Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  Yet MacArthur was enchanted by it. To be in the same rooms, walk down the same halls, and attend the same classes—sometimes the same lectures—as Robert E. Lee (class of 1829), Ulysses S. Grant (class of 1843), Phil Sheridan (class of 1853), Jeb Stuart (class of 1854), George Armstrong Custer (class of 1861), and nearly every successful general currently serving in the army except his father was sometimes overwhelming. “As an Army brat, it was the fulfillment of all my boyish dreams,” he wrote in 1947. “[T]he pride and thrill of being a West Pointer has never dimmed.”25

  To be part of West Point was to be part of history, but it was also a responsibility. “You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national defense,” he once told a class of graduating cadets. “[F]rom your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation’s destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us”—and he would never fail the Corps and what it stood for.

  He had arrived at West Point determined not just to succeed but to surpass every one of his classmates in everything—and he nearly did. He “was one of the hardest working men I have ever known,” his first roommate remembered. “His every energy was directed toward the attainment of…number one in his class.” He was helped in this by the fact that his first roommate was also an upperclassman who had been impressed by MacArthur’s drive and dedication the first time he set eyes on him during Beast Barracks, and invited him to be his roommate. That was a lucky break for Douglas, because first classmen had the privilege of keeping their lights on until 11:00 P.M., which for Douglas meant a precious extra hour of study. He was also regularly up an hour before reveille, hitting the books in everything from chemistry, physics, and mathematics (the mainstays of the curriculum at the Point) to geology, history, French, and Spanish (introduced after the start of the Spanish-American War).26

  The teaching was perfunctory; none of the instructors in French, for example, could speak the language. Instead, cadets learned to prepare their lessons themselves, then come to class and recite the answers to questions instructors had assigned them during the previous class.27 It wasn’t an educational system designed to bring out much original thinking or creativity. But it gave a student like MacArthur, who possessed a virtual photographic memory and intense self-discipline, a guaranteed head start over students who were less responsive to rote memorization and didn’t take books all that seriously.

  But Douglas did, and by June 1900, of the 134 cadets still in his class he was first in math, first in English, first in drill regulations, and first on the Order of General Merit. Nor were his accomplishments limited to the classroom. He also worked hard at sports at the Point, starting with playing left field for the baseball team. “I was far from a brilliant ball player,” he admitted years later. “I was no Ty Cobb but in those days I could run”—and as a classmate noted, he always managed to find a way to get on base either by drawing a walk or bunting his way to first. He managed to score the winning run in the very first Army-Navy baseball game at Annapolis, on May 18, 1901, earning him a dark blue letter “A,” which he wore first on a sweater and then on a succession of gray dressing gowns for the rest of his life.28

  What stood out in his mind sixty years later was not so much the score of the game but the raucous song the Navy cadets sang to him as he and the rest of the Army players walked onto the field:

  Are you the Governor General

  Or a hobo?

  Who is the boss of this show?

  Is it you or Emilio Aquinaldo?29

  Yet it was from his father’s years in the Philippines that Douglas MacArthur would draw valuable lessons for his own future, fighting in foreign lands.

  The first lesson was that politicians in Washington, and their emissaries like William Howard Taft, never understand the real situation on the ground in making policy and so most of their recommendations are grounded in ignorance or bias, or both.

  The second was that when an American army finds itself occupying a foreign country against its will, the best initial policy is a fierce severity. “You can’t put down a rebellion,” wrote Major General Lord Wheaton in 1900, “by throwing confetti and sprinkling perfumery.” The severity, however, must be followed by mercy and a generosity that throws opponents off balance, and points the way to a lasting peace.30

  Finally, Arthur MacArthur taught his son that America’s role in Asia was different from those of other Western nations who were busy seizing trade concessions and colonies. It was to lend the light of liberty to people who had never experienced its warm, comforting glow, and to make America the symbol of freedom in a world that at times seemed to put a premium on its opposite.

  Upon his return to the United States, Arthur MacArthur was ordered to appear before Congress. Representatives, especially on the Democratic side, were outraged by reported atrocities by American troops.

  Arthur MacArthur deftly parried the attacks and criticism. He admitted that some individuals may have committed outrages, but said, “I doubt that any war—either international or civil, any war on earth—[has] been conducted with as much humanity, with as much careful consideration, with as much self-restraint…as have the American operations in the Philippine archipelago.”

  He also spoke highly of the Filipinos. “They like our institutions,” he told the senators. “They have some mistrust of us individually, because our deportment is so entirely different.” But “I have a good deal of faith, in them, they are smart, generous and intelligent people…I do not think there is a question about the power of the Filipino to reach any standard of excellence in almost any direction.”

  Then he finished by lecturing the senators on the importance of a continuing American presence in the Philippines, saying: “The archipelago’s strategical position is unexcelled by that of any other position on the globe. [It is] relatively better placed than Japan…likewise, India…It affords a means of protecting American interest which, with the least output of physical power, has the effect of a commanding position…It is the stepping stone to commanding influence—political, commercial, and military supremacy in the East.”31

  It was a view his son would inherit, and uphold for the rest of his life.

