The General vs. the President

by H. W. Brands

  The editors asked the question MacArthur most urgently wanted to answer on the record: “Are the limitations which prevent unlimited pursuit of Chinese large forces and unlimited attack on their bases regarded by you as a handicap to effective military operations?”

  “An enormous handicap without precedent in military history,” MacArthur said.

  The editors asked a corollary question, the one MacArthur thought Truman and the administration were obsessing over needlessly: “Are there any signs of Russian divisions being mobilized on their border?”

  “No detection of such mobilization,” he said.

  The editors teed MacArthur up for another swing at the constraints on his war fighting. “What accounts for the fact that an enemy without air power can make effective progress against forces possessing considerable air power?”

  “The limitations aforementioned,” he said, “plus the type of maneuver which renders air support of ground operations extremely difficult, and the curtailment of the strategic potentiality of the air because of the sanctuary of neutrality immediately behind the battle area.”

  “Is there a significant lesson in this for U.S. planning?” the editors asked, lest MacArthur’s superiors fail to miss the message.

  “Yes,” he said simply. His previous answers had provided the details.

  The editors asked MacArthur about atomic weapons. “Can anything be said as to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the bomb in the type of operations in which you are now engaged?”

  MacArthur had learned from Truman’s fumbles at the recent press conference. “My comment would be inappropriate at this time,” he said.

  37

  TRUMAN GREW LIVID as he read MacArthur’s interview. U.S. News & World Report scooped itself—and promoted the issue containing the MacArthur interview—by releasing the general’s comments ahead of publication. “Tell General MacArthur we regarded his statement as so important and opportune that we gave it in full text to all the press associations for immediate publication,” David Lawrence of the magazine explained by radiogram to MacArthur’s headquarters.

  Truman read the interview with the rest of America and could hardly contain himself. “I should have relieved General MacArthur then and there,” he wrote later. He thought MacArthur’s statements dishonest and entirely out of line. He bridled at the general’s assertions and implications that all would have been well if only the president and the joint chiefs had listened to him. “In the first place, of course, he was wrong,” Truman said. “If his advice had been taken, then or later, and if we had gone ahead and bombed the Manchurian bases, we would have been openly at war with Red China and, not improbably, with Russia. World War III might very well have been upon us. In the second place, General MacArthur himself had been the one who had said there was no danger of Chinese intervention. At Wake Island he had told me categorically that he had no evidence that a massed intervention was threatening. More important still, he had told me that he could easily cope with the Chinese Communists if they actually came in. He had said that if the Communists from China tried to retake Pyongyang they would be inviting mass slaughter. Even before he started his ill-fated offensive of November 24, he still talked as if he had the answer to all the questions. But when it turned out that it was not so, he let all the world know that he would have won except for the fact that we would not let him have his way.”

  Truman recalled from his army days the prerogative of subordinates to complain at the stupidity of their superiors. “Of course every second lieutenant knows best what his platoon ought to be given to do, and he always thinks that the higher-ups are just blind when they don’t see his way.” The difference was that second lieutenants didn’t air their grievances for the world to hear. “General MacArthur—and rightly, too—would have court-martialed any second lieutenant who gave press interviews to express his disagreement.”

  Truman was tempted to fire MacArthur, but didn’t. “The reason I did not was that I did not wish to have it appear as if he were being relieved because the offensive failed. I have never believed in going back on people when luck is against them, and I did not intend to do it now. Nor did I want to reprimand the general, but he had to be told that the kinds of public statements which he had been making were out of order.”

  Truman’s action was less decisive than his later remarks let on. He sent no message to MacArthur specifically, on the matter of public statements and interviews. Instead he issued a gag order binding all officials of the executive branch, civilian and military. They must clear statements on foreign policy with their superiors. And American officials overseas, including diplomats and military officers, must refrain from speaking directly to reporters on foreign or military policy.

  —

  ANOTHER REASON TRUMAN didn’t fire MacArthur was that he had cause to believe Korea was about to become the least of America’s problems. On December 2 the CIA delivered a sobering assessment of what the full-blown Chinese intervention in Korea portended. “The attitude of the Chinese Communist regime and urgent defensive preparations in China show that this intervention was undertaken with appreciation of the risk of general war between the United States and Communist China and perhaps in expectation of such a development,” the CIA authors said. They continued, and this was the main point, “It is highly improbable that the Chinese Communist regime would have accepted this risk without explicit assurance of effective Soviet support.”

  The Kremlin’s likely course of action seemed clear to the CIA. It would back China with material support, technical personnel and perhaps “volunteers.” In particular it would provide warplanes, pilots, anti-aircraft artillery and gunners to defend Chinese targets against air attack. And it would probably go to the open and forceful aid of China, under the terms of the Sino-Soviet treaty, in the event of major American or UN operations against Chinese territory. Moscow apparently had made its decision with its eyes open. “The Soviet rulers, in directing or sanctioning the Chinese Communist intervention in Korea, must have appreciated the increased risk of global war and have felt ready to accept such a development.”

