“Christ, Fritz, I don’t know,” Haughton said.
“If he is the officer with whom Major Banning is familiar,” Rickabee repeated, “he is unacceptable to us.”
Haughton shrugged.
“How do we find out?”
“Presumably, Banning will recognize him when he reports for duty,” Rickabee said.
X
[ONE]
USMC Office of Management Analysis
Temporary Building T-2032
The Mall, Washington, D.C.
1105 Hours 18 November 1942
Captain David L. Haughton, USN, walked into the office of Colonel F. L. Rickabee, USMC, and handed him a square envelope.
“Sorry, Fritz,” he said.
Rickabee opened the envelope and took out the single sheet of paper it contained.
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON, D.C.
18 November 1942
Colonel F. L. Rickabee, USMC
USMC Office of Management Analysis
Commandant, United States Marine Corps
Washington
By Hand
Dear Colonel Rickabee:
Inasmuch as I have been led to believe that assignment of officer personnel within the Naval Service is my responsibility, I was somewhat surprised to hear from Captain Haughton that you feel that one of the officers being seconded to you from the Office of Strategic Services is “unacceptable.”
You are directed to carry out the operation in question with the personnel assigned to it by me.
No further discussion of this issue is desired.
Sincerely,
Secretary of the Navy
Rickabee looked up at Haughton but didn’t speak.
“Out of school, Fritz,” Haughton said, “he went right through the roof.”
“He doesn’t want to risk a confrontation with Donovan,” Rickabee said. “Donovan might go to the President, accuse Knox of going back on a deal, and Knox might lose. That’s what this is all about.”
Captain Haughton did not think it would be proper for him to reply, even though he’d had the same thought when he witnessed Knox’s surprisingly angry—and highly unusual—response to Rickabee’s request.
“Well, I can always arrange to have the sonofabitch run over by a truck,” Rickabee said.
“Don’t say something like that, even as a joke,” Haughton said.
Rickabee nodded but didn’t reply.
Captain Haughton felt a sudden chill.
“For God’s sake, Fritz, I hope you were joking.”
Rickabee’s eyes, cold and expressionless, met Haughton’s.
“When Major Brownlee and Captain Macklin reported to me this morning,” he said, “I informed them only of what they had Need To Know at this time. Specifically, that tentative arrangements have been made to fly them, this afternoon, to Pearl Harbor, for further transportation to an unspecified location somewhere in the Pacific.”
Haughton nodded.
“Captain Macklin assured me that while he was of course willing to go wherever ordered, he nevertheless felt obliged to inform me that not only had he not completed the training course offered by the OSS, but that he had not yet fully recovered from the wounds he suffered at Gavutu.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You will see, won’t you, Colonel—personally, I mean—that Captain Macklin makes it safely to the airport?”
“Unfortunately, David, I am one of those people who obeys his orders.”
[TWO]
Supreme Headquarters
South West Pacific Ocean Area
Brisbane, Australia
1405 Hours 18 November 1942
Brigadier General Fleming S. Pickering, trailed by Second Lieutenant George F. Hart, passed through the two MPMANNED security posts barring entrance to the Cryptographic Facility of Supreme Headquarters, SWPOA, and then walked down an inside corridor to an unmarked steel door leading to the Special Section.
Hart snatched a .38 Colt snub-nosed revolver from under his tunic and rapped three times with the butt on the door. A lighter knock on the thick steel door—with the knuckles, or even with a Zippo lighter or keys or something else metallic—could not be heard inside; it was necessary to make the door ring like a drum.
In a moment, a three-by-five-inch panel in the door screeched open.
“It’s me, Pluto,” Pickering said.
The panel screeched shut, there was the sound of metal bars sliding out of place, and then the door creaked open. Pickering and Hart entered the small room.
“I didn’t expect you, Sir,” Major Hon said, pulling his tie into place. He was also wearing a .45 automatic in a shoulder holster. Pickering looked past him. On a table was an open briefcase, to which was attached a chain and half of a set of handcuffs.
“Going somewhere, Pluto?” Pickering asked.
“To see you, Sir,” Pluto said, as he closed the steel door behind Pickering and slid the bars back in place.
Pickering waited.
Pluto went to the briefcase and came out with a business-size envelope. He handed it to Pickering.
“That just came in,” he said. “I thought you’d want to see it right away.”
Pickering tore open the envelope. His lips tightened.
“Somehow, I didn’t think you were going to like that,” Pluto said.
“Anyone else seen this?”
“No, Sir.”
“Nobody but you, Hart, and me does, OK, Pluto?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Pickering handed Hart Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox’s Special Channel Personal announcing that Colonel Wild Bill Donovan of the OSS—with Knox’s blessing—was sending two OSS agents to participate in the Fertig Operation.
Pickering’s first reaction—which he immediately recognized as such—was fury.
“Goddamn Franklin Roosevelt,” he said, and was immediately sorry. Not for the thought, but for the emotional outburst.
The one thing I cannot afford to do here is lose my temper.
Pluto and Hart looked at him in surprise.
