Pickering typed out his own reports to President Truman, personally encrypted them, and personally took them to the communications center in the Dai Ichi Building, waited until their receipt had been acknowledged by Colonel Ed Banning at Camp Pendleton, and then personally burned them.
When Pickering told MacArthur that he already had an aide, Captain McCoy, General Willoughby had been visibly startled to hear the name, and Almond had picked up on that, too.
“The same McCoy?” MacArthur had inquired.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ned,” MacArthur said to Almond, “during the war, when we were setting up our guerrilla operations in the Philippines, Pickering set up an operation to establish contact with Americans who had refused to surrender. He sent a young Marine officer—this Captain McCoy—into Mindanao by submarine. Outstanding young officer. I personally decorated him with the Silver Star for that.”
That was even less the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. MacArthur had originally flatly stated that guerrilla operations in the Philippines were impossible.
President Roosevelt had learned there had been radio contact with a reserve officer named Fertig on Mindanao. Fertig, a lieutenant colonel, had promoted himself to brigadier general and named himself commanding general of U.S. forces in the Philippines. MacArthur and Willoughby had let it be known they believed the poor fellow had lost his senses, and repeated their firm belief that guerrilla action in the Philippine Islands was, regrettably, impossible.
Roosevelt had personally ordered Pickering to send someone onto the Japanese-occupied island of Mindanao to get the facts. Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, Gunnery Sergeant Ernest Zimmerman, and twenty-year-old Staff Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, a radio operator, had infiltrated Mindanao by submarine and found Fertig.
McCoy’s report that Fertig was not only sane (he had promoted himself to brigadier general on the reasonable assumption that few, if any, American or Philippine soldiers who had escaped Japanese capture would rush to place themselves under the command of a reserve lieutenant colonel) but prepared, if supplied, to do the Japanese considerable harm. Roosevelt had ordered that Fertig be supplied. At that point, MacArthur had begun to call Fertig and his U.S. forces in the Philippines “my guerrillas in the Philippines.”
When the U.S. Army stormed ashore later in the war on Mindanao, Fertig was waiting for them with than 30,000 armed, uniformed, and trained guerrillas. USFIP even had a band. In very real terms, except for artillery and tanks, USFIP was an American Army Corps. Army Corps are commanded by lieutenant generals. MacArthur continued to refer to Fertig as “that reserve lieutenant colonel.”
In the face of that gross distortion of the facts, Pickering had felt considerably less guilty about saying McCoy was his aide.
“And what did your ‘aide-de-camp’ have to say about what he saw on the wharf at Pusan?” Almond asked, smiling.
“General, this was an observation by an experienced officer, not, per se, a criticism,” Pickering said.
Almond nodded his understanding.
“McCoy said that most of the enlisted men are fresh from basic training, and that the officers and noncoms are also mostly replacements. There has been no opportunity for them to train together, nor has there been an opportunity for them to fire or zero their weapons.”
Almond looked pained.
“Zimmerman checked their crew-served weapons,”
Pickering went on. “He knows about weapons. The 29th has been issued new .50-caliber Browning machine guns; they were still in cosmoline when they were off-loaded from the ships in Pusan. None of their mortars have been test-fired.”
“God!” Almond said.
“The 29th was ordered to move immediately to Chinju, where it will be attached to the 19th Infantry of the 24th Division. The 19th has taken a shellacking in the last couple of days—you heard the G-3 briefing just now. In these circumstances, McCoy doesn’t think that either unit is going to be able to offer much real resistance to the North Koreans.”
Almond was silent a moment.
“I agree. That information would not have contributed anything to the staff conference, in the sense that anything could be done about it by anybody at that table. But I thank you for it.”
“I thought you should know, sir.”
“What Walker is doing is trying to buy enough time to set up a perimeter around Pusan, and hold that until we can augment our forces.”
“I understand, sir,” Pickering said.
“Between you and me, Pickering, that’s all that can be done at the moment. The arrival of the Marine Brigade will strengthen the perimeter, of course, and the 27th Infantry is about to arrive. I understand they’re better prepared to fight than, for example, the