  The CIA didn’t conjecture whether the Soviets hoped for a global war at the present time. But whether they did or not, embroiling the United States in a war with China suited their aims. “If the Soviet rulers do now intend to bring on such a war, they might well prefer that it should develop from the situation in East Asia. On the other hand, even if they do not intend to precipitate a global war, they must estimate that a broadening of the Korean war into a general war between the United States and China would be advantageous to the U.S.S.R.” A general war between the United States and China would slow the arming of the Atlantic alliance. It would foster dissension among the allies. It would fracture the UN coalition on Korea and weaken the international organization.

  And it would hearten communist movements elsewhere in Asia. In sum, though the CIA authors didn’t put it quite this way, a broader war between the United States and China would be about the best Christmas present the Kremlin could receive.

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  MACARTHUR WASN’T THINKING about Russia. He was worried about China and about holding his forces together in the face of the Chinese onslaught. The optimism of November wholly vanished by the first week of December. “The X Corps is being withdrawn into the Hamhung area as rapidly as possible,” he wrote to the joint chiefs on December 3. “The situation within the Eighth Army becomes increasingly critical. General Walker reports, and I agree with his estimate, that he cannot hold the Pyongyang area and under enemy pressure, when exerted, will unquestionably be forced to withdraw to the Seoul area.” The chiefs had urged MacArthur to link X Corps and the Eighth Army, the better to fend off the Chinese. MacArthur pronounced this impracticable and counterproductive. “Both forces are completely outnumbered and their junction would, therefore, not only not produce added strength but actually jeopardize the free flow of movement that arises from the two separate logistical lines of naval suppl
y and maneuver.”

  The chiefs had also recommended a retreat to the narrow waist of the Korean peninsula, above the 38th parallel. MacArthur rejected this advice as well. “The development of a defense line across the waist of Korea is not feasible because of the numerical weakness of our forces as considered in connection with the distances involved; by the necessity of supplying the two parts of the line from ports within each area; and by the division of the area into two compartments by the rugged mountainous terrain running north and south.” The line proposed was some 120 miles long, by air, and 150 miles by road. “If the entire United States force of seven divisions at my disposal were placed along this defensive line it would mean that a division would be forced to protect a front of approximately 20 miles against greatly superior numbers of an enemy whose greatest strength is a potential for night infiltration through rugged terrain. Such a line with no depth would have little strength, and as a defensive concept would invite penetration with resultant envelopment and piecemeal destruction.”

  MacArthur thought the chiefs—and the president—failed to understand the meaning of China’s open entry into the war. “Already Chinese troops to the estimated strength of approximately 26 divisions are in line of battle with an additional minimum of 200,000 to the enemy rear and now in process of being committed to action. In addition to this, remnants of the North Korean Army are being reorganized in the rear and there stands, of course, behind all this the entire military potential of Communist China.” The Chinese action was no limited incursion but a full-scale war against the United States.

  MacArthur complained again at the limitations imposed on him by the chiefs and the president. The artificial sanctity of the international boundary effectively neutralized his air force, reducing the battle to an unwinnable contest of ground troops. “It is clearly evident, therefore, that unless ground reinforcements of the greatest magnitude are promptly supplied, this command will be either forced into successive withdrawals with diminished powers of resistance after each such move, or will be forced to take up beachhead bastion positions which, while insuring a degree of prolonged resistance, would afford little hope of anything beyond defense.”

  MacArthur stated things as starkly as he could. “The general evaluation of the situation here must be viewed on the basis of an entirely new war against an entirely new power of great military strength and under entirely new conditions.” The U.S. government was asking too much of its soldiers in Korea. “This small command actually under present conditions is facing the entire Chinese nation in an undeclared war,” he said. “And unless some positive and immediate action is taken, hope for success cannot be justified and steady attrition leading to final destruction can reasonably be contemplated.”

  He insisted on receiving new orders. “The directives under which I am operating based upon the North Korean forces as an enemy are completely outmoded by events. The fact must be clearly understood that our relatively small force now faces the full offensive power of the Chinese Communist nation augmented by extensive supply of Soviet materiel.” Washington decreed disaster for America’s troops if it did not recognize the new reality and act accordingly. “Time is of the essence, as every hour sees the enemy power increase and ours decline.”

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  MACARTHUR DIDN’T GET new orders. All he got were recommendations from the joint chiefs, who couldn’t bring themselves to issue a direct order. Matthew Ridgway was Joe Collins’s deputy and a tough-minded fighting general. Military service ran in Ridgway’s family, and he had followed his father from one army base to another while a boy. Yet he was an indifferent cadet at West Point, hardly registering in the consciousness of Commandant MacArthur, and he first won notice, during World War II, only as commander of a novelty in the U.S. Army, an airborne division. The Eighty-Second Airborne fought well in Italy and France, and an enlarged Ridgway command helped turn the tide in the Battle of the Bulge. By war’s end Ridgway had earned a reputation as a commander with a knack for reversing bad situations.

