The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines

by Jonathan Horn

But now there was a new chief of staff, George C. Marshall, and a new secretary of war, Henry L. Stimson, and it was to them that MacArthur protested. True, American forces in the Philippines had totaled little more than twenty thousand men, including Philippine Scouts, when MacArthur had taken command in July. But he would have more than one hundred thousand once he fully mobilized the Philippine Army reserves who had passed through his training camps. And by the spring of 1942, he said that number would be two hundred thousand. No wonder Marshall and Stimson came down with what the latter would later diagnose as a case of “contagious optimism.” They found another reason for optimism in the new bomber that Boeing had developed. Designed to fly at high speeds in excess of 250 miles per hour and at high altitudes above