“That bold buckaroo with the cold green eyes.”

– General Douglas MacArthur, describing his savior John Bulkeley –

In March 1942, facing imminent capture by the Japanese, America’s commander in the Far East was ordered to slip away to safety in Australia. The Empire of the Sun controlled both air and sea, and only a precious few Allied planes and ships remained in-theater, skulking through the night fog like pirates to avoid capture and running on little more than spit and baling wire. “Overhauling those motors without any replacement parts was a terrible job,” one of the few to escape that nightmare later remembered. “For instance. Any tank-town garage which overhauls a flivver back in the States always replaces the gaskets with new ones. Only we didn’t have any. Or any sealing compound. So those old gaskets had to be carefully removed, handled as gently as though they were precious lace, and laid back in place when the motors were reassembled.”

When MacArthur arrived at the dock with his family and key commanders, he found waiting for him a trio of tiny, dilapidated motor torpedo boats crewed by dirty, emaciated men with long, unkempt beards and wild eyes. Their skipper was a thirty-year-old U.S. Navy Lieutenant named John Bulkeley, who for months had held his disintegrating squadron together by scrounging like a rat among the islands for gasoline, torpedoes, and other basic supplies. His boats were little more than plywood matchboxes, but Bulkeley had kept them active long after the rest of America’s Navy and Air Force had been destroyed or driven off. He made sneak assaults against transports, cruisers, destroyers, airplanes, landing parties — anything to frustrate the pace of the overwhelming Japanese invasion. Every time he attacked it was a fearsome David-versus-Goliath mismatch, but Bulkeley had done so time and again, sinking many enemy vessels. (more…)

Some of the Navy folks talked about bringing out a veterinarian.

08 July 2009

(Filed from Afghanistan)

The fight in the southern Philippines varies in intensity and technique. Commanders in the AFP (Armed Forces Philippines) will say that the fight consists of about 80% carrot and 20% stick. The relationship between U.S. and AFP forces seems good but there are differences of opinion. Our folks fully understand the 80% part, but on the 20% we often know the whereabouts of the enemy and would like to see faster action. Nevertheless, my gut instinct after having a tour about the place is that progress is being made. A guerrilla commander told me that he had been fighting since 1976, but came out of the jungles with 34 fighters on 20 April this year. Publicly it’s called a “surrender,” but on the ground it seemed more like a mutual agreement to stop fighting and do something constructive. (more…)