A Distorted Mirror
MARSHALL, S. L. A.
A Distorted Mirror REMINISCENCES By General Douglas MacArthur McGraw-Hill. 438 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by S.L.A. MARSHALL Brigadier General, U.S.A. (ret.); author, "Blitzkrieg," "Night...
...Until the end, as witnessed by this testament, the Old Soldier maintained that his deployment and maneuver for the invasion of North Korea were the soundest possible and that his every order was wisely conceived...
...Irrespective of how General MacArthur saw himself in the mirror, his posthumous memoir makes plain that he would have men think that his greatness transcended the possibility of human error in matters large and small...
...In its lack of the slightest trace of modesty or of understatement about self, it compares with nothing in the library of war except the memoirs of Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery...
...Every personal feat of arms, every citation and decoration, every encomium from persons high and low (including an anonymous private) for the MacArthur battle courage, leading and command ability are interlarded in the narrative in fulsome detail...
...MacArthur's faithful retainers, who were also his biographers, Generals George C. Kenney, Courtney Whitney and Charles Willoughby, vied in great claiming for him...
...His blade whistles as he lays on...
...He must have stored up memoranda for this writing since he was in knee pants...
...She was determined that her son, Douglas, would take the same glory path, and with the father as the shining example, the boy's spirit still responded wholly to the mother influence...
...On all of this it is best to draw the veil by commenting in paraphrase of Henry Adams that the narrative is so replete with historical error that in the end one has no choice but to go along with it...
...The truth is that a committee was set up in the Far Eastern Command to determine how the bomb should be used if the situation of the Eighth Army should become desperate...
...Not less noteworthy than the glory is the vainglory, never before so monumentalized as in this memoir...
...Believe me, this book is much too serious that I would mock it...
...His differences with FDR, his bitterness toward him, and his quarrels with Pershing are omitted...
...MacArthur wrote: "Early in January I stabilized the lines of the Eighth Army at a position midway in South Korea.' The truth is that about mid-January the lines became stabilized even with Suwon, which is just a little south of the 38th parallel...
...Given that guidance, living among soldiers on western frontier posts—and the family life there is described beautifully—the young MacArthur could hardly have taken any other course...
...It is when the chief confirms their verdict that curiosity mounts as to how he got that way and what were the consequences to his career, camp and country...
...It has happened to other generals who could not believe that fortune would not always stay kind and so grew careless...
...So we have here something like Cyrano in the final scene...
...The most gracious part of his memoir is the opening section where he speaks of his forbears, parents, childhood and his start as a soldier...
...So let us look only at page 376 as one exercise in distortion...
...But that is not how the story is told...
...The page deals with the withdrawal from North Korea following the clobbering on the River Chongchon...
...MacArthur had nothing to do with the stabilization...
...For once, he speaks kindly of Matthew Ridgway...
...The oversimplified explanation of the Great Defeat will persist, however, blessed as it is by highest authority and authorship...
...He was at his bravest and brassiest...
...For many reasons, I find the book enchanting, not the least being that the consistency of the chronicle with the character is beyond criticism...
...Only those who are surprised and dismayed by the tone are qualified therefore either to hail it as revelation or to quarrel with it...
...It is ever a triumph over great odds, the besting of innumerable adversaries determined to oppose the right and righteous way of doing things...
...This is a distinguished book for the same reason that Green Hills of Africa was one of the late Ernest Hemingway's best, though critics missed the point...
...As with an eye-testing chart, there is the chart itself, but there is also the record of how one man sees it...
...His painful memories concerning others had not fogged out...
...So some confusion portends for today's second lieutenants already hoping for tomorrow's stars...
...The mind was still active...
...The lines became stabilized because enemy supply and energy had neared exhaustion...
...But he could not forbear to renew his expressions of contempt or belittling about Truman, Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson, et al...
...The Old Soldier did not mellow in the final months when he wrote his summing up...
...Suffice to remark that if anyone versed in major tactics can believe that, he can believe anything...
...Before the curtain drops, his ancient enemies are all about...
...In one other essential, MacArthur bested his military biographers...
...It was the 3rd, not the 2nd Division, which fought there...
...MacArthur wrote: "President Truman threatened once that he might make atomic weapons available nothing more was heard of it...
...By then General Ridgway was running his own show...
...A tremendous success story...
...The truth is that X Corps had nothing to do with protecting Walker's flank, since there was a 30-mile gap between...
...Add to it that his conviction of superiority was breastfed to him and we have the makings of a career furthered by genius and favored by opportunity in no small measure...
...all self-recrimination had long since faded, if such there had ever been...
...The GHQ was in central Korea...
...Good or bad, the writing still reflected the man better than anything else...
...MacArthur wrote: "As soon as the X Corps had completed its mission of protecting Walker's right flank from envelopment, I directed its withdrawal Almond's three divisions [were] the 1st Marine, 2nd and 7th Infantry...
...But the seeds of the 1950 defeat in North Korea, and of the incidents which led to the relief from all commands, were nourished by this boundless self-confidence, uninterrupted success and conviction of invincibility...
...One may not say that error makes it irrelevant...
...Though his style was often stilted and marked by a straining for majestic utterance, it had rhythm and clarity and was distinctly his own...
...He dies immaculate, white plume flying, "sans peur et sans reproche," if I may ring in the Chevalier Bayard, also...
...author, "Blitzkrieg," "Night Drop" For his countrymen who are deeply interested in the innerliness of the late Douglas MacArthur, his Reminiscences are worth their weight in chest-borne fruit salad...
...His is unquestionably an heroic figure...
...Yes, and legitimately so...
...Even this is not all told frankly...
...The committee determined mainly that worthwhile targets for the bomb were virtually non-existent on the enemy side...
...In 1875 he married the right woman, Mary Pinkney Hardy...
...When it did not so become, naturally both the Command and the White House dropped the idea...
...But when a subordinate hails his chief as infallible, he but complies with custom and some allowance may be made for the relationship...
...Some are mortal vices, others merely mortals...
...To be sure, the lines ripple less gently and the prose is more purple than Rostand's...
...The 2nd had already been slaughtered on the left flank...
...The play's the thing...
...Arthur MacArthur, the father, was the teen-age volunteer, then the boy colonel, one of the major heroes of the Civil War, a fighter of such renown that he stayed military, and was ever marked for high command...
Vol. 47 • October 1964 • No. 22
