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Chapter 2 Baptism by Fire on the Naktong River Line
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C h a p t e r Baptism by Fire on the Naktong River Line Here dead we lie because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Nor did they choose to shame their comrades, or themselves. —A. E. Houseman I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experiences behind him. —Eleanor Roosevelt The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty, privation, and want are the school of the good soldier. —Napoleon T he d Infantry Regiment arrived in Korea to find itself in a war unlike any the U.S. Army had ever fought, in a place it had never expected to fight. Neither the American people nor their soldiers had ever envisioned an American army fighting on the far-off Asian mainland in a country few in either group could have found on a world map, in a cause few would have called vital to America’s interests. The Korean War: Outbreak and Early Action The Korean peninsula juts from the Asian mainland in an elongated and irregular expanse toward the islands of Japan. The peninsula measures roughly by miles, but narrows to only about miles in width at both Seoul and Pyongyang before it spreads to the -mile border along the Yalu River to the north. In , that northern border separated Korea from both the newly established People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Soviet Union. Although it occupies roughly the same latitudes as the United States from Los Angeles to Portland, Korea is anything but similar in geography and climate. The peninsula is very rugged and mountainous, making the few intervening flat areas especially important for agriculture. One GI remarked that Korea “would be a hell of a big place if they ever flattened it out.” By , most of the mountains were barren, with at most a few scrubby trees on their slopes. The remaining forests had been cleared during the period when Korea was a Japanese colony. The mountains provide a substantial challenge even for toughened infantrymen. Short, hot summers and long, cold winters characterize a climate of extremes. The annual temperature ranges from far below zero to above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit.1 As the portion of the world war in the Pacific came to an abrupt end in August, , the American and Soviet victors almost casually agreed to partition the Korean peninsula along the th Parallel. No American at the time saw this arrangement as anything more than a convenience for taking the surrender of the Japanese in Korea. In the years that followed, however , it became a feature of the Cold War. The United States soon became the benefactor of the southern government, while the Soviet Union nurtured the northern regime. Although it did not become apparent until the outbreak of the war, the two patrons of the North and South Koreans had divergent philosophies concerning their charges. The Russians set about building a communist state under Soviet-trained leader Kim Il Sung. The Americans, on the other hand, looked for a way to set South Korea on its own feet as quickly as possible. The U.S. Army was especially eager to return its occupation forces to the United States. The leader of South Korea was American-educated Syngman Rhee, a single-minded and conservative defender of Korean interests as he defined them. The causes of the war are still emerging from the mists of myth and legend that have enshrouded it on all sides. They are being clarified as scholars gain freer access to the Chinese and former Soviet archives, but will not be entirely revealed until North Korean archives become available .2 There is little debate over the actual events, however. In the early morning hours on Sunday, June , North Korean units invaded South Korea in a lightning attack by well-trained infantry supported by tanks and artillery. The American-trained defenders, who possessed no Baptism by Fire on the Naktong River Line [18.118.145.114] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 02:19 GMT) tanks and virtually no artillery, quickly succumbed to the offensive. There was nothing on the peninsula to stop a precipitous defeat of South Korea. Staff officers in General MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo and military and political leaders in Washington generated hurried and...