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J A C K G A L L A W A Y a u t h o r o f Ihe Last Coll of the Bugle

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ffl THE UNIVERSITY . ^ OF QUEENSLAND

Presented to the

Fiyer Library by

The University of Queensland Press

on 31st May 2001

Property of University of Queensland Press - do not copy or distribute

THE ODD COUPLE

After completing his secondary schoolingjack Gallaway began his literary career with the Graziers Journal when World War II was at its height. As soon as he was old enough, he joined the RAN, and after volunteering (OT special service, took part in MacArthur's Pacific campaigns, steering a landing barge on combined operations with both the Australian and American armies. At war's end, he joined the Australian Regular Army. After the outbreak of war in Korea, he went there with 3 RAR as Signals Platoon Sergeant. Returning to civilian life in the late 1950s, he joined the Commonwealth Department of Primary Industries for a time before returning to journalism. He has worked in both the print and electronic media and as a consultant in the radio broadcasting licensing area. In 1994 his account of the events leading up to the Batde of Kapyong, Tlte Last Call of the Bugle, was published.


THE ODD COUPLE Blarney and MacArthur at War

J A C K G A L L A W A Y a u t h o r of The Last Call of the Bugle

University of Queensland Press


Fryer UQP Dep.

CMonographsl £000

Received on: 31-»6-«l

First published 2000 by University of Queensland Press Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

©Jack Gallaway 2000

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To Phil, because he inspired this work ...

and to Ashleigh and Emily who I love very much and who one day might read it.


CONTENTS

Maps via Foreword ix Preface xiii

Overture: I Came Through 1 1. Doug's Communique 7 2. No Pot of Gold 20 3. Like an Arab Rug Merchant 30 4. A Real Mean Mother 39 5. The Eye of the Beholder 52 6. A Bill of Goods 68 7. The Beautiful Silver Waterfall 82 8. Lion at Bay 105 9. Take Buna ... or Don't Come Back Alive 129

10. A Shell of Sacrifice Troops 146 11. With Underwhelming Force 161 12. There's No Business Like Show Business 186 13. Virtue of Fools 201 14. Table for One 222 15. Astray in Oriental California 231 Epilogue 244

Appendix A: Report of Vera Cruz Adventure 248 Appendix B: Ripping Yarns: an Early Example 253 Appendix C: MacArthur's Movements Day by Day 256 Appendix D: Document signed by air crews in 5th Air Force 260 Index 262


MAPS

Map 1 Defeat in the Philippines Map 2 The limit of Japanese expansion, as at July 1942 Map 3 Battle of the Coral Sea Map 4 Battle of Midway 4-5 June 1942 Map 5 "Reconnaissance in Force", 29 February 1944 Map 6 MacArthur v. US Navy: "Two Roads to Victory"


FOREWORD

Heroes are an essential component in the make-up of any society, for

they fill a void in the mundane pattern of everyday life and add colour

and drama to our perceptions of where we come from, who we are and

what we want to be. They are larger than life and have achieved deeds

beyond the ken of the ordinary citizen, be they sporting stars, movie

heroes or politicians. But much as these heroes may be revered, they fade

into insignificance when placed beside the military heroes who not only

face death themselves but hold the lives of others in their hands. Of all

other heroes, the warrior hero remains constant. Our myths and folklore

are fuU of tales of the warrior kings living on the edge of chaos, facing

horrors and death to save civilisation by their personal courage in battle

and their self-sacrifice to their role as leader and soldier.

Till the beginning of the 19th century the warrior heroes were

commonplace, from the barbaric heroes such as the Irish Cuchulainn to

the chivalrous heroes of King Arthur and Richard the Lionheart. The

18th century onward saw the advent of the warrior general, such as the

Duke of Wellington, the German hero von Bismark and the American

generals Lee, Grant and Sherman. These generals were seen as being

motivated by qualities of loyalty and self-sacrifice. Their valour and strong

character were accepted unquestioningly, and even though the face of

battle was changing irrevocably in the latter part of the 19th century, the

generals still struggled through the mud and the rain with their troops.

The warrior general of the 20th century differs from the warrior kings

and the earlier warrior generals because armies have become so large

that the general has become a corporate manager. He leads and directs

from the ofEce rather than the saddle or the turret of a tank. He is more


X FOREWORD

senior executive than warrior. Few have any chance of displaying their personal courage in battle, and in fact to do so would be foolhardy in the extreme, as a dead or badly wounded general cannot command.

In the 20th century, then, the general needs more than his personal courage and a victory in battle to rise to the status of the warrior general. He needs good press. And to do that he needs flamboyance, ego, and perhaps a gimmick like Monty's hat or Patton's pearl-handled pistols. The documenting of how General Douglas MacArthur set himself up as a warrior general through the skilful use of the press is the core strand in this book by ex-soldier and sailor Jack GaUaway. The intertwining strand is the comparison and contrast between MacArthur and the Australian general, Thomas Blamey. GaUaway shows that, although MacArthur's and Blarney's views on politics, pacifism, trade unions and social reform were strikingly similar, their military capabilities, their political and public relations skiUs, their lifestyles and even their appearance were in stark contrast.

Despite MacArthur's assertions that he participated in wars in Manchuria and the Philippines, his actual experience of war covered five months in France in 1918 and three months on Corregidor in 1942 before he was forced to flee, leaving his troops to face the horrors of Japanese captivity. Blamey, on the other hand, had been a Staff Officer during the landing on Gallipoli and rose firom Major in 1914 to Brigadier General by the end of World War I and had been involved in the organisation and planning for some of the great battles of the Western Front, including Pozieres, Hamel and Amiens. The irony is that, whereas MacArthur's real lack of wartime experience and his disastrous failures in the Philippines remained unknown to the general public and the politicians with whom he dealt. Blarney's solid record of accomplishment and his undoubted organisational skills were seldom mentioned and never praised.

The intertwining strands between MacArthur and Blamey are skilfully woven by Gallaway as he explores MacArthur's manipulation of the media, the US military establishment, the Australian prime minister and, in turn, Blamey and the Australian forces under his command, for his own personal and political objectives. These objectives included aspirations to the presidency of the United States of America.

Gallaway documents meticulously MacArthur's use of his own supposed personal valour and his masterly use of the press to buUd the


FOREWORD xi

foundations of his own myth. One of the most fascinating documents provided by GaUaway is MacArthur's "Detailed report of a reconnaissance from Vera Cruz to Alvarado on the night of May 5,1915". This report by MacArthur is so blatantly faUacious as to be absurd, and yet it was put forward in support of a serious recommendation for a Medal of Honor. To read the document now and then to read GaUaway's analysis of its contents is to wonder how no other writer has caUed its authenticity into question before. But with popular myths no one wiUingly puts themselves up to be the executioner. MacArthur did not receive the Medal of Honor, but the story of his mission to Alvaredo passed into history. As GaUaway notes, " N o biographer, no speech in his praise, no backgrounder handed to the press ever omitted to mention that Mac-Arthur had been recommended for the Medal of Honor".

In contrast, GaUaway points out Blarney's inability to work positively with the press and the price he paid for not doing so. Gallaway covers in some detaU Blarney's time as the Victorian Police Commissioner, including the infamous brothel raid, his drinking habits, his attempts to impose a form of censorship on the poUce roundsmen and his treatment of waterside workers during a waterfront dispute. As GaUaway points out, "Unlike MacArthur, Blamey had Uttle appreciation of the value of personal pubUcity, and saw no need to cultivate the press .. . This neglect cost him dearly."

To emphasise this failing of Blarney's, GaUaway closely examines the rhetoric of MacArthur's press releases and the differing reality of wartime situations during the Philippines tragedy and the period that MacArthur was Commander of the South West Pacific Area (SWPA) and in command of Australian forces. GaUaway's entertaining writing style and sound research is able to bring aspects of the Pacific war to life in a fascinating and readable way, highlighting the problems of command faced by Australian military leaders while a part of SWPA. Many controversial aspects of the SWPA-AustraUa relationship (such as the BougainvUle and Borneo campaigns in which Australian lives were lost for no apparent gain in terms of war policy) are stiU bitterly argued today.

This same forthrightness is displayed when Gallaway writes of the Battle of Midway, the planning for the final assault on Japan, and the "war within a war" between the United States Navy and MacArthur. With the Joint Chiefs of Staff favouring the Navy plan of a direct run to Formosa, MacArthur had to undertake considerable mUitary and


xii FOREWORD

political manoeuvring to achieve his goal of not only returning to the Philippines but of leading the invasion of the home islands. With MacArthur taking the surrender of Japan on board the battleship Missouri, that goal was achieved.

MacArthur's time as the "American Caesar" of Japan and his handling of the Korean conflict leave little doubt that the lessons learned during a lifetime of press manipulation were stUl being used during that time. Unfortunately for MacArthur, the world had changed considerably since 1945 and the opportunities for independent action which he had previously been able to exploit were no longer avaUable. StiU, when finally sacked by President Truman, MacArthur's status among large and influential sections of the American public was so great that reverberations from the sacking were to continue in the United States for more than a year. In contrast, Blamey was removed as Commander-in-Chief in December 1945 and became a sad and lonely figure untU his death in 1951.

The real importance of this work is the way it highlights that history can be distorted when a rigorous critical examination of personalities and events is not employed. As GaUaway convincingly shows, Mac-Arthur's press releases were in large part manufactured to show him in a favourable light. The problem was that no one was prepared to criticaUy examine their contents at that time. Even after 50 years the debate goes on: MacArthur is described by some historians as a "briUiant" general and by others as a "charlatan". Perhaps he could best be described as a mixture of both, a "briUiant charlatan".

MacArthur manipulated presidents, prime ministers and his own feUow officers as weU as officers of the AUied armies. From the Japanese advance and victory in the PhUippines until his sacking by Truman during the Korean war, MacArthur was a central figure on the world stage, and there is no doubt that his astute use of the "press release" to establish his hero status assured him of his position.

Dr Terry BurstaU Brisbane


PREFACE

When Tlie Last Call of the Bugle was published, a reviewer suggested that

in criticising General MacArthur's tactics in the Korean War I had done

him less than justice. I had read Manchester's American Caesar and one

or two other books about the famous American, and of course service

under his command in two wars had provided me with a certain amount

of first-hand knowledge of his achievements. But my critic inspired me

to delve further into the Great Man's curriculum vitae and the role he

played in our own Australian wartime history. I prepared a manuscript

and gave it to Laurie MuUer of UQP, who encouraged me to broaden

its focus.

I had also had more than a passing interest in the life of Blamey and

considered it unfortunate that Sir Thomas had not emulated his peers of

World War II by writing a book. Others did, however, and there is a solid

body of material available to anyone seeking to discover the virtues and

vices of Australia's only Field Marshal. Later, I read the transcript of a

lecture given at the Royal United Services Institute in Brisbane by Maj

BiU Thomas, formerly a member of General Blamey's staff, and what BUI

had to say about the relationship between the Australian general and his

American commander-in-chief directed both the focus of my research

and the new title of the work, Tlie Odd Couple. The two soldiers who

played the leading roles in AustraUa's war against the Japanese were an

iU-matched pair indeed; iU-matched in almost every respect.

For those without the time to spare to read thirty or forty volumes

of biography and history, there is little factual material available on

AustraUa's wartime history. The populist history is based largely on

newspaper stories written at the time that a particular event occurred.


xiv PREFACE

and these are notoriously inaccurate either because the truth of the matter was not clear or because the truth was deliberately concealed for reasons that seemed sound at the time.

What I have attempted to do in The Odd Couple is realisticaUy to describe the life and times of the two generals, and to discard hagiography produced by sympathetic or sycophantic biographers.

In researching the work, I lacked neither advice nor assistance. Major BiU Bentson, once a senior N C O in MacArthur's Brisbane and New Guinea G H Q , gave me unlimited access to his marveUous coUection of books and documents. Dick Graf was Radio Operator in one of the B 17s which flew the MacArthur party to Australia firom Mindanao. Later, he was General Kenney's wireless operator and shared his B 17 Radio Shack with MacArthur whenever he flew with his Air Commander. Dick was able to provide me with a unique personal view of the General. Joy Foorde, close friend of Brigadier "Pik" DiUer, MacArthur's P R man, also provided information of a kind not avaUable in the standard biographies. The extent of my other researches and their sources are carefuUy end-noted.

Ken Blanch, Tony Koch, my nephew, Terry GaUaway, and Harry Gordon, experienced journalists aU, were helpful with advice in certain important areas. Ken Blanch and Harry Gordon also helped by reading drafts of my work and providing criticism. I thank them. Brigadier Ted Serong, an unreconstructed warrior of the old school who served on General "Bloody George" Vasey's wartime staff, also read various drafts, as did my old friend, former company commander and feUow author, Ben O'Dowd. My special thanks to Peter Gerecowski for lending his mapping talents to my work and to Terry BurstaU for w^riting the Foreword. I owe a special debt to Felicity Shea for her skiU and professionalism in editing the work and to Dinah Johnson of U Q P for the depth of her patience in attending to my sometimes specious phone calls during the publishing process.

Above all, I would like to thank my famUy, and particularly my wife, Margaret May, for the deep understanding which enabled her to live with someone who spent most of his days in a world that ceased to exist almost fifty years ago.


OVERTURE

I CAME THROUGH

"... enters the calm, noble, resolute figure of the great Commander ... resplendent in uniform, glittering with decorations, irradiated with the lustre of the hero, shod with the science and armed with the panoply of war . . ."

Winston ChurchUl, Tlie World Crisis, 1916-1918

AT the end of February 1942 the Austrahan government considered the country to be in grave danger of invasion by the

Japanese forces, and with good reason. The Japanese Navy had destroyed most of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in December, sunk the two battleships that the British sent against it and caused the remainder of their Eastern Fleet to seek shelter in West Africa. The Japanese Army had overrun Malaya, seized the mighty British fortress at Singapore and occupied the whole of the Netherlands East Indies. Rabaul, in New Britain, capital of the Australian Mandated Territory of New Guinea, had become a Japanese air and naval base, and Japanese troops were building airstrips at Salamua and Lae on the New Guinea mainland. Darwin had been bombed by Japanese planes and would soon be under daily air attack by land-based aircraft flying out of Timor. With a division of the Australian Imperial Force prisoner of war in Malaya, and the other three divisions serving the British cause in the Middle East, Australia stood defenceless, and nervous Australians were expecting an invasion at any time.

The only good news carried in the daily newspapers told of the heroic defence of the Philippines by a combined force of American


2 THE ODD COUPLE

and Filipino soldiers and of the heroic stand being made on the Bataan Peninsula by General MacArthur. Alone he stood against the Japanese, a towering and tragic figure fighting desperately for a lost cause. But he could not be supphed or reinforced, and the eventual surrender of the American and Filipino forces was inevitable.

With the impregnable fortress of Singapore overcome and the giant British battleships sunk so easily, John Curtin, Labor Prime Minister of Australia, resolved to depend no longer on the mother country for protection. It was time for AustraHa to seek help elsewhere. He asked President Roosevelt of the United States of America to send him an American general, and it just so happened that Roosevelt had one available. Not only was there a general available, but there was absolutely nowhere on earth that Roosevelt and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff would rather send him than to Australia.'

Legend has it that at 0930,17 March 1942 a pair of American B 17s appeared over the airstrip at Batchelor, sixty-five kilometres south of Darwin in Australia's Northern Territory. A description by their most important passenger of the exciting climax of their journey reads like a novel:

Over Timor, we were spotted and they came up after us. But we changed course from Darwin ... and came in at Batchelor Field just as they hit the Darwin field. They discovered their mistake too late, and their dive bombers and fighters roared in at Batchelor ten minutes after I had left in another plane for AUce Springs in the south.^

The first of the planes to land carried Lt Gen Douglas MacArthur, United States Army, former US Army Chief of Staff and the Hero of Bataan. He was accompanied by his wife and child and a group of American officers who had served on his staff in the Philippines. After an exciting evacuation by fast PT boat firom the island fortress of Corregidor, they had flown from Del Monte on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines.-'' From Alice Springs the family continued their journey by rail and reporters met the train at Adelaide. MacArthur's statement on the railway station there contained the inspiring words which would ring out around the world.


I CAME THROUGH ... 3

He told the press that he had been ordered by President Roosevelt to proceed to Australia

... for the purpose, as I understand it, of organising the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the PhUippines ...

And then came the punchline, the heroic phrases which would become more famous than those of Nelson's signal to his ships before Trafalgar: "I came through, and I SHALL RETURN."^

Even as MacArthur spoke these immortal words, Australia's most skiUed and experienced soldier. General Thomas Blamey, was on his way home, recaUed from command of AIF troops in the Middle East to take charge of his country's defence in this time of crisis, his journey a trifle less dramatic than MacArthur's was said to be and far more comfortable. On the evening of March 17 Blamey was enjoying a drink with his staS" in the first class lounge of the giant luxury Cunarder Queen Mary, two days out from Capetown where he had joined her. The giant ship carried almost ten thousand American soldiers bound for Australia. The lounge in which the Australian party relaxed contained more than six hundred American officers and when the public address system announced MacArthur's arrival in Australia, and his appointment as Commander in Chief of the Allied forces there, the Australians joined in the spontaneous cheering that broke out and Blamey remarked:

This is the best thing that could have happened. MacArthur wUl be so far from his Government that he wUl not receive any interference, and as for our own Government, he'U take no notice of it.

If there was a suggestion in this that General Blamey did not hold the Australian Prime Minister or his Labor goverrmient in particularly high regard, then it was probably a true reflection of the General's political views.

General MacArthur's Deputy Chief of Staff, Brig Gen Richard MarshaU, met his commander in Adelaide and the news that he brought was aU bad. He told MacArthur that there could be no early return to the Philippines. The total American forces in Austraha numbered fewer than 26 000. These were mostly Air Force personnel


4 THE ODD COUPLE

and rear echelon troops. There was not a single American infantryman in the country. Nor would there be for weeks, and when they did arrive they would be green troops, poorly trained, badly led and far from battle ready'^

Inspiring as MacArthur's intention to lead an offensive might have been, with the Japanese holding a ring of islands from Singapore to Rabaul it was a gesture without substance. Any thought of offensive action was out of the question. In any event, a return in triumph to the Philippines was simply no part of the overall strategy decreed in Washington and London.''

Douglas MacArthur was the son of a general. His childhood and his youth had been spent in and around army barracks, and for the whole of his adulthood he had been a soldier. His was an introspective view of a world which centred on the army, and despite his wide and often close association with important poUtical figures, he knew no life outside it. While she lived, his career was overseen and supported by his mother, a strong-wiUed woman who was single-mindedly determined that he would rise to the top. Mrs "Pinky" MacArthur was widowed while her son was stiU a Captain. She was not rich by American standards, but a legacy from her family enabled her to support herself and the Captain in a manner befitting a future general. Her efforts on his behalf were tireless and, through a lifetime of association with powerful politicians, his place in the sun was always assured by the continuing influence of family and friends.*

General Thomas Blamey's antecedents could hardly have differed more from those of the American commander in chief. Just four years younger than Douglas MacArthur, the Australian general was the seventh of ten children born to Richard and Margaret Blamey of Lake Albert in the Riverina district of New South Wales. His father had been a grazier, first in Queensland and later near Wagga Wagga, but was twice ruined by drought. By the time his seventh child was born, he managed to feed, house and educate his family by farming a few acres at Lake Albert and supplementing the modest returns by working as a contract drover.'' Young Tom Blamey was determined to be a soldier, but there were no family connections to gain him preferment or to promote his career. He entered the Australian Permanent Army as a Lieutenant through competitive examination.


1 CAME THROUGH ... 5

worked hard at his profession and held a succession of positions

requiring great miUtary skiU and experience. After more than thirty

years service, the last thirteen of which were part-time, he was chosen

to raise the 6th Division, 2nd AIF at the outbreak of war in 1939 and

promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General. Later, in the Middle

East, he commanded the whole of the AIF was promoted to fuU

General and served as Deputy to the British Commander in Chief,

General Auchinleck.'^

T h e Queen Mary docked in Fremantle just six days after General

MacArthur arrived in Australia and the day after he and his staff

arrived in Melbourne . O n the wharf, Blamey was handed a letter

from John Curt in. It informed him that he had been appointed

Commander in Chief, Austrahan MiUtary Forces. The General also

learned that while he was in transit, on 16 March, and with the

agreement of the Uni ted States Chiefs of Staff, he had been appointed

Commander in Chief Allied armies in the Australian area. He would

serve directly under General MacArthur."

O n 18 April, more than a month after his arrival. General Mac-

Arthur received a directive that outlined operations which feU far

short of a dramatic thrust to the north. He was instructed to:

Hold the key miUtary regions of AustraUa as bases for future offensive action against Japan, and in order to check the Japanese conquest of the South West Pacific area to check the enemy advance toward Australia and its essential lines of communication and to prepare to take the offensive.

Wi th no American troops available, MacArthur would have to

make do with Australian Diggers commanded by Australian officers

to create a springboard for his eventual " R e t u r n " and there was a

paragraph in his orders which read:

Your staff wiU include officers assigned by the respective governments concerned, based upon requests made directly to the national commanders of the various forces in your area.

Many of Australia's senior staff officers were highly trained and

widely experienced, and it seemed that the American high command

wanted to take advantage of this. But the close-knit group of officers

that had accompanied MacArthur from Corregidor wanted no


6 THE ODD COUPLE

outsiders to disturb the cosy relationship which they shared with their

general, and in the end their view would prevail.

Notes

1. Dudley McCarthy South West Pacific Area: First Year, AWM, 1959, passim. 2. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, p. 145. 3. D. Clayton James, The Years ofMacArthur,Yo\. II,Houghton Mifflin,NY,

1975. 4. ibid. 5. McCarthy p. 82. 6. ibid, p. 20. 7. Herman GUI, i M N 7942-7945, AWM, 1968, p. 501. 8. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years of MacArthur, Vol. I, Houghton MifUin, NY,

1970, passim. 9. John Hetherington, Blarney: Controversial Soldier, AWM and AGPS,

Canberra, 1973, p. 2, et seq. 10. David Horner, Blamey, AUen and Unwin, Sydney, 1998, passim. 11. McCarthy, p. 25.


CHAPTER 1

DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE

Here too is told the saga bold of virUe deathless youth.

In stories seldom tarnished With the plain, unvarnished truth.

PRIVATE Paul Rogers enlisted in the United States Army on 1 September 1941 and volunteered for service in the PhUippine

Islands. Without undergoing any form of basic training he took ship for Manila and disembarked there on 24 October. He was just six months past his twenty-first birthday.

Rogers has left a description of life in US Army barracks in pre-war

Manila. Wi th the basic pay for a Buck Private set at twenty-one dollars

a month , there could be no expectation of amassing great riches, but

soldiering in the Philippines had its compensations:

I returned at the end of the day to find that a miracle had been wrought by the FUipino bunk boys. AU was arranged; bunks in neat rows with blankets taut over mattresses, corners squared, footlockers at the foot of each bunk, and the head lockers along the waU behind each.

For $3 per month, my bed was cared for, my shoes were shined, my clothing was laundered and arranged in the proper locker, my dishes were washed and my food was cooked. Like a young lord and master I could devote the remaining $18 of my pay and my energy to the pursuit of the finer things of Ufe.'

This was soldiering on America's furthest frontier in October 1941.

It would seem that the garrison which Rogers jo ined was hardly at


8 THE ODD COUPLE

fever pitch in its preparations for the war which was less than seven weeks away.

Just two months earlier, the President of the United States had signed an order which caUed the Philippine Army into the service of the United States, estabhshed the US Army Forces Far East Asia and appointed General Douglas MacArthur as Commander, USAFFE. He had available to him some 21 000 soldiers of the US Regular Army and 80 000 poorly equipped Fihpinos,76 000 of them reservists whose level of military competence ranged from partiaUy trained to totally untrained.2

Since 1935 MacArthur had been employed by the government of the Commonwealth of the Philippines as commander of a Military Mission and defence advisor to its President, Manuel Quezon. The reports he submitted to the US War Department contained glowing but wildly optimistic and totaUy inaccurate descriptions of the standard of training of these Filipino levies.

Within the US defence establishment there existed a longstanding plan for the defence of the Philippines against invasion by the Japanese. It was code-named War Plan Orange. In the event of a Japanese invasion of the main island of Luzon, it caUed for the city of Manila to be abandoned by the military, and the army to be withdrawn to the Bataan Peninsula which would be stocked with military stores, food and other essentials to withstand a seige lasting six months or more. Manila Bay, one of the finest land-locked harbours in the Orient, would be denied to the enemy, its entrance effectively blocked by the heavy guns of the fortress island of Corregidor. Six months was considered to be sufficient time for the US Navy to come to the relief of the garrisons; time for the US Pacific Fleet to bring the Japanese fleet to battle and destroy it, forcing Japan to sue for peace. It was a simple plan which had been part of standard US Defence doctrine since the turn of the century. MacArthur disagreed with it.

The new commander of United States Forces Far East Asia had long claimed that if he were given a substantial force of long-range bombers, and the modern fighter aircraft to protect them, there was no need to retreat to Bataan or to abandon the island capital. He claimed that his newly created army was capable of denying the


DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE 9

whole of the islands to the Japanese and he wrote long and detailed reports seeking the acceptance of his theory. He claimed that his forces should be so deployed that they would meet any Japanese attack on the beaches and throw it back into the sea no matter where it might occur.^

MacArthur was both eloquent and persistent in his determination to convince the US Army Chief of Staff of the soundness of his plan, but in the presentation of reports supporting his view he was guilty of gross exaggeration of both the numbers of Filipino troops which he had at his disposal and of their standard of training.

Fact or fiction notwithstanding, MacArthur's hterary extravagances were convincing. The Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, bought his proposal. In 1941 War Plan Orange was abandoned, and the latest product of MacArthur's staff was incorporated in a new Pacific defence plan code-named Rainbow 5. Substantial reinforcements of American regular soldiers for both infantry and supporting arms were ordered to be sent to the Philippines along with vast quantities of uniforms and equipment, weapons and the like to clothe and arm the additional Filipino conscripts to be called up and trained. MacArthur's confident prediction that war could not commence until April 1942 persuaded the Quartermaster General that sixty days delivery time was adequate. By early December nine cargo and troop ships, packed with stores and soldiers, were on their way to the Philippines, complete with navy escort."*

In 1941 Heavy Bombing squadrons of the US Army Air Corps were about to be re-equipped with a new weapon, one which was considered to be the ultimate in coastal defence. This was the new and much publicised four-engined Flying Fortress, the B 17 heavy bomber. Bristling with .5 inch machine-guns and loaded with more than two tonnes of bombs, it was said to be capable of flying far out to sea to sink large battleships while, at the same time, defending itself from any fighter aircraft that might intercept it. MacArthur's command was given priority over aU others for re-equipment with the new bomber. Orders were issued that every available B 17 be sent to the Philippines. By the beginning of December, MacArthur had thirty-five of the giant aircraft with more on their way.

McArthur's main air base was Clark Field, only a short drive from


10 THE O D D COUPLE

Manila, where there were golf clubs, swimming pools, three first-run movie theatres and other amenities and amusements which catered for the tastes of aU social strata. Clark Field was also weU within the range of Japanese bombers based on Formosa. There was another airfield under development and recently made operational at Del Monte, on Mindanao, weU out of range of Japanese aircraft. It was capable of handling the big new bombers but it was far from civilisation. In the eyes of the young men of Mac Arthur's Air Force, it was the equivalent of Siberia. With first-class aircraft servicing facilities established at Clark Field, it was not difficult to justify the continued presence there of most of Mac Arthur's aircraft.

On 27 November a message from General MarshaU caused the Commander USAFFE to revise his predicted timetable for war:

NEGOTIATIONS WITH JAPAN APPEAR TO BE TERMINATED TO ALL

PRACTICAL PURPOSES WITH ONLY THE BAREST POSSIBILITIES THAT

THE JAPANESE GOVERNMENT MIGHT COME BACK AND OFFER TO

CONTINUE. JAPANESE FUTURE ACTION UNPREDICTABLE BUT

HOSTILE ACTION POSSIBLE AT ANY MOMENT. IF HOSTILITIES CANNOT,

REPEAT CANNOT, BE AVOIDED THE UNITED STATES DESIRES THAT

JAPAN COMMIT THE FIRST OVERT ACT. THIS POLICY SHOULD NOT

REPEAT NOT BE CONSTRUED AS RESTRICTING YOU TO A COURSE

OF ACTION THAT MIGHT JEOPARDISE YOUR DEFENCE. PRIOR TO

HOSTILE JAPANESE ACTION YOU ARE DIRECTED TO UNDERTAKE

SUCH RECONNAISSANCE AND OTHER MEASURES AS YOU DEEM

NECESSARY BUT REPORT MEASURES TAKEN TO DEFEND THE

PHILIPPINES. SHOULD HOSTILITIES OCCUR YOU WILL CARRY OUT

THE TASKS ASSIGNED IN RAINBOW FIVE SO FAR AS THEY PERTAIN

TO JAPAN. LIMIT DISSEMINATION OF THIS HIGHLY SECRET

INFORMATION TO MINIMUM ESSENTIAL OFFICERS.^'

During the last days of November, American reconnaissance flights observed large numbers of Japanese transports and warships in the South China sea, and on 2 December a Japanese aircraft flew undisturbed over Clark Field.'' Admiral Phillips, British Naval Commander in Singapore, visited MacArthur on 5 December for two days of conferences with the General and with Admiral Hart, who was commanding America's Asiatic Fleet. The General told a press con-


DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE 11

ference that he thought that an attack might come some time after 1 January.**

Late the next night, MacArthur's Headquarters received a further message from MarshaU. According to the log in the message centre at the War Department, the signal was sent at 1206 on 7 December, Washington time, 0006 on 8 December in Manila.^

THE JAPANESE ARE PRESENTING AT 1 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME

TODAY WHAT AMOUNTS TO AN ULTIMATUM. ALSO THEY ARE UNDER

ORDERS TO DESTROY THEIR CODE MACHINE IMMEDIATELY. JUST

WHAT SIGNIFICANCE THE HOUR SET MAY HAVE WE DO NOT KNOW

BUT BE ON ALERT ACCORDINGLY'^

The signal was in top-level code and franked "TOP SECP^T, IMMEDIATE", but it was Sunday night in Manila and with the exception of General MacArthur, who always retired early, everyone of importance was at a party. If this vital signal was decoded on arrival and delivered to any member of his senior staff, it did not inspire the officer to wake the General. However, since the time for the presentation of the ultimatum equated to 0800 on 7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor time, the significance of the hour was revealed soon enough.

General MacArthur lived with his wife and small son in a purpose-built penthouse atop the luxurious Manila Hotel. It is not difficult to imagine him at sunset on the eve of war as he took his evening constitutional on the gaUery overlooking beautiful Manila Bay. Neither is it difficult to visualise the scene 8000 kilometres to the east. It was Saturday night in Honolulu and with nine battleships, eleven cruisers and numerous destroyers of the Pacific Fleet in port it was a lively scene. Thousands of sailors on liberty mingled with soldiers on leave from Schofield Barracks and Fort Shafter as they crowded the Honolulu bars and nightclubs. It was but a week past the end of the month. The servicemen had money in their pockets. It would be a long night for the bar girls.

At the Manila Hotel, preparations were in hand for a major social function. As General MacArthur paced his veranda and smoked a last cigar before retiring, airmen crowded the spacious, palm-lined lobby of the hotel. Maj Gen Louis Brereton, newly appointed as Mac-Arthur's Air Force commander, arrived in Manila in the first week in


Air Raid

Otc S

China BAT„

Corregidor • i * / ^ " Dec « C A B P * * S

Bataan Surrender: a Apri l

Correaldor Surrwidered 6 Ha/

• ' 'JOLO , ,

. K . H ^ ' ' 'P-*^ A u . t r a l l , * ^ 6»<^*VTAW1TAWI Mar i r

Jap landing

20 .12 . (1

i?o* M*'

Map 1 Defeat in the Philippines



November but left again almost immediately for Australia and the Pacific Islands to organise the delivery routes needed to ferry the hundreds of aircraft he expected from the United States and to confer with Air Commanders in Australia and the Netherlands East Indies in regard to AUied co-operation in the war that was looming. On 8 December he was due to leave once more for further conferences. His busy schedule had provided no opportunity for his men to meet him sociaUy and this was to be remedied. Even as MacArthur took his evening constitutional far above their heads, dozens of the hotel's cooks and waiters were preparing to receive the Twenty-Seventh Bombardment Group, aU twelve hundred of them. There would be good food and plenty to drink and the finest cabaret acts available in a city renowned for the quality of its entertainment. According to the committee of officers making the arrangements. General Brereton was promised "the best entertainment this side of Minsky's"."

Following the warning on 27 November, eighteen of the thirty-five B 17s under Brereton's command had been flown to Del Monte out of range of Japanese aircraft, but seventeen of the planes remained at Clark Field. Twice they had been ordered to Mindanao, and twice their crews had found reasons for delaying their departure. Quite transparently, the airmen had been determined not to miss the General's party, which was stiU going strong at 0200. It was 0800 at Pearl Harbor and the first Japanese aircraft had just released their bombs.

In the Philippines the US Navy base at Cavite received the first word that the war had started. The base was an addressee for that dramatic message sent by Admiral Kimmel to aU ships at sea and to aU US Navy bases: "Raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a driU."'^

Things being what they always were between the US Services, no one at Cavite bothered to teU the Army. Maj Gen Sutherland, MacArthur's Chief of Staff, was a guest at Brereton's party; he had only just arrived home when he learned of the disaster at Pearl Harbor from a radio news broadcast at 3.40 am. He contacted his commander immediately'-'* The United States of America had been at war for almost two hours before MacArthur received the word.

In Manila the next morning there was a hiatus. No orders were given, nothing moved. Some fighters were sent on patrol, and planes


14 THE ODD COUPLE

were ordered into the air to "stooge around" aimlessly lest they be caught on the ground in a bombing raid. Years afterwards, Maj Gen Courtney Whitney a member of Mac Arthur's staff, claimed that the General was inhibited from action because of the sentence in the 27 November signal: "The United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act ..."''*

In making this claim, Whitney neglects to say how overt an act he considered the sinking of the American Pacific Fleet to be. His reasoning also ignored another sentence in the signal: "This policy should not, repeat not, be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardise your defence."

Late in the morning, orders came down for the Bombardment Group to mount a photo reconnaissance over Formosa. The aircraft ordered into the air in the morning had aU landed for refueUing and for the crews to eat. Cameras were quickly mounted in three B 17s, their hungover crews ate a hasty early lunch and by midday they were in their aircraft running up their engines and preparing for take-off.

At about the same time and more than ten hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor (almost nine after MacArthur had been informed that the country was at war), the remainder of the Far East Air Force was enjoying the lunch break. At Clark Field, B 17 Flying Fortresses, B 25 MitcheU bombers, Kittyhawk fighters and other, misceUaneous aircraft were sitting in the open, most of them evenly spaced in neat straight lines waiting to be serviced.

Just before midday, a radar operator at Iba, 65 kilometres north of Clark Field, reported incoming aircraft headed for Clark at about 25 000 feet. Coastwatchers reported that there were more than two hundred bombers and fighters in the formations but neither the radar warning nor that given by the coastwatchers reached the airmen at Clark Field.

At about 12.25 pm, most of the men of 19th and 27th Bombardment Groups had finished their lunch and were lounging on neatly manicured lawns outside their barracks awaiting the signal to return to their duties. Some of them watched as the three B 17 reconnaissance aircraft taxied toward their take-off positions. Others killed time as they smoked and yarned and relived in memory the entertainment of the night before. Amid this peaceful scene, one of their number



rushed from his barrack room in fuU cry: "Hey you guys. Whadaya know? It's just come over the radio,Japanese planes are bombin'Clark Field. Hey, can ya beat that?"'^

Laughter and hoots of derision greeted the bearer of such obviously false tidings. Meanwhile, sixteen Kittyhawks were burning at Iba and the radar operator whose warning had gone unheeded had been blown to bits along with his equipment and the shack that housed it."^ Time had run out for Clark Field. Hardly had the airmen's laughter died down when the air-raid sirens sounded and, as the startled Americans scanned the heavens, the first Japanese bombers appeared high above them.

The Japanese raiders could not believe their luck. No fighters rose to meet them, no anti-aircraft guns sought to destroy them. Below them the geometrical patterns of runways and buildings, taxiways and hard standings contained all of the aircraft, aU of the paraphernalia of maintenance and refuelling, all of the buildings and oil storages, all laid out neatly and awaiting their pleasure. America's largest miUtary air base outside the continental United States presented a peaceful sunlit scene with dozens of aircraft parked in the open, unattended and inviting destruction.

At 12.25 fifty-four bombers and thirty-six of the new Zero fighters moved into the attack.

At the end of the main runway, engines turning over, the three reconnaissance B 17s were waiting for permission to take off. From 20 000 feet, Japanese Mitsubishi bombers scored direct hits on aU of them. Their crews died instantly as the huge aircraft disintegrated. Then, whUe the startled American airmen vainly sought cover in slit trenches that they had neglected to dig, parked bombers and fighters blossomed into balls of fire before their eyes as the Japanese pattern bombed the field. Few anti-aircraft guns were manned; most of those which were lacked ready-use ammunition.

Unopposed, dive bombers came screaming down to destroy oil storages and hangars, and when they were done Zero fighters roared in at tree-top height. They flashed back and forth across the Clark Field base for an hour and they machine-gunned anything that was not yet dead, destroyed or on fire.

Fifteen of the B 17s and two squadrons of P40 Kittyhawks were


16 THE ODD COUPLE

destroyed. In 1942 alone, the United States would build more than 10 000 heavy bombers.'^ In the same year, a similar number of fighters, most of them far superior to the P40s which were destroyed, would be produced, but in 1941 the lost aircraft could not have been of greater value had they been gold-plated and with jeweUed instruments.'^

At Iba, 65 kilometres north-west of Clark Field, a second force of Japanese aircraft destroyed aU but two of a squadron of P40s which had just returned from patrol. They then turned their attention to the air base and destroyed it and its facilities, unopposed and at their leisure.'''

It was a devastating defeat for MacArthur's forces. In less than half an hour his air force had ceased to exist as an effective element of the Islands' defences. With ten hours warning, MacArthur was no more prepared than was Pearl Harbor which had no warning at aU. Yet the first wartime news story issued from General MacArthur's headquarters in Manila told a tale of death triumphant. The disaster which had befallen Pearl Harbor was weU known to aU, but the catastrophe in the Philippines was by no means clear to the American people and it was to MacArthur and his valiant men that they looked for a hero. He had one ready-made and immediately available. He gave them Colin P Kelly

According to the first of MacArthur's communiques, issued from Manila on 10 December 1941, a flight ofB 17 Flying Fortresses took ofi from a Philippines airstrip that morning to search for a Japanese aircraft carrier which was supporting an enemy landing force at Aparri in Northern Luzon. Flight leader of the bomber force was Captain Colin P. KeUy a 25-year-old West Point graduate. He failed to find the carrier, but instead attacked the Japanese battleship Haruna which was supporting the landing force inshore.

The aircraft was attacked by dozens of fighters and although KeUy's crew fought valiantly and knocked down several Japanese planes swarms of Zeros continued to attack. Eventually, KeUy's intrepid crew drove off the attacking fighters but three of his plane's engines were on fire, he was mortally wounded and he knew that he would never be able to nurse the bomber back to base. His aircraft was fast losing



height, but its bomb load was stiU intact. Colin Kelly ordered his crew to bail out of the doomed aircraft and then, through devastating anti-aircraft fire, he pressed home the attack on the batdeship. A single 200 kilogram bomb struck Haruna and she sank with all hands. Kelly paid with his life, but he had gone part way to avenging the thousands of his compatriots who had died in the infamy of Pearl Harbor.^o

It was an epic tale. The news of CoUn KeUy's suicidal attack was flashed around the free world. Headlines in the world's press told of his heroism. President Roosevelt made an immediate posthumous award of the Distinguished Service Cross to the pilot. His beautiful young widow, KeUy's infant son in her arms, attended at the White House to receive the award and the newsreels filmed the scene as the President pinned the medal to her breast. Thousands of male infants born that week, including the boy who would one day be the first Afro-American to serve as the US Army Chief of Stafi", were named Colin in remem-brance^' and a HoUywood studio paid Mrs KeUy handsomely for the film rights to her husband's tragic story. Paeans of sympathy and praise flowed in from leaders of every nation of the free world and the dead Captain's infant son was made eUgible for a Presidential entry to West Point on that day in the future when he became of an age to foUow his martyred father into the profession of arms.

In terms of wartime propaganda it was the most dramatic story of its day. It presented the United States Army Air Corps, the US Army and America itself at their heroic best. Stories that might have suggested a debacle at Clark Field were quickly spiked. The American press had no room for tales of disaster beside KeUy's epic. Unfortunately and cruelly, it was also a story which was pure fiction. Apart from the undoubted fact that Colin Kelly was dead, there was barely a grain of truth in it. How he died and just what he accomplished were never clear, but one thing is absolutely certain — he did not sink the Japanese battleship Haruna. Despite the extravagant claims in MacArthur's communiques, there is no factual record that Captain Kelly or any other American pilot operating from the Philippines sank or damaged a Japanese ship of any kind during this period.22

Not only was the batdeship Haruna not sunk during the invasion of the Philippines, she was never involved. Haruna was part of the fleet


18 THE ODD COUPLE

which sought to bring to action and sink Admiral Phillip's flagship, Prirue of Wales, and her consort. Repulse, the only alhed battleships afloat in the Pacific. Army bombers and torpedo aircraft forestaUed Haruna and her consorts. Just four days after his conference with MacArthur, Admiral Tom PhiUips RJSf was at the bottom of the China Sea along with his fleet.^^

Haruna played a prominent role in naval actions at Midway and around the Solomon Islands in 1942,and at Leyte Gulf in 1944. When she sank at her mooring in Kure harbour in July 1945 she was the last Japanese battleship afloat and even then she was not entirely lost. Post-\var, she was raised by the industrious Japanese, dry docked at Kure and cut up for scrap. '

The true story of the performance of the United States Army Air Corps in the battle of the Philippines was a disgraceful one of unpreparedness, the ineptitude of MacArthur and his staff far greater than that of the officers responsible for the defence of Pearl Harbor. The threat to the Japanese flank presented by MacArthur's B 17s was removed within the first twenty-four hours of the war. Two Flying Fortresses which survived the holocaust at Clark Field were sent to join the squadron which was based at Del Monte on the southern island of Mindanao, out of the reach of land-based Japanese aircraft. On 15 December,just a week after the commencement of hostilities, Maj Gen Brereton and the remnants of his force of B 17s were ordered to Darwin, without ever having played any significant role in the defence of the Philippines. Shortly afterwards, most of them were sent to fight in the doomed defence of the Netherlands East Indies. Brereton eventually found a niche commanding Ninth Air Force in the European Theatre of Operations and was seen no more in the Pacific War. ^

With no Air Force to oppose them, and with the Asiatic Fleet's few obsolescent ships and submarines offering only token resistance, the Japanese were free to land anywhere they chose. And they did.

Notes

1. Paul Rogers, The Good Years, Praegar & Co., NY, 1990, p. 14.

2. D. Clayton James, Tlic Years of MacArthur,Vo\. I, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1970, p. 594.



3. ibid., p. 594. 4. ibid., p. 613 et seq. 5. ibid., p. 589. 6. Henry C. Clausen, Pearl Harbor: Finaljudgement, Crown, NY, 1992, p. 86. 7. James, p. 617. 8. ibid., p. 618. 9. Gordon W Prange, At Dawn We Slept, Penguin, NY, 1981, p. 495. He

cites Hearings before the Joint Committee on the Pearl Harbor Attack, Congress of the United States, Washington, Part 29, pp. 2145-46.

10. ibid., pp. 494-95. 11. John Toland, But Not in Shame, Random House, NY, 1961; WUliam

Manchester,/Imeri'caM Caesar: Douglas Mac Arthur,Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1978, p. 203.

12. Samuel E. Morison, Tlie Two Ocean War, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1963, p. 59.

13. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun, Free Press (a division of MacmUlan), NY, 1985, p. 107; D. Clayton James, op. cit., p. 619.

14. Courtney Whitney, General MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1965, p. 13.

15. Manchester, p. 211. 16. Spector, p. 107. 17. Weapons and Warfare, Vol. 10, PurneU Reference Books, MUwaukee,

passim. 18. ibid.,Vol. 16,passim. 19. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years of MacArthur,Wo\.\\,Hou^ton Mifflin,NY,

1975, p. 9. 20. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 12 December 1941. 21. Story of his naming told by Gen CoUn PoweU, US Army Chief of Staff,

during TV current affairs program broadcast on CNN, 8 August 1996. 22. Herman GUI, Ry4N ?^42-?^45, AWM, Canberra, 1968, p. 108. 23. Morison, pp. 144, 566. 24. ibid. 25. James, Tlie Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, p. 15; Clay Blair, Ridgway's

Paratroopers, Dial Press, NY, p. 353.


CHAPTER 2

N O POT OF GOLD

N o Uncles, no Aunts, no Nephews, no Nieces No rifles, no planes, no artiUery pieces.

And nobody gives a damn ...

IN December 1941 Americans were in a state of shock. The battleships of the US Pacific Fleet were out of the war, and the

circumstances in which Pearl Harbor had been destroyed made the country's most senior admirals and generals appear as little more than bumbling poltroons. In the Philippines, the Americans did no better. There was no pot of gold at the end of Rainbow 5. Gen MacArthur's tactical masterpiece lasted only as long as it took the Japanese to land troops at Lingayen gulf and drive on Manila. By any measure of military competence, MacArthur deserved to be sacked in disgrace, but little of the detail of his defeat was known in America, and in any case his was the only American force on earth which was in contact with the enemy. He had to be supported.

In Malaya, Britain's defensive strategy had proved to be equally bootless. Japanese ground forces poured down through South-East Asia, Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies in what seemed to be an irresistible torrent, driving before them a British army which greatly outnumbered them.

The American people went to war crying, "Remember Pearl Harbor", and it was a cry for blood, but they needed an assurance of future victory. The Fleet rested on the mud at Pearl Harbor, and for the nonce the good name of the US Navy was of hke substance. But


NO POT OF GOLD 21

to a population reared on a weekly ration of "goodies and baddies", as depicted on the silver screen, MacArthur's communique teUing of Captain Kelly's heroism and others of Hke nature, equaUy fictitious, created a rallying point. Captain Kelly was exactly the kind of "goodie" that a war hero needed to be. The dead man had been young and good-looking and his story had aU of the pathos of a Hollywood epic. The American public looked to the press for inspiration. To provide it, the newspapers wanted Ripping Yarns about valiant deeds and rugged heroism. They seized upon stories from the Philippines and embeUished them outrageously as they geared up to fight the war on their front pages. Colin KeUy's story set the tone. Nothing was hkely to better inspire the newspaper war than The MacArthur Communiques. They seemed to carry the weight of pronouncements from on high, and the product of the MacArthur PR machine, complete with a careful selection of photographs, never missed an edition. It was filed each day, sometimes two or three times a day but always in time to meet the most important deadline in the newsman's world — that of the home delivery edition of the New York morning papers.'

The Ripping Yarn that was Captain Colin Kelly's epic story was the first of 142 communiques that MacArthur issued from Manila and Corregidor before his departure for Australia on 12 March 1942, and it was an oddity. Of those 142 communiques, 109 mentioned only one soldier. General Douglas MacArthur.^

Rainbow 5 was a total disaster. Following Japanese landings in Northern Luzon, the untrained Filipino levies fled, almost as soon as the enemy appeared. Newspapers reported that these landings were being "contained" and that the remnants of the landing forces were being "mopped up". This was pure fantasy. Within hours of the first Japanese lodgement MacArthur was forced to abandon Rainbow 5 and execute War Plan Orange, the very manoeuvre which he had so cavalierly derided. FoUowing the landing of the Japanese main force at Lingayen Gulf, MacArthur's field commander. General Jonathon Wainwright, withdrew 100 000 troops from Northern and Central Luzon and redeployed them in defensive positions on Bataan. His force contained more than double the numbers of the Japanese troops who came against it, but sadly MacArthur had left it too late to execute Plan


22 THE ODD COUPLE

Orange. With the adoption of Rainbow 5, he had discarded the requirement to stockpUe six months' supphes on the Bataan peninsula. The soldiers who prepared for a siege on Bataan were short of ammunition and had litde to eat, there were no medical suppHes, and nothing to prevent or treat malaria in a hot, steamy, mosquito-ridden environment where the disease was endemic. There were no stockpiles of anything on Bataan. In his preparations for his bold defensive strategy, MacArthur's stores depots were boldly scattered aU over the islands. They were an invaluable bonus for the Japanese invaders. ^

General Homma's landing forces quickly drove the Americans into their defensive lines on Bataan, halted and dug in. There was a lull in the fighting and air raids on Corregidor ceased. With its air and naval bases neutralised, the conquest of the Philippines could wait. Japan's greatest need was the oil, tin and rubber from Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies, and the conquest of these two countries was the first priority. The better of Homma's two divisions was withdrawn and shipped to Java. It was replaced with over-age garrison troops.

With the enemy advance halted, the main concern of the defenders of Bataan became the daily struggle to find sufficient food and medicine to keep themselves alive. While they sickened and starved, they tuned their radios to American broadcasts which told of an endless procession of MacArthur victories and predicted the early and total defeat of the innumerable Japanese hordes. The stories were heroic in their detail. No one hearing them could doubt that MacArthur was right there in the front line with his men: the indefatigable hero who led his troops by daily heroic example and shared their dangers and discomforts. His troops knew better. They heard the stories and derided those who broadcast them.

None of this was known in mainland USA where the only war news that the media carried told Ripping Yarns about MacArthur victories. Americans were inspired, and he had the whole country behind him. The troops on Bataan were the only team that America had to cheer for, the only fighting men that the American public read about, saw on their newsreels or heard about on their radios, and from what they read, saw and heard, MacArthur and his men were winning the war. The playing of the "Star Spangled Banner" in movie houses all over America was accompanied by full-screen portraits, first of


NO POT OF GOLD 23

President Roosevelt and then to the unrestrained cheers of the audience that of General Douglas MacArthur, but what they cheered for was a chimera. It was a creation of the MacArthur imagination. Cohn KeUy's story held the headlines for only the first week of the war; the communiques which poured out of Corregidor quickly created a new hero in Douglas MacArthur. His was a story which had legs and they were very weU-practised legs at that.

In France during World War I, Brig-Gen MacArthur had been a colourful figure on the staff of the Rainbow Division and popular with the press who dubbed him "the Beau BrummeU of the American Expeditionary Force". In 1918 he was considered "good copy" by war correspondents and featured in hundreds of colourful stories "from the front". In December 1941 and January and February 1942, MacArthur's was the only American force in contact with the enemy. With complete control of what could or could not be printed about the operations under his command, he was even more colourful and far better copy than he had ever been in 1918. What was printed was sensational. It created a flood of nationwide hero worship fanned to white heat by newspapers and magazines owned by men who were his friends and admirers. WiUiam Randolph Hearst, who created the Legend of San Juan Hill and put Teddy Roosevelt in the White House,'' Roy Howard of the Scripps Howard chain of newspapers. Col Robert R. McCormack, the right-wing demagogue who owned the Chicago Tribune, and Henry Luce who controUed Life and Time, America's leading news magazines, were just a few of the influential right-wing media barons who helped to create the magnificent MacArthur legend.

Americans loved to give their heroes nicknames. In the thirties and forties boxing's "Manassa Mauler" and "Brown Bomber", basebaU's "Sultan of Swat", gridiron's "Four Horsemen of Notre Dame" and aviation's "Lone Eagle" were just some of the household names whose fame paled into insignificance by comparison with that of the "Hero of Bataan", and neither this nor any other single nickname was sufficient for MacArthur. The press coined new superlatives daily Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff now had to deal with a general who was variously described as "Destiny's Child", "The Hero of the Pacific", the "Incredible Warrior", the "Lion of Luzon" or any one of


24 THE ODD COUPLE

a dozen other names dreamed up by imaginative journaHsts. Towns changed their names to MacArthur. New street signs altering the names of thoroughfares to MacArthur Street, MacArthur Square and MacArthur Avenue sprouted hke mushrooms, and thousands of male babies caUed Douglas were registered across the land. The Blackfeet Indians of Montana initiated him into their tribe in absentia and gave him the name "Chief Wise Eagle". In Panama the San Bias Tribe hand-carved a statue of him which they used in their annual fertility rites to ward off evil spirits.^ MacArthur's heroism became legend, his story an epic destined to endure for generations.

Americans were told that General Homma had suicided when he failed to take Bataan; and that he had been replaced by General Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, who would fare no better against the intrepid Douglas MacArthur. The story was totaUy untrue, another Ripping Yarn.

MacArthur's stirring tales of heroism and victory, of Japanese frustration and harakiri, also had wide appeal among America's aUies. The Allied cause was in desperate straits and the inspirational products of the MacArthur PR machine were a godsend to news-hungry editors and to their readers thirsty for glad tidings. Congratulations poured into his headquarters.

President Roosevelt wrote: "Congratulations on the magnificent stand that you and your men are making. We are watching with pride and understanding and are thinking of you."

The US Secretary of War sent a signal: "We aU think of you. Every one of us is inspired to greater efforts by the heroic and skilful fight which you and your men are making."

From King George VI of England came this message: "The magnificent resistance of the forces under your command to the heavy and repeated attacks of an enemy much superior in numbers has fiUed your allies in the British Empire with profound admiration."''

In the United States, his colourful press releases were praised as "gems of battle reporting".^ On Bataan, they were irrelevant to the real world where defeat was accepted as inevitable, and although the President, the Chiefs of Staff and their advisers were only too weU aware of the outrageous extent of his incompetence, they paid lip service to the MacArthur myth and publicly praised MacArthur's


NO POT OF GOLD 25

military genius. Admiral Kimmel, Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet,

and General Short, in command of Army Forces on Hawaii, were

both quickly reheved after Pearl Harbor. Neither of them ever held

another command and they were both given early retirement before

the war was over. Wi th less excuse, MacArthur did no better but he

was never questioned.* The debacle at Clark Field and at Iba should

have been sufficient reason for the US Army Chief of Staff, General

MarshaU, to order his recall. Much later, he expressed his displeasure:

"As for the Philippines," he said, "I wiU teU you that four hours (sic) passed from the time news of the Pearl Harbor attack reached our Philippine headquarters until the Japanese struck the Manila airfield. Four hours (sic) and our aircraft were stUl on the ground in the open — perfect targets. I had sweated blood to get planes for the PhUippines. It is inexpUcable."

MarshaU was wrong — it was more than nine hours. Yet the Chief

of Staff took no action to seek an explanation for the "inexphcable".*^

According to Admiral Kimmel, the Chiefs of Staff simply could

not afford to sack MacArthur.

The essence of the whole sticky business was that Washington had to pinpoint one place; to fix the blame where every American could see it ... that one place was Hawaii ... the PhUippines were too far away for much understanding. But there was Hawaii ... in the American mind — the Gibraltar of the Pacific ... Waikiki, vacadon land, the Paradise of the Pacific and aU that. WeU, the average American could drink aU that in. But not the PhUippines. They were too far away, too much unknown for that much understanding."'

Post-war, the High Commissioner to the PhUippines, Francis B.

Sayre, wrote: "We supposed that an official investigadon would foUow.

But the war was on then and minds were immersed in the immediate

problems of resistance.""

It would be months before the Navy would play a major role in

the war. Only MacArthur and the gaUant force holding on in the

PhiUppines were kiUing Japanese, but from the public point of view

the officers and men on Bataan were anonymous. Just one man,

MacArthur, stood between the man in the street and the YeUow

Hordes. In her hour of need, America needed a hero; not only did


26 THE ODD COUPLE

the General play the role to perfection, he also wrote the script. Once the flow of communiques was weU established, any attempt by the Secretary of War or the Joint Chiefs of Staff to stem the tide or even to question the MacArthur gospel would have been unthinkable. As for a well-merited sacking, who would dare suggest it? The American people might see their President as a wimp and the Chiefs of Staff as an irrelevant debating society, but they could rely on the Lion of Luzon who stood four-square on Bataan, fearless and unafraid, as he braved shot and sheU and defied the Japanese to do their worst.

Admiral Kimmel's assessment of the relative positions of the two commands was spot on, but there was another far more important factor. The Japanese decision to give priority to the Netherlands East Indies delayed the evacuation of Bataan for four months and the surrender of Corregidor for five. In the first three of these months MacArthur was in personal command. During this time, and with the connivance of the American High Command, he seized the high public relations ground, and since the Chiefs of Staff chose not to censure him for his ineptitude, he held it for the duration of the war. From the President down, those who should have sacked him had little choice but to support him, and from that point forward the hysterical promotion of MacArthur by the media made his person sacrosanct. His control of the flow of news was exercised with such skill that, regardless of disaster occurring on almost a daily basis, he was untouchable and no blame would ever attach itself to him or to his command. Basic American—British strategy for the prosecution of the war would have to be modified to fit the gigantic figure that his communiques and the hysteria that they provoked had made of him.

In December 1941 MacArthur moved his family and staff to Corregidor on Christmas Eve. Unlike Bataan, this island fortress had always been held ready to stand a seige. Within its network of tunnels, rations sufficient for 10 000 men for six months were stockpiled and there were adequate medical facilities and supplies. As a result, the 9000 troops of the island garrison lived reasonably weU. The Mac-Arthur communiques, those heroic tales of death and destruction on Bataan, were despatched from an office deep within the Malinta tunnel under more than 50 metres of solid rock. The General visited the battlefield only once during the ninety-four days that he was in


NO POT OF GOLD 27

direct command of the defence of the Philippines, and very briefly at that, yet he claimed the peninsula as his own.'- Few of his men would have granted him the right. While MacArthur lived in comparative ease on "The Rock", those who fought the war on starvation rations expressed views that excoriated him. The infantrymen who fought the defensive battles as they starved and were pushed further and further down that doomed peninsula would no doubt have been offended when MacArthur adopted Bataan as his totem, but they never knew of it. They were either prisoners of war or dead by the time that Douglas MacArthur's career came to full flower.

Later in the war, MacArthur and his staff would become famous as "The Bataan Gang". This httle band was the core of his GHQ, a tightly knit,jealous and impenetrable sycophantic clique who served MacArthur for the remainder of the war, each with his own agenda, and each vying with his fellows for the great man's favour.

General Eichelberger served under MacArthur from 1942 onwards. He described the Bataan Gang in colourful terms: "It was like one of those poker games in Shanghai where they put the cuspidor in the middle of the table because no one dares look away to spit."'^

The last ditch stand by MacArthur's forces on Bataan achieved little. On 3 April a reinforced Japanese army went on the attack. Reports of his death being greatly exaggerated. General Homma was in command. The Americans on Bataan surrendered on 8 April, exactly four calendar months after Pearl Harbor was bombed. Corregidor held out for another thirty-one days before General Wainwright was forced to surrender on 9 May. The shortage of anmiunition and supporting weapons which plagued the defenders was spelt out in barrack-room verse:

We're the battUng bastards of Bataan, No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam. No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces. No rifles, no planes, no artiUery pieces, And nobody gives a damn.'"'

Another, more forthright, opinion of their commander in chief found expression in a parody of "The Batde Hymn of the RepubHc". CaUed the "USAFFE Cry of Freedom", it dubbed him with the


28 THE ODD COUPLE

soubriquet by which he would be known to his troops for as long as

any of them lived:

Dugout Doug MacArthur lies ashakin' on The Rock, Safe from aU the bombers and from any sudden shock. Dugout Doug is eating of the best food on Bataan And his troops go starvin' on.

There were numerous verses added over time, and there was a chorus:

Dugout Doug, come out from hiding. Dugout Doug come out from hiding. Send to FrankUn the glad tidings That his troops go starving on.'^

T h e soubriquet "Dugout D o u g " had a distinctly bitter edge to it,

but no criticism in verse or prose was ever spoken of within

MacArthur's hearing. W h e n , in March 1942, President Roosevelt

ordered h im to fly out of the Philippines to take command of the

Allied forces in the South-West Pacific Area, he was received in

Australia as a hero. He was almost unknown outside America on

6 December 1941, but his beatification by an adoring American press

for his supposed defence of the PhUippines was foUowed by total

canonisation on his arrival in Australia. W h e n news of his dramatic

flight became known, he was hailed by the newspapers as a saviour.

By the time MacArthur arrived in Melbourne , he was the best known

general in the Allied armies. H e was presented to the world as a

colossus bestriding the disaster which had befaUen the free world,

br inging hope to a nation and to a people apprehensive of imminent

invasion of their island continent.

Notes

1. Interview, Robert Sherrod with Brig Gen Le Grande DUler, 15 February 1967, reported in D. Clayton James, Tlie Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1975, p. 89; Paul Rogers, Tlie Good Years, Praegar & Co., NY, 1990, p. 264.

2. James, p. 90.

3. Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun, Free Press, NY, 1985, p. 110 et seq.


NO POT OF GOLD 29

4. W A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst, Scribner, NY, 1961, passim. 5. James, p. 132 et seq.; WiUiam Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas

MacArthur, Litde Brown and Co., Boston, 1978, p. 308 et seq. 6. Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, p. 133. 7. James, p. 90. 8. Henry C. Clausen, Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement, Crown, NY, p. 141 et

seq. 9. Roe Page WUson, General Marshall Remembered, Prentice HaU,NY, 1968,

p. 246; Gordon W Prange, Pearl Harbor Verdict q/"M5tory,McGraw-HiU, 1986, p. 468.

10. Interview with Admiral Kimmel. Quoted in Prange, p. 474. 11. Prange, p. 471; Sayre Papers Box 24. 12. James, p. 288. 13. Robert E. Eichelberger with WiUiam McKaye,jMn^/e Road to Tokyo,

Odhams, London, 1951, p. 29. 14. James, p. 66. 15. Manchester, pp. 237—38.


CHAPTER 3

LIKE AN ARAB R U G MERCHANT

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interests dictate and credulity encourages.

