"Old Soldiers Never Die"

American Caesar by William Manchester (1978)

In words about as subtle as Hulk Hogan’s atomic leg drop, William Manchester captures the character both of his book and its subject:

He was a great thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of men and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime. No more baffling, exasperating soldier ever wore a uniform. Flamboyant, imperious, and apocalyptic, he carried the plumage of a flamingo, could not acknowledge his errors, and tried to cover up his mistakes with sly, childish tricks. Yet he was also endowed with great personal charm, a will of iron, and a soaring intellect. Unquestionably he was the most gifted man-at-arms this nation has produced. (Preamble)

Even before he was born, Douglas MacArthur was destined for greatness. His father, Arthur, had fought in the Union Army during the Civil War, and played a crucial role at the Battle of Mission Ridge. During an uphill charge, when the standard-bearer was shot dead, Arthur, grabbing the colours, rallied his comrades to the top. He was recognised for his bravery and went on to have a distinguished career, the highlight of which was becoming Governor-General of the Philippines. In time, that country would also come to define his son’s life.

MacArthur deeply admired his father, but it was his mother, Pinky, who had the biggest role in shaping him. He trembled before her. Right up to her death—when MacArthur was 55—she was active in leveraging the family’s contacts to promote her son’s career, often without his knowledge! When he first joined West Point military academy, she moved into a hotel across the way; based on whether the light in her son’s room was on, she could tell if he was studying or not.

Between his father’s fame and his mother’s meddling, MacArthur became something of a glory-hound with a penchant for self-promotion. He was meticulous about how he came off to other people. Every word and gesture was calculated to impress. He wore leather jackets, a rumpled hat, and Aviator sun-glasses. He received guests while carrying a corn-cob pipe, even if he wasn’t actually smoking it. For much of his career he also carried a cane; when a journalist asked if it was because he had trouble walking, MacArthur quietly got rid of it.

In speech, he had a habit of slipping into an elevated, rhetorical manner filled with religious and historical allusions. As many times as this filled his men with supernatural courage, it could also be mistimed and pretentious, like when he accepted the Father of the Year award in 1942:

A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentialities of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. . . (ch. 6)

Some, seeing the facade he put up, concluded that MacArthur was a fraud. Though the General was a reserved and contrived person, he believed, more than anything else, in his duties to his men and his country. All of his ideas were steeped in these soldierly instincts. His style was highly personal. Even as supreme commander, he liked to visit the front-lines on reconnaissance missions. While his comrades-in-arms dived for cover, MacArthur would calmly stroll about as if there weren’t snipers and bombers shooting at him.

The man was incredibly brave. Critics nonetheless accused him of seeking attention. He had his reasons, though. When his close friend and compadre, President Manuel Quezon of the Philippines, accused him of recklessness, MacArthur explained:

I know i have no right to gamble with my life, but it is absolutely necessary that at the right time a commander takes chances because of the effect down the line, for when they see the man at the top risking his life, the man at the bottom says, ‘I guess if that old man can take it, I can too.’ (ch. 5)

That was MacArthur’s theory in war and politics. One can see the germ of it in his father’s heroic charge at Missionary Ridge. It solidified during World War I, when he saw the catastrophic results of trench warfare—the result, he believed, of a war prosecuted by desk-workers and pencil-pushers who never actually went to the front-lines. The lessons he took away were for life. A real commander must always lead from the front.

Though MacArthur’s grandiosity was designed to inspire his men, it could also blind his judgement. He was jealous of his peers—who often got more attention than him—and tended to view any push-back from them as part of a big conspiracy; clearly, any setback was a result of those wet-willies in Washington meddling with things they don’t understand. Unwilling to see his own faults clearly, MacArthur demanded resources that could not be spared. When war finally came to the Philippines, he was unprepared.

At that time the pre-eminent powers in the Pacific were Japan and the United States. They were on a collision-course with each other, but Americans in those days had a much more isolationist outlook, and many saw the Philippines as expendable. Only MacArthur wanted to take the fight to the Japanese, who, despite being a great power, were reliant on imports. That is why they wanted to establish an empire in South-East Asia: if they secured access to oil, iron, and rubber in the Indies, they would end their dependence on the Americans, and be able to defeat them in a war. The Philippines lay right in the middle of their plans. As long as it remained under American influence, it was a threat.

