Destiny's Child

(See Cover)

White and shaken, the young lieutenant picked himself up and examined his peaked campaign hat on the ground. The shot had torn it clean off his head. Even the tough top sergeant was moved. Said he: "With the lieutenant's kind permission, may I remark that the rest of the lieutenant's life is now on velvet."

Lieutenant Douglas MacArthur was fresh out of West Point in 1903, on assignment in the Philippines, and the first hostile bullets of his life scared him badly. Last week, 38 years later, General Douglas MacArthur was back in the Philippines fighting the toughest battle of his life. But he was not scared. As the bombs whistled down near him, an orderly tried to shoo him to a dugout. "Give me a cigaret, Eddie," said MacArthur, and went on watching.

To Douglas MacArthur it seemed scarcely strange that his life should have come full circle. Last year, trying to explain to a reporter how he felt about the Philippines, he roared: "When George Dewey sailed into Manila Bay on May 1, 1898 it was Manifest Destiny working itself out. By God, it was Destiny that brought me here! It was Destiny."

For Douglas MacArthur the Philippines are more than a battle assignment. The Philippines are in his blood. His father, Lieut. General Arthur MacArthur, swashbuckling boy hero of the Civil War, was military governor of the islands, 40 years ago; his mother died there; he himself has served three tours of duty there. Under Manila's tropic palms he wooed his second wife, 20 years his junior, and fathered his sturdy three-year-old son. The Philippines are the only home he has known since 1935, when he arrived to stake his professional reputation as a soldier on the thesis that the islands can be defended.

MacArthur's Philippines. When Douglas MacArthur took over the defense of the Philippines in 1935, he had all the honors a professional soldier could "want. He had been the youngest Chief of Staff in U.S. history, had served longer in that post than any other man (before or since). Neither the salary ($18,000 a year) nor the title (Field Marshal) bestowed on him by mercurial little President Manuel Quezon (who had surrendered his sword to MacArthur's father 40 years before) meant as much to him as the fact that the Philippines were a vital outpost of the U.S. defense.

MacArthur was almost alone in this opinion six years ago. The Neutrality Act and the Tydings-McDuffie Act (freeing the Philippines in 1946) expressed U.S. desire to cut its ties with an unhappy world. Moreover, almost all professional soldiers believed that the Philippines were a sore thumb stuck out in the Pacific that could be chopped off in one Japanese try. They wanted to get out. The Philippine Department of the U.S. Army was instructed to get ready to leave when Philippine independence arrived.

On Dec. 31, 1937 MacArthur retired from the U.S. Army. To the Philippine Commonwealth he had promised that by 1946 he would make of the islands a Pacific Switzerland that would cost any invader 500,000 men, three years and more than $5,000,000,000 to conquer.

While Americans in the Philippines, annoyed by MacArthur's refusal to enter greatly into their social life, laughed at him and styled him Napoleon of Luzon, MacArthur sweated to forge a fighting force. Back to Washington went a stream of able reports, stressing the necessity for supplies for his Philippine Army. In his air-conditioned, penthouse apartment he gave fervid interviews to visiting newsmen, telling them how tough was his Philippine Army. He would stride back & forth across his room, purpling the air with oratory, punctuated by invocations of God and the flag, pounding his fist in his palm, swinging his arms in great sweeping gestures. Blond, burly John Gunther, master of the technique of sit-'em -in -the -chair -and -pace -'em -to-death interviewing, met Field Marshal Mac-Arthur, wound up limp in his seat while MacArthur paced roaring on. Always his thesis was the same: the Philippines could be defended, and by God, they would be defended.

Nights he paced his apartment atop the Manila Hotel so vigorously that people in the rooms below complained. He entertained few friends. He worried about friction with the U.S. Army in the Philip pines, some of whose officers considered him a has-been ("Hell, MacArthur doesn't mean any more in this Army than a buck private"), and about budget trouble with volatile little Mr. Quezon, who blew hot & cold about defense.

Not till 1940 did the turn come. Then Japan occupied northern Indo-China, threatened the U.S. with the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. The Philippines were defended then by some 3,000 U.S. soldiers, a handful of mobile 155-mm. howitzers, some old 755, about 100 first-line planes and some old craft which, said the pilots banteringly, could make 100 miles an hour if they dove straight down. If war broke out, all MacArthur's Philippine Army was to be transferred to the American Commander in Chief of the Philippine Department.

Last year the U.S. Army buckled to the task of re-equipping its Philippine Department. In the summer of 1941 it decided to recall MacArthur to the U.S. flag. On July 26, 1941 MacArthur was named Lieutenant General in command of the United States Army Forces in the Far East (the Army shortens the title to USAFFE, but MacArthur prefers to call it the Army of the Far East, the A.F.E.). Last week President Roosevelt capped the return of MacArthur to action by making him, again, a full four-star General.

MacArthur's Command. To his new command, MacArthur brought a dowry of Filipino loyalty. Relations between Filipinos and the U.S. Army in the Philippines had hitherto been only cordial. But Mac-Arthur, who had created the Philippine Army, trusted it and could command it as he wished. "I know a fighting army when I see one," he had said, "and these men are a fighting army."

Competent Major General George Grunert, whom MacArthur superseded as commander of U.S. Army Forces, had laid the ground work for vigorous defense before he left. MacArthur set about bringing his more than 20,000 Filipino regulars under U.S. command and prepared for the gradual incorporation of more than 125,-ooo Filipino reserves. Racing against time, MacArthur demanded, and began to receive, a sizable trickle from the spigot of U.S. production. Transports threaded the maze of the island waterways, bringing U.S. troops, planes, technicians, tanks. Out of the East, Flying Fortresses roared to secret concentrations within the islands.

