigadier Church, now with the 24th Division: “I have already promised the wives and mothers that the boys of the 24th will be back by Christmas. Don’t make me a liar. Get to the Yalu and I will relieve you.” Newspapermen, believing this to be the last battle, were divided over whether to christen it the “End-the-War Offensive” or the “Home-for-Christmas Drive.” Some called it both.135

  Before flying back to Tokyo that afternoon, MacArthur decided on the spur of the moment to fly the length of the Yalu. His staff objected. The plane was unarmed, they would be within range of Chinese and Russian antiaircraft batteries on the river’s north bank, and he specifically said he wanted to see Sinuiju, where as many as seventy MIGs had been sighted. The General, obdurate, waved them aboard. The very audacity of the flight, he assured them, would be its best protection. According to Bunker, one officer unsuccessfully begged Story to take them over another river, insisting that MacArthur wouldn’t know the difference. The pilot replied that he couldn’t “lie to the chief.” All other appeals having failed, Whitney suggested that at least they should wear parachutes. The General laughed. He said: “You gentlemen can wear them if you want to, but I’ll stick with the plane. ”136

  They encountered neither flak nor enemy aircraft. In fact, they saw nothing except a dismal, glazed, empty landscape. MacArthur wrote: “When we reached the mouth of the Yalu, I told Story to turn east and follow the river at an altitude of 5,000 feet. At this height we could observe in detail the entire area of international No-Man’s Land all the way to the Siberian border. All that spread before our eyes was an endless expanse of utterly barren countryside, jagged hills, yawning crevices, and the black waters of the Yalu. . . . If a large force or massive supply train had passed over the border, the imprints had already been well-covered by the intermittent snowstorms of the Yalu Valley.”137

  That is exactly what had happened. The storms, and the superb organization of the enemy, had hoodwinked MacArthur and, indeed, the rest of the world. S.L.A. Marshall has called the Chines
e army “a phantom which casts no shadow. Its main secret—its strength, its position, and its initiative—had been kept to perfection, and therefore it was doubly armed.” Willoughby’s reports had underestimated the size of the foe’s force because after slipping over the Yalu bridges most of Lin’s troops had avoided skirmishes with MacArthur’s men. Marshall notes that “both the movement and concentration had gone undetected. The enemy columns moved only by night, preserved an absolute camouflage discipline during their daytime rests and remained hidden to view under village rooftops after reaching the chosen ground. Air observation saw nothing of this mass maneuver. Civilian refugees brought no word of it. The remaining chance for its discovery therefore lay in deep patrolling combat columns, which was not done. “ The General hadn’t done it, according to Marshall, because he “did not have a sufficient troop strength to probe and prowl every corner of the outland where hostiles might be hiding.” Nothing less would have sufficed, since “within that hill country, a primitive army, lacking in heavy equipment, can be stowed away in less space than a hunt would use for the chasing of foxes.”138