#510： The Greatest Battle of the Korean War
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Summary
The Korean War is often overlooked by Americans, but this forgotten war played a big role in shaping the world order in the second half of the 20th century. What s more, one of the most heroic and harrowing military operations in U.S. history took place deep in the snowy and bitterly cold mountains of North Korea, creating a legendary group of fighters who became known as the frozen chosen. My guest today has written a book that captures this event in military history. His name is Hampton Sides, and his book is On Desperate Ground: The Marines at the Reservoir: The Korean War's Greatest Battle.
Transcript
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the art of manliness podcast the korean war is often overlooked by americans but this forgotten
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war played a big role in shaping the world order in the second half of the 20th century what's more
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one of the most heroic and harrowing military operations in u.s history took place deep in the
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snowy and bitterly cold mountains of north korea creating a legendary group of fighters who became
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known as the frozen chosen my guest today has written a book that captures this event in military
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history his name is hampton sides and his book is on desperate ground the marines at the reservoir
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the korean war's greatest battle hampton and i begin our discussion exploring why the korean war is the
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forgotten war in american history and how the united states got involved in a conflict on the korean
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peninsula in the first place hampton then talks about general douglas mcarthur and how his unbridled
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ambition and hubris as well as other glaring failures among military brass led american troops
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into a frozen trap set by the chinese hampton and i then discussed the epic battle of the chosen
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reservoir and how 20 000 marines fended off annihilation of the hands of over 300 000 chinese
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soldiers in weather conditions that dropped 20 degrees below zero and we end our conversation
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discussing the legacy of the battle the chosen reservoir after the show's over check out our show
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notes at aom.is korean war and hampton joins me now via telephone hampton sides welcome to the show
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great to be with you so you just published a new military history book it's about the korean war
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on desperate ground the marines at the reservoir the korean war's greatest battle it's about the battle
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of the chosen reservoir thing about the korean war is it's often the overlooked war in american history
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people know about world war ii then there's the korean war happened and then there's vietnam and
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there's lots of movies and books about vietnam why do you think the korean war gets overlooked
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lots of reasons i think one of them is that it's sometimes perceived as kind of an addendum to world
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war ii you know like it's this sort of unfinished business having to do with world war ii that kind of
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kind of an afterthought or something like that i think it's also perceived by some people as not being
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truly a war that's you know sometimes it was called a police action a un police action a conflict but
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not a war that you know let me assure you it was a war and it was a brutal and devastating war and and
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you know one that we're really feeling the consequences of still today i think a third reason why it's kind
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of forgotten is that it ended in a stalemate it ended more or less where it began which was at the 38th
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parallel the line separating north and south korea and you know americans uh we we like to think we
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win wars vietnam was an exception a war that we lost but a stalemate is a hard narrative to get your
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head around they say we died for a tie and that they being the veterans of this battle and this war
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and you know i get that it's just kind of it's kind of a messy narrative complicated unsettling
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narrative to understand so those are those are certainly some of the reasons and we're technically
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still at war correct and there's just been a armistice like we're just kind of like it's been put off for
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a bit yeah yeah i mean and that too may be a reason why it's kind of a forgotten war is that it ended
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with this armistice that left so many of the questions unanswered we're still kind of poised on the brink
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of war it's a scary place dmz is a very scary place and you know a flashpoint that could erupt at any
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moment and you know most of our wars that we fought you know have a very clear and definitive ending and
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and you know it's got bookends and you understand what that was and it's over now korea is still
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kind of a cliffhanger you know it's still it's still there's still all these questions that need to be
