Senator Joe McCarthy (right) with .38 cal. snub-nosed revolver in the small of the back of Owen Lattimore (left), marching Lattimore into the corridor of the Senate office building during a recess in the hearings. A single shot was heard, then McCarthy reentered the chamber, alone.
Owen Lattimore was the chief architect of the betrayal of Chang Kai-shek, giving China to Mao Tse-tung (later, Zedong).
April Glaspy meets Neville Chamberlain, voila, Nelly Acheson.
Ann Coulter, Treason, Regnery, 2003, pp 150-1:
In one of the great moments of American statesmanship, in January of 1950, Truman's secretary of state, Dean Acheson, gave a speech at the National Press Club writing off South Korea. He excluded South Korea from America's defensive perimeter, saying, "It must be clear that no person can guarantee these areas against military attack."21 The speech made quite an impression on Stalin: With his blessing, North Korea attacked South Korea just five months later.22
General Douglas MacArthur: Farewell Address to Congress delivered April 19, 1951
I called for reinforcements but was informed that reinforcements were not available. I made clear that if not permitted to destroy the enemy built-up bases north of the Yalu, if not permitted to utilize the friendly Chinese Force of some 600,000 men on Formosa, if not permitted to blockade the China coast to prevent the Chinese Reds from getting succor from without, and if there were to be no hope of major reinforcements, the position of the command from the military standpoint forbade victory.
Thus did Truman insure defeat, just as Johnson did November 1965 when he refused the urgent request by the Joint Chiefs for permission to bomb Hanoi and mine Haiphong.
I asked our friend Hank Holzer about MacArthur and Korea and the ChiComs, he having done Chinese order of battle for Eighth Army. He mentioned a weakness in certain intelligence, a reluctance to accept certain other intelligence, and an unexplored question of MacArthur's intent.
Some discussion of the undercutting of the nation's interest appears in his new book:
The criticism of the effort by the Army in the campaign discussed today should be overlaid with the recognition of the inconceivable valor of the men on the ground, officers and enlisted alike.
That they--under the worst conditions of frigid cold, outnumbered, without communication, dangerously low on ammunition and supplies--should have hammered the red ants and stalled their advance is a signal achievement.
No, we can't just all get along.
We are still faced with a sawed-off psychopath serving as sock puppet for the beetles of Beijing.
A day to be thankful for the real men who held back the monster, fifty-three years ago, on the other side of the world.
Chosin Reservoir, Near Hagaru-ri 11/50
This M4 Sherman lost traction on the relatively flat MSR near Hagaru. Trying to navigate the mountainous route through Toktong pass to support the 5th and 7th Marines was just possible for the M4, almost impossible for the heavier and underpowered M26.
The tanks did provide invaluable artillery service around Hagaru when the Marines lacked enough manpower to control the heights around their base encampment. Later, during the fight-out, the tanks did supply critical support for the exhausted Marine Infantrymen.
Chosin Reservoir, Hagaru-ri 11/28/50, East Hill
This shows why the Marines were unable to rescue 7th Infantry Division's 31st RCT, which was destroyed only a few miles away, on the east coast of the Chosin Reservoir.
The Hagaru-ri valley was surrounded by commanding hills. Those vague shadows in the upper middle are still more and higher snow covered mountains. To put in a perimeter defense even on the near heights would mean manning about a four mile line, on the reverse slopes. This would take at least two infantry regiments. Lt. Col Tom Ridge, 3 Battn 1st Marines, had at his disposal for defense of Hagaru only two reinforced companies and a 6-gun 105mm battery.
With the few available tanks it was just possible to man a partial inner perimeter defense, on flat ground around Hagaru, and pray the enemy didn't have artillery to enfilade the camp. To weaken that defense force further by deploying units out of the perimeter in an attempt to relieve an Army force several times its size, while itself under attack by about the same size force attacking the Army RCT, would have been to risk the withdrawal route for the 5th and 7th Marines, and the whole of the First Marine Division.
In the event, there was much savage fighting just for East Hill, the immediate heights, before and after the 5th & 7th Marines reached Hagaru.
It took 22 hours of fierce fighting—and 600 more American casualties—to get from Hagaru to the next way point, Koto-ri. "Enemy units fought savagely," Erickson recalls, "mounting attacks from ridges towering above the road, setting ambushes and executing the wounded when hospital trucks could be isolated from the rest of the column."
Below Koto-ri, the biggest challenge was a 1,500-foot-deep chasm where the enemy had dynamited the lone bridge. "Crossing the chasm became a classic of engineering improvisation under fire," Trueblood said.
Eight 2-ton Treadway bridge sections, secured to the biggest parachutes that could be found, were dropped from C-119 Flying Boxcars flying at only 800 feet. "Marine patrols recovered six of the sections, but still came up short by seven feet," the leatherneck recalled.
The solution of engineers with the 1st Amphibious Tractor Bn. was grisly. They built a timber frame at one end of the bridge and filled it to road level.
"There wasn’t enough loose rock for the bulldozers to scrape up, but there were enough dead enemy soldiers frozen hard as rocks stacked up alongside the road, so they bulldozed them in and covered them up with dirt and we started to move," said the tank crewman, who by then was among the walking-but-still-fighting wounded.
Thirteen Americans earned the Medal of Honor in and around Chosin (Toktong Pass, Koto-Ri, Yudam-ni, Hagaru-ri):
Marine Capt. William E. Barber
Marine Pfc. William B. Baugh*
Marine Pvt. Hector A. Cafferata, Jr.
Marine Lt. Col. Raymond G. Davis
Army Lt. Col. Don C. Faith, Jr.* [pictured above]
Navy Lt. Thomas J. Hudner
Marine Sgt. James E. Johnson*
Marine Staff Sgt. Robert S. Kennemore
Marine 1st Lt. Frank N. Mitchell*
Marine Maj. Reginald R. Myers
Army Lt. Col. John U.D. Page*
Marine Capt. Carl L. Sitter
Marine Staff Sgt. William G. Windrich*
* Posthumous
A U.S. infantryman with a 75-mm recoilless rifle (rocket launcher) guards a pass south of the Chosin Reservoir. (DA photograph)
During daylight, when Corsairs were on station, the Chinese could not mass their troops to mount such attacks because, when they tried, they were immediately subjected to devastating air strikes with napalm, bombs, rockets and overwhelming 20mm strafing. Not one enemy mass attack was delivered against the column during daylight hours.
M-19 light tank with twin 40mm's, Korea
Bob Matis, 50thAAA Battalion
Nelson Ruiz at K-160
M-16 halftrack with Quad 50's
After the redeployment of the 7,000 U.S. troops from the DMZ to rear positions in 2004, Pyongyang was given an aid package from a B-2 on Thanksgiving Day of that year.
Kim Jong Il, pictured above with his command staff, had no immediate comment as this report went to press.
