Passing the Test: Combat in Korea, April-June 1951

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY This volume is based primarily on the interviews, documents, and detailed operational resumes that U.S. Army military historians assigned to the historical detachments of the Military History Section, Headquarters , Eighth U.S. Army Korea (EUSAK), U.S. Army Forces, Far East, collected during the Korean War. The various historical detachments completed their interviews and studies within weeks or months of the operations covered and submitted them as Section IV: After Action Interviews of EUSAK’s Command Reports. These reports were then collected at Headquarters, U.S. Army Forces, Far East, and also sent to the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, in Washington, D.C., for use in preparing the official history of U.S. Army in the Korean War. Today the Historical Resources Branch, Field Programs and Historical Services Division, U.S. Army Center of Military History (CMH), at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., holds copies of these interviews and studies. These sources are listed at the end of this essay. The Center of Military History holds the entire unpublished manuscript of Gen. Matthew Ridgway’s manuscript “Korea: The First Year” in its Special Collections. This manuscript forms the basis for the early chapters of Ridgway’s The Korean War (see below). The manuscript version is superior for its military detail; its final commercial form is more critical of personalities and events. Other primary sources were used to supplement the interviews in the Center of Military History’s Korean War holdings. These sources include unit historical files and reports from Record Group (RG) 407 and award case files from Record Group 500, all held by the National Archives at College Park, Md. Among these records, the Command Reports, Reports of Operations, Periodic Intelligence Reports, and 416 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY War Diaries of Headquarters, Eighth U.S. Army, in RG 407, are the most critical for obtaining the details of operations at that level. Other primary sources are noted in the chapter endnotes. There is a substantial and growing body of secondary material on the Korean War. Only a few of the major titles are noted here as a starting point for those readers who desire to explore additional material about this conflict. For an introduction to the historiography of the war and a bibliography, see Allan R. Millett, “The Korean War: A 50-Year Critical Historiography,” Journal of Strategic Studies 24 (March 2001): 188–224; The Korean War: The Essential Bibliography (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2007); and “Bibliographical Essay ” in his War for Korea, 1950–1951: They Came from the North (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010), pp. 577–610. Millett should also be consulted on the background of the war; see his War for Korea, 1945–1950: A House Burning (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005) and his War for Korea, 1950–1951: They Came from the North, which covers the period June 1950–July 1951. For information on the U.S. Army in the years between the conclusion of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War, see William W. Epley, America’s First Cold War Army, 1945–1950 (Arlington, Va.: Association of the U.S. Army, Land Warfare Paper No. 15, 1993), and Thomas D. Boettcher, First Call: The Making of the Modern U.S. Military, 1945–1953 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992). The U.S. Army published a number of excellent official histories covering military operations. These include the series United States Army in the Korean War, consisting of the following volumes: Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (June–November 1950) (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1961); James F. Schnabel, Policy and Direction: The First Year (Washington , D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1972); Billy C. Mossman, Ebb and Flow, November 1950–July 1951 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1990); and Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1992). The U.S. Army also published a number of monographs on the Korean War. Of special interest for small-unit combat actions is Russell A. Gugeler, Combat Actions in Korea (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1987). A work covering the background on the U.S. Army in Japan before the war and the experiences in the war of one regiment, the 24th Infantry, the last segregated infantry regiment...