“Am I missing something here?” Hart asked. “Or is that one of the questions I’m not supposed to ask?”
Pickering smiled. “I suppose this will come as a shock to you, as a devout Democrat, George, but our beloved Commander-in-Chief makes Machiavelli seem innocent as Francis of Assisi.”
“I never said I was a Democrat,” Hart said. “And I still don’t understand.”
“There are a number—by God, this is Machiavellian!—of factors at play here, George. In theory, President Roosevelt is the Commander-in-Chief, and MacArthur, like every other officer in a uniform, is supposed to obey without question any order received. Roosevelt wants the OSS to start operating in SWPOA. MacArthur wants nothing to do with the OSS. On the surface, the simple solution would be to simply issue the order. That is not going to happen. Why?” he asked rhetorically. “Because Roosevelt has decided that issuing the order would not be in his best interests. Why? Because MacArthur—having made his feelings about the OSS known, through me—is very likely to disobey that order.”
“Can he get away with that?” Pluto asked, not sounding very surprised.
“Oh, yes. In two ways. Maybe three. For one thing, he could simply ignore the order. In effect, he’s already done that. The way it’s supposed to work is that when the desires of the Commander-in-Chief are made known, everybody is supposed to jump through a hoop to see the desires satisfied. MacArthur has not yet found time in his busy schedule to even talk to Donovan’s people. That’s why I was sent over here this time, to sell Donovan’s people to him.”
“What’s El Supremo got against the OSS?” Hart asked.
“El Supremo doesn’t want anything going on in his ballpark that he can’t control; and he thinks—probably correctly—that he will not be able to control the OSS because Bill Donovan has the President’s ear. This is the proof of that, come to think of it,” Pickering said, waving Kno
x’s Special Channel Personal in his hand.
Hart looked confused.
I have no business explaining this to them, Pickering thought. But on the other hand, Roosevelt and Knox had no right putting me in the middle of their chicanery.
Another seed of thought appeared in the back of his mind, quickly sprouted, blossomed, and then gave fruit.
Of course, that’s what this is all about! Or at least has a hell of a lot to do with it! Roosevelt is one of those people who believe that “If you’re not with me, you’re against me” nonsense. If I quietly go along with this business, which would mean not telling MacArthur, deceiving MacArthur, then I will have chosen sides, joined Roosevelt’s team. His political team, not his military team. When he ordered me over here to try to sell MacArthur on the OSS, as a serving officer, I had no choice but to obey my orders, even though I thought that Donovan’s OSS will probably be more trouble here than they’re worth, and that Bill Donovan personally is an arrogant, goddamned Democrat New York lawyer and New Dealer.
And Christ knows I tried to sell Donovan’s people to El Supremo.
I went to work for Knox to be his eyes and ears over here. While I really think I could be of more use to this war running a shipping operation—God knows I could do a better job of that than three-quarters of those chairwarming admirals in Pearl Harbor—there was a certain value to that. I think I’ve done some good.
But I did not sign on to be a political errand boy for Knox. Or for Roosevelt. And that’s what they’re asking me to become.
I’ll be damned if I’ll go along.
He became aware that both Pluto and Hart were waiting for him to go on.
“When in doubt, Pluto,” Pickering said, “tell the truth. Write that on the palm of your hand so you don’t forget it.”
“Sir?”
“Let me at that phone, George,” Pickering said. He squeezed past Hart, picked up a red telephone, and dialed a number.
“Fleming Pickering, Sid,” he said into it—telling Pluto and Hart that he had dialed MacArthur’s personal number and that Lieutenant Colonel Sidney L. Huff, MacArthur’s aide-de-camp, had picked up the telephone—“I would like a few minutes of the Supreme Commander’s time at his earliest convenience.”
There was a pause.
“No, Sid, squeezing me in for a minute or two at nineteen thirty will not be satisfactory.”
There was another pause.
“I’ll tell you what you can do, Colonel,” Pickering said, his voice icy. “You can speak to the Supreme Commander, relay my request to him, and then relay his reply to me.”
There was another pause, a longer one.
“Thank you very much, Colonel,” Pickering said. “Please inform the Supreme Commander that I’m on my way up.”
Hart started to slide the metal bars out of place.
“You wait for me here, George,” Pickering said. “Aidesde-camp are not invited to this tête-à-tête.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“Fleming, my dear fellow,” General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, SWPOA, said, smiling and waving his hand in a come in gesture. “Come in, curiosity overwhelms me. Sid said this was an emergency of some kind?”
MacArthur was dressed in his customary washed-soft khakis.
“No, Sir. I said nothing about an emergency. What I told Colonel Huff was that I would be grateful if you could find time for me before half past seven.”
“I can always make time for you, Fleming. Sid should have known that,” MacArthur said. “Sid, you may leave us.”
Huff looked as if he had just been kicked.
Did El Supremo sense that I didn’t want Huff to hear what I have to say? Or did he do that to humiliate him and thus placate me? He’s just as Machiavellian as Roosevelt, and I better not forget that.
