Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  The roofs of two of the houses were gone, and the doors and windows of most of them.

  They were almost at the wharf before anyone appeared, and then it was Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC.

  He stood on the wharf and saluted as Lieutenant Taylor skillfully brought his lifeboat up it, and managed to keep a straight face when the boat conned by Captain McCoy rammed into Taylor’s boat, knocking Taylor off his feet.

  XIX

  [ONE]

  THE DAI-ICHI BUILDING TOKYO, JAPAN 0905 20 AUGUST 1950

  The two-starred red flag of a major general flew from a small staff on the right front fender of the glistening olive-drab Buick staff car. Even before it stopped before the main entrance of the Dai Ichi Building, a captain of what was usually referred to as the Honor Guard—or, less respectfully, as the Palace Guard, and, even less respectfully, as the “Chrome Domes”—sent two members of the guard trotting quickly down the stairs so they would be in position to open the staff car’s doors when it stopped.

  The “Chrome Domes” appellation made reference to the chrome-plated steel helmets worn by the troops who guarded the headquarters of the Supreme Commander, and the Supreme Commander himself. The rest of their uniforms were equally splendiferous. They wore infantry blue silk scarves in the open necks of their form-fitting and stiffly starched khaki shirts. Their razor-creased khaki trousers were “bloused” neatly into the tops of glistening parachutist’s boots. This was accomplished by using the weight of a coiled spring inside the leg to hold the trousers in place.

  Not all of the Chrome Domes were parachutists entitled to wear Corcoran “jump” boots. The basic criteria for their selection was that they be between five feet eleven and six feet one in height, between 165 and 190 pounds in weight, and possessed of what the selection officers deemed to be a military carriage and demeanor.

  The standard-issue boot for nonparachutists was known as the “combat boot.” It consisted of a rough-side-out ankle-high shoe, to which was sewn a smooth-side-out upper with two buckles.

  The combat boot was practical, of course, but the rough-side -out boot was difficult to shine, and it was not really suited to be part of the uniform of the elite troops selected to guard the Supreme Commander and his headquarters, and jump boots were selected to replace them.

  The brown laces of the Corcoran boots were also replaced, with white nylon cord salvaged from parachutes no longer considered safe to use. The “laces” were worn in an elaborate crossed pattern.

  Officers of the Palace Guard wore Sam Browne leather belts, which had gone out of use in the U.S. Army in the early days of World War II. Enlisted members of the Chrome Domes wore standard pistol belts, but they were painted white, as were the accoutrements thereof—the leather pistol holster, and two pouches for spare pistol magazines.

  The Buick stopped. The doors were opened, and three men got out. One of them was Colonel Sidney Huff, senior aide to General Douglas MacArthur. He was in his usual splendidly tailored tropical worsted tunic and blouse, from which hung all the especial insignia decreed for the uniform of an aide-de-camp to a five-star general. Colonel Huff was not armed.

  The second man out of the Buick was wearing somewhat soiled fatigues and mud-splattered combat boots, into which the hem of his trousers had not been stuffed. The chevrons of a master sergeant were sewn to his sleeves. He was armed with a Model 1928 Thompson .45 ACP caliber submachine gun and a Model 1911A1 Pistol, Caliber .45 ACP, worn in a shoulder holster. The pockets of his fatigue jacket bulged with spare magazines for both weapons.

  The third man was dressed identically to the master sergeant—including jacket pockets bulging with spare magazines—with these exceptions: He was carrying a submachine gun, M3, caliber .45 ACP, instead of a Thompson. The M3, developed in World War II, was built cheaply of mostly stamped parts, and was known as a “grease gun” because it looked like a grease gun. And instead of chevrons indicating enlisted rank, there were two silver stars on each of his fatigue jacket collar points.

  Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, returned the salute of the Chrome Dome holding open his door and started to follow Colonel Huff up the stairs and into the Dai Ichi Building. Master Sergeant Charley Rogers brought up the rear.

