Leadership in the Crucible: The Korean War Battles of Twin Tunnels and Chipyong-ni

Introduction

Many commanding generals only spend their time on the day of battle in making their troops march in a straight line, in seeing that they keep their proper distances, in answering questions which their aides de camp come to ask, in sending them hither and thither, and in running about incessantly themselves. In short, they try to do everything, and as a result do nothing. They appear to me like men with their heads turned, who no longer see anything and who are only able to do what they have done all their lives, which is to conduct troops methodically under the orders of a commander. How does this happen? It is because few men occupy themselves with the higher problems of war. They pass their lives drilling troops and believe that this is the only branch of the military art. When they arrive at the command of armies, they are truly ignorant , and in default of knowing what should be done, they do what they know. —Count Hermann Maurice de Saxe Peruse again and again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene, and Frederick. Model yourself upon them. This is the only means of becoming a great captain, and of acquiring the secret of the art of war. Your own genius will be enlightened and improved by this study and you will learn to reject all maxims foreign to the principles of these commanders . —Napoleon Bonaparte The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is Introduction the battle won or lost; but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference. —Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington T he phenomenon of leadership—leaders and their followers together accomplishing given tasks—is the focus of this work. As a way to study this phenomenon, it examines in some detail the actions of the d Infantry Regimental Combat Team and the French United Nations Infantry Battalion during the first eight months of the Korean War, with a particular focus on the pivotal battles of Twin Tunnels and Chipyong-ni in February, . The aim of the work is to explore leadership at all levels, from lowest to highest, in search of insights into how leaders and followers acted, successfully or unsuccessfully, during peace and war. The goal is to record the regiment’s story and to gain an understanding of the human factors that cause men to follow other men in combat. A number of sources contributed to this account. The official records and earlier accounts by authors who interviewed participants immediately after the battles gave important insights. Walking the battlefields and examining the fighting positions, many still identifiable on the quiet Korean hills, showed, as only the terrain can, why commanders made many of their important decisions. The most important resources, however, were the accounts provided by the veterans of the battles. More than three hundred veterans gave me their accounts in interviews or letters. They provided a vivid human comprehension of the often-incredible events in which they participated. The battlefield is an environment alien to the rest of human experience . It is a condition of confusion, of intense stimuli to all human senses, of physical exertion and human suffering. It is a place where strangers try to kill one another to avoid being killed themselves. Success, sometimes simply survival, calls on reservoirs of moral and physical courage that equal any human endeavor. As the great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz expressed the phenomenon: If one has never personally experienced war, one cannot understand in what the difficulties constantly mentioned really consist, nor why a commander should need any brilliance and exceptional ability. Everything looks simple; the knowledge required does not look remarkable, the strategic options are so obvious that by comparison the simplest problem of higher mathematics LEADERSHIP IN THE CRUCIBLE  has an impressive scientific dignity. Once war has actually been seen the difficulties become clear; but it is still hard to describe the unseen, allpervading element that brings about this change of perspective. Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war. . . . Countless minor incidents —the kind...