Who Could Possibly Intimidate Douglas MacArthur?

No one would associate General Douglas MacArthur with cowardice. One of the few men to rise to the rank of 5-star general, MacArthur was known for bravery, daring, and determination in the face of adversity.

It’s hard to imagine him facing an adversary who intimidated him to the point of queasiness. That’s exactly what happened on the day he faced off against his most feared adversary. MacArthur wasn’t just queasy — he was puking his guts out.

It happened in 1934. The United States was in the darkest days of the Great Depression. General MacArthur was serving as Army chief of staff, trying his best to oversee an army that was a shadow of its former glory.

In the years following World War I, the U.S. armed forces dwindled to just a fraction of its wartime peak. The nation’s economic problems brought huge cuts to the defense budget, and MacArthur found himself trying to do more and more with less and less.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the second year of his administration. Having campaigned as a fiscal conservative, he proposed a staggering 51% cut in the defense budget. This was more than MacArthur could bear. He requested a meeting with FDR, in hopes of persuading the president to change his mind.

MacArthur made his case and pleaded with the president not to move forward with the drastic cuts. He argued that the army could not provide adequate protection under the existing global conditions. What was worse was that the world was moving toward an inevitable crisis, and the United States would be woefully prepared to face it.

Despite his best efforts, FDR was intransigent. He had promised to bring government spending under control, and the general would just have to figure out how to economize.

MacArthur had heard enough. In his memoirs, the general remembered the heated moment when he had enough. “I spoke recklessly and said something to the general effect that when we lost the next war, and an American boy, lying in the mud with an enemy bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat, spat out his last curse, I wanted the name not to be MacArthur, but Roosevelt.”

“I spoke recklessly and said something to the general effect that when we lost the next war, and an American boy, lying in the mud with an enemy bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat, spat out his last curse, I wanted the name not to be MacArthur, but Roosevelt.”

Roosevelt was not accustomed to having anyone talk to him that way — particularly not in the Oval Office by one of his generals. Before he could utter a protest, however, MacArthur stood, announced that he was resigning as Army chief of staff, and hurried for the door.

The general’s aides hurried after him. If anyone was trying to get MacArthur to reconsider his resignation or offer a word of apology, those attempts fell on deaf ears. MacArthur had one goal: to get out of the White House before he lost the battle he was fighting with his digestive system. The emotional strain of such a hostile confrontation with the leader of the free world was too much, even for this battle-hardened soldier.

MacArthur raced for the exit. Once outside, he promptly vomited on the steps of the White House.

As it turned out, MacArthur’s unconventional argument won the day. The president refused to accept his resignation. More importantly, he agreed to reconsider the draconian budget cuts. MacArthur served another year as Army chief of staff. When the US entered World War II a few years later, no one doubted that the country was better prepared because of MacArthur’s foresight and determination.

Nearly twenty years later, MacArthur would face off against another president. History records the epic showdown with Harry S. Truman that led to the president firing the Korean War’s Supreme Commander. By all accounts, MacArthur received the news of his dismissal rather stoically. One can only wonder if that was because he had strengthened his resolve and made up his mind that although he lost his command, this time he would not lose his lunch.

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