Buck's Battle

(See Cover)

A ruddy-faced, white-thatched, driving apostle of the vigorous life sent the new U.S. Tenth Army driving deeper into Okinawa last week. Commands flowed from him in his normal conversational tones--roars, shouts and bellows. His celebrated laugh rolled out. Said one who had heard it: "It starts with a little chuckle in his throat and then he really lets go and shakes the walls."

The staff, hearing that laugh, knew that Lieut. General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., after 37 years of soldiering, was content with his first taste of major battle. Until now, fate had teased him. He had learned to fly in World War I, then had been denied overseas service. At the start of World War II, commanding in Alaska, he was sitting in a strategic hot spot, seemingly destined for speedy, decisive action; but the war, lightly singeing his area, had swirled southward, leaving him in the quiet northern shadows.

Impatiently Buckner had stamped over the tundra, tended Alaska's defenses and watched the war. He played no part when U.S. forces cleared the lower Solomons. He and his men stood aside while troops and ships put out from California to drive the Japanese off Kiska and Attu islands, in his own front yard.

Buckner was still in Alaska, still watching, when Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz launched the drive across the Central Pacific that was to cut a fiery path through Tarawa, Makin, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, Angaur, Iwo Jima. Battles were fought with companies, regiments, divisions. That march was still in progress last June, when Buckner at last got the word to go to Washington, then to Hawaii to organize a full-fledged army.*

Initial Gains. Buckner's first target turned out to be Okinawa, central and largest island in the Ryukyu chain stretching from Japan to Formosa. There Admiral Nimitz mounted an amphibious operation, surpassed only by those of Sicily and Normandy, to hurl the troops ashore. And by week's end Buckner knew that his Tenth had caught the Japanese by surprise and had scored a smashing initial success.

His units had surged forward from their beachheads against a scattered, disorganized resistance, swiftly capturing more than a fourth of the 60-mile-long island. Under Major General Roy S. Geiger, the leathernecks of the III Marine Amphibious Corps had pressed north, reached through the Ishikawa Isthmus to the neighborhood of Kin. Under Major General John R. Hodge, the doughboys of the XXIV Army Corps had moved south toward Naha, the island's capital.

At first the Japs faded before these thrusts. Casualties were light. Yontan Airfield, one of the most valuable military objectives on the island, was taken at a cost of two dead and nine injured. A Marine battalion, hunting the elusive enemy, managed to find and kill but four in 24 hours. Wrote one-Army colonel to another: "Please send us a dead Jap. A lot of my men have never seen one. We'll bury him for you."

Then suddenly the soldiers saw bodies--and they were not all Japanese bodies. The advancing troops ran into a main defense position, a line drawn across the island just north of Naha. From concrete pillboxes, hillside caves and ravines, murderous machine-gun fire raked their lines. The heaviest concentration of Japanese artillery of the Pacific war backed up the small arms. While marines in the north continued to gain 2,000 and 3,000 yards a day against little opposition, the soldiers were slowed to 200-yard jumps.

The Japanese defenses, "Buck" Buckner knew, would grow even stiffer; tough fighting was bound to come. But he knew, too, that Japan's best chance to turn back this invasion--the period when the first troops were coming ashore--was gone. Perhaps counting too much on a three or four months' delay between the end of the Iwo Jima fighting and the start of the next U.S. operation, the Japs had delayed reinforcing Okinawa's garrison. Certainly the Japanese commander had pulled a major blunder; he had prepared for attack from the east and south, found himself fighting an attack from the west.

Belatedly the island empire awoke to its peril. With Buckner on Okinawa, even medium U.S. bombers could soon roam Japanese skies. Communications with China would be endangered. The homeland itself faced invasion. In Japanese, "Okinawa" means "Rope off in the Sea"; in any language, it now spelled doom.

