THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 26, 1996 TAG: 9605290597
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY RUTH WALKER
LENGTH: 93 lines
OLD SOLDIERS NEVER DIE
The Life of Douglas MacArthur
GEOFFREY PERRET
Random House. 663 pp. $32.50.
In his new biography of Douglas MacArthur, Old Soldiers Never Die, Geoffrey Perret contends that the five-star general did not have the temperament of a soldier but was an intellectual who rose ``to the top of the most pragmatic of vocations.''
MacArthur led his class at West Point. He was the most decorated U.S. soldier in World War I, in which he served as chief of staff and then commander of the celebrated Rainbow Division. He was superintendent of West Point and Army chief of staff. He was military adviser of the Philippines. Several months before the attack on Pearl Harbor he was given command of U.S. Army forces in the Far East and later became supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific area. As supreme commander for the Allied powers, he received the surrender of Japan aboard the battleship Missouri. He commanded American and United Nations forces in the Korean War.
An impressive record, whatever his temperament.
MacArthur, Perret contends, ``had a penetrating intelligence and was one of the most highly educated men of his generation. He had imagination and a mind that was broad and powerful.''
Yet in an earlier passage, Perret points out that MacArthur had ``no love of or interest in art or literature, in science or technology, in economics or philosophy. His interest in books was limited to works of nonfiction that might help him in his career.''
The author makes much of MacArthur's shunning of social occasions and his scorning of military spit and polish. He maintains that the general, naturally shy and aloof, taught himself to win the devotion of others.
MacArthur admirers and detractors will be interested in the account of the rout of the Bonus Army in Washington in 1932. This episode is widely considered the most controversial in his career.
Thousands of veterans, in a time of economic crisis, had gone to the capital in pursuit of a bonus for their World War I service. After disorder broke out, the secretary of war, Patrick J. Hurley, ordered MacArthur to clear the affected area. Troops did, indeed, rout the Bonus Army. But Perret dismisses the lingering notion that MacArthur rode a white horse down Pennsylvania Avenue at the head of heavily armed soldiers.
Surprisingly, Perret believes that the rout of the Bonus Army guaranteed the defeat of President Hoover by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
MacArthur had a gift for the dramatic touch, a good example being the ``I shall return'' promise he made when, on order of President Roosevelt, he left the Philippines for Australia to continue his fight against Japan. That drama perhaps was exceeded by events during the Korean War when President Truman fired MacArthur for insubordination. The general returned to this country where he was welcomed as a hero. He made a memorable speech to Congress, in which he quoted a military ballad, ``Old soldiers never die . . .''
MacArthur's father was Lt. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, who as a young soldier married the redoubtable Mary Pinkney Hardy of Norfolk. Their wedding was at the Hardy home, Riveredge, along the Elizabeth River. Son Douglas was born in Little Rock Barracks, Ark., in 1880. Mrs. MacArthur, known as ``Pinky,'' took a keen interest in her son's career. She did not refrain from writing to Newton D. Baker, secretary of war, and John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, expressing the opinion that a promotion was in order.
MacArthur was married twice, first to an heiress, Louise Cromwell Brooks. The marriage began in 1922 and ended in divorce about seven years later. His second marriage, in 1937, was to Jean Faircloth of Tennessee. She survives, along with a son, Arthur. The wife and son were with the general at faraway posts in World War II.
Perret also brings another woman into the MacArthur story: a teenage mistress named Isabel Rosario Cooper. We are told that MacArthur brought her to Washington from Manila after he was sworn in as Army chief of staff. Perret says that the general established her in an apartment in Georgetown and then in a hotel on 15th Street N.W. MacArthur himself lived with his mother at Fort Myer near Washington.
Perret briefly discusses the negotiations that led to the general's entombment in 1964 in what was formerly a Norfolk courthouse. ``MacArthur,'' he writes, ``was unaware of it, but the memorial he was being offered was part of a complex land deal engineered by the longtime mayor of Norfolk, Fred Duckworth.''
Perret, an Army veteran whose previous works include A Country Made by War, a military history of the United States, isn't reluctant about expressing an opinion. Or stirring up controversy. He disagrees with a claim of a previous biographer, William Manchester, that MacArthur was the greatest soldier in American history.
``MacArthur was,'' Perret judges, ``too difficult a subordinate to be an entirely successful commander.'' At his best, MacArthur, he allows, probably was the second greatest. And the greatest? Ulysses S. Grant, he says. MEMO: Ruth Walker is a retired book editor of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB