Douglas MacArthur

by Arthur Herman

  The Fifth Marines landing on Red Beach had to use ladders to scale the steep seawall; if its North Korean garrison had been positioned to meet them on the wall, it might have been a slaughter. But Inchon’s 2,500 or so defenders were disorganized, confused, and badly led. After several brief but deadly hand-to-hand encounters, the marines cleared the seawall and by midnight held key points overlooking the city.16

  On Blue Beach there was a bigger mixup. Commander of the First Marines Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller pushed his men onto the beach too fast and too soon. The first wave of marines discovered that the naval bombardment hadn’t broken down their seawall and they had to pause while successive waves crowded in behind, or had to circle in their LCVPs until the beach was cleared. It was Iwo Jima all over again—except that the marines were fighting stunned and dispirited North Koreans instead of disciplined Japanese. By midnight the marines on Blue and Red Beaches had suffered 200 casualties and had taken roughly one-third of Inchon, while nearly every KPA defender had been either killed or captured, or had fled.

  Strubee, Almond, and Shepherd took an evening boat ride to see the action (MacArthur for once chose to stay on board). Shepherd counted thirteen fires in the city area, and just as the sun set another rainbow appeared, this time over Inchon.

  “It was a terrific sight,” Shepherd remembered. He returned to the Mount McKinley to find a delighted MacArthur firing off another brief report to the JCS.

  “Our losses are light,” he told them. “The command distinguished itself. The whole operation is proceeding on schedule.”

  He had done it. He had defied the critics, the naysayers, the odds, even nature herself in the shape of tides and typhoons. The Inchon landings had succeeded. He went to bed that night in a mood of vindication as well as triumph. But now would come the most critical phase of the operation, the double breakout east toward Seoul and south toward Suwon, for the eventual hookup with Walker and the Eighth Army.

  The next morning the marines cleared out the last remaining North Koreans from Inchon and began their advance eastward. It was, as one historian has put it, a textbook operation, with tanks, rocket-armed infantry, and waves of attacking marine Corsairs doing devastating damage to the Communist forces in front of them, crippling T-34s and sending the remaining KPA defenders fleeing for the rear. By the 19th the marines had reached the banks of the Han River.17

  On the way MacArthur paid them a frontline visit. He stopped at one position where an attempted North Korean ambush had just been beaten back. Several of the North Korean tanks were still burning when he walked through and shook hands with his victorious marines. What he did not know was that five North Korean stragglers were hiding in a culvert underneath his parked jeep. The marines found them only when MacArthur climbed back in the jeep and drove away.18

  The next day, MacArthur spotted an old friend in Inchon harbor. It was the battleship Missouri, which had joined in the final bombardment. He boarded her for a quick tour, and found a plaque on the quarterdeck commemorating the surrender ceremony of five years earlier.

  MacArthur was suddenly overcome with emotion. Tears began to roll down his cheeks as he stood without speaking for several minutes. Then he turned to the ship’s captain and said, “You have given me the happiest moment of my life.” Whether he was referring to the plaque or the success at Inchon wasn’t clear.

  That day he also presented Marine General O. P. Smith with the Silver Star. His sharpest critic was now his dedicated friend; MacArthur praised him as the “the gallant commander of a gallant division.” Lem Shepherd won a Silver Star as well, with MacArthur saying, “You have served your country with great distinction.” They were standing on the tarmac at Kimpo field, which the marines had recaptured on the 17th. Then MacArthur boarded Bataan II, waved to his generals and the large gathering of photographers and reporters, and flew back to Tokyo.19

  He had reason to feel proud and confident about what he and his men had achieved—and were about to achieve. Because the prediction that he had made about the North Korean army’s disintegrating after the Inchon landing was coming true.

  —

  Meanwhile, right on cue, General Walker had begun his breakout from Pusan.

  To serve as the “anvil” to MacArthur’s “hammer,” MacArthur had instructed him, Walker should begin his offensive on the 16th from the northwest side of the Pusan perimeter, where Walker had massed four army corps, including two South Korean corps. The attack immediately ran into stiff resistance, and Walker’s men didn’t cross the Naktong River until the 19th, when the marines had already finished clearing Inchon.

  Then the tide of battle around Pusan suddenly changed. The North Korean forces began moving headlong for the rear, as thousands of KPA soldiers began shedding their uniforms and donning civilian clothes. Thousands of others evaporated into the hills to the north and west. A peremptory order to withdraw had been issued from Pyongyang, ostensibly to help defend Seoul but in fact to save whatever forces were left before they were completely trapped.20

  The First Cavalry Division surged forward on the 23rd, finding little resistance until it reached Osan on the 26th. There, on the other side of the hill, scouts spotted soldiers in American uniforms. They were advance elements of the Seventh Infantry Division, which had disembarked at Inchon on the 18th and had been moving steadily forward after taking Suwon. The long-anticipated “junction” of the Eighth Army and X Corps, as the Inchon landing force was dubbed, had been achieved. All that was left was mopping up the thousands of KPA prisoners who were throwing down their weapons and surrendering, when they weren’t running headlong for the 38th parallel.

  The toughest fighting would be for Seoul itself. On the 20th the Fifth Marines crossed the Han River and by evening on the 21st, they were at the city gates.21 Smith and Almond discovered that the city was held by fresh, albeit green, KPA troops determined to fight to the death. The marines had a hard go of it when they advanced toward the city on September 23, taking on defenders who outnumbered them three to one. Once again, it was marine artillery, tanks, and Corsairs flying close air support that made the difference, at several points fighting battles that reached the intensity level of Iwo Jima.

  Almond wanted Smith to take the city using the First and Fifth Marines in an enveloping movement from south of the city. Smith didn’t like the idea, and said so. Almond, “with the curtness that was his hallmark,” told the marine general he had another twenty hours to take Seoul. Otherwise he would send in the Seventh Army Division. Smith, like his fellow marines, thought of the Seventh as a second-rate, scratch outfit—especially with its large Korean contingent. Losing the honor of taking the city to that particular division would have been a bitter blow—so the marines pressed on.

  They still missed Almond’s deadline, so Almond devised a plan to put Seventh Division troops across the Han and occupy South Mountain, in the enemy’s rear. With Smith still objecting, the operation got under way on the 24th.

  Almond’s young staffer Captain Al Haig led the crossing of the Han in a marine amphibious vehicle under cover of a massive artillery barrage, and the next day South Mountain was captured.22

  After that, Communist resistance quickly crumbled, and by September 26 the First Marine Division had cleared the central city all the way to the capitol. By then two battalions of the Fifth Marines had lost five of six original rifle commanders since Inchon, and seventeen of eighteen rifle platoon commanders. For every ten men MacArthur’s forces had lost in the Inchon-Seoul campaign, seven were marines who suffered 364 dead and more than 2,000 wounded.23

  But it was all over. On the 28th, the last fighting in the streets of Seoul had all but died away. By Almond’s count, there weren’t any active KPA units left in South Korea. United Nations forces had taken more than 7,000 prisoners and inflicted upwards of 14,000 casualties—adding to the 50,000 troops North Korea had already lost in the campaign to subjugate the south. The entire effort had cost MacArthur and the Americans some 3,500 kill
ed and wounded, but it had also turned the war inside out.

  Now it was time to restore the antebellum status quo, in MacArthur’s mind, and return President Syngman Rhee to his capital. The Joint Chiefs urged him to wait, saying the authority to do so was not his. MacArthur fired back a terse “Message Not Understood” and went ahead with his plans anyway.

  On September 29 a convoy of jeeps and trucks led MacArthur and President Rhee through the battle-scarred streets of Seoul. MacArthur had brought Jean with him, along with Courtney Whitney and General Stratemeyer; his personal plane had brought Rhee and his entourage to Kimpo from Pusan. The trip forcefully reminded MacArthur of driving through Manila in the grim months of March 1945, to restore the Filipino government to power. The same smashed buildings, downed power lines, broken vehicles scattered along the streets, windows and doorways hollowed out by small-arms fire.