Samuel Johnson, in Tlie Idler, 1758

BY the end of February 1942 the Japanese were on Australia's doorstep. The longstanding pretence that the Royal Navy could

defend Australia had disappeared with the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. Australia's finest troops were serving the British cause in the Middle East. Only a hastily assembled militia stood ready to defend the country, and its people were feeling a little naked. On 27 December 1941 Australia's Prime Minister, John Curtin, shocked Winston Churchill, the British government and a large proportion of conservative Australians with his assessment of where AustraUa's greatest support lay Melbourne's Herald newspaper published an article over the former journalist's byline which outlined the situation as he saw it and which concluded:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom. We know ... that AustraUa can go and Britain can StiU hold on. We are, therefore, determined that Australia shall not go, and shaU exert aU of our energies toward the shaping of a plan, with the United States as its keystone, which wiU give to our country some


LIKE AN ARAB RUG MERCHANT 31

confidence of being able to hold out untU the tide of battle turns against the enemy'

Australia's four AIF divisions were scattered piecemeal among various British Commands. The 7th Division was the major component of the British army which had subdued Vichy French resistance in Syria. The 9th Division, heroes of Tobruk, were part of General Auchinleck's Eighth Army which held Egypt against any German attempt to drive through and capture the Suez Canal. The 6th Division was in Palestine. It had only just reformed with reinforcements and new equipment after losing half its strength in the disastrous British adventure in Greece and Crete. The doomed 8th Division fought gallantly in Malaya, but its men were destined to spend the next three and a half years as prisoners of war of the Japanese.

Not unnaturaUy the Australian government wanted the Middle East divisions brought home immediately, but the British were loath to lose any of their Australian troops. John Curtin was forced to bargain like an Arab rug merchant for control of his own soldiers and the outcome was not especially to his liking. In return for the promise by the Americans of two of their infantry divisions, the 9th Australian Division was to remain with the Eighth Army. Two brigades of the 6th Division would help to garrison Ceylon against possible attack by the Japanese. Britain would provide shipping for the return to Austraha of the remaining brigade of the 6th and the whole of the 7th. At the time, Australians' acquaintance with the quahty of American troops was largely hmited to what they learned by watching HoUywood war epics, and if these were a guide, then the transaction seemed reasonable.^

Early in 1942 the faU of Singapore saw the loss of more than 20 000 highly trained volunteers of the Austrahan Imperial Force when most of AustraUa's 8th Division were taken prisoners of war in Malaya. Dutch forces in Java and Sumatra offered litde more than a token resistance and by 20 February 1942 the Japanese had captured airfields within bombing range of Darwin and the Australian mainland.-^ The four brigades of Infantry already on the high seas en route to Austraha appeared to be the only part of her proud AIF that Australia's prime


32 THE ODD COUPLE

minister could salvage for the defence of his country. But even this half portion was at risk.

On 20 February the British prime minister sent John Curtin a telegram. On the basis of a promise from Roosevelt that the American fleet would defend Australia, Winston ChurchiU had ordered that the 7th Division be diverted to the defence of Burma.'' He issued the order without consulting the Australian government.

ChurchiU's arrogant high-handedness stemmed from his appreciation of the political situation in Australia, an appreciation based on advice from expatriate British friends with whom he maintained contact.5 When Japan entered the war in 1941, Curtin had been prime minister for less than two months. He lacked a parliamentary majority and the Australian Labor Party ruled only with the support of two independents. ChurchiU's friends assured him that Curtin would oppose him only at the risk of losing government. The convoy was twenty-four hours on its way before he notified the Australian government of the change of destination and it continued to steam toward Burma while a tensely polite exchange of telegrams passed between London and Canberra.*^

John Curtin would have none of it.^ ChurchiU's advisers had misjudged both the prime minister and his people. He was forced to order the convoy to turn about and head for Australia, but it was an exercise not without cost.** Because of the duplicity of the British prime minister, one of the ships carrying 7th Division troops was forced to dock in Batavia, in Java, to take on additional fuel. At the order of General Wavell, the Allied commander in the area, the troops were disembarked. With a disregard for the authority of the Australian government similar to that shown by the British prime minister. General WaveU had decided to use the Australians in an attempt to stiffen the Dutch resistance. Under the command of Lt Col A. S. Blackburn, a Victoria Cross winner from World War I, an ad hoc infantry force was formed and deployed in defence of the Tjiudjung River crossings. Fighting as "Blackforce", this scratch brigade of Blackburn's held the crossings for five days, but the end was inevitable. When the Dutch on their flanks capitulated, some of the Australians fought on in smaU groups, but the last of them had either surrendered



or been captured by mid-AprU. Three thousand men of the 7th Division joined the men of the 8th behind bamboo.^

Having declared his intention to rely on aid from the United States, Curtin had never ceased to press Roosevelt for the appointment of an American general to take command in the South Pacific Area and the urgency of his plea was heightened on 22 February when Japan urUeashed the might of her naval aviators on Darwin. The eariier arrival of the American troops and material diverted from the PhUippines had raised his hopes that more men, more aircraft, hundreds of ships and the vast quantities of war materials which Australia lacked would flow from the United States. He hoped that the Americans would commit themselves totally to the defence of Australia, and he felt that the appointment of a senior American commander would be the catalyst which would bring this about. It was simply a happy coincidence that his request offered Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff a simple solution to a vexatious problem.

Starving American and Filipino troops trapped in the US enclave of Bataan and on the island of Corregidor were doomed to defeat and capture, but the American government could not aUow their most recently beatified military icon to be captured with them. The much pubhcised presence of his beautiful wife and cherubic child in the beseiged fortress added to the problem. He must be brought offbefore the capitulation, but for the strongest possible reasons, both military and political, he would be most unwelcome back in the United States. On 22 February Roosevelt instructed General MacArthur to hand over his command to General Wainwright and make his way to Australia.

There was already in Australia a force of misceUaneous American aircraft intended for MacArthur's air force. The ships carrying them were diverted to Brisbane foUowing the destruction at Pearl Harbor and the invasion of the Philippines. Others, admixed with Dutch aircraft, were simply refugees from lost battles in the Netherlands Indies and strays from the Philippines. There were some troops and supphes too. They arrived in a six-ship convoy which had set out for the Philippines on the eve of the war. Diverted to Brisbane, the convoy arrived on 22 December. In addition to some field artiUery units, these ships carried sixty disassembled fighter aircraft and a


34 THE ODD COUPLE

contingent of US Army Air Corps ground staff. Four more ships arrived in January carrying over two hundred fighter aircraft and additional troops. Among these were two battalions of anti-aircraft gunners and their weapons,but no infantry arrived in either convoy"'

Given the performance of the United States Air Force to date, and the absence of any immediate American infantry presence, this seemed little enough. The thought of thousands of American troops pouring into Australia was a source of optimism, but the reality was that they were not immediately available, and when they did arrive they would be mainly conscripts, totaUy unblooded in war, of unknown quality and far short of fuUy trained. They were by no means a fair equivalent to the two crack divisions of the AIF remaining in the Middle East and Ceylon and did not make up for the loss of Blackburn's valiant men which British bungling had delivered to Japanese prison camps.

But Curtin would get General MacArthur, and according to his advance publicity, AustraUa was getting the best. The dramatic word picture which the General painted on his arrival — his tale of the close pursuit by Japanese fighter planes and his narrow escape from their bombers as they roared down at Batchelor — captured the public admiration, but hke much that MacArthur told his fans it was not necessarily true.

Master Sergeant Dick Graf was the wireless operator aboard one of the aircraft and he described the flight:

The flight to and from the PhUippines was purely routine. We coUected General MacArthur and his party and took off from Del Monte around 2130 on the night of the 16th and the flight to Batchelor was uneventfiil. There was never any intention to land at Darwin, so we were certainly not diverted to Batchelor. Batchelor was the base from which aU B 17 flights to the PhUippines were made. We didn't go anywhere near Timor and certainly no fighters rose from there to intercept us."

Neither did the Japanese seek MacArthur at Darwin or at Batchelor that day Australian records show that there was no air raid on Darwin on 17 March, and if the Japanese sought their prey at Batchelor, they missed him by a very wide margin indeed. The first Japanese raid of the war on Batchelor was a sneak attack which took



U.S.S.R.

'\ MONGOLIA

CANADA

ICHATKA

ALEUTIAN , .^J SLANTS,-'

. - tsr» - ' e^"''" ' NORTHPAOFICAREA

CENTRAL PACIFIC AREA "^1 (MnyU)

.HAWAIIAN "b ISLANDS

UMTTOF : JAPANESE f EXPANSION

JULY 1942

Pacific Ocean

Indian \ ^ " y ^ A Ocean ^ J^^\

^ AUSTRALIA ^

SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC AREA (MacArthur)

v.-

^ .

^

SOUTH PACIFIC AREA (Ghonnley then Halsey)

NEW ZEALAND

Map 2 Limit of Japanese expansion, as at July 1942

place at three o'clock in the morn ing of 27 September 1942, six

months after MacArthur's D C 3 took off for Alice Springs.'^

But the MacArthur communique and the stories it spawned told

it otherwise, and that made it official. More than any soldier that the

Australians had ever seen or heard of MacArthur walked the walk

and talked the talk. O n e Australian war historian described the man

of the hour:

Alert and energetic, with an air of command, lean, his face combining the inteUectual, the aesthetic and the martial, he was outstanding in appearance and personaUty He was proud and, with skilful pubUcity measures, was soon to buUd himself into a symbol of offensive action and final victory.'^


36 THE ODD COUPLE

Later, John Wayne projected similar images on behalf of aU three armed services, and the Seabees and Green Berets as weU, without ever feeling the need to be sworn in as a member of any of them. But MacArthur also came with a warm recommendation from war correspondent Pat Robinson of the International News Service:

And durn me if he doesn't look more Uke a general than any general I've ever seen ... If he walked along your street in overaUs and an old hat there would be something about the way he carries himself, something about his piercing glance; some essence of personaUty w^hich would make people say ... "Who's that?"'''

And Australians did not have to wait long to see an exhibition of his skilful publicity measures. The Bataan Gang had hardly had time to unpack the few belongings with which they had fled The Rock before communiques commenced to flow from GHQ. According to these, Curtin had obtained the services of the most experienced, the most decorated, the most competent and by a country mile the most courageous soldier in the whole American Army if not the whole world. Here was the one man with the inteUect, the drive and the incentive to not just stop the Japanese but to drive them back whence they came.

When he arrived in Australia, General MacArthur was sixty-one years of age and he had been forty years a soldier. The papers were fuU of stories of the part he played in World War 1 and of his lifetime of knowledge of the Orient. This was said to stem from an intimate acquaintance with the Japanese gained when he accompanied his father to Manchuria as an observer with the Japanese army in its war against the Russians in 1904. In his own autobiography, published shortly before his death, MacArthur wrote:

I met aU the great Japanese commanders ... those grim, taciturn, aloof men of iron character and unshakable purpose. It w as here that I first encountered the boldness and courage of the Nipponese soldier. His almost fanatical belief in and reverence for his Emperor impressed me indelibly.'-^

It is true that MacArthur served as his father's aide in 1904, but not in Manchuria, and he saw nothing of the Japanese army in



wartime array. Lieut Douglas MacArthur arrived in Tokyo to meet his mother and father some weeks after the war against Russia was over. Whatever Japanese generals he met, he met socially, and the most dangerous weapons he ever saw them wield, boldly, courageously, fanatically or otherwise, were chopsticks. FoUowing a brief tour of Japan, he left with his parents on a nine-month world tour. The claim that he had gained first-hand knowledge of the Japanese military machine then or at any other time carried the same qualification as the sinking by Captain Kelly of HMIJS Haruna, the sudden death by harakiri of General Honmia, the Japanese fighters that rose from Timor or the bombers which sought him at Darwin and Batchelor. It was a slight exaggeration."'

The press handouts told also of his wide experience in every major and minor disturbance with which the American army had been involved since the turn of the century, and his skilfuUy prepared publicity told of battles with Mexicans, Moros and Germans. The General was always triumphant and the multicoloured ribbons which completely covered the left breast of his dress uniform were concrete proof of his heroism.

There are principles which govern the dissemination of information in times of war. In order that those who fight might be secure in transit and battle, nothing that might enlighten the enemy may be revealed.

Those who stay at home scare easily. They must be shielded from the horrors of war. The truth of unpleasant events must be concealed totally if possible, and where its disclosure is necessary the news must be broken as gently as possible or, better stiU, delivered with a liberal coating of sugar and disguised as glad tidings.

MacArthur held staunchly to these principles. He used the truth only in the most extraordinary circumstances, and then most sparingly. First in the PhiUppines and later in Austraha, MacArthur's power to control the dissemination of news was absolute and he developed the manipulation of the media to a fine art. Untruths told in the cause are excused as essenrial wartime propaganda and some generals handle propaganda better than others; some establish teams of professional journalists to handle it for them. But there has never been a general or a professional pubhcist who was MacArthur's equal in the art.


38 THE ODD COUPLE

Notes

1. Melbourne Herald,21 December 1941. 2. Lionel Wigmore, Tlie Japanese Tlirust, AWM, p. 446 et seq. 3. ibid., p. 450. 4. ibid., p. 450. 5. Sir Leslie Wilson, a member of the British Conservative Party and a

former parliamentary coUeague of Winston ChurchiU, was then in his third term as Governor of Queensland.

6. Winston ChurchiU, Tlie Second World War The Hinge ofFate,Vo\.lV,CsiSse][ and Co., London, 1951.

7. ibid, p. 452. 8. ibid., p. 456. 9. ibid., p. 456 et seq.

10. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years ofMacArthur,Yo\.ll,HoughtonMiSlin,NY, 1975, pp. 19-21,119.

11. Dick Graf, interview with author, 26 October 1995. 12. War Diary N O I C Darwin. 13. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 20 MiLtch 1942. 14. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 23 March 1942. 15. Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, p. 31. 16. D. Clay ton, James, Tlie Years ofMacArthur,Yo\. I, Houghton Mifflin, NY,

1970, p. 91 etseq.


CHAPTER 4

A REAL MEAN MOTHER

MacArthur went to Mexico, To win the war or bust.

Every time he puUed his gun, A greaser bit the dust.

Anon. US Army song

GENERAL Douglas MacArthur was the son of General Arthur MacArthur Jnr who had been awarded the Medal of Honour

for actions carried out as a young officer in the Civil War.' Douglas was raised among soldiers, attended West Point and graduated first in his class in 1903. After service in World War I,he reached the pinnacle of his profession in 1930. At the age of fifty he was promoted to four-star general and became the US Army's youngest ever Chief of Staff. Under the system of promotion then in place in the United States Army only the Chief of Staff held the rank of general and he held it only during his tenure in the appointment. On completion of his tour of duty in 1935, MacArthur reverted to the rank of Major General and retired from the army to accept employment as the head of a military mission to the Philippine Islands and military adviser to their President, Manuel Quezon. The Filipino Head of State made him a Field Marshal in the Army of the Philippines and paid him $33 000 per annum, in gold. It was the new Field Marshal's task to create a defence force for the US protectorate which had been promised independence by 1946. With war threatening, MacArthur was called to the US Colours in 1941. The US Army resurrected a


40 THE ODD COUPLE

rank which had not been used since World War I and promoted him to Lieutenant General.^ The picture which MacArthur presented to the Austrahan government and its people was that of a brave but simple soldier of wide experience; a patriot of the best sort, intent only on doing his duty. That was the perception, but there was a great deal more to General MacArthur than any antipodean of the time could possibly know.

Despite having lived in self-imposed exile thousands of miles from his native land for more than six years, General Douglas MacArthur remained a major political figure, one who was able to wield a powerful influence on affairs of state. He was a bitter enemy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt who firmly believed that, given the right conditions, MacArthur would be capable of overthrowing the US government.^

No officer of the US Army who lacked political friends ever attained high office and the MacArthurs were better at the political game than most. In the mid-nineteenth century Douglas Mac-Arthur's paternal grandfather, Arthur MacArthur, a lawyer and the immigrant son of a Scottish widow, had made his way from a State governorship in backwoods Wisconsin to a seat on the bench of the Washington DC Supreme Court. There is little doubt that the advancement of the Judge's son, Arthur MacArthur Jnr, to the highest rank in the US Army was due in no smaU measure to the Judge's political connections. Arthur Jnr's wife, Douglas MacArthur's mother, was a prominent figure in Washington society, a tireless lobbyist in her son's interest. Following the family tradition, no matter where he was in the world Douglas MacArthur always maintained a lively correspondence with his many pohtical friends.''

Through his family's influence and that of their friends, and while still a young officer, MacArthur had been privileged to work in areas which enabled him to rub shoulders with Washington's political and mihtary ehte. In 1906, while at the Engineering School at Fort McNair, near Washington DC, he was asked for by name by President Theodore Roosevelt to attend him as "an aide to assist at White House functions". In 1913 he served as a member of the US Army General Staff, an appointment made by the Chief of Staff, General Leonard Wood, an old friend of the family.


A REAL MEAN MOTHER 41

Leonard Wood was a most unusual soldier. A quahfied medical doctor, he joined the army first as a contract surgeon and served on the western frontier. In 1898 he joined with his old school friend Theodore Roosevelt to raise the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry unit which fought in the Spanish American War. One of the finest Ripping Yarns in American folk lore teUs ofhow Wood and Roosevelt led a cavalry charge at San Juan HiU, in Cuba, but in fact it didn't happen. San Juan HiU was captured by regular soldiers fighting on foot. Wood, Roosevelt and the Rough Riders were part of the reserve force and there wasn't a horse in sight,^ but the publicity attached to the episode saw Wood promoted to Brigadier General in the Regular Army and appointed military governor of Cuba. It also led to his friend Theodore becoming President of the United States, and in 1910 President Roosevelt appointed General Wood US Army Chief of Staff. Both were good friends to the young Douglas MacArthur who is said to have idolised Wood and to have sought to emulate him.^

During the period 1906 to 1917, Douglas MacArthur gained an incomparable knowledge of national and army politics, and of the ties that bind the two disciplines. Above all, and a fuU generation ahead of his peers, he gained an invaluable insight into the media, and the means by which it could be used in his own interest or in the interest of causes or projects which he favoured. When he was appointed to the General Staff by Wood in 1913, he was its youngest member ever. Without ever holding a regimental command of any kind, the future general managed to progress from lieutenant to major and remained in Washington in one posting or another until 1917 when America declared war on Germany^ His later reputation for heroism grew from seed planted by an oft-told tale of a wild escapade in Mexico in 1914.

In AprU of that year, foUowing a dispute involving a slight to the American flag, the US Navy landed a force of Marines at Vera Cruz, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. They quickly dispersed the Mexican garrison and seized the city. Subsequently, and without opposition or the need to fire a shot, the US Army landed an occupation force under Brigadier General Funston. General Wood firmly believed that war would foUow and it was his intention to


42 THE ODD COUPLE

rehnquish his post as Chief of Staff and seek further fame and pohtical glory as the commander of the army in the field. In the meantime, he sent Captain MacArthur to Vera Cruz to report on the conditions there. Unfortunately for Wood's expectations, President Wilson and the Mexican dictator, Vittorio Huerta, accepted mediation and beyond the brief skirmish involving the Marines during the initial landing, no warlike activity of any kind took place. On 5 May, just four days after the Captain's arrival, an armistice was signed.* Mac-Arthur made only one report from Vera Cruz. It was dated 9 May While it offered no encouragement to Wood the Warrior Bold, its phrasing does tell posterity a good deal about the characters of both the writer and the addressee. After dealing with routine matters, the report concluded:

Gen Funston is handling things weU and there is very Utde criticism but I miss the inspiration, dear General, of your own clear cut decisive methods. I hope sincerely that things wUl shape themselves so that you wUl shortly take the field for the campaign which, if death does not call you, can have but one ending, the White House.^

General Wood and his protege would seem to have been out of tune with the government's orders to the force commander. Funston was charged with the task of avoiding hostUities and his direct orders from the Secretary of War were quite unequivocal:

The Secretary of War further directs that you strictly limit your action ... and that you do not initiate activities ... which might tend to increase the tension of the situation or embarrass your government in its present relation with Mexico ... '"

The orders should have been fairly clear, but in a report written months after the event MacArthur claimed to have traveUed weU beyond the limits set by Funston's orders, some 70 kilometres to the town of Alvarado seeking railway engines. He did not ask Funston's permission nor did he report the results of his mission either to the commander in Vera Cruz or to the Chief of Staff. The first inkling that anyone in higher authority had of the matter was contained in a letter received by General Wood in October 1914. It was written by a friend of MacArthur who suggested that he be given the Medal



of Honor ." Perhaps there was some interservice jealousy involved in

this, since no fewer than forty-seven sailors and marines received a

Medal of Honor'^ for actions during the capture of Vera Cruz, while

Funston's brigade arrived too late to share in the glory'-''

General Wood took sufficient interest in the matter to ask his

protege for a report on the excursion and in due course he received

a most remarkable document,fifteen paragraphs and 1800 words long,

which purported to describe Captain MacArthur's movements on

the night of 5-6 May 1914. (See Appendix A.)

MacArthur claimed that in the company of three Mexican rail-

waymen he conducted a reconnaissance deep into Mexican-held

territory so that he could locate and inspect some locomotives which

would be needed in the event of war. The detail of his report claims

that in just eleven action-packed hours he rode on horseback for 30

kilometres, walked at least 20 kilometres and that he and the three

Mexicans pumped a hand-car more than 90 kilometres at speeds

certainly beyond both the capacity of the machinery and the strength

of the crew.''* Between times he had carried out a detailed mechanical

inspection of five locomotives and single-handedly won running

fights with three separate armed bands. Dur ing these engagements

he shot a horse and at least seven bandits whose marksmanship was

so poor that they could do no better than shoot a few holes in his

shirt and slightly wound one of his Mexican companions. And

MacArthur's accomplishments weren't limited to his skill at arms. His

humanity was demonstrated when he described how he saved the

wounded Mexican from drowning, and so skilful was his fieldcraft

that for a finale he was able to move through the US Army's defensive

lines at Vera Cruz unobserved in broad daylight. N o doubt he blended

into the background despite being dirty and disheveUed, wearing a

shirt riddled with buUet holes and being accompanied by a wounded

Mexican.

From the unlikely, the report stretches beyond the realms of the

improbable to the impossible, and yet there was more:

I was in mUitary uniform with no attempt to disguise and with absolutely nothing on me in addition to my clothes except my identification tag and my automatic revolver with ammunition. None of the men we encountered were Mexican troops. AU were guerriUas undoubtedly bent


44 THE ODD COUPLE

on general mischief Owing to the darkness I was not recognised as an American soldier and in consequence no alarm was ever felt for the engines.'^

If the weapon which Captain MacArthur's report describes as an "automatic revolver" was his army issue sidearm it would have been a .45 calibre Colt Automatic pistol, and at close range the impact of the .45 projectUe is formidable."^ It v^U shatter any bone that it meets and any wound it inflicts in the vicinity of a vital organ is almost invariably fatal. MacArthur's bag for his night's hunting was equivalent to that achieved by the anonymous sportsmen responsible for the St Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago in February 1929, an event which was reported around the world and is part of American folklore. While there is no doubt that Mexico was a fairly lively place in 1914, it seems unlikely that a stranger armed with a .45 pistol potting seven of its citizens in one night, not to mention the horse, would be so routine an event as to pass without remark. Yet apparently none of the wounded, nor the next of kin or dependents of those kiUed, complained of the pistolero's handiwork. Since it happened in an area adjacent to the American occupation force, the gunman was mounted on a railway troUey heading toward Vera Cruz, and the escapade also contained an element of what was often a capital crime in rural Mexico, horse stealing, it is even more remarkable that no inkling of the massacre reached the ears of the garrison.

On a Munchhausen scale of one to ten, MacArthur's story scores at least a nine point five. General Wood was no longer Chief of Staff by the time the report reached him, but he endorsed the document which eventually arrived on the desk of his successor, Maj Gen Hugh L. Scott. Given his predecessor's eminence, there were probably sound reasons why the new Chief of Staff did not dismiss this nonsense out of hand. Instead, he appointed three members of the General Staff to examine the report and make a recommendation. They came up short of calling the Captain a liar. They didn't give him a medal either, but the story lived on and in time it became a tale of grave injustice to a deserving hero. "Heroism unrewarded" is the foundation upon which the MacArthur legend rests.'''

But the refusal of the decoration did nothing to disrupt his career.



On America's entry into World War I Douglas MacArthur was a major working under the direct command of Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, and charged with the task of selling America's pending entry into the war to the media and through the media to the American people. While the terminology was unknown in 1917, Douglas MacArthur was probably the first full-time official military PR man in the world and he was a credit to the profession.'** When America declared war on Germany most of the journalists who were his clients sailed for France to become war correspondents. Before they left, twenty-nine of them signed a letter to the Secretary of War which concluded:

No man can ever know to v/hat extent the cordial relations the major has maintained with the press may have influenced national thought on mUitary matters ... we cannot but feel that the major has helped to shape the public mind.''*

The public mind continued to receive the Major's close attention for the rest of his career. William Randolph Hearst once said of newspaper publishing: "Putting out a newspaper without promotion is like winking at a girl in the dark — weU intentioned but ineffec-tive."2o

MacArthur used a similar approach to his participation in the war. By the time it was over, he had received more press coverage than had his Commander in Chief, General John Pershing, and was the best-known soldier in the American army.

In 1917 MacArthur was promoted to colonel and sailed for France as Chief of Staff of the 42nd National Guard Division, which he had helped raise using recruits from Washington DC and a total of twenty-five states. When given the task, he had described the concept to Secretary of War Baker as being one that would cover the whole of the United States "just like a rainbow".2' Thus the 42nd became the Rainbow Division, the best-known formation in the US Army and a war correspondent's delight. In contrast to a story filed about divisions raised from a single state, or two or three adjoining ones, as was the normal practice, one which featured the Rainbow could be guaranteed coast-to-coast coverage of the United States. No one


46 THE ODD COUPLE

appreciated the difference better than Colonel MacArthur and never a story of the Rainbow appeared but it featured its Chief of Staff.

Senior officers often took the view that fighting the war should take priority over the requirements of intrusive journalists and photographers but this was never a problem at Rainbow H Q regardless of the state of the battle. MacArthur dressed the part as weU. War correspondents wrote lurid stories of the Divisional Chief of Staff leading his troops on patrol or assaulting German lines and capturing German strongpoints while wearing a soft cap, a turtleneck sweater and carrying only a swagger cane. He posed for photos wearing this personalised battledress. OccasionaUy he added accessories such as a silk scarf or a foot-long cigarette holder. The war correspondents adored him and, just as their successors were to do in a later war, they vied with each other to coin new names for their hero. They described him as "The Fighting Dude", "The Beau BrummeU of the AEF", "The Beau Sabreur of the Rainbow", or "The Child of Destiny", and one erudite correspondent often referred to him as "The Yankee D'Artagnan". After a visit to France, Secretary of War Newton wrote to Mrs MacArthur that her son was "the AEF's greatest front line officer."22 This was praise indeed for a Divisional Chief of Staff whose duties must by their very definition bind him to a chair and a desk, particularly so because of an immutable practice which must govern the movements of all such senior officers. A Divisional Chief of Staff knows everything that his Divisional Commander knows. In fact, he often knows a good deal more. In the course of his duties, he is privy to sensitive information and must never venture into harm's way unnecessarily, lest he, and the secrets he shares, should fall into enemy hands.--^

The Rainbow Division became a World War I icon, just as Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders had in Cuba, and for similar spurious reasons. For all of the publicity; the Division and MacArthur did Utde actual fighting when their service record is compared with that of most similar formations in the AUied armies. In his reminiscences, MacArthur describes the 42nd Division as taking part in offensive operations as early as March 1918, but there is no record of this happening.'^ At the end of March the Rainbow Division occupied a quiet section of the line, but it was not committed to offensive



operations until 14 July^^ According to the official record, the first

action involving an American division took place " . . . far from the

flaming Somme and Lys on a quiet sector of Lorraine . . . the 26th

Division on AprU 20 came under a heavy bombardment, foUowed by

a German attack in regimental strength."^^'

The first authoritative mention of the 42nd in an active role

describes the Allied counter-offensive at Chateau-Theirry which

commenced on 17 July After describing a five-mile advance by the

AUied army which contained two divisions of American regulars

under French Corps control, the American Military historian relates:

Although the two [American] divisions were soon relieved by French and British units, the drive continued and expanded to the East, bringing in the Third, Fourth, Twenty Sixth and Twenty Eighth Divisions and, eventuaUy, the Thirty Second, the Forty Second Division and the Seventy Seventh Division.^^

At the end of July, MacArthur became commander of the 84th

Brigade after the Ra inbow had been withdrawn into corps reserve.

The division did not return to the line until 7 September. At the end

of a further three weeks, MacArthur's Brigade was once more in a

rest area but was in action again within a week. His war culminated

with the capture of a feature called Chatillon Hill on 16 October

1918. From then until a week before the Armistice on 11 November

the Rainbow was in reserve.

But while MacArthur had been busy fighting the Germans, his

mother was no less involved on the home front. O n 12 June 1918

Mrs Mary P. MacArthur wrote to General Pershing:

My Dear General Pershing, I am taking the liberty of writing you a little heart to heart letter emboldened by the thought of old friendship for you and yours, and the knowledge of my late husband's great admiration for you ... I know the Secretary of War and his family quite intimately, and the Secretary is very deeply attached to Colonel MacArthur and knows him weU ... as he served for two years as his MUitary Secretary at the same time that he was the War Department's Censor, both positions (of) which he asked to be relieved in order to go to France ...

I am free to confess to you that my hope and ambition in life is to Uve


48 THE ODD COUPLE

long enough to see this son made a General Officer ... and I trust you can see your way clear, dear General Pershing, to give him the recommendation necessary to advance him to the grade of Brigadier General .. .**

But Pinky MacArthur wasn't one to put aU of her eggs in one basket and that was just as weU. She also had a word with General Peyton C. March, an old subordinate of her late husband who had become US Army Chief of Staff. It was to him that Pershing's Ust of potential generals was submitted, a list which did not include the name of the commander of the 84th Brigade. March appointed forty-six brigadier generals and, much to General Pershing's disgust, one of them was Douglas MacArthur.^^ Unaware that Pershing had failed to nominate him, MacArthur added insult to grievous injury when he wrote an effusive letter of thanks to his commander-in-chief.

A week before the armistice, MacArthur became commander of the Rainbow Division and one of his early duties was to make recommendations for end-of-the-war decorations for bravery At the head of the list stood a recommendation for the Division's new commander to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. This time, Pershing and his Chief of Staff, Col George Catlett MarshaU, were blamed for the Yankee D'Artagnan's faflure to coUect.- ° Once more, heroism went unrewarded.

In 1920 General Peyton C.March was stiU US Army Chief of Staff. He appointed MacArthur to be Commandant of West Point, one of the most prestigious postings in the US Army Two years later General Pershing was made Chief of Staff and promptly sacked him. D'Artagnan was sent to command the US Forces in the Philippines. - '

In 1930 Repubhcan President Herbert Hoover appointed General MacArthur US Army Chief of Staff Just turned fifty he had reached the top of his profession at an age when most of his West Point contemporaries had yet to be promoted beyond a Colonel's rank.- ^ When he donned his uniform with its four stars, the only four-star general in the US Army, the new Chief of Staff wore more decorations than any other soldier who had ever served the United States, aU of them awarded during that brief period, July to November 1918.

By the dme he left his Chief of Staff's chair in 1918 to take



command of the 84th Brigade, the new Brig-Gen MacArthur had been decorated three times — once with the Croix de Guerre, once with the Silver Star and once with the Distinguished Service Cross. Despite the fact that command of a brigade was equally demanding of his time as had been his duties as Divisional Chief of Staff, and although his brigade spent no more than seven weeks in contact with the enemy, its commander gathered another six Silver Stars, a second Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal, at least one medal for each week his division was in action. A grateful France weighed in with a goodly ration also, as did some of the other Allied nations. By 1919 he wore nineteen foreign awards and, in addition,and despite his oft-repeated boast that "I never for a moment left my division",-''-^ his arm was adorned with a couple of wound stripes. But in 1930 there was still room for more. Early in his term as Chief of Staff of the US Army, the Fighting Dude reinvented the Purple Heart to replace the humble wound stripe. The first of these was struck in 24-carat solid gold, engraved "No 1", and awarded to MacArthur.-^''

The new Chief of Staff was the Prince of Pot Hunters.-*'' There was StiU plenty of room on his blouse for more medal ribbons so he did away with the practice of wearing a clasp or rosette to denote the second award of the same medal. Under orders issued by the Beau Brummel of the AEF, multiple awards became multiple medals. With his two DSCs and seven Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts and a raft of foreign decorations, MacArthur's medal ribbons were sufficient to almost totaUy cover that portion of a soldier's uniform on the left breast which is reserved for their display. Probably because he found an unfiUed space, he added lustre to this magnificent cluster with a medal for the Philippine Campaign of 1899-1904, which concluded while he was stiU a cadet at West Point. The Dear Old Dad had been there, so that was good enough for Beau BrummeU.'"''

MacArthur remained in the top job until 1935 when he took early retirement to return to the PhUippines and to his destiny.

When he came to Austraha, selected highlights from his career featured prominently in the "skilful publicity measures" with which the Australian press flooded the country But in truth, no Austrahan — not the Prime Minister, his mihtary advisers or any of his


50 THE ODD COUPLE

coUeagues in the government — had any more than a vague idea of the Supreme Commander's background and accomplishments. Their knowledge of MacArthur did not extend beyond what was contained in the newspapers of the day, and of course the newspapers contained nothing that was not the product of Douglas MacArthur's "skUful publicity measures".

This, and the kind of nonsense peddled to Australian editors by sycophantic American journalists, was more than enough to convince the majority of Australians that they had been blessed with the hottest mihtary property since Alexander the Great. Few reahsed, and fewer StiU cared, that John Curtin had bought his general at the general's own valuation, and that it was a take it or leave it proposition, a once-only offer from the President of God's Own Country Mac-Arthur was a gift-horse, and, conventional in aU things except poUtics, Curtin had no intention of looking him in the mouth.

Notes

1. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years ofMacArthur,Vo\. 1, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1970, p. 29.

2. ibid., passim. 3. WUliam Manchester,/Immoif? Caesar:Douglas MacArtliur,Litt[e Brown

and Co., Boston, 1978, p. 152. 4. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol. 1,1970, Vol. II, 1975,and Vol. Ill, 1985. 5. Ed. Maurice Matloff, American Military History, Office of MUitary

History US Army Washington DC, 1969, p. 332. 6. ibid., passim. 7. ibid. 8. James, Vol. I, p. 117.

9. Manchester, p. 76. DM to General Wood, 17 May 1915. 10. James, Vol I, p. 117. War Diary of Frederick Funston Veracruz, entries of

19 April-3 May 1914, National Archives.

11. FrazierHunt, Untold Story of General MacArthur,DeV\n-hdicii,]>r{,\95A, p. 51;James, Vol. I, p. 118.

12. Hunt, p. 52. 13. Hunt, pp. 51-52.

14. Experiments carried out using a troUey of simUar type "pumped" by professional Rugby League footbaUers from the Brisbane "Broncos". The very low gearing of the machinery restricted the speed at which



it could be driven. Over a measured mUe, these super-fit athletes achieved speeds no greater than 10 kUometres per hour.

15. James, Vol. I, p. 120; D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HUl, 1964, p. 42.

16. Encyclopedia of Weapons and Warfare, Vol. 6, ParneU, MUwaukee, p. 613. 17. James, Vol. I,p. 117 et seq. 18. ibid., p. 127 et seq. 19. ibid., p. 132. 20. W A. Swanberg, Citizen Hearst, Scribner, NY, 1961, p. 162. 21. James, Vol. I, pp. 134-35. 22. Manchester, pp. 88-107 passim. 23. Conversation with Brig. E P Serong DSO MC, former G2 7th Aust

Div. and G2 6th Aust Div, Instructor at Australian Staff CoUege. 24. Macarthur, p. 54 et seq. 25. James, Vol I,p. 174 et seq. 26. Matloff, p. 389. 27. ibid., p. 394. 28. James, Vol. I, pp. 169-72. 29. Geoffrey Perrett, Old Soldiers Never Die, Andre Deutsch, London, 1996,

p. 94. He quoted a letter from Marsh to Pershing, 2 July 1918, Pershing papers.

30. James, VoL I, p. 223. 31. ibid., p. 290 et seq. 32. ibid., p. 343 et seq. 33. Hunt, p. 332. 34. Perrett, p. 154. He quotes War Department Circular No. 6,22 February

1932, and general orders No. 3, 22 February 1932. 35. "Pot hunter" is a golfing term which describes a player who uses

subterfuge to maintain as high a handicap as possible and wUl go to any lengths to win a trophy.

36. Perrett, p. 154.


CHAPTER 5

THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Whose was the fault she betrayed our troops. Whose was the fault she faUed? Ask it of those who lowered the flag That once to the mast was naUed. TeU them we'U raise it on Anzac soU With hearts that are steeled to the core. We swear by our dead and captive sons, REVENGE FOR SINGAPORE.

Dame Mary GUmore, 1942

IN August 1941 Major General Iven Mackay had returned to Austraha from the Middle East to become GOC Home Forces. A

skilled and experienced soldier, he proceeded to plan for Australia's defence using whatever resources were available to him, and he did not have to start from scratch. Immediately after World War I the government of the day appointed Generals Monash, Chauvel and Brudenel White, Australia's most experienced military thinkers to create just such a plan, and the enemy they had in mind was Japan.

Australia has the longest coasthne of any nation on earth and hundreds, if not thousands, of beaches suited to the landing of a ship-borne invasion. But Australia is also a country of great distances and, in 1942, of poor communications systems. This limited an invader's options and the three generals assumed that an invader's main objective would be "some compact, vulnerable area,


THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER 53

the resources of which are necessary to the economic hfe of Australia".'

This ruled out a landing on a remote beach in Western Australia or the Northern Territory which required a seven or eight thousand kilometre overland march to the nearest civilisation. The Japanese were more likely to attempt a lodgement close to the large centres of population, somewhere where there were roads and railways and weU-developed harbours. There was really only one target for any invader, Australia's industrial heartland contained in the coastal area between Newcastle and Melbourne.

Mackay proceeded to deploy the forces that he had at his disposal in conformity with the unanimous view expressed by Monash, Chauvel and Brudenel White.

When Japan entered the war, there were approximately 132 000 officers and men of the militia on fuU-time duty and a further 35 000 AIF available in Australia, but these figures were quickly doubled and more. Members of the militia previously trained and released to their civil jobs were quickly recaUed and others were caUed up for training. By 5 February there were almost a quarter of a million militia men on full-time duty. Enlistments in the AIF escalated, and by the end of March the total AIF troops available or in training for the country's defence totaUed weU in excess of 100 000.^

But initiaUy what General Mackay had was little enough. Cape York to Brisbane offers more than 3000 sparsely populated kilometres of coastline and hundreds of beaches upon which troops could land. From Brisbane to Melbourne was a further 2000 kilometres of coastline almost equaUy weU provided with good anchorages and sandy beaches, and in 1942 it contained more than two-thirds of the country's population. There were just six divisions of green militia to guard the whole 5000 kilometres.

There would never be enough troops to mount an adequate defence of the North Queensland coastline and the obvious vulner-abihty of this region was the subject of cabinet discussions. These had not been resolved before word arrived that the 6th and 7th Divisions were coming home. This, and the arrival of MacArthur and Blamey, brought a change to strategic thinking.

General Thomas Blamey had spent the whole of World War 1 and


54 THE ODD COUPLE

almost three years of World War II as a subordinate to British generals. His Commander in Chief, Middle East, General AuchirUeck, wrote him a reference:

I feel a genuine regret at your going, and I know that I shaU miss you a lot ... I have valued gready your shrewd and sound advice ... you have done much in and for the Middle East ... and you wUl be missed.

At the same time, Auchinleck wrote to the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff: "We parted great friends ... he is a tough old boy with plenty of common sense.'"*

It is the practice of generals to familiarise themselves with the curriculum vitae of their counterparts in other armies, and Blamey knew something of MacArthur's background, a good deal more than Curtin or his cabinet knew. But Blamey was a realist. Glowing references from Auchinleck or not, he knew that he was destined to serve as a subordinate to the American for as long as the war lasted and that this would happen regardless of the fact that with his record of experience and accomplishment he was far better qualified to command the AUied forces than was the flamboyant MacArthur.

After being selected for a commission in the fledgling Australian Permanent Army in 1906, Blamey studied hard, apphed himself to his duties and within six years he had gained promotion to Captain. But if a soldier is ever to become a general, it is imperative that he understand the work required of a member of the General Staff, those specially trained and sometimes speciaUy gifted officers whose task it is to plan and execute the tactical and administrative requirements of General Officers Commanding. In 1912 Captain Blamey took the first step. He earned a nomination to the British Army Staff CoUege at Quetta, in India, only the second Australian officer to do so. When he graduated, it was December 1913 and the Great War was only nine months away*

Major Blamey went from Quetta to England for further staff training at the War Office in London. In November 1914 he went to Egypt to become General Staff Officer III of the First Division AIF He was with the Division and landed with the first Australians on Gallipoh on 25 Aprfl 1915.

Divisional H Q is normally a safe haven for Staff Officers, but



Blamey saw his share of shot and sheU none the less. Every soldier on the peninsula was subject to artiUery fire and most to smaU-arms fire as weU. The Gallipoli campaign was fought at such close range, and on such a cramped battlefield, that the Staff shared the dangers with the fighting elements. After the Divisions moved to France in 1916, Blamey became GSO I, or Chief of Staff of the First Australian Division. In that same year he carried out a similar exercise to that required of MacArthur with the Rainbow Division, but in considerably different circumstances. He was appointed Chief of Staff and given the task of raising the 2nd Austrahan Division. In 1916, while Major MacArthur was dining out with press men in Washington and leading a busy social life, Colonel Blamey was planning the Battle of Pozieres, that murderous engagement where three Australian divisions destroyed a German force and seized a trench system which had proven impregnable to British troops. In contrast to MacArthur's tales of derring do and hair-raising adventures as Chief of Staff of the Rainbow, Blamey painted a realistic picture of the role of a Divisional Chief of Staffin France in World War I:

Here in a quiet home, with a lovely garden and beautiful flowers, I can just hear the low burst of the guns away up beyond Pozieres. Pozieres is ours, captured alone by our division. We are aU very proud of the feat. Our plan, which was chiefly mine, led to a brUliant success. We took the job on after the British had failed in three separate efforts ... The division possesses that undefined quality that the great thinker on war caUed "military virtue". It knows its power ... God grant me a clear brain to plan and think for it.

Pozieres cost Blamey's division 7700 men killed and wounded. From the other two divisions involved, another 15 200 Australians became casualties. But Blamey's achievement was recognised and he was promoted.

On 1 June 1918, a month before the Rainbow Division was committed to any major action, John Monash, a Melbourne-born civil engineer and part-time mihtia officer pre-war, capped a briUiant miUtary career by being promoted to command of a Corps composed completely of Australian troops. He was the first Australian officer to reach such heights. Brig Gen Blamey became his Chief of Staff.


56 THE ODD COUPLE

Together, Blamey and Monash planned the Batde of Hamel. This was a dress rehearsal for the Battle of Amiens which initiated the great offensive that led to the smashing by the Australians and the Canadians of the Hindenberg line and to final victory over Germany.

FoUowing this feat of arms, Field Marshal Lord Haig asked Monash to bring his senior officers to meet him. A man of few words not given to unwarranted praise, Haig told them, "You do not know what the Australians and Canadians have done for the British Empire in these days."^

Medals have aWays been more difficult to come by under the British system than under the American and Blamey's coUection of awards hardly rivaUed those presented to MacArthur for his brief stint at the front. But as a senior staff officer he coUected the obligatory DSO and the higher honours that went with the job, a CB, a CMG and a Croix de Guerre from the French.

At war's end he returned to Australia where he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for a time before being sent to London as the Australian representative on the Imperial General Staff.' There is no doubt that he would have risen to become Australia's Chief of the General Staff, but circumstances arose which led him to see his duty elsewhere.

In 1923,600 policemen went on strike in Victoria. There was chaos in the city of Melbourne as a crime wave broke out. The conservative government of the day sacked the mutineers but the depleted police force remained in turmoil.

Following a Royal Connrussion's recommendation that the force's problems lay with the low level of competence in its management, a new police commissioner was sought, preferably one from outside the police establishment. On the advice of Lieut Gen Harry Chauvel, the Chief of the Australian General Staff and former commander of the Desert Mounted Corps, the Victorian government offered the job to General Blamey who retired from the Permanent Army and took office as Victorian Pohce Commissioner on 1 September 1925.

Hardly had he warmed the chair in the commissioner's office when a personal scandal broke, one which was to dog him for the rest of his life. Three policemen raided a house of iU fame in Fitzroy an inner suburb of Melbourne. A gentleman taken in flagrante delicto with



one of the working girls avoided arrest when he showed them a pohceman's badge and told them that he was a detective. The badge is said to have borne the serial number 80, and badge Number 80 was on issue to the police commissioner, General Tom Blamey.

When a question was asked in parliament, the government claimed that the badge had been stolen and used by an unknown person. Blamey made no explanation and there the matter stood, the basis for rumour and slander which multiplied year by year.^

Other police forces have undergone the experience of having an outsider appointed to conmiand them. Invariably, both the rank and file and the senior officers have resented the intruder and it is unlikely that Blarney was willingly accepted in Melbourne. Experienced journalists and detectives who have been asked for their opinion of the scanty evidence available on the Badge 80 affair have been unanimous in suggesting that the detectives'^ in the brothel may have invented the story. The fact that neither the policemen who raided the brothel nor those who conducted a later investigation were able to either clearly identify Blamey as the man in the brothel, or to more clearly identify the man who claimed to be a feUow detective, might suggest just such a scenario. Whether this was the case or not. General Blamey refused to give any sort of an explanation and the story remained a source of gossip and political controversy for years. Retold and embellished in a hundred sordid versions, it led to the General being branded everything from procurer to pimp, bon vivant to brothel keeper.

When the gentlemen of the fourth estate questioned him about the matter, Blamey shrugged it off. He was a soldier who did his job and did it weU and considered himself entided to ignore reporters' questions on this or any other subject. Harry Alderman, a Melbourne barrister who was a close friend of the General, told him, "You know, Tom, you have to be a very innocent man to buck the press."

Blamey's reply was typical of the man: "I'm not afraid of the press."

He should have been, for he was also a soldier who firmly beheved that rank had its privileges.

In the state of Victoria during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the service of hquor in hotels was iUegal on Sundays and at any hour after 6.00 pm on every other day of the week. These


58 THE ODD COUPLE

blue-stocking Ucensing laws were recognised more in the breach than the observance, and from time to time Tom Blamey was to be seen sharing a drink with friends in a hotel lounge late at night. Liquor was banned too at pubhc gatherings such as the charity baUs supported by Melbourne's social ehte. OccasionaUy these were raided by police and those found in possession of liquor were prosecuted. AU sorts of subterfuges were used to conceal the presence of strong drink at such functions, but if General Blamey happened to be in attendance, patrons were pleasantly surprised to see the police commissioner's party liberaUy and openly provided with beer, wine and spirits and happily brought their own supplies from under the table, quite confident that no police raid would disturb the evening's entertainment.

In the ordinary course of events Blamey's sins would have passed without comment. There is a piece of doggerel which has often graced the buUetin boards in newsrooms:

You cannot hope to bribe or twist Thank God! the average journaUst But seeing what the man wiU do Unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Newspapermen are often thirsty, and those journalists best suited to be police roundsmen may be among the thirstier elements of their profession. Hotel bars and lounges were part of their work environment at aU hours of the day and night. A newsman entering a hotel lounge after-hours and observing Tom Blamey sharing an iUicit Scotch and soda with a friend may weU have washed him luck and joined the party if invited. There was scarcely a newspaper executive either who had not attended a charity baU with a flask of whisky on his hip. In the normal course of events a spirit of live and let live prevailed in such matters, but foUowing another police scandal Blamey attempted to impose a form of censorship on press reporters who covered the police round.



In an attempt to regiment the activities of journalists in and around Police Headquarters, he appointed certain senior police as spokesmen. All others were off limits and indulging in conversation with reporters placed their livelihood at risk. The pressmen declared war, one in which the journalists had all the weapons and there was no lack of disaffected pohcemen to provide the ammunition.

Any lapse from virtue by Blamey, no matter how insignificant, became a news story. The Fitzroy brothel matter was dredged up and turned into a cause celebre. The odd drink which Blamey may have had after-hours in a hotel and the occasional ball at which he was seen imbibing became a perpetual round of drunken licentiousness with the police commissioner staggering from pub to pub and party to party with a lady of easy virtue on each arm. Certain papers found no rumour too scurrilous to print, no sleazy detail too small to mention. When the press accused him of a cover-up foUowing an incident in which a detective was shot, both the papers and the opposition Labor party went after his scalp. His position became untenable. On 9 July 1936 he resigned from the pohce force.'"

Unlike MacArthur, Blamey had little appreciation of the value of personal publicity and saw no need to cultivate the press. A perfect example of the bluff and uncompromising senior soldier, it is likely that he considered such matters to be beneath his notice. This neglect cost him dearly, but he remained a soldier.

On his retirement from the Permanent Army, the General had accepted an appointment to the militia, and throughout his years as police commissioner he had remained on the active list as General Officer Commanding the 3rd Infantry Division, a militia formation. He retained the appointment until 1937 when he was placed on the unemployed officer list.

When Australia declared war on Germany in 1939, the Prime Minister, Robert Menzies, appointed Maj Gen Thomas Blamey to be the General Officer Commanding the 6th Division, Australian Imperial Force, which was being raised for overseas service." But controversy continued to follow him and his appointment was not accepted in military quarters with unbridled enthusiasm.

Menzies had overlooked Australia's senior serving regular soldier, Maj Gen Lavarack. This upset the officers of the Permanent Army


60 THE ODD COUPLE

and there was also a problem with Blamey's coUeagues of the miUtia. Maj Gen Gordon Bennett, a militia soldier who was senior to Blamey was also passed over. A fiery individual with an outstanding record as a battalion commander in World War I, Bennett did not accept his disappointment without comment. And there was another factor. He was from Sydney. Blamey was from Melbourne and Robert Menzies represented a Melbourne electorate. Menzies had been Attorney-General in the Victorian government during the time that Blamey was Victorian Police Commissioner. Menzies' chief defence adviser, Frederick Shedden, who had recommended Blamey, was also a Victorian. The Sydney—Melbourne rivalry which had plagued the founding fathers of the Commonwealth was never far from the surface and once more it reared its ugly head as the Sydney papers piUoried the prime minister for what they perceived to be nepotism. Battlelines were drawn which would endure throughout World War I I . '2

Through aU of it Blamey said nothing and got on with the job, but the damage had been done and there was more controversy when Blamey took the AIF overseas. When application was made by senior Australian officers to take their wives to the Middle East, then a training area, the government said no. Olga Blamey was a businesswoman who was financially independent of her husband. A weU-known Melbourne charity worker in peacetime, she gained an appointment to the staff of the Australian Red Cross which was active in providing services at Army hospitals and paid her own way to the Middle East. When asked to send her home again, Tom Blamey refused, pointing out that she was a free citizen travelling on an Australian passport and that he had no legal right to order her to do anything. Her presence provided more grist to the rumour miU which detailed the fictitious private life of the General.

Blamey ignored the rumours, if he knew of them. His was the responsibility to raise, train and equip this first Australian force to see action against Britain's enemies. That the 6th Division acquitted itself with distinction in the North African desert and fought bravely and weU in defeat in Greece and Crete in 1941 is a self-evident tribute to his talent as a commander and as a trainer of men, but credit for this was seldom forthcoming.



There were two different populations of officers within the Australian army, a small coterie of professionals and a vast majority of citizen soldiers. There were factions within both groups that would miss no opportunity to undermine Blamey's position. Nor were the common soldiers ever likely to hero worship their commander. All of the rank and file who were Victorians were familiar with the "Badge in the Brothel" story, and those from other states who had never heard of Blamey before joining the AIF were soon enlightened. The stories became wilder and more salacious with the teUing.

Blamey was never to receive the respect to which his talents or accomplishments entitled him, and the problems associated with his popularity or lack of it were not restricted to his public image.

During the time of Australia's greatest danger and beyond, he was often piUoried in the parliament by members of both parties, but if Blamey gave a damn, he never showed it. As a soldier he possessed all of the military talents, but he was an old-fashioned man. He would never understand that any of his lawful comings and goings, whether on duty or on leave, in public or in private, could be anyone's business but his own. Like most soldiers, including MacArthur, he deplored the interference in military matters by the press and politicians, but unlike the American he never learned how to deal with either. MacArthur dissembled when dealing with both. He had built his whole career on an attitude of sycophancy and flattery toward his political masters and a close and warm relationship with the press. Such sophistry was contrary to Blamey's nature. He offered them Blamey, no more, no less. Take him or leave him. He was his own man and went his own way. This was his blind spot, a characteristic in his make-up which led to a total inabihty to come to terms with pubhc relations.

Blamey's incumbency as police commissioner was at a time of high unemployment. Trade unions and related bodies promoted raUies and street marches by the unemployed workers. Blamey ordered his police to use their batons freely in dispersing these parades. A waterside workers' strike in 1928 led to riots and disorder. In their efforts to protect the strike breakers, the police used force, and on one occasion pohce fired their pistols. It has long been claimed that a watersider who had served in the AIF at Gallipoh was shot and kiUed.'-^ In fact,


62 THE ODD COUPLE

there is no record of any striker being struck by a pistol shot. In the riot in question, only three strikers were hurt, none of them seriously According to official Victorian Pohce sources, the only one of the three injured watersiders old enough to have served at GaUipoh,James WiUiams, was taken by friends to hospital and was released the next day'"* The dead Gallipoh veteran existed only as rumour, but it was taken up by left-wing propagandists and some historians accept it as fact. It was a legend among the ranks of the 2nd AIF which were fiUed with men who were trade unionists, most of whom had been unemployed at one time or another during the depression years. The Badge 80 affair and the occasional drink after hours would appear to be the "evidence" which saw Blamey piUoried as a drunk and a womaniser, a reputation that foUowed him to the grave and beyond. But the actions of his police against strikers in Melbourne estranged him forever from the men of the working class who were the majority of his troops. For the same reason he was branded a fascist in the eyes of the left wing of the Labor Party whose members formed the government.

MacArthur was never any more popular w ith the troops under his command than was Blamey with the Diggers. The gross exaggerations contained in his communiques made this impossible. In the 1930s, and at about the same time as Police Commissioner Blamey was being pilloried in the press in Melbourne, MacArthur had a problem concerning a pretty young Eurasian woman with whom he was infatuated. He had brought her to America from the Philippines and kept her in an apartment in Washington. This threatened to become a public scandal when columnist Drew Pearson of the Boston Globe located her and threatened to have her give evidence in a libel suit which MacArthur had brought against him.'^ Since MacArthur had brought the girl from the far east, and she had crossed numerous state borders on her way to Washington, the General may have been vulnerable to prosecution under the MannAct.^^

MacArthur also had problems with street demonstrations of a similar kind to those with which Police Commissioner Blamey had to deal in Melbourne but on a much grander scale. In 1932, as US Army Chief of Staff, MacArthur took personal command of the infantry cavalry and tanks when troops dispersed thousands of his



feUow World War I veterans who had marched on Washington from every corner of the United States seeking the payment of a World War I bonus. A shanty town in which the veterans lived was burned down. A veteran was kiUed, women and children were hurt and one chUd was wounded with a bayonet. This incident and his often outspoken criticism of pacifists, socialists and their feUow traveUers left the public in no doubt about MacArthur's pohtical sympathies.

But while Blamey stood condemned on aU counts, the middle-aged MacArthur's daUiance with a young lady hardly out of her teens, and his unnecessary use of deadly force against his fellow veterans, was ignored, if it was known at aU to anyone in AustraUa. Rumour was also rife among the American troops that MacArthur had looted the Philippine treasury before leaving Corregidor and it was rumour well founded in fact. A secret deal done on Corregidor between General MacArthur and Manuel Quezon, the President of the Philippines, reeked of extortion or corruption or both. It enriched the General to the tune of half a miUion doUars, a large fortune in 1942, and several other members of the Bataan Gang also prospered.'"^ The damage done to the Ten Conmiandments by Destiny's Child was at least as great as any that they suffered at Tom Blamey's hands, yet, while the Australian general was constantly lampooned and criticised, the only family which the Australian government and press may have held to be of a purity and probity equal to that of the MacArthurs lived in Nazareth almost two thousand years earlier.

In their public persona, the two generals were as chalk and cheese, even down to their appearance. Above middle height and slim, clean shaven, dressed casuaUy in his suntans with his comic opera field marshal's cap aslant, MacArthur struck a romantic figure, and he employed his own staff of photographers to ensure that nothing appeared in print to sully his image. Although he was two inches under six feet taU,'* it is difficult to find a MacArthur photo of which he is not the focus, towering over aU about him, even when the six foot five inch General Eichelberger appears in the same picture. Such was MacArthur's attention to detaU that he buttoned his pants and shirt together so that activities such as getting in and out of motor cars would not leave him untidily rumpled should a photographer


64 THE ODD COUPLE

be lurking.''' MacArthur was accepted everywhere as the very model of a modern fighting general.

On the other hand, Blamey could have posed for a portrait of Colonel Bhmp. Short and stout, with a bristhng moustache, in the eyes of the American staff he was something of a comic figure. When he first appeared at MacArthur's HQ, he was dressed as he had been for the Desert, wearing the roomy shorts known to the troops as Bombay Bloomers. Seeing these, a senior American officer remarked, "What do we have here ... the Boy Scouts of Australia?"

It was a first impression that did nothing for the Blamey image. It was unfortunate, too, that MacArthur's headquarters was first established in Melbourne and that the Bataan Gang were made honourary members of the Melbourne Club. This was the sanctum sanctorum of the city's establishment which by and large tended to disapprove of General Blamey. At the mention of his name, the locals were glad to bring the Americans up to date with lurid tales, both real and rumoured, of the Australian general's pre-war activities. In American eyes his disastrous career with the Victorian Police Force became the measure of the man — this and the fact of his having been a miUtia general.

Since Blamey had held high rank in AustraUa's militia, the regular army officers of MacArthur's staff regarded him much as they would one of their own part-time officers of the National Guard, whose senior ranks were generaUy fiUed with prominent citizens promoted for pohtical reasons.2" His outstanding record of achievement in World War I and more recendy in the Middle East was ignored, and so powerful was the effect of this misconception that Blamey was written off by lesser talents as no more than an amateur soldier, a political go-getter whose presence in the command structure was little more than an irritating irrelevance.

Injuly 1942 Major General Robert C. Richardson visited AustraUa as the personal representative of General MarshaU. He inspected the South West Pacific Area command and tendered a report which was critical of both the troops and the organisation. One of his recommendations was that American troops be constituted a separate corps. Later, MacArthur made this change, and asked for its sponsor to become his corps commander. Richardson refused to serve under an



Australian general and in doing so referred contemptuously to General Blamey as "Chief of Pohce of Melbourne, Australia".2'

An Australian woman who spent the years from 1942 to 1944 in an intimate relationship with Col Le Grand DiUer, MacArthur's public relations officer, was a native of Melbourne, a former employee of the Myer emporium. In writing of General Blamey many years after World War II, she appeared to reflect the view of her inamorata when she referred to General Blamey as "the former Police Commissioner with no military experience".^^

Blamey also had a local problem. From 1942 onward, the two separate armies, the militia and the AIF became one. It was necessary for the AIF to train and fight shoulder to shoulder with the "koala bears", the largely conscript militia which would play a vital role in the war against the Japanese aggressor. The military machine of which Blamey was to be the driver was one which would need a great deal of lubrication if it was to run smoothly and effectively and much of the oU would need to be applied with the assistance of the Australian government, in particular that of the prime minister. But Blamey did not know Curtin any better than MacArthur did. Labor had been in opposition at the time of his appointment to command, and although he had spent a month in Australia in November 1941, and twice had talks with Curtin, most of their conversations dealt with the future employment of the AIF in the Middle East."

The Australian Labor Party was the child of trade unionism and Blamey had grown to manhood in a rural community where unionists were considered to be enemies of society. He had been appointed by the conservative prime minister Robert Menzies, and both this and his former activities as police commissioner would ensure that he would always be viewed askance by the True Believers of the Labor Party with whom he would have to work.

Given his background, it would seem that MacArthur would have been even further distant from Curtin in outlook than was Blamey. In June 1932, as US Army Chief of Staff, General MacArthur told an audience at the Pittsburgh university that pacifists and leftists were enemies of the state who were "organising the forces of unrest and undermining the morals of the working man".^'^ John Curtin was a left-wing journalist and a trade unionist who had been jaUed for his


66 THE ODD COUPLE

pacifist and anti-conscriptionist views during World War I, an ideologue whose behefs stamped him as an enemy of the people by Mac Arthurian standards. The American general was notorious for his right-wing views, and his use of excessive force in dispersing the Washington "Bonus Marchers" injuly 1932^5 may weU have been the only act of his pre-war career with which an Australian Labor Party politician might be expected to be famiUar. Yet the relationship he established with the Australian prime minister was cordial and warm, and remained so throughout their entire association.

Under the directive to which the Australian government had agreed, MacArthur would have direct access to the prime minister as of right. Blamey, as Commander-in-Chief Allied Land Forces, would be under command of MacArthur, but as Commander-in-Chief Australian Army he had a right to expect his prime minister to accept his advice in matters affecting his army. The difficulty was that by military convention this overlapped the military duty he owed his Commander in Chief, MacArthur. Circumstances now demanded that the socialist Curtin establish a working relationship with two generals whose political ideology he despised, who were almost the antithesis of each other and whose interests and ambitions, other than those broadly relevant to winning the war, seldom coincided. This situation had the makings of a troika the hke of which the finest horseman in Russia would not care to harness.

