U.S. ambassador. There’s no U.S. ambassador here; MacArthur fills that role. The decision about using Chiang Kai-shek’s soldiers in this war is a diplomatic decision, so Harriman will give him his orders about that.
“But MacArthur is also the senior military officer in the Pacific. Wearing that hat, he takes—at least in theory—his orders from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General—General of the Army, five stars, like MacArthur—Omar Bradley. MacArthur is not only senior to Bradley—time in grade—but outranks the Army chief of staff, General ‘Lightning Joe’ Collins, who has only four stars. So Collins has to ‘confer’ with MacArthur, since he can’t tell him what to do. Matt Ridgway is another four-star general. He’s the deputy chief of staff for administration, number two to Collins, and his likely successor as chief of staff, unless Truman decides to fire MacArthur, when he would be candidate number one to replace him.”
“Fire General MacArthur?’ Hart blurted.
“We’re back to what I said before: What’s said here stays in this room,” General Howe said. “Truman doesn’t want to fire MacArthur, for several reasons, including the fact that he’s a military genius and a military hero and the political repercussions would be enormous. But if MacArthur keeps ignoring him, firing him’s a genuine possibility.”
“I didn’t know about Chiang Kai-shek,” Ernie said.
“He offered us thirty thousand troops,” Howe said. “On the advice of General Bradley, Truman decided they would be more trouble than they would be worth, both because they would have to be trained and equipped, and because it would cause serious problems with the mainland—communist—Chinese. We don’t want them in this war. Collins sent MacArthur a message ordering him not to take them. MacArthur acknowledged the message, and then—the next day—flew to Taipei to ‘confer’ with Chiang Kai-shek. I was there when Truman found that out. He was furious. Bradley wanted him fired. Harry decided to send Harriman to bring him into line. Understand?”
Ernie nodded.
“Inchon?” she asked.
“It’s the port for Seoul,” Howe said.
“Ken and I have been there,” Ernie said.
“Okay. What happened is that when General Collins, and General Vandenburg—the Air Force chief of staff— were here . . . July seventeenth, right, Charley?”
Master Sergeant Rogers nodded.
“July seventeenth. Three weeks after we got in this mess,” Howe went on. "MacArthur told them he’d ‘come up with a plan’ to stage an amphibious operation at Inchon, which would cut the North Korean line of supply. When I got here, General Pickering told me that MacArthur had told him the idea had occurred to him earlier than that, that when he went to Suwon a couple of days after the North Koreans invaded, he had thought about an amphibious invasion at Inchon, and had directed Almond to start the initial planning.
“Collins, to put it mildly, was not enthusiastic about an amphibious invasion at Inchon, and neither was the Navy. It’s not like landing on some Pacific Island, or, for that matter, Normandy. There’s a long channel the invasion fleet would have to pass through to get to the beach, and it’s not far from North Korea, which could quickly send reinforcements. But the question became moot after we lost Taejon. All the troops that MacArthur wanted to use for the invasion had to be sent to Pusan, or we were going to be forced off the Korean Peninsula.
“Everybody in the Pentagon sighed in relief when the invasion was called off, but now MacArthur’s brought it up again—using the words ‘when I land at Inchon,’ not ‘if we decide to land at Inchon.’ So Ridgway is going to ‘confer’ with him about Inchon. If we can get away with it, General Pickering and I are going to invite ourselves to that meeting; I don’t think we can crash the one between Harriman and MacArthur.
“What the President sent me here to do is to find out what I can about Inchon and report to him directly what I think. That poses two problems. First, I don’t know anything about Inchon except what General Pickering has told me—”
“Based on damned little,” Pickering interjected, “except my memory of taking a P&FE freighter in there before the war—and aground on the mudflats.”
“Sir, there’s a guy,” McCoy said. “A Navy officer—I talked to him a couple of times—who was in there a lot on an LST,” McCoy said. “He knows all about Inchon, and the channel islands.”
“You have his name?’ Howe asked. “Where is he?”
“Taylor,” McCoy said. “David R. Taylor, Lieutenant, USNR. I don’t know where he is. Naval Element,