Hardly anyone in America believed the islands could be held in the case of a war. The long-standing strategy—War Plan Orange—was to evacuate soldiers into Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island. These lay at the mouth of the inland sea leading to Manila, the capital of the Philippines. American forces would hold this area until the Pacific Fleet could arrive. The idea was to make an invasion so costly as to be not worth it.

MacArthur drew up new battle plans. Rather than fortify Bataan, the Americans would attack the Japanese as they attempted to land on the beaches, making use of lightning-quick aircraft strikes. He trained new soldiers and ordered better equipment from America, but his timelines were unrealistic, and most of his stuff never arrived. At the outbreak of war, the Filipino Army was poorly paid and barely trained. Soldiers spoke various unintelligible languages, making communication difficult. It could hardly compete with the Japanese army, was hardened and experience from several years of war in China.

Yet the war might have gone better had he not made a disastrous blunder in its opening hours. It is still not clear exactly what happened, but on the morning that Pearl Harbour was bombed, MacArthur dithered. Though war was certain, he did not deploy his troops for battle, nor could he be reached by his staff. Instead, he sat on his hands for 9 hours, at which point the Japanese struck first, bombing the majority of his air-force, still nicely lined up on the runways for them. Once MacArthur finally grasped the situation, he began the withdrawal to Bataan. Unfortunately, having deployed most of his supplies on the central Luzon plain—where they could be easily transferred to the beaches—it was now impossible to retrieve them. The Bataan garrison fought on, but their outlook was bleak. Their surrender would be one of the worst defeats in American military history.

Now, MacArthur thought in very black-and-white terms: either you completely destroy your enemy, or your enemy completely destroys you. He had every intention of going down with his men. While that was brave, it never had the desired effect on his men’s morale. They chided him for “hiding” on Corregidor Island, and gave him the nickname “Dugout Doug”. MacArthur was hurt by this; he always blamed the pesky journalists and pencil-pushers for getting in between him and his men. Whatever the case, his refusal to leave the Philippines was simply unacceptable. The man was a seasoned commander. It would be a strategic disaster to let him die on a matter of honour.

In the end, Franklin D. Roosevelt only got MacArthur out of there by lying. He promised him all of the soldiers and equipment he had been asking for; all he had to do was get to Brisbane and lead them. Travelling in a small boat over two days in waters swarming with ships and planes, MacArthur slipped through to the island of Mindanao—the southern Philippines—from where he was flown to Brisbane. It was an extremely dangerous escape. His soldiers perceived it as a betrayal. To the Filipinos, he became a legend for the press conference he gave upon his arrival, in which he uttered the words: I shall return.

While MacArthur saw his own theatre as the centre of the war, the government had no intention of shifting its focus: Europe first, then the Pacific, that was the plan. MacArthur had to fight back with what he could scrape together. Moving in conjunction with the Pacific Fleet, he made inroads against Japanese positions in New Guinea, before beginning a drive to Rabaul. His strategy was clever: rather than hopping from island-to-island to contest every entrenched position, MacArthur simply by-passed the enemy. He utilised the speed and mobility of air-strikes to cut off their supply-lines, forcing them to regroup by making deadly overland treks through the jungle.

After the successes in New Guinea, it remained to be seen where American forces would strike next. Some favoured an assault on Taiwan, so they could connect up with Chiang Kai-Shek’s army in China, but MacArthur stressed the moral imperative of the promise that he had made to the Philippines. His impassioned rhetoric persuaded the chiefs of staff. The decisive battle came at Leyte Gulf. Though the American navy was caught out of position, a blunder by the enemy caused them to back-off, creating a gap into which the landing crafts could slip through. A photographer caught the iconic image of MacArthur wading to shore. He had returned.

Within days of each other, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, and then America dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan was ready to surrender. MacArthur’s next job was to attend the peace negotiations, after which he was appointed Supreme Commander of occupied Japan. His power in this role was effectively unlimited, yet despite his (incorrect) reputation as a reactionary, MacArthur liberalised many aspects of the new Japan. He saw it as his job to de-militarise and democratise the nation. His first action was to resume normal elections and give women the vote. “The Japanese men won’t like it,” he said. “I don’t care. I want to discredit the military. Women don’t like war.” (ch. 7)

Two things ensured his success. First, he developed a professional relationship with Emperor Hirohito. Though the military held all power during the war, the Emperor remained the nation’s spiritual personification, and was considered a God. When he called upon MacArthur, the symbolism was not lost; the Emperor’s deference had imbued the Supreme Commander with something of his mana. Later, he broadcast a speech in which he denied his own divinity and acknowledged the long road ahead for the country’s reconstruction.