First Aims. General Buckner had been born for this job. His father, Simon Bolivar Buckner ST., named for the South American liberator, had served with distinction in the Mexican War and worn a lieutenant general's stars in the Confederate Army. As a brigadier he had been forced to surrender Fort Donelson to his old West Point classmate, U. S. Grant. But he was exchanged, twice promoted, and wound up the war still fighting.

Afterward he indulged in no romantic retreat into the Lost Cause. Life at Glen Lily, the general's 1,000-acre estate near Munfordville, Ky., went on in much the same spacious ante-bellum way. But the general hustled out to enlarge the fortune he had made speculating in Chicago real estate, get himself elected Governor of Kentucky, belabor the reformers. At 62 he took a 28-year-old bride, and fathered the present lieutenant general.

The youngster grew up in a rugged, outdoor life, its setting the lovely, wooded country of rolling hills known in Kentucky as the "Pennyr'y'l." "I went barefooted," Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. has written, ''hunted, trapped, fished, swam, canoed, raised chickens, fought roosters, rode five miles daily for the mail, trained dogs, did odd farm jobs, learned not to eat green persimmons and occasionally walked eight miles to Munfordville to broaden my horizon by seeing the train come in, learning the fine points of horse trading or listening to learned legal and political discussion on County Court Day."

Up to the Point. When the time came to tame the colt, school proved easy for Buckner. Glib of tongue and a quick reader, he kept up with his classes without too much effort. He attended various Kentucky schools, then entered Virginia Military Institute a year after the graduation of a football hero named George C. Marshall. Two years later President Theodore Roosevelt awarded Buckner a West .Point appointment. He graduated syth in a class of 107.

As a career officer Buckner served two tours in the Philippines. That meant hunting and fishing trips through the islands, frequently along coasts where warlike Moros had been known to kill sportsmen for the brass fittings on their boats. He served two tours in Texas, where his hunting companions sometimes included Courtney Hodges and Omar N. Bradley.

But such trips were only occasional relief from the drudging work of the junior infantry officer. Buckner became a tough, exacting drillmaster. He drove his troops hard. No soldier ever complained that he did not hear what Buckner said. During World War I, promoted to temporary major, Buckner suffered understandable frustration trying to drill good military manners into the reckless, daredevil flight training squadrons of those days. He improved his time by learning to fly. After the war Buckner, although he kept an interest in aviation, went back to his beloved infantry.

Back to the Point. Twice Buckner returned to West Point to teach and spruce up cadet discipline. While serving there as an instructor from 1919 to 1923, he sat with Majors Edwin Butcher and Charles H. Bonesteel on the famous "Three Bs Board" that controlled plebe training. Dealing in stern justice, this board handed down demerits strictly according to the book. Rumbles went through the Army; many a general had a son at the Academy. But still the demerits came down. Buckner also plumped for physical conditioning to make West Point hard as nails. Complained one parent: "Buckner forgets that cadets are born, not quarried."

The General was back at the Point again from 1932 to 1936, first as an instructor, then as Commandant of Cadets. Few who were there will forget it. At summer camp he was horrified to discover cold cream and after-shave lotion in some of the cadets' tents, and promptly consigned all such cosmetics to a Savonarolesque bonfire. Said Buckner: "Cadets should work and smell like men."

Skeptical cadets searched in vain for chinks in Buckner's armor. When his dogs upset his duck boat, he came ashore complete--boots, gun, shells, dogs, ducks and boat--and continued hunting. If he lets wet clothes dry on him, he explained, a man will never catch cold.

Between his tours at West Point, Buckner returned to school himself. He attended the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., graduated with honors, and was held over at Leavenworth for three years as an instructor at the General Service Schools. He attended the Army War College in Washington and was held over three years as the school's executive officer.

Test to Come. Brother officers, in moments of highly confidential shoptalk, have been known to accuse Buckner of possessing too much surface brilliance-- a damning indictment in the Army. Much of that criticism may well have stemmed from subconscious envy of Buckner's first-rate vocabulary, which shines with added luster against the background of a traditionally inarticulate profession. His standing with the Army's top leaders is attested by the fact that they have entrusted an army to his command at this stage of the war, when there is no lack of good generals with recent battle experience. As for the final test of combat--Buckner and his army will write that answer.

