On Thanksgiving Day 1950, two months after General MacArthur’s masterly strategic stroke at Inchon, I was seventy-five miles south of Manchuria, posted to a battalion-sized 25th Infantry Division Task Force named for its commander, Lt. Col. Weldon G. Dolvin. Task Force Dolvin’s mission was to probe northward from the Ch’ongch’on River along the east side of its Kuryong tributary. This region had been the site of an earlier battle fought by elements of MacArthur’s favorite 1st Cavalry (really infantry) Division. It was rumored that “the Cav” had had “trouble” in the area and been withdrawn. Our division was its replacement.
A recent medical school and internship graduate, I was ordered to go north to a farmhouse situated between the only road in that area and the river and to bring medical supplies with me. After a traditional Thanksgiving Day dinner I packed an aid kit and was directed to the house, where I found about twenty wounded American soldiers sitting or lying on the dirt floor of the kitchen. Captured in the previous engagement nearby, they had just been released. They were dressed warmly in the tan, padded-cotton uniforms we later came to know so well as Chinesearmy winter issue. With clean wound dressings, splints for their fractures, and slings, the men had been so well cared for that I didn’t need any of the supplies I had brought along. The soldiers were quickly sent to the rear in task-force vehicles.
It was only in retrospect that I began to wonder about the episode, which was eclipsed a few days later by the massive Chinese assault and the subsequent 8th Army rout known as “the bug out.” We line soldiers were totally unaware of the Chinese military buildup and unable to read the uniform labels. But the good medical care the prisoners had received was clearly apparent. The North Korean People’s Army we had been facing until then had neither a reputation for medical expertise nor any tendency to release wounded prisoners in good condition. In fact it was notorious for shooting them. It is inconceivable to me that the significance of this prisoner release would have been lost on division or 8th Army intelligence specialists. The source of the uniforms and their suitability for the approaching harsh Korean winter would also have been appreciated.
Was the Chinese commander attempting to signal to General MacArthur to stop his advance? I’m inclined to think so. Then what happened to that warning?
I suspect that returnee interrogation reports mentioning the Chinese uniforms and perhaps medical details as well were quickly relayed back to Tokyo and to the Supreme U.N. Commander there (MacArthur). I also suspect that the information got no farther and that its suppression may have become part of the fabric leading to General MacArthur’s defeat and later dismissal. Whether President Truman or the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew the details of this episode when Truman fired MacArthur the following April, I just don’t know.
—Edward O. Goodrich, M.D., lives in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
MacArthur’s Last Battle
I first met Douglas MacArthur in November 1921. I was only six months old at the time, but family lore has impressed it firmly in my memory. My father was a major in the Army Medical Corps; General MacArthur was the superintendent at West Point. Dad operated on Mrs. Arthur MacArthur, the general’s mother. I do not know what her medical problem was, but there were serious postoperative complications, and my father stayed at the hospital, never venturing far from her bedside, for at least ten days, until she was out of danger. Every day that my mother was alone at home with my parents’ firstborn—me—General MacArthur sent her a dozen long-stemmed American Beauty roses, with a note expressing his appreciation and understanding. I recall as a youngster seeing those notes, but they have long since disappeared from the family archives. I would give almost anything to have one now.
On March 2, 1964, the eighty-four-year-old general was admitted to Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C. The MacArthurs had lived in the Waldorf Towers in New York since their return from Japan in 1951; he was chairman of the board of the Remington Rand Corporation. In late February his physician, Dr. Morris Schleifer, had called Lt. Gen. Leonard Heaton, the surgeon general of the Army, to say that General MacArthur was ill but was reluctant to have the surgery that Dr. Schleifer believed was urgently needed. General Heaton visited the MacArthurs in New York, agreed with Dr. Schleifer, and was able to persuade the general to come to Walter Reed for treatment. President Lyndon Johnson sent Air Force One to bring General MacArthur, Mrs. MacArthur, and their son, Arthur, to Washington.
General Heaton had selected six of us at Walter Reed to take care of the general. We all gathered at the nurses’ station on Ward Eight, the VIP ward on the fourth floor. As General MacArthur went into the bedroom to change into hospital garb (he occupied the Presidential Suite), General Heaton turned and, catching me completely by surprise, said, “Okay, Scott, you’re in charge. Go in, get a history, do a physical examination, and then tell us what we’re dealing with.” So I had one and a half hours alone with Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
During the few days before his arrival the rumors had flown thick and fast: “He hates doctors, he won’t even talk to you.” “He won’t let you take his blood pressure.” “He’ll refuse to have blood taken from his arm for tests.”
