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c10125d
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When the tide of combat turned against them or when small units were isolated and in danger of losing their POW's, the vindictiveness of the North Korean soldier could not be restrained. Men accustomed to torture and summary execution all their lives, both from Japanese and Communist rulers, could not be expected to behave with nicety toward foreign captives. Nor did they.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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3e223b2
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Not until long afterward was it even dignified by the name of war--the governmental euphemism was Korean conflict--and it rapidly became the most forgotten war in American history. There was little in it, from near-disastrous beginning to honorable but frustrating end, that appealed to American sensibilities.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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2a0792c
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If the United States ground forces had not eventually held in Korea, Americans would have been faced with two choices: holocaust or humiliation. General, atomic war, in a last desperate attempt to save the game, would have gained Americans none of the things they seek in this world; humiliating defeat and withdrawal from Korea would have inevitably surrendered Asia to a Communist surge, destroying forever American hopes for a free and order..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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84a1795
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Every age has a people or a culture that believes the shortest distance between dreams and goals is a bomb, a bullet, a gas oven, or a keen Toledo sword and burning stake. Because
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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044c1f6
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But the most ironic thing, in those bitter days of December 1950, was that the commentators who cried havoc the loudest were the very men who had done most to change and destroy the old 1945 Army. These were the men who had shouted for the boys to be brought home, who had urged the troops to exert civil rights. They were the ones who had hinted that leaders trying to delay the frenetic demobilization, or the reform of the Army, were no bett..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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6be208f
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He had some new officers, some of them recallees. These men were not eager. They were patriotic men, with good records. But listening for the trumpet, they had received instead orders to Korea, telling them to go and serve, not saying why. They had little interest in holding the far frontier. They were citizens, and each of them had better things to do.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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17406f3
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But an opposition party--as each party discovers periodically in America--has certain shining advantages: it can carp and criticize all past and current mistakes without being too specific with its own remedies.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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9ae4c0a
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To make a war, sometimes it is necessary that everyone guess wrong.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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aa88082
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Another expedition journeyed far to the east, across the Panhandle of Texas, and contacted a party of Caddoan Indians. These were Hasinai, but the Spaniards called them Tejas, from the Caddoan Teychas, meaning "allies" or "friends." This word was spelled "Texas" frequently in old Spanish, in which the "x" was substituted for a "j" sound, and from this mistaken tribal name the land derived its name."
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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96a49d9
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Americans who felt, and still feel, that their soldiers taken by a power of different culture and lesser standards of humanity should be, or will be, treated in accordance with decent Western standards are naive.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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54f5d67
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Without effort, the enemy knew everything there was to know about the U.N. forces. The U.N., in turn, never knew the enemy existed--until it was much too late.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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573f5dd
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Lin Piao's forces had averaged twenty-four miles per day, on foot. In Shensi Province, far removed from the Nationalists and the eyes of the world, the Communist Chinese began to rebuild their base of power. They began to wage guerrilla warfare against the Nationalists. They were led by men who were now hardened soldiers, men who wanted above all else for China to be again a great power
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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486e04e
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The popular morality of what the Communist Chinese have done will probably be judged only in the light of whether or not they made China a great power, and only the future will tell that. If they fail, history will condemn them for the enormous suffering they inflicted upon their land; if they succeed, their own history will largely regard them as heroes,
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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4e75ee0
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Keiser, though not really understanding the seriousness of the situation, told him to use his own judgment. Peploe's move, while it could not break the web of fate closing in about 2nd Division, diverted complete disaster. Rolling with the punch, fighting a battle royal, the men of the 38th pulled back astride the Ch'ongch'on during the night. As Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall put it, writing of this night of battle, "It is ... a pity ..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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a7274a4
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Mace's tank, miraculously, had come through without loss among either crew or riders--the first and last vehicle to do so. Surprise, and their momentum, had served them well. And as they went through the British lines, these men knew the worst: that instead of holding only a small stretch of the road under light fire, a full Chinese division had locked itself over six miles of the route, covering it with small arms, mortars, and forty machi..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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315cde4
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It was not until the Korean War was many months old that new Army trainees began to live half their time in the field, and to undergo a third of their training by night. Slowly, commanders then began to restore the old hard slap and dash that had characterized Grant's men in Virginia, Pershing's AEF, and Patton's armored columns.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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fae0c90
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To remain a great power, the United States had to provide the best in nuclear delivery systems. But to properly exercise that power with any effect in the world--short of blowing it up--the United States had also to provide the bread-and-butter weapons that would permit her ground troops to live in battle.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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7511361
|
