Korean stalemate
“never again” club
“Never again a land war in Asia”
world war one
David Halberstam, The coldest winter : America and the Korean war, [2007]
p.282
Paul Freeman
Though he became a Chinese language student (and was still fluent enough to interrogate Chinese prisoners during the Korean war), Freeman was very aware that he never really knew China.
He was there, he later reflected, in the last days of empire, and the only Chinese he had known were a handful of very wealthy ones who belonged to the same clubs and enjoyed the same sports ── ── as Westerners.
Some of the clubs did not even allow Chinese members.
He understood that he had no feel for the difficult lives of the great mass of people.
Freeman spent most of World war II becoming an Asia hand. His very pregnant wife had been sent home in the fall of 1940 as tensions mounted and the Japanese army seemed poised to strike deeper into Asia.
China-Burma-India theater
pp.284─285
In his letter there is an early glimmering of what would later be labeled the Never Again Club, those military men who served in Korea and left with a deep-seated belief that American ground forces should never again fight on the mainland of Asia, in part because of the terrible logistical difficulties, but even more because of the inevitable deficit in manpower. These were, it should be noted, his views before the Chinese even entered the war, and he worried constantly in his letters that sooner or later they were going to come in. He was haunted by a sense that the proportions in this war were in some way all wrong, what the other might be able to invest compared to what the United states could safely afford to invest ── in a war that was self-evidently peripheral to American national security interests.
pp.286─287
The commanders of every rifle company in the first two battalions had been lost during this two-week period. In some companies, the official report noted, they had been replaced three to five times. Paul Freeman never really forgot those awful days on the Naktong or the grim choices he had been forced to make, sacrificing some young men so others might live. Some 17 years later, as a four-star making his last tour of Fort Benning before retiring, he discovered that Sergeant Berry Rhoden, formerly Charley company, by then a grizzled master sergeant, was still stationed there. Freeman had always remained close to the men who had served with him in the 23rd in Korea, and he had sought out Rhoden a number of times, just to talk. Now, on this final ceremonial day, he asked Rhoden to accompany him on his tour. There was another general with them that day, a two-star, and Rhoden enjoyed the byplay between them, four-star and two-star, rarified stuff for an NCO to witness. At one point, Freeman turned to his colleague. “I'd like to introduce you to a member of your command, Sergeant Berry Rhoden. He's an old comrade of mine. Berry is a survivor of a terrible moment when I made the hardest decision I ever had to make as an Army officer. I had to sacrifice his entire company for the good of my regiment and all the other units in the Pusan perimeter. I had to buy time for the other units to form into a blocking force. And they brought the time we needed. It was a terrible, terrible moment and a brutal decision. It was the hardest decision I ever made. Almost no one from his unit survived. You take good care of him, hear.” It was one more reminder to Rhoden that none of them had been able to forget that moment.
p.579
Thus, each lost foxhole was a new Chinese position, allowing ever more Chinese to come up the hill and making the other foxholes ever more vulnerable for the Americans and easier for the Chinese to attack.
Cletis Inmon, McGee's runner, thought he had never seen so many Chinese at that night ── even though it was dark, you could see them fairly clearly, because they were so close. It was, he decided, like an endless line of soldiers that started some place back in the middle of China, maybe a thousand miles away, whatever the distance was, marching all the way to Korea, one long line emptying out right in that little creek bed in front of them.
( The coldest winter : America in the Korean war / David Halberstam.──1st ed.; 1. korean war, 1950─1953──united states., DS 919.H35 2007, 951.904'240973──dc22, [2007], )
____________________________________
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets : a memoir of vietnam and the pentagon papers, 2002
pp.62─63
It was popularly understood that the legacy of the Korean stalemate was a “never again” club in the u.s. army, meaning “Never again a land war in Asia”. I knew from my earlier work on war planning that the real meaning of that motto was “Never again a land war with China without nuclear weapons.” The files I read in McNaughton's office made it clear that lesson was still doctrine. And not only (though mainly) among the military. Secretary of state Dean Rusk (who had been assistant secretary for the Far east during the first two years of the Korean war) could not have agreed more. In a conference with Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge in Saigon in mid-April 1964, he had cited the formular in so many words: “We are not going to take on the masses of Red China with our limited manpower in a conventional war.”
(Secrets : a memoir of vietnam and the pentagon papers / daniel ellsberg., 1. vietnamese conflict, 1961─1975──unitd states., 2. pentagon papers., 3. ellsberg, daniel., DS558 .E44 2002, 959.704'3373──dc21, 2002, )
https://www.ausa.org/news/us-aims-avoid-fighting-land-war-asia
https://www.proquest.com/docview/2090477040
Ground wars in Asia favored the ever more numerous home teams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
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