Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  An engine supercharger on one of Bostrom’s engines went out en route. He could have made it back without having it repaired, but it would have lowered his weight-carrying ability and caused other problems I don’t really understand. He managed to get it repaired, however, which meant that he and the other B-17 could carry all of the MacArthur party (but none of their luggage).

  But then another of Bostrom’s engines acted up during takeoff, and he was really afraid he couldn’t get the airplane off the ground. In the end, though, he managed it. After that, it was a five-hour flight to Darwin—about the same distance as from New Orleans to Boston—and there was violent turbulence en route. Nothing had been done to convert the airplanes from their bombing role. Mrs. MacArthur and the boy had the only “upholstery,” a mattress laid on the cabin floor. MacArthur rode in the radio operator’s seat.

  Along with his immediate family, the general brought his staff out with him, none of whom, frankly, I care for—although MacArthur feels they are to a man superb officers. To me they’re more like the dukes who used to surround a king.

  As soon as they were able to establish radio contact with Darwin, they were informed that Darwin was under Japanese air attack and that they should divert to Batchelor Field, which is about fifty miles away. I was already there with the two Air Australia DC-3s, when they landed about nine in the morning (Tues., Mar 17). A good deal of what follows may well be unimportant—certainly, some of it is petty—but you wanted my opinion of MacArthur, his thinking, and the people around him.

  He seemed very disturbed to find on hand to greet him only Brigadier Royce (who had been on the Air Australia plane with me), representing General Brett. For good cause, certainly, he looked exhausted.

  I told his aide, a man named Huff, that I was your personal representative, and that I wished to pay my respects to MacArthur and ask him for his evaluation of the situation so that I could pass it on to you. Huff made it plain that MacArthur was entitled to a far more senior Navy officer than a lowly captain. He also felt that I had seriously violated military protocol by not presenting myself to Admiral Rockwell before daring to approach the throne of King Douglas. Rockwell was the former senior Navy officer in the Philippines, and he came in on the second B-17.

  Admiral Rockwell was displeased with me, too, and you may hear about that. There was a scene that in other circumstances would have been humorous, during which he kept demanding to know who was my immediate superior, to which I kept answering “Secretary Knox,” to which he kept replying, ad infinitum, “You’re not listening to me. I mean your immediate superior.” During all this, he simply refused to look at my letter of authority from you until I answered the simple question of who was my immediate superior.

  This little farce came to an end when Mrs. MacArthur recognized me. Not as a Naval officer, but as my wife’s husband. Apparently, they had met in Manila, and Mrs. MacA. regards Patricia as a friend. Or at least a social peer. She told her husband of my connection with Pacific & Far East, and I was permitted to approach the throne.

  I had met MacArthur only briefly once or twice before, and I am sure he did not remember those occasions; but he greeted me warmly and told me he was anxious to learn (these are his words as closely as I can remember them) “details of the buildup in Australia; troop and naval dispositions; and the tentative timetable for the recapture of Luzon.”

  I explained to him that there was no buildup; that there were only about 34,000 troops of any description in Australia; that the only unit of any size was the understrength 1st Brigade of the 6th Australian Division; and that the strategic problem as I understood it was to attempt to keep the Japanese from taking Australia which might not be possible and that, consequently, nothing whatever had yet been done about attempting to take Luzon back from the Japanese.

  His eyes glazed over. He turned to another of his aides, a brigadier general named Sutherland, and said, “Surely he is mistaken.” Then he marched off to a small shack where breakfast (baked beans and canned peaches) was served.

  Brigadier Royce, who is a nice fellow, followed him into the shack. And later he emerged from it looking dazed. Mrs. MacArthur did not wish to fly anymore, perhaps ever again, and General MacArthur had therefore ordered Royce to immediately form a motorcade to transport the party to the nearest railhead. Royce had informed MacArthur that the nearest railhead was in Alice Springs, about as far away across the desert (1,000 miles or so) as Chicago is from New Orleans, and that, among other things, there were no vehicles available to form a motorcade.

  MacArthur’s response was, “You have your orders; put them into execution.”

  This apparently impossible situation was resolved by Major Charles H. Morehouse, an Army doctor who had come out of the Philippines with them. He told Royce that such a trip would probably kill the MacArthur boy, Arthur, who is five or six, and who was ill. Morehouse was feeding him intravenously. Morehouse also said that he could not guarantee whether MacArthur himself would live through a 1,000-mile automobile trip across the desert.

  Royce somewhat forcefully suggested to Dr. Morehouse that he make this point emphatically to MacArthur. So Morehouse went into the shack. After several minutes MacArthur came out and announced, “We are prepared to board the aircraft.” It was the royal “we,” Frank.

  We got on the airplanes. As the engines were being started, the air-raid sirens went off; several of the Japanese bombers attacking Darwin had broken off their attack and were headed for Batchelor Field. Whether or not they knew the MacArthur party was there, I don’t know.

  All the same, we got off safely, and made the trip to Alice Springs without incident. Alice Springs looks like a town in a cowboy movie, and it’s the northern terminus of the Central Australian Railway…and it lies a good deal beyond the range of the Japanese Mitsubishi bombers.

