Pearl Harbor Christmas (20 page)

Marshall stood firm on limiting only political questions to review by a War Council in Washington. Employing a distant surrogate for military matters was inefficient “idealism.” What he wanted was “to start something.” And that policy was agreed upon “in broad outline,” with “the details worked out later.” The President asked Marshall and Hopkins to “retire” to another room and revise the proposal for unification to include Churchill’s views about protecting local “sovereign rights,” such as those of the Dutch and the Australians, but he clearly implied British colonial interests as well. Naval forces, all now agreed, would be placed under the supreme commander to be designated.

Although Churchill still had misgivings, the unity issue was almost settled. When the conference adjourned at 4:30 P.M., Marshall recalled in an interview fifteen years later, “I got up and started down the steps and Dill reached me at the top of the steps. No, the first man to reach me was the old admiral [Dudley Pound] who was the head of the naval board—[both] which were pretty cut and dried fellows and more or less opposed to all of this—and he embraced me to my complete astonishment. Dill [also] met me and embraced me. . . . So then Hopkins heard of this and he suggested to Churchill that he get [to see] me in the next morning.” The military chiefs had come around. Lord Beaverbrook scrawled a note to Hopkins on a White House memo pad, “You should work on Churchill. He is being advised. He is open-minded and needs discussion.” The Beaver had also come around.

At the White House at six, Roosevelt and Churchill met with their foreign affairs advisers; then Hull had dinner separately with Mackenzie King on the trifling French imbroglio. On larger issues, Dr. Wilson thought, as sounding board for Churchill’s confidences, “Marshall remains the key to the situation. The PM has a feeling in his quiet unprovocative way he means business, and that if we are too obstinate he might take a strong[er] line. And neither the PM nor the President can contemplate going forward without Marshall.”

December 28, 1941

A
s
Peary
neared Celebes (now Sulawesi) en route toward Manado on the northern tentacle of the scorpion-shaped Indonesian island, three twin-engine bombers were sighted approaching from astern. According to the ship’s log, battle stations were manned,

and as the planes made a bombing approach,
Peary
opened fire. Fire was stopped when British [Australian] markings were observed on the wings. The planes had separated, one each, taking station on the port and starboard bow and one eastern. The plane astern made a bombing run and dropped two bombs about fifty yards astern as
Peary
kicked ahead at full [power].
Peary
again slowed and the plane on the port bow made her approach simultaneously with the other.
Peary
leaped forward, opening fire with machine guns and 4” [battery]. Sights were set at zero deflection and 500 yds range. One plane dropped two bombs near the port bow and the starboard plane dropped two about 25 yds from the stern. Shrapnel damage was extensive. One machine gunner on the makeshift director platform[, Seaman K. E. Quineaux, a French Canadian,] was killed instantly with a head wound. He had been directly over [Lt. W. J.] Catlett, who was navigating from the port wing. The bombs aft, severed the wheel ropes to the rudder and split open two depth charges, in addition to wounding two men. The planes flew away and made [return] strafing machine gun runs.
Peary
set up an intense fire curtain with her machine guns and 4” battery. At this time, the cry “Man Overboard” went up but
Peary
had to continue her evasive tactics from the strafing runs, and leave the man to shift for himself.

Fireman B. E. Greene, one of the walking wounded at Cavite, manning the afterdeck house machine gun, had toppled overboard as the
Peary
’s stern whipped about. Radioman H. D. Doe, one of Admiral Hart’s “Purple gang,” stationed as a lookout with Greene, threw him a life ring and reported that when last seen he was swimming, in his life jacket, with the ring, toward the beach half a mile distant. Several small boats were seen “putting out from the beach.” Greene survived in Dutch hands.

In the heat of action against what the crew recognized as RAAF Lockheed Hudsons, light bombers based upon the ten-passenger civilian Electra, Radioman Doe had not known that he had shrapnel wounds to his forehead and both buttocks. “He now realized that it was not water splashes, which gave him a wet behind. He let his pants down and reassured himself that the importants were in order.” One seaman in the gun crew surveyed Doe’s shrapnel lacerations and joked, “How do you put a tourniquet on a rear end without putting pressure on his balls?” Radioman Doe was placed, face down, on the deck until a mattress could be brought up to carry him to the ship’s “Doc.” He was grateful for the padding: “This damned deck vibrates so much, I’ll lose my teeth.”

“All hands,” according to the log, “behaved in an exemplary manner, as they should, being professionals. Many little acts of heroism took place as natural, trained reactions.” When Fireman M. E. Fryman of the damage control group wanted to throw over the side a damaged but unexploded white phosphorus star shell in its flaming wooden container, he held it until the stern of
Peary
whipped about so that he could heave it clear of the ship’s propeller. It was a “fearsome thing to wrap one’s arms about, and wait.”

