Jungle Sniper

CHAPTER FIVE

If the men aboard ship felt that they were cogs in the wheel of the US war machine, then General Douglas MacArthur was the man cranking that wheel in the Pacific, at least where the army was concerned.

This October morning found him alone in his office, sucking on his pipe, studying maps and scanning reports. And yet he didn’t allow himself to become too absorbed in the paperwork. That was what his staff was for. First and foremost, MacArthur had come to realize that his primary role was to think and plan. He did that best while in motion, pacing his office almost like a caged lion. Definitely a lion, because it was a more regal beast than a panther or a striped tiger.

There was something of the last century that clung to the general’s persona and attitudes, including his ideas of battle. In part this was likely because his own father had fought in the Civil War. More than forty years into the twentieth century, the MacArthur clan still hadn’t completely embraced it.

Studying the maps, the invasion of Leyte weighed heavily on his mind. A great deal was at stake, from the lives of thousands of men to the future of the Pacific War to his own reputation. It might even be hard to say which one of these things MacArthur valued the most.

To be sure, MacArthur was an old soldier in more ways than one. A graduate of West Point, he had been first in his class in 1903, which would have been a foregone conclusion to anyone who’d known him in those days. He had led troops in combat during the First World War as a young officer. Even then he’d had a flair for the flamboyant, wearing a custom-made nonregulation uniform. He’d gotten away with it because he was MacArthur — and even those who didn’t like him had to admit that he was a bold son of a bitch.

The so-called Great War was supposed to end all future wars. It went without saying that the peace promised by that Great War had not been lasting, and had actually set the stage for conflict due to the punitive stance taken toward Germany. It was a lesson in management that MacArthur would later bring with him to the occupation of Japan.

After all, the general was not just a soldier and strategist but also a student of history. Back when he had been commandant of West Point, he had insisted that the students be trained in more than engineering and warfare. He understood that winning was only half the battle — the victors must also be occupiers. An officer with some grasp of history and civics made for a much better peacetime administrator, in MacArthur’s view.

He’d made other changes at West Point, such as working to do away with the savage hazing that took place against cadets. One solution was to eliminate older cadets being in charge of drilling and discipline. Instead, he put veteran army sergeants in charge of training. They weren’t any easier on the cadets, but at least they were professional.

His ideas for changing the curriculum at West Point had not been popular, but MacArthur had forged ahead, despite the naysayers. He never had been one to worry about what others thought as long as the ball was carried forward. Besides, once MacArthur had made up his mind to get something done, he was about as flexible as a steel beam.

While his exploits during the Great War had won him the command of West Point, many people were not as familiar with his more youthful adventures. As a young military surveyor in the Philippines, he had shot and killed two brigands who’d ambushed him in the jungle.

Then, in the US adventure into Veracruz, he had undertaken a daring solo mission and single-handedly held off several attacks by bands of Pancho Villa’s cavalry during the course of a single desperate day, ultimately shooting and killing seven men in the process.

His personal bravery in battle was clear to all — even his detractors and rivals had to admit that MacArthur was a man who was willing to lead from the front.

Now MacArthur was no longer leading a single unit on the battlefield but commanding an invasion force. All in all, his daring gunplay decades before was hard to square with the regal general currently looking over the maps and pages of typewritten documents.

There was a knock on the door, and an aide entered.

“Here are the latest reports, sir,” the aide said.

Inwardly MacArthur groaned. It sometimes seemed as if he would be buried in reports. Each day he seemed to face a blizzard of paper. “Anything I should take a look at right away?”

“I think it’s just the usual chatter, sir. Troop movements, mostly. Whatever our codebreakers were able to pick up.”

“Just put them there with the others.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Jim.”

The aide did as he was told and then quickly retreated from the office.

Thankfully, the aide shut the door behind him, drowning out the sounds of the busy outer office.

For his headquarters, MacArthur had chosen to establish operations in the Australian Mutual Provident Society Building in Brisbane, in part because that city offered the best access to communication with MacArthur’s widespread military operations in the Pacific.

The reports that the aide had delivered largely came from Ultra, which was the secret US system used to break Japanese military codes. The intelligence had proved invaluable for planning purposes. It was like putting an ear to some enemy general’s door and listening in.

