Posted on 08/04/2019 2:20:07 PM PDT by fugazi
They’d go off duck hunting....
MacArthur’s conduct of the 1941-1942 Philippines a campaign should have earned him a a Court-Martial.
He failed to make proper preparations and colossally screwed up his own logistics.
He was out of communications with his command for several critical hours after learning about Pearl Harbor.
The retreat to Bataan was late and large amounts of medicine, fuel and food never made it to the peninsula.
He had blithely assumed the Japanese would not attack until April and his troops paid the price.
The greatest soldier who ever lived was on either side of me in Vietnam.
But my favorite best soldier was a shy, quiet PFC with an odd walk who tended us critically wounded at the Air Force hospital at Tachikawa Japan. The Air Force nurses for our ward almost never showed up - too busy doing something else, I guess - so the PFC emptied our bedpans, changed our IVs, smuggled cokes to us and took care of us.
He had a bandage on the back of his head but I assumed that he was one of those “rear area commandos” based in Tokyo and maybe he’d slipped and hurt himself.
I finally decide to ask him how he got hurt and he told me that “a mortar fell straight down behind him, crushing the back of skull, then exploding behind him, severing his feet”.
I looked over the edge of my bed and saw that the reason for his odd walk was that he waiting on us, walking on rubber pads where his feet had been.
Best soldier, ever.
Good point. Insufferable as MacArthur could be, everything I have read about his island hopping campaign in the South Pacific stresses how he always tried to minimize casualties. Whatever mistakes he made in the Philippines, he sure learned from the later in the war.
Wasn’t Smedley Butler a marine?
John Wayne.
If we are going to limit the discussion to best American commanders then I agree, Washington is at the top. What he accomplished was remarkable. His generalship is highly underrated. His rag tag army fought the world greatest military power for 7 years and won (thanks France). So I give him the top spot for American commanders.
My thoughts exactly: GW!
Army - Audi Murphy (WWII)
Navy - James E. Wilson (Viet Nam)
Marines - Daniel J. Daly (WWI)
Air Force - Edward V. Rickenbacker (WWI)
So your favorite is Omar Bradley?
Steve Rogers
There are only two men...M-E-N...who qualify for this distinction. There are two MEN who, if they hadn't been born, the United States...U-N-I-T-E-D...S-T-A-T-E-S would not exist today.
They are George Washington and US Grant.
My personal preference is U.S. Grant. He's the hardest military man this country ever produced. He hated battle like the Devil hates holy water. Still, he pressed battles that made him physically ill.
If you can't love Grant as the savior of the United States, your too twisted to carry onthis discussion.
I’m also thinking British general Montgomery.
You are flat out wrong in everything you said about MacArthur in the Philippines.
In fact just about the opposite of what you said was the truth.
I don’t seem to recall anyone mentioning Jackson ...
... but I’d pay good money to watch him in DC today pistol whipping almost every last politician out of town.
Pat Tillman and Chris Kyle.
It’s a team thing...Each is great in his whole name....but without the others...he falls.
Some may be unable to comprehend but more often than not they are just doing what leftists do.
What mistakes?
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