Seoul Survivor

Halberstam reporting from Vietnam

If you pull out an old penny or a five dollar bill, you can look on the reverse side of either and see the Lincoln Memorial. This remarkable structure, built from Indiana limestone, was dedicated back in 1922, which coincidentally was just "Four score and seven years ago..."

Over the past several evenings I have been pretty much lost in the David Halberstam book, "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War". It was the last book that Halberstam ever wrote and that is quite a shame because the man was a brilliant writer. Recently I have read 5 books by Halberstam including; 'The Best and the Brightest', 'Summer of '49', 'October 1964', 'The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship', and 'The Fifties'. He was equally adept writing about sports and politics as he was writing about war and societal differences.

Two years ago this last spring, David Halberstam was killed in a car crash in California. He was en route to interview the great quarterback of the New York Giants, Y.A. Tittle. Halberstam was writing a book about the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Giants and the Colts, but he never got the opportunity to finish it. Frank Gifford, who played for the Giants in that game, finished writing the book and it was released last year under the title of 'The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever'.

In 'The Coldest Winter', Halberstam addresses the shortcomings of the U.S. military in the years between the end of World War II and the beginning of the Korean War. After years of war in the European and Pacific Theaters with thousands of young men lost forever, this nation let its' guard down and paid little attention to the status of its' military forces. When the Korean War began it was evident that the once powerful U.S. military no longer existed. Historically, our government has been loathe to adequately support a peacetime military, consequently we unnecessarily sacrifice so many young lives at the outset of every war just trying to retrofit our decayed and neglected military services.

Halberstam paints us a masterpiece of the results of the horrible neglect of the military from the very beginning of the war when the North Koreans pushed the Eighth Army back to the Pusan Perimeter. Under General Walton Walker, an excellent tank commander under Patton in WWII, the Eighth Army suffered heavy losses, but somehow held at Pusan along the Naktong River until MacArthur's Inchon Landing severed the supply lines of the enemy.

(On a personal note, our Commandant of Cadets back in July of 1971 was General Walker's son, General Sam Sims Walker, and his son was one of my classmates at the Academy. Walton and Sam Walker were one of only two father-son tandems to both attain the four star grade in the U.S. Army. The other duo was Generals Creighton and John Abrams. A young Captain John Abrams was an instructor of mine at West Point in the early '70s. Our Superintendent at West Point back in the early 70's was General William Knowlton. His daughter, Holly, married a young grad in 1974 by the name of David Petraeus; thusly a four star father/son-in-law tandem was created. Just a little trivia break to re-energize your thoughts as you struggle through my book report.)

One of the most impressive things that Halberstam does in his writing is to highlight the pathetic failings of Generals like MacArthur, Ned Almond and to some extent Walker. Although MacArthur's Inchon Landing has been hailed as a stroke of genius, his lack of concern for the Communist Chinese intervention, his inability to provide adequate intelligence and guidance for his forward deployed units and his over-inflated ego nearly caused the total destruction of the UN forces in North Korea and was responsible for the terrible sacrifice of soldiers during his push to the Yalu River in the winter of '50 -'51. I thought it was interesting that Halberstam drew a correlation between the Truman/MacArthur relationship to that of Lincoln/McClellan during the Civil War.

His description of the relationship between MacArthur's X Corps Commander, Ned Almond, and the commander of the 1st Marine Division, General O.P. Smith, provides an excellent view of a dilemma within a command structure which often ends in tragedy. On the one hand you have an excellent strategist and tactician in O.P. Smith, while on the other hand you have his commander, General Ned Almond, who had lost touch with the reality of the situation and continued to press his units blindly forward, paying no attention to intelligence reports and with no regard for the safety of his men. Halberstam provides a well written description of the masterful way that O.P. Smith handled the situation with Almond and his excellent leadership once he was surrounded by seven divisions of the Chinese Army at the Chosin Reservoir. If you ever want to read about a true honest to goodness military leader, I suggest that you grab a biography on General Oliver Prince Smith. I've just ordered one from the US Naval Institute written by his granddaughter, Gail B. Shisler, titled, 'For Country and Corps, The Life of General Oliver P. Smith'.

Halberstam's writing about the relationships between Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and Kim Il-Sung provides a penetrating look at the key figures in the Communist world at this time. This book presents the American policy on China in much more detail than I would have expected, given that the book is about the Korean War. I found this not only to be very interesting but quite educational, as my knowledge of America's relationship with Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Chinese government and the Communist government under Mao was sorely limited.

'The Coldest Winter' not only tells of the frightening hardships of our soldiers as they were heavily outnumbered in battle, at first by the North Koreans and later by the Chinese, but also provides a picture of their fight to just stay alive in the harsh sub-zero environment. Losses on the battlefield due to frostbite during this coldest winter were extremely high. All soldiers on both sides of the fighting were not just fighting each other, but were locked in a constant battle with the elements...which often came out the victor.

For some reason we just don't hear much about the history of the Korean War. I'm really not sure why because there are so many lessons to be learned from our mistakes and from our victories during this time in our country's history. If you are the type of person who hates to get bogged down with military maps and gets confused following the movements of individual units on a battlefield, Halberstam has written a wonderful narrative for you. It was even simple enough for me to read and follow along without getting lost in the battlefield minutiae and I would recommend it to anyone.

As I sit here on the 146th anniversary of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, just reading his words again as I am oft to do, I can't help but think how appropriate these words remain throughout all of our history. These words are not just relevant to his time and the soldiers who perished in the Civil War, but are pertinent and proper for our service men from the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War...indeed for our servicemen and women from all wars.

"...that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain..."

However, Lincoln couldn't have been more wrong in his address when he stated, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..." for today we remember his words and no doubt will for many years to come.