Of course, the Japanese had their own ears at the Americans’ door.

MacArthur had thought a lot about the Japanese. He thought that the best way to defeat an enemy was to understand him. He sometimes dwelled on what his adversary might be thinking about him. Trying to anticipate his next move. Probing for weakness. Using his strength against him. MacArthur had no particular hatred for the Japanese. He didn’t go around crowing about killing Japs as Admiral “Bull” Halsey did. For MacArthur, the Japanese were simply a problem to solve, and he loved the challenge of a smart adversary.

Later he would see the results of their heavy hand — even atrocities — in his beloved Philippines with distaste and sadness, but not with enmity toward all Japanese. MacArthur would eventually see to it that the bad apples were hanged for their war crimes.

He sat down, then stood up again, got out from behind the desk, and began to walk around the office, both hands clasped behind his back.

Although he was well into his sixties, he had a great deal of energy, a man very much in his prime. He was ambitious to the point that he’d even had his eye on the White House. Tall and imposing, he possessed the physical charisma of a Washington or a Lee. If he’d been a film star instead of a soldier, central casting would have picked him as a Hollywood version of a commanding officer.

But MacArthur was no empty uniform or Hollywood actor. He was, in fact, a military mastermind who usually managed to stay not just two steps ahead of the Japanese, but also at least one step ahead of the competing officers in other branches of the service.

After all, there were only so many resources to go around. This meant that each command-level officer had to be an advocate and even something of a robber baron at heart by promoting his own branch of the service and his own strategies, sometimes to the detriment of other forces. The role played by Australian and British forces added a whole new layer to the politics of it all. They were Allies — to a point.

At command level, these interservice rivalries could be bitter, akin to a blood sport. Fortunately the commanders did manage to set aside their differences when it came to defeating the Japanese. No one ever seemed to lose sight of the fact that the real enemy flew the Rising Sun banner. When push came to shove, rivalries fell aside in the name of victory.

It wasn’t always a perfect arrangement, but it was far better than the piecemeal way that the Japanese Army and Navy interacted, resulting in a dysfunctional overall military strategy. Their lack of coordination sometimes made it seem as if they were fighting two different wars.

Not that MacArthur was going to complain about that. The thought of the Japanese Army and Navy working more cooperatively made him shudder.

Lost in these random thoughts, MacArthur paced his office and read over the reports on his desk, then paused to study the maps on the wall.

Each day presented a changing situation. It didn’t help that the intelligence reports were continually mistaken. Just when the Japanese Navy seemed depleted, more ships would suddenly appear on the horizon. More submarines would make their presence known beneath the waves. There were times when so many enemy aircraft had been shot down, sometimes hundreds in a single day, that it seemed impossible that there could be more remaining. Yet more squadrons bearing the dreaded meatball symbol on their wings appeared in the sky.

On land, just when it seemed that the Japanese could not possibly fight their way out of the corner they were in, they proved everyone wrong and refused to be defeated. They would fight to the last man, exacting a terrible price and leaving the American troops to wonder, Why in hell won’t they just give up?

It was a source of exasperation but also of grudging admiration for an enemy that believed in total war and simply did not know when to quit. Even when the deck was increasingly stacked against them.

It was frankly amazing that the island nation could produce so many ships, soldiers, and aircraft. Then again, what many Americans failed to realize was that Japan was roughly the size of California, a long broad island in the Pacific with a satellite of buffer islands. What Japan did lack was natural resources, being totally reliant on imported rubber and oil to keep its war machine going. In part this was why Japan had undertaken its path of conquest — to feed its growing demand for natural resources. But it had overreached when it had attacked the United States that awful December morning at Pearl Harbor. MacArthur had been in Manila at the time, and it had soon been the Philippines’s turn to come under Japanese attack.

It was hard for MacArthur to understand the madness that had come over the Japanese people. He had met more than a few Japanese officers in the years leading up to the war and had found them to be reasonable and capable.

