In Danger's Path (11 page)

Milla thought they had as much chance to find Americans in the Gobi Desert as to be taken bodily into heaven to serve as handmaiden to the Mother of God.

What were Americans doing in the
Gobi Desert?

[THREE]
Supreme Headquarters
South West Pacific Ocean Area
Brisbane, Australia
0915 10 February 1943

Second Lieutenant George Hart, USMCR, pushed open the door to the office of Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Huff and held it open until Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, followed by Lieutenant Chambers D. Lewis III, USN, and Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, had marched in. Everyone was far more formally dressed than they had been on Espíritu Santo. The Marines were in greens, with Sam Browne belts. The breast of Pickering's superbly tailored Marine tunic was adorned with ribbons attesting to his valor in two world wars. The breast of McCoy's equally finely tailored tunic and Hart's off-the-officer's-clothing-store-rack tunic were bare. Hart, however had the golden cords of an aide-de-camp hanging from his epaulet. Lewis was in high-collared whites, and also had the golden cords of an aide-de-camp hanging from his shoulder.

Captain McCoy's fine tailoring was something of an accident. Officer Candidate McCoy had ordered his officer's uniforms from the same place that Officer Candidate Pickering had ordered his, and at his suggestion, the Custom Department of Brooks Brothers in New York City. Officer Candidate McCoy had no idea at the time what the uniforms would cost, though he had been assured that Brooks Brothers would happily extend him credit.

Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Huff rose to his feet behind his desk.

“Good afternoon, sir,” he said.

“How are you, Sid?” General Pickering replied, offering him his hand.

Huff took the hand, then nodded at the junior officers.

“I'll tell the Supreme Commander you're here, General,” Huff said. “I'm not sure the Supreme Commander is expecting these gentlemen….”

If that was a question, Pickering ignored it. “Thank you, Sid,” he replied.

Huff walked to the door to the inner office and opened it. “General Pickering is here, General,” he announced.

“Send him in,” MacArthur replied cheerfully.

“The Supreme Commander will see you, General,” Lieutenant Colonel Huff announced formally.

“Thank you,” Pickering replied with what could have been a smile of amused contempt. He had heard MacArthur's voice as clearly as Huff had. Pickering made a quick gesture telling the others to stand fast, then walked through the door and past Huff. He stopped halfway to MacArthur's desk and saluted.

There was a question about whether the salute was actually proper, under the circumstances. Navy protocol decreed that salutes were not exchanged indoors unless under arms. But Douglas MacArthur was a soldier, and Army protocol stated that juniors saluted seniors. Fleming Pickering had enormous respect for Douglas MacArthur. For that reason he decided that saluting MacArthur was the proper thing to do.

MacArthur returned the salute with a casual gesture in the general vicinity of his forehead, then came smiling from behind his desk with his hand extended.

“My dear Fleming,” he said, “I was wondering when I was going to see you.”

MacArthur's use of Pickering's first name was yet one more of the many reasons Colonel Sid Huff did not like General Fleming Pickering. It indicated Pickering's special position in the pecking order surrounding the Supreme Commander.

In the vast majority of instances, when MacArthur addressed one of his officers directly, it was by rank. A privileged few close to the throne were addressed by their last names. And on some rare occasions, a very, very few officers—for example, Generals Sutherland and Willoughby, and Lieutenant Colonel Sidney Huff, all of whom had escaped with MacArthur from the Philippines—would be honored to be addressed by the Supreme Commander by their Christian names.

General MacArthur rarely addressed General Pickering by anything but his first name.

“Thank you for receiving me on such short notice, sir,” Pickering said.

“Nonsense, Fleming,” MacArthur said with a wave of his hand. “You know my door is always open to you.” Then a smile crossed his face. “I mean, after all, Fleming, once the camel's nose is inside the tent, there's not much sense in closing the flap, is there?”

Pickering was surprised to see that MacArthur was responding to his appointment as Deputy Director of the Office of Strategic Services for Pacific Operations as something like a harmless joke. He had imagined that MacArthur would be as furious and frustrated as he himself was.

“General,” Pickering said, “before we get into that, I thought you might wish to talk to the officers who went onto Mindanao to meet with General Fertig. They're outside.”

“And then we can discuss this new development?” MacArthur asked, smiling.

“Yes, sir. Whenever you wish to, of course.”

“Perhaps you're right, Fleming. It probably would be best if we discussed the OSS privately, unofficially, between friends. Are you free for cocktails and dinner tomorrow? Unfortunately, Mrs. MacArthur and I are dining with the Prime Minister tonight. Can't get out of it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then that's the way we'll talk about it,” MacArthur said. He turned to Colonel Huff. “Sid, would you ask General Pickering's officers to come in, please? And then telephone Mrs. MacArthur and tell her General Pickering will be joining us for cocktails and dinner tomorrow?”

Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, and Lieutenant Chambers D. Lewis III, USN, marched into the Supreme Commander's office and came to attention before his desk. They did not salute. They were officers of the Naval Service.

“Stand at ease, please, gentlemen,” MacArthur said.

“General, Captain McCoy and Lieutenant Lewis,” Pickering said.

MacArthur offered both officers his hand, then took a closer look at Lewis.

“Haven't I previously had the pleasure, Lieutenant?”

“I'm flattered the Supreme Commander remembers,” Lewis said.

“And where was that?” MacArthur asked.

“Corregidor, sir,” Lewis said. “I was aboard the
Remora
.”

MacArthur's suddenly increased interest in Lieutenant Lewis was visible on his face.

“Frankly, I had been searching my memory to recall the name of your admiral,” he said, gesturing toward Lewis's aide-de-camp's cord. “But now I remember! Of course. It really is good to see you again, Lieutenant.”

He turned to Pickering.

“The submarine service did not share the belief of the rest of the Navy, Fleming, that it was too hazardous to attempt breaking through the Japanese fleet to reach us.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Pickering said.

“They came, again and again,” MacArthur continued emotionally. “Until the very end. They couldn't bring us much, but at least they tried!” He returned his attention to Lewis. “You made more than one voyage to Corregidor, didn't you, Mr. Lewis?”

“Three trips, sir.”

“And, more recently, if I correctly understand the situation, you left your sinecure as aide-de-camp to…?”

“Admiral Wagam, General,” Pickering furnished.

“…Admiral Wagam,” MacArthur went on, “to undertake the infiltration of Mindanao, a mission posing great hazards! Your courage is inspirational!”

Lewis, visibly embarrassed, did not reply for a moment, but then blurted: “Sir, that was my first rubber-boat mission. It was Captain McCoy's third!”

MacArthur looked at McCoy. “Is that so?”

“McCoy was on the Makin Island raid,” Pickering replied, “with the President's son. And then he went onto Buka to replace our Coastwatcher team there.”

MacArthur looked at Pickering. “Presumably, Fleming, recommendations for decorations for these two fine young officers are making their way through the bureaucracy?”

“There really hasn't been time for that yet, sir,” Pickering replied.

“I was thinking that I would be honored to decorate them myself,” MacArthur said thoughtfully, and then announced, “And by God, I will!” He looked at Colonel Huff. “Sid, go down the hall to G-1”—the General Staff section that dealt with personnel—“and get a couple of Silver Star medals,” he ordered. “Silver Stars would be appropriate, don't you agree, Fleming?”

“Yes, sir. I think they would be. But General, there were two enlisted men on McCoy's team.”

“Silver Stars for the officers, Bronze Stars for the men,” MacArthur decreed. “General Pickering can prepare the citations later.”

“Yes, sir,” Huff said, and left the room.

[ONE]
Quarters of the Supreme Commander
Supreme Headquarters
South West Pacific Ocean Area
Brisbane, Australia
1815 11 February 1943

Jeanne (Mrs. Douglas) MacArthur offered Brigadier General Fleming Pickering her cheek to kiss. “I'm delighted to see you back, Fleming,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“And I would offer my congratulations on your new appointment, but I'm not sure that's the thing to do.”

My God
, Pickering thought,
she knows all about it. That message from the President was classified Top Secret, and wife to El Supremo or not, she had no right to know what it said
.

I wonder what else she knows?

Dumb question. She knows whatever El Supremo feels like telling her, which probably means she knows more Top Secret material than most of the officers around here
.

“Darling,” MacArthur said, “would you please ask Manuel to bring us two stiff drinks of Fleming's excellent Famous Grouse scotch?”

Master Sergeant Manuel Donat, late of the Philippine Scouts, was MacArthur's orderly. Pickering had provided the MacArthurs with several cases of Famous Grouse whisky from the stores of a P&FE freighter that had called at Brisbane. Fleming Pickering was Chairman of the Board of Pacific & Far East Shipping.

“Then congratulations
are
in order?” she asked.

“What we're celebrating is the safe return of two of Fleming's officers from their mission to see this Fertig fellow. I had the privilege of decorating both of them.”

So she knows about that, too. Why am I surprised?

“Curiosity overwhelms me,” she said. “I hope Charley was wrong.”

Charley was Brigadier General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur's intelligence officer. Though Pickering thought that Willoughby was actually bright, he had also concluded that his closeness to MacArthur was based more than anything else on his absolute loyalty to, and awe of, the Supreme Commander.