  Alice Springs, MacArthur announced, was as far as he intended to fly. He could not be moved from this position even after he was told that the next train would not come for six days. And then Ambassador Hurley1 flew in to tell MacArthur that MacA. had been named Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific, by Prime Minister Curtin and President Roosevelt. He also tried to get MacA. to take a plane to Melbourne, but he had no more luck than anybody else.

  So a special train was ordered up. We still had the Air Australia DC-3s. So Hurley and most of MacA. ’s staff—except Huff, Sutherland, and Dr. Morehouse, the intimate guardians of the throne—flew off to Melbourne. I was sorely tempted to fly with them, and I might have gone—until General Sutherland imperiously ordered me to do it.

  I guess I’m learning the Machiavellian rules of the game: I did not think the Personal Representative of the Secretary of the Navy should place himself under the orders of an Army officer.

  The train arrived the next morning. It too looked like something from a cowboy movie: a tiny locomotive, two third-class coaches, and a caboose. The tracks there—between Alice Springs and Adelaide, a thousand-odd miles—are three feet between the rails. Should the Japanese invade Australia, this single-track, narrow-gauge railroad, with rolling stock to match, will simply not be adequate to supply, much less to transport, anything close to an infantry division. Which doesn’t matter, I guess: we don’t have an infantry division to transport; and if we did, one division would obviously not be adequate to repel a Japanese invasion.

  The first coach of the train had wooden seats; and the second held an Australian Army nurse, a couple of Australian Army sergeants, an army field stove, and a supply of food. It was a three-day trip. For the first twenty-four hours, no one spoke to me but the sergeants.

  Then MacArthur sent for me. He ran Sutherland and Huff off and began a nonstop lecture that lasted several hours. Obviously, he was playing to you, vicariously, through me. He began with Japanese economics and politics and how these made the war in the Pacific inevitable. Then he discussed Japanese strategy generally and in the Philippines specifically. He had at his fingertips a literally incredible encyclopedi
a of dates, names, and figures (tonnages, distances, etcetera).

  By the time it was over, I was dazed. Using the word very carefully, the man is clearly a genius. I shall never think of him again as just one more general. It seems to me now that he fits in the same category as Roosevelt and Churchill. I also believe that, like Roosevelt and Churchill, he sees himself as a latter-day Moses, divinely inspired to lead his people out of the desert. In this connection, he feels a personal obligation to the Filipinos.

  MacA. seems to understand that Roosevelt’s decision to aid Britain (and the Russians) first is irrevocable and that, as a good soldier, he will of course support it. But he also makes it plain that he believes the decision was the wrong one, made because (a) Churchill can play Roosevelt like a violin (and I rather agree with that), and (b) George Marshall, who has Roosevelt’s ear, is determined that MacArthur shall not be allowed to demonstrate his military genius (which, of course, is absurd).

  General Marshall (MacA.’s Deputy C/S; not the other one, obviously) boarded the train at a small station several hours before we got to Adelaide the next afternoon. I started to leave, but MacA. motioned for me to stay. Marshall then confirmed what I had told MacA. in Darwin; that there were no troops to speak of in all of Australia; and that there was doubt that Australia itself could be held.

  Marshall said something to MacA. about creating a “Brisbane Line”; the Australian General Staff was planning to abandon the northern ports, including Darwin, to the Japanese, and attempt to hold the population centers along the southern and eastern coasts.

  “They can just forget that,” MacArthur said. “We shall hold Australia.”

  Logic told me, Frank, that that was highly improbable. But my heart told me that we would indeed hold Australia. MacArthur had just said so.

  Marshall also reported that two companies of the 182nd Infantry and a company of Army Engineers had landed on Efate with orders to build an airfield, “whatever the hell that means.”

  Without reference to a map, and more important, without my having told him that Admiral King had ordered the recapture of Rabaul—and if I hadn’t told him, who else had this knowledge and could have?—MacArthur explained that Efate was an island in the New Hebrides, about 700 miles southeast of Tulagi, and that “someone with a knowledge of strategy” had seen the establishment of an air base there as essential to the recapture of Rabaul, which was itself essential to deny the Japanese a chance to make a successful landing on the Australian continent.

  Marshall also told him that there would be reporters waiting for him in Adelaide, and that some sort of a statement would be expected.

  The two of them started to work on that, and were still working on it when he arrived at Adelaide. This is, essentially verbatim, what he said there:

  “The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through, and I shall return.”

  If you want to know what he’s thinking, Frank, I suggest you study that short speech carefully. It was not off the cuff.

  The Commissioner of Railroads had sent his own private car to Adelaide, where it was attached to the Melbourne Express. From Adelaide to Melbourne, the track is standard width. I scurried around getting a sleeper on the train, and had just succeeded when Huff found me. I was, so I was informed, to have one of the staterooms in the private car. I don’t know who was more surprised, Huff or me.

  We got to Spencer Street Station, Melbourne, just before ten a.m. the next day. We backed in, with MacA. standing like a politician on the rear platform of the private car. There were half a hundred reporters in the station, and even an honor guard.

