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Unprepared to Fight
By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday , June 19, 2000 ; B01
First in a series
Watching from a hillside, 2nd Lt. Carl Bernard figured his
nervous men
couldn't shoot straight as they fired time and again at the
column of 33
North Korean tanks rolling down a highway 30 yards away.
So he snatched a bazooka himself, took aim and fired. To his
shock, the
rocket bounced off a tank. The 2.36-inch bazooka rockets the
U.S. soldiers
had been given could not penetrate the heavy armor of the T-34
tanks.
"They didn't hurt the tanks. This was sobering," said Bernard,
who is now 74
and lives in Alexandria. "We didn't know that the piece-of-trash
bazookas we
were carrying didn't do anything but annoy [the North Korean]
tankers."
It was a harbinger of things to come for the U.S. troops in
Korea.
Fifty years later, those awful early days of the Korean War
remain vivid to
veterans who make their home around Washington and to thousands
of their
former comrades, many of whom will join them Sunday on the Mall
for a
ceremony at the Korean War Veterans Memorial.
Their war began with the ugly discovery: The wheels had fallen
off the mighty
U.S. military that had rolled to victory in World War II. The
poorly trained
and inadequately armed troops thrown in the path of the invading
North Korean
army were overwhelmed.
"The truly pathetic thing is, never have the troops sent into
battle been
more understrength, undertrained, underequipped and
under-mentally prepared
than we were in Korea," said Sherman Pratt, 78, an Arlington
resident who
commanded a 2nd Infantry Division company through some of the
bloodiest
fighting of the war. "That has stuck with me all through the
years."
Until June 25, 1950, most Americans were blissfully unaware that
their
military was in many respects unprepared to fight. Then the
Soviet-supplied
North Korean People's Army rolled south, easily capturing Seoul.
President
Harry S. Truman swiftly committed troops to support the rapidly
crumbling
South Korean army.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a renowned hero in the victory over
Japan, dispatched
an advance Army force for what he called "an arrogant display of
strength."
Crowds of South Koreans cheered and waved flags as the force of
440 American
soldiers moved up to take positions on the highway north of
Osan.
"It made us feel like we'd already won," recalled Brad Smith,
84, commander
of the force, called Task Force Smith.
"There was great enthusiasm and expectations of us," Bernard
said. "The rumor
was as soon as they saw American troops, they'd turn around and
go back."
Instead, the Americans were overrun. Smith and Bernard could see
more tanks
approaching, followed by a line of infantry marching four
abreast stretching
back for miles.
"We had a pretty good idea right then that we had something that
was going to
cause us a hell of a lot of woe," Smith said. "We weren't ready
to fight,
there's no question about it."
The Korean War, which would claim several million lives,
including nearly
37,000 American troops, caused woe to a degree that is little
appreciated in
the United States today. Many of the horrifying disasters that
were to befall
U.S. troops in the days and months that followed Task Force
Smith are
attributable to a deplorable lack of military preparedness,
veterans of the
fighting say.
"I lost a hell of a lot of people who I wouldn't have lost had
we been better
equipped and better prepared," Bernard said. "We had machine
guns that didn't
work. We had radios that didn't work."
The glaring American unpreparedness--the number of Americans in
uniform had
shrunk from 12 million in 1945 to 1.5 million in 1948--sparked a
massive U.S.
rearmament that continued through the Cold War. The experience
that followed
Brad Smith and his troops into Korea was so traumatic that the
Army's battle
cry vowing readiness in recent years has been "No more Task
Force Smiths."
Korea got much worse after Task Force Smith. The collapse of the
8th Army
during the massive Chinese intervention in late November 1950
was one of the
worst defeats in American history. Later battles with chillingly
evocative
names like Bloody Ridge, Heartbreak Ridge and Pork Chop Hill
would claim many
more lives.
When the war broke out, the U.S. 8th Army soldiers in Japan were
living the
happy life of an occupation army, with MacArthur reigning as de
facto emperor.
Their combat preparations were minimal, and training consisted
of little more
than keeping fit. Equipment was of deteriorating World War II
vintage, much
of it condemned. Smith's battalion, part of the 24th Infantry
Division, was
at half its designated strength, a deficiency mirrored in
American units
around the world.
Few saw these shortages as a problem. Nuclear weapons had made
conventional
warfare obsolete, most strategists thought.
"After Hiroshima, it looked like we'd never have a war again
where
infantrymen fought like infantrymen," Bernard said. "It led to
us not being
prepared or trained the way we should have."
Instead, Korea was the testing ground for a new, limited warfare
later
practiced in Vietnam. As the soldiers of Task Force Smith were
the first to
discover, infantry fighting was anything but obsolete in this
kind of war.
