American Caesar by William Manchester

Author:William Manchester [William Manchester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780316544986
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 1978-09-30T05:00:00+00:00

His first Luzon communiqué since the escape on Bulkeley’s PT-41 announced: “The decisive battle for the liberation of the Philippines and the control of the Southwest Pacific is at hand. General MacArthur is in personal command at the front and landed with his assault troops.” That was misleading. He did tour the command posts of the four divisions, which by nightfall had pushed eight miles inland against negligible resistance, but he slept on the Boise until Friday, when he transferred his headquarters to a school-house in the town of Santa Barbara, twelve miles east of Lingayen. As usual, he wanted to create a picture of himself as a knight leading charges in glittering armor—or, perhaps closer to the truth, as eighteen-year-old Arthur MacArthur, Jr., scrambling up the slope of Missionary Ridge.

War correspondents who knew he was back on the cruiser jeered, but soon afterward the General’s display of physical courage on Luzon would once again alarm those accompanying him, and the first sign of it came ten days later when he moved to Hacienda Luisita, thirty miles ahead of Krueger’s command post at Calasiao. One reason for the trip may have been the prospect, brilliantly realized, of Filipinos decking his jeep with flowers until it resembled a victorious Roman chariot, kissing his hand, pressing wreaths around his neck, and trying to touch his uniform.* But his chief motive was to goad the cautious Krueger into more daring action. Eichelberger wrote Miss Em that “the commander-in-chief is very impatient,” that “he has had to speed up your palsy-walsy,” and that “Krueger doesn’t even radiate courage.” The General had told Eichelberger that he wanted him to “undertake a daring expedition against Manila with a small mobile force,” using tactics which “would have delighted Jeb Stuart.” The implication was that such a maneuver was too difficult for Krueger, and while MacArthur was doubtless playing his two fighting generals against one another—as Napoleon did with his marshals, and as Stalin would soon do in encouraging Zhukov and Konev to race each other to Berlin—the General clearly regarded his senior field commander as unenterprising, and even timid.70

The amphitheater in which they were maneuvering, the island’s central plain, is about 40 miles wide and 110 miles deep. Beginning at Lingayen Gulf, it runs south, confined on each side by jagged mountain ranges. Some fifteen miles above Manila it narrows between impassable marshes and then broadens once more upon reaching the capital’s outskirts. Though MacArthur had shown the defensive potential of Bataan and Corregidor, south of Manila, Yamashita preferred to withdraw the main body of his troops into the mountains to the east. And MacArthur somehow knew this. He was so sure of it that he saw no need to guard his left flank. “Get to Manila!” he told his field commanders. “Go around the Japs, bounce off the Japs, save your men, but get to Manila! Free the internees at Santo Tomas! Take Malacañan and the legislative buildings!” But Krueger was haunted by the nightmare of

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