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General Douglas MacArthur

Why were twenty wounded American soldiers released on Thanksgiving in 1950, days before the Chinese attacked in Korea?

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.

“That’s General MacArthur! Clear the port wing of the bridge!!”

October 19, 1944. Evening. On U.S. destroyer with invasion fleet en route to Leyte Gulf, Philippines. Destroyer taking fuel along starboard side of USS Nashville.
My stint as an Army journalist a few years earlier (1951–53) than Geoffrey Perret gave me no insight into the MacArthur legend.

“The Rock” was a proud island fortress, impregnable to attack from the sea. Unfortunately, the Japanese didn’t come that way. Its capture climaxed the bitterest defeat in our history

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