P!
Tungil!
We stopped Communist expansionism cold.
But it wasn’t a victory.
Bump
And thus began the first war that our beloved country ever lost. Shame on our Congress.
TC
My dad’s family was fairly well-to-do in pre-war Seoul.
He’s never talked much about the bad old days there. He told me once that his family was well enough off to flee the city by bus, while many others trudged off on foot.
I think Dad did some English translating for the ROK army.
An engineer uncle of his was supposedly “kidnapped” by retreating Nork forces and never seen again.
Had Dad not left there to go study in the States, I never would have been.
Dad’s in his 90s now. We should talk more about this while we still can.
I think Korea was even more of a “major” war than that in Vietnam. Time and time again, especially in the first year of that struggle, US and UN Forces faced defeat in detail on the battlefield.
We have not faced such an enemy capable of inflicting a battlefield defeat since the summer/winter of 1950 on the Korean Peninsula. The names of Task Force Smith, the 1st Battles of Taejon and Seoul, the Pusan perimeter, the near destruction of the 2nd Infantry Division at Kunu-Ri, the annihillation of Task Force Faith, the 120 mile retreat of 8th Army and the 80 mile withdrawal of the 1st Marine Division from the Chosen Resovoir seem but distant memories.
This is why all the lunatic talk about admitting significant numbers of women to ground combat roles riles me so much. Many of these policy making dunces seem to think we will never face such an enemy again, just lightly equipped insurgents or NVA type armies of the type before the Offensive of 1975.
I believe it was Acheson who had said that South Korea was outside our sphere of interest.
A South Korean movie titled, “71: Into The Fire” came out a few years ago that is about the beginning of that conflict based on a true story.
More here about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/71:_Into_the_Fire
Trailer.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qa1G3FAaMM8
Whole movie with subtitles.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ008InBecE
Truman and pals had been savagely slashing the US military at the time. Truman very nearly lost Korea before any shots had been fired. All the later myth making about “Give ‘em Hell Harry” ignores that he made a total botch of the early “Cold War” years.
The Korean war is still going. North Korea still rattles its sabers.