Lt. Col. Smith's troops put up a fight against the oncoming
North Koreans but
were quickly outflanked. Recognizing the futility of his
position, Smith
ordered a withdrawal, but in the chaos, Bernard's platoon never
received the
order and continued to fight until the men discovered they were
alone.
Bernard, who had been wounded by a grenade, and his 10 soldiers
fled into the
countryside, eventually joined by 15 stragglers who had been
separated from
the main force. One sergeant was too severely wounded to walk,
and Bernard
gave his gold Longines watch to a Korean civilian with a
pushcart who agreed
to carry the soldier to safety. The soldiers had no map of
Korea, so Bernard
broke into a schoolhouse to get one. After two days of harrowing
close calls,
they rejoined the main force.
The U.S. reinforcements who poured into the hot, strange land
that stunk from
human feces used to fertilize rice paddies fared little better
than Task
Force Smith. After one week, 3,000 U.S. soldiers were dead,
wounded, captured
or missing.
Desperate to fill the ranks of understrength units, the military
pulled the
most experienced soldiers from units that had not yet been
called. That began
a domino effect when those units later were summoned to the war.
"They took our ranking guys," said Robert Carroll, a Loudoun
County resident
who was a platoon leader with the 7th Cavalry Regiment. "We were
hurting for
leadership."
Pratt, a 28-year-old captain who had served in World War II,
arrived inside
the 8th Army's Pusan perimeter in August. Inspecting the
defensive line along
the Naktong River, he was shocked by the conditions he saw.
Soldiers in his
company had ignored basic tactical rules and had set up gun
positions without
supporting fire.
"New people coming in would have no infantry training
whatsoever, yet they
were called to fight as infantrymen in a very brutal war," Pratt
said. "This
is the condition that existed all up and down the Naktong
perimeter. By all
standards, they should have been pushed back into the sea, they
were so ill
prepared and ill equipped."
But the men held, and MacArthur executed a bold stroke with a
landing at
Inchon that
led to the liberation of Seoul. With the help of U.N. allies,
the U.S. forces
cleared the North Koreans from the south and then drove north
toward the
Chinese border.
MacArthur discounted the threat from the Chinese communists,
insisting that
the Air Force would destroy any large Chinese force. His
miscalculation led
to the second great disaster of the war.
A force of more than 300,000 Chinese soldiers, moving undetected
at night,
had crossed the Yalu River into Korea by late November. They
launched a
massive offensive soon after many of the American troops enjoyed
Thanksgiving
meals and heard predictions from MacArthur that they would be
home for
Christmas.
After several days of round-the-clock fighting near Kunu-ri
trying to block
the Chinese advance, Pratt's regiment was ordered to withdraw.
Temperatures
had sunk below zero, and soldiers were clinging to trucks, jeeps
and tanks as
they inched their way down a dark mountain road.
Swarming Chinese soldiers pulled U.S. soldiers off vehicles,
clubbing and
bayoneting them. The Chinese were so mixed in with the U.S.
force that it was
almost impossible to fire weapons. Through the frozen night came
pleas for
help from wounded Americans.
The division's two other infantry regiments were sent down a
road where
Chinese forces had set up a six-mile-long gantlet of fire.
Chinese roadblocks
and destroyed vehicles blocked the road, and a slaughter ensued.
"The price we paid was ghastly casualties," said Pratt, who has
retired from
a career as a government lawyer and is now a civic activist in
Arlington. "We
had to leave behind the dead and dying and wounded because there
was no way
to get them out."
For the soldiers who survived, there is a lasting sadness about
why many of
their friends were lost.
Bernard felt he could not leave the Army after Korea. He served
in Vietnam
before retiring in 1975 after 30 years in uniform.
"One of the reasons I stayed was I felt an obligation to use
what had been
taught to me at the cost of other people's lives," he said.
"These guys died because of budget cuts," said Bill Woods, a
former Army
sergeant living in Washington. "We weren't ready to fight a
major war over
there."
The War in Korea
June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953
During the pre-dawn hours of June 25, 1950, North Korea crossed
the 38th
parallel to invade South Korea. Within days, the United States
suffered its
first humiliating defeat to North Korean forces. Understrength
and
overwhelmed, the United States would spend the next three years
fighting the
war and simultaneously attempting to rebuild its forces.
The War
The Korean War was part of an international effort to "contain"
Asian
communism in a nation that had been split by a post-WWII
agreement with the
Soviets. The Asian communists were assumed in 1950 to be part of
a worldwide
communist bloc. North Korea's ties with China and the Soviet
Union enhanced
that fear.
