The Ghost Mountain Boys - James E. Campbell [8]
At the same time, Curtin demanded three divisions from Australia’s Imperial Forces sent home at once. When Churchill told him that his request was impossible to fulfill, Curtin persisted, and eventually won the return of two out of the three. Churchill argued that to remove the 9th Division from the Middle East would jeopardize the British line. He then suggested to Roosevelt that if the Prime Minister agreed to leave the 9th Division in place, the United States should send to Australia another U.S. Army Infantry division. Marshall chose the 32nd.
A full seven months later, as the Japanese Imperial army ascended a high ridge overlooking Port Moresby, MacArthur dispatched two of the 32nd Division’s three regimental combat teams to New Guinea.
Although MacArthur came to Australia in defeat, no one would have known it from his reception. One of the most decorated generals of his time, a man who during World War I was called by America’s secretary of war “the finest front line American general of the war,” had arrived to defend Australia in her hour of need.
In fact, MacArthur’s arrival overshadowed the return of one of Australia’s own heroes. Curtin had ordered General Sir Thomas Blamey to return home from the Middle East “as speedily as possible,” appointing him Allied Commander, Australian Military Forces.
The March 18 announcement that MacArthur would be the Supreme Commander of the Southwest Pacific Area upstaged Blamey’s appointment. Blamey was unhappy about the news, which he got while traveling by train east from Perth. But the Joint Chiefs of Staff had already worked out the organization of the Pacific, dividing the theater into two distinct areas: The Pacific Ocean, which included North, Central, and South, went to the navy, and the Southwest Pacific, including Australia, the Philippines, New Guinea, the Solomons, the Bismarck Archipelago, and a portion of the Dutch East Indies, would go to MacArthur.
Conceding to General George Marshall, who argued that an Australian should command Allied troops, MacArthur reluctantly appointed Blamey as his Commander Allied Land Forces. In an uncharacteristic moment of modesty, MacArthur named himself the Commander in Chief Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA) rather than Supreme Commander.
Despite MacArthur’s choice of Blamey, Australian officers were still unhappy. The staff of MacArthur’s General Headquarters was entirely American, composed of trusted advisors who had served on his staff in the Philippines. Not appointing an Australian as a senior member of his staff—which was known as the “Bataan Gang”—was a move by MacArthur that generated bad blood between the Commander in Chief and the Australians, though it was one he defended gruffly. “There was no prospect,” he said, “of obtaining qualified senior staff officers from the Australians.”
From the beginning, MacArthur regarded Blamey ambivalently: In his words, Blamey was “…sensual, slothful and of doubtful moral character…[but] a tough commander likely to shine like a power light in an emergency. The best of the local bunch.” Blamey’s opinion of MacArthur was not much different. “The best and the worst of the things you hear about him are both true,” Blamey said.
On a bright, sunny morning in March, a train pulling MacArthur’s private railroad car came to a stop at Spencer Street Station in Melbourne. Six thousand people, including the Prime Minister and other dignitaries, greeted MacArthur with an outburst of adoration. A correspondent for an Australian newspaper said that he had never seen any man receive such acclaim. MacArthur stepped from the car and, though weary, he was an impressive-looking man. He sported a “flourishable cane” and wore his signature gold-embroidered cap dashingly at an angle.
After a brief but dramatic speech in which he took a jab at