MacArthur waved Pickering into a chair and looked at him expectantly,
Pickering handed him Knox’s Special Channel Personal and then sat down.
MacArthur picked up a long, thin, black cigar from an ashtray and puffed on it as he read the message twice. Then he met Pickering’s eyes.
“I appreciate your loyalty in showing me this, Fleming.”
“General, with all the respect I can muster, loyalty was not my motive.”
“Indeed?”
“I did not want you to believe I had any part in this.”
“I would have known that without your telling me,” MacArthur said. “Whatever terrible things may be said about you around here, no one I know has ever accused you of being devious.”
Pickering found himself smiling.
“Among the things that are said about you around here is that you are mounting a supply mission to Lieutenant Colonel Fertig on Mindanao,” MacArthur said. “I’ve been wondering when you were going to discuss this with me.”
“More of a reconnaissance mission, Sir,” Pickering said. “To see what’s really going on with him.”
“General Willoughby believes Fertig suffers from delusions of grandeur.”
“Yes, Sir, he’s made that clear to me.”
“I had plans, you know, Fleming, to conduct extensive guerrilla operations against the Japanese—using the matériel and personnel available to General Sharp’s Mindanao Force.”
“No, Sir, I did not.”
“That, and good deal else, went down the toilet when the chain of command became confused. You know what I’m speaking of, of course.”
“No, Sir. Not exactly.”
“When I was ordered to leave Corregidor by the President, it was my understanding that I was simply moving my flag, not relinquishing my command and its concomitant responsibilities. I conferred with General Sharp on Mindanao—at the Dole Plantation, incidentally, do you know it?”
“Yes, Sir. I was a guest there many times before the war.”
“Lovely place. It pains me to think of Japanese boots treading on the verandah of the main house . . . but I digress. I spoke with General Sharp at some length while waiting for the airplane. My orders to him were to hold on, that immediately on my arrival here, I would institute a resupply operation for the Mindanao Force; and, looking to the worst case—if it appeared to him that further organized resistance was not possible—to make provisions, select personnel, and cache supplies and matériel for irregular operations.”
“I wasn’t aware of that, Sir.”
“Oh, yes,” MacArthur said. “But the moment that B-17 broke ground at the Dole Plantation airstrip to bring me here, General Marshall began to communicate directly with General Wainwright on Corregidor. General Wainwright naturally assumed the chain of command had been changed, that I had been taken out of it, and that he henceforth would be getting his orders from Washington. Nothing about that was said to me, then or now.”
“I wasn’t aware of this, Sir.”
“Few people are,” MacArthur said. “When I arrived here—you were here, Fleming; you know this—I learned that I had been misled vis-à-vis the matériel and troops that would be available to me here. But I kept my word to Sharp. I drew down on the limited matériel here and instituted resupply voyages to Mindanao. Unfortunately, very little got through to him: two small ships containing artillery and small-arms ammunition, and not much else. And then, when George Marshall diverted to Hawaii supply ships already on the high seas to Australia, on the grounds the risk of their loss was too great to bear, I had to terminate my efforts to resupply General Sharp’s Mindanao Force—with the greatest reluctance.”
“I understand.”
“And then, of course, the question became moot. Bataan fell, and then Corregidor. General Homma bluffed General Wainwright. He would not agree to Wainwright’s surrender unless Wainwright surrendered all U.S. troops in the Philippines. Wainwright had no authority to do that, but he thought he did. And, unfortunately, so did General Sharp. As soon as I heard what Wainwright had done, I radioed General Sharp to ignore any orders from Wainwright. But by then, it was too late. General Sharp, as a good soldier, obeye
d what he thought were his orders to surrender. As a good officer, he destroyed all the war matériel under his command before hoisting the white flag. All the matériel, Fleming, which could, should, have been used to mount a meaningful irregular operation against the Japanese. And the officers who would have commanded such operations, God help them, entered captivity.”
MacArthur paused, took the thin black cigar from the ashtray, relit it carefully, and then met Pickering’s eyes.
“At that point I was forced to conclude that the mounting of effective irregular, guerrilla operations against the Japanese in the Philippine Islands was militarily impossible. I so informed General Marshall.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You do understand the problem here, don’t you, Fleming?”
“I’m not sure I take your meaning, Sir.”
“Faith!” MacArthur said dramatically. “Faith! At the moment, the Filipino people have not lost their faith in me, in the United States. They believe I will return. But realistically, that faith is not very deep. It would disappear if we suffered another humiliating defeat at the hands of the Japanese. If, for example, people flocked to this Fertig chap in the belief that he was in fact a general officer of the United States Army. And then, for example, he were to be captured by the Japanese and marched in chains through the streets of Manila and executed as a common criminal. That would be playing right into the hands of the Japanese!”
“Yes, Sir.”
Abruptly, MacArthur asked:
“What are you going to do, Fleming, about this obnoxious intrusion of the camel’s nose into your tent?”
The question surprised Pickering.
“Obey my orders, Sir. See that these people get into Mindanao and then get out.”
Behind the Lines Page 29