by H. W. Brands
The North Koreans didn’t wait for the Americans; their lead tank closed in on the Americans’ foxholes. Its turret gun blazed and machine guns wielded by its crew strafed the American positions. “Through my field glasses I could see a blond American head poke up out of the grass,” Higgins wrote. “The young soldier was trying to adjust his aim. Flashes from the tank flicked horribly close, and I thought I saw him fall. It was so murky I wasn’t sure. But in a few minutes I heard a soldier shout, ‘They got Shadrick, right in the chest. He’s dead, I guess.’ ”
The American soldiers gamely kept firing at the enemy tanks but did little damage. The tanks rumbled right past them. The Americans fell back, despondent. “My God, they look as if the ball game was over and it’s time to go home,” a journalist colleague of Higgins’s remarked. Higgins approached a sergeant. “What’s going on?” she asked. The sergeant replied bitterly, “We ran out of ammo. And the enemy infantry moving up way outnumbers us. Besides, these damn bazookas don’t do any good against those heavy tanks—they bounce right off.”
The story was similar all along the front. A lieutenant colonel staggered into his general’s field headquarters. He was exhausted and had a shrapnel wound in his leg. “I’m sorry, sir,” the colonel told the general. “We couldn’t stop them. They came at us from all sides. We fired until we ran out of ammo.” The colonel paused. “We lost a lot of men.”
“The wounded?” the general asked.
“The litter cases were abandoned, sir.”
The general winced. “Let’s hear it from the beginning,” he said.
“Right, sir. As you know, we were dug in north of the town of Osan on ridges on either side of the main road. We had some recoilless 75s, some mortars and other artillery. About eight-thirty in the morning those heavy tanks started rolling in on us. We took them under fire at about fifteen hundred yards and hit four or five. But we couldn’t stop them. They rolled right by our positions. We sent the bazooka boys down, but their fire couldn’t hurt that armor. Pretty soon the tanks got around to our rear and were shooting at our positions from behind. Then the infantry came in with automatic weapons and rifles. Some were dressed like farmers, in whites, and the rest had on mustard-colored uniforms. They came in like flies, all around us. We had no way of protecting ourselves from encirclement. We didn’t have enough men to deploy. Then we got caught in the cross fire of the tanks and infantry.”
A captain whose company was assigned to defend the town of Chonan had a similar experience. “The gooks really trapped us,” he told Higgins. “They let us through the town, then came at us from the hills and from the rear. Those tanks must have been there all the time, hidden behind those deserted-looking houses. We got lots of them”—the North Korean soldiers—“but you can’t get a tank with a carbine.”
Even after American tanks arrived, they often proved no match for the heavier Russian tanks the North Koreans used. An infantry sergeant complained bitterly after trying to lead a counterattack: “Them American tanks run out on us the minute they heard the Russian babies coming round the corner. I asked the tank commander where the hell he thought he was going. He had the nerve to tell me he was heading back because his tank was at an unfair disadvantage against Russian armor. I asked that slob what sort of armor he thought I had on my back.”
The soldiers’ anger grew. Early efforts by American fighter planes to lend support to ground operations often did as much damage to the Americans as to the enemy. Higgins overheard a GI complain, after one close call from friendly fire, “Why don’t those jet guys either stay at thirty thousand feet or go back to the officers’ club?” A lieutenant who barely survived a firefight accosted Higgins demanding to know what she was writing for the home audience. “Are you correspondents telling the people back home the truth? Are you telling them that out of one platoon of twenty men, we have three left? Are you telling them that we have nothing to fight with, and that it is an utterly useless war?”
—
WHAT MACARTHUR NEEDED was more U.S. troops; what he got first was command of a UN coalition. Negotiations between the Truman administration and the UN led to a Security Council resolution authorizing the United States to direct a unified command and the American president to name the commander, who would report to the UN through the U.S. chain of command.