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resolved and that certainly contributes to this provisional quality i guess that the whole war
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has an international consciousness you know it's like it ain't over yet well it's because it's
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overlooked it's the forgotten war i think a lot of americans don't even understand how we got involved
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in it so can you kind of give us like a thumbnail sketch of like how we ended up yeah in korea well
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it's a complicated thing and i'll try to do the 101 kind of version of it okay so after world war ii
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the allied powers were tasked with the responsibility of you know deciding what to do
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with the spoils of the japanese empire and korea had been a colony of japan of imperial japan and
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the japanese had just brutally mistreated the koreans but it was their colony so the soviets
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kind of got into that theater of the war very late in the game we're very interested in the northern
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part of korea and we were interested in the southern part of korea and we decided to draw a
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line right down the middle the waist of the country the 38th parallel we would take the south temporarily
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the soviets would take the north temporarily but the idea was that we would have an election and the
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country would be reunited and decide its own fate well that never happened very quickly the north
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became shaped in the image of its custodian nation soviet union under stalin in fact kim the
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grandfather of the current kim you know studied at the knee of the master stalin himself in terms of
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authoritarian dictatorship and the cult of personality and all that sort of stuff he uh built up his army
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with soviet tanks and soviet artillery meanwhile in in the south we we were the custodian nation but
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we really didn't arm south korea very well and we were interested in south korea partly because we
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were rebuilding japan and korea was right there so close to japan that it was important to have
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a relationship with the south korea but on june 25th 1950 kim il-sung surprised everyone by racing
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across the border and taking seoul and there was a blitzkrieg they they pushed the south korean army almost to
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the very end of the peninsula and the u.s entered this war to defend the south koreans and their anemic
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army and we held on for dear life for a few months in the summer of 1950 and then finally got involved
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in a big way in september of 1950 by invading the port of incheon and we retook seoul we pushed
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kim il-sung's forces all the way back to the 38th parallel and if we stopped right there it would
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have been a three-month war we would have accomplished all our goals millions of lives
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would have been spared and it would have been i think perceived universally as a great success
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but we got greedy we we pushed beyond the 38th parallel we decided to do in reverse what kim
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had done which was take all of the peninsula but this time for the south and for the american
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interests and we pushed all the way to the yellow river the border with manchuria and that the chinese
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got very nervous about that and manchuria is china so mal having recently won his civil war the most
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populous nation on earth decided to enter this conflict in a big way and that's sort of setting
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the stage for the battle of chosen reservoir all right so let's there's a lot to unpack there and
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there's also a lot of personalities going on here and which you get into a lot in the book so sort of
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the mastermind of the this invasion to repel the north korea was macarthur who had a controversial
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career in world war ii but during this time he was i guess kind of he was like the uh sort of like
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general eisenhower of the pacific correct except a much more dramatic a much more grandiose form of
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eisenhower you know he could this point seemingly could do no wrong he i don't think we've ever had a
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commander that had concentrated in you know in his office in his person so much power because he was
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the head of the u.n forces he was the head of the army of the far east he was running the occupation of
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japan he was essentially functioning as an emperor and he was yeah he kind of had an imperial personality
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to begin with a very dramatic guy very old school military leader you know whose command style you
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know frankly just doesn't hold up very well in sort of today's culture you know it was all about him
