be transmitted from Taejon, so I went with him. We drove to Pusan and flew out for Tachikawa Air Base, outside Tokyo, just after midnight on an Air Force C-54.
In Tokyo, we learned not only that the 19th and 34th Infantry Regiments had been forced to “withdraw” to new positions farther south, but that the 24th division commander, Major General William F. Dean, had not been seen since he had personally gone out with a bazooka to use against North Korean tanks, and it was feared that he had been captured or killed.
McCoy and Zimmerman are by nature taciturn men, and they certainly were not about to offer their opinion of what they saw to a war correspondent. But it wasn’t at all hard, during the time we spent together, to read their faces. And what their faces said—the individual courage of the officers and men aside—was that the Eighth United States Army was not prepared for this war, is taking a terrible beating, and may not be able to halt the North Koreans.
The Marines are coming.
The question is, will they get here in time? And will they be able to do a better job than the Eighth Army has so far?
“What do you think, sir?” Lieutenant Peterson asked when Hart had finished reading the article.
“I know the two Marines she was with,” Hart replied, thinking out loud. Then he looked at Peterson. “I don’t know what to think, Paul.”
“You know them, sir?”
“In the last war, they called people like that ‘the Old Breed,’ ” Hart said. “I wonder what they call them now.”
[TWO]
OFFICE OF THE SENIOR INSPECTOR/INSTRUCTOR EL TORO MARINE CORPS AIR STATION, CALIFORNIA 1025 21 JULY 1950
Brigadier General Lawrence C. Taylor, USMC, whose promotion to flag officer rank had occurred shortly before his graduation from the U.S. Army War College on 30 May, had elected to take thirty days’ leave before reporting for duty at Headquarters, USMC.
For one thing, the year had been a rough one, and there hadn’t been much time to spend with his family. For another, unless he took some leave, he was going to lose it, as regulations dictated the forfeiture of leave in excess of sixty days. Finally, he suspected that as a brand-new one-star, there would not be an opportunity to take much—if any—leave in the next year.
Both he and Margaret, his wife, had Scottish roots, and had always wanted to see Scotland, so they talked it over, decided that they could afford it, and that it was really now or never, and went.
It was not as easy for him as he first thought it would be. It was necessary for him, as a serving officer, to get permission to leave the country. There were forms to fill out, listing where he wanted to go and why, and permission didn’t come when he expected it to, and he had to spend time on the phone to Eighth & Eye to make sure he would have permission in time to leave.
Permission came seventy-two hours before they were scheduled to leave. That just about gave them enough time to leave the kids with Margaret’s mother in upstate New York and get to New York for the TWA flight to Scotland. They flew on a Trans-Global Airways Lockheed Constellation, which was really very nice, and on the way decided all the paperwork was worthwhile. It was going to be sort of like a second honeymoon.
On 28 June, when he learned of the North Korean invasion in the Glasgow newspaper, he had—with more than a little difficulty—managed to get through on the telephone to Eighth & Eye and asked if he should report for duty. He was told that would not be necessary.
And when he reported for duty, they didn’t seem to know what to do with him, except to suggest that it might not be wise “in the present circumstances” to plan on spending two years at Eighth & Eye, which was the original plan.
General Taylor was thus able to consider the possibility—slight but real—that, should there be a war and an expansion of the Marine Corps, he might find himself serving with a Marine division in the field, or in command of a base—Parris Island, for example, while the incumbent there went off to a field command—instead of shuffling paper at Eighth & Eye.
That fascinating prospect was shattered when General Cates, on 13 July, summoned him to his office and told him (a) that on the fourteenth he was going to issue a confidential