Notes

1. Dudley McCarthy South West Pacific Area: First Year, AWM, 1959, p 6; MiUtary Operations Appreciation — The Concentration of the Australian Land Forces in Time of War, AWM.

2. McCarthy, p. 13 et seq.

3. David Horner, Blamey, AUen and Unwin, Sydney, 1998, p. 269. He quotes Auchinleck to Blamey, 9 March 1942, Blamey Papers, and Auchinleck to Brooke, 7 March 1943, Auchinleck Papers.

4. ibid., p. 28 et seq.

5. Letter from Blamey to his wife, Blamey papers, AWM.

6. John Hetherington, Blamey, AWM and AGPS, Canberra, 1973, p. 47.

7. ibid, p. 49.

8. Horner, p. 80.



9. Horner, Chapter 4 passim. Discussions with Ken Blanch, long-time poUce roundsman with the Brisbane Telegraph and editor of Sunday Truth, Tony Koch, head reporter of the Brisbane Courier-Mail, znd Terry GaUaway formerly crime reporter for Radio 2GB and TV Channel 7, Sydney.

10. Horner, pp. 54-64. 11. Norman Carlyon, / Knew Blamey, MacmUlan, Melbourne, 1980, p. xin. 12. Hetherington, p. 81 etseq. 13. Horner, p. 94 et seq. Horner quotes Rupert Lockwood, Ship to Shore,

Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1990, p. 292. 14. Letter from Victorian Commissioner of PoUce, NeU Crombie, to Jack

GaUaway, 27 September 1999. 15. W Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, Little Brown and

Co.,Boston, 1978,p. 145. 16. Under the Mann Act,passed into US Federal Law in 1910,it was an offence

to transport a female person across a state Une for an immoral purpose. Conviction under this enactment carried a substantial jaU sentence.

17. Ronald Spector, Eagle against the Sun, Free Press (a division of MacmUlan), NY, 1984, pp. 115-16.

18. MacArthur was five feet eleven inches at age 21 (D. Clayton James, V ar5 of MacArthur, Vol. I, Houghton Mifflm, NY, 1970, p. 68). Given the normal shrinkage that goes with age, he could not have been above five feet ten at age 61.

19. From the observations of M/Sgt Dick Graf, former radioman with Gen Kenney who often shared his radio shack with Gen MacArthur.

20. Col Harry Vaughan, a National Guard officer and Missouri poUtician who served as Provost Martial on MacArthur's GHQ, was later promoted to Maj Gen and appointed President Truman's Chief of Staff.

21. D. Clayton James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1975, pp. 183—84. David Horner, Higher Command, AUen and Unwin, Sydney, 1992, pp. 208-9. He cites Eichelberger Dictations, Book 4, pp. VIII-36,VIII-37.

22. UnpubUshed memoir by Joy Foord, 1994. 23. Gavin Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, AWM, 1953. p. 544. 24. James, Vol. I, p. 390. 25. ibid., p. 405 et seq.


CHAPTER 6

A BILL OF GOODS

Tooteth loud thine ow n trumpet Lest thine trumpet remain untooted.

John L Lewis, National President, US Coal Miners Union

WHEN MacArthur arrived in Adelaide, he was met by his Deputy Chief of Staff, Brig Gen Richard MarshaU, who told

MacArthur that there would be no early return to the Philippines. The total American forces in Australia numbered fewer than 26 000. These were mostly Air Force personnel and rear echelon technicians. There was not a single American infantryman in the country. Nor would there be for weeks and when they did arrive they would be green troops, poorly trained and badly led, far from battle-ready'

An AIF Division was almost immediately available. Battle-hardened and experienced, the 7th Division AIF was arri-ving in Australia even as MacArthur landed at Batchelor. There were other elements of the AIF too. Armoured forces in divisional strength,all AIF enlistees, were training in Victoria and in Western Australia and there were thousands of AIF reinforcements in various stages of training in camps aU over the country In total there were 104 000 members of the Australian Imperial Force available, and they were aU volunteers who had enlisted for overseas service.^ Australia's militia was almost twice as numerous, a considerable force of volunteers and conscripts. In March 1942 Australia was in the process of deploying seven infantry divisions, two motor divisions and one armoured division. In


A BILL OF GOODS 69

addition, there were the New Guinea and Northern Territory forces each of which was equivalent in numbers to a division. Although aU of these formations were not up to strength, procedures were well advanced to call up and train the numbers required. They would be there when needed, but not everyone believed that this would be the case.

The AIF volunteered for service anywhere in the world, whereas members of the militia could not be compeUed to fight outside Australia and its island territories. This was a source of friction and created an attitude between the two forces which flowed over into the general Austrahan community It was communicated to the Americans and to their commander, General Douglas MacArthur. Later, the General was to produce a variation on this theme when he pointed out to Australian generals that, while the American GIs were conscripted and sent halfway around the world to defend Australia, strict geographical limits for the deployment of Australian troops would prevent them from fighting to regain American territory in the Philippines.^

MacArthur was a man who planned ahead. His sights were set far beyond the defence of Australia. Nothing less than the recapture of the Philippines would do the Hero of Bataan and for this task Australian troops would not be wanted. MacArthur earnestly beheved that this was an American war. In fact, he thought it was his own personal war, a proprietorial view which was at odds with that held by the admirals of the US Navy who believed that, through their need to avenge the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they had a prior claim to the conflict.'' But MacArthur would not wiUingly share the Umehght with anyone. For the reconquest of his island empire, he would need American troops and lots of them. For those he would have to wait, but he did not wait patiently. He never ceased to harass the Joint Chiefs of Staffin Washington, firing off daily buUetins Usting the deficiencies of both the quantity and quality of the troops under his command, almost exclusively Australian. He exaggerated downward the numbers of Australian troops available, and he missed no opportunity to savagely malign their fighting quahties. Some of his apologists have quoted the need to fight for his share of American resources as a justification for this, but nothing would or should earn


70 THE ODD COUPLE

him the forgiveness of those he slandered. Neither did the US Joint Chiefs of Staff necessarily accept his appreciation of AustraUan resources. They were described as being pleasantly surprised at the extent of the country's resources available for its own defence.^

With the Japanese holding a ring of islands from Singapore to Rabaul, any plans for the offensive were premature; any thought of an immediate return to the Philippines was out of the question. A much larger force than that available in early 1942 would be needed before MacArthur could make good his promise — and he would need not only troops but ships to transport them and ships and planes to protect them. In early 1942 these ships and planes simply did not exist. In any event, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not in the least concerned with MacArthur's plans for a return in triumph to the Philippines. It was simply not part of the overaU strategy.^

Naval opposition to MacArthur's participation in "their war" caused considerable delay in the aUocation of areas of responsibiUty.' When the orders were finalised more than a month after his arrival, they delineated the geographic limits of his area of command, which was described as the South West Pacific Area, and they designated him as its Supreme Commander.

At the same time that this order went out to MacArthur, a similar direction went to Admiral Nimitz, Commander in Chief, US Pacific Fleet, who was given command of the Central Pacific area. Nimitz retained his title of Commander in Chief. MacArthur considered Supreme Commander to be the lesser of the two titles. Without reference to Washington, he immediately changed his title to conform with that assigned to the Admiral. He was always referred to as Commander in Chief, South West Pacific Area, or by the acronym CINCSWPA.

Although General Thomas Blamey was given overall command of Allied Land Forces, the arrangement was made without consultation with MacArthur. It did not particularly please him, and it remained the extent of Allied cooperation at staff level. Rear Admiral Leary USN took command of AUied Naval Forces, and General Brett USAF the Allied Air Forces, but the inner circle of MacArthur's staff was the All-American Bataan Gang. When US Chief of Staff, General MarshaU, questioned MacArthur's failure to employ Aus-


A BILL OF GOODS 71

tralian staff officers on his GHQ, he was told that there were none available who were suitably qualified.

Of course, there were numerous highly trained Australian staff officers available, officers who had wide experience on divisional and corps staffs. General Robert Eichelberger, who had had more to do with the Austrahan infantry commanders than any other American general, said of their staff officers:

The Australians didn't think they needed much help from anyone. Many of the commanders I met had already been in combat in North Africa and, though they were usuaUy too polite to say so, considered the Americans to be, at best, inexperienced theorists.^

And Eichelberger's opinion was reflected in a note written to the prime minister by Frederick Shedden, Secretary of Australia's Defence Department, in which he quoted General Vernon Sturdee as saying that "the American Staff are very academic and lack experience

)J q

in war . Academic they may have been, and their lack of experience was

demonstrated on a daily basis, but the Bataan Gang ruled and brooked no interference from outsiders.

MacArthur's Chief of Staff, General Sutherland, governed GHQ with a rod of iron and guarded the entrance to the sanctum sanctorum. Almost no one saw the Commander-in-Chief on business without the approval of Richard Sutherland. He was a conscientious and competent "paper work" man who relieved his chief of all of the administrative detail of his command. Sutherland did much as he pleased, free from interference from above, but he was a hypochondriac and a buUy whose personal courage was suspect. His staff respected his competence, but most of them heartily disliked him. Eventually, he was to confuse freedom with licence. Delusions of grandeur caused him to overstep the mark and he was ruined by MacArthur.'0

General MarshaU was Sutherland's deputy A charter member of the Bataan Gang he was a faithful and obedient underling. General Charles Willoughby was in charge of inteUigence. WiUoughby was German-born and something of a charlatan. He was said to have had a brief and lusty frolic with Claire Booth Luce, the wife of the owner


72 THE ODD COUPLE

of Time magazine when she visited the Philippines," but if this is true, then Charles was probably double gaited. He eschewed female company while in Australia and associated freely with homosexuals.'^ His claim to descent from a prominent Prussian military family earned him much esteem and preferment during his career with the US Army but it was quite without foundation. According to the registration of his birth, he was the son of a ropemaker, August Weidenbach, and his Frau, Emma, nee Launghauser. Unless the local squire had claimed the ancient "droit de seigneur" and had his way with Emma, not a single drop of aristocratic blood flowed in WiUoughby's veins.'-^

Colonels Le Grand DiUer and Syd Huff were other prominent members of this tight little coterie. "Pik" DiUer was the GHQ public relations man but seldom had the need to write a line. The actual production of the daily communique was attended to in person by General MacArthur. Diller's role was more an administrative one and he was also in charge of press censorship.'•* Colonel Huff had once been Lieut Huff of the United States Navy. He was discharged medically unfit in 1935 foUowing a heart attack which he suffered while playing golf in Manila with Major Dwight Eisenhower who was then MacArthur's Chief of Staff. MacArthur appointed him to the staff of the PhUippines military mission in 1936 as a civiUan, and gave him the task of evaluating and purchasing torpedo boats for an embryo Philippine Navy. By the time war broke out five years later, Huff had purchased two boats from Great Britain and was having another built locally'"' He was commissioned a Lt Colonel in the US Army just prior to the outbreak of war with Japan and MacArthur appointed him his senior aide. He always remained close to Mac-Arthur but Huff possessed few military skills. He found his niche as major domo to the MacArthur household.'^' Huff was devoted to Mrs MacArthur and a trusted family retainer for the next decade and beyond.'''

General Brett commanded the predominantly American air forces then in Australia prior to MacArthur's arrival, but he was not destined to merge smoothly into the new organisation. Brett was out of favour with MacArthur from the time that they met. In fact, neither the Air Force nor the US Navy found favour with the Hero of Bataan. He


A BILL OF GOODS 73

considered the Navy to be responsible for fading to provide reinforcement and supply to the Philippines and the air force had turned in a less than acceptable performance in their defence. The unfortunate General Brett was in particularly bad odour. The first aircraft he sent to fetch the Bataan Gang from the Philippines had been battered wrecks and MacArthur refused to travel in them. New planes had to be found before the party was rescued, but the Yankee D'Artagnan had other concerns with his Air Force commander.

When Curtin had first asked for an American general to take command, he had endorsed Brett as being suitable for the purpose. This was the kiss of death. In any hive, there can be but one Queen Bee. MacArthur sacked Brett in August 1942. He was replaced by General George C. Kenney, a capable and confident airman who stood no nonsense from anyone, not even from the Bataan Gang. MacArthur later told Kenney, probably by way of a warning, that his predecessor had been "altogether too friendly with Austrahan politicians".'^

General Blamey was the sole non-American among the top echelon of the South West Pacific Area command and it was obvious from the beginning that he was there under sufferance. It was a situation with which Blamey was familiar. He had spent much time as a subordinate to British generals who preferred to ignore the views of colonial commanders and their staffs and in aU likelihood he expected nothing more from this new arrangement. He had fought hard to ensure that Australian troops were treated justly by the British, and had been able to rely on support from Australian governments, both conservative and sociahst,but there is no record that John Curtin sought to stipulate any guidelines in regard to the relationship between himself, his Australian Commander-in-Chief and General MacArthur. In contrast to the intransigent attitude which he adopted toward the British over deployment of troops and the appointment of staff ofiBcers, John Curtin and the Australian government accepted MacArthur and aU of his arrangements without complaint or comment.

Injuly 1942 the Austrahan CGS,Lt Gen Vernon Sturdee, summed up the situation:


74 THE ODD COUPLE

There is very close coUaboration between the Prime Minister and General MacArthur ... and if the Australian Chiefs of Staff submitted an appreciation to obtain Australian War Cabinet agreement, such appreciation would, no doubt, be referred for General MacArthur's views ... We naturaUy do not wish to take any action which would upset the present harmony and co-operation which exists with General MacArthur's Headquarters.'*^

Although Curtin's was the responsibility, the negotiations which led to the acceptance of the directive were carried out by the Secretary of the Defence Department, Shedden. In relation to the this, the Secretary noted that:

... an important aspect should not be overlooked. It is the part that has been played by the Defence Department as the agency of aU higher poHcy questions dealt with between the Prime Minister and Gen MacArthur ... On Gen MacArthur's appointment, the Defence Department assumed the responsibility for handling aU matters on the poUcy level .. ."^"

Deliberately or otherwise, the directive left no place for Blamey in the discussions of war policy and Curtin made it plain that his presence in any high-level discussions would only ever be on an "as needed" basis. He informed MacArthur as early as 10 April that "if 1 should not be readily available, Mr Shedden has my full confidence in regard to all questions of War Policy".^'

It is evident that from the day of MacArthur's arrival Curtin and Shedden had swaUowed the whole MacArthur legend at a meal and that it was a repast which needed no condiments. Obviously Curtin had no doubt of the General's talent and if Shedden had any reservations when MacArthur arrived in 1942 they had certainly disappeared within twelve months. In January 1943 the Defence Secretary spent five days in Brisbane conferring with MacArthur and his report to Curtin is enlightening.

Shedden commended MacArthur for his briUiant defence of the Philippines and quoted the General as an authority on the difficulties faced by the troops in the fighting which raged in New Guinea throughout the second half of 1942. He told Curtin that "of the nine campaigns in which [MacArthur] had fought, he had not seen one


A BILL OF GOODS 75

where the conditions were more punishing on the soldier than this one".22

Shedden's six-months overseas service in World War I as a Lieutenant in the Pay Corps was a fairly questionable qualification for an assessor of military genius, and his only bases for a judgment of the General's military competence were the Pdpping Yarns generated by the MacArthur communiques.^-^

By any honest assessment, MacArthur's first-hand experience of real war was extremely limited and Shedden should have been aware of this. But even if his fight with the Bonus Marchers is included, nothing like nine campaigns are to be found in the written record. His only substantial experience of war consisted of a few months on the Western Front in 1918 and ninety-eight days in command of the PhUippines disaster. 2''

Neither Shedden, the prime minister. General Blamey or anyone else within the Australian defence hierarchy had sought a proper briefing on the extent of the MacArthur debacle in the Philippines. Although an honest assessment could have been extracted from a member of the Bataan Gang only under torture, there were other Americans in Australia who would willingly have provided a firsthand account.

In February 1942 High Commissioner Sayre and his family were evacuated from the PhiUppines three days after the departure of President Quezon.^^ They came to Austraha and remained in the country for a time before proceeding to Washington. His name is conspicuous by its absence from the long list of those who consulted with Austraha's leaders. That Sayre was weU aware of the true situation in the Philippines and was totally disiUusioned with both MacArthur's plan and his performance was made plain when he spoke to US Under Secretary of State Sumner WeUes foUowing his arrival in Washington. In a letter to President Roosevelt, WeUes described Sayre's attitude towards MacArthur as "active detestation".^^

A B 17 navigator who was present at Clark Field on the day the Japanese destroyed MacArthur's air force said of the havoc that the Japanese created there: " . . . our generals committed one of the greatest errors ... that of letting themselves be taken by surprise ... [it] can only be exceeded by treason."


76 THE ODD COUPLE

Army Chief of Staff George Cadett MarshaU said, "I just don't know how MacArthur happened to let his planes be caught on the ground."^''

It seems that nothing of these matters was known to Australians. In his report to Curtin, the Defence Secretary wrote that MacArthur showed "great personal courage and leadership as was exempUfied during the campaign in the Phihppines",^** a view which seems to suggest that MacArthur and his staff had managed to ensure that people such as Curtin and Shedden remained in contented ignorance of such matters.

The need to keep the Australian defence hierarchy in ignorance of the true nature of the one-sided contest for the Philippines could weU have been the motivation for MacArthur banning senior Allied staff officers from his headquarters. The nickname Dugout Doug, bestowed on MacArthur by his troops on Bataan, had foUowed him to Australia. So, too, did such derogatory verse as "Battling Bastards of Bataan", and that the defence had been a shambles was common gossip among US service personnel in Australia, but such criticisms by the lower echelons could easily be contained. Had a close association at the General Staff level been established, the maintenance of the omnipotent image of MacArthur may have been more difficult.

A closer association with Americans other than the Bataan Gang by Shedden may have provided him with a different point of view of MacArthur's soldierly talents. Even without such information, a more curious interlocutor might have wondered aloud why Mac-Arthur's eagerness to experience the perils and hardships of the battlefield had abated to the point where he would be content to fight the Papuan campaign from the air-conditioned comfort of Lennons Hotel in Brisbane. But Shedden accepted MacArthur's word as holy writ and did not seek his curriculum vitae.

And the Defence Secretary's admiration for the General was reciprocated. After reading a copy of Shedden's report to his prime minister, MacArthur wrote a letter to Curtin which described the Defence Department Secretary in glowing terms and suggested that his dUigence be given public recognition.^'^ As a result, Curtin recommended his Defence Secretary for Royal Honours, and on the


A BILL OF GOODS 77

King's Birthday 1943 he became Sir Frederick Shedden KCMG.^" The Labor Party disagreed in principle with the award of Imperial Honours, but in wartime they made exceptions in the case of soldiers deserving of recognition. Sir Frederick was the only civihan ever to be so honoured by the Curtin government.

MacArthur carried out his orders and accepted Blamey as Commander-in-Chief, Allied Land Forces, thus giving the Australian titular command of all of the Australian and American land forces in the South West Pacific Area, and while these were forces which were almost entirely Australian, Blamey did indeed exercise such command. Once American infantry arrived in the SWPA in significant numbers, there was an immediate change. MacArthur found the means whereby he could circumvent this arrangement. There would be an Australian Army and there would be an American Army. Although Blamey continued in command of Australian troops, there was never any intention on MacArthur's part to aUow him to exercise operational command of any American formation larger than a Regimental Combat Team or some stray bodies of supporting arms and services which might be attached to the Australians from time to time. MacArthur did not believe in an ecumenical effort and the way in which he established and operated his own GHQ made that plain. Its total orientation to the American Way was implicit in the code-name which he chose, a name which he attached to his headquarters and his person for the next nine years.

Just as though he and his staff had been transferred directly from the Forward Defensive Locahties on that damned peninsula, telephone switchboard operators at MacArthur's GHQ answered caUers with the codename "Bataan". When MacArthur commandeered a new B 17 for his personal use, he had the name "Bataan" painted on its nose. Thenceforth, and untfl 1950, the succession of personal aircraft which served him aU bore the name. When the Austrahan government wished to honour him and asked him to choose a name for a new destroyer for the RJ\.N, the ship was launched in Sydney by Mrs MacArthur and sailed as HMAS Bataan.^^ Had MacArthur been a British general and had he been granted a peerage as was Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, there is no doubt that he would have chosen to be dubbed Viscount MacArthur of Bataan.


78 THE ODD COUPLE

Disaster had not affected him and, although difficult times lay ahead, MacArthur's deft touch for pubhc relations would ensure that, just as he had convinced the world of his genius in the midst of the Phihppine disaster, just as his conscienceless arrogance had aUowed him to ignore the fact of his non-appearance in the forward areas and name his G H Q "Bataan",catastrophe would never touch him. Instead it would be reported as success and presented to the world ablaze with a false gloss of victory

Australia would be saved from invasion not by MacArthur, nor by the US Army, but by the United States Navy, and for the next two years MacArthur's battles would be crowned with the victories of valiant and dogged Australian Diggers. But MacArthur would ignore the US Na-vy and the Diggers and the world would hear little of them.

The 7th Division of the Australian Imperial Force would soon be joined in Australia by the 6th Division and later by the 9th, aU of them veterans of war. They had fought battles with Germans and Italians and even with the Vichy French. They had endured the fortunes of war and on occasion they had earned a few victories, real ones. They had learned to discard the dross, to make their judgments on performance and to find the true value of a leader. Experience had taught them which officers to trust and which to decry and they were wary of newspaper heroes. The politicians,journalists and civilians loved the Americans, but by and large the Australian servicemen returning from the Middle East didn't quite know what to make of these untried soldiers in their natty uniforms. But they quickly learned that the American troops who thronged the streets of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in 1942 were mostly for show. They discovered that for the foreseeable future the burden of war in New Guinea would be borne upon broad Australian shoulders. Before the year was out, they were able to compare performance with publicity and they found themselves more in tune with the BattUng Bastards of Bataan than they were with their own daily newspapers. They quickly passed final judgment on General MacArthur. In consideration of the fighting soldier's view of MacArthur's daily message to his fans, an anonymous Digger wrote:


A BILL OF G O O D S 79

For two long years, since blood and tears

have been so very rife

Confusion in our war news burdens more

a soldier's Ufe.

But from the chaos daily, like a hospice

on the way.

Like a shining Ught to guide us,

comes DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE.

For should we fail to get the maU,

if prisoners won't talk,

If radios are indisposed, and carrier pigeons walk,

We have no fear, because we hear

Tomorrow's news today

And we see our Operations Plan

in DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE.

Here, too, is told the saga bold

of virUe, deathless youth

In stories seldom tarnished with

the plain unvarnished truth.

It's quite a rag, it waves the flag.

Its motif is the fray.

And modesty is plain to see

In DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE.

"My battleships bombard the nips from

Maine to Singapore.

My subs have sunk a miUion tons

they'U sink a biUion more."

"My aircraft bombed Berlin last night."

In Italy they say

"Our turn's tonight because it's right in

DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE."

And whUe possibly a rumour now,

some day it wUl be fact

That the Lord wiU hear a deep voice say,

"Move over God, it's Mac."


80 THE ODD COUPLE

So bet your shoes that aU the news that last great Judgment Day

WiU go to press in nothing less Than DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE.^^

There is no doubt that privately the President of the United States would happily have endorsed the unknown Digger's sentiments, but publicly he had the need to demonstrate a chUd-like faith in the veracity of his General's gems of battle reporting. From the White House came the word that MacArthur was to get yet another medal to add to his record-breaking coUection, and this time it was a special one:

For conspicuous leadership in preparing the PhUippine Islands to resist conquest, for gaUantry and intrepidity above and beyond the caU of duty in action against invading Japanese forces and for the heroic conduct of defensive and offensive operations on the Bataan Peninsula. He mobilised, trained and led an army which has received world acclaim in men and arms. His utter disregard for personal danger under heavy fire and aerial bombardment, his calm judgement in each crisis, inspired his troops, galvanised the spirit of resistance of the FUipino people, and confirmed the faith of the American people in their armed forces.

The prose could well have come from one of Douglas MacArthur's own communiques. A narrow-minded and biased committee had foiled him in Mexico.Jealousy had led Pershing and Marshall to deny him in France, but in the end he had won through to the Holy GraU. Heroism was at last rewarded. For the reasons stated, a grateful nation had awarded him the Congressional Medal of Honor, his country's ultimate accolade.^^

Notes

1. D. McCarthy South West Pacific Area: First Year, AWM, 1959, p. 20.

2. John Hetherington, Blamey: Controversial Soldier, AWM, pp. 216—\7.

3. ibid.

4. Interview with US Director of War MobiUsation, Mr J. Byrnes, 1 June 1942. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 2 June 1942.

5. ibid

6. Herman GUI,/MN 1942-1945, AWM.,p.50l.


A BILL OF GOODS 81

7. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years ofMacArtliur,Vol. II,Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1975, pp 116-24.

8. Robert E. Eichelberger, Jwn^/e Road to Tokyo, Odham, London, 1950, p. 29.

9. D. Horner, High Command: Tlie Struggle for Independence, AUen and Unwin, 1992, p. 287. He quotes a memorandum, Shedden to Curtin, 11 November 1942. MP 1217. MP 293.

10. R Rogers, The Good Years, Praegar, NY, 1990, p. 259 et seq. 11. Geoffrey Perrett, Old Soldiers Never Die, Andre Deutsch, London, 1996,

p. 236. 12. Conversation with Mrs B. Daley (nee Stevenson), former secretary to

General Kenney 12 March 1996. 13. Barbara Winter, Tlie Intrigue Master, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, p. 144. 14. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol. 1,1970,pp 89-90. 15. ibid., pp. 532-33. 16. Unpublished memoir by Joy Foord, 1985. 17. James, Years of MacArtliur,Yol. Ill, 1985,p. 657. 18. Perrett. Horner, High Command, p. 209. Interview with George C.

Kenney, Archives, US Air Force Academy. 19. Letter, Sturdee to Smart, 20 July 1942, AWM 425/11/12. 20. Notes on discussion (by Shedden) with Gen MacArthur, Commander-

in-Chief SWPA, 14 AprU 1942, MP 1217, Box 3. Quoted in Horner, High Command, p. 189.

21. Letter, Curtin to MacArthur, 10 AprU 1942, CRS A5954,item 1598\2. 22. Horner, High Command, p. 248 et seq. He quotes a letter from Shedden

to Curtin, 27 January 1943, MP 1217, Box 2; and a memorandum from Shedden to Curtin, 29 January 1943, MP 1217, Box 575.

23. Horner, High Command, p. 1. 24. James, Years of Mac Arthur,Ydk I and II, passim. 25. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol. II, p. 96 et seq. 26. Gordon W Prange, Pearl Harbor: Verdict of History, McGraw-HUl, NY,

1986, p. 471. He cites a letter from WeUes to Roosevelt, 14 AprU 1942, PSF Box 79.

27. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U,pp.6-7. 28. Impressions of MacArthur after visit by Shedden to Brisbane, 16-20

January 1943.Letter to Curtin. Notes by Shedden,MP 1217,Box2037. 29. Letter from MacArthur to Curtin, 5 February 1943, RG 4, MacArthur

Memorial, Norfolk, Va. 30. King's Birthday Honours List, Brisbane Courier-Mail, 3 ]une 1943. 31. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U,pp.55-73,785. 32. Gavin Long, MacArthur, B. T. Balsford, London, 1969, p 119. 33. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U,pp. 130-31.


CHAPTER 7

THE BEAUTIFUL SILVER WATERFALL

"It wasn't MacArthur, mate, it was McCluskey . . ."

IN the summer and early autumn of 1942 few AustraUans doubted that the country was under imminent threat of Japanese invasion.

With his first massive raid on Darwin, Admiral Nagumo had made it clear to the meanest inteUigence that his planes could bomb Australia almost when and where he wished, and there was little doubt that, had they made the effort, the Japanese could have landed forces large or smaU at almost any point on the long Australian coastline. It was natural that the arrival of American troops was welcome and the arrival of General MacArthur and its attendant publicity produced an air of unbelievable euphoria. Here were the country's saviours. In the circumstances the General assumed the mantle of a Messiah come to save Australia from Japanese invasion. Many people came to believe that this is what he did.

But there is no arguing with history written in hindsight. Post-war searches of Japanese plans and documents reveal that the fears of the Australians were unfounded. The Japanese had no intention of invading their country. They thought about it and decided that they hadn't the resources to do the job. At a strategy meeting on 15 March 1942 at which the General Staffs of both the Japanese Army and the

Japanese Navy were represented, the army staff opposed such an invasion, which they said would require ten divisions or more. Instead,


THE BEAUTIFUL SILVER WATERFALL 83

a plan to take Port Moresby and isolate Australia and N e w Zealand

by occupying Fiji, Samoa and N e w Caledonia was adopted. Cor

roborative evidence, if such is needed, was provided by the wartime

Japanese pr ime minister. General Tojo,just before the Americans hung

him:

We never had enough troops to invade Australia. We had already far outstretched our Unes of communication. We did not have the armed strength or the supply facUities to mount such a terrific extension of our already over-strained and too thinly spread resources. We expected to occupy aU of New Guinea, to maintain Rabaul as a holding base, and to raid northern AustraHa by air. But physical invasion ... no, at no time.'

If this is the case, then the gratitude felt and expressed to the

Americans and to General MacArthur for keeping Australia free from

invasion was misplaced but historical hindsight does not always teU

the whole story.

Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, was one general w h o would have

preferred an Australian campaign to the one which the Japanese army

undertook in Burma.

With even Sydney and Brisbane in my hands, it would have been comparatively simple to subdue Australia ... Although the Japanese General Staff felt my supply Unes would have been too long, so would the American or British Unes. We could have been safe there forever.^

Yamashita's appreciation in regard to supply lines was more reahstic

than Tojo's which failed to take account of Australia's capacity for

production. In the vital period of Austraha's crisis in 1942, the country

was able to provide more than seventy per cent of the tonnage of

suppUes required by the Americans in the South West Pacific Area. In

addition, the country provided substantial quantities of food and

other essentials to the American forces in the adjacent South Pacific

Area.^ When the voracious capacity for consumption of the American

army is compared with the frugahty of the Japanese, there is strong

support for Yamashita's appreciation, and Yamashita's was not the only

voice which disagreed with Tojo, nor was it the most influential.

Isoroku Yamamoto was the most highly respected admiral in the

Japanese Navy. It was Admiral Yamamoto w h o conceived the strategy


84 THE ODD COUPLE

which resulted in the Pearl Harbor attack. He was held in awe by the whole Japanese nation. Yamamoto did not agree with the generals that ten divisions of troops would be needed to mount an invasion of Austraha. He had his own plan. At the very minimum, he wanted to establish a substantial naval base on the east coast. He considered this essential if Japan was to achieve its war aims. He planned to saU south outside the Great Barrier Reef and land five divisions of troops on the east coast close to the large centres of population in the Sydney—Newcastle area."*

Tojo was interested, but argued against what he considered might be a reckless venture. Interservice rivalry was worse in Japan than it was in America, and with a general as prime minister, the Army was in the ascendancy The Army view prevailed and after long discussion Yamamoto had to settle for a smaUer operation — a landing at Port Moresby and the subjugation of New Guinea. But he believed his plans for Australia to be feasible.

When the Admiral and his staff were planning the Pearl Harbor operation, he had estimated that the Japanese Navy could expect to lose a quarter of its strength. At no time had Yamamoto hoped for a victory of the kind he achieved. His ships had crippled the United States Pacific Fleet and sailed away unscathed.Japanese Army aircraft had humbled the British Navy off Malaya when they sank Prince of Wales and Repulse and again with minimal losses. The Japanese combined fleet dealt the Empire a further blow when its pUots bombed Colombo and Trincomalee and chased the remainder of Britain's Eastern Fleet out of the Indian Ocean. In the Battle of the Java Sea, Admiral Takagi met and destroyed a mixed bag of American, British, Dutch and Australian cruisers, the only remaining AUied naval force of any significance afloat east of Suez. In a few short months, the Japanese Navy had been invincible in battle. It had won for its country a vast empire and the Allies had sunk no ship larger than a destroyer. When he compared the expectations contained in his original pre-war appreciation with the state of his resources in mid-1942, Yamamaoto deemed himself rich beyond the dreams of avarice. He and his admirals had every reason to be confident of his Fleet's future success and he was a patient man. He did not persevere with his arguments for the Australian venture, but neither did he



forget it. MeanwhUe, the future plans for the Combined Fleet were in a state of flux. The Japanese bomber line, that magic perimeter from which land-based aircraft could support operations by surface forces, had moved inexorably closer to Australia.' The options were endless.

The plan that Yamamoto devised for Pearl Harbor and subsequent operations was never intended to defeat America. The Admiral was a realist. He was weU aware that America's massive industrial potential would see Japan defeated in a long war. His intention was to seize a "ribbon of defence", a ring of islands from the North Pacific running in a wide arc south and west to Australia. This would create a defensive barrier which would be impossible for the Americans to quickly or easily pierce. He believed that if he could destroy the US Pacific Fleet he would have at least a year in which to establish this perimeter. Japan could then proceed with its plans to establish its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. He believed that to defeat this great Pacific defensive barrier, America would face the prospect of a war which might drag on for years, a war of which the American people would tire. If this occurred, peace might be able to be established, with Japan left in possession of a major portion of her conquests.

It was an ambitious scheme based on a doubtful premise, for he was also aware that even as he made his plans American shipyards and factories which were inmiune to attack by his ships and planes were building a vast fleet and thousands of war planes which would eventuaUy overwhelm him. But Yamamoto knew that it was Japan's best chance of achieving anything resembling a victory. What he knew above aU was that, in the long term, the loss of their battleships was to America's advantage, a blessing in disguise. The development of aircraft had made the battleship obsolescent; it was no longer the capital ship of the fleet. Carriers had destroyed the US Pacific fleet and carriers would win the Pacific War. The US admirals were behindhand in recognising this, but Yamamoto knew that while Enterprise, Hornet, Lexington and Yorktown stiU floated his year of unchaUenged mastery of the seas was impossible. He knew, too, that new carriers by the score, and other ships by the hundreds, were a'buUding in American shipyards. The removal of the American threat from Austraha and the establishment of Japanese bases there would ensure that he made the very best possible use of his Golden Year.


86 THE ODD COUPLE

MeanwhUe, planning for the carrier-supported landing and occupation of Port Moresby was weU advanced, but some members of Yamamoto's staff worked on plans for an attack on the American air and naval base at Midway. Yamamoto did not expect that America would fight hard for Moresby, but he was certain that once he captured Midway, so close to the fleet base at Hawaii, the US Na-vy would have no choice but to come at him with aU of their carriers, and he was equally certain that he would destroy them.

The Naval Staff in Tokyo was not enthusiastic about the Midway plan, but most of its members had served under Yamamoto's command and he enjoyed their respect. They hesitated to refuse him and it remained an option. Yamamoto did not press the issue. Midway could wait, but he was determined to have it, for it was the key to any future dominance of the seas. It was also the key to a future invasion of Australia. He knew that once he destroyed the American carriers, and returned triumphant from Midway, the reputation of the Navy would stand so high that neither Tojo nor anyone else would be able to refuse him any operation he cared to plan. With the combined fleet unchaUenged in any ocean on earth, he would talk again about an invasion of the southern continent.'' But the capture of Port Moresby had priority. He needed a base from which his bombers could harass Northern Australia. Once he held Moresby, he would seize Samoa, Fiji and New Caledonia, isolate New Zealand and sever the Australian lifeline.

Japanese operational plans were usually complicated, but that for Port Moresby was quite simple. An amphibious force of 5000 marines of the Special Naval Landing Forces would be carried in twelve transports escorted by destroyers and cruisers with a light carrier attached to provide a Combat Air Patrol. This force would assemble at Rabaul and sail south through the Louisade Archipelago, around the eastern tip of New Guinea, to assault Port Moresby. The six big carriers of the combined fleet would safl from Truk, and steer south of the Solomons and west into the Coral Sea ready to do battle with whatever force the Allied navies might send to intercept the landing force. D Day for the landing at Moresby was set for early May. Following the landing, the six big fleet carriers would turn south to mount a major air strike on TownsviUe. Suddenly, everything changed.



On 18 April 1942 General Tojo was returning to Tokyo from an inspection tour when his plane had to take action to avoid a strange brown twin-engined aircraft which resembled nothing built in Japan. The General was devastated when his crew told him that it was an American MitcheU bomber and that it was an army type too big for normal carrier operations.^

On the mornng of Tojo's flight an American naval squadron approached the Japanese island of Honshu. It was a Task Force comprising two aircraft carriers. Vice Admiral Halsey flew his flag in USS Hornet upon whose flight deck rested sixteen B 25 medium bombers. In company was USS Enterprise, a sister ship which went along to provide a Combat Air Patrol, reconnaissance and fighter cover to protect Hornet and her escorts. As escort and for antisubmarine protection there was a screen of cruisers and destroyers commanded by Rear Admiral Ray Spruance.

This operation grew from a suggestion by Col James Doolittle of the US Army Air Corps who believed that it was possible for a MitcheU bomber to take off from a carrier deck two hundred feet long. With the aid of a group of young and courageous Army Air Corps pilots, he proved that it could be done, and although it was not expected that a handful of bombers would do a great deal of material damage, he and his youthful crews were off to attack Tokyo. Flying with maximum fuel loads, they were able to mount the operation from a greater distance than that from which land-based Japanese planes could threaten the ships. Since it was quite impossible for an aircraft that size to return to the aircraft carrier, after bombing their targets Doolittle and his men planned to fly a further 1700 kilometres to a friendly airfield in North China.

Col Doohtde and nine bombers would bomb the Japanese capital, Tokyo. Three would bomb Yokohama, three more would go to Nagoya, whUe a lone aircraft would bomb Kobe and Kyoto. It was planned to launch from a range of 614 kilometres, but early on 18 AprU, while stiU more than 1000 kilometres east of Tokyo, lookouts aboard an escort cruiser sighted a Japanese fishing boat and Halsey's radiomen heard it send out a wireless signal before his cruisers sank it with gunfire. The Admiral decided to launch immediately and the whole squadron was airborne by 0824. There was no fuel margin


88 THE ODD COUPLE

which would enable them to manoeuvre and form up as a squadron after take-off. As each B 25 left Hornet, its pflot set a course for his target. For most of the airmen it was their first operation and the standard of navigation was variable. Landfalls were spread over a considerable area, but the first aircraft were over Tokyo by noon. The Mitchells arrived over their targets singly and from widely varying directions, and despite the early warning given by the fishing boat, this caused great confusion to the Japanese. None of the crews met any significant opposition from anti aircraft fire and none whatever from fighter aircraft. Col Doolitde dropped 900 kilograms of incendiary bombs in downtown Tokyo. Other aircraft bombed defence plants and wharves. In aU, ninety factories were burned out and considerable damage was done to an oil tank farm and to an aircraft factory at Kobe. Each aircraft dropped its bomb load and then continued to fly west to China where fourteen of the sixteen planes crash landed. A fifteenth landed in Vladivostok and the crew was interned by the Russians. None of the crews found a friendly airfield but most feU into friendly Chinese hands, and of the eighty brave souls who manned the sixteen bombers, seventy-one survived. The airmen who were unfortunate enough to land in Japanese-held territory were captured, and two of them were beheaded.^ Doolittle's thirty seconds over Tokyo and the handful of bombs that he dropped did nothing to damage Japan's military capabiUty. Even had they landed in the midst of a military instaUation, they would have destroyed no significant fraction of its armed forces or their equipment. But despite their smaU size, dropped where and when they were, these few bombs did much more. The Doolittle raid was the spark which set in train momentous events which changed the course of the war.'

The Japanese people were outraged by the appearance of American planes over Tokyo. Since the attack had come from the sea, it was the Navy that lost face. A sneak raid by carrier aircraft had been predicted and, as a precaution. Admiral Yamamoto had established a picket Une of small ships to give warning. But with the warning given, Doolittle's planes stiU dropped their bombs and flew away unscathed. The Emperor's Godhead had been violated and his sacred person placed in danger. The attack on the Son of God had to be avenged. To strike



the Americans on American soil and to strike them swiftly became the Navy's first duty. Opposition by the Naval General Staff to the Midway strike evaporated and the operation became Priority One for the Japanese planners. The invasion of Midway was set down for the first week in June and carriers and crews had to be made ready.

The Moresby landing was scheduled to take place in the first week in May and it would go ahead. The Japanese were aware that the Americans had only four carriers in the Pacific Ocean and that two of these were used in the Doohtde raid on 18 AprU. Hornet and Enterprise could not reach the South Pacific in time to interfere. Japanese inteUigence sources correctly placed Lexington in Pearl Harbor. With only Yorktown remaining in the South Pacific, two of the big Japanese carriers would suffice to do the business.

Success had had its effect. Victory fever had gripped the Japanese Naval Staff. Instead of it being a combined fleet operation on the scale that wrecked Pearl Harbor and Darwin, the capture of Moresby now became one for a task force. A 300-plane raid on TownsviUe would have had a shattering effect on Australia but it was no longer part of the plan. Admiral Takagi, with Zaikaku and Shokaku would support the invasion force and the light carrier Shoho could provide a Combat Air Patrol sufficient for the protection of the troop convoy The remainder of the fleet would prepare for Midway. The use of maximum force, a first principle of military doctrine, was about to be ignored, but to the Japanese the odds seemed more than favourable.

Compared with the abundance of ships which Yamamoto had available, the AUies were in poor shape, but they had an extremely potent weapon of which the Japanese knew nothing. AUied code breakers had been able to read aU or part of coded Japanese Naval radio traffic since pre-war days. Long before the Moresby invasion convoy left harbour, Admiral Nimitz knew the Japanese task force commander's name, his intention, his time table, and the names, locations and approximate movements of the ships involved."^ This pre-knowledge enabled Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to sail from Pearl Harbor in time for Lexington to make a record-breaking high-speed run to rendezvous with Yorktown, which had been undergoing a period of make and mend at Tongatabu. Together they were despatched to intercept the Japanese armada. "MacArthur's Navy" also


90 THE ODD COUPLE

joined Fletcher's command. This comprised the Australian cruisers, AustraUa and Hobart, the American cruiser Chicago and a few destroyers. They were under the command of Rear Admiral Grace of the Royal Navy.

The story of the Battle of the Coral Sea is well known. General MacArthur's air force, commanded by Lt Gen Brett, played a significant role in air search and reconnaissance but took no part in the main action. It was the Navy's battle and it was unique in the world's history. For the first time, a sea action took place in which the ships which fought it never sighted each other, but it was far from being a classic battle of its type.

On 7 May, Admiral Fletcher detached Admiral Grace's cruisers and sent them to find the Moresby attack force and destroy it. The squadron was attacked by thirty-one land-based bombers but beat them off without casualty or damage. Shortly thereafter three B 17 bombers of the United States Army Air Corps,flying from TownsviUe, attacked the cruisers, mistaking them for the enemy. Grace's men had no difficulty in beating them off either. At 0815 on 7 May search planes from Yorktown reported that they had found the Japanese main battle fleet, two carriers and four heavy cruisers, about 280 kilometres north-west of the American force. Admiral Fletcher sent everything that would fly to attack the Japanese fleet. With the aircraft on their way, the pilot of the reconnaissance aircraft transmitted an amended version of his sighting report. He had actuaUy found a couple of cruisers and a destroyer, hardly a target for two fuU deckloads of bombers. The force turned about and quite by accident came upon Shoho, the light aircraft carrier attached to the landing force. The American dive bombers pounced on the little ship and promptly sank her. Her disappearance in less than ten minutes after the first attack set a record which endured for the rest of the war.

Shoho was unique for another reason. She was the first Japanese ship of significant tonnage to be lost to enemy action during the Pacific War. To make history in such a manner greatly alarmed Admiral Inouye, who was directing the batde from Rabaul. He took fright at losing a ship so quickly. His invasion force was without air cover and he ordered it to withdraw.

Towards evening. Admiral Takagi sent out search and destroy


92 THE ODD COUPLE

missions to seek the Yorktown and Lexington. They didn't find the ships but they did find a squadron of Admiral Fletcher's WUdcat fighters. The Americans shot down nine of the Japanese bombers. Later, in the dark, six of the survivors tried to land on Lexington, having mistaken her for their own carrier. They received short shrift, whUe a further ten Japanese aircraft were damaged while landing on their own ships in the dark.

On 8 May, battle was joined in earnest with aircraft from both task forces finding their opponents' carriers. Both Shokaku and Zaikaku were bigger than the American carriers and normaUy carried more aircraft, but the losses on the previous day had created a better balance. The battle opened with the odds almost exactly even. The Japanese ships had 123 aircraft and the Americans 122.

Zaikaku was hidden in a rain squaU and forty-one aircraft from Yorktown missed her altogether. They concentrated on Shokaku and scored two bomb hits. One of these damaged her flight deck and she could not launch aircraft. Admiral Takagi ordered Shokaku out of the battle and she steamed away for the Japanese base at Truk.

Meanwhile, seventy Japanese aircraft found the American carriers in plain view and gave them a vigorous working over. Yorktown lost sixty-six men killed when a bomb struck an elevator. Lexington was hit by two torpedoes and several bombs. She was left on fire and quickly took a sharp hst. She could stiU steam but not for long. Explosions tore at her innards and her Captain ordered the crew to abandon ship. Finally she was sunk by American destroyers.

OveraU, the loss oi Lexington was a major blow. If Yorktown could not be kept at sea, then losses for the two days of battle totaUed fifty per cent of the American carrier force. To the Japanese, the loss of the little Shoho was not of great significance. Measured by the tonnage lost by both sides, but more particularly if the tonnage is measured against that available to the conmianders of both fleets, the Japanese had a huge advantage. In the beggar-your-neighbour game of war, the Japanese still had five of their big fleet carriers undamaged and able to go to sea and Shokaku able to be repaired. In the whole of the Pacific Ocean, America had only Hornet and Enterprise undamaged.

But what of the amphibious force, the 5000 marines whose task it was to seize Port Moresby?



They had returned to Rabaul; the invaders had retreated. The Japanese plan to seize Port Moresby failed and no Japanese naval force ever sailed the Coral Sea again. That made it an American victory, and there were other benefits to flow from the battle."

While Takagi was taking his lumps in the Coral Sea, Yamamoto completed his plans for Midway. Once again, an amphibious force was involved. Seven thousand Japanese soldiers would land on Midway once the combined fleet had destroyed the aircraft which were based there and silenced Midway's guns.

The Naval air support would consist of four carriers. That seemed to be sufficient but there should have been six. The damaged Shokaku had to go into dock for repair. Zaikaku had lost more than half her planes and most of their crews. Driven by his need to avenge the Doolittle raid, Yamamoto could not wait for Shokaku to be repaired or for Zaikaku to train new aircrews.

The Japanese Navy's plans were seldom simple and Midway was no exception. In aU, 162 Japanese ships were involved in the various phases of a complex operation which even involved diversionary attacks by midget submarines on targets as remote from the proposed battlefield as Sydney and Madagascar.'^ The main diversionary attack would be on American bases in the Aleutians. This would occur two days before the Midway assault, and the Japanese planners believed that it would draw the American carriers away to the north clear of the landing at Midway. After they discovered their error and turned about to drive toward Midway they would be ambushed by the combined fleet and annihilated. Admiral Yamamoto would be in attendance with the main battle fleet which would include the three largest and most modern battleships in the world.

The code breakers had been busy and aU was known to Admiral Nimitz and his staff. Admiral Nagumo flew his flag in Akagi and he had with him the big fleet carriers, Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu. Between them these four ships carried more than three hundred aircraft. Nagumo also had the benefit of the most experienced Air Operations staff afloat, and many of his aircrews had over a thousand hours of operational flying.

Three American carriers sortied to meet the Japanese fleet. There were Admiral Halsey's two carriers, Hornet and Enterprise, which had


94 THE ODD COUPLE

carried out the Tokyo raid, and Yorktown, now Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher's flagship. Fourteen hundred tradesmen and labourers worked around the clock for three days to carry out repairs which normally would have taken a dockyard three months. She sailed with a fuU complement of eighty aircraft. This was but the first of the Miracles of Midway

Admiral Halsey, the senior carrier admiral in the Pacific, was incapacitated with iUness. Admiral Fletcher sailed in command of the American task force with Admiral Raymond Spruance, a cruiser and battleship officer, in command of Halsey's group. Spruance had never before commanded carrier forces.

None of the American Naval air crewmen had experience that was remotely comparable with that of the Japanese, and apart from a very good dive bomber in the Douglas Dauntless, the US carrier force had no aircraft which compared favourably with those carried by the Japanese fleet. In every aspect of naval a-viation, the Japanese Navy led the world. Admiral Yamamoto held all the aces. Even with the advantage that the breaking of Japanese codes and other measures gave them, Nimitz and his men faced a mammoth task. The coming battle was one which the Japanese had absolutely no right to lose.

On 3 June the Japanese launched their attack against the Western Aleutians, far to the north east of Midway Aware that this was a diversion. Admiral Fletcher ignored it.'- He had stationed his three carriers north-east of Midway, weU outside the range of Japanese reconnaissance aircraft and in a position where he could spring his ambush as soon as his own land-based aircraft flying from Midway located the main body of the enemy fleet.

Late on 3 June a Catalina from Midway sighted the Japanese invasion force and island-based Marine torpedo aircraft attacked. The Americans scored a hit on an oil tanker, but failed to disturb any of the Japanese warships, which easily fended off the attackers who lost heavily

Just before 0600 on the morning of 4 June, another Catalina reported two aircraft carriers north-west of Midway steaming towards the island. Fletcher ordered an attack, but Yorktown had search aircraft in the air some of which were short of fuel. His flagship had first to recover them and to do this she had to steam at top speed into



the wind and away from the enemy. Rather than delay the attack, Fletcher ordered Admiral Spruance to take command of Enterprise and Hornet and to proceed independently. He would foUow as soon as he had recovered the aircraft. Ten minutes later, more than a hundred Japanese aircraft attacked Midway.

This attack involved less than half of the Japanese bomber and torpedo aircraft. Nagumo reserved more than ninety dive-bombers and torpedo planes for an attack on American carriers should they be found by his scout planes. By 0700 his searchers had found nothing, and at that moment he received a signal from the commander of the Midway strike force. Before the landing force could be put ashore, additional bombardment was required. Nagumo ordered the aircraft reserved for a carrier strike to be struck below and rearmed with incendiary anti-personnel and fragmentation bombs for a second strike on Midway. He intended to fly them offbefore the first strike force returned.'"*

This process was only just under way when Nagumo received another signal. A search plane reported ten enemy ships to the north-east, a direction in which Nagumo was certain that no enemy ships would be. The Japanese admiral took his time to think about it before he cancelled his previous command and ordered the ninety-three aircraft to be rearmed with anti-ship bombs and torpedoes. As these activities were proceeding, the Japanese carriers were suddenly attacked by USS Hornet's Devastator torpedo bombers. They were alone and without escort.

Steaming south-east at more than thirty knots, Admiral Spruance had decided to launch his aircraft as soon as possible. He received no further sighting reports and when he was 280 kilometres from the last reported position of the Japanese, extreme range for his aircraft, he turned into the wind and launched full deckloads from Hornet and Enterprise. He had ordered a combined attack with which he hoped to surprise the Japanese while they were stiU refueUing the aircraft which had struck Midway. Spruance's decision was exceUent, but unfortunately his staff's execution of his order was not.

Launching procedure commenced with aU of the aircraft "spotted" on the flight deck, thus occupying almost half of its length. The light and fast fighters required the least length of deck to become airborne.


96 THE ODD COUPLE

They were parked for'ard of the "spot", and took off first. The loads of the dive-bombers could be varied in order to make best use of the deck space and they went next, whUe the heavily laden torpedo bombers, the slowest aircraft of aU, were the last to take off. A combined attack required the fighters and the bombers to circle the fleet untfl the torpedo bombers were in the air and then for the whole formation to proceed to the attack.

Once the target was sighted, the dive-bombers would approach at high level, drawing the interceptors of the combat air patrol to them and their escorts would engage the enemy fighters. The dive-bombers would proceed to select targets, and commence their attack. This would attract the attention of the enemy ships' anti-aircraft batteries. With both enemy fighters and enemy anti-aircraft batteries distracted, the torpedo bombers would attack. These aircraft were very slow, but they packed a devastating punch. To dehver it, however, they needed to fly very low and very straight towards the target for a considerable period of time so as to ensure that when the torpedo dropped into the water it maintained its equilibrium and that it ran true. Lacking the kind of distraction provided by a combined attack, this process was suicidal.

There was no combined attack at Midway. Spruance's inexperienced American deck crews took more than an hour to put the armada in the air. Extreme range meant that there was no fuel to spare for manoeuvre and as each squadron formed it was ordered to set course for the target. As had happened with the B 25s over Tokyo, unskilled navigation further scattered the groups of aircraft, and additional dispersal of the attacking forces was unavoidable because of Yorktown's absence. Hornet's and Enterprise's aircraft were aU in the air by 0835. Yorktown launched half an hour later. A combined attack became an impossibility. Instead of a phalanx of American aircraft approaching the Japanese fleet with its squadrons under the secure control of their senior commanders, planes were scattered over 200 kilometres or more of the wide blue yonder. And there was another complication.

Admiral Spruance's staff had assumed that the enemy carriers would continue to steam towards Midway, but when Nagumo received the sighting report he turned away from Midway He settled



First Carrier Stril<ing Force (Nigumil ciirlcfi: Akiji. Kigj. Huyv.Stiyv Sicond Flail-liiir 2 bllll'iliips. Scrailtll, SiiiW)'!', 1 ifflill ciiriir.

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NAUTICAL MILES

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Map 4 Batde of Midway, 4-5 June 1942

on a new heading, ENE, in order to close the American carriers, a fuU ninety degrees from the course first reported.

Hornet's torpedo bombers, under the command of Lt Cdr John C. Waldron, were the first to sight the enemy. To attack in such planes with no dive bombers present to divert the anti-aircraft batteries or fighters to engage the combat air patrol was suicide, but Waldron did not hesitate. Attack he did. The Japanese combat air patrol pounced on the slow, ungainly Devastators and shot aU fifteen out of the sky. Of the thirty crewmen, a single pUot lived to teU of the carnage.

The Japanese fleet steamed on towards Spruance's force, but scarcely had the deck crews returned to their task of readying Nagumo's strike force when the Enterprise torpedo squadron arrived. Lt Cdr Eugene Lindsay led his fourteen Devastators to the attack. Ten of the fourteen planes, including Lindsay's, splashed into the sea.

FinaUy Yorktown's Devastators arrived and, Uke their predecessors,

they were required to act alone and wdthout escort. Lt Cdr Lance E.

Massey was in command and his attack also ended in disaster. Every


98 THE ODD COUPLE

plane was destroyed. Three fliers survived. Forty-one American torpedo planes had attacked the Japanese fleet and only four flew back to their carriers. Of the eighty-two young Americans who manned the planes, just fourteen remained alive when it was aU over. Worst of aU, it appeared that it had aU been in vain. Not a single torpedo found its mark.

Meanwhile, Nagumo had another problem. The attack by the torpedo bombers had interrupted the work of his deck crews. The preparations for the carrier strike were stiU incomplete, and the Midway strike aircraft had returned. Many of them were short of fuel and had to be landed. The Japanese crews worked franticaUy to cope with this new diversion and stiU prepare the strike force for an attack on the American carriers.

But Nagumo saw no imminent danger in the situation. These were not the first attacks made on his carriers. Earlier, Dauntless dive-bombers and Grumman Avenger torpedo aircraft, B 25s and massive Flying Fortresses had aU flown out from Midway to attack the fleet. From 20 000 feet, giant Flying Fortresses had dropped more than three hundred bombs without registering a single hit. More than thirty of these land-based aircraft had been destroyed and not one warship had received damage. The Japanese pilots and gunners had shot down more than seventy aircraft with inconsequential losses. To the Japanese it was a major victory and the deck crews celebrated as they worked.

The time was 1024. The victorious pilots of the Japanese combat air patrol buzzed their ships and the crews of the four carriers were ecstatic as they danced and banzai'd on the flight decks.Japan owned the skies over the Pacific, there was no doubt of it.

The Battle of the Coral Sea could be described as a comedy — a comedy of errors. Friendly planes bombed Allied ships; Japanese aircraft attempted to land on American carriers; planes played Wind man's bluff in the clouds and targets were located and attacked more by accident than design. It was a disorganised scramble at best, but it was almost a tactical classic compared with the shambles that was Midway.

The American attack had been badly bungled, but the Americans had a ready-made excuse — inexperience.



The superb and experienced Japanese staff, commanding the best-trained and most experienced aircrews in the world, had no excuse at aU for what foUowed the doomed Devastator attacks.

Somewhere in the chaotic stream of assorted American aircraft which dotted the skies over the Pacific that morning, one of the two squadrons of Dauntless dive-bombers from Enterprise, commanded by Lt Cdr Clarence W McClusky and one of those from Yorktown, launched from miles away and much later, had found each other. Together, they made up a force of forty-three units, just a httle more than half the number launched from the three carriers that morning. They found no trace of the Japanese fleet at the point predicted by the staff. The sea was empty but for a lone Japanese destroyer heading north-east. Although the little ship's heading was at right angles to the predicted course of the Japanese fleet, McCluskey made an educated guess that this was a ship which had been sent by Admiral Nagumo on some kind of independent mission. Perhaps her Captain had been ordered to investigate a suspected submarine contact. The question was, in which direction was the destroyer headed? Was the captain of the destroyer about to search for a submarine, or was he returning to the fleet? McClusky took a punt on the latter. If he was right, then the white arrowhead formed by the bow wave of the destroyer was his compass needle. He brought his squadrons around to a north-easterly heading.

The dive-bombers were flying at 14 000 feet, and at 1026,just two minutes after the last of Yorktown's Devastators had splashed into the Pacific, McClusky found the Japanese fleet. SudderUy there below him were the four carriers, the fried egg symbol of Japan shining brightly in the morning sunlight on each snowy white wooden flight deck.

Columns of smoke dotted the sea in the wake of the Japanese ships — smoke from the funeral pyres of the Devastator crews, fires fed with fuel from the burst tanks of the Yorktown's torpedo bombers.

What McCluskey could not see was the scene aboard the Japanese carriers where aU was confusion as the busy Japanese deck crews dragged hoses across the decks to refuel aircraft as they landed. High explosive and incendiary bombs httered the decks as armourers rearmed planes with torpedoes and armour-piercing weaponry.


100 THE ODD COUPLE

Never had a carrier fleet been more vulnerable. McClusky had arrived in position to bomb at the moment of optimum opportunity and in the most unplanned manner imaginable. It was a tragic mirror obverse of the standard co-ordinated attack by carrier aircraft and the odds against it happening are incalculable.

The absence of a combat air patrol astonished him but he didn't waste time pondering the phenomenon. The American quickly issued his orders, nominated targets, aUocated flight leaders, and then his own plane turned on its side, nosed down, and he fixed his bombing sight on the large red "meatbaU" on the wooden flight deck o(Akagi, the Japanese flagship. This symbol of Japan grew larger in his bombing sight as his Dauntless plunged seaward and then, between 3000 and 2500 feet, he released his bomb, eased the plane gently from its vertical plunge so as not to throw the weapon off course and puUed it out of its dive. As the G forces tugged at his gut, he looked back and saw the bomb burst among the parked planes on the carrier's deck.

Forty-two more dive-bombers plunged seaward as the flight commanders targeted three of the four carriers. The Daundess was one of the best-loved carrier aircraft of the war and it achieved immortality at Midway. To an airman, its almost vertical bombing dive was a thing of beauty. One of the survivors of Yorktown's torpedo bomber strike, floating in his emergency dinghy, had a grandstand view of the attack. He described what he saw:

It was Uke a graceful sUver waterfaU descending from Heaven ... and then bang, bang, bang ... Three Jap carriers were history.

By 1032 it was aU over. Enterprise fliers had done for two of the carriers, while crews from Yorktown had put three bombs into a third. Three of the four Japanese carriers were burning hulks.

Japan's remaining carrier, Hiryu, launched aircraft which found Yorktown. There were eighteen dive-bombers, ten torpedo bombers and a dozen fighters. The Wildcats of the American combat air patrol made great slaughter among the Val dive-bombers and anti-aircraft fire from Yorktown and her escorts destroyed six of the torpedo-carrying Kates, but eight planes attacked Yorktown. She took three bomb hits and, at 1445, two Long Lance torpedoes struck at her vitals. While the repairs made at Pearl Harbor had enabled the gaUant ship



to play her part in the battle, her integrity below decks was less than 60 per cent. She took an immediate 26 degree Ust and fifteen minutes later her Captain ordered "abandon ship". EventuaUy this gaUant survivor of the Coral Sea battle had to be sunk; but that afternoon, Enterprise launched twenty-four dive-bombers, many of them York-town survivors. Lt GaUaher, of Yorktown, was given the honour of leading the mission and they went after Hiryu. At 1700 hours they found her, and just as Yorktown was about to slip beneath the waves, Lt GaUaher led her orphaned aircrews and their comrades from Enterprise into the attack which avenged her passing. The last of the Japanese carriers was hit four times and was left burning. Attempts to salvage her faded and she had to be sunk by Long Lance torpedoes from Japanese destroyers.'^

Japan's great carriers had been built at ruinous cost to a country which StUl had a peasant economy. They were the pride of the Japanese fleet. They were no more, and Japan had not the resources, nor would there be time, to build ships to replace them. And there was an even greater loss. The experienced and victorious aircrews who had provided Japan with her brief domain over the vast oceans were gone with their ships. They would never be replaced. Midway was the turning point. In six minutes at Midway, Japan lost World War II and lost the only weapons which could make possible an invasion of AustraUa.

Tojo did not he about the invasion of Austraha. The Japanese army always had the need to fight a war in China and to maintain a dozen divisions in Manchuria against the chance that Russia would attack them. His resources were overstretched and it is urflikely that he and his planning staff ever wanted to have to stretch them further. But that was not the Navy view. A Japanese victory at Midway, the destruction of the US carriers, would have had a disastrous effect on the AUies. It would have provided Japan with complete domination of the Pacific Ocean and Austraha's and New Zealand's tenuous link with the United States would soon have been severed. Victory in the Batde of the Coral Sea might have seen Austrahan cities heavily bombed, might have seen AustraUa invaded. Victory at Midway, however, would have made both of these a certainty. Yamamoto would have returned to Japan as a hero of gigantic stature. Had the Admiral


102 THE ODD COUPLE

won a victory at Midway, Tojo's word on future strategy would no longer have been final.