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he they used to say he loved the vertical pronoun i shall return you know it was all about him
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and you know the way he used media and the way he had an entourage everywhere he went and the way he
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you know surrounded himself with yes men who just told him what he wanted to hear he was a little past
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his expiration date at this point he had a long and interesting and an amazing career but this was
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near the very end and i think it had all gone to his head and he just thought he could just you know
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kick ass and and just just take korea and it would be super easy and didn't think the chinese would
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intervene and even if they did it'd be so easy to you know and and of course he wanted to use nuclear
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weapons against china when they when they did intervene they just blow up beijing no problem you know he
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he'd by this point become a very i think a very scary dude in the sense of just being you know so
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much power in this one guy and and truman president truman didn't really know how to handle him and
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the joint chief of staff in washington didn't really know how to handle him it was uh it was like a one
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man show well this initial idea of invading or you know repelling the americans coming in and
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helping the south koreans that was macarthur's idea correct well no not just macarthur i think everyone
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agreed that we you know we had pledged in various ways to defend this fledgling democracy we certainly
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didn't want it to become a communist peninsula i think history has proven that we were right that
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you know that kim was an unusually malevolent dictator and you only have to go to korea today
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to see the difference between south korea and and north korea and and and certainly you know
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seoul has become this just amazingly dynamic city it's it's a south korea's 11th largest economy in
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the world so you know i think if you ask veterans of the korean war today should we have been there
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were we doing the right thing almost invariably they'll all say yes up to the point where we
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came to the 38th parallel going beyond the 38th parallel is where all the problems really
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you know begin but anyway yeah macarthur wanted to do this but so did truman and and and you know
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everyone wanted to defend south korea it's just that line it's like once you cross that line you go
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into a much more complicated narrative and that's where macarthur he said we were successful here we
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kicked butt why don't we just keep going yeah the incheon invasion was enormously successful
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surprise the north koreans kim was on the run you know but he said well we need to pursue kim
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into his own territory and destroy the remnants of his army so he can't do this again okay fair
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enough but let's keep going let's take pion gang let's take other cities in north korea and then
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ultimately let's go all the way to the border with china well the analogy the chinese would use is that
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you know what if the chinese had invaded mexico and pushed all the way to the rio grande what would
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we have done well we would have entered the war preemptively and that's what they did in a big
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way and you know was the beginning of what people feared would be world war three and but were there
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people around macarthur like other generals and chiefs of staffs who were like that's not a good
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idea you should not do that uh you know there were some people who voiced concerns but his immediate
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his immediate staff know that you know he had surrounded himself with with sycophants who told
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him what he wanted to hear and agreed with them and the foremost among them was this guy general ned
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almond who is his commander on the ground in korea and this is part of the problem you see macarthur
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was not on the ground in korea he would fly over occasionally for a photo op from tokyo and you
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know it's said that he never slept a single night on korean soil during the korean war so he's a classic
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example of an absentee commander and you know he just was out of touch with reality and and really
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that's where a lot of the problems lie so he didn't have he didn't have people disagreeing with
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them in a you know vigorous way to adjust his view of things well you mentioned like you know
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truman didn't know how to handle macarthur you also had marshall who seemed like he didn't really
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know how to handle macarthur either and he kind of gave him the rubber stamp on on this does you know
