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Robb, Walter, June 18, 1947.
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- 2- For instance, here is what Mac Arthur knew about airpower late in 1939:
"Dear Walter: "This(Royal Leonard's memo. on airpower-in-war to Fort Santiago, after 5 years' flying in China) is a most intriguing paper. The material side of aviation and the doctrine of its personnel are in such a state of flux and rapidity of change that its real potentialities, insofar as they affect basic strategy, have not as yet been demonstrated. It will probably take a world war to really give some great new military genius--one who will thereby make himself one of the notable captains of war--an opportunity to exploit the new possiblilities which this weapon has placed in the hands of a commander of imagination and flexibility. Thanks for letting me see it.
"MacA,"
Or for instance, I am told by a Manilan who says he helped dump them, that in 1941, Major General George C. Grunert, commanding at Fort Santiago, had the rifles and ammunition from the ordnance depots at Fort Santiago dumped at the bottom of Manila bay--to keep them from falling into the hands of Filipinos, in case Japan attacked and we lost Manila. The reliable American who tells me this, lived to survive the Death March. Often, at Bataan, he longed for those rifle and that ammunition to be in the hands of Filipinos, whose loyalty, not remotely suspected by Grunert, would have dogged the enemy's flanks with telling guerrilla fire. And whether Grunert sunk those arms or not, our military was never ready with the arms and ammunition the loyal Filipinos required. Or for instance, obviously the primary step in the preparation of Bataan as a mainland support to Corregidor (and site on which to withstand siege ) would have been a dependable food supply. In those mountains, that I have twice trekked over, one concreted, aerated excavation could have accomodated a rice mill, and adjacent ones could have stored unhulled rice indefinitely-- merely with the "elevator" equipment to turn it over occasionally. But among a dozen or so major generals MacArthur included, who commanded at Fort Santiago and had to do with Bataan's defenses, not one built even a small rice mill, and none built a paddy warehouse. Our men were not defeated there, therefore, but were starved out.