  The Communists had also left their special mark. Rummaging through the hotel that Kim Il Sung’s Soviet advisors had used during the occupation of the city, Captain Haig discovered that the Russians had defecated in the center of every room they had occupied, as a farewell gesture to the advancing Americans. “This bestial insult made a lasting impression on me,” he later remembered.24

  The Americans also found something else when they liberated the city, something also reminiscent of Manila 1945. These were the bodies of thousands of civilians who had been murdered by Kim’s secret police, some 26,000 up and down the peninsula; most had died for the simple crime of being “class enemies” or working for the Rhee regime. Walker’s men had also discovered mass graves containing the bodies of American prisoners that the Communists had killed on their advance to Pusan; most had been shot in the head, their hands tied behind their backs—sometimes with barbed wire.

  It was a grim reminder of what a final Communist victory would have meant for thousands more Koreans—and what South Korea had been freed from. Whatever doubts some back in Washington had about Dr. Rhee, MacArthur was thinking, his government was certainly better than this—although some ROK troops took their own revenge on North Korean troops, with American soldiers quietly looking the other way.

  The convoy reached Seoul’s capitol building, and precisely at noon the ceremony began in its National Assembly Hall. The place was packed with South Korean officials and civilians, as well as dozens of ROK, American, and British officers who had participated in the campaign, many of them carrying sidearms and most except MacArthur wearing steel combat helmets.

  MacArthur strode to the podium and spoke for five minutes. He thanked “the grace of a merciful Providence” for the moment of restoration of South Korea’s government and freedom, and thanked “our forces fighting under the standard of that greatest hope and inspiration of mankind, the United Nations.” He spoke of his confidence “that from the travail of the past there may emerge a new and hopeful dawn for the people of Korea.”

  Then MacArthur led the entire assemblage in what one eyewitness said was “the most dramatic recitation of the Lord’s Prayer I have ever heard.”25

  Our Father who art in Heaven

  Hallowed be Thy Name

  Far off in the distance the audience could hear artillery fire and even the occasional snap of rifle fire, as the last mopping-up operations around the city were still under way.

  Thy Kingdom come

  A louder artillery blast and resulting thud shook the building. Broken glass rained down from the ceiling, and those, like Captain Al Haig, who were still holding their helmets hastily put them on.

  MacArthur, of course, did not even pause:

  Thy will be done

  On Earth as it is in Heaven.

  Amen.

  The echoes of “Amen” died away and then MacArthur turned to Syngman Rhee standing beside him and said:

  “Mr. President, my officers and I will now resume our military duties and leave you and your government to the discharge of civil responsibilities.”

  Rhee stepped forward and gripped his hand. Tears were streaming down his face; soon they were running down MacArthur’s as well. Two elderly men, who had seen much pain and suffering in their lives, now together in a moment of unexpected happiness and triumph. Yet one seemed bowed and almost broken by the ordeal of the last three months, while the other looked young enough to be his son.

  “We admire you,” Rhee was telling MacArthur in a husky voice. “We love you as the savior of our race. How can I ever explain to you my own undying gratitude and that of the Korean people?”

  MacArthur knew he didn’t have to, as he boarded Bataan II for the trip back to Japan at 1:30 that afternoon. He knew he had not only freed the Korean people but had scored one of the most amazing victories in military history—and had reversed not just the war but the Communist cause in Asia.

  Back at his office in the Dai-ichi building he found an anxious message from the Joint Chiefs. They had heard that MacArthur had allowed the American flag to be flown at the restoration ceremony next to that of the Republic of South Korea.

  They believed this was a serious mistake; it should have been the flag of the United Nations instead.

  MacArthur grimaced and contemptuously shoved the radiogram aside. Then he focused on the pile of other telegrams and messages that had come in.

  There was one from President Truman: “I know I speak for the entire American people when I send you my warmest congratulations in the victory which has been achieved under your leadership…”

  One was also from the Joint Chiefs: “You have given new inspiration to the freedom-loving peoples of the world. We remain completely confident that the great task entrusted to you by the United Nations will be carried on to a successful conclusion.”