While few men, legislators or otherwise, have felt down the years that they could command ships of the line or marshal air armies without specialized training, almost any fool has felt in his heart he could command a regiment.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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af1b8aa
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Half contemptuously, American military men spoke of "elusive" Lin Piao, and of the "poet" Mao Tse-tung. Mao Tse-tung, Premier of China, had already revealed to the world how his Communist armies operated--how they flowed from place to place, fighting when fighting was profitable, biding their time when it was not. What Mao Tse-tung had written was instructive, and intensely practical for a war in Asia--but because the Chinese wrote in poeti..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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b7f2b80
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No matter how cultured or ancient the civilization, no average American is going to condone the absence of flush toilets. Not now, not ever. The United States Government and international planners may as well face that simple fact.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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5ad6d34
|
Citizens fly to defend the homeland, or to crusade. But a frontier cannot be held by citizens, because citizens, in a republic, have better things to do.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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37c858b
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And it was no accident, in the late forties, that the makers of American policy, unwilling to backtrack with the public, began to try to isolate foreign policy decisions from public and Congressional control. The great decisions--the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine--that gave the earth a hope of eventual order were not instantly popular with the American people. There was no great attempt to sell them--it was significant that every histo..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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622805f
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The balance of power can be maintained short of holocaust, but only if the trumpet is not sounded. The world of 1914 learned that lesson much too well.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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508ae51
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Something new had happened. The United States had gone to war, not under enemy attack, nor to protect the lives or property of American citizens. Nor was the action taken in crusading spirit, as in World Wars I and II, to save the world. The American people had entered a war, not by the roaring demand of Congress--which alone could constitutionally declare a state of war--or the public, but by executive action, at the urging of an American ..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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e915813
|
At the end of World War II, American military policy, digesting the Japanese lessons in China, was to control air and sea lanes throughout the East but never to engage in ground hostilities on the Asian mainland. As one spokesman put it, "There was no point to mucking about through Manchuria."
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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35cd5b6
|
There was talk, high-level talk, at Wake Island, Sunday, 15 October, but there was not enough communication.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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0abe214
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the knowledge in men's minds had far more meaning for the future than whatever blood coursed in their veins.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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f2b7d5d
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It has been said that each generation must rewrite history in order to understand it. The opposite is true. Moderns revise history to make it palatable, not to understand it. Those who edit "history" to popular taste each decade will never understand the past--neither the horrors nor glories of which the human race is equally capable--and for that reason, they will fail to understand themselves."
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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e758c6a
|
Just as the northern states of the American Union have overlooked and forgotten their occupation and reconstruction of the southern states, the West has dismissed the painful humiliations repeatedly visited upon the ancient Sinic culture in the past hundred years. Neither the South nor the Middle Kingdom has forgotten.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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dca4172
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Like the Indian Wars, it would leave a troubled feeling, a trauma, in its wake. Crusades, even when failures, are emotionally satisfying. Wars of containment, wars of policy, are not. They are hard to justify unless it is admitted that power, not idealism, is the dominant factor in the world, and that idealism must be backed by power.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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ec6542c
|
Oddly, they were never sanguine about their own combat prowess. Most of them, officers and men, felt a deep respect for, and almost an inferiority before, the various professionals that comprised the other U.N. troops in Korea. Their praise of the allies--the French, Thais, Turks, and Abyssinians--was far removed from the grousing about allies that had marked most previous wars. Most Americans, privately, would admit the U.N. troops were be..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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78503ad
|
But the most ironic thing, in those bitter days of December 1950, was that the commentators who cried havoc the loudest were the very men who had done most to change and destroy the old 1945 Army. These were the men who had shouted for the boys to be brought home, who had urged the troops to exert civil rights. They were the ones who had hinted that leaders trying to delay the frenetic demobilization, or the reform of the Army, were no bett..
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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9d7a024
|
extremely primitive conditions a certain order was established. The
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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5a690ea
|
Ironically, the Chinese allowed those who ran toward the west to escape, and in many cases actually helped these men along by picking them up and carrying them until they were close to American lines. Those who stayed and fought were not seen again.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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d88d3ca
|
The last men of the division to come through, arriving within the British lines of the morning of 1 December, could remember very little of what they had experienced. There comes a time when the conscious mind accepts no more; as with women experiencing childbirth, even the memory of pain is blotted out.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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6e328f6
|
If another war follows Korea, if American policy is threatened anywhere on the globe, it will not be years and months, as in the two world wars, or days, as in Korea, but only hours until American troops are committed. In battle, Americans learn fast--those who survive. The pity is, their society seems determined to make them wait until the shooting starts. The word should go out sooner.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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4e35c9d
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It is the nature of peoples to see the ancient foes, and to ignore those newly arising.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |
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3796b9c
|
War was to be entered upon with sadness, with regret, but also with ferocity.
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T.R. Fehrenbach |