Instead he was relaxed, friendly, candid, and answered my questions simply and clearly. I am certain he sensed that I was tense (because I was), but he quickly put me at ease, and it was a very pleasant and useful session.
The first question of any medical history is always: “What is your chief complaint; what bothers you the most?” To which he answered, “Doc, it’s this damned itching.”
It turned out that General MacArthur had had gallstones for several years and had experienced a number of episodes of pain and jaundice, caused by the gallstones obstructing the flow of bile. These symptoms had always cleared up spontaneously, and he had therefore refused to have his gallbladder removed, though the indications for surgery were clear. This time there had been steadily deepening jaundice for at least five months, suggesting the possibility of a malignancy (a possibility later disproved). Obstructive jaundice is associated with generalized itching, itching so severe that there are reports of its driving patients to suicide. I was therefore surprised, as I carried out the physical examination, to find no evidence of scratching; there was not a mark on his skin. When I asked General MacArthur about this, he replied, “Yes, it gets pretty bad. Why, sometimes I almost have to scratch.”
Jaundice causes such severe itching that some patients are driven to suicide, but I found no marks or scratches on his skin.
The examination also showed enlargement of his liver and spleen and dilation of the veins over the abdominal wall, evidence of biliary cirrhosis, with a potentially serious complication: portal hypertension, which causes dilation of the veins inside the esophagus, which may bleed severely.
At this point let me make something plain. There are two types of cirrhosis of the liver: One is portal (or Laennec’s) cirrhosis, which is associated with alcohol abuse; the other is biliary cirrhosis, which is caused by prolonged obstruction to the flow of bile from the liver to the gallbladder and thence to the small intestine, where it plays an important role in digestion. General MacArthur had biliary cirrhosis.
The general was otherwise in good overall condition—no significant heart or lung problems—and there were no contraindications to the proposed surgery, cholecystectomy (removal of the gallbladder) and relief of the obstruction to the flow of bile through the bile ducts.
During the few days of preoperative studies and consultations and for almost two weeks after the operation, there was ample opportunity to sit and talk. He held all of us spellbound with tales of his boyhood on isolated Army posts with his father during the closing years of the Indian Wars and with stories about Gen. John J. (“Black Jack”) Pershing during World War I. Many were hilariously funny, and he told them all enthusiastically and well.
Throughout his stay with us he never lost his interest in world affairs. The Vietnam War was just beginning to heat up, and he had firm opinions about it, declaring in no uncertain terms that we must not send any more American troops to fight on the mainland of Asia. Mail for him arrived every day, in increasing volume. Soon there were two or more full sacks every morning. Most letters bore the expected address, but several were delivered with only “The Old Soldier” on the envelope, and one, from Australia, with only five stars in a circle.
General Heaton and the other surgeons performed the operation on March 6, 1964. The gallbladder was successfully removed, and the obstructing gallstones were cleared out of the bile ducts. General MacArthur withstood the procedure well, recovering quickly from the anesthesia; his jaundice began to fade, and within fortyeight hours the itching had subsided completely.
Then disaster. At four o’clock on the morning of March 23, bleeding suddenly began from those esophageal veins. Nothing would stop it, and a second operation was necessary. This was successful—the hemorrhage was arrested—but the general’s recovery from the anesthesia was very slow. He seemed to be gaining ground when, six days later, suddenly another crisis developed, a totally unrelated surgical emergency. A third major operation in less than three weeks was more than any eighty-four-year-old patient could tolerate. General MacArthur never fully regained consciousness. He slipped gradually into a coma and died on April 5. Mrs. MacArthur, their son, Arthur, and the general’s friend and World War II aide Maj. Gen. Courtney Whitney were at his side.
An autopsy was carried out immediately. It brought no surprises; we had missed nothing. I am convinced that everything we did was right, but unavoidable complications defeated us. I have heard rumblings of criticism: that it was unnecessary and cruel to have operated on a man of his age three times in such a short period. But what else could we have done? The indications for removal of his gallbladder were very clear. We could not stand by and allow him to bleed to death just to avoid the second operation. Failure to carry out that third procedure would have resulted in certain, agonizing death. It was a terrible disappointment not to have been able to save that gallant man.
Why had he refused for so long surgery to correct what was a rather common condition—gallstones? Certainly he did not lack physical courage, nor did he have an unrealistic fear of pain. Was it because he refused to surrender to the mundane? MacArthur does not scratch.
—Norman M. Scott, Jr., M.D., is a retired Army medical officer who was part of the team that provided care for General MacArthur. He now lives in San Francisco.