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going past the 38th parallel why do you think marshall did he just didn't know what to do with
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macarthur just well just let him do it it's complicated a lot of different reasons uh certainly people
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didn't know how to handle macarthur's personality in general and there was of course a political
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dimension to that which is that it was thought widely thought that macarthur was gearing up to
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run for president back in the states you know after the war so he was a live wire in that sense
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mccarthy had just sort of risen his ugly head that year mccarthyism was a factor in american politics and
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the democratic party and truman in particular had been accused widely of of being soft on communism
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so that was another factor you know that plays into the calculus here you went up here to be soft on
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communism so you know push to the yalu go all the way and then the fact is everybody wanted to unite
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korea as a democratic capitalistic pro-american peninsula everybody wanted that truman certainly
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wanted that it would have been great i think ultimately for the north korean people as we've
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come to see under kim what has happened but the intelligence began to trickle in in the fall of
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1950 that the chinese not only were going to enter but had entered in hundreds of thousands of chinese and
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millions were were moving to manchuria to get in place and macarthur didn't want to hear this didn't
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want to believe the intelligence and actually his lieutenants actively doctored a lot of this
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evidence so you know really it's one of the greatest military intelligence failures in our history
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and ultimately it's macarthur's fault yeah there was you mentioned a meeting that truman and macarthur had
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and truman you know straight up said if the chinese ever get involved like we're not doing this
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anymore right and macarthur's like well yeah it's not going to happen that's we're yeah fine yeah i mean
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these two men whose fates are so closely intertwined actually only met one time only once and they flew
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in opposite directions to this little island in the middle of the pacific wake island and had this
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very strange meeting for a couple hours they talked about this very question what to do if the chinese
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enter the war and macarthur was quite confident he said they will not enter don't worry they're not going
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to enter and even if they do we'll slaughter them you know basically they're just a bamboo army you
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know they're just a you know peasant army we've got planes we got tanks we got you know we got modern
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communications we're gonna we're gonna kick them back across the yellow very quickly it'll be over by
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christmas and truman you know loved hearing that of course and but what truman said is as soon as you
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get an inkling that the chinese really are entering in large numbers stop halt in your tracks and
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take a position you can hold and go no further well macarthur didn't do that so you mentioned
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macarthur sort of an absentee commander didn't sleep a night in north korea but there was one guy
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who was the most involved in the initial evasion and also you know moving the men past 38th parallel
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and that was major general oliver smith now i never knew about smith until i read your book
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but this guy was amazing tell us about him yeah well he's kind of a not kind of he's definitively the
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the protagonist of of the book he's an amazing general that you say you hadn't heard of most
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people hadn't heard of i hadn't heard of him until i got into this project he is the commander of the
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first marine division he's a field general and you know he's one of those guys that we need to
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listen to more often in these battles and these wars the field generals on the ground who know
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what's happening and know how to fight at the ground level and and care about the fate of their
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men general smith was known as the professor he was not your typical gung-ho marine you know macho guy
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he was an academic he was constantly smoking a pipe he was fluent in french he'd studied all over the
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world he taught classes at quantico and uh you know at pendleton and and had um he graduated from
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berkeley and you know he's kind of cerebral guy and but he had also fought in some ferocious battles
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of world war ii including uh peluru and okinawa and he was a master of uh amphibious landings that was