The other reason for MacArthur’s success was his attempt to cultivate good-will among the occupied. He did not attempt to mete out a victor’s justice. Any American caught slapping a Japanese person would receive a 5 year prison sentence. The issue of war crimes was mostly left for the Japanese to deal with themselves—though MacArthur couldn’t help but go after his old foes in the Philippines. Overall, MacArthur exercised his authority in a principled way. He allowed much of the old political class to stay, strong-arming them only on a select few issues, such as constitutional reform and the break-up of the old Zaibatsu corporations. That prevented the Japanese government from growing decadent and dependent on the Supreme Commander’s personal judgement.

Just at the moment MacArthur risked becoming a permanent institution, he was whisked away to fight the Korean War. Since 1905, Korea had effectively been part of Japan. In the final days of the war, the Soviet Union and the United States divided it into two occupation zones, north and south. Now the north had crossed the border, smashed the southern army, and was rapidly driving them back to a small beach-head at Pusan.

MacArthur’s strategy for breaking out was to once again bypass the enemy. He proposed a massive amphibious assault on Incheon, a city lay far behind enemy lines, with a deep harbour and a narrow, rocky entrance. There was only a short time-frame in which the tides would be low enough for landing, and the weather had not been particularly good. The sheer unlikeliness of such an attack is exactly why it succeeded. MacArthur’s timing was also perfect: had he waited another week, the weather would have only gotten worse, and the North Koreans would have had time to complete fortifications they had just laid down.

Now the North Koreans were on the run. But as NATO forces pressed the counter-attack, engineers discovered sophisticated runways in enemy territory. Only a major power, such as the Soviet Union or China, could have constructed them. Something was afoot, but MacArthur, determined to end the war by Christmas, pressed on to the Yalu river which borders China. President Truman had authorised MacArthur to attack the Chinese if they joined the war. All the evidence suggested that this was already happening: intelligence noted that Chinese soldiers were massing at the border. MacArthur, going on his gut feeling, urged his men onwards anyway. They advanced in two prongs, deep into the gorges of North Korea where, as the season passed into winter, and their supply-lines became dangerously thin, they suddenly ran into the Chinese Army. They had been waiting in ambush, and now they had pounced.

Why did MacArthur rush to end the war? Manchester suggests he did not want to make a diplomatic blunder regarding China. He had already done that earlier, at the outbreak of the war, when he met with Chiang-Kai Shek in Taiwan. Shek was keen to get involved in the Korean War so he could get the Americans behind an invasion of mainland China. Though MacArthur had only come to discuss military matters, the meeting was interpreted as a political move, and Communist China was on high alert.

Now that China was in the war, MacArthur did actually want to invade them. In his black-and-white thinking, a victory meant the total defeat and capitulation of all enemies. That now included China. He suggested a nuclear assault on her biggest cities to permanently disable her ability to wage war. Anything less he considered appeasement, a disastrous prolonging of the state of conflict.

Truman shut him down. An invasion of China would likely trigger another World War, and that was the last thing anyone wanted. But then MacArthur voiced his beliefs in public, confusing the international community, and once more scaring the Chinese. What actually was America’s stance on the war? Were they going to keep the fighting in Korea, or bring it to China? MacArthur’s blunder had caused a diplomatic crisis. He was out of control. Truman had no choice but to recall him. The Korean War would wage for another two years, and, when the dust had cleared, the border between north and south had barely moved.

The conflict between Truman and MacArthur was personal, political, and philosophical. The two men were opposites in every regard, MacArthur an aloof, dignified Victorian gentleman, Truman a vulgar, fiery every-man. MacArthur believed that war was the last resort which, when arrived at, you fought with everything you had until either you or your enemy were dead. Truman believed in the concept of a limited war, which eventually developed into George Kennan’s strategy of containment; that was the only hope for avoiding another world war, while also meeting the threat of communism head on.

MacArthur’s recall meant he would be returning to the United States for the first time since before the war, almost 15 years. The closing words of his military career, spoken before Congress, echo the realisation he had come to: “Old soldiers never die - they just fade away.” MacArthur’s time was up. Just like that, the man who had promised the Philippines their future, and given it to them, had finished his role in history.