Task Force Smith
Sent to Korea to provide "an arrogant display of strength" by
Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, a force of 440 men took up a blocking position in
Osan. Woefully
unprepared and poorly equipped, the force was no match for the
North Koreans,
who continued their southward attacks. In September 1950, U.N.
forces were
nearly pushed into the sea.
Key Events
At the end of World War II, Korea was divided into U.S. and
Soviet occupation
zones along the 38th parallel in August 1945.
1950
January: Secretary of State Dean Acheson states that western
defense
perimeter of the U.S. does not include South Korea.
June 25: North Korean People's Army invades South Korea.
June 27: United Nations asks member countries to aid the
Republic of Korea.
President Harry S. Truman announces U.S. intervention.
June 28 to 29: South Korean capital, Seoul, captured by North
Korean army.
July 5: U.S. forces retreat with heavy casualties from first
battle with the
North Koreans, in Osan.
July 7: MacArthur appointed supreme commander of U.N. command in
Korea.
July 19 to 22: Battle for Taejon. U.S. troops retreat.
Aug. 27 to Sept. 15: Pusan perimeter battles, some of the
heaviest fighting
of the war.
Sept. 15: MacArthur executes an amphibious assault landing at
Inchon to
retake Seoul.
Sept. 19 to 29: Attack and capture of Seoul by U.N. troops.
Oct. 9: Invasion of North Korea begins; U.N. forces cross 38th
parallel.
Oct. 13 or 14: Chinese communist forces cross the Yalu River
into Korea.
Oct. 19: Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, is captured by
U.N. forces.
Nov. 26 to Dec. 1: Chinese forces strike devastating blow along
the Chongchon
River; U.S. retreat.
Nov. 27 to Dec. 11: U.S. Marines retreat from Changjin (Chosin)
Reservoir.
1951
Jan. 4: Seoul captured by the Chinese.
March 14: Seoul retaken by U.N.
April 11: Truman fires MacArthur.
July 10: Truce talks begin at Kaesong.
Aug. 1 to Oct. 31: Battles of Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge.
1952
Feb. 18: Communist POWS begin riot in Koje-do prison.
1953
Last week of March to April 18: Battles of Old Baldy, Eerie and
Pork Chop
Hill.
April 20: Exchange of sick and wounded POWs, known as Little
Switch, begins
in Panmunjom.
July 27: Cease-fire is signed in Panmunjom; fighting ends about
12 hours
later.
(These maps were not available)
1. North Korea Attacks
June 25, 1950: North Korea launches attack into South Korea,
crossing the
38th parallel, claiming a nationalist mandate to reunify the
country. The
Soviet Union and China had given approval. The north's soldiers
meet little
resistance and push South Korean and a small number of U.S.
troops back to a
pocket around the port of Pusan.
2. U.S. Lands at Inchon
The United States, believing the invasion to be a crucial test
of Western
resolve by Moscow, reinforces Pusan, and the line is held. In
September, U.S.
troops land at Inchon to recapture Seoul. The North Korean
invasion force
disintegrates, and U.S. and allied forces from U.N. members
quickly advance
far into the north, nearing Chinese border.
3. China Enters the War
China sends more than 300,000 men across the Yalu River. U.S.
and U.N. troops
fall back, with evacuations by sea at Wonsan and Hungnam, and a
general
withdrawal south.
4. Cease-fire Near 38th Parallel
Battle lines eventually stabilize near the 38th parallel. After
two years of
negotiations while the conflict continues, both sides sign a
truce on July
27, 1953.
After nearly 50 years of armed standoff, North and South Korea
signed an
accord last week resolving to improve relations. About 37,000
U.S. troops are
stationed in South Korea today.
American Readiness
In the years following World War II, U.S. military strength had
become
dangerously weak. In 1945, the United States spent $50 billion
on the Army;
in 1950, it spent $5 billion. In 1945, there were 12 million men
and women in
uniform; in 1948, there were 1.5 million, and no one had been
drafted since
March 1947. With heavy military commitments in Europe, the U.S.
had little to
choose from.
Army
Estimate of necessary strength
14 divisions; 940,000 personnel
Actual forces June 1950
10 divisions; 5 regiments; 591,000 personnel
Actual forces 1953
20 divisions; 18 regiments; 1.5 million personnel
Air Force
Estimate of necessary strength
70 groups; 400,000 personnel
Actual forces June 1950
48 groups; 411,000 personnel
Actual forces 1953
93 wings*; 974,000 personnel
Navy
Estimate of necessary strength
1043 ships; 560,000 personnel
Actual forces June 1950
683 ships; 382,000 personnel
Actual forces 1953
1130 ships; 808,000 personnel
Marine Corps
Estimate of necessary strength
3 divisions; 3 aircraft wings; 108,000 personnel
Actual forces June 1950
2 divisions; 2 aircraft wings; 74,000 personnel
Actual forces 1953
3 divisions; 3 aircraft wings; 246,000 personnel
*The Air Force changed from groups to wings to describe two or
more squadrons
and supporting elements.