  Another came from Secretary of Defense Marshall: “Accept my personal tribute to the courageous campaign you directed in Korea…”

  Prime Minister Yoshida in Japan wrote: “The bold stroke in your strategy has changed overnight the whole picture of the Korean situation. To you, the indomitable and inspiring Commander-in-Chief, the world owes an infinite debt of gratitude.”

  Dwight Eisenhower, now the president of Columbia University, also chimed in: “I cannot stay the impulse to express the conviction that you have again given us a brilliant example of professional leadership.”

  Still another telegram was from Bull Halsey: “Characteristic and magnificent. The Inchon landing is the most masterful and audacious strategic stroke in all history.”

  The man who, next to MacArthur, had done the most to prevent a collapse of leadership and morale in the immediate Korean crisis, John Foster Dulles, wrote: “Congratulations—you have done it again.”

  And buried toward the bottom of the pile was a terse tribute from Winston Churchill: “A perfect job.”

  Douglas MacArthur was standing at the apex of his prestige and his career. Côte de Châtillon, the island-hopping campaigns in New Guinea and the Solomons, the Philippine landings: they all paled to a dismal memory in comparison with what he had achieved that September of 1950. Every critic was struck silent; every doubter was now eager to win his approval.

  In his mind, however, there was no time to enjoy the accolades or the deep glow of inner satisfaction. There was still a war to be won, despite the end of the fighting in South Korea. “The golden moment to transmute our victory at Inchon had arrived,” he wrote later, to defeat the Communists once and for all.26

  He would now commit all the prestige and authority he had earned with Inchon to making that happen.

  Despite the warm telegrams that had been sent, in Washington news of MacArthur’s success brought amazed relief, mingled with chagrin that so many had been so wrong about the Inchon operation and MacArthur had been so right.

  MacArthur had been wrong about one thing; it wasn’t President Truman who had tried to block CHROMITE at the last minute. Virtually everyone in the administration and the Pentagon who heard the plan, or weighed the circumstances, thought it wouldn’t work—everyone except Truman. The man w
ho had persuaded the president that it could succeed was none other than Averell Harriman, who after his Tokyo visit in August believed MacArthur could do what he said he could, regardless of the so-called experts. Defense Secretary Louis Johnson was furious that Harriman managed to convince Truman to disregard Johnson’s advice and that of the Joint Chiefs, and to endorse the invasion.

  “What have you done to the president?” Johnson had asked Harriman bitterly. He thought Truman had made the worst mistake of his presidency, as did nearly everyone else.27

  Instead, “[t]he Inchon counteroffensive succeeded brilliantly,” Dean Acheson would concede in his memoirs.28 He and the other MacArthur skeptics had to admit that the general had won his victory, and fulfilled his mandate to drive the North Koreans out of the south. The question was, now what?

  Two schools of thought sprang up. The first, led by George Kennan, held that MacArthur’s UN forces should remain in South Korea and not cross over the 38th parallel. This group had the firm backing of most of America’s UN allies, including Great Britain. They feared a violent Soviet reaction if the border into North Korea was crossed.

  The other group, supported by two key figures in the State Department’s Far Eastern division, Dean Rusk and John Allison, believed the 38th parallel was an entirely arbitrary dividing line (Rusk would have known, having drawn the line himself). They argued that crossing it in order to force a North Korean unconditional surrender shouldn’t be ruled out. Indeed, “peace and stability would not exist while the country was divided,” they insisted—thereby hinting that this might be the moment for the peninsula to be united under President Rhee, rather than the Communists.29

  The Joint Chiefs went further. They believed that MacArthur should be ordered to cross the parallel, defeat what was left of the enemy’s forces, and occupy the entire country. They contended that America and its allies had more than enough resources to finish the job and to declare a free, independent Korea under UN mandate. They also confidently believed the Soviets would choose not to intervene, either in Asia or in Europe. It was time to wrap this operation up, and MacArthur had proven he was the man to do it.