  MacA. delivered another speech, which I am sure was as carefully prepared as the “I shall return” speech in Adelaide. In it, again just about verbatim, he said, “success in modern war means the furnishing of sufficient troops and materiel to meet the known strength of the enemy. No general can make something out of nothing. My success or failure will depend primarily upon the resources which the respective governments place at my disposal.”

  He cold-shouldered General Brett and General Royce at the station, rather cruelly I thought; and I think he’s going to hold a grudge about the B-17s. There is no excuse for it that I can see. Nor—as I just learned from Huff—is there any excuse for recommending the award of a Presidential Unit Citation to every unit on Corregidor except the 4th Marines. His reason for not giving it to the Marines, again quoting Huff, is that “they have enough publicity as it is.”

  He also, politely, refused the offer of several mansions and moved into the Menzies. I can only wonder what will happen when he finds out that lowly Captain Pickering, USNR, occupies an identical apartment directly above him.

  I don’t think he has made up his mind what to do about me, and for the moment, at least, I am considered a member pro tem of the palace guard.

  One final thing: I learned from the Australians that they have left behind, on various islands now (or about to be) occupied by the Japs, former colonial officers, planters, missionaries, etcetera. They are calling these people “Coastwatchers,” and they feel they will be able to provide very valuable intelligence. They have commissioned them into the Royal Australian Navy Reserve, so they’ll be under the Geneva Convention. I suspect that they are just whistling in the wind about that.

  Admiral Leary does not seem to be impressed with their potential. I am. If we have anybody who speaks Japanese, and who can be spared, I suggest you send them over here now to establish a relationship with the Coastwatchers.

  I really hope this is what you were hoping to get from me.

  Respectfully,

  Fleming Pickering, Capt., USNR.

  (Eight)

  Walker Hasslinger’s Restaurant

  Baltimore, Maryland

  1 April 1942

  The basic principles of both leadership and organization have evolved over many centuries. Among the most important of these principles is the chain of command. The military services, and for that matter any organization, may be thought of as a pyramid. Authority and responsibility flow downward from the pinnacle, passing through progressively junior levels of command. Simplistically, if the first sergeant of an infantry company, for example, wants a PFC to load a truck with sandbags, he does not stop the first PFC he encounters and tell him to do so. Instead, he tells a platoon sergeant, who tells a section leader, who tells a corporal, and the corporal selects the PFC who gets the sandbags loaded.

  To do otherwise would create chaos. The corporal would wonder where his PFC had gone without orders. The man in charge of the sandbags would question the PFC’s right to take them away. The truckdriver would not know why sandbags were being loaded on his truck.

  The chain of command is even more important at the highest echelons of military and naval service. Although in law the Secretary of the Navy has the authority, he does not issue direct orders to captains of ships, or even to commanders-in-chief of the various fleets.

  He tells the Chief of Naval Operations what he wants done, in general terms: “I think we should reinforce the Pacific Fleet.” The Chief of Naval Operations decides how the Pacific Fleet should be reinforced, again in rather general terms: “Add a battleship, two cruisers, and a half-dozen destroyers.” As the order moves down through the pyramid, other officers make more specific decisions and issue more specific orders: which battleship, which cruisers, and which destroyers; in other words, which commands will lose assets to reinforce the Pacific Fleet, and when.

  Only six or seven levels down in the chain of command will the captain of a destroyer finally order the officer of the deck to make all preparations to get under way, and then to set course for the Hawaiian Islands. And he will not associate the movement of his vessel with a vague suggestion given to the Chief of Naval Operations by the Secretary of the Navy.

  The chain of
command is so important that it is almost never violated. People at the top, civilian or military, very rarely issue orders to anyone not in the level of command immediately subordinate to them.

  But there are exceptions to every rule.

  Captain David Haughton, USN, Administrative Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, got off the Congressional Limited of the Pennsylvania Railroad and climbed the stairs to the Baltimore Pennsylvania Station. He walked across the waiting room, left the station, and turned right. He was in uniform, and he was carrying a black briefcase.

  A block away, he entered the bar of Walker Hasslinger’s Restaurant, a Baltimore landmark that justly enjoyed the reputation of serving the finest seafood in town. Captain Haughton had been coming to Walker Hasslinger’s since he was a midshipman at Annapolis. He looked up and down the bar for the man he was here to meet, but didn’t find him.

  He took a stool at the bar, and reached for a bowl of oyster crackers.

  “The free lunch went out when the New Deal came in,” a large, red-faced man in chef’s whites said, sliding the bowl out of his reach. “Now it’s cash on the bar.”

  But Eckley Walker, the proprietor, was smiling and extending his hand.

  “How are you, Dave?” he said. “It’s been some time.”

  “You still serving those condemned oysters?” Haughton said.

  “Only to sailors who can’t tell the difference,” Walker said. He snapped his fingers and a bartender appeared. He said only one word, “Rye,” but made certain gestures with his head and hand that conveyed to the waiter that he wanted a dozen oysters and two drinks, the latter from his private bottle of rye whiskey, which was kept out of sight.

  The bartender poured stiff drinks, added a dash of ginger ale, and slid them across the bar.