Truman never considered anyone except MacArthur, who was officially apprised of his appointment by the joint chiefs. MacArthur responded directly to Truman. His words, soon made public, could not have seemed warmer. “I recall so vividly and with such gratitude that this is the second time you have so signally honored me,” he radiogrammed the president. “Your personal choice five years ago as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan placed me under an intimate obligation which would be difficult for me ever to repay, and you have now added to my debt. I can only repeat the pledge of my complete personal loyalty to you as well as an absolute devotion to your monumental struggle for peace and good will throughout the world. I hope I will not fail you.”
Truman responded in like manner, also for the benefit of the American people and the world. “I deeply appreciate the letter and the spirit of your message,” the president wrote to the general. “Your words confirm me—if any confirmation were needed—in my full belief in the wisdom of your selection. With my warm regards and all good wishes, I am sincerely yours, Harry S. Truman.”
—
EVEN MORE WELCOME was the first good news from the front. The arrival of additional American troops slowed the North Korean advance and stemmed the panic that had gripped South Korea. The prospect of the imminent conquest of the entire country by the North Koreans was dispelled. “This chance he has now lost through the extraordinary speed with which the 8th Army has been employed from Japan to stem his rush,” MacArthur wrote from Tokyo. Truman would tire of the self-congratulatory tone of MacArthur’s missives, but for now the president was simply relieved that South Korea wouldn’t be overrun by the communists. He forgave more of MacArthur’s grandiloquence as the general sketched a strategy for the weeks and months ahead. “Over a broad front involving continuous local struggles, there are bound to be ups and downs, losses as well as successes,” MacArthur wrote. “But the issue of battle is now fully joined and will proceed along lines of action in which we will not be without choice….We are now in Korea in force, and with God’s help we are there to stay until the constitutional authority of the Republic is fully restored.”
MacArthur likely guessed that Truman would quote him, as the president indeed did in a radio address to the American people. “The issue of battle is now fully joined,” Truman repeated. “We are now in Korea in force, and with God’s help we are there to stay.” Truman also quoted Joe Collins, who had just returned from a trip to Korea and Japan, where he had given MacArthur a United Nations flag to fly over his headquarters. The army chief of staff praised “General MacArthur’s magnificent leadership,” which had inspired him to declare, “The task that confronts us is not an easy one, but I am confident of the outcome.”
The good feeling of the moment prompted Truman to pay MacArthur the courtesy of giving him an advance look at a message he was preparing to send to Congress about the conflict in Korea. The message was the administration’s first serious accounting of what had happened in Korea, and it included a request for new funding that proved to be the administration’s closest approximation to a request for a war declaration. “To meet the situation in Korea, we shall need to send additional men, equipment and supplies to General MacArthur’s command as rapidly as possible,” the president told the legislators. “The hard facts of the present situation require relentless determination and firm action. The course of the fighting thus far in Korea shows that we can expect no easy solution to the conflict there. We are confronted in Korea with well-supplied, well-led forces which have been long trained for aggressive action. We and the other members of the United Nations who have joined in the effort to restore peace in Korea must expect a hard
and costly military operation.”
MacArthur responded as effusively as before. “It is a great state paper, in ultimate effect perhaps the most significant of modern times, for it means that the United States has determined that the Pacific areas shall be free,” the general wrote to Truman. “I am sure that the historian of the future will regard it as the focal and turning point of this era’s struggle for civilization. I am proud and honored to serve under your leadership at so vital a moment. That God will preserve and protect you in your monumental task is the fervent prayer of every member of this command.”