When they bombed Tokyo, Col James Doohtde and his B 25s addled the thought processes of the Japanese Naval Staff and they threw mihtary logic out the window. Had the whole Combined Fleet been committed to the invasion of Port Moresby, it would have succeeded. Nimitz could not have risked his carriers in a battle against such odds. Given the presence of six Japanese carriers at Midway, it is doubtful that even the code breakers could have tilted the odds sufficiently in America's favour. A triumph in the Coral Sea using all six carriers would have been followed by the destruction of the cit^ ofTownsville.

At Midway, the work of the code breakers placed the US carriers at the right place at the right time, but inexperience and sloppy aircraft handling frittered away this advantage. Pure luck and the unaccountably poor judgment of the Japanese admiral were aU that gave the Americans victory. It was the Australian people's good fortune that luck and the victory fever which led the Japanese into a major doctrinal error saw them secure in their island.

After Midway, the exhortation in General MacArthur's directive to defend Austraha was no longer vahd. He had been in the country less than three months, he was yet to strike a significant blow at the enemy, but he could safely inform Prime Minister Curtin that the danger of invasion had passed and he did so at a prime minister's conference on 11 June.""

Yet to receive any reinforcement of any consequence, and yet to strike a blow, MacArthur was not to be Australia's saviour, but it was not in his interest for the Australian government to say so or for the Australian press to make much of the Midway victory and they didn't.'^ The Coral Sea battle was the big Australian news of the day and his deft touch with publicity saw Chief Wise Eagle claim most of the credit for the tactical victory. Since Midway was barely mentioned in Doug's Communiques, the press largely ignored it. With the need to maintain the war effort at its maximum intensity, the emasculation of the Japanese capacity to invade Australia was not made public for almost a year, and Australian history has ignored the role played in the country's preservation by Doohttle and McCluskey,



and by those immortal martyrs of the Torpedo Squadrons. But Winston ChurchiU recognised the importance of Midway:

The memorable American victory was of cardinal importance ... At one stroke the dominant position of the Japanese in the Pacific was reversed ... From this moment, aU our thoughts turned with sober confidence to the offensive. No longer did we think in terms of where the Japanese might strike the next blow, but where we could best strike at him to win back the vast territories that he had over run in his headlong rush ... the issue was not in doubt.'**

Notes

1. D. McCarthy South West Pacific Area: First Year, AWM, 1959, p. 113.

2. Yamashita Hobun, E Oki. Quoted in John Deane Potter,/! Soldier Must Hang, MuUer, London, 1963.

3. Courtney Whitney, Macy4rf/zwr— His Rendezvous with History,Knop{, NY, 1956, p. 203.

4. Samuel E. Morison, Tlie Two Ocean War, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1963, p. 274.

5. John Toland, BMf Nof m S/iame, Random House, NY, 1961,p. 367;John Toland, Tlie Rising Sun, Random House, NY, 1970, p. 302; Frazier Hunt, MacArthur and the War Against Japan,p. 80; Yoshia Kodama, / Was Defeated, translated by Taro Fukuda, Tokyo, 1959, p. 110.

6. Ronald Spector, Tlie Eagle against the Sun, p. 150 et seq.

7. Walter Lord, Incredible Victory, Harper and Row, NY, 1967, p. 5.

8. Morison, p. 140.

9. ibid, pp. 139-140.

10. Barbara Winters, Tlie Intrigue Master, Boolarong Press, 1994, p. 161.

11. Morison, p. 140 et seq.

12. Lord, p. 9.

13. Winters, pp. 161-62.

14. Morison, p. 153. 15. Morison, p. 152 et seq; Lord, passim.

16. David Horner, Blamey, AUen and Unwin, Sydney 1998, p. 301. He quotes CRS A5945,Box 1.

17. MacArthur was not entirely to blame for the Navy receiving no credit for Midway Army Air Corps B 17s dropped 322 bombs during the Batde of Midway without hitting anything. The Army Air Corps refused to beUeve this possible and claimed that their aircraft, and not the Navy's,


104 THE ODD COUPLE

had done the damage. This beUef was not corrected untU the end of the war.

18 Winston ChurchUl, Tlie Hinge of Fate, CasseU & C o , London, 1951 p. 227.


CHAPTER 8

LION AT BAY

... commanders should be counseUed by those who see the country; who see the enemy ... and rest assured that we shaU pay no attention to any councUs but such as are framed within our camps ...

Lucius Aemilius Paulus, 168 BC (an extract from the framed text which hung on the waU of General MacArthur's office)'

IN his reminiscences, General Douglas MacArthur made the accu

sation that whenjapan entered World War II the Australian General

Staffplanned to defend Australia on a line which foUowed the Darling

River from Brisbane to Adelaide.- Despite the dodgy geography, any

Australian who knows anything of World War II would understand

that he was talking about Eddie Ward's Brisbane hne."*

He went on to say:

I decided to abandon the plan completely, to move the thousand mUes forward into eastern Papua, and to stop the Japanese on the rough mountains of the Owen Stanley Ranges of New Guinea.'*

This was written some time in the late 1950s but it varies httle

from what he told a group of journaUsts at a briefing in Brisbane on

17 March 1943, on the anniversary of his arrival in Australia. It is

fairly typical of the MacArthur style of pubhc relations, implying that

he had decried the poltroonery of lesser men, discarded their cautious

plans, and moved boldly north to N e w Guinea where he estabhshed


106 THE ODD COUPLE

himself among the peaks of the Owen Stanleys and boldly chaUenged the Japanese to come on and have at it.

Many of Mac Arthur's numerous biographers have claimed that at several points in his career when underlings have suggested that he seek a place of safety rather than the high ground with a view of the enemy, the General waved them aside saying, "I can't fight 'em if 1 can't see 'em".^

A Ripping Yarn to this effect teUs of his and his family's occupation of quarters on the unprotected "Topside" of Corregidor when he was first on the island. Just as his location of the Darhng River in Queensland and South Australia might puzzle the average Aussie, his understanding of Philippines geography might also baffle the locals. For most of the time that MacArthur was on Corregidor, his nearest enemy was north of Tarlac, at least 100 kilometres away on the other side of a range of mountains.

Only once did the Lion of Luzon approach the enemy. On 10 January 1942, just seventeen days into the seige, he crossed from the island to Bataan and visited various command headquarters, none of which was in dire peril at the time. At one point he is said to have asked General Jonathan Wainwright about the effect of the I Corps heavy artiUery and the 155 mm Long Toms which he was inspecting. Wainwright asked him whether would he like a closer look at the guns. "I don't want to see them,Jim," he is reported as saying. "1 want to hear them."''

Like his expressed desire to see the enemy, this was the sort of Ripping Yarn which looked good in a MacArthur communique, and of course it made headlines in New York the next day. Whether Wainwright obliged and let the general hear the guns is not recorded, but if he did, MacArthur didn't bother to come back either for an encore or for a closer view of the enemy. For the next ten weeks he made do with whatever he could see and hear from his headquarters office a couple of hundred metres inside the Malinta tunnel. And neither did he ever set foot in the Owen Stanley Ranges. MacArthur arrived in Melbourne on 21 March 1942 and he and his family were very comfortable in the best suite in Menzies Hotel. During the four months that Melbourne was his headquarters, an overnight visit to Canberra to meet Australia's politicians was the only occasion on


LION AT BAY 107

which duty tore him from the bosom of his family^ (See Appendix

C.) Defence arrangements, including arrangements for the defence of

North Queensland, the Northern Territory and New Guinea, were made first by the Australian General Staff. Troop deployment as oudined in these dispositions was in process when MacArthur took command and at no time did he issue any instruction to change or modify them.** Nowhere in any of these arrangements was the Owen Stanley Range mentioned, and for good reason. Even as MacArthur and his staff were settling into their new offices in Melbourne in March, AUied inteUigence was able to teU them that a seaborne invasion of Port Moresby was the Japanese intention.

It was to support a seaborne landing at Moresby and similar operations against the Solomons that Japanese army and navy personnel occupied Lae and Salamua to establish an air base more than a week before MacArthur arrived in Australia.^ These activities had been observed and reported on by detachments of the New Guinea Volunteer Rifles. These were smaU bodies of local militia, experienced Australian bushmen who manned observation posts and monitored the Japanese activities. The enemy at Lae and Salamua were never in sufficient strength to pose a threat to Port Moresby, the main port and capital of the territory, nor was the likelihood of an attack by a force marching overland from Lae to Port Moresby considered likely or even feasible. Both General Blamey and his predecessor in command, the CGS, General Vernon Sturdee, had ordered Port Moresby reinforced with a seaborne invasion in mind.'"

Peaks of the Owen Stanley Ranges rise to heights in excess of 4000 metres. There are no roads, only steep and narrow foot pads that cling to the sides of the jungle-clad ridges. The distance from Port Moresby to "The Gap", the lowest point in the ranges, is more than 80 kilometres as the crow flies. Unlike the unencumbered crow, an infantryman is required to carry his weapons and 20 or 30 kilograms of ammunition, rations and equipment, and since he lacks wings, he needs to take a more tortuous route than that foUowed by the crow. In any case, neither kilometres nor miles mean a thing in this steep and savage land. Travel is measured in days and described as "walking


108 THE ODD COUPLE

time". The Gap is more than ten days "walking time" from Port Moresby."

At a conference in February, almost two months before MacArthur and the Americans became involved, the defence of mainland Australia was the major item on the agenda. It was decided that Port Moresby should act as a strong defensive position which could Ue on the flank of any Japanese attack on Australia, whether it came from the Netherlands East Indies or from the massive base that they were building at Rabaul. Although its importance was recognised, the defence of Australia had first caU on the country's resources, and to defend Port Moresby, Maj Gen BasU Morris had been provided only with what could be spared.

The possibility of a seaborne landing at Port Moresby was reduced after the Coral Sea battle. It became something less than a remote possibility when Midway removed Japan's capacity for further seaborne conquest. From that point forward, the Allies were winning the war, but Coral Sea and Midway were Naval victories and Douglas MacArthur fretted. None of his American troops were in action anywhere, and apart from patrol brushes with the enemy by the NG VR and some minor clashes between Japanese troops and Australian commandos on Timor, nothing was happening in the SWPA. His communiques told brave tales of Japanese troops being kiUed, when, in fact, nowhere in his command was anyone kiUing them in quantity. But MacArthur was now able to make plans for future offensives, and in preparation for this he decided to move his headquarters to Brisbane. This brought him more than 2000 kilometres closer to the battlefield, but he remained weU out of range of any enemy weapon which might do him a mischief.'^

As early as the first of May General Blamey had received a note from MacArthur asking whether there might not be an opening for a raid on Lae or Salamua by troops advancing from Port Moresby. He even suggested that the two ports might be retaken. All maps are flat, and from MacArthur's headquarters in Melbourne, 4000 kilometres away, the task of crossing the mountains to raid or capture Lae seemed simple enough, but the view from Port Moresby was a litde less optimistic.

Earlier than this, in late April, Maj Gen George Vasey was in Port


LION AT BAY 109

Moresby in company with Lt Gen Brett of the US Air Corps. They had decided to recommend the formation of a gueriUa group to operate from Wau and to be known as Kanga Force. In addition to fiUing a reconnaissance role, these troops could act as sentries to give warning in the unlikely event that Japanese troops from Lae should attempt to walk over the mountains and attack Moresby.

On 6 June, General Morris received a signal from General Blamey requiring him to take steps to oppose the enemy on possible hnes of advance from the north coast. With Kanga Force in place astride the Une of advance from Wau, Lae and Salamua, the other hkely point of lodgement for the Japanese was considered to be at Buna or Gona, further to the east.

Morris assembled Maroubra Force, organised around the 39th MiUtia Battalion which had a strong leavening of AIF reinforcements, both officers and other ranks. It was sent to garrison Kokoda, a small viUage which had an airstrip adjacent and which was situated on the lower northern slopes of the Owen Stanley Ranges. A walking track and a road connected it to Buna, approximately 60 kilometres away on the coast. A track led south from Kokoda over the Owen Stanleys to Uberi, beyond which a walking track and a primitive dirt road led to Port Moresby 30 kilometres away. Later this was improved to a road capable of taking a jeep. From Uberi to Kokoda is more than twelve days "walking time" for men in good condition. Maj Gen Morris conformed with Blamey's orders with some reluctance. With his experience with the supply of Kanga Force over mountainous jungle tracks, and faced now with the need to provide for an even larger force over much longer routes of an even more primitive nature, Morris doubted the wisdom of detaching forces from the main garrison at Port Moresby. He considered the Kokoda Trail itself to be an obstacle which would defeat any attempt by the enemy to take Moresby. He did not doubt that the Japanese could cross the Owen Stanleys, but he was certain that no matter how numerous, how weU trained or how weU equipped their force might be when it left Buna, it would suffer such attrition of men and equipment, it would be so affected by disease, and the nature of the country would impose such supply difficulties, that the force would be decimated long before it reached Moresby. In addition to this, of course, there was absolutely


110 THE ODD COUPLE

no means by which an army could bring heavy guns across the Kokoda TraU. In contrast to most of New Guinea's jungle-covered lowlands, the region surrounding Port Moresby is lightly timbered, open country which offers little natural cover to an approaching enemy. Unsupported by artiUery, the remnants of such a force as the Japanese could mount could pose no real threat to a properly equipped and weU-prepared garrison.

Morris believed that by sending troops forward to Kokoda he was creating for himself the very problem which he foresaw for the Japanese. No wheeled vehicle could move more than a few miles toward Kokoda. There was an airstrip at Kokoda but there were not available in Moresby sufficient aircraft to begin to provide for supply by air even if weather and the mountains were not a major obstacle to this form of delivery. An Australian Light Horse Troop was brought in with pack animals, but the hot, wet, mountainous country was not suited to this form of transport and they were of limited use. Native carriers, each man carrying no more than 20 kilograms, would be the main method used to provide for whatever troops were committed to an attempt to defend the Kokoda TraU.

Morris knew the country weU and in his appreciation of the situation he described aU of the difficulties associated with campaigning in the Owen Stanleys, and concluded:

... therefore, even if the Japanese do make this very difficult and impracticable move, let us meet them on ground of our own choosing and as close as possible to our own base. Let us merely help their own supply problem to strangle them whUe reducing our supply difficulties to the minimum.'^

On 2 July, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered MacArthur to take steps to seize and occupy those parts of New Guinea not already held by the Allies, but the Incredible Warrior needed no urging. He wanted to get to grips with the Japanese and start kiUing them as soon as possible, and when the order arrived, his staff were already in the throes of producing plans for highly ambitious schemes. Only four days after McClusky's dive-bombers blasted the Japanese carriers, MacArthur had signaUed General George MarshaU suggesting that he attack New Britain and New Ireland with a view to creating a


LION AT BAY 111

base from which he could destroy the stronghold of Rabaul.'"• He asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to provide him with a considerable force to execute his plan — a division of Marines and a couple of aircraft carriers. "I will drive the Japanese aU the way back to Truk," he said.'^

The Navy entered a noUe prosequi. They said that they would not risk their big ships where there was no protection from land-based aircraft. It was made plain then, and reaffirmed later, that regardless of the need MacArthur would never take major fleet units under his command.'^'

Meanwhile, two divisions of American infantry had arrived in Australia, the 32nd and the 41st. Initially they were deployed in the southern states, but after Midway MacArthur ordered them both moved to Queensland. The 32nd went to a camp west of Brisbane and the 41st to a site between Rockhampton and Yeppoon on Queensland's central coast.

In May, MacArthur's Chief of Staff, Maj Gen Sutherland, prepared an appreciation of the situation, in which he wrote:

... the AUies in the SWPA wiU require local air and sea superiority, either for participation in the general offensive, or for any prehminary offensive undertaken when opportunity offers. Sea control would rest primarily on air superiority.'^

Six weeks after the US Navy victory at Midway, MacArthur left Melbourne and his GHQ opened for business in Brisbane on 24 July. Before he left Melbourne, the General issued an outline plan for the creation of airfields and other instaUations at Buna on the north coast of New Guinea. This was to provide support for the planned recapture of New Britain. Australian infantry and American engineers were to walk over the Kokoda TraU from Port Moresby to the northern New Guinea coast to "seize an area suitable for the operation of aU types of aircraft and secure a disembarkation point pending the arrival of sea parties".

He also ordered airfields constructed at Milne Bay at New Guinea's eastern extremity. By mid-July 1942, an Australian fighter squadron equipped with American P 40 Kittyhawk aircraft was operating from


112 THE ODD COUPLE

the Gili Gili strip, at the extreme western end of MUne Bay, and a brigade of Australian infantry was deployed to defend the area.

WhUe work at Milne Bay proceeded, plans for the occupation of Buna were clouded on 21 July when a Japanese float plane machine-gunned the mission station there, and just a few hours later a Japanese cruiser and a destroyer escorting two troop transports appeared off Gona, 15 kilometres to the west.

According to one American historian, "A thousand Australian militia in the area faded into the mountains".'* This is one of the lesser libels against Australia and its soldiers which originated in MacArthur's GHQ. Similar infamous falsehoods were to become common currency among his staff officers and were often contained in communications which he sent to the Joint Chiefs of Staff seeking reinforcements of men and material.

The orUy AUied troops at Buna or Gona were members of a section-sized patrol of native troops of the Papuan Infantry Battalion. MacArthur had left his run too late. From Rabaul, General Horii was about to mount a fuU-scale amphibious assault on the Buna Gona area with the intention of marching over the Owen StarUeys to seize Port Moresby If, as he later claimed, he had formed an intention in March to defend Australia "on the line of the Owen Stanleys", then weU-established defensive forces at Buna and in the Cape Sudest area would have been the key to the situation. He had had three months in which to establish a defensive position there. He had not done so, and the only Allied troops north of the ranges were the men of Maroubra Force and Kanga Force. At Kokoda,many of the militiamen of 39 Battalion were only eighteen years of age and lacked training. The long trek over the ranges had worn them out, they had gone hungry for much of the time, and after they arrived at Kokoda they found that arrangements to supply them wdth food and other necessities were totally inadequate. Sixty kilometres away, at Buna and Gona .Japanese infantry and engineers were pouring ashore. The only Australians in the Buna area itself, other than the Papuan Infantry Battalion patrol, were some mission priests and nuns and a plantation manager and his staff. Many of these, including six women, were captured by hostile natives and handed over to the Japanese who beheaded most of them.' '


LION AT BAY 113

The initial Japanese landing was made by the 15th Independent Engineer Regiment led by Colonel Yosuka Yokoyama. He was accompanied by a battahon of infantry from the 144th Regiment and a Mountain ArtiUery detachment. He also had a large number of Rabaul natives for carriers and 52 horses. His was a reconnaissance task. He was to survey the route and report on the feasibility of an advance on Port Moresby via the Kokoda Trail. A favourable report would bring General Horii with additional forces.

Colonel Yokoyama sent back very favourable reports on the prospects of defeating the Australians and told his General that they would capture Port Moresby by the end of August. General Horii came ashore at Buna in command of more than 13 000 men. He intended to lead them over the mountains riding his favourite white horse.^"

The 39th Battalion was forced out of Kokoda. The inexperienced defenders were heavily outnumbered and they faced a force which contained the most experienced jungle fighters of the time. In addition, there were horrific re-supply problems. Maj Gen Morris signaUed Blamey:

Kanga and Maroubra personnel cannot be fuUy maintained by native carriers ... Weather conditions over mountains usuaUy difficult and planes have to stand by for long periods awaiting breaks. Procedure for obtaining planes is too slow and has already cost us Kokoda.

His voice went unheard. Already GHQ staff were working on plans to send more troops over the mountains thus vastly compounding the supply problem. MacArthur and his staff were totaUy ignorant of both the nature of the country and the conditions which prevaUed.

On 11 August, New Guinea became a Corps command under Lieut Gen Sydney RoweU who took over from Morris. He was foUowed by elements of the 7th Division AIF commanded by Maj Gen "Tubby" AUen,2' and on the day after RoweU took command he was treated to a demonstration of American ignorance when a message arrived from MacArthur's Chief of Staff. General Sutherland suggested that "reconnaissance be made of critical areas of the trail ... where the pass may be readily blocked by demolition .. ."

The pass to which Sutherland referred was the geographical feature known as The Gap. This was so named because it was the lowest point


114 THE ODD COUPLE

in the Owen Stanleys, only 2000 metres above sea level as compared with peaks east and west of it which rose to more than 3500 metres. It was the one point where aircraft might be able to cross the mountains beneath the thick cloud cover which usually envoloped them. It was more than 12 kilometres wide.

RoweU was restrained in the language he used to reply. He pointed out that:

... the amount of explosive which could be carried by native porters for the ten days' trip ... would hardly increase the present difficulties of the track. Some parts of the track have to be negotiated on hands and knees and the use of tonnes of explosives would not increase these difficulties. ^

This American ignorance of local conditions continued throughout the New Guinea campaign. Often a plane load of officers from G H Q would arrive at a New Guinea airfield, spend the day sightseeing and then return to Brisbane, their journey designed oiUy to qualify them for a campaign medal. -^ But no senior staff officer of MacArthur's, and certairfly not the General himself, ever set foot on the Kokoda Trail. Few of them visited New Guinea during the heavy fighting, and in a country so steep that it can only be meaningfuUy explored on foot, no American staff officer ever learned anything about it beyond what was marked on a map. Shortly after he took command, RoweU sent another battalion to join Maroubra force and made it a brigade command, as he also made ready to defend Milne Bay

Milne Bay enjoys an annual rainfaU in excess of 5000 mm and it rains almost every day in aU seasons. The newly built airstrip at GiH Gili was at the end of what is a long, fairly narrow embayment more than 35 kilometres from the point where it debouches into the China Straits. Jungle-clad mountains 2000 metres high plunge fifty fathom deep into the bay, and where pockets of flat land dot the shoreline they are covered in mangroves and sago palm which thrive in the hot and foetid swampy environment. Milne Bay is host to one of the densest mosquito populations in the world and malaria is endemic to the area.

In early July Brigadier Field deployed his 7th Brigade of the Australian mihtia to protect the Gih Gih air strip. He was soon


LION AT BAY 115

reinforced by the arrival of Brig George Wooton's 18th Brigade, AIE Shortly afterwards, Maj Gen Cyril Clowes took command of the newly created Milne Force, more than 6000 strong. The army had never fought a war in such conditions, and little thought had been given to suitable tropical dress. At MUne Bay, and on the Kokoda TraU, the troops wore the traditional Austrahan summer dress of shorts and short-sleeved shirts. Swarms of mosquitoes feasted on bare Australian knees and arms. The malaria organism was injected into Australian bloodstreams and the disease ran rampant. In New Guinea in 1942, malaria and other tropical diseases caused more than three times as many casualties as did the enemy. 2"*

W ith no Allied naval presence to contest their passage into Milne Bay Japanese ships were free to come and go as they pleased and the shorebound Australian infantry were vulnerable to attack from seaward at any time and at any place of the enemy's choosing. On 25 August four Japanese transports and a pair of minesweepers escorted by cruisers and destroyers entered the bay. They landed troops on the northern shore, less than 10 kilometres from Gili Gili.

Besides being shorebound, the Australian infantry were mud-bound. Torrential rain feU every night and on most days and the few primitive roads were a quagmire. Vehicles bogged and movement was possible only on foot and at a veritable snail's pace. At every step the feet of the riflemen sank at least to the ankles and often to the knees in heavy glutinous mud.^^

But Clowes was not to be left to solve his own problems. The day after action commenced, 26 August, and under pressure from Mac-Arthur, General Blamey signaUed RoweU in Port Moresby stressing the need for offensive action. This was exactly what Clowes was taking, but since the initiative lay with the Japanese, it was not a simple exercise. RoweU responded to Blamey's urging by explaining the bleeding obvious:

Feel sure that the complete free sea movement enjoyed by enemy compeUed Clowes retain considerable portion forces in hand to meet landing south coast of bay. State of tracks makes movement difficult and considerable degree of dispersal inevitable. ^

On 28 August the Japanese attacked using tanks and broke through


116 THE ODD COUPLE

to threaten No. 3 Airstrip. Group Capt Garing, in command of the RAAF in the area, was concerned for the overnight security of his aircraft and, as a precaution, ordered aU serviceable planes and aU spare pilots to be flown out to spend the night at Port Moresby. ^

Most of the RAAF pUots were young and exuberant. During a wUd night in the officers' mess at the Seven Mile airfield, tales of pending disaster at Milne Bay became taller with each drink. One totally baseless story named Maj Gen Clowes among the overnight refugees. The rumours reached the ear of General Kenney, the American 5th Air Force Commander, who had chosen that very day to visit Port Moresby. Reports from Clowes' H Q had been confined to routine matters. GHQ had considered itself starved of information and General Kenney's return to Brisbane provided a feast. Wild rumour became solid fact by the time it reached General MacArthur.

Later, Clowes' senior staff officer. Col Fred Chilton, regretted his ignorance of the American staff's need for frequent and colourful situation reports:

Instead ofsending back body counts ... we sent back our usual colourless situation reports. I wish I had known then what was required. We received ... panicky messages from MacArthur's Headquarters. How they thought they could fight the batde from AustraUa, I don't know. **

General Vasey, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, was at Mac-Arthur's HQ. He wrote a letter to RoweU:

Only two minutes ago I have been phoned by Sutherland asking me what reports I had, and what offensive action had been taken by Cyril (Clowes) ... I replied that it was not necessarUy lack of activity ... You possibly do not realise that for G H Q this is their first battle, and they are therefore, like many others, nervous and dweUing on the receipt of frequent messages.

In a private note to RoweU, Vasey w^rote . . .

"We want to fight the Japs" is the only known expression at GHQ. I am now awaiting the result of Cyril's activities yesterday. I'm dying to go to these bastards and say "I told you so — we've kUled the bloody lot."^^

Fighting their first batde they may have been, but from more than 2000 kUometres away, they were doing it very badly. The General had


LION AT BAY 117

fought the Philippine battles in the newspapers with reports of ghostly fleets sunk, ethereal generals committing harakiri in frustration, thousands of phantom Japanese slain and victory after victory right up until his final defeat by a numerically inferior force (which the MacArthur communiques quite erroneously claimed to outnumber his by more than three to one). Given Australian situation reports, he had a choice. He could put out his daily communiques without boasting of the number of the enemy kiUed, or he could invent some numbers. He generally chose the latter course, but he wasn't happy.

In the real world. General Clowes had his problems.Japanese ships came into the bay each night. On 6 September, the day that the 2/9th Battahon fought its way into the Japanese base area, an aUied merchant ship, MV Anshun, had managed to sneak in from Port Moresby carrying urgently needed ammunition and stores. That night, as she unloaded alongside the wharf at Gili GUi, a Japanese cruiser entered the bay, sank her with gunfire and heavily shelled the area adjacent to the wharf. " Clowes men had no means of monitoring such enemy ship movements and the Japanese had the capability to land infantry virtuaUy anywhere. As a result, Clowes had no choice but to maintain an uncommitted reserve to deal with any new lodgement. Had this not been the case, he would have dealt with the Japanese landing force in short order, but even with this advantage, the Japanese action had a brief life.

In ten days it was aU over. The men of Milne Force had kiUed and wounded more than a thousand of the 1900 Japanese who had landed and the rest had been withdrawn by night by Japanese warships. Clowes had lost exactly 373 battle casualties, 161 of them kiUed in action. An engineer who was kiUed and two others who were wounded were the first Americans to become casualties in a ground action in New Guinea. Several more were kiUed or wounded in air attacks. There was some criticism of Clowes because the remnants of thejapanese force escaped,but this is undeserved. With no Alhed naval presence, there was nothing the Army could do to stop an evacuation.

Revisionist historians have claimed that the Japanese landing was part of a pincer movement against Port Moresby.•'*' It seems more likely that the Japanese wanted MUne Bay for the same purpose as the AUies did, to be used as an air base. The suggestion that Moresby


118 THE ODD COUPLE

could ever have been captured by an operation involving the two-pronged approach, from Milne Bay and from Kokoda, belongs in the realm of fantasy. In any case. General Clowes and his men decided the matter and theirs was an historic victory with ramifications which had an effect far beyond New Guinea.

Field Marshal Shm, who commanded the British campaign in Burma in September 1942, wrote in his book Defeat into Victory:

In August 1942 Australian troops had ... infUcted on thejapanese their first undoubted defeat on land. If the AustraUans, in conditions very like ours had done it, so could we. Some of us may forget that of aU the Allies it was the Australian soldiers who first broke the speU of the invincibility of the Japanese Army. Those of us who were in Burma have cause to remember. •'*-

But MacArthur was not impressed. Destiny's Child had never seen New Guinea. He had never viewed its jungles or its mountains; he had never been drenched in a Milne Bay downpour or walked knee-deep in Milne Bay mud; he had never been bitten by a Milne Bay mosquito or been violently shaken with the ague of malaria. He had no idea of the difficulties presented by the New Guinea terrain and he was ignorant of the effect of the weather in one of the wettest corners of the wet tropics, but he did not allow his ignorance to influence his judgment or inhibit him in expressing it. Following the first Allied defeat of the Japanese on land, the Hero of the Pacific wrote to General Marshall in the most mean-spirited and petty-minded terms. He first denigrated the men who had won the victory — "The enemy's defeat at Milne Bay must not be accepted as a measure of the relative fighting capacity of the troops involved ..." — and then paid tribute to his own military genius: "The decisive factor was the complete surprise obtained over [the enemy] by our preliminary concentration of superior forces."^''

But any residual credit that might be due the defenders was overlooked when he described the victory as having been won by Allied Forces, thus diminishing the Australian achievement by implying that significant American forces were involved.

At the same time as Gen Clowes' men were mopping up the renmants of the Japanese amphibious force, their comrades of Ma-


LION AT BAY 119

roubra force were having their problems on the Kokoda Trail. As General Morris had predicted, the logistics involved in supplying a large force in the Owen Stanleys were a nightmare. Morris had found it difficult to provide for Kanga force which numbered only a few hundred. By September there were thousands of Australian troops in the mountains and thousands of underpaid, unwiUing and most unhappy native porters had been conscripted to carry supphes and ammunition to them.- ''

Air drops of food and ammunition were instituted, but these were largely ineffective since military minds had never given consideration to the necessary techniques. Suddenly there was a pressing need to maintain an army in the field using air-dropped rations and ammunition and no one had the slightest idea how to go about it. Old hands in New Guinea had sometimes needed to supply mountain camps by this means and they used a technique called "double bagging". Tinned food and grain were generally packed in two bags.'^ xhe outer container was much larger than the inner one so that when the package struck the ground and the inner bag burst, the outer one would retain its integrity and contain the spilled food. Sometimes it worked and mostly it didn't, but in any case, a much greater problem was the recovery of the packages that did remain intact. Neither the people who flew the planes nor those responsible for throwing out the packages had any training in air-dropping techniques and their target was usuaUy a smaU clearing in the jungle on the narrow spine of a steep ridgeline. An error in locating the drop zone might see the suppUes miss their target by kilometres; a near miss might send the package hundreds of metres down the mountainside beyond any hope of recovery or into jungle so thick that it would never be found. As often as not thejapanese received as much benefit from a delivery as did the Australians.

A special air-drop site was established in a treeless dry lake bed at Myola, near the top of the range. There was a plan to drop supplies into this open area and establish a thirty-day reserve close to the front line. Food, ammunition and other supplies would be stockpiled there and distributed to the infantry and other units. Unfortunately, deliveries to Myola still left the supplies several days walking time from


120 THE ODD COUPLE

where they were needed, and the weather prevented sufficient flights to allow the planned reserve to be established.

Constantly wet, constantly on the alert for probing Japanese and starved of rations and ammunition, the Australians were forced to withdraw from position after position. The Japanese tactics involved simultaneous frontal assault and penetration to the flank, and to avoid being cut off from the rear the Australians had been forced to fall back time after time. Myola was overrun, and eventuaUy the Australians set up a strong defensive line at Imita Ridge, prepared to defend it from the Japanese who quickly built up numbers facing them on loribaiwa Ridge.

At the beginning of September, on the northern slopes of the mountains. General Horii had the equivalent of two fuU-strength brigades of infantry heavily reinforced with dismounted cavalry, engineers and artillerymen, and he was able to use two fuU regiments alternately to attack the Australians and push them back. By 12 September sickness and battle casualties had made serious inroads into his force, but it was estimated that he still had 5000 more or less fit men under his command. His artiUerymen were equipped with a type of mountain gun that could be broken down into five two-man loads.^'' Sick and debilitated crews had discarded most of these heavy weapons, but it says much for the devotion and stamina of the Japanese soldier that Horii still had two of the guns and a smaU supply of ammunition with him when he reached loribaiwa."

Up to this point, httle had been said in Doug's Communiques to indicate that there was a problem in New Guinea. The impression made by what was released to the American people can be gauged by a passage in a book ghost-written for one of his staff. In describing the threat posed by the Japanese crossing of the Owen Stanleys, General Willoughby's ghost writer said:

... MacArthur ... moved into Port Moresby personaUy along with his staff, to join a handful of Australians and local Europeans who had come to New Guinea to prospect for gold and who remained to fight.-^*

This was Knights of the Round Table stuff, and just as fanciful. As fighting raged on the Kokoda Trail, the former Beau Sabreur of the AEF was yet to sight New Guinea, even from a distance. He arrived


LION AT BAY 121

in Brisbane by train from Melbourne on 24 July and there he remained, his thirst for travel slaked by being driven daily in his Humber limousine the three city blocks from Lennons Hotel to his office in the AMP building. Any yearning he had for high adventure he assuaged each night by watching western movies in the theatrette which had been constructed at the hotel for his private use.^''

But his GHQ continued to produce agitated reports of pending disaster in New Guinea. As early as 30 August, he had radioed MarshaU: "I predict the development shortly of a situation similar to those that have successfully overwhelmed our forces in the Pacific since the beginning of the war."*'

From MacArthur's GHQ, General Vasey reported: "GHQ is like a bloody barometer in a cyclone ... up and down every two minutes."'*'

Once again without any regard for his ignorance of the situation. MacArthur wrote to Chief of Staff MarshaU on 6 September: "The Australians have proven themselves unable to match the enemy in jungle fighting. Aggressive leadership is lacking."' ^

He expressed a similar view to Vasey who passed it on to RoweU who had his own problems due to the predominance of very young, poorly trained soldiers who made up the bulk of the militia units under his command.

Meanwhile, MacArthur's predictions of doom had thrown the Australian government into a state of panic, and at the request of the Australian prime minister General Blamey flew to Port Moresby on 12 September and stayed until the 14th. On his return, he pointed out that thejapanese had managed to reach the positions before Imita Ridge with two regiments mainly due to the supply difficulties faced by the Australians. He expressed his confidence in RoweU, Allen and their troops.

Blamey's report to the prime minister reprised the view earlier stated by BasU Morris:

... therefore, even if the Japanese do make this very difficult and impracticable move, let us meet them on ground of our own choosing and as close as possible to our own base.

He provided a list of the forces which would meet thejapanese even if they did, in fact, reach Port Moresby. In addition to the 26th Brigade,


122 THE ODD COUPLE

AIF which had recently arrived, the 16th Brigade was on the water. Soon to go were two squadrons of hght tanks, three field regiments of artiUery and a mountain battery. In addition, it was intended that some American infantry were finally to face the foe. A regiment, the numerical equivalent of an Australian brigade, was destined for Moresby*-^

The Australian prime minister had hardly time to digest these figures when he had a telephone caU from General MacArthur who once more predicted disaster and blamed it aU on the inefficiency of the Australians. He intended to have 40 000 Americans in New Guinea to stem the tide, but as immediate action he urged that General Blamey be sent to New Guinea to take personal command and "energise the situation". The question may well have been asked "Stem what tide?"

The Bataan Gang, and hence the Australian politicians, were in a state of panic, deathly afraid that this much larger force of fresh troops entrenched at Port Moresby would be invested and overrun by the sickly remnant of Horii's two regiments at loribaiwa, and that its fortifications would be breached by a pair of pop guns, the crews of which were iU, starving and short of ammunition. And this despite the fact that the Japanese force would be under constant attention from more than a hundred field guns which outranged them by thousands of metres and the Allied air forces which had undisputed control of the air south of the Owen Stanleys.

The conmiand structure in New Guinea could already be deemed to be top-heavy with two generals having overlapping responsibilities. In overall command was Lt Gen Sydney RoweU, a regular soldier with wide experience in both the first and the second world wars. Even though his major concern at the time was the battle in progress on the Kokoda Trail, he had other forces under command at Milne Bay and in the Markham Valley. In direct command of the Kokoda Trail forces was the GOC 7th Division, Maj Gen "Tubby" Allen, a citizen soldier with infantry service conunencing at GaUipoU and who had held active service infantry commands at every level — platoon, company, battalion, brigade and division. They were both supported by staffs who possessed in full measure the wealth of skiU and depth of experience that MacArthur and his staff lacked. With


LION AT BAY 123

Brig Ken Eather's brigade holding firm on Imita Ridge, they were on the verge of victory when Blamey was ordered to New Guinea. What is more, Blamey was weU aware of this and was loath to interfere. When MacArthur asked him to set up a headquarters in New Guinea, he demurred. He went only when Curtin ordered him to go foUowing a request by MacArthur that the prime minister do so.

On 18 September he told one of his aides of his departure and was asked whether he was he worried about the situation. "No," he said, "But Canberra's lost it. I saw what happened to the Auk in the desert, I'm off to New Guinea.""'*

Blamey had seen the British general Claude Auchinleck sacked for refusing to accept an order from Prime Minister Churchill with which he disagreed. The Australian prime minister and MacArthur had now placed Blamey in a similarly invidious situation. Had he refused to go, there would have been no option but to sack him, and he knew that there were already those among his own senior officers who conspired with members of the cabinet to have him replaced. "'

Blamey was well aware that his presence in New Guinea would give offence and one of his aides preceded him to RoweU's headquarters bearing a letter which said, in part:

The Powers that Be have determined that I shaU go to New Guinea for a whUe and operate from there ... I hope you wiU not be upset by this decision, and wiU not think that it implies any lack of confidence in yourself. I think it arises out of the fact that we have very inexperienced politicians who are inclined to panic on every possible occasion, and I think the relationship between us personaUy is such that we can make the arrangement work without any difficulty."*

This was an over-optimistic view. Although RoweU and his Commander-in-Chief were old acquaintances, their personal relationship was not of the kind that could easily tolerate tensions of this nature.

RoweU was one of the tiny handful of early graduates of the Royal MiUtary CoUege who had served under part-time soldiers for half a Hfetime. Blamey had resigned from the Regular Army to become a MiUtia General and he was considered to be an outsider by the close-knit membership of the Staff Corps. Having at last won through to the rank of general and command of a corps, RoweU was once


124 THE ODD COUPLE

more to have his day-to-day proceedings overseen by a citizen soldier. In attempting to maintain his independence, he clashed repeatedly with Blamey, and after some days of argument he was returned to Austraha and replaced by Maj Gen Ned Herring, a lawyer in civil life and later to become a Supreme Court Judge, but a thoroughly experienced soldier and, in the view of his peers, a very fine human being.'*''

Australia will never enjoy the luxury of dependence on a fuU-time professional army, and in a time of major conflict the army wiU always contain a majority of part-time soldiers. It foUows that a harmonious relationship between professional and citizen soldier grounded in mutual respect is the only basis on which such an arrangement can succeed. Unfortunately RoweU's sacking saw battle Unes drawn which would endure for decades. Meanwhile, a commander of proven worth was lost to the Australian army for the remainder of the war — and at a time when his troops were on the cusp of victory.

Despite the use of air drops, the Allies had learned that it was impossible to sustain any large fighting formation in the Owen Starfleys and expect it to perform to anything like its potential. The Japanese lacked even the limited supphes provided by "biscuit bombers". Horii's men had also learned that courage is not enough. They were decimated by disease and starvation and were supported by orUy a couple of light artiUery pieces. If indeed they had appeared before the Port Moresby defences they would have faced at least a division of fresh troops supported by more than seventy field guns, the numbers of both due to double within days."** In terms of men, guns and the security of its lines of supply, the force available to defend Port Moresby was almost twice that commanded by General "Ali Baba" Morshead when he held Tobruk for eight months against constant attack by Rommel's Afrika Corps, a force which exercised air superiority and contained the finest tank and artiUery units in the world. Unlike Morshead at Tobruk, RoweU at Moresby enjoyed air superiority and secure lines of supply. There is absolutely no hypothesis which could support a Japanese victory.

Many a soldier has ruefully bemoaned an unjust fate at the hands of authority but seldom has greater injustice been demonstrated than at Port Moresby during the month of September 1942. Within a week


LION AT BAY 125

it was aU over. The Japanese were withdrawing. The threat to Port Moresby had existed only in the minds of the panic-stricken, but it had disappeared anyway. In fact, neither Milne Bay nor Port Moresby had ever been in such danger as to merit the degree of alarm exhibited by MacArthur and his staff. For any person possessed of a military education, and in full possession of the available inteUigence, to have considered that Port Moresby might faU to the disease-ridden, starving Japanese who reached loriabaiwa demonstrates a lack of moral fibre reprehensible in any soldier and a disgrace to his uniform in a Commander-in-Chief.'*''

In the mean-spirited manner which he had demonstrated throughout the Kokoda Trail operation and after Milne Bay Mac-Arthur damned the Australians with faint praise. In late September he received his first visit from a member of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lieut General Hap Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Army Air Corps. As was his practice with important visitors, MacArthur sat Arnold down in his office, paced up and down before him and delivered a two-hour monologue. The notes which Arnold made set out the main points:

1. Japs are better fighting men than the Germans. 2. Pick of the Japanese army were those who were deployed against

MacArthur in the SWPA. 3. MacArthur does not have the troops to hold Japs. Only two divisions

— and those partiaUy trained. Australians are not even good miUtia. Navy support is nU.

4. Air has passed from belo^v average under Brett to exceUent under Kenney.

5. Japs can take New Guinea at wUl.^"

Arnold also made notes on other matters, including Lieut General Robert L. Eichelberger, the newly arrived commander of I Corps, the formation which contained the two divisions of untried American troops currently in Australia. "1 believe he will put some pep into the Aussies. He already has plans to go on the offensive."

Arnold was even more ignorant of the real world in which the war was being fought than was MacArthur. Like MacArthur, he knew absolutely nothing at first hand of the quality of the troops or the


126 THE ODD COUPLE

conditions under which they were fighting the Japanese. Although his busy schedule was sufficiently elastic to include a seaside holiday on Queensland's Gold Coast in the company of a young lady recruited by PR guru Lt Col Pik DiUer, he found himself unable to visit New Guinea.^' Like MacArthur, Arnold didn't feel that the lack of any direct knowledge of the situation should prevent him from commenting on the capabilities of the Australian Digger. Although no American infantryman had yet fired a shot in New Guinea, Hap Arnold expressed the view that "the Massachusetts soldiers knew more about the New Guinea jungle in two days than the AustraUans in two years".^2

With the Japanese on the retreat from loribaiwa, and the need to dislodge their garrison at Buna and Gona, Eichelberger was going to have his hands too fuU putting pep into his own soldiers to much concern himself with the effervescence of the Diggers. At the same time, MacArthur, Eichelberger, Hap Arnold and the whole US Joint Chiefs of Staff would discover to their dismay just how little use were the Massachusetts soldiers of whom the Air Chief expected so much. In the fuUness of time, they would also learn a thing or two about the capabilities of the GIs from the other forty-seven states.^^

Notes

1. Courtney Whitney, Mac/lrf/mr; Hi5 Rendezvous with History, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1965, p. 428.

2. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HUl, NY, 1964, p. 152. 3. Gavin Long, MacArthur, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1969, p. 95. Mr

Edward Ward was the member for East Sydney, a left-wing idealogue who had accused the previous Menzies government of planning to surrender the major portion of the country in the event of a Japanese invasion.

4. MacArthur, pp. 54,130.

5. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years of Mac Arthur,Vol. II,Houghton Mifflin,NY, 1975, pp. 797-98.

6. ibid., p. 53. Wainwright had been caUed Jim by his friends since West Point days.

7. Dudley McCarthy South West Pacific Area, AWM, 1959, p. 112n. 8. ibid., p. 83. 9. ibid., p. 83.


LION AT BAY 127

10. ibid., p. 48.

11. ibid., p. 50 passim. 12. WiUiam Manchester, American Caesar, Little Brown and Co., Boston,

1978, p. 296. 13. McCarthy p. 115. 14. Horner, High Command, AUen and Unwin, Sydney 1992, p. 186. He

cites Morton, Louis, Strategy and Command, Office of the Chief of MUitary History, Dept of the Army, Washington, DC, pp. 297-98. Prime Minister's War Conference, Canberra, 17 July 1942, MP 1217, Box 1. See ET. Smith Reports, 17 July 1942, MS 4675 NLA. Reports of Gen Mac Arthur, Vol. l,p. 55.

15. James, Years of Mac Arthur, Vol. II, p. 186. 16. ibid., p 187. 17. Matloff and SneU, Strategic Planning for Coalition Wafare, p. 259. Imme

diately foUowing the Battle of Midway there was a mistaken belief that the B 17s had sunk thejapanese aircraft carriers. This led AUied planners to an exaggerated belief in the capabilities of land-based air.

18. Manchester, p. 296. 19. McCarthy p. 139 et seq. 20. ibid., p. 144 etseq. 21. ibid, p. 140. 22. ibid, p 141. 23. Described to author by Brigadier F. C. (Ted) Serong, G2, 6th Div., 8

January 1999. 24. ibid., p. 157 et seq. 25. ibid, p 161. 26. ibid, p. 174. 27. Baker and Knight, Milne Bay 1942, self published, Loftus NSW, 1991,

p. 194. 28. ibid., p. 196. 29. McCarthy pp. 174-75. 30. Herman GUI, i M N /^42-7^45, AWM, Canberra, 1968,pp. 171-72. 31. Geoffrey Perrett, Old Soldiers Never Die, Andre Deutsch, London, 1996,

pp 304-305.

32. McCarthy p. 187n. He quotes Fd MarshaU Sir WUliam SUm,pp. 187-88. 33. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol. II, p. 209.

34. McCarthy pp. 115-16.

35. "Double bagging" of air-dropped materials had to be taught again to both Australian and American troops fighting in Vietnam 25 years after


128 THE ODD COUPLE

World War II. Letter from Brig F. R Serong DSO MC, former commander of AATTV, 3 January 1999.

36. Encyclopaedia of Weapons and Warfare, ParneU, MUwaukee, p. 1670. 37. McCarthy p. 228. 38. WiUoughby and ChamberUn, MacArthur 1941-1951, Heinemann,

London, 1950, p. 83. 39. Mr J. Watt, wartime manager of Lennon's Hotel, Brisbane. Conversa

tions with author 1956-1960.James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol.ll,p.797 et seq.

40. McCarthy p. 225. 41. David Horner, General Vasey's War, Melbourne University Press, Mel

bourne, 1992, p. 184. 42. McCarthy p. 225. 43. ibid., p. 228. 44. John Hetherington, Blamey, AWM and AGPS, Canberra, 1973,p 239. 45. Letter to author from Serong, 3 January 1999. 46. Hetherington, p. 238 et seq. McCarthy, p. 234. 47. Letter to author from Serong, 3 January 1999. 48. McCarthy, p. 244. Field ArtUlery avaUable in Port Moresby, 20 Septem

ber 1942: 2/6 Field Regt 24 x 25 Pdr 13th Fd Regt 24 x 25 Pdr 14th Fd Regt 24 x 25 Pdr

To arrive: 2/5 Fid Regt 24 x 25 Pdr 32nd US Div Arty Bns 48 X 105 mm

49. Hetherington, pp. 238, 241-44. 50. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U,pp.2\0-\l. 51. Unpublished handwritten manuscript by Joy Foord, •wartime compan

ion of Lt Col Le Grande DUler, 1990. 52. ibid, p. 212. 53. McCarthy, p. 233 passim.


CHAPTER 9

TAKE BUNA ... O R DON'T COME BACK ALIVE

Hotspur: But I remember when the fight was done, When I was dry with rage and extreme toU Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, Came there a certain Lord, neat and trimly dressed.

Shakespeare, Henry IV

FROM the time that they first faced the Japanese and during the whole of the dogged withdrawal, casualties due to disease, debUity

climate and living conditions and a poor and insufficient diet had taken a greater toU of the Australian infantry than had the enemy. As the Japanese advanced further into the mountains they underwent a similar ordeal. The fearsome mountains, the mud and the incessant rain attenuated the Japanese supply hne, while malaria, scrub typhus and heat exhaustion and hunger thinned out their numbers. AUied planes bombed and strafed the invaders at every exposed point on the Track and added immeasurably to their difficulties. At loribaiwa, it aU became too much. A superhuman effort by exhausted troops enabled Horii's patrols to probe the Australians' Imita Ridge defences but with no effect. They could do no more as the Australians prepared to counter-attack.

General Horii's original force was many times stronger than American inteUigence had estimated, and it was the difficulties associated with providing rations and ammunition to the forward


130 THE ODD COUPLE

elements rather than any lack of fighting spirit which kept the Australians on the back foot. As the Japanese advanced, they were beset with the same problem and were at the end of their tether at loribaiwa. Without reinforcement and re-supply, Horii knew that there was no going forward. Australian gunners had now hauled 25-pounder guns to within range of the Japanese position and artiUery fire began to faU on loribaiwa Ridge.

At night, Horii's soldiers could see the lights of Moresby, but the port may as weU have been at the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The Japanese general would never ride his white horse through its streets.

In fact, thejapanese had lost many more than the 1500 men of the American estimate to iUness and malnutrition alone, while the Australians had kiUed more than 900 of them and wounded a further 1400. A Japanese report on the campaign says that on his arrival at loribaiwa General Horii had issued his last grain of rice and the whole rationing system for the force was in a hopeless condition. He had, indeed, shot his bolt. ' Now under artiUery fire and without the wherewithal to continue, he could do no more.

Australian battle casualties during the same period amounted to 314 killed and 367 wounded, but these troops, too, had been ravaged by disease, the climate and the haphazard rationing arrangements.

It is unlikely that General Horii ever had the opportunity to read Maj Gen Morris's rejected appreciation made almost six months earlier, but at loribaiwa and scattered over a hundred kilometres of mountainous jungle-clad track, he and his emaciated men were proof, both living and dead, that the Australian general's advice to his superiors had been sound: "Let us merely let their own supply problem strangle them."

Strangle them it did, aided to a tremendous degree by the endless rearguard actions fought at great cost by the Australians of the rrulitia and then, later, by the AIF

Thejapanese force had been subject to all of the difficulties which had attached to the Australian supply effort except that theirs were of much greater magnitude. Under the heading "Supphes", General Horii's orders had read:


TAKE BUNA ... OR DON'T COME BACK ALIVE 131

During the progress of the fighting, we wiU have to face innumerable difficulties regarding supplies, but once we locate the AustraUans' supply dumps, they must be attacked, captured and any fires extinguished ... Because the quantity of arms and ammunition within the detachment is Hmited, the method of using captured arms and ammunition should be studied ... The progress of the operation must be swift, brave and resolute and much practical use must be made of captured supplies ... The advance detachment wiU carry ... eleven days rations for the men when the detachment begins to cross the mountains.^

The men of Horii's advance guard had entered Kokoda on 29 July

with most of their eleven days rations still intact. Two months later,

at loribaiwa Ridge, they had received no substantial re-supply of food

or medical supplies and there had been little joy for them in what

was left behind by the Australian troops.

The Australians' supply line barely provided their day-to-day

requirements, there were no supply dumps to capture and little

surplus was left behind. Units had taken great care to destroy or spoil

what Uttle they could not carry away. The Australian air-dropping

system was unreUable, but Horii's was non-existent. This left h im

totaUy reliant on carriers. In addition, all of the Japanese supphes had

to cross a suspension bridge over the Kumusi River at Wairopi. O n

every day that weather permitted them to fly. Allied bombers attacked

it. The bridge was destroyed as often and almost as quickly as the

Japanese engineers were able to replace it. ' Horii's men were on

starvation rations long before they got to loribaiwa.

But New Guinea was only one battlefield where desperate fighting

was taking place. The US 3rd Fleet landed 1 Marine Division on

Guadalcanal on 7 August. Thejapanese responded furiously and the

contest for the island was anyone's fight in October when the

AustraUans halted General Horii's forces at loribaiwa Ridge.

The General Staffin Tokyo decided that Guadalcanal offered the

best chance of success. General Hori i received orders to withdraw aU

the way to Buna. Some of his senior officers were almost mutinous.

With their objective in sight, they wanted to make one last desperate

lunge down the mountains in an attempt to take Port Moresby. Hori i

and his staff pointed out the futiUty of such a gesture. There was no

food and, even if there were, the force was neither strong enough nor


132 THE ODD COUPLE

weU enough equipped for the task. Horii ordered one of his battaUons to stand rearguard and gave the order to withdraw.

Of this withdrawal, a Japanese war correspondent wrote:

... they fled for dear life. None of them had ever thought that a Japanese soldier would turn his back on the enemy ... As soon as they realised the truth, they were seized with an instinctive desire to Uve. Neither history nor education meant anything to them ... Discipline was completely forgotten. Each tried for his Ufe to flee faster than his comrades.'*

AUied reinforcements were now starting to arrive in New Guinea in numbers. For the first time, there were American infantry in Port Moresby; the 126th Infantry Regiment were hard at work road building and constructing an American base camp.^

Eather's Middle East veterans of 21 Brigade were fresh and ready for battle and he had reinforcements. His force was built around his three infantry battalions reinforced by a Pioneer battalion, another of militia, plus a small Commando detachment. From Imita, he initiated an active program of fighting patrols of substantial size, fifty men of aU ranks, and by 23 September, the day on which General Blamey arrived, his brigade had begun to edge forward despite losing casualties to Horii's rearguard. On the 28th, his forward elements found loribaiwa Ridge unoccupied and the chase was on.*"

Once again, the Diggers had to depend for resupply on native carriers or on air drops, and with recovery rates from the latter sometimes as low as ten per cent, this means would be of only limited value. Once Myola was retaken, and the open space provided by its dry lake bed was utilised once more, there would be a dramatic improvement.

MacArthur had been loudly critical of the efforts of AustraUan troops. He was now in offensive mode and he intended to demonstrate the capabilities of the soldiers from God's Own Country. What MacArthur came up with was a plan for a pincer movement to trap General Horii's forces on the Kumusi River. This had previously been considered and rejected by General RoweU on advice from those who knew the difficulties posed by the terrain. The American experts knew better. On the map table, in Brisbane, it looked fairly simple. From Kokoda, the road to Buna turns due east and leads to Wairopi.



Carefully studying the map of Papua-New Guinea, someone at GHQ discovered a second track which led over the Owen Stanley Ranges from the viUage of Kapa Kapa, 60 kUometres east of Port Moresby. This appeared to be a shorter route to Wairopi than that which the AustraUans were using. The Americans proposed that a battalion of the 126th US Infantry Regiment would execute a classic envelopment. The GIs would march over the mountains to Wairopi and in true Hollywood fashion, "cut 'em off at the pass". Supply would be no problem. General Kenney promised to maintain them with air drops of aU that they needed.''

With the Japanese advance halted, and the offensive under way, MacArthur paid his first visit to New Guinea on 2 October. This would have surprised the American man in the street — for more than two months. Ripping Yarns which described the Incredible Warior as leading the defence of Papua, in person, had enriched the daily news.

The next day he inspected the Port Moresby area and had his photo taken visiting the troops. According to his biographer, "he spent the day inspecting the Port Moresby area, going beyond the forward artiUery posts" and "In a brief excursion along the beginning stretch of the Kokoda Trail made quite a hit with the Aussies".

In fact, MacArthur was driven by jeep the 50 kilometres to Owers Corner whence he could catch a distant glimpse of the mountains in which the Australians were campaigning. He did not attempt the "Golden Staircase", which was the "beginning stretch" of the track.** At the Australian gun positions, he had his photo taken for the newspapers,standing tall in his suntans, his Field Marshal's cap suitably tUted and his tie neatly knotted, surrounded by suitably bedazzled Australian soldiers stripped to the waist. He drove back to Port Moresby, spent the night at Government House, and flew home to Brisbane next morning.'

By this time the Australians were pushing forward from loribaiwa Ridge, more than four days walking time from Uberi, under orders which MacArthur had issued on 1 October: "Our forces in the SWPA wiU attack with the immediate objective of driving the Japanese northward of the Kumusi River hne."

The Australians were weU on the way to fulfilling their obligations


134 THE ODD COUPLE

under MacArthur's orders, but the battahon of the 126th Regiment which was committed to the Kapa Kapa trail was in trouble from Day One, and the further they went, the worse it got. The crossing of the mountains took the battalion forty-two days and the survivors of the trek were almost aU hospital cases. Gen Eichelberger saw some of these men several weeks after they arrived on the northern side of the Owen Stanleys and described them thus: "The troops were in a deplorable state. They wore long dirty beards, their clothing was in rags ... their shoes were uncared for or worn out . . ." ' "

In fact these soft and unacclimatised National Guardsmen from Wisconsin had endured tortures of a kind that they could not have imagined. They had been hungry, wet, cold, ill with malaria and aU of them suffered from dysentery. Accustomed to a softer diet, they could not tolerate the "buUy and biscuit" ration which was aU that they received by air drop." They failed to find their way to Wairopi, their objective, and they did not meet a single enemy soldier, yet they arrived on the northern side of the Owen Stanleys in far worse condition than the Australian infantry who had had to fight Japanese rearguards for every piece of high ground, and for every river crossing. The unfortunates who made the journey over the Kapa Kapa traU became known as the Ghost Battalion, its remnants unfit for operations for months after the experience.

The Australian infantry on the Kokoda Trail faced all of the problems met with by their allies on the Kapa Kapa trail, but they were better trained, more experienced and simply tougher. They handled the conditions better, and in contrast to their aUies,they had lots of Japanese in front of them.

Led by the 3rd Battahon, a militia unit, the AustraUans moved out of loribaiwa on 2 October, the day of General MacArthur's first visit to New Guinea. They immediately saw clear evidence that they were pursuing a defeated army. Equipment and personal weapons were strewn along the track, a mountain gun was found abandoned, and there were the dead bodies of Japanese who had succumbed to malnutrition and disease. Twelve Japanese whose bodies showed no sign of wounds were buried on the first day. There was evidence that they had existed by eating roots and grass, even wood from the trees, and the dead men had all suffered severe dysentery



Some prisoners were taken, sick men who could barely walk. The

AustraUans had httle sympathy for the Japanese they captured, but

they were hospitalised, cared for and returned to Austraha where

many of them died. Under Australian law, post-mortem examinations

had to be made and coroner's inquiries held in order to establish the

cause of death. Some of the Japanese were discovered to be infected

with psittacosis, an avian disease endemic to N e w Guinea, contracted

from eating the raw flesh of native birds.'-

Birds did not provide the only fresh meat used by the Japanese to

supplement their meagre rations. Australian indifference to Japanese

prisoners of war turned to violent hatred when the bodies of two

Diggers were found further down the track. Captain George Donnan,

R M O of the 2 /25th Battahon AIF was handed a parcel of meat. His

report stated:

I have examined two portions of flesh recovered by one of our patrols. One was the muscle tissue of a large animal, the other simUar muscle tissue with a large piece of skin and underlying tissues attached. I consider the last as human.

Lt Crombie, a platoon commander from the battalion, made a

statement in regard to the same matter:

"I was the officer in charge of the burial party of two 3 Bn miUtia personnel kiUed on 11 Oct 1942 and on examination of the bodies, found that one of them had both arms cut off at the shoulders and the arms missing and a large piece cut out of one thigh as weU as one of the calves of one of the legs slashed by a knife. The other body also had a large piece cut out of one of the thighs. These mutilations were obviously made by a sharp knife, and were not caused by buUets or bayonets. The men's deaths were caused in one case by a burst of MG fire in the chest and the other in the head."

Neither the inteUigence people nor the medical evacuation system

found themselves troubled with Japanese prisoners of war foUowing

this incident.'-''

The AustraUans recaptured the dropping ground at Myola and

continued to advance. Supplies flowed more freely. Horii's men were

largely a spent force, but he raUied sufficient of them to mount a

rearguard, and on 8 October the leading Austrahan elements were


136 THE ODD COUPLE

held up by a force astride the track between Myola and Templeton's

Crossing.

MacArthur was impatient for his troops to get across the mountains

to Buna. He looked at the Austrahan casualty lists, then at the progress

that Eather's men were making, and this, coupled with his firm

opinion that the Austrahans had little in front of them other than a

defeated and starving enemy, was deemed to be clear evidence that

they were making an insufficient effort. W h e n news reached Brisbane

that the forward elements had been held up by a rearguard at Eora

Creek, MacArthur initiated a rocket to be administered to Maj Gen

AUen, the G O C Seventh Division. It feU to General Blamey, now in

Port Moresby, to fire it:

General MacArthur considers quote extremely Ught casualties indicate no serious effort yet made to displace enemy unquote. You wiU attack enemy with energy and aU possible speed at each point of resistance. Essential that Kokoda airfield be taken at earUest. Apparent enemy gaining time by delaying you with inferior strength.

Since no senior officer from either MacArthur's or Blamey's

headquarters had seen the battlefield at first hand, General Allen took

umbrage at this uninformed appreciation of his situation and repUed:

25 Bde has been attacking aU day and enemy is now counter-attacking. WUl advise when situation clarifies. Serious efforts have been made to dispose of enemy and energetic steps have been taken at each point of resistance. This action wiU continue. Batde casualties since contact with enemy are ... KiUed ... Officers 5, ORs 45. Wounded, Officers 10, ORs 123 but I respectfuUy submit that success in this campaign cannot be judged by casualties alone. Lloyd's 16th Bde starts a move forward 18 Oct to continue pressure ...