Hitler he could understand — one man grabbing the authority all for himself, a charismatic leader who promised to lift up a battered nation. Japan’s descent into madness had been a more collective effort. The general hoped that American democracy would always remain strong so that same totalitarian mindset did not seize the reins of power. Would America’s system of checks and balances still hold up in fifty years, or a hundred? He sure as hell hoped so. Every man in uniform was fighting for that democratic future.

Since the string of Japanese victories in the wake of Pearl Harbor, the tide had turned, and Japan’s island empire was now falling one by one to US forces: Guadalcanal, Guam, Peleliu, Saipan.

MacArthur hoped to add the Philippines to that list. He put his hands on his hips, unconsciously striking a pose as if there were a photographer in the room — which often there was. Although he was alone, the general was a man constantly aware of outward appearances.

The Philippines would not be an easy nut to crack, not if reports could be believed that several hundred thousand Japanese troops were stationed there, well equipped, with plenty of ammunition and ready to fight to the death. These were tough soldiers, some of them even elite units that had fought in China.

Surely the Philippines would suffer in the process, and this thought saddened MacArthur terribly. He had a deep affinity for the Philippines and its people. He loved the islands’ rich history that mingled the culture of the Filipino people and the Europeans who had settled there, starting in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Spanish. Since 1898, the Americans had added their own unique spice to the mix.

The result was that Manila had been a charming, almost old-world city that could have been placed in Spain or Portugal. But now, at the cruel hands of war and the Japanese who sought to leave destruction in their wake, he feared that Manila and all its lovely avenues and historic buildings would be reduced to rubble and ruin.

There was always a price in war, MacArthur thought. Lives would be lost. Farmland burned, cities ruined, towns and villages destroyed. He never forgot that reality.

Also, MacArthur never lost sight of the fact that a victory in the Philippines would make good on his promise to return to the islands.

After defeat had been handed to him by the Japanese in 1942, he had managed to slip away and avoid capture. He would have preferred to remain behind and go down fighting, but orders had come directly from FDR, who had ordered MacArthur to leave the Philippines. The president of the United States did not need the added complication of such a high-ranking general falling into the hands of the enemy as a prisoner of war. Losing the Philippines itself was bad enough. And so MacArthur had left like a dog with his tail between his legs, leaving thousands of US soldiers behind to suffer through the Bataan Death March and the cruel POW camps.

Leading up to the invasion of Leyte, MacArthur had ordered the location of any of these camps to be marked on the map. He was going to make liberating the soldiers a priority as his forces swept across the Philippines.

However, it would be a difficult battle. The Japanese were expecting them. They were still thought to have hundreds of aircraft with which to attack and harass the American invasion fleet.

MacArthur feared that the cost on the beaches of Leyte would be terrible. The marines had certainly paid dearly for Guadalcanal. Now it might just be the army’s turn to pay a similar price. And yet MacArthur remained optimistic. He believed in his troops. He believed in his strategy. Most of all, General Douglas MacArthur believed in himself.

In the outer office, Captain Jim Oatmire could barely believe that the great MacArthur himself had actually remembered his name.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered, just loud enough to be heard by Andy Tatum, who occupied the desk next to his — when either man had time to sit.

“What is it?”

“The Old Man actually knew my name when I dropped off his reports this morning.”

“Huh. You know, that could be a good thing, or a bad thing — a very bad thing. As in, ‘Captain Oatmire, why the hell didn’t you get those reports on my desk sooner? Captain Oatmire, you are personally going to lead the next beach landing.’”

“You know what? I wouldn’t mind seeing some action.”

“You must be a fool, Captain Oatmire,” Tatum intoned, imitating the general’s commanding voice. “Do you want to get shot at by the Japanese, Captain Oatmire?”

“Actually, he called me Jim.”

Tatum shuddered. “Good God, that’s even worse. Just don’t slip up and call him Doug.”

“No worries there. The Old Man isn’t exactly all that familiar, now is he?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that. Heck, the two of us were just chatting about baseball scores.” Although the war had gutted the ranks of baseball leagues back home, the games still went on, and the scores and accounts of the games were a welcome relief that at least something normal was still happening back home. Tatum never missed a chance to crow when news trickled in that his beloved Yankees had won a string of games.

“I call bullshit on that, because I am pretty sure that the general has never been to a baseball game.”

