If not for the USMC, Korea would have been lost. The US Army had gone so far downhill that many of the troops sent over from Japan at first couldn’t properly assemble an M1 Garand. The NKs rolled right over them. Fortunately the Marines hadn’t lowered their standards.
Bookmarked. Looks like a good read when for when I’m sober. Thanks.
President Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex “deep state” in 1961. Promoting wars made them rich. The FED bank system sucked the country dry during the depression. Lost battles gave arms dealers billions in orders.
US actions in the Korean War enabled us to contain communism. It was NOT a failure!!!!
The Korean war was also followed by the greatest period of prosperity the US has ever seen! (This even started shortly before and during the war.) Some regard it as the golden age of America!!!! This was despite the continuing nuclear threat from the Soviets!
God Bless our veterans, including Korean War veterans, this Memorial Day! And may the Memory of deceased veterans be Eternal!!!!
I think the fall came between with Eisenhower rounding up illegal aliens and Reagan giving them amnesty. Reagan destroyed America with this action and it has been downhill since.
My father was sent to Korea .. His description was laying on a hillside shooting off artillery shells, until the armistice and he was among those that returned the colors to NYC ... He was told to get out of uniform soon after parade, so as to not stir up the commies in the area.
That war was the first war that we were not allowed to finish, same for Viet Nam. How sad for all the Americans killed, all of whom got mocked very heavily by the MASH tv series. Absolutely revolted me. According to that horrible show, all good soldiers were jerks and killers, and all bad soldiers were to be treated gently. We were even friends to the enemy Koreans ..
Other than the modest humor once in a while, I couldn’t take more than a half dozen of their unpatriotic shows.
“The troops left were therefore barely enough to respond to any Soviet aggression while also occupying Germany and Japan. The military was gutted. In Korea, we committed into combat most likely the least trained and least-equipped army in our history.”
Maybe. The troops we sent to France in 1917-18 had no realistic combat training at all. The French Army had to set up schools of instruction for all of our combat arms.
The Civil War was probably worse. They did get training in parade ground maneuvers which basically got everybody slaughtered.
We did not lose the Korean War. The N. Koreans and later, the Chinese, invaded the South and drove the UN troops (Mostly American troops stationed in Japan and poorly trained) and the ROKs down to a small part of the South. Their goal was to take over the South and unify the country under communist control, and they almost did it.
However, we fought back and pushed them back across the 38th parallel (N. Korea/S. Korea border) and then almost into China until Truman stopped MacArthur from invading China.
The end result was a stalemate that kept the South free. So the North did not accomplish their goal of unifying the country under communist control.
“In Korea, we committed into combat most likely the least trained and least-equipped army in our history.”
When my dad, at 17yrs old got off the boat in Korea they had 12 hours to clean their M-1 and sight in.
Then they were on the trucks to Hadong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadong_Ambush
Two days later he wrote his mom and let her know he was in Korea, was OK but that his unit got shot up pretty bad.
I still have that letter written on waxed paper in pencil. She saved it.
3rd Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment.
“The Communist Chinese leadership was more than happy to throw wave upon wave of their countrymen into the attack to ultimately be shattered by concentrated artillery fire, air attack, and overlapping fields of machinegun fire.”
I had read an anecdote (take it for what it’s worth) that many of the PLA units committed to the Korean theater were former Nationalist Chinese Units that had defected late in the recent Communist revolution. The implication being that Mao was prepared to take heavy casualties and was cynically sacrificing his least reliable troops, politically-speaking.
Hi.
Kinda off topic, the Yalu river basin should have been turned into glass. No, I’m not related to the general.
The Soviets and Mao would have learned a valuable lesson, and the Berlin Wall or the Cuban missile crises would never have happened.
Among other events in history.
Imho as a Monday morning quarterback.
5.56mm
bmp
China. Nuff sed.
That was the first war. Shooting one. With China.
Vietnam was the second
No way in hell you’re ever going to be Chyna in a ground war on their turf
Impossible task
The USSR should have been pushed back to its borders and communism eradicated as a part of WWII. Imagin a weak Soviet Union and no communism outside its borders ever again.
Not true. World War II and World War II were worse than the Korean War. The U.S. never lost a war as badly as it lost World War II.
Russia and China.
America hasn’t won a war since 1945.
We lost 34,000. The Koreans and Chinese lost 1,000,000. Read up on General Ridgeways “meat grinder “ strategy.