And the final port ion of his signal pointed out the real problem:

UntU dropping ground further north is estabUshed, possibly Alola, there is no alternative once Lloyd's brigade is forward but to base Eather on Myola and Efogi North. In short, with the carriers available I can only maintain three battalions forward in contact -with the enemy. RespectfuUy suggest you defer judgement ... until a more senior staff officer can come forward and discuss situation w ith me. The severity of the conditions under which the troops are operating is emphasised by the



fact that the net wastage by sickness alone in 25 Bde is Offrs 24 ORs 706.

These latter figures were the real key to the situation. Scrub typhus and malaria were doing much more damage than the enemy was. Eather's brigade which was in contact had lost close to half of its fighting strength to casualties and iUness, while sickness had already take a considerable toU of a second brigade not yet in action.

It is difficult to estimate just how big a "Butcher's BiU" would be needed to convince MacArthur of his ignorance of the conditions under which the Australians fought,but he wanted Buna. He wanted the Papuan coastline cleared of the enemy he wanted this done speedily and there were sound tactical reasons for this. The issue on Guadalcanal was still in doubt. Should the Japanese prevail in the Solomons while they stiU held Buna, Gona and Sanananda, there was reason to believe that a second seaborne invasion of Port Moresby might be attempted.

When MacArthur's concerns were not immediately met with dramatic reports of action, Maj Gen Allen got the chop.

On 27 October, Blamey sent a signal:

Consider that you have had sufficiently prolonged tour of duty in forward area. Gen Vasey wiU arrive Myola by air morning 28 October for tour of duty in this area. WUl arrange air transport from Myola forenoon 29 October if this convenient to you.''*

Later, Blamey recommended him for a knighthood. AUen's unjustifiable sacking came just as he had cleared the way

for his successor to harvest the victory. Just as General RoweU was reUeved at the very moment that the Japanese were stopped at loribaiwa Ridge, leaving the victory to Blamey, Allen had cleared the way for Vasey to command an immediate advance. Two days after AUen's departure, his forward troops had cleared the Eora Creek area, and by the night of 31 October the forward elements of the 16th Brigade, AIF, were bivouacked within sight of Kokoda. The airstrip and vUlage were in Australian hands before last light next day.

Apart from the airstrip, there was little of value at Kokoda, but the very name, the one by which the Track would forever be remembered, had a mystique which would endure, and at 0800


138 THE ODD COUPLE

hours on 2 November, in a simple ceremony which became part of Australian service folklore, General "Bloody George" Vasey had the Australian flag hoisted above the viUage. With General AUen back in Port Moresby, Vasey was immortalised as the victor of Kokoda, only two days after he took command.' Mn the 16th Brigade, the formation which took Kokoda, battle casualties in the month of October 1942 were 99 men kiUed and 192 wounded, but almost a thousand more were evacuated sick, mostly with malaria. And there was a further price to pay before the 7th Division reached Buna.

As Eather's troops advanced, resistance hardened, but it was not Horii's emaciated warriors who manned the rearguards. Reinforcements of weU-fed and healthy marines, elements of a fresh landing force, had come forward from Buna and were holding carefuUy selected positions sited to delay the Australians.

The Japanese contested every metre of the Australian advance along the Kumusi River to Wairopi. Every bend in the track, every vantage point held enemy defenders and they died in their hundreds. In one forest clearing alone, the Australians of the 2/31st Battalion counted 89 Japanese dead in a position whose defences included a mountain gun and two medium machine guns. The Australians were quickly adapting to jungle fighting and they would go on to become masters of the craft. This local victory cost them only three kiUed and eight wounded.

At the point where the track crossed the Kumusi, the site of the often-destroyed bridge, more than 600 Japanese defenders died, whUe the remnants fled across the flooded river in whatever they could find that would float. Boats and makeshift rafts were used and many of them were swept away and overturned. The Japanese commander, General Horii, was among those who drowned attempting this crossing, the fly-blown carcass of his white horse rotting on the Kumusi's south bank a mute testimony to his passing.'*^

From 22 July until the crossing of the Kumusi opened the way to Buna and Gona, the Australian infantry had lost 39 officers and 586 other ranks. The total casualties, kiUed and wounded, were 103 officers and 1577 other ranks.'^ It is estimated that, in addition, for every man killed and wounded on the Track at least two and possibly three more were evacuated sick.



The Allies held airfields east of Buna and as Vasey's troops of the 7th Division approached the coast Gen Kenney's transport aircraft were already inserting portion of the US 32nd Division by air. MacArthur wanted the Austrahans to join them and then for the combined force to wipe out this Japanese lodgement which had so interfered with his plans for an offensive. The General was not aware that the enemy had been reinforced.

To this point, the war in New Guinea was an Australian campaign fought by Australian soldiers who were commanded by Austrahan officers, and American inteUigence had been of no help. Brig Gen WiUoughby had constantly underestimated the strength of the opposing forces. And General MacArthur's only recognisable contribution was by way of iU-advised and amateurish interference with the commanders in the field and constant and uninformed criticism of the performance of their troops.

Now, at Buna, the US Army faced its moment of truth. On 5 October, sixty-five plane loads of men and equipment were landed at Wanegila. The airlift included the 2/10th Australian Infantry Battalion and an American Anti-Aircraft artiUery unit armed with .5 inch Browning heavy machine-guns.

This was the first occasion anywhere in the South West Pacific Area on which a substantial force of ground troops was moved forward by air, but it would not be the last. Development of additional airfields was proceeding and the air hft continued. Two regiments of the 32nd US Division foUowed the 2/10th and they were accompanied by the Austrahan Commandos of the 2/6th Independent company. A few 25-pounders and a single American 105 mm howitzer were ferried in by luggers and captured Japanese landing barges. Plans were made to bring forward a troop of Stuart tanks and some Bren gun carriers. The attack on Buna was about to commence.'**

With the exception of the soldiers of the "Ghost" battalion which had spent itself on the infamous Kapa Kapa trail, the Americans were aU fresh troops, unaffected as yet by any of the disabling diseases which were endemic to New Guinea. It was their task to attack Buna.

The three battahons of the Australian 16th Brigade had fought their way over the Kokoda Track, but many of their sick and wounded had returned to the ranks and they had received some fresh replace-


140 THE ODD COUPLE

ments. Their objective was Sanananda and for this operation they received the reinforcement of an American Battalion. The 25th Brigade, also veterans of the Kokoda Trail, advanced on Gona.

Maj Gen WiUoughby was the usual source of misinformation. He estimated that there were no more than 1000 defenders at Buna, aU of them on the point of starvation. He claimed that Gona and Sanananda were similarly lightly held. If WiUoughby was right, then the substantial infantry force would have had no difficulty in overcoming such opposition. But he was wrong. The garrison comprised thousands of fresh troops. They were weU dug in behind substantial fortifications with overhead cover and they were able to be reinforced and supplied by sea. Attacking infantry lacking adequate artiUery support would have great difficulty and unfortunately the logistical situation was such that artiUery would play no significant part in the coming operation.

In the Pacific, plans and operations were plagued by bitter conflict between the US Navy and the US Army, or, more specificaUy between the US Navy and General Douglas MacArthur. With the war being fought across the world's largest ocean and its successful prosecution entirely dependent on seaborne logistics, overaU command by a naval officer would have been logical. In the circumstances that existed in 1942, this simply could not happen and the reason was MacArthur. He would never have accepted a position subordinate to a naval officer. It is unlikely, but possible, that the Naval Chief of Staff, Admiral King, might have accepted a general as Commander in Chief; but it is certain that that general could never have been MacArthur. The President of the United States and his Joint Chiefs of Staff had the theoretical power to override both King and MacArthur and appoint a commander in chief but such authority meant nothing. Such was MacArthur's public profile that they lacked the political wiU to make a decision which might bring down the wrath of the General's political supporters on their heads.

So there existed a war within a war, and the MacArthur versus the US Navy conflict assumed a greater importance to the protagonists than did that which both sides were sworn to prosecute against the Japanese,''^ and in the second half of 1942 MacArthur's logistical



problems were of minimal interest to the US Navy, which had other fish to fry.

Injuly 1942 an American reconnaissance aircraft reported that the Japanese were building an airstrip on Guadalcanal, South East of Rabaul. The US Navy was quick to act, and on 7 August the 1st US Marine Division landed on the island. Most of the Japanese on the island were non-combatants and within two days the Marines had seized the airstrip. The Japanese reacted with attacks by air, sea and land and there foUowed one of the fiercest, and certainly the most highly publicised, campaigns of the Pacific war. Guadalcanal was finaUy secured in February 1943, but in October 1942, when the soldiers of Australia's 7th Division were pursuing Horii's remnants northward over the Kokoda Trail, it was not at aU clear that the Marines would be the victors. If they lost, and the Japanese pushed them off the island, this would free a couple of divisions of enemy troops who could be used to renew the fight for New Guinea. More than that, it would also free a considerable proportion of the Japanese fleet to join in the contest for New Guinea and to do so under fighter cover from the airfield at Guadalcanal. This was of major concern to General MacArthur, as he fought his own war in New Guinea. f*

The Marines had landed at Guadalcanal under the protection of a massive bombardment by naval vessels and a similar bombardment would have greatly simplified the task of reducing the Japanese strongholds at Buna and Gona. Alternatively, the job could be done by field artiUery. At Port Moresby there were several regiments of both field guns and medium artillery, more than sufficient to reduce the stronghold, but both guns and their ammunition would need to be brought to Buna by sea. Unfortunately, no ships could be found to carry even a single regiment and its guns, nor to provide adequate suppUes of ammunition to the few guns that were available.

The ability of General Kenney's air force to fly troops and supplies into the Buna area and to evacuate the sick and wounded was aU that made the campaign possible. It was up to the unsupported Australian infantry which had already walked over the Owen Stanley Ranges and the AUied forces which were being flown in to Wanigela, the main component being the 32nd US Infantry Division.

The 32nd was a National Guard formation whose training has


142 THE ODD COUPLE

been described as "hasty and incomplete". Incomplete it may have been, but this was hardly due to undue haste. The Division had been on fuU-time duty since late 1940. It had been in Australia for more than six months but httle had been done to prepare it for the kind of war that was being waged in New Guinea.

In a burst of patriotism General Arnold had placed a good deal of faith in these formations, but after inspecting the 32nd, and its companion formation the 41st US Division, General Eichelberger wrote:

I had read General MacArthur's estimates of his two infantry divisions and these reports and our own inspections convinced my staff and me that the American troops were in no sense ready for jungle warfare ...^'

This opinion was not one which was shared by the officers and men of the 32nd Division who were more inclined to Hap Arnold's opinion of them. It seems likely that, just as his had been, their own judgment of themselves was influenced by the expressed opinion of their Commander-in-Chief of the capabilities of their aUies. In his communications with Washington, and in conversation w ith General Arnold, MacArthur had been scathing in his criticism of Australian troops, describing them as "not even good militia". There is Uttle doubt that this and similar criticisms had also seeped downward from his GHQ. The 32nd, and particularly the divisional commander, Maj Gen Edwin F Harding, entered the war with a very high opinion of the soldierly qualities of its officers and men.

FoUowing their arrival before Buna, 32nd division was ordered to withhold its attack untfl adequate reserves of rations and supplies were built up. Of this an American observer wrote:

... the only reason for the order is a poUtical one. GHQ was afraid to turn the Americans loose and let them capture Buna because it would be a blow to the prestige of the AustraUans who had fought the long hard battle aU through the Owen Stanley Mountains, and who therefore should be the ones to capture Buna. ^

General Eichelberger, a brave and talented officer who was to prove himself at Buna and elsewhere to be the best of MacArthur's American generals, described the 32nd before battle:



It went into New Guinea "high" on itself, fuU of confidence, but quite unprepared and untrained for the miseries and terrors of jungle warfare so alien to the experience of boys from the cUpped green lawns and serene streets of the smaU town Middle West.^'

General Ned Her r ing was in overaU command and Maj Gen

"Bloody George" Vasey was in command of 7th Division AIF when

the attack on the Buna -Gona area commenced, but in his letter to

Sutherland, Harding made it plain that he expected to meet only a

"sheU of sacrifice troops" and that he would not expect to have any

trouble taking the place.2-* He had been led sadly astray by the

appreciation prepared by MacArthur's G3 , Brig Gen Charles WU-

loughby

Alas, poor Harding. The 32nd's initial attack on 19 November was

a total disaster. The GIs came under fire from Japanese rifles and

machine-guns manned by soldiers so weU camouflaged as to be

invisible to inexperienced eyes. Immediately they encountered the

enemy the Americans stopped, went to ground and stayed there. The

official American historian describes them ...

... with the greater part of their ammunition used up, the 1st BattaHon ended the day a badly shaken outfit. The troops had entered the battle joking and laughing and sure of an easy victory. Now they were dazed and taken aback by the mauling they had taken from thejapanese.^^

Two weeks later they had gone no further.

Victory at Buna assumed such importance to MacArthur that, for

the first time, he moved his headquarters to N e w Guinea and took

up residence in Government House in Port Moresby. Despite the

American General's derogatory remarks about Australian troops, it

gave General Blamey no satisfaction to report to him in person:

... it is a very sorry story. It has revealed the fact that the American troops cannot be classified as attack troops. They are definitely not equal to the Australian militia and from the moment they met opposition they sat down and have hardly gone forward a yard. "

MacArthur caUed Eichelberger forward to Port Moresby and

ordered him to Buna to take command. His final orders to his corps


144 THE ODD COUPLE

commander have been enshrined in military lore: "Bob, I want you

to go out there and take Buna or don't come back alive."^^

Eichelberger arrived before Buna on 1 November. His first inspec

tion revealed that the American infantry was making no endeavour

to advance, and that a stalemate existed, a condition that could only

favour the Japanese. He was already under instructions from Mac-

Arthur to sack the divisional commander, General Harding, and

whether he agreed with the need or not at the time of the order, he

quickly concluded that it was the only course.^*

Notes

1. Raymond PauU, Retreat from Kokoda, NichoUs and Co, Manchester, 1959, passim.

2. Dudley McCarthy South West Pacific Area, AWM, 1959, p. 304.

3. ibid., p. 305.

4. ibid., pp. 304-305.

5. ibid., p. 242.

6. ibid., p. 246.

7. ibid., p. 279.

8. So steep was the initial cHmb and so muddy that Royal Australian Engineers buUt steps of timber, more than two thousand of them, to enable the troops and the carriers to traverse it. It was known as the Golden Staircase.

9. McCarthy p. 242, p. 280. D Clayton James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol.ll, Houghton MifUin, NY, 1975, p. 232. WUUam Manchester, American Caesar, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1978, p. 305. McCarthy, p. 280.

10. Robert E. Eichelberger,_/M«g/e Road to Tokyo, Odham, London, 1950, p. 25.

11. A 350 gram can of corned beef and a packet of protein-enriched biscuits was a standard day's active service ration for an AustraUan soldier It was issued on the basis that one of a team of three soldiers would provide a ration at each of the day's three meals. The biscuit was very hard, and in tropical conditions the corned beef was extremely soft and unpalatable. It was a far cry from American rations, but it was the only ration pack available in the SWPA that was sufficiently robust to be air dropped.

12. Queensland Department of Health Archives, Coroner's Reports 1942.

13. McCarthy p. 271.



14. ibid., p. 307 et seq. 15. ibid, p. 314. 16. ibid., p. 330. 17. ibid, p 332. 18. McCarthy, p. 356 et seq. 19. Post-war, the US Navy commissioned Republic Pictures to produce a

lengthy historical documentary series, "The War at Sea". Nowhere in twelve hours of film is General MacArthur mentioned by name even though footage in w^hich he can be plainly seen is included in the presentation.

20. General E. Morison, Tlie Two Ocean War,Little Brown and Co.,Boston, 1963, p. 164 etseq.

21. Eichelberger, pp. 11-12. 22. McCarthy, p. 352. Milner, Victory in Papua, p. 138. 23. Eichelberger, pp. 11—12. 24. McCarthy, p. 352. 25. Eichelberger, p. 60. 26. Milner, p 175. 27. John Hethrington, Blamey, AWM and AGPS, Canberra, 1973, p. 282. 28. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol. II, pp. 260-64.


CHAPTER 10

A SHELL OF SACRIFICE TROOPS

The General is the Minister of Death. He cannot be responsible to the heavens above, the earth below, to the enemy in front nor to the Emperor behind.

Sel Liao Ezu, 835 AD

THE Japanese entrenchments at Buna, Sanananda and Gona were sited on what amounted to a fairly narrow peninsula of soUd

ground which was bordered to the north by the sea and to landward by a tangle of almost impassable swamplands. This had to be traversed by the infantry if the Alhed offensive was to succeed. The Japanese positions commanded the beach and they were able to be suppUed and reinforced by smaU ships and submarine.

In November, and weU before the Allied armies were ready to attack. General Blamey considered that the Navy might be able to use a similar route to land forces south-east of the Japanese enclave, whence they could attack using fire support from Allied warships. MacArthur put the matter to Vice Admiral Carpenter, his Commander of Naval Forces, who advised that the deployment of his warships in the Huon Gulf was out of the question due to navigational hazards. When Blamey made the less ambitions proposal that a couple of destroyers be made available as transports to land troops adjacent to Buna Mission, MacArthur agreed that it was "a germ of an idea", but once again mentioned the navigational


Captain Douglas MacArthur at Vera Cruz in 1914. He displayed a simUar eccentricity in his dress throughout his career. (MacArthur Memorial)

Lt Gen Jonathan Wainwright with General MacArthur on Corregidor just before MacArthur left for Australia. Two months later, Wainwright was forced to surrender to the Japanese and spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp. (MacArthur Memorial and Archives)


Maj Gen R. K. Sutherland, Chief of Staff to Maj Gen Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's G3 General MacArthur. (Intelligence).

Lt Gen Lavarack and General Blamey share a drink and a joke with General Eichelberger shortly after the American's arrival in Melbourne.


MacArthur and his staff arriving at Spencer Street Station in Melbourne in March 1942. Despite claims that they had existed on the same starvation rations as the troops fighting on Bataan, MacArthur, General Willoughby (behind left) and public relations officer Lt Col "Pik" Diller (behind right) all looked remarkably well fed. (Melbourne Herald)

The fifteen pilots of Torpedo Squadron 8 who took off in Devastator Torpedo Bombers firom USS Hornel to attack the Japanese Combined Fleet at Midway. All fifteen aircraft were destroyed by Japanese fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Of these men, and their rear gunners, only one man. Ensign George Gay (front row, fourth from left), returned alive.


Lt Cdr John Waldron, USN, who led the USS Hornet's Torpedo Bombers

in their suicidal attack at Midway. The sacrifice of those men paved the

way for the successful attack by the dive bombers which sank three of

thejapanese carriers. (US Navy)

Admiral Nimitz (left), the architect of the US Navy's victory at Midway, with Vice Admiral Spruance, the Task Force commander who won the batde. (US Navy)


General Sir Thomas Blamey and Lady Blamey on the steps ofVictoria Barracks, Melbourne. Blamey was MacArthur's deputy and Conunander-in-Chief of Allied Land Forces SWPA, but the "Bataan Gang did not admit outsiders to the inner circle. Blamey's relationship with the Americans was never a happy one. (Australian War Memorial)


Pre-war garrison troops being inspected by the Lieut Governor of New Guinea, Mr W H. Champion, at Port Moresby in 1939. Government House can be seen in the right background. The open nature of the country surrounding the town would have gready favoured the defenders had thejapanese forces ever succeeded in crossing the Owen Stanleys. {Courier-Mail)

Austraha's wartime Army Minister, Frank Forde (left), with General MacArthur, General Blamey and General Suthedand, MacArthur's Chief of Staff. (AWM^


Maj Gen Basil Morris, who commanded the Australian garrison at Port Moresby early in 1942. Morris's advice, endorsed by Blamey, was to let the Japanese walk over the Kokoda Trail if they wanted to; they would not be able to take artillery with them and the climate and topography would decimate their ranks; when they reached the open country north of Port Moresby they would be met by fresh troops in strong defensive positions, supported by several regiments of artillery (AWM, no. 09967)

Fuzzy Wuzzies carrying Mortar ammunition down a steep descent on the Kokoda Trail. (AWM)


General "Tubby" Allen sitting for his portrait in 1944. With victory at Kokoda almost within his grasp, Allen was reheved of cormiiand by Blamey at MacArthur's urging. Gen Vasey reaped the reward when the Australians captured Kokoda two days after he assumed command. (AWM, no. 023271)

General Sir Sydney Rowell, who succeeded Morris in

command of Australian Forces in New Guinea. His sacking by Blarney had repercussions that were felt throughout the

Australian army. (AWM, no. 026582)


General "Bloody George" Vasey was credited with the Australian victory at Kokoda. He commanded the Austrahan force at Buna and later conducted the Markham Valley campaign which drove thejapanese out of Lae and Salamua. (AWM, no. 052620)


Milne Bay is one of the wettest spots on earth and any roads that existed were a quagmire, abiost impassable for vehicles. Troops sunk up to their knees in the mud and movement was at a snail's pace. (AWM)

"The beach" at Milne Bay When Gen MacArthur criticised the speed at which the Australians moved against thejapanese,Maj Gen Clowes pointed out the difficulty involved in the movement of troops in this mountainous and muddy environment. From his desk in Brisbane, MacArthur's Chief of Staff suggested that Clowes might move his troops more quickly if he "ran them along the beach". (AWM, no. A85365)


The Golden Staircase. Almost three divisions of Australian infantry walked over the Owen Stanley i anges from Port Moresby to Buna and this is where the journey commenced. Austrahan engineers hacked 2000 steps out of the mountainside and faced them with bush timber. (AWM, no. 026821)


The "Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels" of the Kokoda Trail. A wounded AustraUan is led back to the rear by two New Guinea porters. The dedication of these natives who carried stores and ammunition forward and returned with the wounded was all that made the campaign possible. {Courier-Mail)


Australian soldiers inspect a Japanese 70 mm mountain gun. At the time that MacArthur and his staff feared that Port Moresby would fall to the Japanese, the enemy had only two of these pop guns to support further advances. (AWM, no. 018046)

Wairopi". The bridge that gave the crossing its name was the only means of crossing the tast-flowing Kumusi River. During the Japanese advance on Port Moresby, the Allied Air Forces destroyed this bridge almost as fast as thejapanese rebuilt it. (AWM, no. 072462)


General Blamey and General Eichelberger inspect the forward

positions at Buna. (AWM, ho. 014093)

General MacArthur posed with a group of Australian gunners at Owers Corner during his first visit to New Guinea. The enemy retreat had begun at this time and the Japanese were well out of range of the guns. (AWM)


Generals Eichelberger and Blamey at the entrance of one of the strong positions which thejapanese held at Buna. Budt of palm logs, and with substantial overhead cover, these positions were difficult to reduce. The defenders fought to the last man and the last round. (AWM, no. 014091)

Apprentice paratroopers. When General Vasey expressed his need for artillery in the initial stage of the operation, a battery of the 2/6th Regiment, Royal Austrahan Ai-tiUery volunteered to dismantle their guns, have them parachuted into Nadzab and jump with them, although none of the gunners had ever had any parachute training. (AWM, no.015700)


Hundreds of aircraft took part in the airborne operation at Nadzab. The objective was heavily bombed and strafed and the paratroopers had the benefit of a smokescreen when they jumped. In fact, the drop zone had been cleared by Australian patrols and there wasn't an enemy for miles. (AWM, no. 128387)

The impact of the American Engineer. A week after the paratroops landed, Nadzab was a fully operational forward airfield almost within sight of the Japanese main base at Lae. (AWM, no. 057485)


9 3^^

V ••.,

^^HHIMHmVBi^^ - • T--/?' >. saBP^

' " ^

A General Stuart tank being salvaged from the Buna battlefield. Manned by Australian crews, these American Hght tanks supported the Austrahan 18th Infantry Brigade in the assault that turned the tide of batde and gave MacArthur his victory at Buna. {Courier-Mail)

The Bataan. MacArthur's personal B 17 in which he overflew the Nadzab operation accompanied by a group of favoured war correspondents. When he landed back in Brisbane, Gen Kenney ptesented him with the Air Medal. (AWM, no. 129748)


An LST landing troops and stores at Scariet Beach, Finschhafen. (AWM)

HMAS Manoora. This 12 000 tonne Austrahan Landing ship and her identical cohort Kanimbh were both available for the Los Negros operation, but were ignored by MacArthur for pohtical reasons. With their 50 landing barges these two ships could have landed a full regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division complete with transport, artillery and tanks. (Author's collection)


Only one Japanese was killed on the beach at Los Negros. His body attained a degree of immortality when General MacArthur posed for the photographers while inspecting it. (Signals Corps)

MacArthur with Brigadier General Chase of 1st Cavalry Division inspecting a two-wheeled hand troUey the only transport arrangements that could be carried to the lanchng at Hyane Bay on Los Negros. {Courier-Mail)


A 20 mm anti-aircraft gun captured at Los Negros. This gun and others like it survived the initial bombardment. Their crews permitted the first wave to land and then opened fire on the landing craft as they withdrew. A fortuitous rain squall blinded the Japanese gunners long enough for the infantry to deal with them. (Signals Corps)

At the conference held in Hawaii injuly 1944, MacArthur convinced President Roosevelt of the merits of his plan to drive to Japan through the Philippines. This photo was taken soon after MacArthur's arrival and the body language suggests that Admiral Nimitz and the Navy were already on the outer. (US Navy)


MacArthur in casual mode in the gardens at General and Mrs MacArthur pictured alongside Government House in New Guinea. (AWM) "Bataan" at Archerfield Airfield in Brisbane in

1944. (Courtesy of Maj Bill Bentson,US Army Ret.)

MacArthur in conversation with Gen Whitehead, commander of the 5th Air Force. (Courier-Mail) Property of University of Queensland Press - do not copy or distribute

Generals Blamey and MacArthur with the Australian prime minister,

John Curtin. These three were seldom seen together. Blamey was

bypassed by Curtin and his Secretary, Shedden, who dealt

direcdy with the Americans. (AWM)

MacArthur farewells the Australian prime minister at ship's side prior to the voyage that John Curtin and General Blamey made to America and England in June 1944. {Courier-Mail)


MacArthur is welcomed to New Guinea by General Blamey on 12 October 1942,more than three weeks after thejapanese had begun to retreat. His visit was brief He returned to Brisbane the next day. (AWM)

S#M^^?-Infantrymen of 1 US Cavalry Division crouch in cover near the Momote Airstrip on Los Negros, 28 February 1944. ABC correspondent Frank Legge, a former AIF infantryman, and photographer Frank Bagnall passed through them and inspected the airstrip without seeing any sign of Japanese. (Signals Corps photo, taken by Frank Bagnall)


The Return. MacArthur and his staff wade ashore at Leyte in October 1944. {Courier-Mail)

The Return of the Bataan Gang. MacArthur and those members of his staff who had served with him on Corregidor pose for a photo on the fortress's parade ground after the island was recaptured in 1945. Left to right: Brig Gen DUler, Col McMicking, Generals Willoughby, Atkin, Sutherland, MacArthur, Marshall and Casey, Col Huff, Gen Marquart and Master Sergeant Paul Rogers. {Courier-Mail)


A stores dump on fire adjacent to LSTs beached at Llinkus Beach, Tarakan, 1 May 1945. {Courier-Mail)

MacArthur watches an Austrahan training exercise on the Atherton Tablelands in 1944. On his right are the Australians Maj Gen "Guts" Wooton and Lt Gen Moreshead. (Courier-Mail)


General Blamey and Brigadier "Torpy" Whitehead inspect a bombed-out oil installation at Tarakan shordy after Diggers of the 9th Division AIF stormed the adjacent beaches. (AWM)


Maj Gen Milford, GOC 7th Aust Div, indicates General Blamey with Lt Gen Iven McKay who points of interest to General Blamey and his commanded the Australian forces in New Chief of Staff, Maj Gen Frank Berryman, at Guinea in 1943. (AWM) Balikpapan in July 1945. (AWM)

c

General Blamey negotiates the ramp of an Austrahan Landing Barge during an inspection tour of BougainviUe in 1945. (AWM)


Austraha's only seat at a Peace Table. MacArthur watches as General Blarney signs the Japanese surrender document aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay in 1945. (AWM, no. 440969)

General Tojo, wartime prime minister of Japan. When Tojo encountered an

American Mitchell bomber while on a routine internal flight to Tokyo,Japanese

strategy underwent a hasty change. He was hanged for his war crimes in Tokyo

in 1946. {Courier-Mail)


MacArthur leads his subordinate commanders to the flag-raising ceremony at the US Embassy in Tokyo, 6 September 1945. Left to right: Generals Sutherland and Giles, Admiral Halsey and Generals Eichelberger, MacArthur and Chase. (MacArthur Memorial)


Fpr the first and last time in their lives, MacArthur and President Truman met at Wake Island, in November 1950. MacArthur assured his President that there was nothing to fear from a Chinese entry into the Korean War. (Signals Corps)

General MacArthur hands an award to a cadet at West Point during his last visit to the college where it all began. He died shortly afterwards following surgery. {Courier-Mail)


The MacArthur Memorial in Norfolk, Virgima, where MacArthur is buried. {Courier-Mail)


»ATAAN.C0RREGiD0R«NE\X^ GUINEA'S

e>K«:t \s MM y T H i S

MacArthur's tomb under the rotunda of the Memorial, When his wife died, aged 101, in February 2000, she joined him there in a place reserved for her since 1964. (MacArthur Memorial)

D FOR

S E C O N D W0RL1> IN THIS BUlLDlNCj GEMfij^

.SUPREME COMMANDER A-1 ESTABLLSHED hlfS HEAJ.

AND HERE HE FOR WHfcH ' '•

OVER THE JAP^^'-

THE F(;RCES UNDEiv i-3-^

'HAVY. ARMY-ANB^

GRKAT BRITAIN, I T N l t l t

AUSTRALIA. NEW 7,

mi JULY m i ^ UNIimL .PLAN?

\nr!TfiRY

(''MPRTSED

'Or >v •.^gSTMSaifeAJNir''

-XERICA.

A'Vi'-^i'v'-/, •'•

The MacArthur name is revered by many in Austraha. The people of Brisbane have protected the insurance building that was his headquarters under heritage legislation and have preserved his office as It was when he left it in 1944. {Courier-Mail)


A SHELL OF SACRIFICE TROOPS 147

difficulties, and told Blamey that the destroyers weren't available anyway'

Never a trusting soul, Blamey checked with his Naval Officer in Charge, Port Moresby, Commander Hunt, a former merchant marine officer with wide experience in New Guinea waters. Hunt ridiculed the Navy's assessment and drew Blamey's attention to the availability of officers with similar experience to his own now serving with the RAN and acting as pilots to the US Navy's ships operating in the Solomons, where the AUied ships fought actions at high speed in narrow channels between islands where navigation and pilotage was a great deal more difficult than it was in the open waters of the Huon Gulf 2 He also drew attention to the vast disparity between the naval resources available in the Solomons, and those under MacArthur's command.

When the US Marines landed at Guadalcanal, the pre-landing bombardment and subsequent immediate support for the infantry was provided by a Naval Task Force which comprised two Australian heavy cruisers, each with eight eight-inch guns, and the light cruiser Hobart, with eight six-inch guns. There were four American heavy cruisers, each with nine eight-inch guns, and nineteen destroyers, each of which had at least five five-inch guns. This made a total of fifty-two eight-inch guns and more than a hundred artillery pieces of smaller calibre.^ In addition, the division of Marines which landed was complete with aU of its organic artiUery, as were the Army formations which reinforced it.'*

Blamey persisted with his submissions to MacArthur seeking Naval support for his forces, only to be told that the Navy would not co-operate. It would also seem that, like the American commander, Harding, MacArthur believed that the AUies would quickly overrun thejapanese defenders. He told Blamey that sufficient artiUery would be "so emplaced as to enfilade the whole position and make it untenable to the enemy".^

In total, the artiUery support for the two divisions of troops involved in the attack on Buna, Gona and Sanananda was just four 25-pounders and a single American 105 mm howitzer. Lack of observation would hamper the gunners' attempts to deliver accurate fire. Even these few puny guns would be idle much of the time for


148 THE ODD COUPLE

lack of adequate supplies of ammunition. Attacks would often be supported by a single gun with a piddling dozen or two rounds of 25-pounder ammunition.^ To deal with bunkers, the Diggers invented an explosive device comprising a hand grenade secured to a bully beef tin of high explosive. After creeping close enough, a soldier would lob this on top of the palm log overhead cover and blow it in. This was not a practice suited to the faint of heart, and it was costly in casualties.^

Deployed as they were on the beach, thejapanese were vulnerable to any form of attack from the sea and any of the heavy cruisers which were deployed in the Solomons would have done the business. By decree, they always traveUed in mutuaUy supporting pairs and any two of them mounted, between them, sixteen to eighteen eight-inch guns capable of delivering almost two tonnes of high explosive sheUs per salvo — seven or eight tonnes per minute — more High Explosive in a minute than the five shorebound guns would deliver during the whole campaign. Hundred-kilogram, fuse-delayed, armour-piercing eight-inch projectiles bursting deep in the earth would have destroyed the Japanese bunker system in short order and observers carried in the ships' own scout planes were trained to spot the faU of shot and deliver fire on the target with pinpoint accuracy. In contrast, neither navigation difficulties nor lack of air cover prevented the Japanese from risking their ships in New Guinea waters.

The Navy may have offered specious justification for its failure to support MacArthur at Buna, but there were other, sinister undercurrents to the Army-Navy relationship which contributed to this. A hostile relationship had existed between the US Navy and General MacArthur since his Chief of Staff days, and the failure to find ships to support and reinforce his Philippines campaign had brought their relationship to its lowest level. Any disincUnation that the Navy may have exhibited to do the SWPA commander any favours may have been equalled only by his reluctance to ask for them. Poor intelligence from Willoughby combined with advice from his Air Force commander may also have persuaded MacArthur that he didn't need the Navy anyway.

When Maj Gen Harding, commanding 32nd Division, discovered that he was to take his infantry into Buna without artiUery support,



he was horrified. There is no record as to the degree of reassurance which he obtained from General Kenney's answer to his problem. In 1942 the senior officers of the US Army Air Corps were those airmen who had fought a long political battle to have the aeroplane recognised as a major weapon of war, and in doing so they had made many claims for its bombardment and other capabilities which were outrageously exaggerated. Prominent among those who had promoted the Air Corps' case was MacArthur's Air Force Commander, Lt Gen George Kenney, and it would appear that he had come to beUeve his own propaganda. Apparently, he had decided that big guns were no longer necessary to give close support to infantry He is reported as teUing General Harding, "In this theatre, the ArtiUery flies".^

This was dangerous nonsense. The availability of Kenney's bombers and fighters was subject to the weather, and when they did arrive, even if they could find the target they seldom hit what they aimed at and they often did as much damage to the AUies as they did to the Japanese. At one point in January 1943, General Blamey was inspecting a forward position at Buna in company with General Eichelberger when it came under low-level air attack from American A20 Boston Bombers. The "friendly fire" wounded three infantrymen and the Bostons departed in a hail of smaU-arms fire from the American troops on the ground. General Eichelberger explained: "Those planes think they're firing at Sanananda, three miles away. Our men get fed up and fire back."'

Once having experienced this kind of air support, infantry commanders seldom asked for it again.'^'

Within twenty-four hours of arriving at Buna, Eichelberger had sacked General Harding, aU of his regimental commanders and most of his battalion commanders. A sergeant who led his platoon in an attack which seized and held ground was promoted to captain on the spot and given command of a company. The General placed members of his own staffin command of battalions and regiments and operated his headquarters with little more than his batman and a wireless operator. There were no easy pickings for the 32nd at Buna regardless of who was in command.''

Neither were the Australians at Gona or Sanananda provided with a walkover. The Diggers of the 16th and 25th Brigades AIF were far


150 THE ODD COUPLE

better trained, better disciplined, better led and better motivated than the raw and over-confident Americans, but they didn't find life any easier. Japanese positions were a series of well-constructed, weU-camouflaged, mutually supporting bunkers fortified with palm logs and their ample overhead cover ensured that American air strikes had Httle effect even when they did find the target.

With air strikes of limited use, and minimal artiUery fire support available, other means to break the Une were sought. Using dumb lighters towed by smaU ships, a few tracked Bren gun carriers were landed east of the battlefield and an attempt was made to breach the Japanese line using these to give fire support to advancing infantry. Only desperation could have caused a commander to consider these vehicles for such a role. They were too lightly armoured, and almost aU of them "bellied" on logs and tree stumps and were marooned in the swamp like crippled waterfowl, easy meat for thejapanese as their tracks churned uselessly in the slush. Some were knocked out by Hght Japanese artillery and some by mortar fire against which the open-topped vehicles had no protection.

An even greater effort was needed to bring forward a troop of American M3 Stuart tanks manned by Australian crews. Its fourteen-tonne weight and its low ground clearance made the tank just as prone to "bellying" as the ridiculous Bren gun carrier. When one Armoured Fighting Vehicle (AFV) was marooned in this fashion, the Japanese set alight to the kunai grass which grew abundantly in the swamp and forced the crew to evacuate their vehicle or be roasted alive. Most of the Stuarts suffered the same fate as the little carriers,'^ but some of the tank crews performed heroic deeds and wdth their aid the infantry achieved much. By mid-December, Gona was in Australian hands, but the Americans were stiU in deep trouble. In the end, it became obvious that the 32nd Division would never take Buna, and Brigadier Wooton's 18th Brigade came to their aid. With Wooton in charge of the battle, and with the help of the tanks. Buna feU to the AlHes on 2 January 1943.'-^

The reduction of an area which General WiUoughby had claimed to be weakly defended by "a few starving troops" cost, in total, 2870 Allied kiUed and wounded, 913 of them Austrahans.

Gona and Buna had been subdued. There stiU remained Sanananda



but MacArthur took no heed of this. A communique gave out the news that American infantry had taken Buna and the campaign was over. The American media trumpeted this premature paean of triumph as the real thing. MacArthur basked in the glow of victory and it was doubly sweet as he had beaten the Navy. No equivalent announcement would be forthcoming from Guadalcanal until 9 February.''*

In issuing his communique, MacArthur chose to ignore both the Australian troops who had fought at Buna and Gona and also the thousands of Japanese still holding out at Sanananda. Relying on reports from his airmen who bombed the area, and foUowing the American trend to underestimate the enemy strength. General Kenney informed his Commander-in-Chief that there were no more than 1000 enemy remaining in the area. He offered to eat every Japanese present above that figure.'^ In clearing Sanananda and the defended localities which surrounded it, Australian and American forces killed more than 1500 Japanese. It was estimated that a further 1200 sick and wounded enemy were taken off by sea and more than 1000 escaped overland to the west of Gona. So much for Kenney's guesswork. The AUied infantry lost more than 2000 casualties. Almost 600 Australians were killed or missing and 274 Americans lost their lives taking Sanananda. Its fall on 22 January went unheralded. No announcement could be made. After Buna fell, MacArthur closed his Port Moresby headquarters and without ever having set foot on the battlefield had gone home to Brisbane and declared the campaign over.

The defeat of the Japanese at Guadalcanal in February was a tremendous media event. United States Army and Marines lost 1600 kiUed on Guadalcanal out of a total casualty list of 5845, its very name becoming a US Marine Corps icon. Fewer than 6000 casualties from a total of more than 60 000 troops committed hardly compares with the butcher's bill at Buna, Gona and Sanananda. Three thousand and ninety-five AustraUan and American soldiers died in the Papua operations, where casualties totaUed 8546 from a force which numbered less than half that which fought on Guadalcanal."' And these were only the battle casualties.

At Buna, malaria, scrub typhus and other tropical diseases incapaci-


152 THE ODD COUPLE

tated many more men than did the enemy. The US Infantry at Guadalcanal faced similar problems but they were minor by comparison. Their tactical posture contrasted with that of Blamey's troops at Buna since they held the high and dry ground of the airstrip. Theirs was a defensive battle and it was the Japanese attackers who were mired in the jungle and the swamp.

Quite early in the campaign, Maj Gen Frank Berryman, the Austrahan staff officer who acted as Chief of Staff to Gen Eichelberger, had suggested that the whole of the Buna—Gona-Sanananda area could be isolated, with its garrison starved out and left to wither on the vine. To the end of his days, the basis of MacArthur's proudest boast was this very tactic of bypassing enemy strong points, and his use of these tactics to avoid casualties, but he would have none of Frank Berryman's suggestion. The Incredible Warrior wanted the enemy destroyed and the area from Gona to Buna occupied. Above aU, he wanted an American victory, and he wanted it at any cost. On more than one occasion he had ordered Harding to attack wdthout regard to casualties and his orders to Eichelberger had been unequivocal: "Bob, take Buna or don't come back alive."''' Bob took Buna and he came back alive, but there was little evidence that his Commander-in-Chief appreciated his effort.

MacArthur claimed Buna for the Americans as the first US Army victory of the Pacific War, but his communiques never mentioned the Australians. Neither were the Diggers the only victims of the Mac-Arthur omissions. He didn't mention the name of his American field commander either. Few more churlish actions by a commander have been recorded than that which saw MacArthur ignore Eichelberger's performance. The Corps commander was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, but not for Buna. His name was buried in a long list of recipients, most of them staff officers, and the award was a "periodic" one for the defence of Papua without mention of Buna. The list included the Austrahan commanders who had fought at Buna, but it also included members of the Bataan Gang who fought the campaign from Brisbane, their only connection to the battlefield a brief visit to Dobadura to have their ticket punched as evidence of their eligibility for the Buna campaign medal.'^ At Buna,as at Bataan, there could be but one hero and MacArthur occupied centre stage.



Victory at Buna was reserved for the General and was so recorded for history.'^

MacArthur's heroic communiques had ensured that "back home" the US Army's reputation, and especiaUy that of General MacArthur, stood as high as ever, but he was still unloved by the Navy.

On Guadalcanal, the US Marines mistakenly believed that Mac-Arthur was to blame for failing to send army units to reinforce or relieve them. A Marine poet penned some lines which expressed their resentment:

We asked all the Doggies to come to Tulagi, But General MacArthur said "no." He gave as his reason "It isn't the season. Besides you have no USQ." °

In its recording of history, the US Marine Corps chooses to ignore Milne Bay, the Kokoda Trail, Gona, Buna and Sanananda and claims Guadalcanal as the first Allied victory of the war against Japanese ground forces.

A summary of the interservice relationship was provided by a naval officer on MacArthur's staff. Captain Ray Tarbuck, USN. Tarbuck worked under General Chamberlain in the planning division of MacArthur's G3 branch:

We got the minimum sustenance for modern war ... In the 7th Amphibious Force we manufactured our own rocket launchers and converted our own LCIs to rocket ships.

We made 56 amphibious lanchngs and ... [we] had seaborne air support on only 11. We got our blankets and mutton from AustraUa ... The Central Pacific navy had numberless supply ships, but the 7th Fleet seldom saw any, because someone drew a Hne on a Pacific Chart and said, "The Central Pacific ends here." The batde between the Army and the Navy was almost as tough as the Jap war. '

With victory at Buna, General MacArthur had secured Papua, yet strategically he was no further forward than he had been six months earUer, when it was occupied by a few missionaries and a section of native constabulary.

Meanwhile, he needed to go further and thejapanese stiU held Lae


154 THE ODD COUPLE

and Salamua. To totally dominate the Huon Gulf and the Bismarck Sea, he would need these bases and others at Finschhafen and Madang so that General Kenney's bomber line could move further to the west.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff directive for the next phase of the campaign caUed for MacArthur to seize Salamua—Lae—Finschhafen and Madang while Admiral Halsey's South Pacific command occupied the southern portion of Bougainville. 22

By comparison with MacArthur's task, which was reaUy one for Blamey and the Australians, Halsey's was a simple one. The contrast is more stark when the resources available to both are considered.

In April 1943 Halsey had two divisions of Marines, four US Army divisions and a division of New Zealanders, aU of them fresh troops. His 3rd Fleet comprised six battleships, two aircraft carriers, three escort carriers, thirteen cruisers, more than half of them heavy eight-inch cruisers, and more than fifty destroyers. Before the year ended, he would have additional aircraft carriers and cruisers, destroyers and fleet auxUiaries, the lion's share of the flood of new naval tonnage pouring from American shipyards.

In addition, he had a weU-equipped amphibious force of landing ships, beaching craft and landing craft sufficient to move two divisions at a single lift. To protect his fleet, his carrier and land-based air forces could put almost a thousand planes in the air.

At Empress Augusta Bay on BougainviUe 14 000 troops and more than 6000 tonnes of material were landed on 1 November in an operation given fire support by four Ught cruisers and eight destroyers. Within fourteen days 33,861 men and 24 000 tonnes of suppUes were ashore. Given such resources, MacArthur's problem would have been simple of solution.23

"MacArthur's Navy" had not been totaUy ignored. In March, with a stroke of his pen US Naval Chief of Staff, Admiral King, created Seventh Fleet, but his magic wand didn't extend to the provision of any extra ships. Seventh Fleet was basically Task Force 44.9 with a new label. It comprised Uttle more than the much depleted AustraUan squadron. In addition to two Australian cruisers, HMAS Australia and HMAS Hobart, there was USS Phoenix and a smaU destroyer squadron.2"* Hobart was not to be around for long. On 21 July she took a torpedo aft while operating in the Solomons and was out of



commission for the next seventeen months.^5 Apart from these few ships, there were the numerous "corvettes" and some tenders. Of naval amphibious forces, there were none.

Even while the fighting at Buna was in progress, cartographic ships of the RAN had carried out a detailed survey of the coast from Milne Bay to Cape Nelson and beyond2*' and a supply line was established to the developing port at Oro Bay. MacArthur's procurement officers scoured the boatyards of the east coast of Australia and purchased any smaU motor vessel capable of carrying a tonne or two of cargo. Civilian crews were enlisted at merchant pay rates and units of the expanding fleet of small craft were captained by a sundry collection of seafarers whose qualifications for command were often questionable and sometimes non-existent.

To this conglomerate force was added the 2nd US Engineers Special Brigade, which would eventuaUy man a fleet of landing craft ranging from the 36-foot Landing Craft Vehicle or Personnel (LC VP), each capable of carrying a platoon of infantry to the larger Landing Craft Material (LCM) which would carry up to sixty personnel on short hauls, and later to the Landing Craft Tank (LCT) which was capable of making sea passages carrying a number of vehicles.2^ He had a new admiral too. In January 1943, Rear Admiral "Uncle Dan" Barbey an amphibious specialist, created what was to become 7th Amphibious Fleet, and later in 1943 he acquired four APDs as its nucleus. These were obsolete World War I destroyers which had been converted for use as high-speed transports. Capable of almost eighteen knots, an APD could carry up to two hundred troops and could land them using its four LCPs(R). This was an early version of the standard American Landing Barge from which was developed the LCVP. It had a ramp no more than 90 centimetres wide which was suitable only for personnel.

When MacArthur received orders to take Lae, Salamua and Finschhafen, he had three American divisions under his command but only two Regimental Combat Teams fit for battle. Just arrived in Australia was the 1st Cavalry Division. Dismounted, the troopers were deployed and would fight as infantry when they got around to it, but like the 32nd and 41st when they first arrived, the 1st Cavalry Division lacked any form of training which might fit it for New


156 THE O D D COUPLE

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The LCP(R) — Landing Craft Personnel (Ramp) was a development of the earliest Higgins boat, the Landing Craft Personnel. A narrow wooden ramp was added so that troops could disembark without chmbing over the forward gunwale. With the development of the LCVP, production of these craft was discontinued, but their hghter weight made them suitable for use with the APDs. The heavier LCVP would have made the old Destroyers top-heavy and unstable. The LCP(R) could carry no vehicle larger than a wheelbarrow.

Guinea, as did the 24th US Infantry Division, due to arrive before the middle of the year. MacArthur also had under command the victors of Guadalcanal, the elite troops of the 1st US Marine Division, but they needed rest, reinforcement and retraining. They would not be fit for battle again until the end of the year. If MacArthur wanted



Lae and Finschhafen in 1943, he wasn't going to take them using American infantry.

Australian troops had a much better recovery rate than did the Americans. Despite having done aU of the fighting on the Kokoda Trail and most of it at Gona and Sanananda, and despite having taken more than twice as many casualties as any US Division, the 7th Division AIF was ready for battle by mid-1943. The 18th Australian Infantry Brigade had sustained very heavy losses in winning the Americans'battle for them at Buna and would take time to recuperate, but one brigade of 6th Division was also available. Veterans of the Middle East, they had been part of the force which had fought and defeated the Japanese army at Milne Bay. Then there was the 9th Division, freshly arrived from the Middle East. Like most of the Americans, they were yet to see New Guinea, but that was where any resemblance ended. The 9th were veterans who had played a major role at the Siege of Tobruk. They stood fast as the vital right flank of Eighth Army in the defensive phase of the battle of Alamein. After the enemy had been halted, they were the spearhead as Montgomery's Eighth Army smashed Rommel's line and drove him back across North Africa.Just returned to Australia and given leave, the troops of the 9th would be given a brief period of jungle training in North Queensland to ready them for the New Guinea battles to come.2'*

The Australian Army had gained a wealth of experience and knowledge of jungle fighting during the previous year. Twenty-three infantry battalions had gained battle experience in New Guinea, fifteen from the AIF and eight from the militia, and the expertise gained was not wasted. A new Jungle Training establishment was opened in the mountainous rain forests at Canungra in Queensland and recruits were trained under frighteningly realistic conditions. The battaUons of the 6th, 7th and 9th Divisions, reinforced by Canungra graduates, were camped on the Atherton Tablelands in North Queensland, adjacent to more jungle-clad mountains, where training continued. The troops who would go to Lae and Salamua were a far cry from the indifferently trained eighteen-year-old conscripts who were the first to meet thejapanese assault at Kokoda.2^

The Japanese were not idle either While the Australians were


158 THE ODD COUPLE

reorganising, the Japanese garrisons at Lae, Salamua and Finschhafen aU received substantial reinforcement.

In AprU 1943 Command in New Guinea was exercised by Lt Gen Iven Mackay and his inteUigence staff estimated that thejapanese had some 11 000 men at Wewak, 6000 to 8000 at Madang, and 5000 to 6000 in the Lae—Salamua area. Kanga Force, reinforced to brigade strength and operating from bases in the Wau—Bulolo area, conducted aggressive patrols to deny the inland region to the Japanese.^"

As a bombardment force, the 5th Air Force was yet to find its feet, but in March 1943, after almost fifteen months of war, Americans under MacArthur's command finaUy struck a teUing blow. General Kenney had a large and growing force of B 25 MitcheU medium bombers. He ordered each MitcheU fitted with eight forward-firing .5 inch machine-guns. Armed with bombs that had delayed action fuses, they were sent out to attack Japanese shipping using a "skip bombing" technique. Each aircraft carried up to a tonne of ammunition for the machine-guns, later increased in number to sixteen, and they poured a torrent of fire onto the target during the low-level bombing run. Released just above the surface, the bomb ricocheted off before striking the target above the waterline.

From the second to the fifth of March 1943, Mitchell bombers of the 5th Air Force and Beaufighters of the RAAF used this technique to attack and destroy an eight-ship convoy carrying substantial reinforcements from Rabaul to the New Guinea port of Lae. The 51st Japanese Division lost almost 3000 men and most of its experienced officers.^'

In April, Maj Gen Savige moved the headquarters of his 3rd MiUtia Division to Bulolo to prepare for a campaign which would first seek to gain dominance of the highlands south of the objectives of Lae and Salamua. His main striking force would be the 17th Infantry Brigade, AIF, and a number of the commando companies. On the day that he took command at Bulolo, Kanga Force ceased to exist, but while it was possible for AustraUan forces in the mountains to the south to threaten the objectives, supply problems dictated that the capture of these coastal towns would have to involve a seaborne landing.

On 10 May, Generals Blamey and Herring attended a conference



with Admiral Barbey, at which Blamey revealed plans for the capture first of Lae and then of Finschhafen and Madang. With Savige's forces dominating the area to the south, an American force of brigade strength would land at Nassau Bay in the boats of the 2 Engineer Special Brigade and hold the area to serve as a base for further operations.^2 L^C, and Nadzab, 30 kilometres inland, would be the first objectives of the major operation. Besides providing a base for operations, Blamey hoped that the presence of a force at Nassau Bay would draw Japanese troops away from Lae.

The debutante 2nd ESB put elements of a battahon of the untried 162nd Regimental Combat Team ashore at Nassau Bay. Poor navigation saw much of the landing force fail to find the landing area. Included among the troops who thus missed the operation was the officer in command who arrived at his destination twenty-four hours later In a night landing 770 men and their equipment were disembarked, although in withdrawing from the shoreline a moderate surf caused the inexperienced boats crews to wreck most of their landing craft which broached to on the beach.

There was no enemy resistance, but some Australians detailed to guide the Americans described the subsequent evening's activities as "Guy Fawkes Night". Indiscriminate firing started soon after dark and, convinced that Japanese had infiltrated their positions, the iU-trained and frightened GIs spent a wild night shooting at anything that moved. Eighteen men died and a further twenty-seven were wounded and not an enemy within twenty kilometres of them.^^

For the time, however, most problems were overcome and the combined force of Australians and Americans exerted such pressure on Salamua that Blamey's hopes were fulfiUed and Japanese forces in strength were drawn away from Lae.

At a conference held in Port Moresby on 25 July, Maj Gen George Vasey received orders to prepare the 7th Division for an advance cross-country from Bulolo and down the Markham Valley to Nadzab whUe an amphibious operation landed Maj Gen Leslie Morshead's 9th Division AIF at a point west of the Buso River to drive eastward towards Lae.- ''

Naval resources, almost non-existent for the Nassau Bay venture, had improved slightly for the assault on Lae. The barely adequate


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LCVPs and LCMs of the 2nd ESB Regiment were overshadowed by new acquisitions. On 1 September 1943, at Milne Bay, six LSTs, eighteen LCIs and fourteen LCTs loaded 9th Division troops and their vehicles for the Lae Operation and at 1300 hrs the convoy sailed out of the bay. The debacle at Nassau Bay had convinced the planners that dayhght was preferable for such operations, and just after dawn on 4 September five destroyers which accompanied the landing force laid down a barrage of five-inch high-explosive sheUs. Shortly afterwards the 9th Division hit the beach. By midday there were over 7000 troops and more than 1500 tonnes of stores on dry land. The scale of the bombardment and the force landed was almost paltry when compared with that used in Halsey's operations, but sufficient unto the day nonetheless. No Japanese opposed their landing, and the AustraUans quickly deployed and moved off toward Lae.'^

The plan for the 7th Division to walk from the Wau—Bulolo area to Nadzab held no appeal for Gen Vasey. There was a disused airfield at Nadzab heavily overgrown with kunai grass, and adjacent to it was a vast acreage of flat land suitable for the development of additional runways. It was not in enemy hands, Australian patrols moved freely through the area and there was a company of Royal Australian Engineers already on the ground. AU that was needed was that an adequate force be provided to hold the Nadzab airstrip while the sappers burned off the kunai grass and carried out the necessary repairs to the surface so that troop-carrying aircraft could land. Vasey could see no good reason why his men could not go direct to Nadzab by air- *' MacArthur and his staffseized upon the idea with enthusiasm. The 503rd Parachute Regiment was newly arrived from the United States, trained and equipped for just such a task, and the American decision to use them to occupy Nadzab led to the creation of a spectacle that not even Steven Spielberg could match.

On 5 September, as the 9th Division advanced on Lae, 302 aircraft took off from airfields in the Moresby and Dobadura areas in the most spectacular operation of the war in the South West Pacific. Eighty-two Douglas DC3s carried the paratroopers of the 503rd. Another five carried four "short" 25-pounder field guns and their crews, AustraUan volunteers from the 2/4th Field Regiment AIF, all of whom were about to make their first parachute jump. The transport aircraft


162 THE ODD COUPLE

assembled north of the Owen Stanleys, a vast armada, and regardless of the fact that the objective was already in AustraUan hands. General Kenney was determined to do the job with style.

The nearest enemy were many kilometres away, but leading the attack on Nadzab were six squadrons of B 25s. Each plane carried sixty fragmentation bombs and having dropped these they would strafe the airstrip and any likely enemy positions with their multiple machine guns. Backing up the strafing aircraft were half a dozen A 20s which would fly low and shroud the drop zone in smoke to screen the landing paratroopers from enemy observation while they sorted themselves out and found their assigned positions.

Escorting and protecting all of these aircraft would be the close-cover fighters, foUowed in steps aU the way up to 20 000 feet by more squadrons of fighters acting as a combat air patrol. A Group of B 17s would follow to drop parachuted packages of essential heavy equipment to the troops on the ground. High above the transports flew a group of special B 17s. One of these carried the air commander, General George C. Kenney, another a selected group of journalists and photographers, and there was a third. General MacArthur had taken to the air to provide, he said, "such comfort as my presence might bring to our paratroopers who enter their first combat fraught with such hazard".-^^

Great melodrama, but not very relevant to the real situation. Australian clearing patrols had already reported the area free of enemy, and, across the river from the Nadzab strip, sappers of the 2/6th Field Company Royal Australian Engineers and a company of the 2/2 Pioneer Battalion had a grandstand view of the spectacular display as they waited the command to go to work on the strip and put it in working order By last light on 5 September the paratroops had established a perimeter, and at 0940 the next morning the first aircraft, a single-engined Piper Cub, landed. It carried the C O of an American engineer regiment. An hour later the first transports touched down, and by sundown more than fifty planeloads of troops had been delivered, mainly Australian and American engineers. Within a few days thejapanese were faced with the reality of an operational Allied air base almost within sight of Lae, a base which would quickly become the largest in New Guinea. On his return from Nadzab,



MacArthur has been described as being delighted when General Kenney convened a brief ceremony in which he awarded MacArthur the Air Medal.- *

The Japanese fought a delaying action, but they evacuated such positions as they stiU held in the vicinity of Lae. At 1130 on 16 September, patrols from the 7th Division entered the abandoned town and arrived on the seashore, their only opposition an air attack by American planes and artiUery fire from guns supporting troops of the 9th Division approaching from the other direction. Salamua fell to Savige's men shortly afterwards. In capturing Lae, 7th Division had just 38 men kiUed and 104 wounded. The 9th Division lost 77 men kiUed and another 73 were missing, while 397 men were wounded. Between them the two divisions accounted for more than 2000 Japanese, while Savige's force had kiUed as many again. More than 6000 Japanese escaped from the area into the Finisterre Ranges to rejoin forces on the North Coast in the vicinity of Finschhafen. It now became a matter of some urgency to attack and seize this next objective before the enemy commander had time to organise and deploy these additional troops.^'

The date for the 9th Division's second amphibious operation was quickly set for 22 September, only five days after the fall of Lae. Barbey's four APDs, fifteen LCIs and three LSTs, accompanied by eight LCMs and fifteen LCVPs landed the AIFs 20th Infantry Brigade on Scarlet Beach, seven kilometres west of Finschhafen.

Reversion to a pre-dawn assault resulted in navigation problems. The barge carrying the RJ\.N beach party grounded on the beach adjacent to an enemy position and there were immediate casualties from machine-gun fire. The officer in charge, Lt Cdr Jack Band, BJ^NR(S), was the first man ashore at Finschhafen, and the first man kiUed. Once ashore, the brigade met strong resistance for a time, but the defenders were outgunned and outfought by the veteran Diggers. By 2 October, 9th Division had occupied Finschhafen. The two-week campaign cost the AustraUans 73 men kiUed and another 265 wounded. Fifty members of the American 2nd ESB became casualties, eight of them being kiUed.

In a little more than three months the Australians had given MacArthur total victory in New Guinea. The 9th Division fought


164 THE ODD COUPLE

on after Finschhafen. They pursued the Japanese into the Finisterre mountains and routed the remnants of the Lae and Finschhafen garrisons. It was a difficult campaign fought over terrain that was almost impossible. It cost the Division more than a thousand casualties, including 283 dead, but when it was over, more than 3000 Japanese bodies had been counted and it was estimated that they had lost more than 7000 casualties. The 9th had destroyed a whole Japanese division, and cleared the way for the 3rd AustraUan Division to take Madang the foUowing year''° It was a magnificent AustraUan victory, but it was left to the Americans to harvest the fruits.

The war was about to change. American conscription had produced new divisions for MacArthur, America's industrial might had provided him with much of the material for which he had pleaded, and Finschhafen provided him with the base he needed for the campaign which would see the US Navy forced to eat humble pie. In January 1944 the men of the 9th Division made their way back to Finschhafen and were evacuated to Australia for leave, for rest and to be reinforced and trained for their next campaign. They embarked in large troop transports at a wharf that had not existed just three months before. An Australian unit war diary described the scene:

... everyone was amazed at the development that had taken place since its capture ... Where there had been foot-tracks, or at the best. Jeep tracks, there were now wide coral roads, Langemack Bay had been bridged, there were w^harves and Liberty ships, an airstrip and seemingly endless dumps of all types of equipment. The base had been needed for future operations in the SWPA and the Yanks who moved in soon after its capture had developed it at a great rate.'"

Finschhafen placed the General's feet firmly on the road to Manila. "I SHALL RETURN", he had said, and so he would. Admiral King was yet to agree: So, indeed, were the rest of the Chiefs of Staff, but it would happen and the Austrahans had made it possible. In doing so, they fought what was by far the most arduous campaign of the war on the Kokoda Trail, overcame the dogged and suicidal defence of the Japanese garrisons at Gona and Sanananda, provided the force that enabled the Americans to finally claim victory at Buna and drove thejapanese out of the Markham and Ramu valleys. More than 4000



Australians lost their lives in the campaign which gave the Hero of the Pacific, his Air Force and his Navy control of the Bismarck Sea.

Notes

1. David Horner, Blamey, AUen and Unwin, Sydney, 1998, p. 361. 2. Herman Gill, I M N 7939-/^45, AWM, 1951, p 130. Later in the war,

40 000-ton troop carriers pUed the waters of Huon Gulf without difficulty (author's observation).