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really what he knew the most about and and so consequently with the incheon invasion he was a
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guy called in to to design the landing and amphibious landing is a very very complicated thing
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you know it's three-dimensional and there's planes there's artillery there's ships there's you know
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men coming in from from the seawall it all has to be timed perfectly and there's huge tidal
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fluctuations at incheon that had to be you know figured out and he and in tandem with the navy
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you know figured this thing out it worked brilliantly they got ashore the first day and they took incheon
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very quickly and surprised the north koreans so smith i followed smith through incheon into seoul they
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take seoul and you know very quickly the war is going to be over they think but then they start going
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north into north korea his first marine division actually is brought onto ships again and they go
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around the peninsula and then up the east coast of north korea and land at a place called hungnam
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and we follow them as they they push up this narrow road into the mountains of north korea toward a
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man-made lake a reservoir the chosen reservoir where where this battle ultimately takes place
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we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show we're gonna
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talk about this battle because it's one of the most epic battles in the way you describe it's
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it's just it was so it was captivating but let me let's talk about smith and macarthur these two
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personalities that were almost like polar opposites right how did how did smith manage macarthur because
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there was instances where you know he'd hear something from macarthur and he'd go through
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almond and then smith would kind of be like yeah i'm not gonna do that but still like make it look
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like he was doing it yeah well there's always been this rivalry between the marines and you know
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other branches of service and here's a marine being told to do something that smith fundamentally
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disagrees with he thinks it's it's it's a trap it's it's a classic ambush situation to push up a narrow
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mountain road twisting through this and it's the only way to go there's only one road so his army
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is going to get and so his marines are going to um disperse along this road and it's a perfect
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situation for an encirclement and an entrapment you know and by this point he knew the chinese were
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there in large numbers somewhere in those mountains so but you know but but general smith doesn't want to
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be accused of insubordination he can't really violate the order so he he kind of meets halfway
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he slows down deliberately and macarthur is saying go go go as fast as you can go but smith is slowing
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down he's he's starting to fortify certain towns and create strongholds for a battle that he knows is
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coming he decides to start building an airstrip up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere
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why do you need an airstrip up there they said well he said well you know just in case we need to
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bring in planes for a battle and to bring out the casualties that we're going to have from a battle
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it's almost like you know all these places all these pieces are coming into place for a major battle that
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only general smith seems to be able to see the others macarthur and allman just doesn't think there's
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going to be a battle just just don't worry about it just go as fast as you can headlong to the yalu
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so you know their personalities are very different i spent a lot of time kind of comparing and
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contrasting smith's very cautious personality with the rash and reckless personality of general allman
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who is really just doing the bidding the ultimate commander macarthur i mean speaking of you know
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the chinese and their their military strategy i mean it seems like yeah they were setting the
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americans up for an ambush like they like mao was using sun tzu and all that's like he was a big
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you know disciple of these guys and he was really thinking hard that was another i thought that was
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interesting i didn't know that about this part of military history yeah well mao was quite actively
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involved in the strategy and prided himself on being a great military strategist and during the civil war
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his long prolonged civil war against the nationalist forces under chai and kai-shek mao had proved to
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be you know quite adept and yeah he like he liked to read the classics he liked to read he liked to read