  He also was known for having little tolerance for nonsense from either subordinates or superiors. Ridgway sat in on the meetings of the joint chiefs at which the dire condition of MacArthur’s command was reviewed, and he thought the chiefs were engaged in nonsense with MacArthur by not issuing him an order. After one meeting he asked Hoyt Vandenberg about their diffidence. “Why don’t the chiefs send orders to MacArthur and tell him what to do?” Ridgway inquired.

  Vandenberg shook his head. “What good would that do? He wouldn’t obey the orders. What can we do?”

  “You can relieve any commander who won’t obey orders, can’t you?”

  Vandenberg didn’t answer. “His lips parted and he looked at me with an expression both puzzled and amazed,” Ridgway recounted later. “He walked away then without saying a word and I never afterward had occasion to discuss this with him.”

  38

  MAGGIE HIGGINS HAD heard lots of officers give lots of orders, but she hadn’t heard an officer give an order that caused him such anguish as that evinced by a marine colonel in Korea in December 1950. The Chinese counteroffensive had trapped much of the Marine First Division near Chosin Reservoir in the mountains of far North Korea, and Radio Peking was predicting their rapid annihilation. Lieutenant Colonel Ray Murray understood the long odds against his command; the Chinese outnumbered the Americans by several to one and had the Americans surrounded. “The snow lashed hard at the raw faces of a dozen marine officers as they stood in the zero temperature listening to the words of their commander,” Higgins recalled of a meeting at Hagaru that Murray allowed her to observe. She knew of the marine tradition of always fighting to the front, of retreating only in extremis. Murray knew the tradition better than she did, and he had great difficulty with the words he was compelled to speak. “At daylight,” he said, “we advance to the rear. Those are division orders.”

  Murray didn’t like the orders, so he added a personal sentiment and gloss: “We’re going to come out of this as marines, not as stragglers. We’re going to bring out our wounded and our equipment. We’re coming out, I tell you, as marines or not at all.” He thought some more. “This is no retreat,” he declared. “This is an assault in another direction. There are more Chinese blocking our path to the sea than there are ahead of us. But we’re going to get out of here. Any officer who doesn’t think so will kindly go lame and be evacuated. I don’t expect any takers.”

  Higgins knew the marines had been through hell already. She could see it in their faces and their posture. “They had the dazed air of men who have accepted death and then found themselves alive after all. They talked in unfinished phrases. They would start to say something and then stop, as if the meaning was beyond any words at their command.”

  The marines were bitter. They felt they had been poorly commanded. They had been placed in X Corps and were subject to army orders. They had been ordered to advance, to take the town of Yudamni, even after the Chinese had come dangerously close to their left flank. When the Eighth Army, to their west, was sent reeling, their left flank collapsed and they were surrounded. “Yudamni was the ideal trap,” Higgins wrote. “Steep-sided valleys led to it along a narrow, icy road. The Chinese hugged the ridges, and the marines were easy targets.” The intensifying winter added to their danger and misery. “The temperature dropped way below zero. Guns and vehicles froze. The marines had to chip ice off the mortars to fire them. Carbines jammed in the cold.” Frostbite claimed fingers, toes, ears and noses. The wounded suffered the worst, being unable to move and generate even a little warmth.

  Those who had made it out of Yudamni appeared as though they could hardly go farther. “As I looked at the battered men there at Hagaru,” Higgins wrote, “I wondered if they could possibly have the strength to make this final punch. The men were ragged, their faces swollen and bleeding from the sting of the icy wind. Mittens were torn and raveled. Some were without hats, their ears blue in the frost. A few walked to the doctor’s tent ba
refoot because they couldn’t get their frostbitten feet into their frozen shoepacs. They were drunk with fatigue, and yet they were unable to shrug off the tension that had kept them going five days and nights without sleep and often without food.”

  But they had no choice. If they were going to get out, they had to keep moving. “It was a battle all the way,” Higgins recounted. “The frost and wind, howling through the narrow pass, were almost as deadly as the enemy. Bumper to bumper, trucks, half-tracks, and bulldozers slipped and scraped down the mountain. Half a dozen vehicles skidded and careened off the road. Mortars lobbed in, and sometimes the convoy had to stop for hours while engineers filled the holes. It was a struggle to keep from freezing during these waits.”

  The cold became a greater enemy than the Chinese. “Most of the marines were so numb and exhausted that they didn’t even bother to take cover at sporadic machine-gun and rifle fire,” Higgins wrote. “When someone was killed they would wearily, matter-of-factly pick up the body and throw it in the nearest truck.”

  One of Higgins’s journalist colleagues watched a marine chiseling breakfast out of a frozen tin of beans. His fingers were nearly frozen, too, and he could barely hold his spoon. The journalist asked the marine what he would ask for, if he could have any wish.

  “Gimme tomorrow,” the marine said, not looking up from his beans.

  The marine column got a tomorrow, and then another. After two agonizing weeks they reached the coast at Hamhung. Higgins recounted the relief expressed by one marine captain. “We’ve really got it made now,” he said. “I don’t know if I can tell you how the guys feel. It’s not having to look for a place to hide. It’s being able to sleep without feeling guilty. It’s being able to eat something warm. It’s not having to spend most of your time just trying not to freeze to death.”