  Standing just outside the door itself were six more Chrome Domes and the Chrome Dome officer, already saluting, and two more were holding the door itself open.

  “Perhaps,” Colonel Huff said, in the Supreme Commander’s outer office, “it would be best if you left your weapons with your sergeant.”

  “Colonel, I really hadn’t planned to shoot General MacArthur,” Howe said. He handed Rogers the grease gun, but made no move with regard to his pistol.

  “Colonel, how about seeing if you can have someone send something up here for Charley to eat? Neither one of us could handle the powdered eggs they were feeding at K-1.”

  Huff’s face tightened.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, then went to the right of the double doors, knocked twice, and pushed it open before Howe heard a reply.

  “General, Major General Howe,” Huff announced.

  He indicated that Howe should enter the office.

  MacArthur, who was behind his desk in his washed-soft khaki, tieless uniform, rose as Howe entered the room. Howe saluted. MacArthur returned it, then came around the desk and offered Howe his hand.

  “Thank you for coming so soon, General,” MacArthur said. “I didn’t think, frankly, it would be this soon.”

  “I came right from the airport, sir. Your colonel, at Haneda, said you wanted to see me ‘at my earliest convenience. ’ Coming from you, I interpreted that you meant you wanted to see me immediately.”

  “I would have understood certainly that you might have taken time to freshen yourself,” MacArthur said.

  “If I had known that, sir, I would have stopped for breakfast, ” Howe said.

  “Can I get you something here?” MacArthur asked.

  “General, I would just about kill for a fried-egg sandwich, a glass of milk, and a cup of coffee.”

  Howe saw the look of surprise that flashed across MacArthur’s face.

  I was supposed to say, “No thank you, sir, but thank you just the same.” Right? You’re not supposed to order a snack in El Supremo’s office, right?

  MacArthur turned and pushed a button on the desk.

  Colonel Huff appeared immediately.

  “Huff, have the mess send a fried-egg sandwich—make that two; no, make it three, I’m suddenly hungry myself— a glass of milk, and coffee up, will you, please?”

  Colonel Huff wasn’t entirely able to keep his face from registering surprise.

  “Right away, General,” he said.

  “It should be here shortly,” MacArthur said. “Is it too early in the morning for you, General, for a cigar?”

  “It’s never too early or too late for a good cigar or a good woman, sir,” Howe said.

  MacArthur laughed, then turned to his desk again, picked up a small humidor, and offered it to Howe. Howe took one of the long, black, thin cigars, sniffed it, then rolled it between his fingers.

  “Philippine,” MacArthur said. “I smoked them all through the war, courtesy of our friend Pickering.”

  “How’s that, sir?”

  “The Pacific Princess brought one of the first troop shipments to Australia shortly after we arrived there. Fleming, in his role as commodore of the P&FE Fleet, emptied her humidor of cigars and enough of that scotch he drinks . . .”

  “Famous Grouse, sir,” Howe furnished.

  “. . . and I now do . . . to carry the both of us for the rest of the war.”

  He’s going out of his way to make the point that he and Pickering are pals. I wonder where that’s leading?

  MacArthur handed him first a cutter, then a lighter.

  “Very nice,” Howe said after taking his first puff. “Thank you.”

  MacArthur made a deprecating gesture.

  “I had occasion several times while you w
ere in Korea—about every time that Colonel Huff stuck his head in the door to tell me you were still there—to reflect on those times, and the role of the aide-de-camp in the army.”

  Howe looked at him and waited for him to go on.

  “This is in no way a reflection on Colonel Huff—I don’t know what I’d do without him—but I thought that his role as my aide-de-camp represents a considerable change from the role of aides-de-camp in the past, and from your, and Fleming Pickering’s, roles here. And during World War Two.”

  “How is that, sir?”

  Here it comes, but what the hell is it?

  “Think about it, Howe. Napoleon’s aides-de-camp—for that matter, probably those of Hannibal, marching with his elephants into the Pyrenees in 218—were far more than officers who saw to their general’s comfort. They were his eyes and his ears, and when they were in the field, they spoke with his authority.”