The damage and the casualties were due to misnamed “friendly fire,” the bane of warfare.
Peary
’s jury-rigged antennas, patched after the Cavite raids, were now nearly useless. The ship had code experts aboard “but could not effectively communicate.” Its ability to steer from the bridge was gone. The hull at the engine room had twenty punctures. It had lost a .30-caliber Lewis gun. And its attackers were “planes made in America.” Yet it was far from the first—or worst—friendly fire episode since Pearl Harbor. Six carrier planes from the
Enterprise,
at sea, flying in after the Japanese had left, were mistaken for the enemy by panicky gunners on Oahu who did not recognize their own identifying markings. This time American fire was accurate and deadly. One pilot, bailing out of his burning “Wildcat” fighter, was shot in the chest as he drifted down.

Friendly fire was always a nightmare in the fog of war, often concealed by cover-ups that later unraveled.

WITH MACARTHUR HOLED UP on Corregidor and all of the Philippines doomed, the Japanese were beginning to exploit collaborators to create a vassal nation. Radioing Washington, MacArthur urged countering, somehow, the “crescendo of enemy propaganda” which was being used with “deadly effectiveness.” In a rare confession he added, “I am not in a position here to combat it.” In response, Roosevelt drafted a proclamation directed to the people of the Philippines and meant for radio there as well as domestic airing in the United States. “I renew my solemn pledge to you,” the President declared, “that your freedom will be redeemed and your independence established and protected.”
Redeemed
suggested the obvious. The Philippines were being lost—but not yet sufficiently lost for MacArthur to abandon his personal priorities. From Corregidor, which had an under-the-bay cable to Malacañag, the nearly abandoned presidential palace in Manila, the general telephoned Jorge Vargas. “Jorge,” he explained, “I have not yet taken the 70,000 [Philippines pesos] contingency fund that is due me.”

“What do you want me to do, General?” asked the surprised Vargas, who had been left to administer the last rites to the government.

“Can you buy me $35,000 worth of Lepanto [gold-mining] stocks?” MacArthur inquired.

“We will try, General; we will try,” assured Vargas. He struggled by transoceanic telephone to locate the manager of the Philippine National Bank’s New York office. “After the war,” said Vargas, released from Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, “MacArthur became a millionaire on account of that last-minute purchase.” The general was comfortably wealthy far earlier than 1941, but even amid catastrophe he looked for ways to pad his portfolio.

Free to enter Manila unopposed, General Homma preferred to consolidate his lines, north and south, to pinch off any possible resistance on Luzon beyond Bataan, but the result was to leave the peninsula open for further withdrawals into it. Homma was taking few prisoners, as able Americans and Filipinos were falling back into their last-ditch positions in such tightly packed numbers, swelled by refugees, as to further overwhelm their diminishing food supplies and ammunition. It may not have been the general’s strategic objective, but at little cost in his own casualties Homma was creating a starve-out dilemma for the defense.

TWO CONVOYS LEFT BRISBANE for northern ports. The
Pensacola
group, which had arrived on the 22nd from Hawaii, headed for Darwin to help secure it from the Japanese. Ostensibly it was still tasked to support the Philippines, but no effort would be made to risk that. (One battalion aboard from the 131 st Field Artillery would be sent uselessly to Java, where its remnants would be taken prisoner in March.) The same day the American cruiser
Houston
with four destroyers as support vessels would also arrive, soon to join a Dutch-commanded force which would fail to hold off the invasion of Java. (The
Houston,
with other warships, would be bombed to the bottom of the Sunda Strait on March 1.) Sailing northeast was a British force, including the 44,786-ton former passenger liner
Acquitania,
en route to Port Moresby, New Guinea, with five thousand Australian troops intended to prevent the major harbor on the big island from falling into enemy hands. Port Moresby would become a major staging area.

THE DAYS ELSEWHERE made no difference to Anthony Eden’s voyage from frigid Murmansk, other than that each revolution of the clock brought the endangered convoy farther from chances of German air or submarine attacks. “Bitter weather—somewhere off Fa[e]roes,” Oliver Harvey wrote. The island group, a Danish colony between Iceland and the Shetland Islands and now under British occupation, was distant enough from German bases in Norway to offer some safety but was often closed in by fog and rain. “Fairly nice day and a little sun—stayed on the bridge a bit,” Harvey noted happily. They were still under radio silence but could receive news and messages. “After lunch [I] talked with A.E. about what he should say to press on arrival and also on his [BBC] broadcast. He is a little jealous of Winston with all his limelight in Washington but feels, as I do, that he talks too much. An officer of the ship spoke to me today of his speech [to Congress] as ‘so much soap.’ No harm therefore in A.E. sitting pretty and getting on with the [foreign affairs] job.” Eden and his staff had to turn water into wine.