3. Samuel E. Morrison, Two Ocean War, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1963,p 169.

4. S. E. Morison, History of the US Naval Op5, Vol. V, Little Brown & Co., NY, 1958, p 382.

At the outset of the campaigns in the Solomons and in New Guinea, the US and Australian navies had available in the area the following warships:

4 Batdeships 5 Aircraft Carriers 16 Heavy Cruisers 7 Light Cruisers 4 AA Cruisers 100 plus Destroyers

5. Horner, p. 362. 6. ibid., p. 362. 7. Letter from Brig E C. Serong to author dated 3 January 1999. 8. Geoffrey Perrett, Old Soldiers Never Die, Andre Deutsch,London, 1996,

p. 316. He quotes Samuel MUner, Victory in Pi pwa, Washington DC, 1957, p 135.

9. Robert E. Eichelberger, jM«§/e Road to Tokyo, Viking, NY, 1950, p. 40. Verbatim evidence of Maj V C. Thomas MC, G2 on Landops HQ. Conversation with author 1998.

10. D. Clayton James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, Houghton Miffhn, NY, 1975,p 282.

11. ibid., p. 244. Eichelberger, passim. 12. Lex McAulay, To the Bitter End, Random House, Sydney, 1992, p. 303.

McCarthy, p. 375 et seq.

13. ibid., pp 369,382-83, 462.

14. Morison, p. 214.

15. Eichelberger, p. 42.

16. James, p 280.


166 THE ODD COUPLE

17. ibid., pp. 273-74. Eichelberger, p. 58. McCarthy p. 533 et seq. 18. Brig. E C. Serong, conversation •with author, 18 January 1999. 19. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, footnote p. 165.

James, Years of Mac Arthur,Vol. II, p. 275 et seq. 20. ibid., p. 855. Robert Lleckie, Strong Men Armed. Tlie United States Marines

Against Japan, US MC Historical Section, NY, 1962, p. 80.

21. Morison, p 264. 22. David Dexter, The New Guinea Offensives, AWM, 1961, p. 9. 23. Morison, p. 286 et seq. 24. GUI, p 277. 25. ibid., p 291. 26. ibid., p 243. 27. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U,p.325. 28. Dexter, p. 264 et seq. 29. ibid., p. 264 et seq. 30. ibid., p. 18 et seq. 31. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U,pp.292-303. 32. ibid., p 166. 33. ibid., p 98. 34. David Horner, General Vasey's War, Melbourne University Press, Mel

bourne, 1992, p 257. 35. Dexter, p. 326 et seq. 36. Horner, p. 263 et seq. 37. Courtney Whitney, MacArthur His Rendezvous with History, Alfred A.

Knopf,NY, 1965, p 104. 38. Perrett, p. 353. 39. Dexter, p. 338 et seq. James, Vol. II, p. 327. 40. ibid., p. 444 et seq. 41. ibid., p 737.


CHAPTER 11

WITH UNDERWHELMING FORCE

Hitler's fate was sealed, MussoUni's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder. AU the rest was merely the proper apphcation of overwhelming force.

Winston ChurchUl, Tlie Second World War 1948-1954

AT the end of 1943 further landings were made on the northern tip of New Britain at Cape Gloucester and at Arawe by 1 US

Marine Division and the 32nd US Infantry, but the landings were superfluous and the airfields that were constructed at Cape Gloucester were never of any operational use. With Finschhafen in American hands, the creation of new airfields there and the development of Langemack Bay as a major port, the power of the Japanese in the South West Pacific Area was broken. Rabaul had ceased to function as a naval base and its airfields were empty of Japanese aircraft. The garrison there, the best equipped Japanese fighting force in existence, was isolated from any communication with its homeland other than by submarine or by wireless, and 100 000 Japanese troops and naval personnel would spend the remainder of the war as market gardeners, cultivating the Rabaul hiUsides to grow rice and vegetables to feed themselves.'

But MacArthur had other concerns than the Japanese. The US Navy planned a series of offensives across the central Pacific Ocean through the Mandated Japanese Islands to Formosa and thence to


168 THE ODD COUPLE

Japan. The Navy believed that theirs was the only road to Tokyo, one which they intended to foUow using air cover flying from their swiftly growing fleet of carriers. Not only did MacArthur's promise to the Filipinos, "I ShaU Return", mean little to Admirals King and Nimitz, they considered an invasion of the Philippines to be both a waste of precious resources and a positive hindrance to an early end to the war

MacArthur saw the situation differently. He looked westward from Finschhafen and saw the means to extend his land-based bomber line first to bases near New Guinea's western extremity and thence to the Netherlands East Indies, to seize islands and construct airfields from which General Kenney's land-based planes could provide cover for the conquest first of the southern PhiUppines and then of Luzon. After riding triumphant into Manila, and orUy then, he would use this most northerly of the PhiUppine Islands as the main base for the series of amphibious operations which would see him lead the final assault on thejapanese home islands. But if the Joint Chiefs of Staff favoured the Navy's plan, MacArthur would remain in AustraUa; the Lion of Luzon would be caged, and his SWPA command reduced to garrison status.'

In the meantime, an invasion of the Admiralty Islands came under discussion. The Admiralties comprise two main islands, Manus and Los Negros, and a large coral atoU. Situated just south of the equator, and north of New Guinea, the atoU creates in Seeadler Harbour one of the finest landlocked anchorages in the world. More than 25 kilometres long and 7 kilometres wide, the lagoon is more than large enough to contain aU of the ships of the US Fleet. The United States Navy wanted it and planned to have it. On America's West Coast, shipyards worked twenty-four hours a day to build two giant floating docks each capable of lifting the largest ship in the fleet. They would come complete with pumps, generators, cranes, workshops and living quarters and in the fullness of time they would be towed across the Pacific Ocean to Seeadler Harbour Anchored there, they would form the centrepiece of the largest naval base west of Pearl Harbor The Navy had one small problem. The boundary between Nimitz's Central Pacific Area and MacArthur's SWPA was drawn along the equator Manus Island lay in MacArthur territory.


WITH UNDERWHELMING FORCE 169

The overaU plan for 1944 caUed for the US Navy to invade the MarshaU Islands in February. Their fast carrier forces would then strike thejapanese naval base at Truk and neutralise it before moving with other surface forces to the Bismarck Sea in time to support a landing in the Admiralties on 1 April. These landings were to be followed by a further step westward on the New Guinea coast with MacArthur's troops landing at Wewak and Hansa Bay on 22 April.

The Navy's operations were carried out according to schedule. Nimitz's Marines made the first landings in the MarshaUs on 1 February and overran the islands in a week. The carrier strikes on Truk left more than 200 000 tonnes of Japanese shipping at the bottom of the ocean and destroyed most of the aircraft stationed there, ending the island's usefulness as a Japanese base for the remainder of the war.^ Success in the Admiralties was assured, but although MacArthur's staff was involved in the planning, and the landings were to involve MacArthur's Seventh Fleet and one of his infantry divisions, no part of the operation was to his liking. Halsey's Third Fleet boasted a vast array of battleships, carriers and cruisers and most of its smaller task forces were larger than MacArthur's whole Seventh Fleet. The participation of the Seventh Fleet and SWPA forces was a token gesture only and his part in the landing operation would be of no great significance. Marines of Halsey's command would storm the beaches whUe MacArthur's men sustained a similar role to that of General Funston and his troops at Vera Cruz: a garrison force to mop up after the Navy. In the news media, the US Navy would have aU of the cream while the Hero of the Pacific would have to settle for a scanty ration of skim milk.'* This was not the MacArthur way and it was not simply his ego that would suffer He knew, too, that amid the public acclaim foUowing the Navy triumph in the MarshaUs, augmented by that resulting from a success at the Admiralties, his arguments against the adoption of the Navy's chosen Road to Tokyo would be unheard. He could forget about THE RETURN.

In 1942 the blaze of pubUcity generated by MacArthur's communiques from Corregidor gave the world the Lion of Luzon, but two years later his fame had been overtaken. Guadalcanal had poUshed the Marines image to one of unsurpassed briUiance, and the US Navy's spectacular sweep through the Central Pacific had put them


170 THE ODD COUPLE

in the spotlight. MacArthur's was no longer a solo act. He was off the front pages of the US newspapers. If he was to win the argument for his return to the Philippines, what the General needed was a spectacular coup and one achieved at the Navy's expense would be the ideal. In the circumstances, he needed a miracle. Thanks to a couple of Sappers, members of a Field Company of Royal AustraUan Engineers working with their mine detectors west of Finschhafen, he was to have one.

FoUowing the capture of Finschhafen in 1943, the AustraUans moved further west and occupied the main Japanese administration area at Sio.^ Thejapanese had left with such haste that no attempt had been made to destroy any of their dumps of stores, but care was needed in sorting and handling the captured material. There could have been booby traps and land mines. On 19 January 1944 a party of 9th Division engineers using a mine detector found a metal box which had been dumped into a water-fiUed pit by the retreating Japanese. The box contained Japanese code books from which the covers had been removed. This was standard practice w^hen there was a need to dispose of high-security code books, the covers being retained as evidence that their contents had been destroyed. But in this case the Japanese high command was misinformed. The code books at Sio were intact and with them were the currently used cypher keys. This casual discovery was the greatest single inteUigence coup of the Pacific War. Taken to Brisbane, the find was identified as the Japanese Army's "States Codes", used to encrypt such sensitive material as daily ration states, reports of casualties, transfers, arrival of reinforcements and the evacuation of casualties. For the remainder of the war Allied inteUigence would use them to complete a perfect picture of the entire Japanese Order of Battle and to constantly update it. An operation so secret as to remain unknown for almost half a century was created to deal with the Sio codes. That was the long-term benefit of the Diggers' cUscovery. In the short term it was the miracle that MacArthur so desperately needed. So sensitive was the captured material that none of it, nor any message concerning its discovery, its content or its importance, could be sent by radio. The information could only be delivered to Washington by "safe hand" courier. InteUigence procedures then had to be foUowed which



would ensure that its significance would not be known to the Joint Chiefs of Staff before they saw the relevant inteUigence summary, a document that would require some time to produce. Those few weeks between the discovery of the codes and the delivery of the summary to the Joint Chiefs of Staff were MacArthur's window of opportunity.

By mid February 1944, and three weeks before anyone outside his headquarters knew of the existence of the Sio codes, MacArthur possessed a tabulated list of the Japanese army units present in the Admiralty Islands and the numbers of personnel contained in each.

Unit Combat Base 5 Elements 17th Div 1000

1 St Bn 1st Regt 600

Elements 38 Div 300

Oita Sea Detachment 300

Anti-Aircraft Battery 200

51st Transport Unit

51st Div Hospital

MisceUaneous (estimated)

Ibtai 2200 200 1650 4050^

It was obvious that the operation planned for 1 April would be massive overkill. Obvious, too, that MacArthur had the resources within his command to go it alone.

Manus Island is mountainous and by far the largest in the Admiralties group. Los Negros is a long, narrow, low-lying island which Hes east of Manus and is separated from it only by a narrow passage at its western end, easily crossed. The garrison was completely cut off from support by both navy and air force. With a limited force of shorebound troops, with more than 200 kilometres of coastline to guard, and faced with a lodgement anywhere by Allied forces, the Japanese commander would be in a similar tactical situation to that from which Maj Gen Clowes was forced to fight at Milne Bay. He could commit only a part of his force to try to contain any immediate threat. No single position could be strongly held and a brigade group would have no difficulty in forcing a landing anywhere it chose. A fuU division would overrun the Islands in a few days and suffer negligible casualties in doing so.

nee

800 50

800

Total

1000

600

300

300

200 800

50 800


172 THE ODD COUPLE

MacArthur had the 1st Cavalry Division available at Oro Bay, near Buna, and another division of infantry at Finschhafen, both less than thirty-six hours by fast ship from his objective. "Uncle Dan" Barbey's 7th Amphibious Fleet had ample seaUft to land a fuU brigade on D-Day and reinforce it to divisional level if necessary by D + 3. In addition to the four APDs which had landed 9th Division troops at Finschhafen, he had received substantial reinforcement of LSTs, LCTs and other beaching craft, and the R A N had made a major contribution. Three former Armed Merchant Cruisers, HMA Ships Manoora, Kanimbla and Westralia, had been refitted as Landing Ships Infantry and between them they were capable of transporting and landing a reinforced brigade over any required distance. Westralia had recently taken part in operations at Cape Gloucester and had sailed for Sydney on 15 February carrying a party of American naval personnel on recreational leave. She was not due to return to Milne Bay untU 2 March,'' but in February 1944 Manoora and Kanimbla were exercising with troops off the North Queensland coast near Cairns.^ Both Kanimbla and Manoora had comfortably accommodated weU over a thousand troops for periods as long as three weeks; they had fed them, cared for them, even entertained them with movies and landed them fighting fit at their destination. For the brief overnight passage, Oro Bay to the Admiralties, each of them could carry double this number in addition to vehicles and field guns, even 30 tonne AFVs and other heavy equipment. Using the twenty-five landing craft v^th which each of them was equipped they could load without the need for wharfage and land both troops and equipment on the beach. An entry in HMAS Manoora's March 1944 letter of proceedings describes an operation similar to that needed at Los Negros.

0945, came to starboard anchor ... Away aU boats ... Commenced disembarking troops and cargo on to beach ... aU troops landed 1330 ... aU equipment landed ... 1530 ... Total of 1107 troops landed ... 564 tons of equipment landed ... AU boats hoisted ... weighed and proceeded 1620.

The crews who manned the ships' landing barges were among the best trained in the Pacific and the men of 1 Cavalry Division were famiUar with the ships; they had trained in them at Port Stephens



during the previous year Both ships were equipped with fuUy staffed hospital facilities to handle casualties. They were fast motor vessels capable of seventeen knots, and from Cairns they could be anchored in Oro Bay within forty-eight hours of receiving orders. Using them and, if needed, the APDs, MacArthur could land a full Regimental Combat Team on Manus Island on D-Day, complete with its organic artiUery and some Tank support if needed.

Cruisers would be needed and MacArthur had four of them. The eight-inch guns of Australia and Shropshire, the two Australian heavy cruisers, would be able to silence the fortified gun positions which guarded the entrance to Seeadler Harbour He also had the American light cruisers Boise and Phoenix. This provided him with a further thirty six-inch guns for the preliminary bombardment. He had more than enough of everything to do the job properly.

Provided with the new information about Manus, the Joint Chiefs of Staff might have moved their timetable forward, might have given MacArthur a larger role in the operation. Perhaps they would have aUowed him to mount the operation alone, but they weren't to have the opportunity. He determined on a bold and risky stroke, one so daring that it would place him once more in the world spotlight. He would bypass the Navy and seize the Admiralties using the resources of his own command. Just in case the Joint Chiefs did not approve of his venture, he wouldn't teU them about it until it was all over But there were problems.

There was a condition attached to the directive under which MacArthur operated which prevented him from ordering Australian ships to sea wdthout Australian approval of the project in which they were to be engaged, and at that point in its development the RJVN was reaUy a branch office of the Royal Navy. The Australian cruiser squadron was commanded by Rear Admiral Crutchley RN, and at higher level, the First Naval Member of Australia's Navy Board was Vice-Admiral Sir Guy Royle, another Royal Navy man. It was impossible for MacArthur to use Manoora, Kanimbla and the heavy cruisers or any other Australian vessel without both of these Admirals knowing their destination and something of the operation in which they were engaged.^ The Royal Navy also liked to know where to find their admirals at any given time, and both Crutchley and Royle


Seeadler

Harbour \ '•

PERIMETER > ^ 2 - 4 MAR.

'i::-:nyy'.':'^'\':','-]ci-^ i L E s.V 2 Id

Map 5 "Reconnaissance in Force", 29 February 1944



had direct lines of communication to London, and thus to Washington, independent of the authority of GHQ.

On 24 February Admiral Barbey received an urgent message from General MacArthur ordering him to prepare for a landing on Los Negros, D-Day to be no later than February 29."* The orders referred to the operation as a "Reconnaissance in Force". In Australian army terms, this describes a fighting patrol, an armed probe of the enemy's defences to test their strength. This was the kind of operation that a commander at any level might mount without reference to higher authority. Further, because he didn't trust senior naval officers not to gossip, the operation would be mounted with such speed that it would be over before scuttlebutt could spread word of his intention to the adjacent South Pacific Command of Admiral Halsey.

With no Australian landing ships available, the capacity of Mac-Arthur's sealift was drastically reduced. The only fast transports that Barbey could use were the APDs, and only three of these were available. Additional troops would have to be carried by the escorting destroyers. Since these smaU vessels had no facilities for passengers, troops would have to bunk down on the upper decks. There would be only twelve barges available to land a thousand men. The force was going to be very small indeed. Including some engineering and other personnel, it would number just over a thousand men and the fighting component, a squadron of dismounted cavalry some eight hundred strong, was stripped to the bone. The landing barges carried by the APDs were LCPs (R) which had a ramp that was only sufficiently wide to pass infantrymen in single file. Supplies and ammunition would have to be manhandled ashore. There would be no motor vehicles of any kind landed; The only transport available to carry material forward was a few hastily constructed two-wheeled push carts. For members of such a smaU force, the odds against being kiUed or wounded shortened dramatically." But there would be reinforcements. Fast destroyers would return late on D + 2 with additional infantry, and even as the little task force was loading at Oro Bay, another convoy was making up at Finschhafen. It carried a further 1500 infantry, an artillery battery and some tanks, a naval construction battalion of 1200 seabees and 2500 tonnes of stores and equipment in six LSTs. But the fast APDs would put their troops ashore on


176 THE ODD COUPLE

D-Day, 29 February. With no artiUery support, no proper faciUties to treat the wounded and inadequate rations, this tiny force would be on its own for more than forty-eight hours before reinforcement of any kind arrived, and the slow LSTs carrying the supporting arms could not arrive until D + 3. As one experienced amphibious warfare specialist commented, "It was a heU of a way to run a war."'^

Admiral Barbey had the troops loaded and ready to sail two days inside the deadline and late in the afternoon of 27 February, just as the last of the troops were being distributed to the escort destroyers, the cruisers Phoenix and Boise arrived at Oro Bay escorted by four destroyers. General MacArthur and his naval commander. Admiral Kinkaid, were aboard Phoenix. Destiny's Child was off to the war at last.'3

Lacking the firepower to force the entrance to Seeadler Harbour, MacArthur landed his troops at Hyane Bay, an inlet adjacent to the Momote airstrip on Los Negros' south-eastern shore. It was a tiny bay studded with coral reefs which restricted the entrance to a passage less than 50 metres wide. There was a total of thirteen destroyers available to provide a preliminary bombardment, but the landing force was in trouble early. The only possible landing site was a smaU beach at the southern extremity of Hyane Bay and coral reefs required that the course to the beach ran close in to the eastern headland. A suicide party of Japanese manned heavy machine-guns and a 20 mm cannon on the headland, well dug in and camouflaged. AU twelve landing barges were used in the first wave; the enemy gunners lay low and aUowed them to land their troops. They then attacked the boats as they withdrew from the beach. With the destroyers unable to fire because of their own troops ashore, the gunners had aU twelve landing barges at their mercy when, miraculously, a violent storm broke and the LCPs escaped under cover of torrential rain which feU for more than four hours. By the time the rain eased to a drizzle, infantrymen had made their way around the headlands and kiUed the gun crews.

MacArthur came ashore at 1400 hrs to inspect his conquest. Only five Japanese had stayed behind to contest the issue and only one of those was found in the area where MacArthur landed. He was dead hours before the General came ashore but attained a degree of



immortaUty when his body was photographed being inspected by the new Master of Manus.'^

In his autobiography. Reminiscences, MacArthur described the landing on 29 February:

I was relying almost entirely on surprise for success and the immediate decision required I accompany the force aboard Admiral Kinkaid's flagship, USS Phoenix ... The landing met Utde opposition ... a reconnaissance of the surrounding terrain ... convinced me it could be held ... I told Brigadier General Chase ... "Hold what you have taken, no matter what the odds. You have your teeth into him now, don't let go."''

The General's was an astonishing statement but typicaUy Mac-Arthurian and much of it was word for word with a communique that had been prepared by his headquarters before he left Brisbane three days before the landing."*

A select band of war correspondents accompanied him on the operation and the wireless facilities aboard USS Phoenix were made available to them to file their stories. By a strange coincidence he gave his order for the force to stay at 1500, midnight in New York and just in time to make the home delivery edition of the New York morning papers.'''

By. afternoon, the detachment of 5th Cavalry were preparing defensive positions on the perimeter and there was no resistance. But what inevitably followed these early successes was a Japanese counterattack as soon as conditions became more favourable. The 882 front-Une troops who landed on the little beach at Hyane Bay were untried and green, most of them conscripts. The only artiUery organic to the landing force were two "man pack" 75 mm howitzers which had been carried ashore in pieces and assembled on the beach. There was a Umited supply of ammunition for these. MacArthur's judgment that the place could be held, made on the spot during the landing, had absolutely no sustainable basis and in fact no such decision was made. No fighting patrol, not even one 800 strong, is a brigadier general's command and this was no fighting patrol. It was always intended that Brig Gen Chase and his men would remain, since the resources needed for an evacuation did not exist. Proof of Mac-Arthur's intention, if proof were needed, lay in the party of Australians


178 THE ODD COUPLE

which accompanied the force. These were officers and other ranks of the AustraUan New Guinea Administration Unit (ANGAU) and the Papuan Constabulary who went along to take charge of civil administration of the territory.'^ Describing the operation. Admiral Barbey deplored the fact that it was considered necessary to find room for 1026 troops on three APDs and as deck passengers on the destroyers. He made no mention of the availabiUty of the Australian ships when he wrote:

It was a pretty meagre force to go out on such an important mission. Only the lightest equipment — no vehicles, or even kitchen gear was carried and the men (were) restricted to the bare essentials.'^

The first substantial reinforcement could not arrive for more than forty-eight hours and MacArthur was aware that the tiny landing force faced its greatest danger during that period.

Following his inspection of the ground, and his dramatic decision, MacArthur stood on the beach while Brigadier General Chase pinned a medal on his chest. He then boarded Phoenix and at 1730 on D-Day she sailed for Oro Bay, in company with Boise and eleven of the destroyers that had accompanied the landing force, leaving the cavalrymen to hold the ground they had taken with just two destroyers to provide fire support. Next morning the General flew back to Brisbane to his comfortable suite in Lennon's Hotel, far from harm's way, there to receive the plaudits of his staff. Brigadier General Chase and his squadron of 5th Cavalry were there to stay, alive or dead, no matter how hot it got.^"

One of MacArthur's staff wrote of his visit ashore: "[General MacArthur] considered that it was an important boost to morale for the troops on Los Negros."^'

It is likely that the morale of the troops would have had a considerably greater boost had he left a cruiser behind, or even one or two more destroyers. On the night of D-Day General Chase's smaU force was almost overrun by a battalion-strength attack. The two destroyers provided defensive fire tasks and used star sheU to help the infantry to locate their attackers. The green troops fought valiantly, they took heavy casualties and they managed to hang on, but it was naval gunnery that saved the day. General Chase said of the destroyers



and their gunners: "They didn't just support us, they saved our

necks."^^

Admiral Fechteler was to write of the operation: "ActuaUy, we're

damn lucky we didn't get run off the island."^^

By the night of 2 March, D + 2, thejapanese had heavily reinforced

Los Negros and they launched a powerful and sustained attack. The

Japanese made incursions into the American perimeter, at one point

almost to the headquarters of General Chase.^'^ With the most basic

of medical faciUties, overworked surgeons used an abandoned Japanese

sleeping hut as an operating theatre and carried out surgery on a table

made out of coconut palm trunks, but by that time fast destroyers had

ferried in reinforcements and the lancUng force had more than doubled

in size. The force held on, and when the slow convoy from Finschhafen

arrived on the morning of 3 March bringing artiUery and tanks the

worst of it was over. It was mid-March before aU organised enemy

resistance ceased on Los Negros, and 3 AprU before the Admiralty

Islands were totaUy secured and unrestricted work on their develop

ment as a naval base could commence.^^ Had the landing been carried

out on 1 AprU, in conformity with the original program, the overaU

strategic result would not have differed.

Never one to settle for less than maximum dramatic effect, Mac-

Arthur exceeded himself at Los Negros. The US Navy and the Joint

Chiefs of Staff received news of the operation at the same time as the

average American citizen, when they read the morning paper. The

fiction of the "Reconnaissance in Force" answered aU questions and

sUenced aU criticisms. MacArthur's titular superiors in Washington

had no choice but to praise him even if it was through gritted teeth.

General George Marshall sent a signal: "Please accept my admira

tion for the way in which the entire affair was handled."

To journalists, his arch-rival. Admiral King, described the operation

as a "briUiant manoeuvre",^^ while even Winston ChurchiU sent a

message:

I send you my warm congratulations on the speed with which you turned to good account your first entry into the Admiralty Islands. I expect that this wUl help you to get ahead quicker with what you have planned. ^


180 THE ODD COUPLE

But amid aU of the congratulations and praise, nothing was said

about the Butcher's BiU. W h e n MacArthur left the beach at Hyane

Harbour, not a single soldier had faUen. Before the operation was

completed, 337 American soldiers and sailors had died on Los Negros

and 1189 had been wounded. This to disperse a garrison that

contained fewer than two thousand infantrymen. The 9th Australian

Division had lost just nineteen more "kiUed in action", and 109 more

wounded in and around Finschhafen only a few months earUer In

doing so they kiUed more than 8000 of the enemy and totaUy

destroyed a fresh, reinforced Japanese infantry division.

In the first three days of the Los Negros operation, more than sixty

per cent of the original landing force became casualties. Most of those

w h o died or were wounded feU during those first three nights when

the bitter Japanese counter-attacks came close to dislodging the

cavalrymen. If a more careful examination of the operation is made,

it is difficult to justify the death of more than three hundred soldiers

in an assault that would have resulted in insignificant loss of life had

it been carried out using the overwhelming force avaUable.

But there was no examination, careful or otherwise. MacArthur

was beyond criticism as he soaked up praise from aU sides, but Admiral

Barbey knew the risk that had been involved. He never went so far

as to criticise MacArthur, but he went close when he wrote:

... for a time it looked like we were headed for disaster. The landing as originaUy scheduled for April 1, with overwhelming force, would have overrun the island in a few days with a minimum of casualties. A disaster at Los Negros would have set back the Pacific Campaign by several months at least. Looking back, I often wonder if General MacArthur ever questioned his judgement in this matter. **

In almost fifty years as a soldier, MacArthur was never known to

question his judgment about anything, but according to Admiral

Barbey he was not the only one to question the General's judgment.

None of the commanders in the forward area Uked any part of this "quickie" assault on the Admiralties. General Swift (1 Cav Div Commander) wanted a minimum of two thousand two hundred troops in the initial assault. I didn't like the idea of even a small amphibious landing — regardless of what it was caUed — relying solely on a few destroyers



and APDs. We could not use the slower LSTs, LCIs and LCTs because they simply could not get there in time. ^

In time for what? In terms of any contribution it made towards the defeat of Japan,

337 men died at Los Negros in a totaUy pointless exercise. A more leisurely offensive using overwhelming force would have achieved the same result. But pointless though it may have been as regards the war against Japan, in the conflict MacArthur versus the US Navy it was a clear-cut victory to MacArthur, easily his most decisive of either war

His "hurry up" operation was designed for maximum impact on the American public and therefore on the President of the United States. It provided the fresh impetus his public persona needed and he maintained the momentum. Through his possession of the "Sio Codes", he had known to the man the strength of the Japanese defence before mounting his "Reconnaissance in Force". From the same source he also knew that, while Wewak and Hansa Bay were heavily defended, the major Japanese base at HoUandia was unguarded. On 15 March he contacted the Joint Chiefs of Staff and proposed that the scheduled landing at Hansa Bay be canceUed. At the same time he submitted complete plans for the ships and troops aUotted for that venture to be used to land at HoUandia instead, placing him 500 kilometres nearer to the Philippines than would otherwise have been the case.

There was no suggestion that his next operation might be undermanned or under-resourced. There were no economies proposed for HoUandia. During this operation, 217 ships ofaU types were available to Seventh Amphibious Force to transport, protect and put ashore a total of 79 800 Army and Air Force personnel. On D-Day, 22 AprU, 35 800 combat soldiers went ashore at HoUandia, at the adjacent Tanah Mera Bay, and at Aitape, 200 kilometres to the east. All of this to capture a position known to be held by some 12 000 men, mostly non-combatants. Overwhelming force overran HoUandia in two days at a cost of 159 lives, fewer than half the number lost in subduing a force many times smaUer at Los Negros. Only two Americans feU at Aitape and Tanah Merah Bay was undefended.-^"


182 THE ODD COUPLE

Meanwhile, there was the question of a base at Manus Island to settle. MacArthur's Los Negros venture had nothing to do with winning the war, and everything to do with his own ego and ambition, and when Admiral King recommended to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that Manus Island, Seeadler Harbour and the yet-to-be-built naval base be placed under command of the Navy, MacArthur's reaction was predictable. The Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Nimitz, would exercise control through his South Pacific Area commander. Admiral Halsey.

Ever paranoid, and as territorial as a sealion in the mating season, MacArthur interpreted this as the first step toward Nimitz being granted overall command of all American forces, including his own. And King and Nimitz had an ally. In 1944 the US Air Force took delivery of a new long-range heavy bomber, the B 29, and it was anxious to acquire bases from which it could attack the Japanese home islands. The Air Force chiefs favoured the Marianas. In the Central Pacific it was a US Navy objective. With the Air Force Chief of Staff siding with Admiral King at Joint Chiefs meetings, rumours were rife that canceUation of MacArthur's advance toward the Philippines would foUow. MacArthur would fight to the death to avoid such an outcome.

Prior to his capture of Manus, and to the concern of the Admirals, MacArthur had insisted that any base established there would be under his control through the new commander of his Seventh Fleet, Vice Admiral Kinkaid. By definition, any admiral appointed to serve MacArthur was barely a bit player in the US Navy's scheme of things, and to Admiral King the thought of such a nonentity in control of any aspect of the operations of the gigantic Third Fleet was simply too bizarre to contemplate. But MacArthur was serious and even as he was preparing to sail for Los Negros, on 27 February, he was protesting to General Marshall. A signal he sent from Oro Bay that day stated that the SWPA commander's honour and leadership capability were being questioned. There is no record that the signal contained any reference to the reason for his presence at Oro Bay or of his intentions toward the Admiralties.•'*'

General MarshaU did not discourage him. He wrote: "You should control base facilities in your area unless you yourself see fit to turn



over control of them . . ." However, he added that "there should be a clear understanding that the (Pacific) fleet wiU have unrestricted use of them".-^^

With his own troops in occupation of Manus, MacArthur's attitude hardened, but the Navy's plans for the great base had been made without reference to MacArthur They were far too weU advanced to be interfered with and Nimitz didn't have time to argue. He agreed to the arrangement provided that his men be permitted to construct the base and that his ships had unrestricted access to it. -*

Within a short time Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet Headquarters was established there and the Manus base was firmly under the control of Nimitz and the Navy. But by that time MacArthur could not have cared less. He had made his point. In the eyes of his myriad admirers, the Lion of Luzon was undisputed Master of Manus and the world was his oyster At HoUandia, for the first time, MacArthur's forces had the support of Admiral Halsey's fleet carriers and the South Pacific command provided him with a substantial fleet of LSTs, LCIs and other landing and beaching ships and craft. General Douglas Mac-Arthur was on his way back to the Philippines, and from that time forward the US Navy had little choice but to provide him with everything he asked for. '*

Landings by MacArthur forces at Saidor, Sarmi, Wakde Island, Biak, Noemfoor and Moratai would foUow in quick succession, and in October, flanked by his faithful Bataan Gang, he would stride ashore at Leyte Gulf and announce to the world, "1 have returned".^^ Whether they Uked it or not. King, Nimitz and Halsey would be the supporting cast. MacArthur had come into his own. He would be the star in the forthcoming drama which would end with him established in Tokyo as absolute ruler of his own empire.

Notes

1. SamuelE.Morison, Two Ocean War,Litt[e Brown and Co.,Boston, 1963, p. 292. Herman GUI, RAN 1942-1945, AWM, 1951. Dexter, New Guinea Offensive, AWM, 1961, pp. 792-93.

2. D.Clayton James, Tlie Years ofMacArthur,Vol.ll,HoughtonMiShn,NY, 1975,pp330-31,p.388 etseq.



184 THE ODD COUPLE

4. James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, p. 379 et seq. Admiral D. Barbey MacArthur's Amphibious Navy, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, p. 146 et seq.

5. Barbara Winter, The Intrique Master, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 1994, p. 217. She quotes RG457; SRH-275;OP2RG: FUe of Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne, 28 June 1943, 23 September 1945. See Drea, MacArthur's Ultra: Code Breaking in the War against Japan, University Press of Kansas, 1992, pp 92-93.

6. WiUoughby-ChamberUn, MacArthur: 1941-51, Viking, NY, 1954, p. 170.

7. Letter of Proceedings for HMAS Westralia, February 1944. 8. HMAS Manoora, Letter of Proceechngs, February 1944, AWM. 9. Note to the President of the USA from JCS. Quoted by Dudley

McCarthy South West Pacific Area: First Year, AWM, 1959, p 23. 10 .1 Cav Div was organised on an old-fashioned estabUshment known as

a square division and a squadron numbered some 800 men, about the equivalent to an AustraUan battahon.

11. Barbey p 157. 12. Dexter, p. 795. Barbey, p. 149 et seq. Comment by Cdr Harry Heath,

PJ\.N Amphibious Warfare SpeciaUst. 13. Barbey, p. 152. 14. WiUiam Manchester, American Caesar,Litde Brown and Co., Boston,

1978, p 342. 15. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, p. 188. 16. Neither were they original. The phrase "You have your teeth into him"

comes from one of C. S. Forrester's "Captain Hornblower" novels, popular at the time.

17. MacArthur, p 188. Barbey p 152. 18. Dexter, p 796. 19. Barbey p 159. 20. ibid., passim. 21. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol.ll,p.386. 22. ibid., p 386. 23. ibid., p 387. 24. Ronald Spector, Eagle against the Sun, Free Press, NY, 1985, p. 282. 25. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol. II,p. 386. 26. MacArthur, p 183. 27. ibid., footnote p 189. 28. Barbey p 157. 29. ibid., p 151.



30. Spector, p. 284 et seq. Barbey p. 162. 31. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.ll.p.389.

32. ibid., p 389. 33. ibid., p 387 etseq. 34. ibid., p 445. 35. ibid., passim.


CHAPTER 12

THERE'S N O BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS

You can fool aU of the people some of the time. And some of the people aU of the time ...

And perhaps you can't fool aU of the people ... AU of the time

But you can fool enough of the people Enough of the time ... To get the job done ...

Slogan in an advertising agency

IN July 1944, three months prior to the date of any Philippine operation then proposed, MacArthur told Blamey that one Aus

tralian division would be used in a landing at Leyte in 1944 in the Philippines and another in an operation to take place at Lingayen Gulf the following year On each occasion, an Australian division would form part of a corps under an American commander It is doubtful that MacArthur intended any such thing, but regardless of his intention, in the end it was longstanding AustraUan policy which would ensure that no Australian infantry division would land in the PhiUppines.

The maintenance of the integrity of Australian formations had long been Australian government policy, and in two world wars Australian generals had fought with their British counterparts to retain control of their own troops. MacArthur could hardly have been unaware of this, but that was hardly relevant. He himself had set a


THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS 187

precedent which required that the Austrahans and the Americans should serve under separate corps commanders.

As Blamey pointed out to Curtin:

Gen MacArthur has always insisted that the difficulties of two difierent systems of supply made it necessary to ensure that the American and Australian commands should, as far as possible, work independently ... There is no adequate reason why the Australian corps should not be employed (in the PhUippines) as a corps under its own commander ...'

But there was to be no role for the soldiers of the AIF in the PhiUppines and it is doubtful that this was ever seriously contemplated by MacArthur and his staff. If this was to be the case, then for what purpose were three divisions of crack Australian infantry training in North Queensland? The best estimates of the generals was that the war would continue until at least 1947.- If Australia expected to be seated at the peace table, then employment on active service would have to be found for them lest they become the butt of political ridicule.

In 1942 Prime Minister Curtin did not hesitate to deceive his people when he failed to inform the Australian public that the country was no longer in danger of invasion. This deception was very much in MacArthur's interest, and almost certainly at his suggestion. The Australian economy was geared to total war and strict censorship was able to ensure that no suggestion of premature victory should cause this maximum effort to slacken. No doubt the enemy aided Curtin's credibility.'' It was not until November 1943, more than a year after Midway, that the last Japanese bomb feU on Australian soil.^ Unaware that the danger had passed, civilians worked long hours, endured rationing of almost everything and curtailed their recreational activities, while garrisons throughout the north kept sleepless watch for the enemy who no longer had the means to come near The battles fought on the Kokoda TraU and at Buna, Sanananda and Gona were not fought to save Australia, for Australia was no longer in danger of invasion. These battles were fought to gain control of the northern coast of Papua, for without bases there, MacArthur's march to the Philippines could not commence. Not until March 1943, foUowing the victories at Buna and Guadalcanal, did Curtin


188 THE ODD COUPLE

reluctantly inform the Australian people that the danger of invasion had passed, and the historic record preserves the myth that the thousands of young Diggers who died fighting in New Guinea did so in desperate defence of their country, an enduring belief which saw a True Believer who was heir to John Curtin fall to his knees and kiss the sacred earth at Kokoda.''

By mid-1944 there was very little action that involved Australia in the conflict, but if her war effort was to remain at this low level, the achievements of the AIF and the Australian Militia in 1942 and 1943 would carry little weight in any discussions to take place in 1947 and 1948. Their victories had been damned with faint praise by Mac-Arthur when they were achieved; they would be long forgotten by the time the victorious AUies sat down to divide the spoils of war Indeed, American newsmen had quickly forgotten them.

Excluded by MacArthur from the main game, an enemy worthy of Australia's sword had to be found elsewhere if the scale of her mihtary effort was to be maintained. Either that, or the policy laid down in 1943 would have to be reviewed and Australia could forget about finding a place at the Peace Table. But that was an unthinkable alternative.

General Blamey and the prime minister visited England in the Northern summer of 1944 and the Australian general had lengthy talks with his British Army counterparts. With the European war drawing toward its end, it was then anticipated that Britain would send forces to fight in the Pacific and that there would be a need to find a role for them. As a result of these talks, Blamey returned to Australia with a firm belief that the AIF divisions, reinforced by British troops, might launch a campaign to retake the Netherlands Indies and Malaya and do so independently of the Americans. The thrust would be made from Darwin, through Timor and Borneo. It has been claimed that Blamey saw a role for himself as Commander-in-Chief of the new force and that this coloured his thinking during late 1944 and early 1945. Perhaps his growing estrangement from the Americans was accelerated for this reason. However, such a campaign could not have proceeded without MacArthur's approval, and whether Blamey was aware of it or not this would never have been forthcoming.



Curdn and his government had sought to foUow MacArthur's earUer advice, but if they sought to do battle against the enemy in order to fulfil their 1943 commitment that Australia's "miUtary effort should be on a scale to guarantee her an effective voice in the peace setdement",^ they would have to find enemies closer to home. They didn't need to look very far MacArthur had left a bounteous supply behind when he moved to the Philippines.

From the time he had arrived in Australia until the end of 1943, infantry operations under MacArthur's command had been carried out by forces that were preponderantly Australian fighting under Australian officers, but by mid-1944 American men under arms totaUed many miUions and American industry had wrought miracles. Thousands of planes and hundreds of warships poured off production Unes and American carrier task forces roamed the Pacific bombing Japanese targets at will. In one morning, on 18 February 1944, aircraft from Admiral Spruance's Fifth Fleet destroyed Japan's major naval base at Truk.** In June his carriers met thejapanese Combined Fleet in the PhUippine Sea, and when the smoke of battle cleared, only 35 aircraft remained out of the 430 with which thejapanese had gone into battle. The American pUots caUed it the Marianas Turkey Shoot. " And there was another American weapon even more potent.

During the last four months of 1943 and the first eight of 1944, United States Navy submariners effectively destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet. Interdicting the trade routes from Japan's only sources of tin, rubber and oil, US submarines sank 442 merchant ships — almost two and a half miUion tonnes of shipping. During that same year of operations, submarines sank 67 Japanese naval vessels.'° Japan's industrial capacity was incapable of replacing a fraction of the losses. Meanwhile MacArthur's aU-American army went on its island-hopping way to the Philippines against negligible opposition. They were fighting an army starved of both the means to fight and the food and medical supplies to sustain it.

MacArthur waded ashore at Leyte in a blaze of glory, but this was only the first phase of the campaign. When MacArthur said "I shaU return", he meant aU the way. He was determined to recapture Luzon, return in triumph to his pre-war home in Manila and then go on to command the ultimate victory, an invasion of Japan. In this, he was


190 THE ODD COUPLE

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LEGEND

Navy Route Macarthur's Route •« Proposed Op. — — — - »

Map 6

at odds with both the US Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They favoured the Navy's plan to bypass Luzon and attack Formosa.

Contention between MacArthur and the Navy over their preferred invasion targets came aUve in 1943, but injuly 1944 the matter was settled by no less an authority than President Roosevelt himself

In 1944 Roosevelt nonUnated for an unprecedented fourth term

as President. For reasons more to do with winning an election than



winning the war, he decided to travel to Hawaii and there to confer with his two Pacific Ocean commanders-in-chief He made the voyage in the heavy cruiser Baltimore, which secured alongside at Pearl Harbor at 1500 hours on 26 July. Adjacent to the wharf, an area of almost a hectare had been cleared and barricades erected to hold back a huge crowd who waited to welcome the President. In dazzling dress whites. Admiral Nimitz led the host of senior officers who swarmed aboard to greet Mr Roosevelt immediately the gangway was down, but although he had arrived in Hawaii by plane earlier in the day, Mac-Arthur was not of their number. There was a band standing by on the dock, waiting to strike up "Hail to the Chief "when the President came ashore. But nothing could happen until MacArthur joined the party. There foUowed a hiatus. Roosevelt retired to his cabin and the gaggle of VIPs and ship's officers waited impatiently on the quarterdeck.'^

After almost an hour Roosevelt decided to wait no longer and to go ashore without his Commander-in-Chief SWPA. Then, just as he was about to leave the ship, the scream of police sirens was heard. There was a commotion among the crowd as all eyes turned to the wharf gates to see a motorcade make a spectacular entrance. The President and his entourage stared open-mouthed. MacArthur was seated in solitary splendour in the centre of the rear seat of a long, red CadiUac convertible, escorted by a round dozen military police mounted on motorcycles, all twelve with sirens blaring. In contrast to the beribboned formal dress whites worn by the Admirals present, MacArthur presented the image of a regular fighting man, straight from the front with no time to change out of his day-to-day working togs. He wore no decorations on his plain, much-laundered "suntans" which were topped by his field marshal's cap set at a rakish angle. To add to his swashbuckling image, he wore a leather flight jacket open at the front and he sucked on a corn-cob pipe. To the delight of the spectators, the procession did a slow lap of honour as MacArthur acknowledged their plaudits. When the car finally drew to a halt at the ship's side, MacArthur dismounted and strode up the gangway, halting midway for a last salute to his admirers before continuing to the quarterdeck to greet his Commander-in-Chief It transpired that his use of the red CadiUac was of even greater interest to the local citizens than was the presence of so many VIPs. There were only two


192 THE ODD COUPLE

such cars on the island. The one belonging to the Fire Chief had been reserved for the President's use. The other was owned by the lady who conducted Pearl Harbor's most luxurious and expensive bordeUo.'^

FoUowing a day and a half of conferences during which both Nimitz and MacArthur presented their case for their favoured routes to Tokyo, the SWPA commander accompanied Roosevelt on a tour of military installations. MacArthur shared the back seat of one of the red convertibles with his Commander-in-Chief and there is no doubt that his famed powers of persuasion were used to maximum effect. Having listened for three hours to MacArthur's views on the moral and strategic necessity for the conquest of Luzon, Roosevelt returned to the ship and pleaded with his staff for aspirin.'''

Upon his return to Brisbane the next day, MacArthur informed Generals Sutherland and WiUoughby that the President had approved his plans for Luzon to be the major invasion target after Leyte. '^There would seem to be ample circumstantial evidence to suggest that from the time that Roosevelt and MacArthur met in Hawaii everything that occurred thereafter was due to a political deal. It seems likely that MacArthur painted a graphic picture of the future. He offered his President a choice between pre-election newsreels showing hundreds of Marines dead on the heavily fortified beaches of Formosa in a re-run of Tarawa,'^' and a form of the second coming with crowds of happy, smiling Filipinos tossing flowers at their preordained saviour MacArthur was able to remind Roosevelt of the dozens of fuU-page pictures in Lrfe magazine of dead Marines strewn on Pacific beaches. The slaughter at Buna was long forgotten and he was able to compare costly Marine landings like the one at Tarawa with his recent spectacular operations in Western New Guinea which had been so economic of human life.

In terms of the Hollywood melodramas so dear to American hearts, it was "Custer's Last Stand" versus "The Hero's Return" and reaUy no contest at aU. Although neither party to the Red CadiUac conference admitted to a deal being made, it could hardly be coincidence that in October American newsreels and newspapers featured little else but pictures of cheering throngs of Filipinos and MacArthur's triumphant return just three weeks before Roosevelt's equaUy smashing victory in the 1944 presidential election.'^ And there is absolutely no



doubt that a typically premature and totally fictitious announcement by MacArthur of total victory at Leyte was politically inspired.

The landing at Leyte was conducted beyond the range of land-based air cover The US Navy had provided this using carrier-based planes, but engineers and Seabees had quickly repaired Japanese airstrips and built new ones. Anxious to rid himself of any obligation to the Navy, and little more than a week after the landing, MacArthur announced that his Far East Air Force could take care of his defences, but with the carriers gone, three typhoons raged across the island turning newly created airstrips into quagmires and grounding his fighters. With Kamikazes playing havoc among his supply ships, MacArthur had to beg the Navy to send back the carriers he had so cavalierly dismissed. His infantry were also in trouble, fighting a desperate battle to maintain a small perimeter surrounding the landing beaches.'* Yet, on 30 October,just ten days after the landing and nine days before the Americans went to the poUs, MacArthur announced that two-thirds of the island had been secured and that enemy resistance had collapsed.

This was the Ripping Yarn to beat aU Ripping Yarns, one that shocked even those war correspondents who were accustomed to "Doug's Communiques". They protested to GHQ. Pik Diller told them: "The elections are coming up in a few days, and the Philippines must be kept on the front pages back home."

Roosevelt won his election and the Democrats achieved control of both houses of the Congress. In due course, Luzon was announced as the next target. The landing took place on 9 January 1945. Then in April a new directive was issued which designated MacArthur as Commander-in-Chief, United States Armed Forces Pacific, with control over aU American Army and Army Air Force units and resources in the Pacific. AU Naval resources would remain under command of Admiral Nimitz.'''

In 1942 and 1943 the defeat of Germany had been the American government's main concern and America had no troops to spare for MacArthur Then at Buna, those that could be spared showed him that they would be of no effect in an offensive role. MacArthur needed the AIF divisions then, and as an incentive to Curtin to ensure that they were maintained at fuU strength, he had promised that they


194 THE O D D COUPLE

would fight shoulder to shoulder with their aUies, the Americans, when he kept his blood oath and returned to the Philippines. John Curtin gave him the AIF and the AIF gave him Buna and Gona, Nadzab, Lae, Salamua and Finschhafen. The discovery by an AIF unit of the Sio codes gave him the Admiralties and eventuaUy paved the way for The Return. His chimera of a duplicitous promise achieved his aim, but the substance of his failure to keep it had an opposite effect to that which Curtin and his other victims intended when they rubber stamped the war policy formulated by MacArthur in 1943. That the General had taken them for mugs became evident in an editorial published in November 1944 by the Chicago Tribune, owned by MacArthur's friend and supporter. Colonel McCormack:

SOME ABSENT ALLIES

MacArthur is fighting on Leyte with the same divisions which made the original landings. The British Press, since the invasion, has described it as an AUied operation, but Americans can look around and wonder what "AUied" might have meant.

The British and Australians who were forced to yield Malaya have not returned for another bout with their conqueror and the Canadians have not fought since 1942 in the Pacific except in one Aleutian operation.

Australians cannot have forgotten so soon that the Americans in the Solomons and in New Guinea saved their homeland. Now that the Americans on Leyte are fighting so desperately, we would expect Dominion troops to come rushing to the side of MacArthur.^"

As the United States war effort moved into top gear, the arrival of increasing numbers of his own troops and a seemingly endless supply of ships, planes, guns and other war material made MacArthur independent of the Australians. This, and the priceless inteUigence available from the code breakers, had rid him of the need for aUies. That was fine for MacArthur, but it left his good friend John Curtin with something of a problem.

At the peace talks which followed World War I Australia's Prime Minister Hughes played a hero's role. No less would be expected of John Curtin when World War II ended. But the world had changed in the twenty-six years since the little Welshman had jousted with the rich and famous at Versailles, and in the circumstances which prevaUed in 1945 Billy Hughes would be an incredibly hard act to foUow.



Australia's contribution of volunteers to the Allied cause in World War I amounted to almost forty per cent of those Australian men within the acceptable age bracket, 18 to 44, and more than nine per cent of the country's total population.

Almost 350 000 of those who came forward saw active service and, of these, over 65 000 were killed in action or died of wounds — roughly three per cent of Australia's male population. The AIF was the only wholly volunteer army to serve the AUied cause and no less impressive were the achievements of her troops in battle. By war's end, the Australians, with the Canadians, were recognised by both the British and German staffs as the most effective shock troops on the AUied side.^' The AIF's sixty-five per cent casualty rate was the highest of any of the AUied forces which fought in the war 22 Australia's prime minister demanded a prominent place at the peace table and AustraUa's share of the booty. He believed that his country had paid for her place at table with her 65 000 dead.^^

Australia was granted mandates over some of the German possessions in the Pacific. These came to be known as the Mandated Territories of New Guinea and these were the Australian possessions for which its men had fought so hard in 1942 and 1943. But in 1944 the AIF had completed its work in New Guinea. It had been rested, reinforced and re-equipped and was deployed in training camps on the Atherton Tablelands in far north Queensland. On beaches off Cairns, the men of the infantry honed their amphibious warfare techniques against the day when they would join their AUies in the final defeat of the Japanese. After five years of war, the infantry battalions of the AIF had Military Virtue. They had won more battles than they had lost, they could not be frightened and they knew their power First Australian Corps was unchaUenged as the most potent miUtary assault force in the world. Most of the officers and NCOs and many of the private soldiers of the AIF's 27 infantry battaUons and the corps units which served and supported them had been in uniform for four or five years and had fought on a dozen battlefields under aU conditions. They were an elite force capable of assaulting and carrying any existing Japanese-held island stronghold. They waited in vain to be given a task, and they were not the only unemployed Australian soldiers. Apart from some limited patrol


196 THE ODD COUPLE

activity by the militia units garrisoning Madang, there were no Australian army units of any kind on active duty.

From 1941 onwards, Austraha had faced horrendous manpower problems. Besides the need to maintain the infantry divisions of the AIF at full strength, two armoured divisions and five divisions of militia had been raised and had to be sustained. Through its commitment to the Empire Air Training Scheme, tens of thousands of young Australians were serving in Europe with the Royal Air Force. Australian shipyards built destroyers, frigates and dozens of corvettes for which crews had to be found and trained. There was a substantial proportion of the Australian workforce engaged in war production and food production and there were other onerous commitments.

From the beginning, MacArthur's American army formations were unbalanced. Quite deliberately, MacArthur had built up an army which lacked many of the services to provide for its fighting elements. It relied heavily on Australian civilian employees to carry out miUtary duties involving administration, construction, supply and transport.

Thousands of Australians, male and female, young and old, found lucrative wartime employment "working for the Yanks", and it was aU paid for by the Australian government under lend lease. The provision of labour for the Americans was one of the major factors which saw Australia the only AUied country to end the war with a credit balance in its Lend Lease account, and it was an arrangement of which American officers took full iUicit advantage, starting with MacArthur's Chief of Staff and extending down through the ranks.

Shortly after he arrived in Australia, Maj Gen Sutherland, Mac-Arthur's chief of staff, established a de facto relationship with a Melbourne sociahte who he promptly placed on the Army payroU. "* When the headquarters moved to Brisbane, the General's lady came too. Col "Pik" DiUer also brought his live-in girlfriend with him from Melbourne. Formerly a shop girl in Myer's, she was employed as a file clerk somewhere in the headquarters, but spent most of her nights at Lennons Hotel with the colonel. Col Syd Huff, major domo to the MacArthur family, had a similar arrangement with another young woman from Myer's and later made an honest woman of her^^ MacArthur was weU aware of the situation but it was difficult for him to do anything about it, even had he wished to.



When war threatened in early 1941, aU dependents of US servicemen had been ordered out of the Philippines. Married officers such as Sutherland and DiUer had been deprived of their legitimate conjugal rights for almost a year by the time they arrived in Australia. At the time that the order was issued, MacArthur was not on active duty and was not subject to it. However, he was restored to fuU-time duty injuly 1941 and had an immediate obligation to send his wife home too. Instead, he simply ignored the order and continued to live a life of domestic bliss. Apparently no one dared remind him of it. Given the circumstances, he could not object to his staff setting up de facto arrangements in Australia. He didn't. Most of them quickly found temporary replacements for their departed spouses and close proximity to the top wasn't necessary to enjoy such privileges.

The practice of combining weU-paid work with pleasure extended to aU levels. Mrs Phyllis O'CarroU, a young Brisbane married woman, was a highly skiUed secretary whose husband had been discharged incapacitated after service overseas with the AIF In 1942 she worked in the office of an American Bomb Group supply section where the CO was orUy a major, and was one of five girls employed as secretaries to various officers. She left to seek other employment when she found the work load too heavy. Apparently it had been open season in Melbourne's great emporium in 1942. Three of the other secretaries were former Myer salesgirls. Mrs O'CarroU was the only one of the five not sleeping with her boss, and she was also the only girl in the office who could type with more than two fingers.^^

The provision of camp followers for American officers was a minor function of lend lease. The requirement for both skiUed and unskiUed labour for a wide variety of administrative tasks and for such essential defence work as airfield and road construction and maintenance strained the country's Umited manpower resources to the limit and beyond. The Myer girls and their coUeagues made a minor but important contribution to AustraUa's post-war position as the only AUied country to which America was in debt in its lend lease account.

As early as April 1943 General Blamey reported that to maintain the Australian army at the level then current and stiU provide sufficient manpower for essential war production was almost impossible. Blamey believed that the necessary men to be trained as reinforce-


198 THE ODD COUPLE

ments could not be spared from industry and he recommended that "the force being prepared for offensive operations should be reduced by an infantry division".^'^

In September 1943 a letter from Curtin to MacArthur outUning the problem was evaluated by his chief of staff, Sutherland, as a veUed threat by the prime minister to partiaUy demobilise AustraUan forces, but there was never any prospect that this would happen.2** Mac-Arthur ruled. Defence Secretary Shedden traveUed to Brisbane to discuss the matter with MacArthur whose view was predictable. He had no American forces in Australia capable of standing alone and defeating an organised Japanese force. If he wanted Lae, Salamua and Finschhafen, he would need the AIF to get them for him and he intended to have it intact. He asked for the retention of three divisions of the AIF and in doing so he appealed to Australia's national pride. He told Shedden:

Anything less •would be incompatible with Australia's status and destiny as a Pacific power and would not guarantee her the same voice in the Peace Councils, to which she is entided."^'

This is simply a variation of the standard pitch used to seU luxury motor cars to people who don't need them and can't afford them, but it was dutifully transmuted into Australian government policy. On 1 October 1943 the Australian War Cabinet declared as a principle that:

It is of vital importance to the future of AustraUa and her status at the peace table in regard to the setdement in the Pacific that her military effort should be on a scale to guarantee her an effective voice in the peace settlement."""'

MacArthur's motive for thus advising the Australian Government is obvious, and he sweetened the pot by recycling an earlier promise that Australian troops would be among his forces when he staged his much-publicised return to the Philippines.

On 17 March 1944 MacArthur had been in Australia for two years and a grateful prime minister hosted a dinner at The Lodge in Canberra to celebrate the occasion. Following the dinner, MacArthur, Curtin, and Curtin's trusted adviser. Sir Frederick Shedden, met



privately for a wide-ranging discussion of future war strategy. Mac-

Arthur told the prime minister that the invasion of the Philippines

would be spearheaded by three Australian infantry divisions and one

of American paratroops. Curtin and Shedden may have believed him

but there is clear evidence that the American was lying.Just nine days

before the anniversary dinner, Sutherland had presented the Joint

Chiefs of Staff with the proposed Order of Battle for the Leyte

operation. Nowhere among the formations listed to take part did

AustraUa get a mention.^'

Notes

1. John Hetherington, Blamey, AWM and AGPS, Canberra, 1973, p. 354.

2. David Horner, High Command, AUen and Unwin, Sydney, 1992, p. 382. He quotes Gavin Long, Tlie Final Campaign, AWM, 1952, p. 28. Letter BDO/Berryman to Blamey, 23 October 1944,Berryman Papers. Letter BDO/15, Berryman to Blamey 19 November 1944.

3. Horner, pp. 404-16. He quotes Berryman Diary, 19 AprU 1945, Letter BDO/50 Berryman to Blamey 20 AprU 1945. Berryman Papers. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 20 February 1945.

4. David Horner, Inside the War Cabinet, p. 120. He quotes Minutes of Advisory War CouncU Meeting, Canberra, 11 June 1942, CRS A5954/46, item 814/1, Shedden notebook, CRS A5954/2,item 1.

5. A single bomb dropped on Adelaide Raver by a sneak raider. PJW^F War Diary, Darwin, 1942-43.

6. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 15 March 1942.

7. Horner, p. 276.

8. Samuel E. Morison, Tlie Two Ocean War, Little Brown and Co., Boston, 1963,p314.

9. ibid., pp 329-345.

10. ibid., p 517.

11. D. Clayton James, Tlie Years ofMacArthur,Vol. II,Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1975, p 527.

12. WiUiam Miinchester, American Caesar, p. 366. James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. II,pp. 527-28.Ronald Spector,Ea^/e against the Sun,Free Press,NY, 1985, p. 417. S. I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt, YLiLndom House, NY, 1952, pp. 456-76. Tlie Great Sea War:E.B. Potter and Chester Nimitz, US Naval Institute, AnnapoUs, 1960, p. 346.

13. Manchester, p. 369.


200 THE ODD COUPLE

14. Frazier Hunt, Untold Story of Douglas MacArthur, pp. 332-33. Admiral Leahy, / Was There, US Naval Institute, 1954, AnnapoUs, p. 250. Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, pp 198-99.

15. Morison, pp 299-306. 16. Michael SchaUer, Tlie Far Eastern General, Oxford University Press, NY,

1989, p. 78. In the mid-term Congessional elections of 1942, the Republicari Party increased its representation in the Congress by 47 seats and in the Senate by 10. Roosevelt won the 1944 election with a popular majority of 51.7%.

17. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol. II, p. 568 et seq. 18. Manchester, p. 371. 19. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol.\\,pp.72A-25. 20. Chicago Tribune, 15 November 1944, quoted in the Courier-Mail, 17

November 1944. 21. Dennis Winter, Hi3i '5 Command: A Red55e55me«t, Viking,London, 1991,

passim. 22. E. Scott, Australian History of World War, Vol. 11, Melbourne University

Press, Melbourne, 1987, p 974. 23. Manning Clark, A History of Australia, Vol. VI, p. 112. He quotes "The

Fight at the Peace Table", pamphlet avaUable in the National Library, Canberra.

24. Paul Rogers, The Bitter Years, Praegar & Co., NY, 1990, passim. 25. Joy Foorde to author, 10 August 1997. 26. Mrs O'CarroU to author, August 1992. 27. David Horner, Inside the War Cabinet, p. 152. He quotes Recommenda

tions of Defence Committee, 6 May 1943, CRS A2571. Item 106/43. 28. Handwritten comments on letter,Curtin to MacArthur,5 August 1943,

N A R A , R G 3 1 6 , B o x 7 2 . 29. Notes of Discussions (by Shedden) with Commander in Chief SWPA,

25-31 May 1943, CRS A5954, Item 2\3. 30. Horner, p. 256. He quotes War Cabinet Minute 3056,1 October 1943,

Canberra. 31. Horner, p. 309. He quotes Notes of Discussion (by Shedden) with the

Commander in Chief SWPA, Canberra, 17 March 1943,MP 1217,Box 3. Record of Conversation Maj Gen ChamberUn and Brig White, 1500 hours, 25 February 1944, Blamey Papers 43.5.


CHAPTER 13

VIRTUE OF FOOLS

"... should we faU to get the mail, if prisoners won't talk.

If radios are indisposed, and carrier pigeons ^valk ..."

Anon.

IN the islands to the north, those battlefields of 1943, only at Buna had MacArthur fought a battle of destruction. In every other case,

wherever the Americans had landed, they had been content to occupy only as much space as was necessary to establish their air and naval bases. Hostile action by both sides had subsided and enemies had settled down to a form of undeclared truce. At some places, American garrisons had enjoyed this tranquil tropical lifestyle for almost two years.

By September 1944, six of the fifteen divisions of American troops under General MacArthur's command were engaged in this phoney war, but with his return to the Philippines in the offing they were needed for sterner work. MacArthur was roUing up his rear areas, mustering his forces for the recapture of Luzon and Manila. Blamey's chief of staff. General Berryman, noted in his diary: "It is obvious ... that General MacArthur hopes to get into the war against Japan proper and leave us over 250 000 Nips to look after ... a secondary role."'

In July 1944 MacArthur ordered that his own troops in New Guinea and adjacent islands be replaced by Austrahans. In his prepa-


202 THE ODD COUPLE

ration to comply with his orders. General Blamey's appreciation caUed for seven brigades of mihtia to reUeve the six American divisions which manned these island enclaves. This did not suit MacArthur He ordered that no less than twelve brigades be aUocated to the task. That he deployed this force against his better judgment is revealed in a letter which Blamey wrote to the leader of the opposition, Mr Robert Menzies.