  “Neither General Pickering nor I have any authority, General, to issue orders to anyone,” Howe argued.

  “The difference there is that when one of Hannibal’s aides was in the field, he was not in communication with Hannibal. You are in communication with our Commander-in -Chief. Pickering was in private communication with President Roosevelt all through the war until Roosevelt died. If he then, or you now, told me it was the President’s desire that I do, or not do, thus and so, I would consider it an order.”

  Where the hell is he going?

  “I can’t imagine that happening, General,” Howe said.

  “Neither can I,” MacArthur said. “The other difference being that if the Commander-in-chief wishes to issue an order to me, or anyone else, directly, he now has the means to do so. But that wasn’t really the point of this.”

  Okay. Finally, here it comes.

  “Oh?”

  “I was leading up to the other function of aides-de-camp: being the commander’s eyes and ears. Has it occurred to you that that’s what you’re doing? You and Pickering?”

  “Yes, sir. It has. Our mission is to report to the President anything he tells us to look into, or what we see and hear that we feel would interest him.”

  “Of course, Fleming Picking has the additional duty—or maybe it’s his primary duty; it doesn’t matter here for the moment—of running the CIA and its covert intelligence, and other operations.”

  “That’s true, sir,” Howe said.

  Okay. Now we have a direction. I think.

  There was a knock at the door, and a white-jacketed Japanese entered bearing a tray on which was a silver coffee set and a plate covered with a silver dome.

  “Our egg sandwiches, I believe,” MacArthur said. “Just set that on the table please.”

  “That was quick,” Howe said.

  “It’s nice to be the Emperor,” MacArthur said, straightfaced, and then when he saw the look on Howe’s face, suddenly shifting into a broad smile, showing he had made a little joke.

  “I suppose it is, sir.”

  “I am a soldier, nothing more,” MacArthur said. “And I really have done my best to discourage people from thinking I am anything more, and more important, than I think I am.”

  I don’t know whether to believe that or not. But I guess I do.

  MacArthur lifted the dome over the plate.

  “Help yourself,” he said. “They are much better when hot.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “They take me back to West Point,” MacArthur said. “My mother had the idea I wasn’t being properly nourished in the cadet mess, and when I went to see her at night in the Hotel Thayer, she would have egg sandwiches sent up.”

  Howe remembered hearing that MacArthur’s mother had lived in the Hotel Thayer at West Point during all of his four years there. He had a sudden mental image of a photograph he had once seen of Douglas MacArthur as a cadet.

  He looked like an arrogant sonofabitch then, too. And a little phony. How many other cadets were coddled by their mothers, and fed fried-egg sandwiches at night?

  And why did he tell me that?

  Ralph, you’re out of your league with this man. Watch yourself!

  The Supreme Commander Allied Powers in Japan and United Nations Command thrust most of a triangular piece of fried-egg sandwich into a wide-open mouth, chewed appreciatively, and announced.

  “Very nice. I’m glad you thought of this, Howe.”

  “I learned to really loathe powdered eggs during the war,” Howe said. “That was the menu at K-1.”

  “Not a criticism of you, of course, Howe, but whenever I am served something I don’t like, I remember when we were down to a three-eighths ration on Bataan and Corregidor, and suddenly I am not so displeased.”

  Was that simply an observation, or is he reminding me that I am eating a fried-egg sandwich in the presence of the Hero of Bataan and Corregidor?

  “Powdered eggs aside, I ate better in Korea just now than I often ate in Italy,” Howe said.

  “That’s good to hear, Howe, and it actually brings us to the point of this somewhat rambling conversation we’ve been having.”

  Is this it, finally?

  “What occurred to me, Howe,” MacArthur went on, “is that Hannibal, Napoleon, and Roosevelt had—and President Truman now has—something I don’t, and, I am now convinced, I really should have.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “And, come to think of it, that General Montgomery was wise enough to have during his campaigns in the Second War: experienced, trusted officers—aides-de-camp in the historical sense of the term—who moved around the battlefield as his eyes and ears, and reported to him what they thought he should know, as differentiated from telling him what they think he would like to hear.”