16
YET THE MUTUAL admiration was for appearances only. James Reston was one of the most distinguished journalists in America and perhaps the best-connected member of the Washington press corps. Capital insiders fed Reston information even as they read his articles and columns to see if he was treating them as well as they were treating him. When Reston wrote about MacArthur, his words spoke as much for off-the-record Washington as they did for the New York Times, which paid his salary. Following MacArthur’s appointment as UN commander, Reston reflected on the challenges the new position held. “General Douglas MacArthur, at 70, is now entering upon the most delicate political mission of his illustrious career,” Reston wrote. “As Commander in Chief of United Nations forces in defense of South Korea, he is asked to be not only a great soldier but a great statesman; not only to direct the battle, but to satisfy the Pentagon, the State Department and the United Nations in the process.” Reston wondered—which was to say, important figures in Washington wondered—if MacArthur was up to the job. “He has in the past had much larger forces under his control, and on many occasions he has had to act for other nations besides his own; but never before has he been asked to display political qualities so foreign to his own nature.” Reston, with many others, compared MacArthur with Dwight Eisenhower, who had led the Allied armies to victory in Europe. The comparison did not work to MacArthur’s advantage. “Eisenhower had a genius for international teamwork,” Reston said. “Like most great soldiers, General MacArthur is a sovereign power in his own right, with stubborn confidence in his own judgment. Diplomacy and a vast concern for the opinions and sensitivities of others are the political qualities essential to this new assignment, and these are precisely the qualities General MacArthur has been accused of lacking in the past. Not even the General’s detractors, who are many in this city, question his ability to handle the military side of the battle; but even in the present developing crisis he has demonstrated his old habit of doing things in his own way, without too much concern about waiting for orders from Washington.” Reston’s sources had provided particulars. “His instructions in the first few days of the Korean operation were to restrict his attacks to the area of Korea south of the Thirty-eighth Parallel, but despite official denials, responsible officials here still insist that his planes attacked the North Korean capital before President Truman authorized any such action.” MacArthur’s high-handedness had prompted stronger orders from Washington. “Since then, he has been instructed in specific terms to stay out of the area of the Soviet Union’s main Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, and to keep his planes and ships away from the territory and territorial waters of the Soviet Union and Communist China.”
—
MACARTHUR’S POLITICAL SENSE became an issue in late July when he traveled to Formosa. Louis Johnson and the joint chiefs had grown worried by signs that the Chinese might be preparing an invasion of Formosa; they recommended to Truman that MacArthur be sent to the island to survey the situation there. Truman approved the recommendation.
He soon wished he hadn’t. MacArthur met with Chiang Kai-shek for two days, at the end of which Chiang pronounced his delight at the decisions he and the American general had made. “An agreement was reached between General MacArthur and myself on all the problems discussed,” Chiang said. “The foundation for a joint defense of Formosa and for Sino-American military cooperation has thus been laid. It is our conviction that our struggle against Communist aggression will certainly result in final victory.”
Truman offered no public response to Chiang’s statement, which seriously misrepresented American policy toward the Chinese Nationalists. Truman was still trying to disentangle the United States from Chiang and the Nationalists; there was no plan for a joint defense of Formosa. At the very least the president insisted that any decision about future relations with Formosa be his decision and not Chiang’s.
And not MacArthur’s. Truman couldn’t tell from Chiang’s statement where the misrepresentation had arisen: with Chiang or with MacArthur. MacArthur didn’t dispute Chiang’s claim about a military agreement, but neither did he confirm it. In fact, he hadn’t even filed a report of the trip to the joint chiefs, under whose direction he had gone to Formosa.
Truman dispatched Averell Harriman to Tokyo to get to the bottom of things. Harriman was a son of railroad magnate E. H. Harriman who had gone into banking and then diplomatic troubleshooting. He conducted delicate missions for Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, and Truman concluded that if Harriman could handle Stalin and Churchill, he might be a match for MacArthur.
The general made a show of welcoming his visitor. “Harriman and I were friends of long standing,” he remarked later. “While superintendent of West Point I had hunted ducks on his preserve near Tuxedo.” He brought Harriman into his confidence. “We discussed fully global conditions.” Yet beneath the amicable aspect of the conversations, each man was probing the other. MacArthur didn’t like what he discovered. “I found him careful and cautious in what he said, but gained these very definite impressions: that there was no fixed and comprehensive United States policy for the Far East; that foreign influences, especially those of Great Britain, were very powerful in Washington; that there was no apparent interest in mounting an offensive against the Communists; that we were content to attempt to block their moves, but not to initiate any counter-moves; that we would defend Formosa if attacked, just as we had done in Korea; that President Truman had conceived a violent animosity toward Chiang Kai-shek; and that anyone who favored the Generalissimo might well arouse the President’s disfavor.” MacArthur concluded, “He left me with a feeling of concern and uneasiness that the situation in the Far East was little understood and mistakenly downgraded in high circles in Washington.”
