CAPTAIN DOUGLAS MACARTHUR SAT AT his father’s old roll-top desk in his fifth floor suite of the Hadleigh Apartments and ran his fingers across the thin War Department envelope that had just been delivered by an Army courier. All of the sacrifices—the physical and psychological suffering at the Point, the late nights studying with candles hidden under sheets after curfew, the grim determination to graduate first in his class, the grueling assignments and moves from outpost to outpost—all were about to be eclipsed by the contents of this letter inside. He slid the silver point of the opener into the crease, careful to avoid cutting what would surely become a precious document of American military history. He had been as steady as a rock when the bullets flew at Veracruz, but now he felt more on edge than when he had testified during the hazing scandal. Finally, with a quick, jagged stroke, he sliced open the envelope and—
“Not yet, Douglas. First, tell me again of Mexico.”
He sighed with impatience. “Mother, I have recounted the story to you at least a dozen times.”
Pinky MacArthur firmed her grasp on her son’s shoulder. “Start at the beginning, darling, with General Wood. He has been so very kind to us.”
He reluctantly dropped the letter, still folded, to the desk. In weak retaliation, he reached for a cigar in his humidor, eschewing the corncob pipe that he smoked as part of his carefully orchestrated military persona. Although he preferred stogies, he would never allow himself to be seen in public with one. General Grant had immortalized that image, and some might interpret cigar smoking as a crass attempt at imitation. Such accessories had to be adopted with subtlety. He had made a careful study of the great commanders of the past. A trait they had all shared was a keen understanding of the necessity for an identifying mannerism, one that the common soldiers could latch onto as a comforting symbol of victory and bravado. And so, he had decided the corncob pipe offered the perfect blend of frontier dash and American ingenuity.
“Douglas, your father died from that pernicious habit. You know I cannot abide the smoke in our house.”
Our house?
This time, his sigh was resigned. Here he was, thirty-three years old and a member of the Army’s General Staff, but still she treated him like a boy. He stole a last puff before putting the cigar out in the tray. He would humor her, as always, for any reminder of his father threatened to send her into a relapse of the mysterious invalidity from which she had only recently recovered.
Of course, he could only hope to approximate the sterling combat record, impeccable flair, and sense of timing that his father, the hero of Missionary Ridge and Manila, had demonstrated, even to the very end. Two years ago, while on the dais addressing the fiftieth reunion of the Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Regiment, Lt. General Arthur MacArthur had collapsed from a heart attack. The elderly surgeon of his father’s Civil War unit had looked up from his knees to announce to his fellow veterans that their commander was dying. On that tragic night, ninety surviving comrades had stood around his father, crying and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. When he was finally pronounced dead, they had wrapped him in the tattered regimental flag.
“You were fevering with malaria,” Pinky reminded him, drawing him back to that time when destiny had first called him to Mexico.
“Tonsillitis."
Waving off his attempt to correct her, Pinky began pacing the room like a haunting ghost. “I was beside myself with the news. You had that same ghastly look of death that your brother Malcolm held before he passed from the measles. But the country needed you. General Wood told me that no other man could perform the task. I pulled myself together and told him that, early on in life, I knew that I was to be martyred repeatedly in my heart for the sake of the flag. If my son must be raised upon the cross, I wrote to him, I would stand willingly at the foot and suffer in silence. … Oh, Douglas, if you had been killed, no one would have known.”
“That comes with the territory on spy operations,” he said dryly, bemused at how she seemed to be hinting that she also deserved a medal.
Pinky catapulted the back of her hand to her forehead. “That monster! I cannot bear to think of how Huerta insulted the Stars and Stripes! If you had been placed in charge of the garrison instead of that blockhead Funston, we would welcoming Mexico into the Union!”
“Mother! How many times must I tell you? You must be more circumspect about what you say in this city!”
She spun on him with a crescendo of fury. “Every word of it is true! These insufferable colonials understand only the language of force! Your father found that out! That tub of lard Taft would not listen to him! If he had, General MacArthur could have won the Philippines for us!”
He set his jaw, sharing as he did her disdain for the insipid civilian liaisons who were always being sent off to rein in military commanders. “One day I will avenge that slight.”
Pinky’s eyes narrowed with ambition. “Yes … yes, you will.” She walked to the window and looked down across Dupont Circle, toward the White House and the Washington Monument towering over it. “The newspapermen will be calling you tomorrow. They will want an account of your heroism. It must be told in the appropriate tone. With humility, but with no details left out.”