  “Yes, sir, I suppose that’s true.”

  “I don’t know where I am going to find such officers to fulfill that role for me—it will have to be someone who is not presently on my staff—but I will. And just as soon as I can.”

  Here it comes.

  But what did that “it will have to be someone who is not presently on my staff” crack mean?

  “I’m sure that you would find that useful, sir.”

  “In the meantime, Howe, with the understanding that I am fully aware that your reports to President Truman enjoy the highest possible level of confidentiality, and that I would not ask you to violate that confidence in any way, I sent Colonel Huff to Haneda to ask you to come to see me in the hope that you would be able to share with me what you saw, and felt, in Korea.”

  The sonofabitch wants me to tell him what I’m reporting to Truman. Jesus Christ!

  “I can see on your face that the idea makes you uncomfortable, Howe, and I completely understand that. Let me bring you up to date on what has happened since you’ve been in Korea, to give you an idea what I’m interested in, and then I will ask you some questions. If you feel free to answer them, fine. If you don’t, I will understand.”

  “Yes, sir,” Howe said.

  “I don’t think I managed to convince General Collins that the Inchon invasion is the wisest course of action to take—” MacArthur interrupted himself, went to his desk and pulled open a drawer, took out a radio teletype message, and then walked around the desk and handed it to Howe. “Read this, Howe.”

  It was an eight-paragraph Top Secret “Eyes Only MacArthur” message from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur waited patiently until Howe had read it.

  “Stripped of the diplomatic language, I think you will agree, Howe,” MacArthur said, “that what that doesn’t say is that the JCS approves of Inchon. That they agree with Collins that the invasion—and they don’t even call it an ‘invasion’ but rather a ‘turning operation’—should take place somewhere, preferably at Kunsan, but anywhere but Inchon.”

  “That’s what it sounds like to me, sir,” Howe agreed.

  “But what it also doesn’t say,” MacArthur went on, “is that I am being denied permission to make the Inchon landing. That suggests to me, frankly, that someone in Washingt
on is reluctant to challenge my judgment about Inchon—and that someone is the President himself. Who else could challenge the judgment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff but the President? And why would the President, absent advice he’s getting from person or persons he trusts that I’m right about Inchon and General Collins is wrong, challenge the judgment of the JCS?”

  I’ll be damned. He knows—doesn’t know, but has figured out—that Pickering and I both messaged Truman that we think the Inchon invasion makes sense.

  “I don’t expect a reply to that, Howe,” MacArthur said. “But let’s say this: Absent orders to the contrary from the Commander-in-Chief, I will put ashore a two-division force at Inchon 15 September.”

  Howe looked at him, but didn’t respond.

  He must know that I’ll message Truman that he said that. But Harry’s no dummy. He knows that already.

  “There are several interrelated problems connected with that,” MacArthur said. “If you feel free to comment on them, I would welcome your observations. If you feel it would be inappropriate for you to do so, I will understand.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “The first deals with General Walker. I am sometimes, perhaps justifiably, accused of being too loyal to my subordinates. There has been some suggestion that otherwise I would have relieved General Walker.”

  “General, I’m not qualified to comment on the performance of an Army commander.”

  “All right, I understand your position. But I hope you can answer this one for me. General Almond, for whom I have great respect, feels he needs the First Marine Division to lead the invasion. That means taking the 1st Marine Brigade—which is, as you know, essentially the Fifth Marine Regiment, Reinforced—from Pusan, and assigning it—reassigning it—to the First Marine Division. General Walker, for whose judgment I have equal respect, states flatly that he cannot guarantee the integrity of his Pusan positions if he loses the 1st Marine Brigade to the invasion force—which has now been designated as X Corps, by the way. That problem is compounded by the fact that Generals Walker and Almond are not mutual admirers.”