Find old Korean War articles here. We have great newspaper articles from the Korean War check them out today!
Having learned a good deal from two world wars concerning the fragile nature of soldiers and Marines who suffered from battle fatigue, the U.S. Army Medical Department sent hastily trained psychiatrists to the forward positions during the Korean War in order to better serve these men – and get them back to battle. The Atomic Age name for battle fatigue is neurotic psychiatric casualty
The outbreak of the war in Korea sent stocks tumbling in all important world markets. In N.Y., three months of profits were wiped out. At week’s end some stocks rose, but jittery brokers kept an eye on the war news and – an ear turned toward Washington, where announcements of increased U.S. participation in the fighting touched off further waves of selling>
Then came June 24 [1950]. Her skirts legally clean, Russia hit upon a way to fight the U.S. without technically using a single bullet or soldier of her own. It mattered little if Korean mercenaries, not identifiable nationally with the USSR, were doing the fighting. A satellite war was just as good a way to weaken the U.S. as a direct war – if not better.
With the U.S. inducting some 50,000 men a month there must necessarily be a high number of delinquents… Few draft dodgers realize that the FBI steps in when the draft board steps out of the picture. Furthermore delinquents are liable to five years imprisonment.
To read an article about American draft dodgers of W.W. II, click here.
Nine months after the American intervention into the Korean War, the Congress saw reason to expand the draft pool to an even wider degree:
Eighteen-year-olds were a little closer to the draft this week, and America was a step closer to a system of permanent universal military training…
Christmas in khaki became the new theme song of thousands of the nation’s young men last week when the Army handed Selective Service a new quota… the Army wants 70,000 in November.
On Friday, November 3, 1950 Mao Tse-Tung (1893 – 1976) ordered the Chinese Army to intervene in the Korean War on behalf of the the retreating North Korean Army:
…perhaps [as many as] 250,000 Chinese Communists jumped into the battle for Northwest Korea; at best, their intervention meant a winter campaign in the mountains; at worst, a world war.
From Amazon: The Korean War: The Chinese Intervention
The Korean War was all of two weeks old when this column went to press describing the combustible atmosphere that characterized the Nation’s Capitol as events unfolded on the Korean peninsula:
A grim Senate voted the $1.2 billion foreign arms aid bill. Knots of legislators gathered on the floor or in the cloakrooms for whispered conversations. Crowds gathered around news tickers…
On everyone’s lips was the question: ‘Is this really World War III?’
Click here to read about the need for Army women during the Korean War.
Ridgway wants no repetition of the Korean experience. If the U.S. is to fight in Asia again, he wants an army equal to the task and free to win. And, until his Army is capable of undertaking the job, he opposes even limited action by air or sea forces. The General disagrees with those who hold that a war can be won by air or sea power alone.
As 1952 was coming to an end President Truman must have seemed delighted to pass along to the next guy all the various assorted trouble spots that existed throughout the world. President-Elect Eisenhower had promised peace during his presidential campaign – but many of the issues at hand were interrelated: French Indochina, South Africa, the Middle-east, the Iron Curtain and, of course, Korea.
The toughest fighting was in a three-mile beachead at the chewed-up port of Hungnam. There the U.S X Corps had escaped from a Chinese trap and was piling aboard a fleet of Victory and Liberty ships.
The U.S. Navy had a strong presence off shore to cover the American withdrawal.
Sitting before a senate committee convened in order to understand what went wrong in Korea, Lieutenant General Edward M. Almond (1892 – 1979), U.S. Army, was not shy to point out that it was the the back-seat drivers in Washington who interfered in their ability to fight the war.
Senator Welker: Could we have won the war in 1951…?
General Almond: I think so.
General Matthew Ridgway experienced the same frustration – click here to read about it.
On June 25, 1950 ten divisions of North Korean infantry invaded South Korea. In its narrowest sense, the invasion marked the beginning of a civil war between peoples of a divided country. In a far larger sense, it represented a break in tensions between the two dominant power blocs that had emerged from the Second World War. These well-illustrated pages appeared in Quick Magazine two weeks after the hostilities commenced and serves to summarize the events in Washington and at the United Nations. Within the first twelve hours of the war President Truman committed U.S. air and naval forces to the defense of South Korea and signed a bill to widen the draft pool.
The Korean War ended in 1953. Click here to read about the military results of that war.
In every engagement with the enemy during the Second World War, only 12 to 25 percent of American riflemen ever fired their weapons. This was an enormous concern for the brass hats in the Pentagon and they got right to work in order to remedy the problem. Five years later, when the Korean War rolled around, they found that the situation was somewhat improved: 50% of the soldiers were now able to return fire. This article tells the story of U.S. Army General S.L.A. Marshall (1900 – 1977) and his research in addressing this issue. A good read.
The first surprise attack came at night. It was mounted by reckless fighters, who swarmed into battle on horseback and afoot after [American] bugles had morbidly sounded ‘taps’. The Reds pounced on two combat regiments of the American First Cavalry Division and the South Korean First Division. Hundreds of civilians, caught by the flaming machine gun and mortar fire, were mowed down. In U.N. casualties, it was the one of the costliest engagements of the war.
The Chinese foray into Korea resulted in the coming together of numerous politicians in Washington in order to boost Army spending by $41.8 billion dollars, with an additional $1 billion designated for nuclear warfare preparedness. Assorted branches of the military increased the draft pool and lowered their admission standards. New Jersey Representative Charles Eaton(R) gravely stated:
We face the greatest danger of extinction since the nation was founded.
When General James Van Fleet let it be known that much of the previous two years in Korea had been plagued by a shortage in ammunition, tempers flared in the Senate as both parties talked of convening an investigative committee.
Attached is an article concerning a page from American Military History and it outlines the losses and gains of the Korean War (1950 – 1953). In five sentences this article gives the number of American dead and wounded, the number of U.N. dead and wounded and the amount of ground lost to the Chinese and North Korean military; a map of the stabilized front is provided.