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sun tzu and you know using the element of surprise you know guerrilla tactics marching overland avoiding
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the roads moving only at night stealth flexibility of movement all these things he was going to employ
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in the battle of chosen reservoir as well mao is following these movements from afar he's in
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beijing at this point of course but his generals are in close contact with him and the chinese you
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know and this is i have to say that you know in fairness to macarthur the chinese were very difficult
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to spot from the air and one of the reasons for this intelligence failure was that in the first month or so
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they they were just they were almost impossible to detect they came across the yalu they moved only
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at night they slept during the day they foraged off the land they didn't build fires that could be
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spotted from the air and so consequently they had moved into place very surreptitiously and they were
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they were just really good at what they what they did they they didn't have great weapons they didn't
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have great communications they didn't have modern you know a modern army or vehicles of any sort
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but they had the element of surprise and they had overwhelming numbers and and that's sort of
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setting the stage for for for the battle well just to reiterate like they went undetected and there's
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like hundreds of thousands of them which is mind-boggling mind-boggling that we still didn't know
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that they were there and and we we started to find out we we had skirmishes and we'd capture some
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of these guys and they would say very frankly you know we're from china we're chinese we're
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mao's troops there's thousands hundreds of thousands of us we were gonna they had actually
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been trained to attack taiwan and we're almost you know to the point of getting on ships to go to
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taiwan when they got this other order no we're gonna go north to manchuria and we're gonna cross
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the yellow and we're gonna defend kim and his communist forces and we're gonna attack the imperialist
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americans that's what they did they were very frank about all this and the marine intelligence folks
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would send it up the food chain to tokyo and and macarthur's guys would just look at this and say no
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these aren't chinese they can't be chinese chinese aren't there they're volunteers there must be north
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korean north koreans who speak chinese or manchurian volunteers who've just come across the border for
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their own you know just to help their brethren they aren't mao's troops don't worry about it and
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it's a that's that's where it just it ceases to be an intelligence failure and it becomes a leadership
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failure i think you know it's just willful ignorance all right so the marines they head up they they get
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near the chosen reservoir like summer fall or summer like through september in north korea you know
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it's warm pretty temperate but then like november hits and the weather changes dramatically tell us
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about the conditions about at the chosen reservoir yeah you know i i just don't think that any of us
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realized then and still today i don't think people realize how cold it gets in north korea you know
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bitter bitter bitter cold uh suddenly in november winter fell and it got down to 20 below zero
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and the winds were just howling out of the steps of manchuria we just weren't prepared for it our
00:25:51.680
equipment wasn't prepared for it guns wouldn't fire properly the artillery wouldn't register properly
00:25:59.020
vehicles shut down it just took people's breath away and you know people started freezing to death
00:26:04.600
and hypothermia and you know it affects your decision making you know it became the cold became
00:26:11.100
this third combatant you know there was the chinese there was americans and then there and there was
00:26:17.040
this old man winter that you know just affected everybody it affected the chinese even more profoundly
00:26:23.320
than the americans they were really were not equipped many of them didn't have gloves they were wearing
00:26:29.620
these sort of tennis shoes the chinese were that uh you know they slipped on they didn't have socks
00:26:35.740
it was just devastating to them and and people people began to freeze to death and you know these guys
00:26:41.840
the marines who were there called themselves the frozen chosen because you know this was a battle
00:26:47.000
that was just fought under these incredible winter conditions for 17 days consequently a huge percentage
00:26:55.520
of them about 85 percent of them suffered some form of frostbite they lost fingers and toes and
00:27:01.460
parts of their face and uh you know after the after the war they so many of the ones i interviewed they
00:27:07.580
almost all settled in places like florida and southern california because they just really
00:27:12.400
could not deal with the cold so yeah it's a it's a big factor of this uh of this battle and you know