“What do you mean? I heard the Old Man was in charge of our Olympics teams back in 1928.”

“Sure, that makes sense. The Olympics are all about classic sports like running, the javelin, that disc thing that they throw—”

“The discus.”

“Exactly. Not bats and balls and peanuts in the stands.”

“You can’t get any more American than baseball.”

“If you say so.”

“Shh, don’t look now, but here comes that ballbuster Major Lundholm.”

Beside him, Tatum ducked his head and went back to work, studying several documents at once in an effort to look busy. Sometimes it seemed as if the war were being fought with paperwork, as if mountains of paper could somehow replace bullets and bombs, ships and planes.

Around them, the large office hummed with activity — shouts, ringing phones, hurrying men, and a few women. The place was semiaffectionately known as “the bullpen”—a term taken straight from Wall Street.

Captain Oatmire decided to go down to the street and get some fresh air. The brief interaction with the general, however small, had left him dazed.

Out on the street, he lit a cigarette and surveyed the traffic passing on Queen Street. Many of the vehicles were of British origin, with the exception of the US jeeps and trucks that went rushing past. Though the people in the street spoke English, their accents sounded jarring to his American ears.

It was hard to pinpoint what Australia was like — he had struggled to describe it in his letters home. It wasn’t quite British, and it definitely wasn’t American. I guess Australia is Australian. He hadn’t had time to explore much of the country. He worked long hours at headquarters. There wasn’t much sightseeing taking place, considering that there was a war on. Some of his fellow junior officers — and some not so junior — seemed determined to meet the local sheilas, but Oatmire had kept his head down in that regard, at least. There seemed to be ten eager men for every available woman, anyhow.

Even if there was tension over dating the local girls, the Australians were mostly welcoming of US forces — and for good reason. It had less to do with the money that the soldiers and officers spent at the bars throughout Brisbane than it did with the fact that there had been real fear that the Japanese might invade Australia. The Japs had bombed the city of Darwin and had even used midget submarines to raid Sydney Harbor — or Harbour, as the Brits and Australians spelled it. Not far from Australia, savage battles had been fought against the Japanese on New Guinea.

Back when fears of invasion had been at their height, there had been good reason for Australia to be worried. Japanese Imperial forces would have overwhelmed their defenses. But with the influx of US forces and recent victories against the Japanese, those invasion fears had subsided. The Japanese were far from defeated, but they had been knocked back on their heels. They were fighting a defensive war now, although nobody was ready to say they were on the ropes.

He watched a squad of hollow-eyed soldiers pass by. Their uniforms looked dirty and ragged, stained in places with what might be blood. Judging by the battered stocks of their rifles, their weapons had seen hard use.

Clearly these men had experienced the horrors of combat. Oatmire felt a twinge of guilt. He came from a wealthy and well-connected family that had made its money, ironically enough, in manufacturing military supplies during the Great War. After graduating from college, he had soon found himself in uniform as a staff officer. His war was very different from the one being fought by the veteran troops who had just marched past. More than once, he had expressed his interest in seeing action rather than shining a chair seat throughout the war.

But staff duty was not without its perils, not when you were dealing with someone like MacArthur. If Oatmire wasn’t careful, he might find himself leading the first wave going ashore in the Philippines. Sure, he had said more than once that he wouldn’t mind seeing combat, but in his mind’s eye, he saw himself observing from a safe distance. He’d always imagined himself strolling ashore once the heavy lifting had been done and the only gunfire was off in the hills.

He flicked away his cigarette stub and began to make his way back to the bullpen.

At the top of the stairs, he was surprised to see the unwelcome figure of Major Lundholm standing in the doorway. With a sinking feeling, he realized that Lundholm had been waiting for him. Uh-oh. That couldn’t be good.

“Oatmire, where the hell have you been?” the major wondered, scowling. “Probably flirting with those damn sheilas. I hope you don’t have any hot dates, because it’s time to pack your gear.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“This is the army, son. What’s there to understand? Anyhow, it looks like you got your wish.”

“My wish, sir?” Oatmire instantly felt his belly knot with worry.

“You’re going to be part of the landing on Leyte, after all, you lucky son of a bitch.”