“You’re welcome,” Lopatynski said. “Now you’d better hustle to your barracks. I know it’s cold out there.”
Not cold in here, Mike thought. But he didn’t come out with the sarcastic crack. As far as he could tell, Lopatynski just didn’t want him freezing. He gave back a brusque nod and walked away. Getting reminded that even a GBI man could be a decent human being was one of the more disturbing things that had happened to him lately.
* * *
The U.S. Army and Navy had known for years that they might have to fight Japan. Like other armed forces the world around, they made plans against the day. Anyone, even generals or admirals, could see that the Philippines, American-ruled but close to the potential enemy, were an area the Japs would try to overrun as soon as they could.
Holding the entire island chain wasn’t practical or even possible, not with the relatively small American garrison and the larger but less trained native Philippine forces. The plan, then, was for most of the Americans and as many locals as could join them to hole up on the Bataan Peninsula and hang on for as long as they could.
By holding out there, they denied the Japs the use of Manila’s fine harbor. And, if everything went according to plan, they might still be holding out when the Pacific Fleet steamed west from Hawaii and met the Imperial Japanese Navy in a sea battle that would make Jutland look as if it were fought in a bathtub by toy boats.
But things didn’t go according to plan. The Pacific Fleet wouldn’t be coming. Too much of it lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The soldiers holed up on the Bataan Peninsula could still deny Manila’s harbor to Japan. Nobody was coming to their rescue, though. Sooner or later, they would have to throw in the towel.
Meanwhile, they fought bravely, Americans and Filipinos alike. They held back the Japanese week after week, month after month. They took a moniker that they wore with a kind of upside-down pride-the Battling Bastards of Bataan. A reporter wrote a limerick about them, one of the few good clean ones:
“We’re the Battling Bastards of Bataan,
No Mama, no Papa, no Uncle Sam,
No aunts, no uncles, no cousins, no nieces,
No pills, no planes, no artillery pieces,
And nobody gives a damn!”
That last line, as Charlie knew all too well, wasn’t true. Joe Steele did give a damn about the men fighting in the Philippines, and about what losing the islands would mean. But there was a difference between giving a damn and being able to do anything about it.
The difference got underscored in the middle of February, when England surrendered Singapore to the Japs. Wanting to hang on was one thing. Being able to was another. Joe Steele started sending Douglas MacArthur messages urging him to leave Bataan and come back to Washington for consultation about his next assignment.
Charlie polished up the President’s messages and smoothed them as much as he could. Joe Steele was angry at the distant general, and it showed in anything that came from his pen. Despite the smoothing, MacArthur remained cagey. One of his replies read I wish to share the fate of the garrison. I know the situation here in the Philippines and unless the right moment is chosen for this delicate operation, a sudden collapse might occur.
“He doesn’t want to come back,” Charlie said to Lazar Kagan after that one came in.
Kagan looked at him, expressionless as usual. “Would you?” Remembering what had happened to Short and Kimmel, Charlie had to shake his head.
Finally, Joe Steele stopped dickering and ordered MacArthur to leave Bataan, go to Australia, and from Australia come to Washington as quickly as he could. MacArthur still hesitated. Joe Steele had George Marshall send a cable to the U.S. commander in the Philippines, reminding him that refusing to obey orders was a court-martial offense.
That did the trick. A PT boat plucked MacArthur, his family, and his entourage off the peninsula and took them to the island of Mindanao, which was also in the process of falling to the Japs. Three B-17s came up from Australia and landed on a dirt strip to take the general and his companions to safety.
A roundabout air route got MacArthur to Honolulu. He dropped a wreath into the oily water of Pearl Harbor before flying on to San Diego. Soldiers, sailors, Marines, and civilians there gave him a hero’s welcome and put him on a cross-country train. He made speeches at half the stops, sounding more like a political campaigner than a military man.
Spring had already sprung by the time he got to Washington. Along with Vince Scriabin and Stas Mikoian, Charlie was at Union Station, not far from the Capitol, when the train pulled in.
A platoon of soldiers waited on the platform with them. There were no ordinary civilians around, nor any reporters. “I hope this isn’t too ugly,” Charlie said to Mikoian as the train rolled to a stop.
“So do I,” the Armenian answered, “but it will be.”
Scriabin waved such worries away. “He won’t get anything he doesn’t have coming to him,” the Hammer said. Like Joe Steele, he never seemed afflicted by doubt.
A door in the side of one of the Pullman cars opened. A colored porter set down a contraption with three wooden steps to ease getting down from the train to the platform. Then the Negro stepped back, and Douglas MacArthur stood in the metal doorway.
He was tall and thin and craggy. His uniform hung loosely on him. By the way he looked around, he was expecting at least a brass band and maybe a ticker-tape parade. The corncob pipe jerked in his mouth when he saw he wouldn’t get them. He eyed the soldiers. They weren’t pointing their weapons his way, but they looked as if they could any second now.
“What kind of welcoming committee is this?” he asked, sounding like a man who didn’t really want the answer.
A spruce young captain stepped toward him out of the ranks. “You are Douglas MacArthur?” he asked in turn, his voice formal. He didn’t give MacArthur his rank. He didn’t say sir. He didn’t salute.
“You know damn well I am, sonny,” MacArthur said roughly. “Who the hell are you?”
“I am Captain Lawrence Livermore,” the young officer said. “You are under arrest. The charge is failure to defend the Philippine Islands properly, in that the bombers under your command were caught on the ground and destroyed by Japanese aircraft a full day after fighting began in Hawaii. The charge includes negligence and dereliction of duty. I am ordered to bring you before the military tribunal that will judge your case.”
MacArthur stared at him. “Fuck you. You hear me? Fuck you, you little prick! Fuck your goddamn military tribunal. They’re going to shoot me-that’s what you’re saying. Oh, and fuck Joe Steele, too, up the asshole with a cactus.”
Whoever’d chosen Captain Livermore had chosen him not least because he didn’t rattle. He didn’t even redden when MacArthur swore at him. He just turned back to his men and nodded. Their front rank dropped to one knee as they aimed their rifles at the suddenly disgraced general. The men behind them aimed at him, too, over their heads.
“Either you come with us quietly,” Livermore said, “or we’ll need to hose down this platform before we can use it again.”
No one had ever claimed MacArthur lacked courage. His right hand flashed to his belt. But he remembered with the motion only half made that he wasn’t wearing a sidearm. His hand fell back to his thigh. He looked up at the roof-and at the heavens beyond it-and said, like Charles Coughlin before him, “‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’”
“You aren’t Him,” Captain Livermore said. “Last chance. Come before the tribunal. . or don’t come before the tribunal.”