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Make and Remake. After an interval in the U.S., and a promotion to first lieutenant, Krueger was back in the Philippines in 1908. The long-nosed, serious-faced young man with the dark hair parted dead center, brushed due east & west, was made a topographical inspector. As head of a mapping party, he rode and tramped up & down, back & forth across the central plain of Luzon. Few men today are more familiar with its military features than Walter Krueger. With the Japanese in possession, Luzon's familiar map requires some changes. Walter Krueger is the man to make them.
In the years that have passed, he has worked at one endless job: to make himself a better professional soldier. By comparison with a MacArthur or a Patton, he is colorless. To reporters he has snapped: "I don't want any legends built up around me. I'm just doing what they're paying me for." The record of his tours of duty is as unglamorous as it is long; in World War I, though he got to France, he saw no action. In one thing he takes pride: he has commanded, in relentless progression, a squad, a platoon, a company, a regiment, a brigade, a division, a corps and an army. He dislikes the lofty impersonality forced on him by his present duty—"Hell, I'd rather have a regiment." Now, he says, "I don't do much except think a lot, scold a little, pat a man on the back now & then—and try to keep a perspective."
Nothing but the Best. The only legends which have grown up around Krueger have their origin in his directness and outward severity. He is as much a stickler for military form as though he were in the Prussian army. His jeep driver in the combat area must wear proper battle dress, carry full equipment. An officer must execute every order fully and on time, and report on his mission, in proper form. Never having needed an alibi himself, Krueger will take none from others. His inspections are searching, and reflect his deep regard for those vital instruments of war, the combat infantryman's feet and stomach. There is no excuse, he holds, for poorly cooked chow, and many a G.I. who had heard of Krueger as a tough, tyrannical ogre has been better fed after a Krueger visit to the company mess. If he sees a G.I. limping, Krueger wants to know why. If the trouble is a misfit shoe, the man's officer is rebuked for not having seen to it that his men were properly outfitted.
To Krueger, this solicitude has nothing to do with tenderheartedness; it is sound military practice. Says he: "Don't make me out to be a kindly old man, because I'm not." He would rather be thought of as a mean old soldier.
Island by Island. MacArthur was not asking for any kindly old man when, in February 1943, he requested the War Department to send Krueger to Australia to head the Sixth Army. Headquarters in a Brisbane hotel was too plush for Krueger: he moved to a camp 16 miles out of town and lived in a hut. Later he was to live in many a hut, from Milne Bay to Good-enough Island, New Britain, Hollandia and Leyte.