SOURCES: "A Short History of the Korean War," James L.
Stokesbury; Korean War
Commemorative Committee; "Warfare and Armed Conflicts," by
Michael
Clodfelter; World Almanac "Korean War Almanac," by Col. Harry G.
Summer Jr.;
"Atlas of Global Strategy," by Lawrence Freedman; "The Forgotten
War," by
Clay Blair;
"For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States
of America,"
by Peter Maslowski.
By Steve Vogel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 20, 2000; Page B01
Second in a series
Julius W. Becton Jr. was a young lieutenant training at Aberdeen
Proving
Ground in Maryland when he got an education in how the Army
would enforce a
new presidential order directing racial integration for the
nation's military.
Soon after President Harry S. Truman signed the order in the
summer of 1948,
according to Becton, the commander at Aberdeen assembled all
officers on the
post and read them the executive order. The commander paused. As
long as he
was there, he continued, there would be one officers' club and
swimming pool
for whites and another officers' club and swimming pool for
blacks.
"And that's the way it stayed," Becton, a retired Army general
and former
D.C. public schools chief, said in a recent interview at his
Springfield
home. "Let's say the Army viewed [integration] with all the
deliberate speed
that was later used by the educators in the Brown case."
Two years later, the outbreak of the Korean War changed
everything for blacks
in the U.S. military, and with it, race relations in America.
But it was
combat necessity, not social policy, that forced integration.
"Korea was what broke the eggshell to make the omelet to make
the integration
a reality," said Becton, who later rose to three stars as the
Army's first
black corps commander.
Like other blacks in the military, Becton was used to
second-class treatment.
Though blacks had served with distinction in World War II, they
had fought as
segregated units. Becton, who joined the Army near the end of
that war, was
treated as an inferior even by Italian prisoners of war in
Florida.
After Truman's order, blacks were still in practice often
limited to serving
in designated "colored" units, barred from many military
specialties and
given few opportunities for promotion. "We had a lot of people
opposed to
mixing races in the Army," Becton said.
Weeks after the North Korean invasion June 25, 1950, Becton was
sent to Korea
as a platoon commander to fight with the 3rd Battalion of the
9th Infantry
Regiment. Every soldier in the battalion was black--except the
commander and
the executive officer.
The battering taken by U.S. troops soon forced changes. After
two weeks of
fighting in the Pusan perimeter, all three 9th Regiment
battalions--two white
and one black--had taken heavy losses. The regimental commander,
Col. Charles
C. Sloane, was approached by a staff officer who asked where the
white and
black replacement soldiers arriving in Korea should be assigned,
Becton said
he was later told.
" 'We've got all these replacements coming in, but they're not
coming in
racially versus our losses. What should I do with them?' "
Becton said the
officer asked Sloane.
"And Sloane said, 'Put them where they're needed,' " Becton
recalled. "And
with that, we were integrated."
Becton, assigned his first nonblack soldier, drew aside his
platoon sergeant.
"Don't let anything happen to that guy," Becton told the
sergeant. "We're not
going to be the ones to go down in history as having gotten that
guy killed."
With an unprepared American military plagued by manpower
shortages early in
the war, the situation in Becton's outfit was repeated many
times over in
other units.
By the end of the war in 1953, 90 percent of military units were
integrated,
and more than 90 percent of blacks in the Army were serving in
integrated
units. The number of black Army officers in the Far East theater
grew
fourfold to 955 over that time.
"We had white company commanders, black company commanders,
white soldiers,
black soldiers, Hispanic soldiers," said Becton, now 73. "We
basically looked
like what society looked like. It just took time."
Becton quickly rose from a platoon leader to a company executive
officer,
then to a company commander. The racism of the day did not
disappear
overnight, but nonetheless, white soldiers never questioned his
authority,
Becton said.
"In combat, a very interesting dynamic takes place," said
Becton, who was
wounded twice in Korea and awarded the Silver Star. "People want
to survive,
and people are prepared to do what you tell them to do as long
as they believe
you have some idea what you're talking about. Since I was the
type of
officer who would do anything I told the men to do, we had no
problems."
Some black units in Korea were accused of cowardice by the Army
after
collapsing during the early fighting, but later historians have
contended
that the men in question were poorly led and unfairly branded.