“Charley was wrong about what?” Pickering asked.

“He said the poor fellow was…that the stress had been too much for him.”

“Jeanne, according to my people, General Fertig is perfectly sane, and, if we can get supplies to him, is going to cause the Japanese a good deal of trouble.”

“Would you ask Manuel to bring us the drinks, Jeanne, please?” MacArthur said.

Obviously, El Supremo wants the subject changed
, Pickering thought, but as soon as his wife had left the room, MacArthur proved him wrong.

“And that, presumably, is what your officers are going to tell the people in Washington?” MacArthur asked. “That this Fertig fellow knows what he's doing?”

“Yes, sir.”

MacArthur raised his expressive eyebrows and shook his head.

Pickering thought it over for half a second and decided he was obliged to make the Supreme Commander even unhappier.

“Fertig made quite an impression on both McCoy and Lewis, General. What Lewis thinks, of course, he will report to Admiral Wagam, and more than likely to Admiral Nimitz. And just before I went back to Espíritu Santo, there was a Special Channel message from Colonel Fritz Rickabee, suggesting I prepare McCoy to brief the President just about as soon as he gets off the plane in Washington.”

“Who is Rickabee? How would he know what the President wants? For that matter, why would Franklin Roosevelt want to hear what a captain thinks?”

“Rickabee is my deputy—
was
my deputy—before this OSS thing came up. I don't know this, but I suspect the President told Frank Knox that he wants to talk to McCoy.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“McCoy is held in high regard by Jimmy Roosevelt; they were both on the Makin raid.”

MacArthur snorted.

“And Frank Knox told his assistant, Captain Houghton, who told Colonel Rickabee,” Pickering finished his thought.

MacArthur considered that for a moment. “Don't misunderstand me, Fleming,” he said. “I admire this Fertig fellow. And I will move heaven and hell and whatever else has to be moved to see that he gets the supplies he needs.”

Sergeant Donat, in a crisp white jacket, arrived with a tray holding glasses, ice, and a bottle of Famous Grouse.

“Good to see you again, General,” he said.

“Thank you, Manuel,” Pickering said.

Donat poured two stiff drinks, then looked at Mrs. MacArthur, who smiled and shook her head, “no.”

“A toast, I would suggest, is in order,” MacArthur said. “To your brave young officers, Fleming.”

“And the enlisted men they had with them,” Pickering responded. “Better yet, to all the brave men who are carrying on your fight in the Philippines.”

MacArthur considered that, then sipped his drink. “So what are you going to do now, Fleming?” he asked.

“Now that my nose is under your tent flap?”

MacArthur smiled and nodded.

“I'm going to meet with Colonel Waterson first thing in the morning,” Pickering said.

Colonel John J. Waterson was OSS Brisbane Station Chief, which is to say head of the Office of Strategic Services detachment assigned to Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean Area.

“In your new role as Deputy Director for Pacific Operations of the OSS?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have not previously met the gentleman?”

Pickering shook his head, “no.”

“Coast Artillery Corps. Class of '22 at West Point,” MacArthur recited. “Resigned in 1934, with twelve years of service, after failure of selection for promotion to captain. Commissioned as major artillery, reserve, in 1939. Called to active service October 1940. Instructor—mathematics—at the Artillery School, Fort Bliss. Detailed to the OSS January 1942. Promotions to lieutenant colonel and colonel came shortly after he joined the OSS. In his civilian career, Colonel Waterson was a vice president of Malloy Manufacturing Company—they make hubcaps for automobiles—which is owned by his wife's family.”

It was not a very impressive recitation of military credentials, and both men knew it.

MacArthur, looking very pleased with himself, smiled at Pickering.

“You know more about him than I do,” Pickering confessed.

“I thought that might be the case,” MacArthur said.

“What was that? ‘Know your enemy'?” Pickering asked.

“Your phrase, Fleming, not mine,” MacArthur said, smiling. “And I certainly don't think of
you
as the enemy.”

“Thank you.”

“Unfortunately, I was never able to find time to receive Colonel Waterson,” MacArthur said, obviously pleased, “and now it won't be necessary, will it?”

Pickering suddenly understood why Douglas MacArthur was pleased that the President had appointed him OSS Deputy Director for Pacific Operations.

He thinks I'm going to get Roosevelt and Donovan off his back
.

And in his shoes, I would think the same thing. He knows he's right about the OSS; and he knows I think he's right, and I can plead his case in Washington better even than he can
.

Just before Pickering left Washington for his current Pacific trip, the President of the United States had personally given him a subsidiary mission: to convince General Douglas MacArthur to find time in his busy schedule to receive Colonel Waterson.