00:27:20.500
in the old days when armies encountered this kind of weather they would kind of shake hands and
00:27:26.260
agree to meet in the spring and go to some place like valley forge but here they just kept going
00:27:32.560
and you know with with devastating result yeah talk about what it was like so there's hundreds of
00:27:38.300
thousands of chinese how many marines were there at the chosen reservoir there were about 13 000 right
00:27:43.940
there around the shores of this lake which is by this point frozen solid you know in fact some of the
00:27:50.660
battle happens out on the ice which is kind of amazing and there's another seven or eight thousand
00:27:57.160
marines down in the valley by the sea supporting them but they're surrounded by you know 10 to one
00:28:04.220
in many parts of the battlefield by the chinese who had you know to their credit very successfully
00:28:10.460
lured the marines up into this area and then they surrounded them truly surrounded them and then
00:28:17.460
they finally attack in force on the night of november 27th and you know they only attacked at night
00:28:24.860
because they were terrified of american air power so they couldn't be spotted at night of course the
00:28:32.120
planes couldn't fly at night so they'd come around midnight and it'd be this sort of cacophony of
00:28:37.880
bells and whistles and drums and bugles and they'd come over the hills in waves you know it's just
00:28:46.500
the marines are holding on for dear life trying to absorb this attack all through the night and by
00:28:52.640
dawn uh the attacks would relent and and they would sort of disappear into the hills and you wouldn't
00:28:58.840
see them until the next night well this goes on you know for for over a week just trying to absorb
00:29:04.900
these these incredible attacks until the marines can figure out what to do next no and the the carnage
00:29:12.160
i i mean it was like it was homeric it was biblical i mean just bodies thousands of bodies just like
00:29:17.700
heaped on each other it was i mean you yeah you know war is bad but like i you never i never read
00:29:23.060
anything like this before yeah well you know the chinese were either incredibly brave or they were
00:29:30.700
just incredibly uh driven by their commanders and you know mal treated his men like cannon fodder i mean
00:29:37.720
just we'll make more we'll we'll just we'll just send in more and more and more people and he was
00:29:43.840
willing to sustain casualties that we would consider obscene and so they would these waves would come
00:29:51.740
and you know the marines were had to resort very quickly to hand-to-hand combat him there's a lot of
00:29:56.920
these a lot of this combat happened with shovels and bayonets and knives and pistols in the dead of
00:30:03.440
night in 20 below zero weather on you know beneath the glare of these of these flares against the
00:30:10.460
light of the snow you know the light coming off the snow uh so it was very eerie environment to have
00:30:16.400
to fight in and and you know as you said the corpses would just pile up the marines really couldn't dig
00:30:22.620
foxholes because of because the soil was frozen solid so they ended up using these corpses as
00:30:29.800
these wind breaks as sandbags almost and uh they just pile them up and they'd hide behind the
00:30:35.320
corpses and and keep fighting through the night so you know you talk to these marines they they talk
00:30:42.460
about a lot of things and have a lot of nightmares about a lot of different aspects of this but they
00:30:47.780
talk a lot about that it was just like corpses everywhere you know there's a yeah and they froze
00:30:53.480
solid in the shape that they had fallen in so it's really quite ghastly and you know these corpses
00:30:59.360
just lying around for all 17 days of the battle it's it's it's quite ghoulish really and you know
00:31:06.640
just one one of one of many extreme aspects of this of this battle so the battle started in
00:31:12.540
november it lasted 17 days but there was a point where the americans decided like we have to retreat
00:31:18.040
they didn't call it that but that's effectively what it was at what point did the americans decide
00:31:23.000
they had to get out of the chosen reservoir well you know it was it was pretty apparent even after the
00:31:28.880
first night that they had to regroup in some way that they weren't going to be marching to the yalu
00:31:35.540
anymore it took macarthur several more days to finally agree and we can't march hell we can't even
00:31:42.560
defend what where we are certainly aren't going to march to the yalu but how you do that is the is a
00:31:49.300
very tricky thing it's probably the trickiest thing in warfare is you know how do you successfully
00:31:54.840
march you know out how do you retreat the marines hate to use the word retreat and you know of course
00:32:01.320
there's a lot of euphemisms for retreat advance to the rear retrograde maneuver it was general
00:32:09.380
smith who famously said we're you know we're not retreating we're simply attacking in another
00:32:14.020
direction which i love and but you know but what he really meant by that was that if you are
00:32:19.900
surrounded by overwhelming numbers of the enemy who are trying to kill you movement in any direction
00:32:26.080
is an attack you're going to fight your way out he knew it would be a fight and you know if they had
00:32:32.540
to march 70 miles to the sea where they where there was this port hungnam where they could regroup hold
00:32:40.240
the port and stage stage an evacuation like dunkirk which is what they did of course but that becomes the
00:32:48.300
rest of the story the rest of the book is is this incredibly well choreographed fighting withdrawal
00:32:54.140
down this one mountain road the same road they marched up they now have to march out of and they
00:32:59.760
do it with air power they do it with artillery they build this airfield and get their casualties out
00:33:08.520
they bring in supplies and they kind of systematically break down these enclaves and and move towards the
00:33:15.880
coast in an organized fashion they didn't want to just turn and run they wanted to fight their way out
00:33:21.380
in a systematic way and and that's exactly what they did and that's why this battle is so widely embraced
00:33:28.440
and studied by the marines it's a perfect example of a fighting withdrawal and you know they got out of
00:33:34.240