"Korea gave black Americans the opportunity to prove among other
things that
they could be soldiers," Becton said. "Korea gave the Army the
opportunity to
prove that integration would work and work well. It took a long
time to get
to that point, and then it took a much longer time after Korea
for the
message to sink in."
The integration experienced in Korea would have a profound
effect on many
black soldiers, not only on their lives in the military, but
also on their
expectations of society after returning home.
L. Douglas Wilder, a 22-year-old college graduate from Richmond,
was less
than eager to go to Korea after he was drafted in 1952. "I had
some very mixed
feelings, fighting in another country for freedoms that I did
not enjoy in
my own country," Wilder said.
Assigned to a front-line unit with the 17th Infantry Regiment,
7th Infantry
Division, Wilder was intrigued by the integrated life in his
company. "That
was my very first real interaction with members of the Caucasian
race--sleeping together, eating together, doing everything
together," he said.
Even more stunning was seeing that some of the officers in his
battalion were
blacks, who were giving orders to white soldiers. "It made a
difference,
seeing people of color being in positions of authority that
heretofore I had
not seen," Wilder said.
But Wilder and other black soldiers soon learned that a double
standard was
often at play. They would help train white replacement soldiers
who arrived
in the company. But when promotions came, they would go to the
newer white
soldiers rather than experienced black ones.
Wilder, his loquaciousness evident to his fellow soldiers, was
chosen to lead
a delegation to bring the problem to the attention of the
battalion commander.
The commander promised he would take action, and he did, Wilder
said. Black
soldiers started seeing promotions, and Wilder himself advanced
to corporal
and then to sergeant, with increased responsibilities.
The experience influenced the course his life would take back in
Virginia,
encouraging him to believe that segregation might be overcome.
"It had a very profound effect on me," said Wilder, who
eventually launched a
political career that culminated in his becoming the nation's
first black
elected governor. "It said the system might work."
Wilder's life was saved one day when a white soldier whom he had
befriended
pushed him into a shelter right before an enemy mortar strike.
Not long after, on April 18, 1953, Wilder's unit was sent up
Pork Chop Hill,
a key position held by U.S. troops that was being assaulted by
communist
Chinese forces.
Wilder repeatedly put himself in the line of artillery and
mortar fire to
pull wounded soldiers to safety, according to the citation for
the Bronze
Star he was awarded later. He and two other soldiers managed to
force the
surrender of 19 Chinese soldiers.
It did not matter that some of the soldiers he helped save were
black and
others white, he said. "You came to understand that the name of
the game is
survival," Wilder said. "It didn't matter what color the soldier
was who had
drunk out of your canteen, or eaten with your fork."
But when his stint in Korea was up in 1953 and Wilder headed
back to the
United States, he noticed a disturbing development in
black-white relations
even before he made it home. "When you came back on the ship,
you started
seeing that camaraderie and closeness slowly dissipate as you
got closer to
California," Wilder said.
Preserving the racial equality gained in Korea was to prove a
struggle.
George M. Brooks, of Baltimore, belonged to the Maryland
National Guard's
231st Transportation Truck Battalion when it was activated in
1950 and sent
to Korea. The all-black unit was the only one in which
minorities could then
serve in the Maryland Guard.
Arriving in Korea in late December, the Maryland Guard unit was
quickly
caught up in the wave of integration sweeping through the Army.
"You went to bed one night segregated," said Brooks, then a 1st
lieutenant.
"The next morning, we had a whole lot of white soldiers assigned
to us. When
we went to bed that night, we were integrated. That's what we
call instant
integration."
The unit stayed that way through the war, winning numerous
commendations for
its performance.
After the war, Brooks and other soldiers from the battalion met
in Baltimore
with Maj. Gen. Milton A. Reckord, the longtime Maryland adjutant
general, to
discuss reestablishing the unit with the Maryland Guard. The
black soldiers
told Reckord that they would do it only as an open--meaning
integrated--unit.
"He looked at us and said, 'What do you mean, an open unit?' As
long as he
was white and we were black, it wasn't going to happen," said
Brooks, 77. "We
walked away."
They went to the Afro-American newspaper and to the NAACP for
help. After
subsequent publicity, the Army notified the Maryland Guard in
November 1955
that unless it opened all its units to all qualified
individuals, federal
funds for the Maryland Guard would be cut off.
Reckord retreated, and slowly, the Maryland Guard was
integrated. Brooks
retired in 1975 as the first black colonel in the Maryland
Guard's history.
After fighting as an integrated Army in Korea, the soldiers
would never go
back to being segregated.
"We had done it, and there was no turning back," Brooks said.