Maybe Another Time
BY THE READERS
I was sweating out the summer of 1960 in a tenement in New York City’s Greenwich Village when a college friend offered me his family’s apartment for the month of August. It was a luxurious spread with a terrace at 2 Sutton Place, one of the city’s grander addresses. On my way to the elevator the morning after installing myself in my elegant digs, I glanced at the name tag on my neighbor’s door. “M. Monroe,” it read, in raised black ink in a businesslike type.
It couldn’t be, I thought. I asked the building’s doorman, and he confirmed that my neighbor was indeed Marilyn Monroe.
“Do you ever see her?” I asked.
“Not enough.”
After I had been in the apartment a week, I decided to celebrate my month of high life by having a few friends over for a barbecue on the terrace. I had just put a steak on the grill when I told my guests that Marilyn Monroe lived next door. One promptly piped up, “Well then, why don’t you trot over and ask her to join us?” Surrounded as I was by good friends on an elegant terrace in the mellow dusk of an August night, I suddenly thought that inviting Marilyn Monroe over seemed a plausible thing to do.
I turned the care of the steak over to my guests and made my way to Miss Monroe’s door. Ten seconds after I had pressed the buzzer, it swung open.
She was wearing an ankle-length terry cloth robe belted snugly at the waist and slipper scuffs of the same material. Her hair stood out a bit from her head; probably she had been brushing it. It gave off an aura of shampoo and of course was very blond. Her mouth was flawlessly lipsticked bright red, just like on the posters. Her blue eyes peered into mine, calmly inquiring, and her lips pursed into a bemused half-smile.
“I’m your neighbor for the month of August,” I blurted. “I’m having a few friends over for a barbecue, and, I, uh—”
“Was just wondering … ,” Marilyn Monroe supplied for me.
“If you would like to—”
“Join us!” She finished, smiling. “It’s very nice of you to think of me, but I’m already late for something else. Thank you for the invitation. Maybe another time. Good night.” Before she gently swung her door closed, she offered a dazzling smile.
My expression was enough to convince my guests that I had indeed had a conversation with Marilyn Monroe.
“She said, ‘Maybe another time,’” I told them. They greeted this with howls.
But she had said it.
—James McDermott is an editor of Guideposts, an inspirational magazine.
The Well-Mannered Motorcade
In May of 1977 I was a young Marine Corps lance corporal working with the Naval Security Group on Misawa Air Base, tucked away on the northern tip of the island of Honshu, Japan. While Misawa was somewhat isolated, it was conveniently located across the Sea of Japan from what President Ronald Reagan later referred to as the Evil Empire. With Vietnam behind us, our attention was once again returning to the Cold War, and as a low-level communications technician I was proud to make even the slightest contribution to the effort. Our mission often demanded that we work two full eighthour shifts in a twenty-four-hour period. This schedule allowed little more than a quick bite to eat and a few hours of sleep between shifts.
Several weeks earlier I had read in Stars and Stripes that a national sports festival was to be held in the northern Honshu city of Aomori. Many Japanese dignitaries would attend, including one in particular who hadn’t traveled to that part of Japan for more than twenty years. Because of a lack of adequate airfields in the region, all planes were to land at Misawa Air Base before a forty-minute drive to Aomori. I planned to hang around the terminal on the designated day to try to catch a glimpse of a Japanese VIP.
But when the day arrived, I was assigned one of those double shifts, and I wearily chose sleep over celebrity chasing. I had just crawled into my bunk at 8:00 A.M. when someone knocked on my door and told me that Sergeant Hutchinson wanted me on the barracks phone. Hutchinson, the administration sergeant for our company, was as belligerent as you might imagine any noncom could be who routinely had been passed over for promotion. When I answered the phone, he told me he had some forms that needed my signature. Knowing they were nothing urgent, I begged him to allow me to sign them some other day. Staying in character, he demanded my presence immediately.
So I climbed back into uniform and proceeded to the company office. One block away, on a quiet side street that led directly from the flight line to the main base entrance, I came to a crosswalk. As I looked to my left, I saw a small procession approaching: two Japanese motorcycle police acting as front-runners, a limousine smartly decorated with Rising Sun flags, and two more motorcycle police to the rear. Immediately I knew who occupied the government vehicle, and I hoped I might catch a glimpse of him as it sped through the deserted intersection. To my astonishment the group stopped at the red light. With not another automobile in sight, the car rolled to a halt a foot from the curb where I was standing. As I peered into the rear seat, I saw on either side two huge individuals who bore a striking resemblance to the James Bond villain Oddjob. Sandwiched between them was an elderly and frail-looking man. It was Emperor Hirohito.