  —

  The son, meanwhile, had created at West Point a record that was nothing less than astonishing.

  Douglas MacArthur would rank first in his class for three of his four years, dropping to fourth in his third year—but still in the top five “distinguished cadets.” When he graduated in 1903, the gap between MacArthur’s merits total (2,424 out of a possible 2,470 or 98 percent) and that of the runner-up, Cadet Charles T. Leeds, was bigger than the gap separating Leeds from the man in fifth place. In addition to being the class First Captain, he led his class in mathematics, English, drill regulations, history, ordnance and gunnery, law, and military efficiency. His scores in English, history, and law were perfect—100 percent of all possible merits.32

  Some said it was the most outstanding graduating record since Robert E. Lee’s in the class of 1829. Most agreed it was the best in a quarter century.

  But for Douglas, the highest reward was having both his parents present for the graduation ceremony on June 11, 1903. There was his father, Arthur, fresh from his triumphs in the Philippines, and his mother, Mary, with whom he spent a half hour every afternoon during the two years she had been with him at West Point, discussing his studies, his hopes, his problems—the person who had been his emotional rock in the most trying times of his life.

  At West Point he had learned the power of self-discipline, and of self-assertion. It was customary in a cadet’s last year that he could be exempted from taking the final exam in mathematics if he had maintained a certain grade point average.

  When Douglas saw his name on the list of cadets who were not exempt—because the teacher insisted that he had missed a single quiz—he exploded. He told his instructor point-blank that he wouldn’t take the exam, no matter what. “If my name is not off that
list before 9 A.M. in the morning,” he told his roommate at the time, George Cocheu, “I’ll resign!”

  Cocheu winced. “But what will your father say?”

  “He will be terribly disappointed, but I believe he will see my attitude in the matter and approve my action.”

  At 8:50 MacArthur got the news. The instructor had relented.33

  He also got his first experience in leadership. Even during summer camp of his first year, older cadets recognized that this was a person born to be in charge.

  In his second year the tactical officer of A Company, an artillery officer, watched MacArthur drill a squad of inexperienced plebes. The officer turned to the cadet next to him and said with astonishment, “There’s the finest drill master I have ever seen.”34

  At this point his identification with his father was total. His roommate Arthur Hyde remembered Douglas being obsessed with measuring up to his father’s standard. “He often wondered if he would be as great a man as his father—and thought if hard work would make him so, he had a chance.”35 His years at West Point seemed to prove him right. But it was his mother, Mary, who had enabled him first to take on, and then endure, the most difficult of all the crises that he underwent at the Point. In the end, it was her trust and approval, even more than his father’s, that would serve as the emotional foundation for his career and future.

  His longtime aide and friend, Brigadier General Tommy Davis, who worked with him in the twenties and thirties, grasped this essential truth about the commanding officer whom he deeply admired but also understood. “The goal instilled in him was to be Superman,” was how Davis explained it to a colleague. “MacArthur’s tie to his mother…represented possessiveness and dominance, with the son never free of an imposed destiny or from fear of failing it.”36 Although the career he had chosen was his father’s, and his goals the same as his, it was his mother who shaped the ways in which he would achieve those goals, starting at West Point.

  For all these reasons, it was no wonder he could tell his roommate, “Next to my family, I love West Point,” and tell the assembled cadets on the Plain fifty-five years later in his last public speech, “When I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps—and the Corps—and the Corps.”37

  It was a sincere declaration of what the academy had meant to him, but also what it had enabled him to become.

  CHAPTER 4

  YOUNG MAN GOING EAST

  Asia is now the land of commerce, where the heated imagination can indulge the boldest assumptions, since it is essentially an unknown country.

  —ARTHUR MACARTHUR, “CHINESE MEMORANDUM,” 1882

  To a person just graduating from college, the world can seem a place of almost unlimited possibilities—or a place from which to seek permanent refuge. The first was true of Douglas MacArthur, and with good reason. After graduation from West Point, he enjoyed a two-month furlough with his parents in San Francisco before starting on his first assignment as a second lieutenant of engineers. Douglas had learned he would be heading to the country that his father had just left, the Philippines, in order to join the Third Engineer Battalion.

  Now he would have a chance to see firsthand what his father had wrought in his four years as military governor there. The son would also start to forge his own links with the people and nation with whom he would be identified more than with any other country, including his own.

  But before he left, the young West Point graduate spent many hours listening to his father explain his view that the Filipinos were America’s future friends in Asia. Douglas would often spend the day in General MacArthur’s San Francisco office now that his father was commander of the Division of the Pacific. Later the son would remember hearing Arthur MacArthur explain both to the state’s governor and to railroad baron E. H. Harriman his idea of creating an artificial harbor in Los Angeles. “It was his belief that within fifty years such a port would become one of the leading handlers of commerce in the country,” the son wrote, including trade with Asia. Creating a major western hub for American-Asian trade was yet another dream Arthur MacArthur had outlined in his “Chinese Memorandum” twenty years earlier, a dream that would be realized with the creation of the port of Los Angeles.1

  It’s a very fortunate second lieutenant who has the opportunity to be briefed on the country where he is about to do a duty tour by the country’s former military governor. Certainly it was a well-informed Douglas MacArthur who set sail on the army transport Sherman from San Francisco with his fellow engineers for his first encounter with Asia and the Far East.

  On October 28, 1903, MacArthur and the Sherman sailed into the blue-green expanse of Manila Bay. What impressed Douglas about Manila Bay, compared to San Francisco Bay, was its immense size. It measured thirty-five miles at its mouth, and the Sherman had to steam northeast for another five hours before it reached Manila. On the way they passed a sinister-looking rock-bound island that the Spanish had dubbed Corregidor, which was used as a fortress to guard the bay. Looming behind the island were the forbidding headlands of the Bataan Peninsula, sticking out like a swollen thumb to the west of Manila.

  The Sherman was too large to unload at the Manila dock, so the big transport anchored offshore to discharge her passengers and cargo. From the deck the young lieutenant could see the red-tiled roofs of the old city, set in a low, flat plain, with row upon row of nipa huts stretching out from the city’s suburbs into the interior of Luzon. Small skiffs or bancas rowed up with Filipinos offering goods and services to the disembarking Americans, and in a couple of hours Douglas MacArthur found himself wandering the streets of Manila, especially those of the sixteenth-century city nestled inside the old city walls, Intramuros, with access through drawbridges over the surrounding moat like a fairy-tale castle.

  This was not his father’s Manila of two years earlier, where tense patrols of American troops passed through streets lined with burned-out houses from the siege, as Dewey’s cruisers grimly guarded the harbor with their guns pointed toward shore. The city had almost returned to its normal peacetime routines (although there was still guerrilla fighting up in the Sierra Madre and on the remoter islands). Shops, restaurants, and cafés catered to Americans and Filipinos alike, while after a leisurely lunch everything came to a halt for the two-hour siesta, until 4:00 P.M.

  “The Philippines charmed me” at first sight, MacArthur admitted years later. But there wasn’t a lot of time to enjoy the delights of the city. Almost the moment he docked, he was ordered to leave immediately for Iloilo on the island of Panay, where he would join the Third Engineer Battalion’s I Company. The engineers were there to construct a new wharf and harbor for what was known as Camp Jossman, as part of the growing postwar American buildup in the islands.

  He found life on the island amazingly primitive and amazingly hot, even for November. But Panay was also amazingly beautiful, with the rich tropical foliage and sparkling emerald-green vistas set against the cobalt-blue of the sea. There was also danger on Panay, MacArthur discovered, from poisonous snakes and the ever-present threat of malaria and yellow fever, but also from roaming gangs of brigands left over from Aguinaldo’s army.

  Every outing from Camp Jossman into the jungle therefore required an armed guard, and MacArthur learned to routinely carry his pistol when he set out on work duty. One day he and his men went to another island, Guimaris, to look for lumber for the piers and docks they were building. As he wandered down the jungle trail, and kept looking up ahead for trees tall and sturdy enough to cut down, he realized he had become separated from his work party.

  At a turn in the trail he also came upon an armed man with a rifle blocking his path. MacArthur quickly glanced over his shoulder and found another blocking the path behind him.

  There was no time to think. The first brigand raised his rifle and fired at MacArthur’s head. The bullet whizzed through his sweat-stained campaign hat but somehow missed his skull, smacking into a sapling behind him instead—the first of Douglas MacArthur�
�s many miraculous brushes with death.

  By now he had his pistol out. He quickly fired one shot at the first brigand, dropping him in the path. Then he swiveled, aimed, and drilled the second through the head before the man had time to raise his rifle.

  The sound of shots had drawn the attention of his sergeant foreman, who came running up to find his lieutenant standing over two dead bodies, his gun drawn and his hat still smoking from the first brigand’s shot. The sergeant bent down to make sure the two guerrillas were dead. Then rolling his quid of tobacco into the hollow of his cheek (this was how MacArthur later remembered it), he slowly drew himself up to his full six feet, his heels clicking together, saluted, and drawled in his rich Irish brogue, “Beggin thu Loo’tenant’s pardon, but all the rest of the Loo’tenant’s life is pure velvet.”2

  In describing the incident in a letter to his mother, he wrote of the almost pleasant sound of a bullet whistle by his head. It was the kind of remark Winston Churchill might make, who had his baptism of fire on almost the same date in the Boer War, and famously said that nothing was more exhilarating than being shot at without result.3

  Still, if a brigand’s bullet couldn’t cut him down, malaria did. To recuperate, he was given leave to return to Manila, where in the spring of 1904 he took and passed his examination for promotion to first lieutenant. One part of the exam was an oral question: What would Lieutenant MacArthur do, he was sternly asked, if he had to defend a harbor like Manila’s from a combined naval and amphibious assault, but lacked any troops?

  MacArthur thought for a moment, then said, “First, I’d round up all the sign painters in the community and put them to work making signs reading BEWARE—THIS HARBOR IS MINED. I’d float these signs out to the harbor mouth. After that I’d get down on my knees. Then I’d go out and fight like hell.”