“The War Department will issue a press release.”
She spun on him, aghast that he would even contemplate leaving such an important matter to those backstabbers at Fort Myer. “Absolutely not, Douglas! They must hear it from you, word for word. Practice telling it to me.”
“I still have several hours of work left and—”
“Was I wrong when I required you to practice your oratories in my presence during your matriculation at the Point?”
One of the marks of a skillful military man, he had learned, was to know when to concede defeat. He stood obediently, as she had always insisted he do during their study sessions at the Point. Addressing an imaginary bank of reporters, he recited: “General Woods assigned me to undertake a solitary reconnaissance mission deep into Mexican territory with the objective of preparing the way for an invasion force to come to the salvation of the United States Marines in harm's way in the port of Veracruz.”
She reached to his chin and lifted it. “Project your voice, dear.”
Taking her cue, he elevated his carriage for a more Shakespearean delivery. “On the evening of June 3, armed with only a revolver, I absconded from Veracruz and walked deep into hostile territory—”
“Terrain once investigated by Robert E. Lee.”
He nodded to confirm the importance of adding that comparison to the annals. “On my desperate Iliad through the Mexican barrens, I encountered numerous bandits and ruffians. I was forced to shoot my way out of several scrapes, including one with a band of horsemen, and my uniform suffered dearly with numerous bullet holes. Near morning, I made my way down a stream by canoe until I discovered an abandoned handcar on the rail tracks. I made my way another mile toward five locomotives and inspected the engines should we need to transport a relief army. Armed with the invaluable information, I made my way back toward Veracruz. The return, to put it succinctly, was a violent and bloody action.”
“Don’t forget the derringer.”
“Ah, yes.” Armed with that reminder, he continued the practiced report. “Having spent the bullets for my revolver, I was forced to resort to my last and only hope—a small derringer I carried in my vest pocket. I dropped two of the scoundrels and gave thanks to God for the aim He had given to me. As dawn rose, I scampered back over the walls of Veracruz. Those Marines were darned surprised to see me. And I was never so glad to see American faces in my life.”
Pinky smoothed the wrinkles in his shirt, beaming at his performance. “Your father would have been so proud of you, Douglas. Now, my dearest son, you may open your reward.”
He sat down again and pulled the letter from the envelope. He took a deep breath, having rehearsed this moment a thousand times. Then, he scanned the correspondence for the three most important words in a military man’s life. His face reddened.
“What is wrong?”
He unbuttoned his collar, gulping for air.
Pinky stole the letter from his grasp and read it. “No.… this cannot be!”
He turned aside, trying not to let her see his tearing eyes. The last line of the letter was already seared into his brain: To award Captain MacArthur the Medal of Honor might encourage any other staff officer, under similar conditions, to ignore the local commander, possibly interfering with the latter’s plans with reference to the enemy.
Pinky, outraged, circled behind him. “But General Wood recommended you! Those traitors on the awards committee!”
I should have seen this coming, he told himself.
Leonard Wood had ordered him not to tell General Funston, the commander at Veracruz, of the spy mission, lest Funston let it slip to junior officers who might reveal it inadvertently to the many Mexican agents in the city. Those bastards at the War Department despised him for his brilliance, and now they were conspiring to reverse his meteoric rise in the Army, latching onto this flimsy excuse to deny him his due. His father had suffered the same crime of jealousy when the Army denied him his Medal of Honor for thirty years.
We should have been the only father and son to ever receive the decoration.
Recovering to a steely composure, he picked up a pen and dipped it into the ink well.
“Douglas, what are you doing?”
He placed two clean sheets of his embossed stationery on the writing pad. “I am going to protest this injustice.”
Alarmed, Pinky for once became the voice of reason. “You must not antagonize those inferior men in the War Department. Allow me to take care of this matter. You still have time.”
“This was my only chance. There may never be another war in my lifetime.”
“Douglas, please.”
He ignored her plea. On the first letter, addressed to General Wood, he wrote: I miss the inspiration, my dear general, of your own clear-cut, decisive methods. I hope sincerely that affairs will shape themselves so that you will shortly take the field for the campaign which, if death does not call you, can have but one ending—the White House.
He titled the second letter, to the awards committee, an Official Memorandum, and in it he excoriated its members for what he termed their rigid narrow-mindedness and lack of imagination.