I tried to imagine President Carter stopping for a red light as he passed through the streets of America. An instant later one of the most infamous men of the twentieth century leaned forward in his seat and looked directly into my eyes. I thought of my father, a Navy chief petty officer during the Second World War, who spoke of the terror of encountering Hirohito’s Kamikazes in the South Pacific. I tried to imagine what Hirohito himself might be thinking as he gazed at a Marine standing on Japanese soil. Even after almost thirty-two years of American military presence, I doubted the emperor had become accustomed to the sight.
Soon the traffic light changed, and the well-mannered motorcade moved on to Aomori and the sports festival. I continued on to the company office, enthusiastically greeted Sergeant Hutchinson, and watched a bewildered expression cross his weathered face as I thanked him on my way out the door. If it hadn’t been for this ornery old Marine, I never would have experienced my brush with history.
—Kevin Rogers is a division training manager for a national chain of shoe stores.
The Federalist Student
In the spring of 1948, out of the service and still in my twenties, I was a graduate student at Columbia University. I was surprised one day to be called to report to the university provost, Albert C. Jacobs, in Low Memorial Library. He told me that Gen. Dwight Eisenhower had agreed to be the university president and asked if I’d like to work for the new president and himself.
Thrilled, I began at once helping prepare plans for the general’s inauguration; the evening before the ceremony it was my duty to present a thousand guests to the General and Mrs. Eisenhower in the great domed expanse of the Low Library’s rotunda (I was especially pleased to be able to tell Mamie Eisenhower that, like her, I was Iowa born).
Inauguration Day was overcast, but just as President Eisenhower (we Columbians were the first to call Ike by this title) received the keys to the university, the clouds parted like those in an allegorical painting, a shaft of light sparked on the keys, and a gasping murmur rose from the twenty thousand guests crowded on the South Lawn. Mamie Eisenhower later said that she never forgot that happy augury.
The faculty oration at the inauguration was delivered by Robert Livingston Schuyler, who, as well as being a distinguished historian and the descendant of two distinguished families, was my mentor. Thus it was natural that he came to me to inquire if President Eisenhower might be willing to talk to his historiography class.
“Come to the office and ask,” I urged him, only to be chagrined when I saw him twice turned away by Maj. Robert Schulz, a strict aide whom Eisenhower had brought with him from the Army.
“I guess,” a disappointed Professor Schuyler said to me a few days later, “I won’t be able to invite President Eisenhower to my class.”
I had an idea. The president, I told him, left his office with military precision at noon sharp every day and headed down the steps in front of Low. It was a long flight of stairs. Why couldn’t Professor Schuyler contrive to meet him as he came out of Fayerweather Hall across the way? “Gordon, that’s a great idea!” Professor Schuyler exclaimed. “I’ll try it tomorrow.”
The next day I discreetly followed President Eisenhower out of his office and down the steps. Suddenly he stopped and called in a voice so strong it seemed to echo off Butler Library across the campus, “Professor Schuyler!” I froze several steps above, then heard him heartily go on. “I’ve been hoping to thank you for your wonderful address at my inauguration and ask you if there’s anything I could do for you.”
Schuyler then told Eisenhower he taught a large historiography class and asked if the president might come and speak to it. What about? Ike wanted to know. “Your favorite historians.”
Eisenhower did indeed come and, to everyone’s surprise, spoke with passion and deep knowledge about two of the college’s most illustrious former students, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.
Five years after that memorable classroom session, during his first months in the White House, Eisenhower sent for Tohn Foster Dulles, his Secretary of State, to ask his opinion on the Bricker Amendment, a move to curtail presidential foreign policy agreements that was then being debated. Dulles hedged a bit, and Eisenhower told him he’d do some homework that night and meet with him early the next morning. At the meeting Eisenhower said he’d reread The Federalist on the necessity for the President to have a strong role in foreign policy. Dulles stammered his amazement at the President’s familiarity with The Federalist and thereafter often discussed the work with him. Years later Eisenhower wrote with some amusement, “Dulles talked about The Federalist Papers as though he had begun their study in kindergarten.”
Only Professor Schuyler from the Columbia years would not have been surprised that Eisenhower kept a copy of The Federalist on his desk in the Oval Office. Indeed, certain detractors of Eisenhower’s intellect won’t believe it to this day.
—R. Gordon Hoxie is the founder and chairman emeritus of the Center for the Study of the Presidency.
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