OSS Director William Donovan had complained to Roosevelt that following a very brief meeting with General Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur's G-2, shortly after his arrival in Brisbane seven weeks before, Waterson had been waiting in vain for the meeting with MacArthur Willoughby had promised to arrange “just as soon as the Supreme Commander can find time in his schedule.”

When Pickering had raised the subject to MacArthur soon after his arrival in Brisbane, he was told that MacArthur had decided that the OSS was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Receiving Colonel Waterson would therefore be tantamount to letting the nose of an unwelcome camel into his tent. MacArthur had no intention of doing that.

Pickering thought MacArthur was right. The OSS probably would be more trouble than it would be worth in the kind of war MacArthur was fighting. The situation here was completely different from Europe and Africa, where the OSS had proven very valuable.

It was a relatively simple matter to infiltrate OSS Jedburgh teams into France and other German-occupied areas of the European landmass by parachute or even by small fishing boats setting out from England. Once inside enemy-held territory, agents who spoke the language and were equipped with forged identification papers could relatively easily vanish into the local society, aided by in-place resistance movements. Once in place, OSS agents in Europe could go about their business of blowing up railroad bridges and harbor facilities, of gathering intelligence, and of arranging for resistance groups to be armed and equipped with communications equipment.

None of the conditions that made the OSS valuable in Europe prevailed in the Pacific. For one thing, there was no contiguous landmass. The war in the Pacific was already becoming known as “island hopping.” Hundreds—often thousands—of miles separated Allied bases from Japanese-occupied islands.

Simply infiltrating OSS teams onto a Japanese-held Pacific island would pose enormous—probably insurmountable—logistical problems.

And, with the exception of a few Americans and Filipinos who had refused to surrender when the Philippine Islands had fallen to the Japanese, there was no organized resistance in Japanese-occupied territory anywhere in the Pacific. In other words, there would be no friendly faces greeting OSS agents when they landed.

Furthermore, no matter how well he might speak Japanese, no matter how high the quality of his forged identification papers, a Caucasian agent stood virtually no chance of passing himself off as a Japanese soldier, or making himself invisible in a society whose brown-skinned citizens often wore loincloths, filed their teeth, and spoke unusual languages.

And finally, on the Pacific Islands where MacArthur intended to fight, there were very few railroad or highway bridges or industrial complexes to blow up, and really very little intelligence to gather.

Aware that his thinking was probably colored by his personal feelings toward OSS Director Colonel “Wild Bill” Donovan, Pickering thought the very idea of setting the OSS up in the South West Pacific Ocean Area probably had more to do with Donovan playing Washington politics than anything else.

Pickering had little use for Donovan, a law school classmate of President Roosevelt who had been a highly successful Wall Street lawyer before Roosevelt had appointed him to lead the OSS.

Lawyer Donovan had once been engaged by Chairman of the Board (of the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation) Pickering to represent P&FE in a maritime legal dispute. Pickering had liked neither the quality of the legal services rendered—the suit had been decided against them—nor the size of the bill rendered, and had called Donovan on the telephone and bluntly told him so.

William Donovan was not used to people talking to him the way Pickering did; and he was Irish. He was still angry two weeks later when he ran into Pickering in the lobby of the Century Club in New York City. There was some disagreement about who uttered the first unkind remark, but it was universally agreed that only the intervention of friends—strong friends—of both gentlemen had prevented adding to the many Century Club legends a fistfight in the main lobby between two of its most prominent members.

The enmity between the two men had continued after Donovan became Roosevelt's intelligence chief as head of the newly created Office of Strategic Services and Pickering had performed various intelligence services—separate from the OSS—for Navy Secretary Frank Knox, leading to his appointment as head of the highly secret Office of Management Analysis. The new marriage—at Roosevelt's direction—between Pickering and the OSS was likely to become a marriage made in hell from the point of view of everyone except the President.

Brigadier General Fleming Pickering looked at General Douglas A. MacArthur, shrugged, shook his head, took a healthy swallow of his Famous Grouse, and then shook his head again.

“Yes, Fleming?” MacArthur asked. “What is it you are having such a hard time saying?”

“I was wondering how a simple sailor like myself ever wound up between a rock named MacArthur and a hard place named Roosevelt,” Pickering said.

“All I ask of you, Fleming, with every confidence in the world that you are incapable of doing anything else, is to tell the President the truth. I don't think the OSS can play a valuable role here—I wish that it were otherwise—and neither do you.”

Pickering didn't reply.

“Elsewhere in Asia,” MacArthur went on, “India, China, Indochina, Burma, the OSS may prove, under your leadership, to be very useful.”