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THE FIGHTING AGENTS
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
Copyright © 1987 by W.E.B. Griffin.
Originally published under the pseudonym Alex Baldwin.
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eISBN : 978-1-4406-3699-8
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For Lieutenant Aaron Bank, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS (later, Colonel, Special Forces) and Lieutenant William E. Colby, Infantry, AUS, detailed OSS (later, Ambassador and Director, CIA)
As Jedburgh Team Leaders operating in German-occupied France and Norway, they set the standards for valor, wisdom, patriotism, and personal integrity that thousands who followed in their steps in the OSS and CIA tried to emulate.
Prologue
Since General Douglas MacArthurs departure for Australia from the Fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay was in compliance with a direct order from President and Commander -in-Chief Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was the Generals belief that the move was nothing more than a transfer of his headquarters. He believed, in other words, that the battered, outnumbered, starving U.S. and Philippine troops in the Philippine Islands would remain under his command.
He believed specifically that Lieutenant General Jonathan M. Wainwright, a tall, skinny cavalryman who had been his deputy, would, as regulations and custom prescribed, remain under his orders.
General MacArthurs last order to Wainwrighton the small wooden wharf at Corregidor just before MacArthur, his wife, his son, and a small staff boarded the boats that would take them awaywas verbal: He told Wainwright to hold on. Wainwright understood this to mean that he was forbidden to surrender.
Since he had been promised reinforcement and resupply of his beleaguered forces by Roosevelt himself, MacArthur believed that as long as the Fortress of Corregidor held out, Roosevelt would be forced to make good on his promise of reinforcement. The island of Luzon, including the capital city of Manila, had fallen to the Japanese. But there were upward of twenty thousand reasonably healthy, reasonably well-supplied troops under Major General William Sharp on the island of Mindanao. That force, MacArthur believed, could serve as the nucleus for the recapture of Luzon, once reinforcements came.
MacArthur accepted the possibility that Corregidor might fall. But if that should happen, he believed that Wainwright should move his three-starred, red generals flag and the other colors to Mindanao, assume command of General Sharps troops, and continue the fight.
Before MacArthur reached Brisbane, however, traveling first by PT boat and then by B-17 aircraft, General Wainwright began to receive orders directly from Washington, from General George Catlett Marshall, the Chief of Staff.
General MacArthur and General Marshall were not friends. For instance, some time before the war when Marshall was a colonel at Fort Benning, MacArthur, then Chief of Staff of the Army, had officially described Marshall as unfit for command of a unit larger than a regiment. Several such incidents did not bring the two closer.
It was made clear to General Wainwright by the War Department that he was no longer subject to General Mac-Arthurs orders, and that the conduct of resistance in the Philippines was entirely his own responsibility.