1. Gen. Douglas MacArthur believed that the
invasion of Korea in late 1950 by US and UN forces would be the glorious
culmination of his career. An immense cult of personality surrounded him. He relied
on aides and assistants who told him what he wanted to hear rather than what he
needed to know. Some of his aides were toadies. As a result, he did not receive
(and did not want to hear) intelligence about Korea, especially about the arrival
of 200,000 Chinese soldiers from Manchuria, that would interfere with his plans
for conquering Korea and having troops go home by Christmas.
2. At least as far back as World
War II, bad intelligence has been a key factor in drawing US forces into armed
conflicts. Some historians argue that Franklin Delano Roosevelt overlooked
intelligence reports that hinted at a possible attack on Pearl Harbor in
December 1941. Bad intelligence was a constant issue in the Vietnamese
conflict. In 2001 the Bush administration overlooked or ignored intelligence
suggesting the possibility of an attack on the World Trade Center. Incorrect
intelligence about weapons of mass destruction led to the US invasion of Iraq in
2001. A key factor in the campaign that led to the battle for the Choisin
reservoir was faulty intelligence about the presence of Chinese troops. The
fault was not in the intelligence but in the unwillingness of commanding
generals to heed it. Generals in the field knew the Chinese were there, but
their commanding officers regarded their reports as rumors and did not take
them seriously.
3. Major General Edward
Almond was in charge of the campaign and at the same time belonged to
MacArthur's inner circle. He admired the general so deeply that he was willing
to carry out his orders without question. Gen. Oliver Smith, on the other hand,
commander of the UN forces, was an expert in amphibious landings. He was knowledgeable
about tactics and a deep and careful thinker. He intuited and later knew for
certain that the campaign he was assigned to carry out would be difficult if
not impossible. But Gen. Almond regarded his reports as alarmist and until the
late stages of the campaign he ignored them. The rivalry between these two
generals, their mutual dislike for each other, was a major factor in this
campaign. Gen. Smith’s ability to, on the one hand, obey Almond's orders and,
on the other hand, protect his troops was one of the main reasons why the
Choisin campaign was not a complete disaster.
4. Ethnic and racial
stereotypes played another role. Gen. Almond was a racist who did not believe
that black or Puerto Rican troops could be good soldiers. He thought the
Chinese were unsophisticated and incapable of carrying out a well-planned
campaign. In fact, the Chinese forces were not well armed or trained, but there
were hundreds of thousands of them. In China the cult of individualism didn't
exist. Chinese generals were willing to expend hundreds and thousands of lives
to achieve their goals in battle. Wave after wave of Chinese soldiers attacked
US and UN forces and were immediately gunned down only to be followed by other troops
who were also gunned down. Some 3000 American deaths resulted from the campaign,
but the toll for the Chinese was 35,000.
On Desperate Ground: The
Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle (2018),
by Hampton Sides,
moves back and forth between accounts of soldiers in the field to generals in
their offices and homes. Sides illustrates his accounts with specific narratives
of soldiers and officers in the field. This is an approach to narrating a
battle similar to what Mark Bowden uses in Hue
1968 (2017). It makes this informative, carefully researched, and well
written book more accessible for lay readers.
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