I have no real say in the matter beyond carrying out orders ... I have pretty strong feelings on certain of these aUocations. I have no right to criticise them.^

MacArthur never made public his reasons for ordering the deployment of so many Australian troops to carry out the task, but in light of what is known of the man, it has to be concluded that he intended to avoid any adverse publicity which might tend to denigrate the Americans should almost 150 000 of his men be relieved by Australians numbering less than one-third of that number.'' At MacArthur's order, 1st Australian Army, conmianded by General Sturdee, was given the task.

There w ere two divisions of Americans at Aitape, in New Guinea, two on Bougainville, and two more at Torokina on New Britain. Each of these forces had manned a smaU perimeter, but at no time had they considered it necessary to mount deep patrols to learn more about the Japanese disposition and intention. This was not the AustraUan way. On 18 October 1944 Blamey's instructions to Sturdee required that 1st Army should "by offensive action ... destroy enemy resistance as opportunity offers without committing major forces".

Sturdee was not entirely happy with the term "without committing major forces", and he asked for clarification. Blamey's reply made it plain that there was a total lack of information in regard to what lay before 1st Army, particularly on BougainviUe, and that it would be necessary to first locate the enemy and then test his strength before plans could be made for any offensive action. His letter to Sturdee concluded:

I fuUy appreciate the undesirabUity of retaining troops in a perimeter, particularly our Australian troops, over a long period, since this is certain to destroy the aggressive spirit which is essential against the


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 203

Japanese. I hope, therefore, that there wiU be a considerable increase in our activity ...*

Cut off as they were, it might be logicaUy expected that the Japanese would have surrendered. Faced with a similar situation, troops of other nations on both sides had invariably done so earlier in the war, but no one had a right to any such expectation of the Japanese soldier Despite being cut off and surrounded, starving and iU, those members of the Japanese garrisons at Buna and Gona who had been unable to escape had fought to the last man. American experience on Leyte had paraUeUed this. More than 80 000 Japanese were kiUed defending the island and only 798 surrendered.'' On the island of Saipan in the Marianas in June 1944 more than 30 000 Japanese soldiers died, and another 8000 Japanese civilians, colonists who Uved on the island, men, women and children, jumped to their deaths from cliffs into the sea rather than be captured by the Americans.'' It was inevitable that at some point in the future these bypassed garrisons in Australia's near north would have to be rounded up. There was no reason to believe that this might not be a long and bloody task whenever it was undertaken and it was Australia's and Blamey's problem.

There were three main concentrations ofjapanese. There were the remnants of three divisions on the north coast of New Guinea. The XVIIl Army was commanded by General Adachi who had his headquarters at Wewak. In October 1944 it was 31 000 strong.

There were 30 000 enemy soldiers on BougainviUe, in addition to 20 000 naval personnel, and at Rabaul, on New Britain,Japan's Eighth Area Army deployed more than 90 000 soldiers, sailors and marines.'

In order to find the number ofbrigades that MacArthur demanded, Blamey had to involve one of the AIF divisions. Thus the 6th Division, AIE was sent to Aitape to face the remnants of Adachi's men, while miUtia divisions were deployed in New Britain and on BougainviUe. Lt Gen Savige established his 1st Australian Army headquarters at Lae to take charge of the operation. What foUowed became known to some as the "backyard war".^

Two divisions of the AIF remained on the Atherton Tablelands, stiU busily practising to be soldiers, and MacArthur wanted these for a


204 THE ODD COUPLE

series of operations codenamed Oboe 1 to 6. If carried out as planned, they would involve amphibious landings in Borneo and Java.^

General Adachi's forces had been badly mauled by the Australian 7th and 9th Divisions in 1943 and, foUowing the American landing at Aitape in April 1944, had been further reduced by casualties when elements of the XVIII Japanese Army marched overland from Wewak to mount a counterattack on the beachhead. At Aitape, the seven US RCTs, each equivalent to an AustraUan brigade, were relieved by the three brigades of the 6th Division and the exchange of duties took place during October and November 1944, with Major General Stevens opening his 6th Division Headquarters at Aitape on 8 November'°

FoUowing a period of intensive reconnaissance and smaU actions, Stevens mounted an offensive and captured Wewak, the major Japanese base on the coast. Inland, the Japanese were carefuUy deployed in defence of the areas where they grew the crops that were their only means of sustenance. When the 6th Division relieved the Americans at Aitape, it was estimated that there were between 30 000 and 35 000 Japanese troops in Adachi's command. At war's end ten months later the XVIII Japanese Army numberedjust 13 500. Stevens' command lost 442 officers and men kiUed in action and 1141 were wounded."

The most powerful Japanese forces were at Rabaul on New Britain, but the American estimate of their strength was wildly astray. When the 5th Australian Division relieved the Americans, their GOC, General Ramsay, was told that thejapanese were about 38 000 strong, and that they were concentrated in the area of the GazeUe Peninsula, the north-east extremity of the island. In fact, there were at least five divisions ofjapanese concentrated in and around Rabaul, and there were manned posts which guarded the south coast as far west as Cape Dampier'^

With their air force and their navy long gone from the South Pacific, the Japanese had no means of attacking the Americans, and for an equally long period the Americans had shown no interest in Rabaul other than to bomb it occasionaUy.

General Ramsay estabhshed his Divisional Headquarters at Jacqui-not Bay on the south coast, orUy a few kilometres from Wide Bay, and


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 205

deployed his forces so as to exclude thejapanese from aU of the island except the GazeUe Peninsula. A vigourous program of patrols and search and destroy missions was undertaken but despite the availability of almost 100 000 troops, thejapanese commander. General Imamura, showed little aggression. With five divisions ofjapanese bottled up in the GazeUe Peninsula, General Ramsay had control of ninety-five per cent of the island. Thejapanese had vast acreages under crops in and around Rabaul and, while the five divisions of troops which were deployed there were beyond the capacity of a single division to capture and kill, they were very efficient gardeners. Ramsay was content to hold the line with his considerably smaUer force. With total control of the sea surrounding the area, Rabaul was converted into a self-sustaining prison camp.

On New Britain, the 5th Division lost only 53 men kiUed and had 140 men wounded.

In early 1945 Maj Gen Bridgeford's 3rd Division began a campaign to clear BougainviUe ofjapanese. It continued until the surrender at war's end. The whole of the operation cost Australia 516 men kiUed and 1572 wounded. It appeared that once again both Australian and American intelligence sources had got the figures wrong. By the end of the war the Diggers had kiUed more than 8000 Japanese and 23 571 more had surrendered.'•'' In operations in New Guinea and the Solomons over a period of more than nine months, the 1st Australian Army of three fuU divisions lost 1011 kiUed and 2853 wounded, more than half of them on BougainviUe.'''

Elements of General Sturdee's forces began their reUef of the American forces in September 1944 and it was completed by the end of the year, but 1945 dawned without the Australian people being aware that more than four divisions of their troops had been deployed in New Guinea. The only major war story in the New Year's Day edition of the Brisbane Courier-Mail was datehned New York and carried a three-column headline:

TOUGH YEAR FOR JAPS PROMISED.

The story quoted Admiral Nimitz and dealt with his forecasts regarding the American campaign in the Northern Pacific. There was no mention of the AustraUans. In October 1944 MacArthur left AustraUa behind him, never to return, but whUe he left the Austrahan


206 THE ODD COUPLE

Army behind too, he stiU held the power of censorship over any and aU news published in that country if it related to the war'^ No censor was permitted to pass for publication any story emanating from the 1st Australian Army Headquarters or, for that matter, any other headquarters of the AustraUan army. During the weeks and months that foUowed the Australian relief of US forces in the islands there was considerable activity, but little was known of it since the Mac-Arthur public relations machine was busy elsewhere. For months after the invasion of the Philippines in October 1944, the Australian Digger disappeared from the pages of the newspapers in his own country. The Americans were fast disappearing from Australian streets, but American war news was still the stuff of headlines, with MacArthur leading the charge.

MacArthur's approach to the military art was unique. Regardless of his performance on the battlefield, a place he seldom visited, he kept his aim simple and steadfastly maintained it. First and foremost he sought victory in the newspaper war, and invariably he won. In 1942 he had persuaded a wiUing corps of war correspondents to transmute the ignominious defeat of his army in the Philippines into an epic defence against vastly superior numbers. In 1944 they were persuaded to present the world with another saga of death-defying heroism. MacArthur had returned to the Philippines. A half million or more officers and men accompanied him, but to a man they were anonymous.

In 1944 Eisenhower's generals were household names. The achievements on the European battlefields of soldiers like Patton, Montgomery, Bradley and Bedell Smith were familiar to every American who could read, but the situation in the Pacific was vastly different. American papers seldom mentioned Krueger, Sutherland, Eichelberger or Willoughby and never mentioned Blamey at aU. These were the Child of Destiny's senior staff officers and the army and corps commanders who served him, but they were nonentities. The Pacific Ocean was the largest pond in the world, but there was room for only one large amphibian in that portion of it which was MacArthur's puddle.Just as he had been in 109 of the 140-odd reports from Manila and Corregidor before he departed, MacArthur was the only hero of The Return. Reports from GHQ SWPA dealt with his


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 207

achievements and his alone. Since such substantial figures as Eichelberger and Krueger, three-star generals in the US Army, failed to figure in the news, foreigners had no chance of making it, and the exclusion of the Diggers from the MacArthur Communique was not just for the American press. If news of the Diggers didn't figure in the Communique, they couldn't be mentioned in the Australian press either

MacArthur's communiques in themselves were brief and to the point,but they were the framework within which war correspondents were compeUed to write their stories. If an island or a city, a skirmish or a battle, a soldier or a sailor failed to gain a mention in the MacArthur Communique, then as far as the press was concerned it didn't exist; it hadn't happened or they were never there. Once such a place or event was mentioned, however, and provided they gave generous mention to MacArthur and to no one else, correspondents were permitted a great deal of licence, hyperbole being restricted only by the imagination of the individual and the extremely liberal censorship administered by Col Pik Diller, MacArthur's Chief of Public Relations."'

There was no dearth of stories about Australians or of people to write them. The various forward headquarters fairly swarmed with war correspondents and photographers, but no communique issued from MacArthur's GHQ had deigned to mention the Australians since he shook the dust of Brisbane off his feet in October 1944. Not since the Greeks used a wooden horse to invade Troy had an armed miUtary force been so weU concealed from public knowledge. Mac-Arthur's sUence on the subject could hardly have anything to do with miUtary security. In New Guinea, on BougainviUe and on New Britain, Diggers were patrolling, they were killing Japanese soldiers and, in the process, some of them were being wounded and others were dying. And since they were doing all of this wearing their distinctive slouch hats, even the least astute Japanese would have been aware that they were not Americans. But MacArthur's control of Australian censorship ensured that never a word about it appeared in the Australian press. On 4 January General Sturdee wrote to General Blamey:


208 THE ODD COUPLE

I have been anxiously awaiting some Press announcement that the AustraUan Army stUl exists in New Guinea, and it seems that the AustraUan public must be wondering whether we are stiU in the war

An Australian pohtician visiting America also expressed concern. Percy Spender, who had been Minister for the Army in the Menzies government, told a New York journahst that he was concerned that Americans were ignorant of the part Australia was playing in the war He complained that MacArthur's communiques placed Australia's war effort in a false light and he mentioned "sizable and important" operations in which Australian troops were engaged.'''

Australian newspaper editors were paying war correspondents good money to write reports and take photographs which members of the public were not allowed to see, and they highlighted the Spender story to put pressure on the government. On 8 January Frank Forde, acting Minister for Defence, contacted MacArthur suggesting that the need for his communiques to govern Australian Army censorship matters was no longer relevant. He proposed that Australia's armed forces should provide their own communiques and so free up the system. Ben Chifley acting Prime Minister due to Curtin's illness, declined to seek such a variation to the longstanding arrangement. At the same time. General Blamey sent a signal to MacArthur suggesting that he mention the Australians in his communique of 9 January and that it be given the fuU treatment by correspondents. Thus, on 9 January 1945 the Communique read:

Australian forces have reUeved United States Army elements along the Solomons axis, in New^ Britain and British (sic) New Guinea. Continuous actions of attrition at aU points of contact have been in progress. So far, 372 Japanese have been kUled, 20 captured and 10 friendly nationals recovered.

This opened the floodgates to a massive backlog of stories and photographs, newsreels and radio reports. Also, and very much be-latecUy, Defence Minister Forde was able to announce that aU of the major units of the Royal Australian Navy had taken part in the Philippines operations three months before and were stiU involved in operations with the Seventh Fleet.'^

The Australian public read avidly of the resumed involvement of


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 209

their men in the war, but it quickly became apparent that the fields

on which they were fighting were those on which victory had been

celebrated years before. Then , also on 9 January, MacArthur's armies

swept ashore at Lingayen Gulf in a seaborne operation involving more

ships than attended at D-Day in N o r m a n d y The media live on

sensation, and on a meter with a scale of 10, headed by a full-scale

amphibious landing with the whole fleet in attendance, mopping-up

operations in N e w Guinea scarcely moved the needle.

Having watched MacArthur's communiques transmute Blamey's

New Guinea victories into MacArthur triumphs, Blamey now saw

the revived interest of the press in the Diggers in the islands last only

as long as it took the politicians to make new headlines with criticisms

of the army, its new role, its performance, its equipment and its

commander

On 12 January the Sydney Morning Herald editorialised:

Whatever official reasons may be advanced for the prolonged silence ... there can be no doubt that it has done serious damage to Australia's reputation abroad.

The Sydney Daily Telegraph's editorial writer was first to introduce

the dreaded term which was later commonly used to describe the

efforts of the 1st Australian Army. Reprising the words of the Chicago

Tribune headline, "SOME ABSENT ALLIES", he wrote:

No one wUl pretend that this job of mopping up is not necessary or that it wUl be easy, but mopping up jobs won't provide Australia with much of an answer to anti Australians such as Colonel McCormack.

The Melbourne Argus also deplored Australia's inability to answer

the scurrilous libels printed in Chicago:

There have been complaints of lack of publicity given overseas to AustraUa's war effort, and American gibes suggesting that we had prematurely retired from the struggle, yet no steps were taken by the army authorities to ensure that these new operations would be fuUy described.

Criticism of "the army" in this sense had to be directed at General

Blamey. Senator FoU, w h o held a commission in the army, told the

Senate that whUe he, personally, considered Blamey to be a fine


210 THE ODD COUPLE

soldier, "The pubhc has no faith in him, and the army is seething with discontent".''*

FoU also exhumed the controversial sacking of General RoweU and laid that at Blamey's door, whUe the Minister for Information, Arthur CalweU, told journalists in Canberra that Army pubUc relations was responsible for the failure to keep the public informed. This caused General Blamey to speak out. Exercising his usual deft touch with the press, Blamey responded by caUing CalweU a liar Tactless,perhaps, but certainly truthful. Neither Army public relations nor CalweU's department could originate any news other than that which was authorised by a MacArthur Communique, and for several months the machinery which produced these gems of war reporting had been working at fuU capacity churning out Ripping Yarns from the Philippines.

Without the troops of both the AIF and the MiUtia, MacArthur's role in the war would have been a minor one. The unknown poet who wrote the lines

But from the chaos daUy Uke a hospice on the way.

Like a shining light to guide us, comes DOUG'S COMMUNIQUE

would hardly have been surprised at the acceptance of this as historical doctrine of the kind which inspired the description of Blamey's Papuan campaign by the official US Navy historian, Samuel E. Morison:

Gen Eichelberger ... led his AustraUan and American troops through a stinking malarial jungle and captured Gona ... Sanananda and Buna.' ^

Unlike MacArthur, Blamey was not oriented towards pubUc relations. This had been his weakness as a police commissioner, and it didn't help him now. In addition, his relationship with Curtin had deteriorated. He was constantly under attack by the opposition in the Australian parliament, members of the government were questioning the need for the island campaign, and Blamey's instruction to his generals that aggressive action by the Australians was needed was being questioned by both civilians and soldiers.


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 211

General Sir Francis Hassett was AustraUa's Chief of the General

Staffin the 1960s, but in 1945 he was a major and one of General

Bridgeford's senior staff officers on BougainviUe. A graduate of

Duntroon, Hassett served with the AIF throughout the war and in

every theatre of war^' In 1996 he wrote of Bougainville:

It worried me then, and it concerns me now. The commanders ... were fuU of fight but there was concern among the very young MUitia soldiers about the worthwhUeness of the campaign and the casualties occurring.

But Hassett conceded that the Australian government acted correctly in seeking such involvement as would give it a strong voice in the Peace Councils.^^

While such criticisms were being expressed publicly, Blamey was

StiU Commander- in-Chief of the Australian Army with a duty to

carry out a government war policy unchanged since 1943. With

MacArthur's refusal to use Australian troops in the Philippines, and

American newspapers critical of Australia's war effort, it is hardly

surprising that the Australian generals should wish to raise the level

of activity in the only areas where their troops could give the lie to

scurrUous libel such as was published by the Chicago Tribune. If further

justification for the increased level of activity was needed, then

Blamey was able to provide it. H e wrote to Prime Minister Curt in

in April 1945, comparing the "backyard war" with MacArthur's

campaign in the Philippines:

It did not appear to me to be logical that the plans should contemplate the complete eUmination of the Japanese in the PhUippines and the withdrawal of the AustraUan forces from New Guinea before a simUar stage had been reached there ... it is my considered opinion that fiirther AustraUan forces should not be withdrawn from New Guinea (and adjacent islands) ... untU such time as Japanese forces on AustraUan territory are destroyed also ... I except from this Rabaul [where] the Japanese forces ... have been pressed into a smaU area.^^

When MacArthur landed in the Philippines, there was no strategic

necessity for his tactics there to differ from those which had been

used in the island-hopping campaign from AustraUa. In February

1945, whUe MacArthur's artUlery was destroying Manila, General

MarshaU, Army Chief of Staff, told the British Service Chiefs that he


212 THE ODD COUPLE

had assumed "that the Filipino guerrillas and the newly activated Army of the Philippine Commonwealth could take care of the rest of their country ... "^'^

Yet, at the same time that Savige was deploying his troops in the New Guinea Mandates, General Eichelberger and Admiral Barbey conducted more than forty amphibious operations, involving seven divisions of troops, in order to clear Cebu, Mindoro, Samar, Palawan, Negros, Mindanao and numerous other smaUer islands that had been occupied by the Japanese. ^

Following the landing at Lingayen, MacArthur used Krueger's Sixth Army to capture Manila and to clear the whole of the island of Luzon. In liberating Manila, he destroyed the most beautiful city in the Orient. This and the Central Philippines campaign cost many, many times more lives than those lost by the Australians in the island campaigns in 1945, and the vast majority of them were Filipino non-combatants.

In 1941, in order to protect the city of Manila and its people. General MacArthur had declared Manila an open city. He and aU of his troops had removed themselves to Corregidor and the city was occupied by thejapanese undamaged and with aU of its people alive and well. Apart from the harbour, which was clogged with sunken wrecks, Manila remained undamaged when the Americans landed on Luzon in 1945.

General Yamashita intended that it should remain so. He and his troops moved out of the city before it was threatened and he reopened his headquarters in the mountains north of Manila. Unfortunately, his orders went unheeded by Rear Admiral Sanji Iwabuchi, the local naval commander. Iwabuchi decreed that the Japanese naval garrison of 20 000 would defend Manila to the last man and the last round.^''

In the circumstances, this should have been irrelevant. There was no miUtary objective in Manila which demanded its capture.

FiUed with sunken wrecks, it Avould be months before the harbour would be fully functional and American forces could be adequately suppUed through alternative ports. But MacArthur had sworn to return, and his egomania demanded that this be to the island capital. Three divisions, the 1st Cavalry, the 37th Infantry and the 11th Airborne raced to be first to deliver him the prize. The Lion of Luzon


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 213

banned aerial bombing of the city lest careless bomb aimers damage

his lair atop the Manila Hotel or the suburban haciendas of his

pre-war friends, but artiUery is more selective and he placed no limit

on the number or the size of the guns his ground troops could use.

In overcoming the enemy, the Americans claim to have kiUed 16 665

Japanese. The 1171 Americans kiUed in this single action was more

than the 1st Australian Army lost in the whole of the "backyard war",

but this was a tiny fraction of the total Butcher's BiU. More than 100

000 civUian men, women and children died when MacArthur's forces

used 155 m m field guns, 8 inch howitzers and hundreds of artillery

pieces and tank guns of smaUer calibers as they fought their way into

the city street by street. Tens of thousands of rounds were fired and

the bombardment reduced the once beautiful city to rubble.^^ Warsaw

was fought over three times. Once when the Poles defended it against

the Germans, again when the Germans put down the people's rising

and again when they defended it against the Russians. O n the first

and last occasions it suffered indiscriminate bombing, and in 1944

bombardment by Russian heavy artillery. It was the only Allied city

in the world where war damage exceeded that done by MacArthur's

guns to Manila. Lt Cdr Harry Heath was aboard H M A S Manoora, the

first large ship to enter Manila Bay after the capture of the city. H e

remembered the destruction:

In the whole of Manila, the only buUding which seemed to be standing was the ManUa Hotel, on the waterfront. The Port War signal station was operating from the penthouse which someone told us had been Mac-Arthur's home before the war. A friendly Yank with a jeep gave me a guided tour of the city and everywhere it was the same scene of ultimate destruction. There was a remarkable contrast in the suburbs where the upper class FUipinos had their haciendas. These were untouched by the bombing (sic).^*

In a letter to his wife. General Eichelberger wrote, "there was

practicaUy nothing that hadn't been knocked down and in ruins . . .

there was nothing but graveyard . . . Manila, in effect, has ceased to

exist. . . "29

"Mopping u p " in the Philippines did no more to shorten the war

than did "mopping u p " in N e w Guinea and BougainviUe, and


214 THE ODD COUPLE

MacArthur had no more reason to "liberate" the PhiUppines than Blamey had to do likewise in the mandated territories.-''^ His haste to regain control of the islands had a great deal to do with the satisfaction of his own ego and may have borne an even closer relationship to his political aspirations. It was also of great political benefit to his pre-war FUipino friends such as the coUaborator newspaper owner Manuel Roxas, but like his "Reconnaissance in Force" at Los Negros, it had little or nothing to do with the ultimate defeat of Japan. According to Admiral Spruance and other commanders who mounted the I wo Jima and Okinawa operations, MacArthur's retention of two fuU armies and substantial naval resources for the clearance of the Philippines was a considerable hindrance to these operations and resulted in a higher level of casualties than would otherwise have been the case.

But the MacArthur Communique ensured that there would be no criticism of Chief Wise Eagle. Even though he was not present when it happened, the blame for the destruction of Manila was placed squarely upon General Yamashita. Ripping Yarns told horror stories of Japanese rapine and murder amid the burning ruins as the Americans were forced to reduce hastily created Japanese strongholds in city buildings. Soon after the war was over, MacArthur ensured that General Yamashita was tried and hung for these outrages. Roxas, who had coUaborated with thejapanese throughout the war,became the first post-war president of the Philippines after he and five thousand of his fellow collaborators were forgiven their sins.^'

But the Incredible Warrior saw the Australian mopping up in the mandates in quite a different light from his own. FoUowing an exchange of messages with the Australian prime minister, he wrote of Australia's backyard war:

1 and my headquarters have never favoured it, and whUe its execution has been successful and efficient in every way and worthy of every praise, I regard its initiation as having been unnecessary and inadvisable.-'

The Leader of the Opposition also questioned the need for the deployment in the islands. Speaking in the House of Representatives on 27 April 1945,just two days after Anzac Day, Mr Robert Menzies said:


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 215

I would feel better about our role in this war if our troops were engaged in defeating Japan where Japan Uves or in the reUeving from Japanese control of Malaya or the Netherlands East Indies.^^

He disclaimed authorship of the phrase "mopping-up operations",

used so derisively to describe the 1st AustraUan Army activities, and

pointed to its use in no less than 56 MacArthur communiques since

January.

Within a few days of Menzies comments, there was news of further

action — a fresh campaign which had General MacArthur's blessing.

It was received with enthusiasm by both the press and the people.

On 2 May 1945 headlines in Australian newspapers announced:

AIF LANDING IN BORNEO

MIDDLE EAST VETERANS STORM ASHORE

NEAR OIL PORT

Oboe One opened on 1 May at Tarakan, a smaU oil-soaked island

off Borneo's east coast, when the Australian 26th Brigade, part of the

9th Division, AIF, stormed ashore.^"*

The Oboe operations would later be described by at least one

revisionist historian as part of an "Unnecessary War","*' but few

Australians w h o took part in it considered this campaign to be

unnecessary at the time. AU were aware that somewhere in Borneo,

on Java and on the Asian mainland thousands of their comrades were

suffering in heUish P O W camps. To drive through the Indies and to

Malaya and to rescue them would be a crusade from which no true

blue Digger would flinch. Major Hassett's militiamen on BougainviUe

may have had doubts of the "worthwhUeness" of their campaign, but

the first waves at Tarakan went into battle with a song on their lips.

To the tune of the German ballad "LiU Marlene", they sang:

Here come the Aussies, to capture Tarakan This is just the kick off, we're heading for Japan,

You should see those grim faced men, and their mates, the R A N

We're coming from AustraUa ... to capture Tarakan.^^

There was an airfield on Tarakan from which it was intended that

fighters and ground-attack aircraft would support further Borneo


216 THE ODD COUPLE

operations. There was also a plan to use the oil from Tarakan's fields to fuel Allied ships.

Two thousand Tiger Marines defended the island wdth fanatic intensity and it was not until early July that Tarakan was cleared of Japanese. Neither the oilfields nor the airfield were ever of use in subsequent operations. The campaign cost the brigade 225 kiUed and another 696 wounded.

The Oboe plan required the other two brigades of the 9th Division to invade British North Borneo, with separate landings being made on Labuan Island and near Brooketon in Brunei Bay on 10 June. There was negligible resistance. Labuan was soon cleared ofjapanese, and aU of the major objectives on mainland British North Borneo were quickly overrun. Mopping-up operations continued until war's end. The two operations cost Australia 114 killed and 221 wounded.^'

General MacArthur arrived at Labuan on the morning of D-Day in USS Boise. He watched the landing from her decks, then, around midday, accompanied by General Morshead and his Air Commander, General George Kenney, he went ashore and took a stroU among the mountains of stores being unloaded on the beach. **

With the war in Europe drawing to a close, major units of the Royal Navy were assembling in the Pacific and, according to Mac-Arthur's plan, Brunei Bay would be the base from which they would operate. While the Australians were securing Brunei Bay, the main naval activity was centred around the Northern Pacific. By then, Iwo Jima and Okinawa were in Allied hands and carrier aircraft were about to attack thejapanese home islands. The Royal Navy had no intention of being left out of the action. They neither wanted nor needed a fleet anchorage at Brunei Bay, and no British ship ever used it.

Oboe Two was the last amphibious operation of World War II. The 7th Australian Division landed at Balikpapan on the south-east coast of Borneo on 1 July, just three weeks after the Brunei Bay landings. Pre-war, Balikpapan had been a major production centre for the SheU OU Company. Its refinery was capable of processing 15 000 000 barrels of oil per year, an output exceeded only by the company's instaUations at Palembang, the largest refinery in the East. MacArthur had declared that control of the oil resources of southern Borneo was the reason for the operation, but the oil was of no use unrefined, and


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 217

AUied bombers had long since reduced the Balikpapan refinery to a pile of rusting scrap metal.

General Blamey had never been very keen on the whole Borneo exercise, but by that time he was "out of the loop". In 1943 MacArthur had effectively short-circuited Blamey's authority as Commander AUied Land Forces by declaring the major American components to be a separate Task Force under an American general and placing them under his direct command. In 1945 he did it again, this time with Australian troops.

He declared 1 Australian Corps to be a Task Force, appointed Lt Gen Morshead to command it and placed it under his direct control. Blamey had no objection to the North Borneo operations, but he had never favoured an invasion of Balikpapan and he raised his objection with the Australian government.^'* His was not the only concern. In Washington the Joint Chiefs of Staff also queried the necessity for the lodgement so far south in order to capture a defunct oU instaUation. In fact, the Joint Chiefs saw little value in either the clearance of the Philippines or the Borneo operations.

The American official historian said of the Philippine operations: "It is somewhat of a mystery how and whence MacArthur derived the authority to use United States Forces to liberate one Philippine island after another."*"

The Joint Chiefs were similarly unenthusiastic about the Oboe plans, approving only three of them in the first instance and then holding back approval of Balikpapan, but MacArthur was unwiUing to sacrifice the Balikpapan operation and he wrote to MarshaU, "I believe that the canceUation ... wiU produce grave repercussions with the Austrahan government and people."'^'

By this time,John Curtin was dead and it was Prime Minister Ben Chifley to whom Blamey had addressed his objection to Balikpapan. Chifley had little affection for General Blamey, but the Australian Chiefs of Staff of the Navy and the Air Force and General Milford, in command of the 7th Division, had aU questioned the motive for capturing the wrecked port. Chifley relayed their views to MacArthur and impUed that Australian troops might not be avaUable. MacArthur neglected to mention the similar objections by the Joint Chiefs when he repUed:


218 THE ODD COUPLE

The Borneo campaign in aU of its phases has been ordered by the Joint Chiefs of Staff... I have ordered the 7th Division to a forward concentration ... The concentration [of forces] is in progress and it is not possible to substitute another division and execute the operation. The attack wiU go ahead unless the AustraUan Government withdraws the 7th Division from assignment to the SWPA. I am loath to beUeve that your government contemplates such action at this time ...''^

Since there was no channel of communication between the Joint Chiefs and the Australian government other than through Mac-Arthur, his deception of both parties remained undiscovered. The operation went ahead as scheduled with the 7th Division going ashore on the first of July.

This was by far the largest amphibious assault carried out by Australian troops and it was entirely successful. Since MacArthur had argued so strongly for the operation to proceed, he felt obliged to be present at the landing. Once again he went ashore. In one of the last batches of Ripping Yarns of the war, stories based on MacArthur's communique claimed that he came under fire but there is nothing in the Australian historical record which suggests this.''-'

The operation was routine, but nevertheless 229 Austrahans lost their lives at Balikpapan, and another 634 were wounded. Less than five weeks later, the Enola Gay dropped a new kind of bomb on Hiroshima and thejapanese saw unquestionable proof that Armageddon was at hand. Terms for unconditional surrender were offered. While the Japanese government pondered these, another bomb feU on Nagasaki. They quickly made a decision and it was aU over

For almost four years the people of America, Australia, Britain and their aUies had been bombarded with propaganda branding Emperor Hirohito a war criminal who must be brought to trial at war's end, but the preservation of his person and status were both crucial to the Japanese acceptance of the conditions attached to the surrender Hindsight offers no enUghtenment as to the wisdom of this, but the consensus among the troops was that had the AUies declared an intention to catch and kiU the Emperor, thejapanese might weU have fought to the last man, whether at home in thejapanese islands, in a remote jungle hideout on BougainviUe or in Borneo. Post-war, it was discovered that forces in these areas had numbered almost half a


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 219

miUion. Hirohito's message of surrender turned fanatic warriors into docUe labourers overnight and the Diggers whose task it would have been to clean out these islands, and the AustraUan sailors who had been warned that their ships would be needed in the invasion of Japan,'*'' were just as pleased to see the head of Japan's Royal Family remain in his moated palace."'

And so the time was ripe for the Australian government to reap the fruits of victory. At MacArthur's urging, the country had made great sacrifices in order to support his drive to return to the Philippines. The Austrahan campaign to secure the Huon Peninsula was the basis of his emergence to chaUenge the US Navy for primacy in the Pacific. Although few if any members of the government were aware of it, the discovery by Australian engineers of the code books at Sio was the very foundation of the island-hopping campaign which created the legend of MacArthur's genius. It was time for Australia to present the biU, and they had every right to anticipate a willing endorsement by Destiny's Child of any Australian claim to consideration as most favoured Ally in America's dealings with thejapanese and that his good offices would ensure that Australia's voice would be heard at the Peace Table.

Notes

1. Berryman Diary, 13 March 1945. 2. John Hetherington, Blamey: Controversial Soldier, AWM and AGPS,

Canberra, 1973, p. 357. 3. Hetherington, p. 357. 4. Gavin Long, Tlie Final Campaigns, AWM, 1952, p. 26. 5. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, p. 234. 6. Ronald Spector, Eagle against the Sun, Free Press, NY, 1985, p. 317. 7. Long, p. 23n. -8. Maj V C. Thomas MC, G2 Land Ops HQ to author. David Horner,

High Command, Melbourne University Press, 1992, p. 388 et seq. Signal B230.

9. Clayton James, Tlie Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1975, p 714.

10. Long, p 278. 11. ibid., p 386. 12. ibid., p 242.


220 THE ODD COUPLE

13. ibid., p 237. 14. ibid., passim. 15. ibid., p 93. 16. Brig General Thorpe,East Wind Rain, Gambit Inc.,Boston, 1969, p. 93. 17. Long, pp. 37-38. 18. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 12 January 1945. 19. Brisbane Courier-Mail, 1 March 1945. 20. Samuel E. Morison, Tlie Two Ocean War, Little Brown and Co., Boston,

1963, p 264. 21. Lt Col Bob Breen, Battle of Maryang 5dtt, AustraUan Army Training

Command, 1994, passim. 22. General Sir Francis Hassett, letter to author, 14 October 1996. 23. Hetherington, p. 358. He quotes a letter from Blamey to Curtin, 5 AprU

1945. 24. James, Tlie Years of MacArtliur,Vol. II,pp. 737-38. 25. ibid., pp. 740 et seq. 26. ibid., p. 626. 27. ibid., pp. 631 etseq. 28. Lt Cdr Harry Heath RAN (ret.), conversations with author, August

1996. 29. Dear Miss Em ... A coUection of Eichelberger's letters edited by D.

Luvass, Greenwood, Westport Connecticut, 1972, pp. 230-31. 30. James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, pp. 631 et seq. He quotes Samuel E.

Morison, Liberation of the Philippines,Little Brown, Boston, 1954, p. 168. Iwo Jima: Amphibious Epic (Washington), 1954, Forrestal Diaries, Mills ed. p. 26.

31. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.U, pp. 691 etseq. 32. Horner, p. 403. He quotes a letter from MacArthur to Chifley, 20 May

1945, Sutherland papers. 33. Report Brisbane Courier-Mail, 28 AprU 1945. 34. Long, pp. 412 et seq., photo. 35. Peter Charlton, The Unnecessary War, MacmiUan, Melbourne, 1989,

passim. 36. As learned by the author, aboard HMAS Manoora, AprU 1945, song of

the 2/48th Battalion, Bluey Corrigan and Curly Colby, Derrick's Platoon.

37. Long, p. 501. 38. Herman GUI, iMN. /5'42-r^45, AWM, Canberra, 1968,pp 641^2 . 39. Hetherington, p. 365. 40. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol.U,p.738.


VIRTUE OF FOOLS 221

41. Horner, p 356. Signal MacArthur to MarshaU, 20 AprU 1945, RG4 MacArthur Memorial.

42. Horner, pp 405-406. 43. James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. II, p. 762. GiU, p 652. Long, p 520. 44. Signal Barbey to HMAS Manoora, 24 July 1945. 45. Author's recoUections.


CHAPTER 14

TABLE FOR ONE

Only the dead have seen the end of war ... Plato

WAR is but politics pursued by other means and in 1944, with the war entering its final phase but no end in sight, poUtical

policy demanded that Australia find active employment for the largest army that it had ever raised. As a result, four divisions of infantry were deployed in New Guinea and the adjacent islands, while MacArthur planned to use the remainder of Australia's forces in a militarily redundant campaign in the East Indies.

Using perfect hindsight, at least one Australian historian termed these campaigns the "unnecessary war",' but given the record, it is difficult to find common ground with a belief that any war might be absolutely necessary, except that, geneticaUy war is part of the human condition and has been since the beginning of time. Perhaps the whole of the war that the world saw contested from 1939 onwards was unnecessary. It can be argued that it was not a single war but several wars aU fought for different reasons and that most of them were unnecessary, but given the state of world politics in the 1930s, it might rather be termed the "unavoidable war", a sum of its unavoidable parts.

In terms of any contribution they might have made to defeating thejapanese, the campaigns fought by the Australians in 1945 were unnecessary, of that there is no doubt, but both the defence of Australia and the defeat of the enemy had long since ceased to be the


TABLE FOR ONE 223

Australian government's main agenda items. From a strictly Australian point of view and measured by any threat Japan posed to Australia, the war was over when thejapanese were defeated at Midway in 1942. In Papua, Austrahan Diggers fought battles to implement American strategy rather than Australian.

MacArthur's campaign in the PhiUppines was no more necessary than General Blamey's in the Mandates, but just as it was fought to shape the kind of victory that MacArthur wanted, the island campaigns were fought in an endeavour to create a perceivable measure of victory for Australia; and while Australia's defence policy remained unchanged, continued campaigning was unavoidable, whether necessary or not.

In 1945 Australians chased, caught and kiUed thejapanese in New Guinea, New Britain and on BougainviUe and they stormed the Borneo beaches in order to support the war policy of their government, a policy based on what it considered to be sound advice from General MacArthur. In 1943 the government adopted the policy in the belief that, unless there was a perception among the AUies of a significant Australian involvement in the war, the country would be ignored when it came time to settle the peace. This was the word of the great General; it was the Gospel of the Day and Curtin, Shedden and company dared not doubt it.

In 1945 the advice given by MacArthur still controlled their destiny, and in pursuit of this principle the prime minister had supported its author unreservedly. John Curtin was dead and buried by war's end. Had he lived, he would have been disappointed to learn that all of his support and loyalty availed his country not a jot. There was to be no quid pro quo to be had from the General. So high did MacArthur's stock stand at war's end that he had no need to display gratitude to anyone and his sword knew no friend.

When the shooting stopped, it was expected that Admiral Nimitz would be appointed to command an occupation force in the conquered land, but to the surprise of almost everyone except the poUticians, President Truman appointed General MacArthur to become Supreme Commander Allied Powers. The fact was that his appointment had nothing to do with his qualifications for the task at hand. It had everything to do with stifling his well-known ambition


224 THE ODD COUPLE

to become the next Republican President of the United States of America. The Hero of Bataan had expected to remain in command of forces in occupation of the Philippines. He hoped to be appointed High Commissioner to his adopted homeland as a preliminary to his triumphant return to the United States to seek the presidency. Many of the decisions he had made in the Philippines and much that he had done there had been in anticipation of this, but when his appointment as Supreme Commander AUied Powers was announced, he didn't tarry long in Manila. Within two weeks of the war ending he flew out to take possession of the conquered land and it was his staff who made the arrangements for the surrender ceremony which took place in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.

General Blamey led a contingent of admirals, generals and air marshals to represent Australia at the signing of the surrender document and similar delegations were there from aU of the AUied nations. Even the Russians were there. They had been very reluctant starters, with their declaration of war against Japan taking place on 10 August, only a few days before both sides ceased fire, but it was an involvement that was to have serious consequences five years later.^

The American delegation was a large one. All of MacArthur's Army and Corps commanders were present, and most of his personal staff. Admirals Halsey and Spruance were there with their staffs too and so were the two released captives. General Wainw^right who had fought MacArthur's lost battle on Bataan, and the British General Percival who had surrendered Singapore. The US Navy was permitted to provide the theatre; their newest battleship, USS Missouri, was anchored in Tokyo Bay for the occasion. Admiral Nimitz was there as President Truman's representative, but MacArthur represented MacArthur and there could be only one star. MacArthur wnrote the script and, despite being in disgrace with his master of more than six years and booked to return to the States within a few months,^ General Sutherland was aUowed to stage manage the whole fixture.

From the time that the Japanese delegation was piped aboard Missouri, until Destiny's ChUd rose from signing the Instrument of Surrender, it was entirely a MacArthur production. His was the last signature affixed to the document and as he stood at the table after he had signed, he proclaimed, "Let us pray that peace has now been


TABLE FOR ONE 225

restored to the world and that God wiU preserve it always. These proceedings are now closed.""*

Indeed they were, and weU and truly closed at that. The snowy quarterdeck of the Missouri was awash with AUied brass, but no one was left in doubt as to who won the war, nor were the AUies long left in doubt as to who would command the peace. If the Australian government or anyone else was of the view that there might be a peace conference, a summit meeting or any other forum at which the future of Japan might be discussed, they were to be sadly disappointed. The efforts of the AIF had been in vain; there would be no seat for any Australian at any peace proceedings other than the folding chairs occupied by Blamey and his associates on the deck of the Missouri. Blamey had queued with the representatives of the other AUies to add his signature to the instrument, and that brief moment that it took him to write Thomas Blamey on the parchment was as long as any Australian was ever to sit at anything which might have resembled a peace table.

There is no doubt that MacArthur enjoyed his role as the White Mikado, the American Caesar who exercised a benevolent dictatorial power over Japan during the time of its reconstruction. There is no doubt either that the Japanese people were grateful, and they had every right to be. Using their commercial strengths, the work ethic of Japan and the amazing kick start the Americans and MacArthur gave to their economy in the years foUowing World War II, the Zaibatsu, the close-knit community ofjapanese industrialists, did weU. Haff a century after MacArthur first set foot on Atsugi airfield, an examination of the aims of those long-dead generals who took Japan to war faUs to reveal one that has not been achieved:

Japan's 100 Year War Aims • To gain favourable access to raw materials. • To dominate trade in South-East Asia and the Pacific. • To drive Europeans from their enclaves in China. • To oust Britain from India, Malaya and Singapore. • To oust the Dutch from the East Indies. • To oust the United States from the PhiUppines. • To oust the French from Indo China. • To break the Unks between Australia and Britain.


226 THE ODD COUPLE

• To smash the White Australia PoUcy. • To eUminate the danger of an attack by the Soviet Union.^

For five years MacArthur commanded an AUied Occupation Force in Japan and was treated with aU the respect due to his status, which was that of an absolute monarch. For Sir Thomas Blamey, there was to be no such post-war glory.

At war's end there was much that General Blamey could have done for the Australian Army, but little that he was aUowed to do. Never comfortable with a Commander-in-Chief whose political ideology most of them heartily detested, the Labor Government had retained him as Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Army for just one reason: he was the best man for the job. Despite constant criticism, conspiracies against his rule, open demonstrations against him by his troops'' and the appalling rumours that abounded about his personal life, Tom Blamey stuck to his task for the same reason.

It was his certainty of his pre-eminence among his peers and the knowledge that any replacement might not be up to the job that caused him to cling tenaciously to his high office despite the efforts of those who would see him replaced. Blamey was weU aware that he had been accused of sacrificing RoweU to protect his own position. He knew, too, that MacArthur had never been happy v^th the arrangement that saw an Australian as Commander of Allied Land Forces. Even after he had managed to reduce this to a titular appointment rather than a real one, MacArthur would have been weU pleased if no Australian general stood between him and the free use ofthe AIF

Supported by Curtin against aU criticism through the most dangerous part of the war, Blamey lost his support later. On a three-month journey to America and England in 1944 during which he had been in close company with Curtin and his eminence gris, Shedden, he had been left in no doubt whatever that he had faUen out of favour with the prime minister Curtin would not fly, and on the journey to the United States in the American ship LwrZ/ne, Blamey flaunted the rules of a navy condemned to temperance. He laid in an abundant stock of strong drink before saiUng, and then kept open house for his shipboard friends during the voyage, often untU the


TABLE FOR ONE 227

smaU hours of the morning. Curtin was not only a teetotaUer and a reformed alcoholic, he was also something of a puritan. That certain of Blamey's party guests were AustraUan wives of American servicemen, war brides traveUing to their future homes, did nothing to improve his image and Curtin's opinion of Blamey never recovered from the nadir it reached during the journey. Blamey would have had Uttle patience with Curtin's narrow view. His world was one where rank had its privileges, and he exercised those of a commander-in-chief wdthout restraint. It was said that Blamey clung to his high office because of the lifestyle that it afforded. Perhaps he did enjoy this to the fuU, but the true fact was that he took stock of the credentials of the available alternatives and believed that his duty to Australia demanded that he remain Commander-in-Chief. No doubt Mac-Arthur would have taken a similar view of his own position had it ever been chaUenged.

There were a number of candidates proposed to replace Blamey from time to time, Rowell among them, who were considered by some to be better fitted for or more deserving of Blamey's position than the incumbent, and there is evidence that at least one of these was given the nod for the job by the Army minister and possibly the prime minister In 1945, just before taking off from Brisbane on the plane trip which ended in his death on 5 March, Lt Gen George Vasey rang his friend Col Reg PoUard who was then at the Australian Army Staff CoUege at Cabarlah, near Toowoomba in Queensland. He told him that he was on his way north to become GOC 6th Division, but that the appointment would not last long as he would shortly return to Melbourne to be appointed Commander-in-Chief.' By the nature of their calling, and by tradition, men who choose a mihtary career are seldom supporters of radical poUtical parties, and their definition of radical includes aU of those ideologies that are not conservative. Blamey's nature and disposition, his reputation and his love of good living have often been blamed for his estrangement from Australia's wartime government, but even though they lacked comparable lead in their saddle bags, Lavarack, RoweU or even the popular "Bloody George" Vasey may have fared no better in his job.* It is unlikely that died-in-the-wool trade union men like Frank Forde and Ben Chifley or pacifists Uke John Curtin would have grown any fonder of any of


228 THE ODD COUPLE

them than they were of Blamey. But above that, Blamey had Utde confidence in the government to make the best choice and he was well aware that among the most favoured candidates there were possible wrong choices who would be disastrous for the Army'

With the war over, and having reached an age and rank where career ambitions could have little meaning, only duty bound Blamey to his post. He thought that he would play a major role in post-war planning for the future defence of Australia, just as his mentor, Monash, had done in the 1920s. Perhaps the Army Minister, Frank Forde, gave him that impression when he refused him permission to accept an invitation to attend a national gathering of the American Legion to be held in Washington in mid-November Forde wrote and told him that his presence in Australia at that time was essential.

Then, within a fortnight, the Minister offered his Commander-in-Chief the ultimate insult. He wrote again and told him that the government would accept his resignation and nominated a deadline. In accordance with Forde's instructions. General Sir Thomas Blamey left his office at Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Road, Melbourne, at close of business, 30 November 1945.

But there were many routine matters which demanded the Commander-in-Chief's attention, and the deadline set by Frank Forde's snarler'" was impossible for both Blamey and the Army to meet. He had to be given leave to attend to the completion of the paperwork attached to his tenure of office. When he was finaUy discharged from the army on 31 January 1946, he had given 39 years and four months to the service of his country.

Despite their differences during the war, MacArthur had a high opinion of Sir Thomas Blamey. In his memoirs, he would refer to his wartime Australian subordinate as "a veteran ofhighest quality"," but he demonstrated his regard for the retired warrior in more practical fashion in 1948 when he invited him to visit Tokyo. Blamey traveUed to Iwakuni in southern Honshu in mid-September, courtesy of the FCA.AF Courier Service, and was whisked away to Tokyo in Mac-Arthur's personal DC4, "Bataan". His month-long stay in Japan included a busy round of social engagements. A guest of General Sir Horace Robertson, Conmiander-in-Chief of the British Corrmion-wealth Occupation Force, at his headquarters at Kure for a week.


TABLE FOR ONE 229

General Blamey made an informal visit to two of the infantry

battalions at the adjacent town of Hiro.

Brigadier J im Shelton, a Dunt roon graduate w h o served with

distinction in Korea and later in Vietnam, was a young captain and

adjutant of 66 Battalion when General Blamey made his visit. He

recaUs:

He turned up at the unit accompanied by Red Robbie.'^ I •was very impressed. The General didn't want to meet the officers or to be entertained in the mess, choosing rather to take a stroU around the company Unes and meet the Diggers. He impressed me by the way he knew the names of those he met and used them in addressing them. After all of the stories I had heard, I was pleasantly surprised at his easy friendly manner, and I -wUl always remember his good humour and the level gaze of his briUiant blue eyes ... '

The former Commander - in -Chief went on to visit 67 Battalion,

later 3 Battalion, P J ^ R , and the first Australian infantry unit to serve

in Korea. Tom Blamey was no longer a well man and it is likely that

the activity of the visit to 66 Battalion had tired him. Lt Col Bernard

O'Dowd, a company commander with 67 Battalion, remembers that:

... there were no special honours paid to Blamey. In fact, we didn't kno^v he was in the country untU he turned up one afternoon to take tea with us. He looked very tired and not at aU weU. In the midst of proceedings, he feU asleep. We stood looking at each other for a time and then tiptoed quietly out and left the old boy to be cared for by his aide.'"*

Notes

1. Peter Charlton, Tlie Unnecessary War, MacmUlan, Melbourne, 1989,

passim.

2. Samuel E. Morison, Tlie Two Ocean War,Little Brown and Co.,Boston,

1963, p 573.

3. R Rogers, Tlie Bitter Years, Praegar & Co., NY, 1990, passim.

4. Clayton James, Years of MacArthur,Vol. II, Houghton Mifflin, 1975, pp.

790-91.

5. Barbara Winter, Tlie Intrigue Master, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 1994,

p 268.

6. At Moratai, on Anzac Day 1945, author's recoUections.


230 THE ODD COUPLE

7. As told to author by Brig Ted Serong, DSO MC, who was with Col PoUard when he took Gen Vasey's caU.

8. David Horner, Blamey, AUen and Unwin, Sydney, 1998, p. 274. 9. Shortly after RoweU's dismissal in 1942, Maj Gen Robertson was

interviewed by members of Cabinet. It is said that when he walked into the room with them, their support for his appointment was assured, but after half an hour's conversation, they had changed their minds. Conversation between the author and Brigadier Ted Serong.

10. A coUoquial term to describe any dismissal where service is found to be unsatisfactory; derived from an acronym for "Services No Longer Required".

11. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HiU, NY, 1964, p. 157. 12. Shelton to author, 10 November 1998. Red Robbie was the nickname

by which General Sir Horace Robertson was universaUy known. 13. Conversation, Shelton and author, 18 December 1998. 14. O'Dowd to author, 10 November 1998.


CHAPTER 15

ASTRAY IN ORIENTAL CALIFORNIA ...

"Should MacArthur suggest that a battaUon could walk on water, there might be someone ready to give it a try."

Gen Matthew Ridgway September 1950

KOB^A occupies a peninsula which dangles from Asia's northwestern coast like an inverted left thumb and it was a Japanese

possession from 1905 until the end of World War II. Its existence as a Japanese colony was given little thought during the war, but with the occupation of Japan there also rose the need to occupy Korea. FoUowing their belated entry into the Pacific War, the Russians quickly overran the country and, in making arrangements with them for its liberation, some minor functionary in Washington drew a line across the peninsula at the 38th paraUel and suggested that it would be convenient if that part north of the parallel was to remain occupied by the Russians, who had occupied aU of Manchuria as weU as Korea, and that to the south be the responsibility of the American Army. South Korea thus became part of the fiefdom of the American Caesar in Japan.

Considered an adequate arrangement in 1945, within a few years the handiwork of the Washington bureaucrat had led to South Korea and North Korea being at ideological daggers drawn, and it was the Communist North which held the sharpest dagger Armed to the teeth with Russian weapons that included heavy artiUery and more


232 THE ODD COUPLE

than 150 exceUent tanks, the North Korean army threatened war against the South which had been provided with far fewer American armaments and of a kind useful only for deahng firmly with citizens who disagreed with government policy from time to time.'

With one of the more populous countries on earth to govern, MacArthur showed little interest in this ancient land, but in 1948 he made the brief flight across the YeUow Sea to the capital, Seoul, for the inauguration of the American puppet, Syngman Rliee. He added a new dimension to any beUicosity that existed locaUy when he told the assemblage that "an artificial barrier has divided your land ... This must, and shaU be torn down."

No doubt he made a considerable impression on the new president, too, when he added in a stage-whispered aside overheard by pressmen present, "If Korea should ever be attacked by the Communists, Mr President, I will defend it as I would California."^

That his promise was in conflict with his government's foreign policy concerned him not at aU, and in 1950 he was granted the opportunity to keep it. On 25 June, and without warning, the North Korean army drove south and within a week the South Korean Army was in disarray, MacArthur's sotto voce undertaking to defend the Oriental California was dusted off and American aid called for. On 30 June MacArthur received instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff requiring him to provide air and naval support for the South Koreans, and by early July it had become an American war sponsored by the United Nations. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, just a few months past his seventieth birthday and ten years beyond the retiring age for ordinary solcUers, was appointed Supreme Commander of the United Nations Forces in Korea. The Army Chief of Staff, General Joe CoUins, flew to Tokyo and presented him with a United Nations flag. At a ceremony atop the Dai Ichi building this banner was flown and MacArthur spoke briefly in response to Collins' presentation: "I accept this flag with the deepest emotion. It symbolises one of the greatest efforts man has ever made to free himself."

Of course, it never was a United Nations command. FoUowdng his return to America, MacArthur told a senate committee:

My connection with the UN was largely nominal. There were provisions


ASTRAY IN ORIENTAL CALIFORNIA... 233

made that the entire control of my command and everything I did came from our own Chiefs of Staff. The controls over me were exactly the same as though the forces under me were aU American. AU of my communications were to the American high command.-'

InitiaUy, the war was the Philippines 1941 revisited. The tardcs of the North Koreans sliced through the South Korean army like a hot knife through butter and within a month their remnants, reinforced with some hastily assembled American forces, were boxed in a tight perimeter around the port of Pusan. It was a dramatic moment, but this time no enemy fleet barred the way to MacArthur's reinforcement and there were no enemy bombers to destroy his air force. The General prepared a slashing riposte. Using the 1st Marine Division, he mounted an amphibious assault at Inchon, almost 300 kUometres behind the enemy's forward defences and only a few kilometres from Seoul. It was Los Negros aU over again. The MacArthur genius had prevailed once more and the free world feU at his feet.

In his book, American Caesar, MacArthur's biographer, WiUiam Manchester, declares that this operation was carried out against the advice of everyone connected with it, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and not excluding the General's own staff. An anonymous Australian poet had once suggested that one day, "the Lord will hear a deep voice say, 'Move over God, its Mac'."

Around the Supreme Commander's GHQ, God had long since moved over Most of MacArthur's senior staff. Generals WiUoughby, Whitney and company, were the self-same people who had served him during his World War II campaigns. The idea of the obsequious Whitney, the sycophantic WiUoughby or anyone else who served under them arguing with MacArthur verges on the bizarre. General CoUins and Admiral Sherman, respectively Army and Navy Chiefs of Staff, headed a delegation to MacArthur to discuss the proposed operation. The resulting get-together was more a Royal audience than a command conference. MacArthur made of it a combination history lesson and sales talk. After displaying and discarding the alternatives to a landing at Inchon, he told the assembly:

The prestige of the Western world hangs in the balance. Oriental milUons


234 THE ODD COUPLE

are watching the outcome ... We fight Europe's war with arms, whUe (in Europe) it is stiU confined to words ...''

As ever, the General's dramatics oversold the action. The landing was carried out in conformity with War Plan SL-17, on file at the Pentagon, and prepared against just such a contingency by a staff officer, Lt Col Donald McB. Curtis, in 1949. Multiple copies were requested by MacArthur's GHQ on 26 June, the day after the North Koreans crossed the border'' Overwhelming force was used, and the landing was routine, but that didn't prevent it being perceived as yet another unique representation of the MacArthur genius.

When the caU went out for other members of the United Nations to send assistance to MacArthur, Australia was the first to respond. An lUAAF squadron already in Japan as part of the occupation force joined the Americans in providing air support. Three Battahon, Royal Australian Regiment, well below strength and also a residual of the occupation, was quickly brought up to fuU war establishment. When the Regular Army failed to produce sufficient trained soldiers, hastily recruited ex-Diggers from World War II made up the numbers and the battalion was sent to join a British brigade which had arrived in Korea from Hong Kong.

Events moved quickly. MacArthur's landing at Inchon and his subsequent triumphal declaration that aU organised resistance had ceased preceded the arrival of the Australians. When the officers and men of Three Battalion marched down the gangway at Pusan on 28 September 1950 it seemed that the war was over and that the Australians would once more be relegated to "mopping up".

As had so often been the case in World War II, MacArthur's announcement was premature in the extreme,^' and the vast blaze of publicity with which his landing at Inchon had been greeted was to have a far-reaching effect. According to US Army Chief of Staff, General J. Lawton CoUins, after Inchon:

... the subsequent prestige of General MacArthur was so overpowering that the Chiefs hesitated thereafter to question later plans ... which should have been chaUenged ... [MacArthur] seemed to march Uke a Greek hero of old to an unkind and inexorable fate.'

Lion of Luzon, Master of Manus, MacArthur had now become the


ASTRAY IN ORIENTAL CALIFORNIA... 235

Idol of Inchon. General Ridgway, CoUins' deputy, was quoted as saying, "Should MacArthur suggest that a battaUon could walk on water, there might be someone ready to give it a try"*

With the North Koreans cleared from his fiefdom, inspired by the heady triumph at Inchon, and despite clear warnings of intervention, MacArthur determined to risk war with China to unify Korea.'* As many as 450 000 Chinese soldiers were massed on China's Manchurian border with North Korea,'" but MacArthur ignored them and his army was over the Imjin River into North Korea on 10 October"

On 15 October President Truman and General MacArthur met on Wake Island for a conference. The General told his President that "formal resistance will end throughout North Korea by Thanksgiving [late November] and it is my hope that I can withdraw Eighth Army to Japan by Christmas".

Even as he spoke,six Chinese field armies,more than 180 000 men, were deployed in the ravines and gullies of the towering spine of mountains that divide North Korea into two parts. They had made their way across the Yalu river, moving by night and hiding camouflaged by day, and they waited undetected on the flank of Mac Arthur's advancing army. With two Army Corps available, MacArthur split them and sent one north along the roads which flanked the west coast of the peninsula, the other by sea to land at Hungnam on the east coast. It was a scandalous display of military ineptitude. Had the Chinese General Lin Pao been able to order the deployment of the UN Forces, he wouldn't have changed a thing.

Leading the western prong of MacArthur's pincer was the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade. The Brigade fought six actions in Uttle more than a week and by 29 October were at Chongju, only 70 kilometres from the Manchurian border. By this time the Chinese were in the war, in strength, and the Idol of Inchon was in big trouble. Even as the Australians led the 8th Army and blasted their way across the Taenyong BJver on 26 October, Hanson Baldwin was reporting in the New York Times that there was a force of 200 000 Chinese already deployed in Korea.

If General MacArthur was told of this, he took no heed.

As Three Battalion approached the heights before Chongju to


236 THE ODD COUPLE

disperse the final resistance of the North Korean army on 28 October, a South Korean unit less than 60 kilometres to their right was being mauled by a Chinese force which seemed to come from nowhere.'^

This was overlooked in Doug's communique that day.

On 30 October the Austrahan battalion's War Diary recorded that the Republic of Korea's (ROK) soldiers were "heavily engaged with a fiercely resisting enemy".'^ There was worse to come. The Marines serving with X Corps on the East Coast were in heavy contact with Chinese troops.'"*

Against neghgible resistance, the 6th ROK Division actuaUy reached the Manchurian border, 140 kilometres north-east of the 27 Brigade position. Then, while moving north to join the main body on the Yalu Paver, a ROK Regiment was totaUy destroyed in an ambush at Onjong, 50 kilometres south of its divisional headquarters. The Chinese then proceeded to disperse the rest of the Division.'^

While the victorious AustraUans took their ease at Chongju, basking in the warmth of the autumn sun, elements of the United States 1st Cavalry Division were advancing toward the Yalu to the rescue of the 6th ROK Division. At Unsan, 80 kilometres to the right rear of the Australian position, the 1st Cavalry Division came under attack. In occupation of the Tokyo area since 1945, the Cavalry was Caesar's Praetorian Guard. When on Palace Guard, off-duty members often joined the MacArthurs to watch the evening movie screening. This time MacArthur got the message.'* From the Dai Ichi came the word that the General had acknowledged that a new foe had entered the lists. The fact was reported in the New York Times newspaper: "Chinese Communist hordes, attacking on horse and foot to the sound of bugle caUs, cut up Americans and South Koreans at Unsan today in an Indian style massacre."'''

The number of soldiers in a Chinese horde, or its scale of equipment, is unclear, but it was more than sufficient for the task at hand. It was "Bug Out" time. By the first week in December, the whole of the Eighth Army was back below the 38th paraUel.

Following this defeat, MacArthur became Cassandra. The whole tone of the Ripping Yarns dispensed from Tokyo changed dramatically. "Home by Christmas" had been his promise in October A month later the MacArthur PR machine was caUing for the evacuation of


ASTRAY IN ORIENTAL CALIFORNIA ... 237

Korea, although he did suggest an alternative. On 30 December MacArthur wrote to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and offered to start World War III:

Should a policy determination be reached by our government or through it by the United Nations to recognise the state of war which has been forced upon us by the Chinese authorities and to take retaUatory measures within our capabUities, we could (1) blockade the coast of China; (2) destroy through naval gunfire and air bombardment China's industrial

capacity to wage war; (3) secure reinforcements from the NationaUst China garrison on For

mosa to strengthen our position in Korea; and (4) release existing restrictions upon the Formosan garrison for diver

sionary action, possibly leading to counter-invasion against vulnerable areas of the Chinese mainland.'*

On 4 January the Australians provided the rearguard for the evacuation of Seoul. After the last southbound vehicle crossed the last remaining bridge over the Han River, engineers used explosives to blow down two of its spans.

On 10 January MacArthur was predicting the destruction of his Army. He informed the Joint Chiefs that "under the conditions imposed upon the command in Korea its present miUtary position is untenable.""