there intact with their equipment they got their casualties out of there and they got to the coast
00:33:40.540
and lived to fight another day within another few months they're they're fighting again in the
00:33:45.680
korean war the first marine division and yet they you know just a few weeks earlier they were really on
00:33:51.720
the brink of possibly being annihilated the newspapers back home said as much that they were a doomed
00:33:58.300
legion lost legion there was just no way they were going to get out of this trap so you know that's
00:34:03.960
really what the book about it's about how they got themselves into a trap and then how they fought their
00:34:08.340
way out and in in this you know you're fighting out of this trap there was you know lots of amazing
00:34:13.900
stories of ordinary men doing extraordinary things was there is there one that you could you know maybe
00:34:19.520
share with us that stands out to you well one of the cool things about this battle is the extent to
00:34:25.240
which it was an engineering story you know some of the heroes of this battle are engineers particularly
00:34:30.840
the chief marine engineer guy named partridge who had been asked to build this airfield
00:34:37.440
and we're not talking about just a little airstrip for you know cessmas or something they built a huge
00:34:43.280
airfield to bring in these big transport planes in the middle of nowhere i mean just in the wilderness
00:34:49.800
and you know people said it couldn't be done didn't have enough equipment uh couldn't find an exact
00:34:56.420
place to do it of course the ground is frozen solid and this general smith gets partridge in on it
00:35:03.600
they look at the place they figure out yeah maybe we can do it they bring in bulldozers and grading
00:35:10.300
equipment which keeps breaking because it's just like granite that the soil is so hard and then
00:35:19.340
around the clock under the glare of these you know floodlights they start scraping this airfield and they
00:35:27.280
barely make it in time but they finally get it built and graded and they still don't know if it's going to
00:35:33.400
really work but the planes start coming in and it's sort of just in the nick of time and and uh
00:35:39.020
start bringing in all these supplies and ammunition and medical supplies in the midst of the battle and
00:35:47.040
what's amazing is these bulldozer operators are are scraping the earth and periodically shutting down
00:35:55.180
their equipment and picking up their rifle and shooting i mean they're they're fighting a battle
00:35:59.960
while operating earth moving equipment and it's just kind of it's just it's kind of amazing and
00:36:06.500
then a little later in the battle partridge gets asked to do something even more extreme which is
00:36:11.700
the chinese had blown a bridge at a key choke point that you know everyone knew if they blew this bridge
00:36:18.780
we're in trouble the marines are backed up from 10 miles or more and they can't move because the bridge
00:36:25.580
has been blown so partridge gets called in to build a bridge in the middle of a battle they fly in these
00:36:32.200
huge girders by and drop them by parachute and these engineers are you know out kind of like acrobats
00:36:39.860
swinging from this precipice building this bridge while fighting a battle and they get it built in in a few
00:36:46.820
in a few short hours and hold the bridge long enough for for 13 000 marines to come out
00:36:52.900
and then they blow the bridge up so the chinese can't use it so that's one of the many stories you
00:36:59.180
know this is this is a one of the most highly decorated battles in american history and there's
00:37:06.120
all these little set pieces all all over the battlefield like this people who won congressional
00:37:11.480
medal of honor people who are in the thick of the fighting and you know i guess the hardest part
00:37:16.680
of doing this book for me was picking and choosing you know which of those individual stories
00:37:22.300
those sort of stories on the ground level the grunts which ones to tell so uh this was the war with
00:37:28.640
most decorated battle but besides that what do you think the legacy of the the frozen chosen is
00:37:33.440
well uh you know people who have heard of it just think of think of it as being like okay
00:37:38.920
we should never fight these kinds of conditions again we should never put ourselves in these these
00:37:45.500
sorts of conditions i think you know i view this as a sort of tragic collision of forces those armies
00:37:52.360
shouldn't have been up there in that place we it happened because diplomacy failed it happened because
00:38:00.440
we didn't do the hard messy work of diplomacy we didn't have a relationship with with the most
00:38:06.840
populous nation on earth we refused to recognize mal as the legitimate leader of of china we had no back
00:38:16.600
channels of communication he sent ample signals to us that he was going to intervene we just kind of
00:38:23.560
ignored those signals and so i mean i i think of the legacy of of this battle as being first and
00:38:30.980
foremost kind of exhibit a of of failure you know what happens when when diplomacy fails and the other
00:38:38.640
legacy that i really look at here is is you know just how important it is to listen to your field
00:38:45.680
commanders the guys who are on the ground who have the intelligence who know what's happening
00:38:51.400
you know listen to them and keep a channel of communication from the bottom up not just from the top
00:38:58.040
down this whole thing could have avoided this whole thing could have been avoided if we listened to
00:39:03.620
what general smith had to say well hampton where can people go to learn more about the book in your
00:39:07.680
work well uh my website is hamptonsides.com and the book is published by double day anywhere where
00:39:13.480
books are sold you can you can find it well hampton sides thanks for your time it's been a pleasure
00:39:17.360
thanks so much i really enjoyed it my guest there is hampton sides he's the author of the book on
00:39:21.560
desperate ground it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you find out more information
00:39:25.780
about his work at his website hamptonsides.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash
00:39:31.040
korean war where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:39:34.460
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website
00:39:44.800
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