On Desperate Ground: The Marines at The Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle, by Hampton Sides

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.