What Eichelberger Did When MacArthur Threatened to Send Him Home in a Box After Buna

What Eichelberger Did When MacArthur Threatened to Send Him Home in a Box After Buna On the afternoon of November thirtieth, nineteen forty-two, on the veranda of Government House at Port Moresby, a fifty-six-year-old American lieutenant general stood watching another general pace. The man pacing was Douglas MacArthur. The man standing was Robert Lawrence Eichelberger, commander of United States First Corps, just flown up from Rockhampton in a pair of C-forty-seven Dakotas. His chief of staff, Brigadier General Clovis Byers, was inside the house. The two had been given perhaps a quarter of an hour to set down their bags before MacArthur summoned them onto the porch. MacArthur stopped, turned, and spoke quietly. "Bob, I'm putting you in command at Buna. Relieve Harding. If necessary, put sergeants in charge of battalions and corporals in charge of companies. Anyone who will fight. If you don't relieve them, I'll relieve you. Time is of the essence. Bob, I want you to take Buna, or not come back alive. And that goes for your chief of staff, too." Eichelberger said, "Yes, sir." He would spend the next sixty days proving he could do it. He would also spend the rest of his career watching the man who gave him that order make sure he was not remembered for having done it. If you're enjoying this deep dive into the story, hit the subscribe button and let us know in the comments where in the world you are watching from today. Robert Lawrence Eichelberger was born on March ninth, eighteen eighty-six, on a two-hundred-and-thirty-five-acre farm outside Urbana, Ohio. His father was a lawyer who had also been a farmer, a man who had set his four sons against one another in a kind of running competition for approval and rarely awarded any. Robert grew up thin-skinned, sensitive to slight, and quietly ambitious in the way men become ambitious when they cannot remember being told they were enough. He was a middling student at West Point, graduating sixty-eighth in the class of one hundred and three in nineteen oh nine. In that class were George Patton, Jacob Devers, William Simpson, and a quiet officer from Franklin, Ohio, named Edwin Forrest Harding. #MilitaryHistory #WWII #BunaCampaign #USArmy #MacArthur #Eichelberger #WarStories #Leadership #CourageUnderFire #HistoricBattles #PacificWar #TrueStories #CombatLeadership #MilitaryHeroes #Bravery #HistoryUncovered #CommandDecisions #WW2Pacific #BattleOfBuna #LegendaryLeaders