"I'm not surprised," Howe said. "And I think you'll un-derstand what it means when I tell you that you're about to be made privy to some national security information that it is not to leave this room."
"I understand," Ernie said.
"Can we talk here?" Howe asked.
"There's the dining room," Ernie said. "In case anyone wants to write, or take notes."
"The dining room, please, then," Howe said.
Ernie led them into the dining room, and indicated that Howe should take a seat at the end of the table.
"This is your house, Mrs. McCoy," Howe said. "That's your husband's chair. I'll sit here."
He pulled out the first chair next to the head of the table, and gestured for McCoy to sit at the head. Master Sergeant Rogers took the chair across from General Howe, and set his briefcase on the floor. He reached into it and came out with three pencils and a pad of yellow lined paper. McCoy saw that the briefcase also held a 1911A1 Colt and what looked like the straps of a GI tanker's shoulder holster.
Pickering sat down beside McCoy; Zimmerman beside Rogers, and Hart beside him.
"I had the maid start coffee," Ernie McCoy said. "It'll be ready in a minute."
"That's very kind," Howe said. "But I'm doing fine with this."
He raised his whiskey glass.
Ernie sat down beside Pickering.
"Okay," Howe said. "Where to begin?"
He thought about that for a moment.
"At the beginning is always a good place. Harry S. Tru-man. Our President and the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. I work for him, and so does everybody else in uniform, but sometimes people have trouble really understanding that.
"He's a very good man. If he had his druthers, when War Two started he would have gone on active duty as a colonel-we both made colonel on the same National Guard promotion list-and probably would have made two stars, as I did. But he was in the Senate, doing important work, and they talked him into not going on active duty, and retired him as a colonel.
"That's important to keep in mind. You don't get to be a colonel unless you know something about soldiering, more important, soldiers, and more important than that, officers.
"If I forget, and refer to our commander-in-chief as `Harry,' no disrespect is intended. I have picked up a lot of respect for him since the time we were both captains. He was a good captain, and he was a good colonel, and he was a damned good senator. He wasn't vice president long enough to make any judgments about that, but since he's been President, he's done a good job, and I wouldn't be surprised if a hundred years from now, he's regarded by the historians as being in the same league as Washington and Lincoln.
"Having said that, Harry S. Truman is no saint. He's got a temper, and he holds a grudge, and once he makes up his mind, he finds it hard to admit his original decision was wrong. I honest to God don't know what he's got against the Marine Corps, but it's pretty obvious he really doesn't like it.
"He's got a lot against the professional officer corps generally. Probably some of that goes back to our National Guard days, when the regular army used to rub their supe-riority in our faces. And some of it, I'm sure, goes back to when he had the Truman Committee in the Senate, and a lot of brass thought they could get away with lying to him.
"The President told me that right now there are two gen-eral officers-two only-he trusts completely. Both of them are at this table. And he told me why: He knows I don't have a personal agenda, and he doesn't think General Pickering does, either.
"The truth seems to be that the military services are loaded with prima donnas, and I'm not only talking about General MacArthur, although he can certainly give lessons to the others in that regard.
"Okay. All of this is to explain what I'm doing here, and what you all have to do with it. The day after tomorrow, Ambassador W. Averell Harriman and General Matthew B. Ridgway are going to get on a plane and come here. Item one on Harriman's agenda is to tell MacArthur that he is absolutely not, not, going to use any of Chiang Kai-shek's troops, and item two is Inchon. That has to be resolved-"
"My feelings won't be hurt-" Ernestine McCoy inter-rupted.
Howe looked at her in surprise.
"-if you tell me I'm not supposed to ask questions. But I don't understand..."
Captain Kenneth R. McCoy looked at his wife in disbelief. General Howe's eyebrows went up. General Pickering smiled tolerantly, and waited for General Howe to more or less politely put her in her place.
"Ask away, Mrs. McCoy," Howe said, surprising every-body. "I meant it when I said I think you have to be in-volved in this, and the more you understand, the better."
"Well, I know who Ambassador Harriman is," she said. "I know Ambassador Harriman. He and my father are friends. My father told me he's President Truman's ambassador-at-large. But who's General Ridgway? And what's Inchon?"
"Harriman is also the President's national security advi-sor," Howe said. "'Ambassador-at-large' is a personal rank; when Harriman goes someplace, it means he speaks for the President.
"MacArthur really wears two hats. The senior American someplace is the U.S. ambassador. There's no U.S. ambas-sador here; MacArthur fills that role. The decision about using Chiang Kai-shek's soldiers in this war is a diplo-matic 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 the-ory-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 se-nior 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 an-other four-star general. He's the deputy chief of staff for administration, number two to Collins, and his likely suc-cessor 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 is 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-com-munist-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 in-vasion at Inchon, and had directed Almond to start the ini-tial planning.