Buckner was a colonel in 1940, serving as chief of staff to the 6th Division, when he got his orders to Alaska. There was an immediate promotion to brigadier general in the assignment, and a task no good officer could have faced with overconfidence. Commanding a force that was never to go above 14,000 men until after Pearl Harbor, he had to fortify and guard a sparsely populated region one-fifth the size of the U.S., with a coastline nearly twice as long.

The brand-new general threw himself into the task of fortifying this land. Everywhere military installations were under construction. The general moved around, cutting red tape and finding short cuts. When cement did not arrive on time, he used stone. When milled lumber failed to show up, he cut down trees. When planes did not arrive on time to man his new airfields, he sent a terse telegram to Washington: FIELD READY FOR FIRST PLANE--FRIENDLY OR ENEMY.

In all the rush, he never lost his ingrained concern for the welfare of his troops. When two types of Arctic boot were sent to Alaska, he put a boot of one type on his right foot, the other on his left, and went for long hikes in rock and ice to see for himself which was better for the men. When two kinds of sleeping bags were ready for issue, he tried each for a night outdoors, in 60-below-zero weather.

Close, But . . . The war which struck the U.S. at Pearl Harbor late in 1941 lapped perilously close to Buckner's domain in the following six months. In early June 1942, when the Japanese seized Kiska and Attu, enemy carrier-based planes attacked Dutch Harbor and troop transports bore down on the base. They turned away when land-based aircraft from Buckner's hastily constructed airfields struck at them.

As the sharp danger receded, the general's job settled down into an administrative routine. Twice he was promoted, once decorated, for his work in putting Alaska in a sound defensive position. Then came the call to the Tenth Army and battle.

Although a man of action, who would rather sail a kayak or tame an outlaw horse than see a movie, the general who came to Okinawa was not a restless man. He could sit calmly in a leather chair aboard his command ship, listening to the reports coming in, and occasionally giving an order. If he had his way, man would stay awake 24 hours a day. But since man cannot, he has learned the trick of sleeping for five or ten minutes, then coming suddenly wide awake.

Officers who have served with him report him a friendly, helpful, confiding commander, likely to grow stern when things go wrong. Almost all of them gain the impression that he is several inches taller than his actual 5 ft. n. A six-inch chest expansion helps.

Postwar Plans. In San Francisco, waiting out the war and trying to keep track of her family, is Mrs. Simon Bolivar Buckner,* who was born Adele Blanc, in New Orleans, but moved to Kentucky "when she was a quadruped." Her elder son, Simon Bolivar III, is a captain in the Signal Corps in France, her younger son, William Claiborne, a plebe at West Point. The daughter, Mary, is studying at the University of California.

For the postwar period their plans are set. They fell in love with Alaska, bought a homesite in Anchorage and a farm at Homer on the Kenai peninsula. Wild game, including black and grizzly bears, abounds at the farm. A vein of coal lies offshore, and the tide washes up more than enough lumps for heating. The Buckners plan to return there to live. Said the General: "I expect it will take me a solid year to catch up with my hunting and fishing. And I'll be so far away from things I won't be able to exercise a retired general's prerogative of cussing and swearing that the new army has gone to hell since he got out of it."

But all that is for the future. Right now the General confines his hopes to his favorite toast (invariably drunk in "bourbon and puddle water"): "May you walk in the ashes of Tokyo."

* The Tenth is the third U.S. Army to appear in the Pacific. The others: Lieut. General Walter Krueger's Sixth, Lieut. General Robert Eichelberger's Eighth, both operating in the Philippines.

* Mrs. Buckner calls her husband Bolivar; sometimes to rhyme with Oliver, sometimes (with the original Spanish pronunciation) to rhyme with retriever.

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