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Chapter 8. Combat and Service: Korea and Vietnam
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Chapter 8 Combat and Service Korea and Vietnam T he experiences of the men who trained at Montford Point and served in Korea and Vietnam were nothing like those of the Montford Point veterans of World War II. Nearly 20,000 black Marines had served in World War II, but at the outbreak of the Korean War, less than 1,500 African Americans served in the Corps, nearly a third of whom served in the Stewards Branch. Although combat-trained black Marines represented only a tiny fraction of the Corps’s manpower, it was they who integrated the Corps at unit level as the Corps used the Korean War to implement President Truman ’s executive order to end segregation within the military. In Korea, for the first time, black Marines fought side by side with their white comrades in fully integrated combat units. An even smaller number of Montford Point Marines fought in their third and final war in Vietnam. The harsh realities of combat remained the same, and racial tensions continued to exist, but the Marine Corps had changed dramatically. In Vietnam the Montford Pointers served in a Marine Corps they could only have imagined as raw recruits in the 1940s. They fought in a fully integrated Marine Corps, at times in units commanded by black officers. The vast majority of African Americans with whom they served in Vietnam had trained not at Montford Point, but with their fellow Marines at either Parris Island or Camp Pendleton. It was a Marine Corps their courage , determination, and sacrifice had created. Korea Because some of the most ferocious engagements of the Korean War came in the early stages of that conflict, men trained at Montford Point fought on Korea’s bloodiest battlefields, especially in the Inchon landing and the Chosin Reservoir campaign. On June 25, 1950, North Korean troops swept south across the 38th Parallel, since the end of World War II the division be- Korea [3.238.107.238] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 11:36 GMT) tween North and South Korea. They easily captured the capital city, Seoul, and pushed South Korean and United Nations forces to the tip of the Korean Peninsula. Drawing on American experience in the Pacific island campaigns of World War II, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of all United Nations forces in Korea, in a daring and brilliant maneuver, on September 15, launched a successful amphibious landing at Inchon, a harbor town on the Yellow Sea approximately fifty miles west of Seoul. Led by American troops, the invasion force recaptured Seoul in less than two weeks. Moving northward, United Nations forces began to drive into North Korea, capturing its capital, Pyongyang, on October 20. Despite Chinese threats to enter the war in support of the North Koreans, in late October MacArthur launched a major offensive. Vowing to sweep to the Yalu River, the border between China and North Korea, and end the war before Christmas , MacArthur ignored the explicit instructions of President Harry Truman not to send American troops into the vicinity of the Yalu. On November 23, in the brutal cold presaging the Korean winter, thousands of Chinese soldiers stormed across the Yalu, overrunning American and United Nations positions and forcing MacArthur’s forces into a general retreat back to the 38th Parallel. The war settled, along that line, into a bloody stalemate, which MacArthur proposed to break by bombing China with nuclear weapons if necessary, a position that led President Truman to relieve him of command in April 1951. The stalemate and the fighting continued for two more years, ending in an armistice signed on June 26, 1953, which left the dividing line between the two countries essentially unchanged. The Korean conflict left over 54,000 American troops dead and more than 100,000 wounded. Calvin Brown And finally, in June 1950, Korea broke out. The Marines, naturally, were being called [back to active duty], right and left. At that time, all the black Marines that had gotten out were called back; they were going in line companies [combat units] left and right, because they were going where they were needed. Several of my buddies I know that got hit and killed and whatnot, and all like that. The Army unit called the 24th Infantry was trying to hold them, but they couldn’t. The North Koreans were barreling through, coming down to South Korea. And so, we went to Korea, and I had this laundry...