Monument

MACARTHUR 1941-1951 (441 pp.)--Major General Charles A. Willoughby & John Chamberlain -- McGraw-Hill ($5.75).

As the old soldier fades away, Douglas MacArthur's lieutenants are coming forward to speak for him. General George Kenney, his air commander, has already written exuberantly but superficially of The Mac Arthur I Know. Currently General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur's adviser and military aide from old Australia days, is cranking up an authoritative memoir for publication next year. Now, with the expert help of Author-Critic John Chamberlain, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, 62, one of the original "Bataan boys," tells of the ten years he served as MacArthur's G2.

One of MacArthur's most devoted staffers, German-born General Willoughby* used to keep a whole shelf of books about his chief behind his desk in 1944 at advanced headquarters in the New Guinea jungle. After World War II, his Tokyo staff prepared an elaborate history of MacArthur's exploits at which Army department historians were not allowed a peek. These "MacArthur histories" provide the basis for the best part of this unevenly documented book. Willoughby is happiest describing the Southwest Pacific campaigns in which MacArthur was so magnificently right, advancing by more than 100 amphibious landings to his promised Philippine return. An oldtime Leavenworth command-school lecturer with a flair for the drama of military history, Willoughby compares MacArthur's capture of New Guinea outposts with Napoleon's campaigns, in East Prussia, and shows with maps that the boss took Hollandia by the same classic double envelopment that won Cannae for Hannibal. The distance covered in MacArthur's advance from Australian bases was "at least twice that encompassed by Napoleon, Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great in their most extended campaigns."

After such victories and a magisterial term of occupation in Japan, Korea was bound to be a letdown. The sketchy, querulous Korean narrative adds little to the public record. At Inchon, notes Author Willoughby, MacArthur took the North Koreans in the rear "in the classical Napoleonic pattern"--just like the dazzled Austrians at Treviso. But the Supreme Commander pushed on, never believing that the Chinese Communists would strike south across the Yalu River. By the time MacArthur could pull his retreating forces together again, Truman fired him for insisting that the Korean war could (and should) be fought on to victory. History may decide that MacArthur was right. Authors Willoughby and Chamberlain have produced no new documents or arguments to forward his case. But this well-phrased, ardent book can be taken as a medium-sized monument to a monumental personality.

* Born Von Tscheppe-Weidenbach, he adopted his American mother's maiden name when he was 18.

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