A few days before the evacuation of Seoul, the Eighth Army Commander, General Walton Walker, was killed in a traffic accident and General Matthew Ridgway took his place. Ridgway disagreed with MacArthur. He discarded any plans to evacuate the country and beheved he could defeat the Chinese and retake Seoul. He then went ahead and proved his point. This was of some comfort to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from then on MacArthur's credibility with them and with the President ceased to exist.^^

Commencing with the loss of his Air Force in 1942, MacArthur's rrUlitary sins were so many and of such magnitude as to have had a lesser individual sacked several times over, but although battered, and perhaps slightly bent, his sword remained unbroken. His immense reputation, his stature as a former US Army Chief of Staff and one of the major figures of World War II, and the aura of genius which


238 THE ODD COUPLE

post-Inchon publicity had generated aU served to preserve him in command. But it was not for long, although in the end it was his pen and not his sword that brought him undone.

In August 1950 the respected Veterans of Foreign Wars had v^ritten to MacArthur asking him to send a message to be read at their annual "encampment". With a lifetime of soldierly experience to draw upon, MacArthur could have chosen from a vast library of taU tales to teU, and even one or two that were true, none of them controversial. Instead, he despatched a treatise which outlined aU that was wrong about Truman's foreign poUcy and which contained the words, "We fight Europe's war with arms, while [in Europe] it is still confined to words".

When it appeared in print, the President was furious and gave "serious thought to replacing him with General Bradley" there and then.2' But planning for the landing at Inchon was then at a critical stage and such a change of command posed far too many difficulties.

Then in March 1951, with both his reputation and his credibility in shreds, MacArthur again put pen to paper. When asked for his view of the situation by a Republican congressman, Mr Joseph Martin, his reply contained an updated version of his well-worn party piece:

... here in Asia is where the Communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest, and that we have joined the issue thus raised on the battlefield; that here we fight Europe's war -with arms whUe the diplomats there stiU fight it with words; that if we lose the war to Communism in Asia the faU of Europe is inevitable; win it and Europe most probably would avoid war and yet preserve freedom ... there is no substitute for victory^^

Congressman Martin read the MacArthur letter in the House and released it to the media. If Joe sought maximum effect, his timing was almost MacArthurian.^-^ The President decided that the Lion of Luzon had roared once too often and he would have to go, but he also discovered that sacking a general who talks too much is a little more compUcated than firing a White House cook who gets drunk and burns the dinner. Deliberations with the Joint Chiefs and other advisers were required.2'' Truman was impatient, but stiU the awesome



MacArthur charisma lingered. A hurriedly convened meeting of the Joint Chiefs discussed this insubordination based on three options: sack him, send a "senior officer" to Tokyo to talk to him and explain in detail the government's foreign policy, or write him a letter suggesting that his actions were embarrassing the government. A higher-level conference in the Oval Office also held an indecisive discussion.

Under Roosevelt, no disgrace attached to MacArthur's failure in the Philippines. In 1945 Truman had diarised comments which suggested that he considered MacArthur little more than a charlatan, and then, because he saw in Chief Wise Eagle a potential rival for the 1948 Presidential election, he installed him in Japan in a position of power unparaUeled in US Army history. Neither the outrageously ridiculous deployment after Inchon nor its disastrous consequences had drawn substantive criticism; nor had his abortive "Home for Christmas" campaign or the offer of the World War III option seen any move made against him. But on 8 April, and while his advisers StiU dithered over the means to sack the General, Harry Truman made up his mind and, like Sir Thomas Blamey, MacArthur "copped a snarler".

Word of the decision to sack MacArthur leaked to the press. On 11 April, while the MacArthurs were entertaining guests at lunch in the Embassy in Tokyo, the faithful major domo, Sid Huff, heard the news over the radio. It has been said that tears flowed down the Colonel's cheeks as he delivered the bad news to the family^'' The scene caUed for a stiff upper lip and the Beau Sabreur of the AEF read it to perfection. There was no change in his expression, no hesitation as he turned to his wife and said, "We're going home at last,Jeanie".

In Australia, Robert Menzies had returned to government at the head of his newly created Liberal Party at the end of 1949, and six months later Sir Thomas Blamey was promoted to Field Marshal, the equivalent rank to that of Five Star General to which MacArthur had been promoted in December 1944. The promotion was gazetted on 8 June 1950, just a few weeks before MacArthur embarked on his final campaign. Ironically, it was General Sir Sydney RoweU who was required to announce the promotion. The regular officers held the


240 THE ODD COUPLE

ascendency in the post-war army and RoweU was the head of his service as Chief of the General Staff.

A field marshal never retires, and with Sir Thomas Blamey's appointment went a substantial salary and other privileges commensurate with the rank,but Blamey had Uttle time to enjoy them. Within a fortnight he became gravely iU, and within a year he was dead. In Melbourne, 4000 soldiers took part in the ceremonies which saw him laid to rest with the fuU irulitary honours due a British field marshal.

PoUticians are good haters and Truman exceUed in this regard. A lifetime member of the National Guard who had served as a captain in an ArtiUery Battalion in France in World War I, the httle President from Missouri had little regard for any graduate of West Point, but for Chief Wise Eagle of the Blackfeet he reserved a special measure of iU-wiU. He made many comments about him both privately in his chary and publicly to the news media, none of them complimentary. One of the best know^n dealt with the dismissal:

I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for Generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jaU.^*

Son of a bitch, perhaps, an egomaniac certainly. General Omar Bradley knew a thing or two and he caUed him a megalomaniac^^ — but dumb? MacArthur? Never Destiny's Child was highly intelligent, weU read, a great communicator and very good at what he did best. Unfortunately, and despite a contrary belief held by millions of his fans, soldiering was not one of his major skills. MacArthur was more politician than soldier and far more actor than either.

A soldier's first duty is to obey orders. MacArthur went his own way and considered obedience to be optional whether the order came from his immediate superior or from the President of the United States. Victories he claimed in the Pacific were won either by others or by the application of such overwhelming force that they were walkovers. The Inchon landing, lauded to the skies as a stroke of MacArthur genius, was nothing more than the routine deployment



of overwhelming force in accordance with an existing staff study avaUable from the files at the Pentagon. Faced with an enemy of near equal strength thereafter, his generalship was so disastrous as to bring the United Nations armies to the brink of ignominious defeat. He was a poor soldier

MacArthur was close to major Republican politics aU his hfe, but in two runs at the Republican nomination for President, one half-baked and one half-hearted, he demonstrated that, with everything in his favour, when he faced the only real political test, that of getting elected, he was a dismal failure, a lousy politician.

The MacArthur legend rests not upon his achievements as a soldier, nor upon those associated with the statesmanlike pose which he struck in Tokyo, but on what the world believes these things to have been, and in colouring the world's perceptions MacArthur was at his brilliant convincing best. Placed before an audience, even one of cynical journalists, MacArthur was often spellbinding, and when it came to self promotion, like all great actors his touch was sure, his style audacious, his timing perfect. The true basis of the Hero of the Pacific's image of greatness was his wealth of thespian talent and his acquired pubhc relations skills — the self-same talent and skiUs that enable both the actor and the huckster to earn a living. MacArthur was both, and in his lifetime he had no peer in either profession.

His towering thespian talent and his mastery of the media contrasts vividly with the military ineptitude which conceived the Rainbow 5 plan to defend the PhiUppines and the poUtical naivety which encouraged him to beheve that he could hold himself above grubby day-to-day RepubUcan politics and win through to the Presidency of the United States simply because people loved him.

Perhaps he was born too soon. At a later time, when television became king, he might have won through to the presidency. He was made for TV When Hollywood sought to present MacArthur's life to the world on celluloid, one of Tinsel Town's finest actors played him, but it can be said without fear of contradiction that the Beau BrummeU of the AEF would have turned in an equally fine performance as himself or, had he been granted the opportunity to do so, he may weU have played the lead in a Gregory Peck biography at least as well as Peck played the lead in his. In 1952 he was granted the


242 THE ODD COUPLE

privUege of addressing a jo in t sitting of the U S Congress, and in

conclusion he recaUed an old British army baUad. His speech ended:

... old soldiers never die and Uke the old soldier of the baUad, I now close my mUitary career and just fade away ... an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the Ught to see that duty ...

So powerful was his delivery that it was said of the occasion that

there was scarcely a dry Republican eye in the house, or a dry scat

among the Democrats.^^

His final address to a military audience was made on 12 May 1962,

a little less than two years before his death, when he was 82. He spoke

at West Point where he had served both as Cadet and Commandant .

He told the Corps of Cadets:

In my dreams, I hear the crash of guns, the ratde of musketry, the strange mournful mutter of the batdefield. But in the evening of my memories I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes: Duty, Honour, Country.

Today I make my final roU caU with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river, my last thoughts wiU be of the Corps and the Corps and the Corps. I bid you fareweU.

Pure melodrama was always the Lion of Luzon's strongest forte.

Thanks to modern technology, he can stiU be heard delivering this

oration, and whether they loved MacArthur or loathed him, few

soldiers w h o served h im w^ho listen to it can do so unmoved.

Roosevelt always understood it, and Truman probably suspected it.

Curt in demonstrated his ignorance of it and Georges Clemencau is

credited with enunciating it, a phrase which politicians might ignore

at their peril: "War is too serious a matter to be entrusted to military

men."

Notes

1. Clayton Blair, Tlie Forgotten War, Anchor Books, NY, 1989, p 44. 2. ibid., pp 43-44.

3. Military Situation in the Far East. Published reports of Senate hearings. 4. Clayton James, Years o/M(jc^rr/jHr,Vol. Ill, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1985,

p 470. 5. Blair, p 87.



6. Jack GaUaway, Tlie Last Call of the Bugle,University of Queensland Press, 1994, Chapter 4 passim.

7. James, Vol. III. Blair, p 485. 8. WiUiam Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, Little Brown

and Co.,Boston, 1978,p. 577.Robert Heinl, Victory at High Tide,Ha.rper & Brothers, NY, 1956, pp. 88-89. Soldiers, by Gen Matthew Ridgway as told to Harold H. Martin, Harper & Row, NY, 1956, p. 44.

9. K. M. Pannikar, In Two Chinas. Memoirs of a Diplomat, CoUins, London, 1955, pp 109-13. Through diplomatic channels, China had passed the word that they would not tolerate an invasion of North Korea using other than South Korean troops.

10. James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. Ill, pp. 490-91. He quotes various authorities.

11. Blair, p 339. 12. Blair, p 371. 13. GaUaway, Chapter 10 passim. He quotes War Diary 3 PJ^R, October

1950. Oral history interviews with members of 3 RAR, archives, 3 P J ^ Museum.

14. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol.lU,p. 509. 15. Blair, p. 371 et seq. 16. Blair, p. 382 et seq. 17. Manchester, p. 556. 18. James, Years of Mac Arthur,Vol. Ill, p. 550. 19. James, pp. 552—53. 20. Manchester, p. 625; James, Years of MacArthur, Vol. Ill, p. 559. Omar N.

Bradley with Clay Blair, A General's Life, Simon and Schuster, NY, 1983, pp. 546-77.RusseU EWrigley History of the United States Army,NY,\967, p513 .

21. James, Years of MacArthur,Vol.\\\,p.462. 22. D. MacArthur, Reminiscences, McGraw-HUl, 1964, p. 386. 23. James, Years of MacArtliur,Vol. Ill,p. 589. 24. James, pp 586-87. 25. James, pp 592-600. 26. Merie MiUer, Plain Speaking, Harper, NY, 1974, Chapter 24. 27. Bradley 28. Manchester.


EPILOGUE

And whUst possibly a rumour now Some day it wUl be fact

That the Lord wiU hear a deep voice say Move over God, it's Mac.

MA C A R T H U R outlived his former Commander-in-Chief, Land Forces, by more than a decade, and while the ceremonies

associated with the passing of Australia's first and only Field Marshal were impressive, they could hardly match those which attended the fareweU that was MacArthur's. At 1439, Sunday 5 AprU 1964, the Beau Brummel of the Rainbow died of comphcations foUowing a bUe-duct operation. Like the ceremonies aboard Missouri in Tokyo Bay, what followed was a MacArthur production, planned in consultation with the Defence Department in 1963.' Commencing with a parade of the Corps of Cadets at West point on Monday, more than 30 000 New Yorkers queued to view the body on Tuesday as it lay in state in the Seventh Regiment Armoury on the corner of Park Avenue and Sixty-Sixth Street, New York; US Army posts around the world fired nineteen-gun salutes and flags were flown at half-mast for the rest of the week by order of President Lyndon B.Johnson. On Wednesday, the Corps of Cadets escorted the coffin and hundreds of thousands of citizens lined the streets as it passed in procession through the city. The special train which bore the General's remains to Washington slowed and halted at various centres on the route to permit people to pay a final tribute, and on arrival at the national capital his body


EPILOGUE 245

again lay in state for a day before being flown by military aircraft to Norfolk, Virginia, where the Incredible Warrior had chosen to be laid to rest in the 114-year-old former courthouse now refurbished as the MacArthur Memorial Centre. There was a further public viewing in the rotunda of the old building before the corpse was interred with fitting ceremony in the marble vault where it wiU lie for eternity.^ The city of Norfolk chd him proud, but it is an odd place to bury an old soldier.

Described by one ex-Navy man as a city of bars, brothels and flop houses,^ Norfolk and adjacent towns like Hampton, Newport News and Virginia Beach merge into an urban sprawl on the foreshores of Chesapeake Bay and the James River estuary. They contain the largest naval base in the world; they are US Navy territory and always have been.'' The city is home to the Atlantic Fleet, to several large Naval Air stations, to the US Marines and the Navy's Amphibious training depot; the headquarters of the US Coast Guard and many another maritime enterprises are also housed in and around Norfolk. The Navy is by far the largest employer of Norfolk citizens and providing for the needs of the Navy is the sole basis of Norfolk's economy. When the distinct lack of cordiality extant in MacArthur's wartime relationship with the US Navy is considered, his choice of the world's largest navy town as a suitable repository for his earthly remains has a touch of the bizarre to it to say the least. His tomb is the centrepiece of a shrine which occupies a whole city block. His wife survived him and lived to the remarkable age of 101. When she died in February 2000, she was entombed next to her beloved general in a place that had been prepared for her at the time of the construction of the mausoleum. The old courthouse houses his mammoth coUection of memorabilia and a separate building is devoted to the Jean MacArthur Research Centre. There is also a gift shop which dispenses MacArthur souvenirs to visitors.

MacArthur could have been buried in ground held sacred by the American Army at Arhngton,where his mother and father both lie, or at West Point, which he always claimed as his spiritual home, or in any of the hundreds of dedicated MacArthur Parks and gardens which dot the US countryside, many of them in sites with which he had a close relationship in his lifetime. But he wanted more than a grave


246 THE ODD COUPLE

with a stone on top, no matter how elaborate the crypt or how relevant the setting. Former presidents Herbert Hoover, who appointed him US Army Chief of Staff, Roosevelt, who sanctioned his return to the Philippines, Truman, who sacked him, and Eisenhower, who once served under him, were all to be provided with well-appointed and spacious presidential libraries at public expense, buildings which house their personal papers and other memorabiha. The Hero of the Pacific would settle for no less, and since there was no mechanism whereby such a facihty could be publicly funded, he sought other means of providing it. Although it is unlikely that it was the only proposal put to him, it would seem that the offer by the city of Norfolk to devote an entire city block to become MacArthur Park, to donate the stately pre-Civil War courthouse to be converted to a museum and to provide the other purpose-built facilities was an extremely generous one.

Dedicated in 1960, by the time the General went to his reward in 1964 his shrine had become the centrepiece of an urban renewal project which was visited by 400 000 tourists in its first year, but it is a memorial devoid of any real tradition. Although it contains thousands of historical documents, and a vast array of MacArthur memorabilia, sited where it is it must be considered to be more a commercially oriented tourist attraction than a remembrance to a major military figure.

The project was the brainchUd of Norfolk Republican wheeler-dealer "Ducky" Duckworth, a politician with a decidedly dodgy reputation whose death by gunshot remains on the books as an unsolved murder. Although little is known of the process by which Norfolk gained selection as Chief Wise Eagle's last resting place, it would appear that, faithful to his Republican free-market principles, and foUowing an exanUnation of aU offers made, the right to host the Hero's remains was knocked down to the highest bidder''

Notes

1. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, Vol. Ill, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1985,p 688.



EPILOGUE 247

3. Letter from Dr David MarshaU,former US Navy surgeon, 23 December 1998.

4. Letter from Dr David MarshaU,former US Navy surgeon, 16 December 1998.

5. Geoffrey Perrett, Old Soldiers Never Die, Andre Deutsch, London, 1996, p. 585 et seq. WUUam Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, Litde Brown and Co., Boston, 1978, p. 706 et seq.


APPENDIX A

R E P O R T OF VERA C R U Z ADVENTURE

Repor t submitted at the request of the Chief of Staff, September 30,

1914.

From: Capt Douglas MacArthur General Staff

To: Maj Gen Leonard Wood

Subject: Detailed report of reconnaissance from Vera Cruz to

Alvarado on the night of May 5, 1914.

1. This report is supplementary to the general one made to you under date May 9, 1914. It had not been rendered before as I did not reaUse the matter was under consideration.

2. The general purpose of the reconnaissance was the location of locomotives suitable for road use on the narrow gauge Une of the Inter-Oceanic Railroad. Due to the shortage of animal transportation, the command at Vera Cruz was practicaUy immobUe. Freight and passenger cars were in abundance, but no road motive power. Every effort was being made to remedy this state of affairs so that in case of field operations which appeared imminent, the command would not be tied to Vera Cruz.

3. Through the maudUn talk of a drunken Mexican, I received an inkUng that a number of engines were hidden somewhere on the line connecting Vera Cruz to Alvarado. This man was sobered up and found to be a railroad fireman and engineer of the Vera Cruz and Alvarado R R. He consented after certain financial inducements had been offered to assist me in accurately locating the engines.

4. At this time, I occupied at Vera Cruz a unique and rather difficult status.


APPENDIX A 249

I had been ordered there before the 5th Brigade left Galveston as one of the prospective Assistant Chiefs of Staff of the First Field Army My orders were defined in a letter from the Secretary ofWar to the Secretary of the Navy under date of AprU 23, 1914, in the foUowing words.

I am desirous of sending down for the purpose of observation and reconnaissance a representative of the War Department. This officer is Captain Douglas MacArthur, of the General Staff who, in case of any aggressive movement by the army in regard to Mexico, wiU function as one of the General Staff Officers of the commanding general. In order to facUitate his observations and his passage to Vera Cruz, I would appreciate very much if the Admiral commanding be requested to extend such privUeges to him as may be possible and that the batdeship Nebraska which is expected iviU touch New York tomorrow be directed to take him on board as a passenger.

On arriving at Vera Cruz, 5th Brigade did not recognise me as a member of their command as I had no orders assigning me thereto. They took the attitude that I was an independent staff officer acting directly under you. I was permitted to exercise my own judgment in regard to fulfiUing my general orders and instructions, subject only to such limitations as were prescribed by the MiUtary Governor for aU those domicUed in Vera Cruz. In undertaking this reconnaissance, therefore, I was thrown entirely on my own responsibUity, as it was not feasible or safe to communicate the question to you for decision. The object of the trip not being aggressive, but merely for the purpose of obtaining information, my general instructions as given above seemed to cover the very contingency, and I accordingly made my plans.

5. The Alvarado RaUroad is a narrow gauge road connecting Vera Cruz and Alvarado, distant some 42 mUes [68 km]. The principal towns en route are Tejar, MedaUin, Paso del toro, Laguna, La Piedra and Salinas. We held the Une as far as Tejar, nine mUes [15 km] out. About four miles [7 km] beyond Tejar, at Paso del Toro, the Alvarado Une is crossed by the broad gauge Une connecting Vera Cruz and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. This latter Une after leaving Vera Cruz passes through the town of Boca del Pdo, where it crosses the Jamapa Raver, before reaching Paso del Toro. From Vera Cruz to Paso del Toro, therefore, these two raUroad lines formed roughly the two halves of an eUpse. We did not hold the Isthmus Une beyond the outskirts of Vera Cruz.

6. Mexican troops in force were reported near Tejar and in order to avoid them I determined to proceed along the Isthmus Une as far as Paso del


250 A P P E N D I X A

Toro and then change to the Alvarado Une. My general plan was to leave Vera Cruz alone on foot at dusk and to join my Mexican engineer who was to have a hand-car on the Alvarado line manned by two Mexicans. From there we were to push along the line untU the engines were located and their condition ascertained. AU three of the Mexicans were raUroad men and their affUiations and experience enabled them to obtain the hand-cars and have them at their appointed places. For their services 1 agreed to give them $150.00 gold, payable only after my safe return to Vera Cruz. Captain Cordier of the 7th Infantry was the only person outside of these men who kne-w of the plan.

7. The night was squaUy and overcast. At dusk, I crossed our Une unseen near the wireless stations, where a detachment of the 7th Infantry was encamped. I was in mUitary uniform with no attempt to disguise and with absolutely nothing on me in addition to my clothes except my identification tag and my automatic revolver with ammunition. I found my engineer with a broad gauge hand-car in the appointed place. I carefuUy searched him and after some demur on his part removed his weapons, a .38 calibre revolver and a smaU dirk knife. As a further precaution against his possible treachery, I had him search me so that he might better realise that there being nothing of value on me my death would afford him no monetary return. The essence of the transaction for him,therefore,became my safe return to Vera Cruz when he would receive his pay.

8. We proceeded as far as Boca del Rio without incident,but at the Jamapa River, found the raUroad bridge down. I decided to leave the hand-car, concealing it as weU as possible. After searching the bank of the river for a short distance, we discovered a sniaU native boat by means of which we paddled across, landing weU above the town so as to escape observation. On landing, we located, after some search, two ponies near a smaU shack and mounted on them we foUoNved the traU along the raUway until near Paso del toro. We then made a detour and hit the Alvarado line below the tow^n.The two Mexican firemen were awaiting us with the hand-car. We secreted our ponies and after I had searched the two newcomers and found them unarmed we pushed on. MUe after mUe was covered with no sign of the engines. The Une is studded with bridges and culverts and my crew protested violendy at crossing them without investigating their condition. Time was so short, however, that I dared not stop for such steps and had to take them in our stride. I was obliged to threaten my men to the point of covering them with a revolver at the first bridge, but after that 1 had no further trouble with


APPENDIX A 251

them. In fact, after getting into the spirit of the thing their conduct was most admirable. At every town we reached I took one man and left the car which was run through to the far side by the other two. I fastened myself by lashing to the man acting as my guide so as to insure us against separation and together we made a circuit of the town, joining the car on the far side. This took time, but was the only way that 1 could avoid detection.

9. We reached Alvarado shortly after one o'clock and there found five engines. Two of these were switch engines and worthless for our purpose. The other three were just -what we needed — fine big road puUers in exceUent condition except for a few minor parts which were missing. I made a careful inspection of them and then started back.

10. At Salinas, while moving around the town with one of my men as described above, we were halted by five armed men. They were on foot and wore no uniforms. They were not soldiers and were evidently one of the marauding bands that infest the country with brigandage as a trade. We started to run for it but they opened fire and foUo'wed us. We outdistanced aU but two and in order to preserve our own lives I was compeUed to fire upon them. Both went down. I was fearful lest the firing might have frightened away my hand-car men, but after some search we found them awaiting us about a mUe beyond the tow^n.

11. At Piedra, under somewhat simUar circumstances and in a driving mist, we ran flush into about fifteen mounted men of the same general type. We were among them before I realised it and were immediately the centre of a melee. I was knocked down by the rush of horsemen and had three buUet holes through my clothes, but escaped unscathed. My man was shot in the shoulder but not seriously injured. At least four of the enemy were brought down and the rest fled. After bandaging up my wounded man we proceeded north with aU speed possible.

12. Near Laguna we were again encountered and fired upon by three mounted men who kept up a running fight with the hand-car. I did not return this fire. AU but one of these men were distanced, but this one man, unusuaUy weU mounted, overhauled and passed the car. He sent one buUet through my shirt and two others hit the car within six inches of me and I then felt obUged to bring him down. His horse feU across the front of the car and on the track and we were obliged to remove the carcass before proceeding.

13. At Paso del Toro, we abandoned the hand-car, found the two ponies where we had left them and made the best of our way back to Boca


252 APPENDIX A

del Rio where we returned the animals from whence we had procured thein.

14. We found the boat where we had left it and started to cross the Jamapa Raver, but when near the shore the boat struck a snag in the darkness and sank. Fortunately the water at this point was something less than five feet deep, for in our exhausted physical condition I do not beUeve we would have been capable of swimming. As it was I was hard put to it to keep my wounded man's head above water. Day was breaking when we reached the bank, but so wearied were we that we were unable to move for nearly half an hour We then located our first hand-car and ran in close to Vera Cruz where we crossed the American Unes unobserved.

15. None of the men ^ve encountered were Mexican troops. AU were guerrUlas undoubtedly bent on general mischief. Owing to the darkness I was not recognised as an American soldier and in consequence no alarm was ever felt for the engines. Months later when traffic was partiaUy resumed I saw one of them running to Tejar from Alvarado.

(Signed) Douglas MacArthur Captain, General Staff


APPENDIX B

RIPPING YARNS: AN EARLY EXAMPLE

From the Courier-Mail, Brisbane, 19 March 1942 Under the by-Une of Roy ConnoUy a staff reporter

Pat Robinson was a hard boiled, cynical ex fight reporter, ex city editor and ex member of the Rainbow Division. He describes MacArthur

General MacArthur is the grandest soldier I've ever know^n and the finest man. One night at zero hour between LuneviUe and Baccarat in Lorraine our colonel suddenly decided that he would go over with a raid on the Jerry trenches to see for himself how raids were conducted. Nothing would stop him. He went ... AU he carried was the riding crop which he carries always to this day. He hadn't even a revolver. That Colonel was Douglas MacArthur.

MacArthur who staggered the world by showing that the Philippines were N O T overrun by thejapanese, the one general of the war who retired to "positions previously prepared," which WEPJE prepared and which proved impregnable. MacArthur, the unorthodox, even in that; MacArthur, who had the long-sightedness and the disiUusionment even with certain of his immediate chiefs to make his own preparations against the day that Japan would strike.

What is the secret of MacArthur's success? If you followed closely the story of the fighting on Batan [sic] you wiU have noticed one recurring theme. MacArthur never aUowed his army to be attacked


254 APPENDIX B

unless he immediately hit back. It must have been disconcerting to the Japanese. They struck at his left flank. MacArthur parried and launched his right wing at them. They tried to dent his centre, both his wings went into action. A blow at both flanks found disconcerting things happening to their centre.

The Japs launched thunderbolts at MacArthur's American and Filipino army on Batan [sic] — thunderbolts from the air that had sent so may armies reeUng. MacArthur had a miserably few fighters, but his anti-aircraft guns roared and the big guns on Corregidor beUowed and pounded the Jap ships.

The Japs were forced to slow down. The aUeged Sons of Heaven found their Heaven strangely gone over to the side of MacArthur, and their General, Homma, decided to go up to Heaven by the route of suicide.

Robinson says that the man who proved to be the most brilliant strategist and tactician in the American Expeditionary Force in France during the last war was MacArthur

But as Robinson points out very sagely, strategy and tactics are one thing. There is also execution. In MacArthur is a perfect blend of the two capacities.

His response to attack is, it appears, extremely simple. He does not understand anything but immediate counter attack. He favours the offensive first, last and always. Such overwhelming forces as the Japanese sent against him in the Philippines made a wdthdrawal to his weU-planned positions imperative.

Once there, he used those positions as a lair from which to attack. His audacity is beyond question admirable. Suddenly from some secret recess in the jungle a handful of outdated Bristol fighters took the air and swooped on Japanese shipping in Manila Bay sinking 30 000 tons. The world knows that.

What the world does not know is what Robinson told me yesterday.

MacArthur's ground staff screwed fixtures on to the \vings of those fighters which would carry heavy bombs. The Japs knew MacArthur had no bomber. They took a risk. They wiU know MacArthur better next time.


file:///vings

APPENDIX B 255

Out of the dizzy altitudes above Manila Bay MacArthur's handful of fighters dived at the shipping and from fighters which were not bombers lethal bombs rained leaving destruction and death as they raced back to their jungle hiding places ...

MacArthur is accustomed to handling politicians having had both the United States and the Filipino varieties. He will doubtless find scope in Australia but he is bound to deal effectively with time wasting and such nonsense from such quarters.

And durn me if he doesn't look more like a general than any other general you ever saw.


APPENDIX C

MACARTHUR'S MOVEMENTS DAY BY DAY

1941 8-24 Dec 25 D e c - 9 Jan

1942 10 Jan 11 J a n - 11 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 14-16 Mar 17 Mar 18-21 Mar 22-25 Mar 25-26 Mar 27 Mar 28 Mar - 28 June 29 June 30 June — 16 July 17 July 10-20 July 21-23 July 24 J u l y - 1 Oct 2 Oct 3 Oct 4 Oct 5 Oct - 5 Nov 6 Nov 7 N o v - 8 Jan

Manila Corregidor

Bataan and return to Corregidor Corregidor Taguayan Cagayan. Del Monte Plantation el Monte Plantation Batchelor NT. Alice Springs Alice Springs - Adelaide - Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne. Canberra Canberra. Melbourne Melbourne Seymour and return to Melbourne Melbourne Canberra and return to Melbourne Melbourne Melbourne. Sydney. Brisbane. Brisbane Brisbane. TownsvUle. Port Moresby Port Moresby Port Moresby — Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane. TownsvUle. Port Moresby Port Moresby


1943 9 Jan 1 0 J a n - 2 6 M a y 27 May 28 M a y - 6 June 7 June 8 June 9-24June 25 June 26June 27 June 28June 29 June 30June IJuly 2 July

3 July 4 July 5 July 6 July 7 Ju ly -24 Aug 25 Aug 26 Aug - 4 Sep 5 Sep 6-23 Sep 24 Sep 25 Sep - 10 Oct 11 Oct 12-13 Oct 14 Oct 15 O c t - 2 5 Nov 26 Nov 27 N o v - 1 1 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 14-15 Dec 16 Dec 17-30 Dec 31 Dec

1944 1-3 Jan

APPENDIX C

Port Moresby. TownsvUle. Brisbane Brisbane Rockhampton and return to Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane. Sydney Sydney Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane. TownsvUle. Cairns Cairns. Mareeba. Port Moresby Port Moresby Port Moresby. MUne Bay. Goodenough Island GUiGiU MUne Bay Dowa Dowa. Wago. Samarai. Kana. Kopa MUne Bay. Dobodura. Oro Bay. Cape Endaidere,

Sanandnda. Buna Cape. KiUerton Dobodura. Port Moresby Port Moresby Port Moresby. Mareeba Mareeba. Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane. Port Moresby Port Moresby Nadzab and return to Port Moresby Port Moresby Port Moresby. TownsvUle. Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane. Port Moresby Port Moresby Port Moresby - Brisbane Brisbane Rockhampton and return to Brisbane Brisbane Brisbane — Port Moresby Port Moresby. Goodenough Goodenough Goodenough. Port Moresby Port Moresby Finschafen and return to Port Moresby

Port Moresby

257


258 APPENDIX C

4 Jan Port Moresby Brisbane 5-25 Jan Brisbane 26 Jan Rockhampton and return to Brisbane 27 Jan - 26 Feb Brisbane 26 Jan Rockhampton and return to Brisbane 27 Jan - 26 Feb Brisbane 27 Feb Brisbane. MUne Bay 28 Feb Aboard Boise on passage to Los Negros 29 Feb Los Negros 1 Mar Finschafen. Port Moresby 2 Mar Port Moresby. Brisbane 3-16 Mar Brisbane 17 Mar Brisbane. Canberra 18 Mar Canberra. Brisbane 19 Mar - 17 Apr Brisbane 18 April Brisbane. Port Moresby 19 AprU Port Moresby. Finschafen 20 AprU Cape Gloucester 21-23 AprU HoUandia Operation 24 April Finschafen. Port Moresby 25-26 AprU Port Moresby 27 AprU MUne Bay and return to Port Moresby 28 AprU Port Moresby 29 AprU Dobodura and return to Port Moresby 30 AprU Port Moresby 1 May Port Moresby. TownsvUle. Brisbane 2 May - 25 July Brisbane 26—30 July To Hawaii and Roosvelt conference 31 July — 8 Sept Brisbane 9 Sep Brisbane. TownsviUe. Port Moresby 10 Sept Port Moresby. HoUandia 11-12 Sep HoUandia 13—16 Sep Moratai Operation 17-18 Sep HoUandia 19 Sep HoUandia. Port Moresby 20 Sep Port Moresby. TownsvUle. Brisbane 21-29 Sep Brisbane 30 Sep Canberra. Brisbane 1-13 Oct Brisbane 13 Oct Departed for Leyte operations and never again

returned to Australia


APPENDIX C 259

MacArthur spent 60 days in New Guinea in 1942, but never went further north than Port Moresby.

In 1943 he spent 65 days in New Guinea without going north of Nadzab, except to visit Finschhafen on December 31.

In 1944 he spent only 28 days in the north, but accompanied landing operations to Los Negros, to HoUandia and to Moratai.


APPENDIX D

DOCUMENT SIGNED BY AIR CREWS IN 5TH AIR FORCE

Every member of air crews in 5th Air Force was required to read, understand and sign the document reproduced below before the commencement of the Philippines campaign. A copy was provided to the author by Maj William Bentson, who formerly served on GHQ. It was received by Maj Bentson from the widow of the signatory who died in December 1996.

IT MUST BE UNDERSTOOD BY ALL THAT THE LIBERATION OF THE

PHILIPPINES IS ONE OF THE PURPOSES OF THE PHILIPPINES

CAMPAIGN. LIBERATION OF THE PHILIPPINES WILL NOT BE

UNDERSTOOD BY THE FILIPINOS IF THEIR POSSESSIONS, THEIR

HOMES, THEIR CIVILIZATION AND THEIR LIVES ARE

INDISCRIMINATELY DESTROYED TO ACCOMPLISH IT. THROUGHOUT

THE FAR EAST OUR MORAL STANDING AND HUMILITY DICTATE

THAT DESTRUCTION OF PROPERTY AND LIVES IN THE PHILIPPINES

BE HELD TO A MINIMUM IN OUR MILITARY CAMPAIGNS COMPATIBLE

WITH THE INSURANCE OF SUCCESS. EVIDENCE IS ACCUMULATING

THAT THEJAPANESE IN SOME LOCALITIES ARE LEAVING FILIPINOS IN

RESIDENCE, EVACUATING CITIES, EITHER COMPELLING FILIPINOS TO

STAY OR FAILING TO WARN THEM. IN ORDER TO INSURE OUR

SUCCESS, OUR OBJECTIVES IN AREAS WE ARE TO OCCUPY IS THE

TOTAL DESTRUCTION OF HOSTILE EFFORT. AERIAL BOMBING OFFERS

BY FAR THE GREATEST DESTRUCTION EFFECT PORT FACILITIES WE

PLAN TO USE WE MUST PRESERVE TO THE GREATEST POSSIBLE

EFFECT, OUR ATTACK OBJECTIVES ARE PRIMARILY SHIPPING AND


APPENDIX D 261

AIR FIELDS IN THE LATTER AREAS, NOT BARRACKS. VILLAGES OR

METROPOLITAN AREAS."

Signed ... Douglas MacArthur Signed ... George Kenney

I certify that I have read and understand instructions quoted above.

(Sgd) Eari Mahan T/Sgt 9/25/44

(Name) (Rank) (Date)


INDEX

A20 (see Boston Bombers) Adachi, General 203,204 Adelaide 2,105 Admiralty Islands 168,169,171,173,

179,182 Afrika Corps 124 AIF 3, 5,31,34,53,65,68,69,122,

130,149,157,163,188,194,195, 196,203,211,225

Aitape 181,202,204 .4%/,HMIJS 93,100 Alamein 157 Alderman, Harry 57 Aleutians 93,94 Alice Springs 2,35 Allen, Maj Gen "Tubby" 113,122,

136,137 Alvarado x, 248,250,251 Alvarado Railroad 249 American Caesar 225,231 American Caesar (biography) 233 Amiens, Battle of 56 AMP Building 121 ANGAU 178 Aparri 16 APD 155,156 (diagram), 163,173,

175,178,181 Arawe 167 Arlington 245 Arnold, Gen "Hap" 125,126,142 Asiatic Fleet 10,18 Atherton Tablelands 157,195,203

Atsugi 225 Auchinleck, General Sir Claude 5,

31,54,123 Australia 1,12, 28,30,31,32,34,37,

49, 52,53,60,83,101,108,205, 223,225,226,255

Australian Army Australian Light Horse 110 AustraUan Military Forces 188 Australian Permanent Army 4,54,

60 1st Australian Army 202,205,213,

215 1st Australian Corps 195 1st Division (First) AIF 55 2nd Division (First) AIF 54,55 6th Division AIF 5,53,60,61,

157,203,204,227 7th Division AIF 31-3,54,68,78,

113,122,136,138,139,157, 159,161,163,216-18

8th Division AIF 31 9th Division AIF 31,78,157,161,

163,164,170,215 3rd Australian Infantry Division

(Militia) 59,158,164 5th Brigade 249 7th Brigade (AMF) 114 16th Brigade 122,137,139,149 17th Brigade AIF 158 18th Brigade AIF 157 21st Brigade AIF 132


INDEX 263

25th Brigade AIF 137,149 26th Brigade 215 2/25thBnAIF135,140 2/6th Field Coy RAE 162 2/6th Independent Coy 139 2/4th Field Regt 161 2/9th Aust Inf Bn 117 2/lOthAustInfBn 139 3 Bn (Militia) 134,135 39th Bn (MHitia) 109,112,113 3 Bn Royal AustraUan Regiment

229,234,235,236 66th Aust Inf Bn 229 67th Aust Inf Bn 229 27th British Commonwealth

Brigade 235 Australia,HhAAS 154,172 Australian General Staff 105,107 Australian Labor Party 32, 65,77 Australian Red Cross 61

B17 2,14,15,16,18,75,77,162 B25 14,88,98,158,162 B 29 182 Backyard War 213 Baldwin, Hanson 235 Balikpapan 216, 217,218 Baltimore, VSS 191 Band, Lt Cdr Jack 163 Barbey, Vice Admiral Daniel 155,159,

172,175,180 Bataan 2,8,22,24,26,27,33,76-8,

152,224,253 Bataan, HMAS 77 Bataan Gang 27,36,63,64,70,71,

73,75,76,122,152 Batavia 32 Batchelor 2,34,37,68 British Commonwealth Occupation

Force 228 Beau Sabreur of the Rainbow 46,239 Beau BrummeU of the AEF 46,49,

244 Beaufighters 158 Bedell-Smith, General 206 Bennett, Maj Gen Gordon 60 Bentson, Maj BiU xiv

Berryman, General Sir Frank 152, 201 Biak 183 Bismarck Sea 153,165,169 Blackburn, Lt Col 32 Blackfeet Indians 240 Blackforce 32 Blamey, General Sir Thomas xi, xiii,

3,4,5,53-6,70,73,75,77,107-9, 113,115,121,123,132,136,137, 143,146,147,149,158,159,188, 197,201,202,207-10,217,223, 226,239,240 at Surrender Ceremony, 224—5 Victorian Police Commissioner

57-66 visits Japan 227—9

Blamey, Lady Olga 60 Blamey, Margaret 4 Blamey, Pachard, 4 Blanch, Ken xiv Boca del Rio 249,250, 251 Boise, USS 178,215 Bonus Marchers 63,66,75 Borneo 188,204,215,217,218 Boston Bombers 149,162 BougainviUe 154,202,203,205,207,

211,213,215,218,223 Bradley, General of the Army Omar

206,239 Bren gun carriers 150 Brereton, Lt Gen Louis 11,18 Brett, Lt Gen George 70,72,73,90,

109,125 Bridgeford, Lt Gen Sir WiUiam 205 Brisbane 33,78,105,121,151,177,

197,198 Brisbane Courier-Mail 205, 253 Brisbane Line 78,105,152 Bristol Fighters 254, 255 Britain, 30 British Empire 56 Brown Bomber 23 Brudenel White, Gen 52,53 Brunei Bay 216 Bulolo 158,161 Buna Mission 146 Buna 109,112,113,126,137-9,141,


264 INDEX

142,147-53,155,157,164,187, 192,194,202

Burma 32,118 BurstaU, T. xiv Buso River 159

Cabarlah 227 Cairns 172,195 CaUfornia 231,232 CalweU, Arthur 210 Canadians 56,195 Canberra 32,106,123,199, 210 Cannibalism 135 Canungra 157 Cape Nelson 155 Carpenter, Vice Admiral 146 Cassandra 236 Catalina 94 Cebu 212 Central Pacific Area 153,168,169,

192 Ceylon 31,34 Chamberlain, Gen Richard 153 Chase, Brig Gen 177,178 Chateau-Theirry 47 ChatUlon HUl 47 Chauvel, Gen Sir Harry 52,56 Chesapeake Bay 245 Chicago Tribune 194 Chief Wise Eagle 24,102,214,240 Chifley, Benjamin 208,217 Chilton,Col Fred 116 China Sea 18 China 88,101,235 China Straits 114 Chinese Army 235,235,236 Chongju 235 ChurchiU, Winston 1,32,103,123,

167,179 Clark Field 9,10,14,16-18,25,75 Clemencau, Georges 242 Clowes, Maj Gen CyrU 115-18,171 CoUins, Gen Joe 232-4 Colombo 84 Combined Fleet 86,93 Coral Sea 86,90,93, 98,101,102,108 Cordner, Capt 250

Corregidor 2,5,8,21,26,33,63,106, 206,212

Grace, Admiral 90 Crete 31,60 Crombie, Lt 135 Crutchley, Rear Admiral, R N 173 Cuba 41,46 Curtin,John 2,30-2,34,36,50,54,

65,66,73,74,76,77,102,187-9, 194,198,199,211,217,223,226, 227,242

Curtis, Lt Col Donald McB 234

Dai Ichi 232 DarUng River 105 Darwin 1, 2,33,34,37, 82, 89,188 DC3 161 DeIMonte2 ,10 ,12 ,18 ,34 Desert Mounted Corps 57 Destiny's Child 23,63,176,206,224,

240 Devastators 95, 97,99 DiUer, Col Le Grand (Pik) xiv, 72,

126,193,196,197,207 Dobadura 152,161 Donnan, Capt George 135 Doohtde, Maj Gen James 87,88,89,

102 "Doug's Communique" 79,193,210 Douglas Daundess 94,98,100 Duckworth, "Ducky" 246 Dugout Doug 76

Eastern Fleet, R N 1,84 Eather, Brig Ken 123,137 Efogi North, 136 Egypt 31,55 Eichelberger, Gen Robert 27,63,71,

125,126,134,142,143,149,152, 206,213

Eighth Army British 31 Eighth Army (UN) 235,236 Eisenhower, Gen of the Army

Dwight D. 72, 206 Empire Air Training Scheme 196 Empress Augusta Bay 154 Enola Gay 218


INDEX 265

Enterprise, USS 85,87,89,92,93, 95-7,99-101

Eora Creek 136,137 European Theatre of Operations 18

Far East Air Force 14,193 Fechteler, Admiral 179 Field, Brigadier 114 Fifth Air Force 158 Fifth Fleet 189 Fighting Dude 46,49 Fiji 83,86 Finisterre Ranges 163,164 Finschhafen 154,155,157-9,163,

164,167,170,172,194,198 Fletcher, Admiral Frank Jack 89,90,

92,94 Flying Fortress 9,14,16,18, 98,162 FoU, Senator 209,210 Foorde, Joy xiv, 67n Forde, Frank 208, 228 Formosa 10,14,167,189 Four Horsemen of Notre Dame 23 Funston, Brig Gen 41,43

GaUaway, Terry xiv GaUaway, Margaret xiv GaUipoU 55,62,122 Galveston 249 Gap,Thel07,108 Garing, Group Captain 116 GazeUe Peninsula 204,205 George VI, King of England 24 Gerecowski, Peter xiv Germans 37,78 Ghost Battalion 134,139 GUi GUi 112,114 Gilmore, Dame Mary 52 Gloucester, Cape 167,172 Gold Coast 126 Golden Staircase 133 Gona 109,112,126,138,139,141,

147,149,150-3,157,164,187, 194,202

Gordon, Harry xiv Graf, Master Sergeant G. R. xiv, 34 Great Barrier Reef 84

Greater South East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere 85

Greece 31,60 Green Berets 35 Grumman Avenger 98 Guadalcanal 131,137,141,147,151,

153,156,169,187 Gulf of Mexico 41

Haig, Field Marshal Lord 56 Halsey, Admiral WUliam 87,94,154,

161,169,175,182,183,224 Hamel, Battle of 56 Hampton 245 Han River 237 Hansa Bay 181 Harding, Maj Gen Edwin F 142,144,

147-9 Hart, Admiral 10 Hamna, HIMJS 16,17,18,37 Hassett, General Sir Francis 211, 215 Hawaii 25, 96,191,192 Hearst, WiUiam Randolph 23,45 Heath, Lt Cdr Harry RAN 213 Hero of Bataan 2,69,72,224 Hero of the Pacific 23,118,165,169 Herring, Maj Gen Ned 124,143,158 Hindenberg Line 56 Hirohito, Emperor 36,218 Hiroshima 218,219 Hiryu, HMIJS 93,100,101 Hobart,HhAAS 154 HoUandia 181,183 HoUywood 21, 31,192,241 Homma, General 22, 24,27, 37,254 Hong Kong 234 Honolulu 11 Honshu 228

Hoover, President Herbert 246 Horii, General 112,120,122,124,

129,130-2,135,141 Hornet, USS 85,87-9,92,93,95-7 Howard, Roy 23 Huerta, President of Mexico 42 Huff, Lt Col Sydney 72,78,196 Hughes, Wmiam 194 Hungnam 235


266 INDEX

Hunt, Commander 147 HuonGul f l46 , 147,153 Huon Peninsula 219 Hyane Bay 176

Iba 14,25 Idol of Inchon 236 Imamura, General 205 Imita Ridge 129 Imjin River 235 Inchon 233, 234, 236,240 India 225 Incredible Warrior 110,152,214 Indian Ocean 84 Inouye, Admiral 90 International News Service 36 loribaiwa 120,122,129,130,132,

133,137 Italians 78 Iwabuchi, Rear Admiral Sanji 212 IwoJima 214,216

KeUy, Capt Cohn P 16,17, 21, 23 KeUy, Mrs 17 Kenney, General George C. xiv, 73,

116,133,139,141,149,151,154, 158,162,168,216

Kimmel, Admiral 12,25 Kincaid, Admiral 182 King, Admiral Ernest xi, 140,154,

168,179,182 Kittyhawk fighter 14 Kobe 87,88 Koch, Terry xiv Kokoda 109,110, 112,131,136,188 Kokoda TraU 109,110, 111, 113-15,

119,122,125,134,137-41,153, 157,164,187

Korea 231,237 Krueger, Lt Gen Walter 206 Kumusi River 131,138 Kure 228 Kyoto 87

Jamapa River 250 James River 245 Japan 22,32,33,37,53, 84,85,100,

101,108,168,181,189,214,215, 224,225,234,236

Japanese Army 1 15th Engineer Regt (Japanese) 113 18th Japanese Army 203,204 51st Japanese Division 158 144th Infantry Regiment

(Japanese) 113 Japanese Navy 1 Japanese Naval Staff 82,90,189 Japanese Order of Battle 170 Java 31,32,204 Java Sea, Batde of 84 Johnson, Lyndon B. 244

Kaga, HMIJS 93 Kamikaze 193 Kanga Force 109,112,113,119,158 Kanimbla, HMAS 160,172, 173 Kapa Kapa TraU 134,139 Kapa Kapa 133 Kate Dive Bomber 100

Labuan 216 Lae 1,107,109,153,154,155,157-9,

161-4,194,198 Laguna, 249, 251 Lake Albert 4 Landing Ships Infantry 172 Langemack Bay 164, 167 Langhauser, Emma, 72 La Piedra 249,251 Laverack, Gen Sir John 59 LCI 153,161,163,181 LCM 155,160 (diagram), 161,163 LCP(R) 155,156 (diagram), 175 LCT 155,161 LCVP 155,156,160 (diagram), 161,

163 Leary, Vice Admiral 70 Lennons Hotel 76,121,178,196 Lexington USS 85,89,92 Leyte 189,192-4,199,203 Leyte Gulf 183 Life Magazine 23 Lili Marlene 215 Lin Pao, General 235 Lingayen Gulf20, 21, 209


INDEX 267

Lion of Luzon 23,26,106,168,169, 183

Lloyd, Brig 136 Lone Eagle 23 Long Lance Torpedoes 100,101,161 Lorraine 47 Los Negros 168,171,172,176,

179-82,214,233 Louisade Archipelago 86 LST161,175,176,181 Luce, Clair Booth 71 Luce, Henry 23 Lurlinc, USS 226 Luzon 8,16,21,168,190,201,212,

239 Lyndsay, Lt Cdr Eugene 97 Lys 47

MacArthur, General of the Army Douglas x-xiv, 2-5,16,17,20,21, 23,25,27,34,35-7,39,40,42,43, 46,48,53-6,59,61-80,82,89,90, 102,105-8,112-18,120-3,125, 126,132-4,136,137,139-42,144, 147-9,151-6,158,162-4, 167-71,173,175-83,186-91, 192-4,196,198,201-3,205-19, 223,225,226,232-6,238-41,244, 246,253,254 appointed to command USAFFE

8-13 executes War Plan Orange 22 moves to Corregidor 26 Dugout Doug 28 ordered to leave for Australia 33 appointed to General Staff 41 excursions to Vera Cruz 44 promoted to major. Secretary of

War's staff 1917 45 with Rainbow in France 47 et seq US Chief of Staff 49 moves GHQ to Brisbane 111 "Take Buna,Bob . . ."143 "The red cadiUac" 192-4 accepts surrender 224

MacArthur, Gen Arthur Jnr 40 MacArthur, Jean 77,245

MacArthur,Judge Arthur 40 MacArthur Memorial Centre 245 MacArthur, Mrs Mary P 4, 40, 46,47,

48 MacArthur's Navy 89,154 MacKay Gen Iven 52, 53,158 McCormack, Col 29,194 Madagascar 93 Madangl54,158,159,164 Malaria 22 Malaya 1,20,31,83,84,188,194,

215,225 Malinta Tunnel 26,106 Manassa Mauler 23 Manchester, WiUiam 233 Manchuria 36,101,231 Manchurian Border 235 Mamla 7,10,11,12,16, 21,168,189

destruction of 211, et seq, 214, 224 Manila Bay 8,11,213,255 Mamla Hotel 11,213 Mann Act 62 Manoora, HMAS 160,172,173,213 Manus Island 168,171,173,182,183 March, Gen Peyton C. 48 Marianas 189,203 Marianas Turkey Shoot 189 Markham VaUey 122,159,164 Maroubra Force 109,112,113,114,

119 MarshaU, Maj Gen Richard 3,68,71 MarshaU Islands 169 MarshaU, General of the Army

GeorgeCatlett9,10,11,25,48, 64,70,75,80,110,118,121,179, 211,217

Martin, Congressman Joseph 238 Massachusetts soldiers 125 Massey, Lt Cdr Lance E. 97 Master of Manus 177,183 McCluskey Lt Cdr Clarence W. 99,

100,102,110 McNair, Fort 40 Medal of Honor xi, 39, 42,43,48,80 MedaUin 249 Melbourne 53,78,106,108, H I ,

121,227


268 INDEX

Melbourne Argus 209 Melbourne Club 64 Melbourne Herald 30 Menzies Hotel 106 Menzies, Sir Robert 59,65,202,214,

239 Mexicans 37, 43,250 Mexico 39,41,42,44,80, 249 Middle East 1,5,30,31,34,52,64,

65,78,89,132,157 Middle West 143 Midway xi, 86,89,93,94,98,100-2,

108,111,187,223 Military Mission 8 MUford Lt Gen 217 MUne Force 115,117 Milne Bay 111, 112,114,115,117,

118,125,155,157,161,172 Mindanao 10,18 Mindoro 212 Minsky's 12 Missouri, 240 Missouri, USS 224,225, 244 MitcheU Bomber 87, 88,98,158,162 Mitsubishi 15 Monash, General Sir John 52—6 Montgomery, Viscount Bernard Law

ofAlamein 77,157,206 Moratai 183 Morison, Admiral Samuel E. 210 Moros 37 Morris, Maj Gen BasU 108-10,113,

121,130 Morshead, Gen Sir LesUe 124,159,

216,217 Myer's 65,196,197 Myola 119,120,132,135,136,137

Nadzab 159,161,162,194 Nagasaki 218 Nagumo, Admiral 82,93,95,98,99 Nassau Bay 159,161 National Guard 141 Nationalist Chinese 237 Netherlands East Indies 1,12,13,18,

20,22,26,33,108,188,215

New Britain 1,110,111,202,203, 205,207,223

New Caledonia 83, 86 Newcasde 53 New Guinea 1, 52,69,74,84,105,

107,110,111,114,115,117,118, 120-3,126,131,133,139,141-3, 157,158,162,163,168,169,188, 192,194,195,203,205,207,209, 211-13,223

New Guinea Volunteer Rifles 107 New Ireland 110 New York 106,177,244,249 New York Times 236 New Zealand 83, 86,101 Newcasde 84 Newport News 245 Nimitz, Admiral Chester xi, 70,89,

94,168,182,183,191-3,205, 224 Ninth Air Force 18 Noemfoor 183 NorfoUcVa 245,246 Normanby 209 North China 87 North Korea 231,235 North Africa 61,157 North Queensland 54,106,107,157,

172,187 Northern Territory 2,53,69,107

Oboe 1 215 Oboe 2 216 Oboe 6 216 O'CarroU, Mrs PhyUis 197 O'Dowd, Lt Col B. S. xiv, 229 Okinawa 214,216 Oro Bay 155,173,178 Osaka 87 Owen Stanley Range 105-7,109,

114,119,122.133,134,142,162

P40 15,16 Palawan 212 Palembang 216 Papua 133,152,223 Papuan Infantry Battalion 112 Paso del toro, 249,251


INDEX 269

Paulus, Lucius Aemilius 105 Pearl Harbor 1,11,12,15-18,20,25,

27,33,69,84,85,89,100,168, 191,192

Percival, Lt Gen Arthur 224 Pershing, Gen John 45, 47, 48, 80 PhUippine Islands xi, 1,2,7,9,17,20,

21,25,27,28,33,34,37,39,69, 70,73-6,80,117,168,170,187, 189,194,199,206,211-13,217, 218,223-5,233,239,241

PhUlips, Admiral Thomas 10,18 Phoenix, USS 154,173,176,178 PoUard, Col Reg 227 Port Moresby 83,84,86,89,90,92,

93,102,107-11,113,115-17, 120-2,124,125,130,133,136-8, 141,143,147,151,159

Pozieres 55 Prince of Wales, HMS 18,30,84

Queen Mary RMS 3 Queensland 4, 111, 126,157 Quetta 54 Quezon, Manuel 8,39,63

RAAF 116,158,228,234 Rabaul 1,4,70,83,90,93,108,111,

112,141,167,203,211 Rainbow 5,9,20-2 Rainbow Division 23, 45,46,55,253 Ramsay Maj Gen 204,205 Ramu VaUey 164 RAN 147,155,163,172,208,215 Red CadUlac 192 Red Robbie 228 Reminiscences 111 Repulse,HMS 18,30,84 Rhee, Syngman 232 Richardson, Maj Gen Robert C. 64 Ridgway, Gen Matthew B. 237 Riverina 4 Robertson, Gen Sir Horace 228 Robinson, Patrick 36, 253,254 Rockhampton 111 Rogers, Lt Paul 7

Rommel, Field Marshal Erwin 124, 157

Roosevelt, Theodore x, 23,40,41,46 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 2,3,24,27,

32,33,40,75,189,191,239,242, 246

Rough Riders x, 41, 46 RoweU, Gen Sir Sydney 113—15,

122-4,132,226,239 Royal MUitary CoUege (Duntroon)

123 Royal Navy 30, 84,173,216 Royle, Adnural Sir Guy R N 173 Roxas, Manuel 214 Russians 36, 88,231

Saidor 183 Saipan 203 Salamua 1,107,109,153,155,157,

158,163,194,198 SaHnas 251 Samar 212 Samoa 83, 86 San Juan HiU x, 41 Sanananda 147,149,151,153,157,

164,187 San Bias Indians 24 Sarmi 183 Savige, Maj Gen Sir Stanley 159,163 Sayre, Francis B. 25,75 Schofield Barracks 11 Scott, Maj Gen Hugh S. 44 Seabees 36 Seeadler Harbour 168,173 Seoul 233,237 Serong, Brig Ted xiv, 227 Seven Mile Airfield 116 Seventh Amphibious Fleet 172 Seventh Fleet 154,169 Shafter, Fort 11 Shanghai Poker Game 27 Shedden, Sir Frederick 60,71,74-6,

198,199,223,226 SheU OU Company 216 Shelton, Brig 229 Sherman, Admiral 233 Shoho, HMIJS 89, 90


270 INDEX

Shokaku, HMIJS 89.92, 93 Short, General 25 Shropshire, HMAS 172 SUver WaterfaU 82,100 Singapore 1,2,4,10,31,70,224 Sio 170 6th ROK Division 236 Slim, Field Marshal Sir WUUam 118 Smith, General BedeU 206 Solomon Islands 18,147,148,154 Somme, 47 Soryu, HMIJS 93 South China Sea 10 South Pacific Area 33,182 South West Pacific Area xi, 28,70,77,

83,108,111,125,133,139,148, 164,167-9,191,218

South-East Asia 20 South Korea 231 Spanish American War 41 Special Navy Landing Force 86 Spencer, Percy 208 Spruance, Admiral Raymond 87,

94-6,189,224 Staff CoUege 55 Staff Corps 123 States Codes 170 Stevens, Maj Gen Jackie 204 Stuart Tanks 139,150 Sturdee, Lt Gen Vernon 71,73,107,

202,205, 207 Sudest, Cape 112 Suez Canal 31 Sultan of Swat 23 Sumatra 31 Sutherland, Lt Gen Richard 12,71,

111,113,192,196-8,206,224 Swift, General 180 Sydney 78, 84, 93,172 Sydney Daily Telegraph 209 Sydney Morning Herald 209 Syria 31

Takagi, Adnural 84,89,92 Tanah Merah Bay 181 Tarakan 215, 216 Tarawa 192

Tarbuck, Capt Ray 153 Tarlac 106 Tejar 249 Templeton's Crossing. 136 Third Fleet 131,154 Thirty-eighth paraUel 236 Thomas, Maj BiU xiii TigerofMalaya24,83 Tiger Marines 216 Time Magazine 23,72 Timor 2,34,108,188 Tobruk 31,124,157 TOJO, Gen Hediki 83, 87,101 Tokyo 86,88,94,102,169,232,236,

244 Tokyo Bay 224 Toowoomba 227 Tongatabu 89 TownsvUle 86,89,102 Trincomalee 84 Truk 169,189 Truman, Harry S. 223,224,235,239,

242 Tulagi 153

Uberi 109,133 United Nations 232,237 Unnecessary War 215 Unsan 236 US Army 140,153

1st US Marine Division 131,141, 156,167

11th US Airborne Division 212 126th Infantry Regt (American)

132,134 1st US Cavalry Division 155,172,

212,236 24th US Infantry Division 156 27th Bombardment Group 14 32nd US Infantry Division 111,

139,141,142,148,150,167 7th US Infantry Division 212 41st US Division 111,142 42nd Division (see Rainbow

Division) 45 503 US Parachute Regt 161 5th Cavalry 177,178


INDEX 271

7th US Infantry 250 2nd US Special Brigade 155,159,

161,163 84th Brigade 47, 48

US Army Chief of Staff 9 US Joint Chiefs of Staff xi, 1,5,33,

69,110-12,140,153,168,170, 173,179,182,217,233, 237, 239

US Marines 153 US Pacific Fleet 8,11,14,70,84 US Navy 8, 20,41,69,72,78,140,

141,147,148,164,168,169,179, 182,189,193

US Army Air Corps 9,17,34,87,90, 109,149

US Army Air Force 34 US Secretary of War 24,42,249 USAFFE Cry of Freedom 27 USAFFE 8,10

Val Torpedo Bomber 100 Vasey, Maj Gen George xiv, 108,116,

121,137,138,159,161,227 Vera Cruz 41-4,169,248-50 Veterans of Foreign Wars 238 Vichy French 31,78 Victoria 56 Victorian Police Force 64 Virginia 244 Virginia Beach 245 Vladisvostok 88

Wagga Wagga 4 Waikiki 25 Wainwright, Gen Jonathan 21,27,33,

106,224 Wairopi 131,132,133,138 Wakde Island 183 Wake Island 235 Waldron, Lt Cdr John C. 97 Walker, Gen Walton 237 WanegUa139,141 War Office 55 War Plan Orange 8,9,21, 22 War Plan SL-17 234 Ward, Eddie 105

Warsaw 213 Washington DC 11,40,55,62,69,

70,142,170,175,179,217,228, 231,244

Wau 109,158,161 WaveU, General 32 Wayne, John 36 Weidenbach, August 72 WeUes, Sunmer 75 West Africa 1 Western Australia 53 West Point 16,17,39, 242,244,245 Westralia,HMAS 172 Wewak 169,181,203,204 White House 42, 80,239 White Mikado 225, 228 White, General Sir CyrU Brudenel

52,53 Whitney, Maj Gen Courtney 14, 233 WUdcat fighter 100 WiUiams, James 62 WiUoughby, Maj Gen Charles 71,

120,139,140,143,148,192,206, 233

WUson, President Woodrow 42,43 Wisconsin 40 Wood, Gen Leonard 40,41,42,44,

248 Wooton, General George 115,150

Yalu River 235 Yamamoto, Admiral Isoroku 83,84,

85,86,88,89,93,94 Yamashita, General 24, 83, 212 Yankee D'Artagnan 46,48,73 YeUow Sea 232 Yeppoon H I Yokohama 87 Yokoyama, Col Yosuka 113 York, Cape 54 Yorktown, USS 85,89,90,92,94,96,

97,99-101

Zaibatsu 225 Zaikaku, HMIJS 89, 92,93 Zero Fighter 15,16


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