When the Japanese struck at the Philippines last fortnight, MacArthur's men rolled with the punch. If the Japanese plan had been to lure General MacArthur out beyond the mountain bastions of the central core of Luzon, there was no evidence last week that they had succeeded (see p. 14).

Last week General Douglas MacArthur labored through the day, far, far into the night at his Manila headquarters, moving troops about the map, gauging, speculating, ordering. "Well, slaves," he cheerily remarked once to his sweating staff, "I'm going home to eat." Now & then he appeared around town, letting the people be reassured by his presence. Douglas Mac-Arthur, with his innate sense of drama, knew that he was in dead center of the stage, and enjoyed it.

MacArthur's Style. Wherever Mac-Arthur goes he travels as if draped in the American Flag itself and preceded by a guard of honor. But while civilian critics used to consider MacArthur a swashbuckling, colorful, impeccably dressed soldier with a penchant for the William Jennings Bryan type of oratory, most of his Army contemporaries thought him a strict disciplinarian, a magnificent leader of men in action, a first-class fighting man.

Style runs in the MacArthur family. His father. General Arthur MacArthur, left Wisconsin to join the Union forces at the age of 17, emerged as "The Boy Colonel of the West," having led his troops personally on the charge at Missionary Ridge.

Arthur MacArthur died in style. Attending the 50th annual reunion of his Civil War regiment at Milwaukee, he rose to deliver what he said would be his last speech. It was a fiery oration, reverberating with echoes of dead drums and battle cries. As he finished the speech, he faltered, dropped dead. His old adjutant rose, tottered over to drape the body with the flag, then fell dead himself across the body of his commander.

Douglas MacArthur was born at an Arkansas Army post. When he was four his mother and a company sergeant sheltered him from an Indian raid. He entered West Point in 1899. MacArthur was First Corporal as a Yearling, Ranking First Sergeant as a Second Classman, First Captain as a First Classman, graduated first in his class, with the highest scholastic record in 25 years, to enter the Army's Corps of Engineers. Between times at the Academy, the legend says, he became engaged to eight different girls.

MacArthur is his own pressagent. Whatever he does is done with a sense of dramatic value. As an aide to his father, who was military observer to Japan in 1905, he watched the Russo-Japanese War. At Mudken he saw the Japanese charge a Russian-held hill six times, joined them on the seventh and successful charge. In 1914 he was with Major General Frederick Funston at Veracruz. Disguised as a Mexican bum, he reconnoitered behind Mexican lines, found three locomotives for his gen eral. He remembers this escapade especially because of a young official of the Ger man Embassy who helped him : Franz von Papen.

MacArthur went on in World War I to turn in a spectacular performance as brigade commander, then divisional commander of the Rainbow Division. The striking idea of creating a division that included troops from every state in the Union was Douglas MacArthur's. While the Rainbow raced with Major General Clarence R. Edwards' 26th (New England) Division for the honor of being first to land on French soil, MacArthur was too sensible a soldier to permit his troops to put off underequipped in .order to gain that honor. The Rainbow barely nosed out the 26th to France -- and had to cough up part of its equipment to less well-heeled Yankees when they arrived.

MacArthur's combat record was brilliant. Besides two wounds, one gassing and enough praise to turn a modest man's head, he picked up 13 decorations for gallantry under fire, seven citations for extraordinary valor, 24 top decorations of foreign Governments. MacArthur remained overseas for a while with the Army of Occupation. On this tour of duty he met the Prince of Wales, who was gloomy about what he considered certain German resurgence. Said MacArthur: "We beat the Germans this time, and we can do it over again." After an astringent two-year tour of duty as the youngest Superintendent in the history of West Point, he went back to the Philippines, returned to the U.S., later took charge of America's Olympic team in 1928, went back again to the Philippines as Commander of the Philippine Department, returned to be jumped by Engineer Hoover over the heads of many oldsters to the post of Chief of Staff. He was only 50 then.

As Chief of Staff, MacArthur blasted the proposal of economy-minded Congressmen to amalgamate the Army & Navy in one department ("Pass this bill and every potential enemy of the U.S. will rejoice"). He established the first self-contained air striking force in U.S. history (the GHQ Air Force), worked out the present four-Army system of U.S. continental defense to be superimposed on the old nine Army corps areas.

Perhaps the sole action of his life that MacArthur would willingly forget is the Victory of Anacostia Flats when, riding a spectacular white horse, he called out a military force to rout the haggard veterans of the Bonus army from their Washington encampments. Army men tell the inside story. When asked who was going to lead the show, MacArthur realized that any man who did would commit political suicide, wind up in a dead-end career. He decided to take the dirty job in his own hands. But at night he used to go down to the flats, distribute money to the boys of his old division.

MacArthur's Problem. Last week Mac-Arthur was deep in one of the most difficult problems of his career. Defense of the Philippines was always planned in the belief that communications with the Philippine Islands could be kept open.

As a brilliant, visionary strategist General MacArthur knew that it was more important to hold the Malaya-Singapore-Netherlands Indies line, that if necessary the Philippines would have to be sacrificed. But MacArthur is quite capable of flouting the laws of war. The High Command might decide by the rules that the Philippines should be given up. But the last man to be convinced of that fact would probably be Douglas MacArthur. And if the islands should be lost, the U.S. would probably lose its best fighting general with them.

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