Harriman was no less worried by what he gleaned from MacArthur. “General MacArthur met me at Haneda Airport,” Harriman reported to Truman after the visit. “He drove me to the guest house at the Embassy. As the window between the driver and his aide, and ourselves, was open, our conversation was general.” MacArthur described the tremendous progress the Japanese had made since the war. “He spoke of the great quality of the Japanese; his desire to work, the satisfaction of the Japanese in work, his respect for the dignity of work. He compared it unfavorably to the desire in the United States for more luxury and less work.” MacArthur said the Japanese had been heartened by America’s strong reaction to the North Korean invasion of South Korea. “They interpreted it to mean that we would vigorously defend them against Russian invasion. They were not disturbed by our temporary difficulties, since they understood the military difficulties caused by the surprise attack. Their pride had been aroused by ‘his’ confidence in them, shown by the withdrawal of most of the American troops. He could withdraw them all without any danger of disorder in Japan.”
When they could speak more freely, MacArthur and Harriman broached more-sensitive topics. They started with Korea. “He did not believe that the Russians had any present intention of intervening directly, or becoming involved in a general war,” Harriman told Truman. “He believed the same was true of the Chinese Communists.” Yet the Russians and the Chinese were helping the North Koreans, supplying military training and volunteers. MacArthur evinced respect for the North Koreans as fighters. “Their tactics had been skillful, and they were as capable and tough as any army in his military experience.” This reflected their Asian h
eritage, MacArthur told Harriman. “He described the difference between the attitude towards death of Westerners and Orientals. We hate to die; only face danger out of a sense of duty and through moral issues; whereas with Orientals, life begins with death. They die quietly, ‘folding their arms as a dove folding his wings, relaxing, and dying.’ ”
Harriman raised the issue of Formosa. “I told him the President wanted me to tell him he must not permit Chiang to be the cause of starting a war with the Chinese communists on the mainland, the effect of which might be to drag us into a world war. He answered that he would, as a soldier, obey any orders he received from the President. He said that he had discussed only military matters with the Generalissimo on his trip to Formosa. He had refused to discuss any political subjects when the Generalissimo attempted to do so. The Generalissimo had offered him command of the Chinese National troops. MacArthur had replied that that was not appropriate, but that he would be willing to give military advice if requested by the Generalissimo to do so.”
Harriman suspected MacArthur wasn’t telling him the complete story. “For reasons which are rather difficult to explain,” Harriman wrote to Truman, “I did not feel that we came to a full agreement on the way we believed things should be handled on Formosa and with the Generalissimo. He accepted the President’s position and will act accordingly, but without full conviction. He has a strange idea that we should back anybody who will fight communism, even though he could not give an argument why the Generalissimo’s fighting communists would be a contribution towards the effective dealing with the communists in China. I pointed out to him the basic conflict of interest between the U.S. and the Generalissimo’s position as to the future of Formosa, namely the preventing of Formosa’s falling into hostile hands. Perhaps the best way would be through the medium of the UN to establish an independent government. Chiang, on the other hand, had only the burning ambition to use Formosa as a stepping-stone for his re-entry to the mainland. MacArthur recognized that this ambition could not be fulfilled, and yet thought it might be a good idea to let him land and get rid of him that way. He did not seem to consider the liability that our support of Chiang on such a move would be to us in the East. I explained in great detail why Chiang was a liability, and the great danger of a split in the unity of the United Nations on the Chinese-Communist-Formosa policies; the attitude of the British, Nehru and such countries as Norway, who, although stalwart in their determination to resist Russian aggression, do not want to stir up trouble elsewhere. I pointed out the great importance of maintaining UN unity among the friendly countries, and the complications that might result from any missteps in dealing with China and Formosa.”