trusted staff and an amateur challenging their—and your—judgment. ”
“I have overridden my staff before, and you know that.”
“I wasn’t sure I could carry it off. Not me. Captain McCoy. I thought it was worth the risk. If we failed, only a few men would be lost. If we succeeded . . .”
“And what makes you think the enemy won’t immediately take action to retake the islands?”
“The hope is that the enemy will believe it’s nothing more than the South Koreans improving their positions along the Flying Fish Channel. They may not even take action. If they do, all they’re going to find on the three islands are South Korean national police.”
“And when the invasion doesn’t take place in the next three or four days, you think they will relax?”
“Yes, sir,” Pickering said. “I spoke with Captain McCoy on the radio shortly before I came here. He said the North Koreans on the islands were not in radio contact with the mainland. So they could not have reported they were under attack by U.S. and Royal Marines. He believes the deception worked.”
“Royal Marines?”
“Yes, sir. From HMS Jamaica. And HMS Charity provided naval gunfire for the assaults.”
“So Admiral Matthews also felt D Minus One for the assault on the islands was not a good idea,” MacArthur said. “I wonder why he didn’t come to me with his objections.”
“I can only guess that he felt much as I felt, sir.”
MacArthur looked at him for a long moment, then asked, thoughtfully, “We have no idea what will happen between now and the invasion, do we?”
“No, sir. But McCoy feels—and I concur—that if there is an attack on the islands, and we refrain from using gunfire from the Charity to repel it, it would lend credence to the idea that the whole thing was a South Korean operation, nothing more.”
“In which case, we would lose the islands.”
“Not necessarily, sir. There’re thirty South Korean police already on the islands, and we intend to reinforce them. If an attack doesn’t come for several days, we should have enough South Koreans in place to repel anything but a major effort.”
“That’s a pretty iffy situation,” MacArthur said. “So iffy that I don’t consider it wise to throw this equation—what if we already held the islands?—into the last-minute planning just yet. Right now, the fewer people who know about this, the better, and we will take things as they develop. Wouldn’t you agree, Fleming?”
“Yes, sir.”
Don’t tell me that’s it?
We’re back to “Fleming”? And he just wants to sit on this, “take things as they develop”?
“Would you like another little drop before we go into supper, Fleming?” the Supreme Commander asked. “Or not?”
“I think another one would go down nicely, sir. Thank you.”
[FIVE]
TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND 0530 26 AUGUST 1950
“I can stay,” Lieutenant David Taylor, USNR, said to Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC. “Kim is as good a skipper for the Wind of Good Fortune as I am, and Major Kim will be aboard.”
“What, are there two last names in all of Korea—Kim and Lee?” Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman observed rhetorically.
Taylor and McCoy chuckled.
“Don’t let this go to your head, Taylor,” McCoy said. “But I disagree, and right now we can’t afford to get in trouble with the Wind of Good Fortune. You go. We’ll be all right.”
“Says the eternal optimist,” Zimmerman said.
“The sooner we get the militia off the islands, and Kim’s national police on them, the better off we’re going to be,” McCoy said.
“What makes you so sure there’s going to be more national police?” Zimmerman asked.
“Because we now hold the islands, and I don’t think any national police commander would want to take the chance of becoming known as the guy who was responsible for us losing them again, simply because he was afraid to reinforce them.”
Zimmerman’s shrug indicated he accepted the logic.
“I wish we could have kept the Limeys,” Zimmerman said. “At least the boats.”
“They couldn’t swim back to the Charity,” McCoy said. “They left us one of their boats, and the radio . . .”
“But not the guy to drive it,” Zimmerman argued.
“. . . and we’ll have to do with that,” McCoy went on, ignoring him. And then he changed his mind.
“I want you to have this straight in your mind, Ernie, so I’ll go over it one more time. There is no way we can hold any of these islands if the North Koreans really want to take them back. And if they tried they would become damned curious if we put up a hell