The Art of Manliness - #510： The Greatest Battle of the Korean War

00:00:00.000 the art of manliness podcast the korean war is often overlooked by americans but this forgotten

00:00:14.820 war played a big role in shaping the world order in the second half of the 20th century what's more

00:00:19.560 one of the most heroic and harrowing military operations in u.s history took place deep in the

00:00:23.980 snowy and bitterly cold mountains of north korea creating a legendary group of fighters who became

00:00:28.260 known as the frozen chosen my guest today has written a book that captures this event in military

00:00:32.440 history his name is hampton sides and his book is on desperate ground the marines at the reservoir

00:00:37.080 the korean war's greatest battle hampton and i begin our discussion exploring why the korean war is the

00:00:41.840 forgotten war in american history and how the united states got involved in a conflict on the korean

00:00:46.060 peninsula in the first place hampton then talks about general douglas mcarthur and how his unbridled

00:00:50.160 ambition and hubris as well as other glaring failures among military brass led american troops

00:00:54.600 into a frozen trap set by the chinese hampton and i then discussed the epic battle of the chosen

00:00:58.780 reservoir and how 20 000 marines fended off annihilation of the hands of over 300 000 chinese

00:01:03.680 soldiers in weather conditions that dropped 20 degrees below zero and we end our conversation

00:01:07.780 discussing the legacy of the battle the chosen reservoir after the show's over check out our show

00:01:12.080 notes at aom.is korean war and hampton joins me now via telephone hampton sides welcome to the show

00:01:25.300 great to be with you so you just published a new military history book it's about the korean war

00:01:30.280 on desperate ground the marines at the reservoir the korean war's greatest battle it's about the battle

00:01:35.580 of the chosen reservoir thing about the korean war is it's often the overlooked war in american history

00:01:40.940 people know about world war ii then there's the korean war happened and then there's vietnam and

00:01:45.360 there's lots of movies and books about vietnam why do you think the korean war gets overlooked

00:01:49.780 lots of reasons i think one of them is that it's sometimes perceived as kind of an addendum to world

00:01:57.780 war ii you know like it's this sort of unfinished business having to do with world war ii that kind of

00:02:03.520 kind of an afterthought or something like that i think it's also perceived by some people as not being

00:02:09.360 truly a war that's you know sometimes it was called a police action a un police action a conflict but

00:02:16.620 not a war that you know let me assure you it was a war and it was a brutal and devastating war and and

00:02:23.720 you know one that we're really feeling the consequences of still today i think a third reason why it's kind

00:02:30.400 of forgotten is that it ended in a stalemate it ended more or less where it began which was at the 38th

00:02:38.300 parallel the line separating north and south korea and you know americans uh we we like to think we

00:02:45.540 win wars vietnam was an exception a war that we lost but a stalemate is a hard narrative to get your

00:02:53.820 head around they say we died for a tie and that they being the veterans of this battle and this war

00:03:02.100 and you know i get that it's just kind of it's kind of a messy narrative complicated unsettling

00:03:07.940 narrative to understand so those are those are certainly some of the reasons and we're technically

00:03:12.440 still at war correct and there's just been a armistice like we're just kind of like it's been put off for

00:03:16.960 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

00:03:23.940 with this armistice that left so many of the questions unanswered we're still kind of poised on the brink

00:03:31.160 of war it's a scary place dmz is a very scary place and you know a flashpoint that could erupt at any

00:03:38.700 moment and you know most of our wars that we fought you know have a very clear and definitive ending and

00:03:46.300 and you know it's got bookends and you understand what that was and it's over now korea is still

00:03:53.320 kind of a cliffhanger you know it's still it's still there's still all these questions that need to be

00:03:59.360 resolved and that certainly contributes to this provisional quality i guess that the whole war

00:04:06.640 has an international consciousness you know it's like it ain't over yet well it's because it's

00:04:11.900 overlooked it's the forgotten war i think a lot of americans don't even understand how we got involved

00:04:17.360 in it so can you kind of give us like a thumbnail sketch of like how we ended up yeah in korea well

00:04:22.800 it's a complicated thing and i'll try to do the 101 kind of version of it okay so after world war ii

00:04:29.340 the allied powers were tasked with the responsibility of you know deciding what to do

00:04:34.380 with the spoils of the japanese empire and korea had been a colony of japan of imperial japan and

00:04:42.660 the japanese had just brutally mistreated the koreans but it was their colony so the soviets 1.00

00:04:49.120 kind of got into that theater of the war very late in the game we're very interested in the northern

00:04:54.840 part of korea and we were interested in the southern part of korea and we decided to draw a

00:05:03.000 line right down the middle the waist of the country the 38th parallel we would take the south temporarily

00:05:08.940 the soviets would take the north temporarily but the idea was that we would have an election and the

00:05:14.280 country would be reunited and decide its own fate well that never happened very quickly the north

00:05:20.720 became shaped in the image of its custodian nation soviet union under stalin in fact kim the

00:05:27.960 grandfather of the current kim you know studied at the knee of the master stalin himself in terms of 0.96

00:05:33.600 authoritarian dictatorship and the cult of personality and all that sort of stuff he uh built up his army

00:05:40.140 with soviet tanks and soviet artillery meanwhile in in the south we we were the custodian nation but

00:05:46.080 we really didn't arm south korea very well and we were interested in south korea partly because we

00:05:51.620 were rebuilding japan and korea was right there so close to japan that it was important to have

00:05:59.720 a relationship with the south korea but on june 25th 1950 kim il-sung surprised everyone by racing

00:06:08.580 across the border and taking seoul and there was a blitzkrieg they they pushed the south korean army almost to

00:06:14.960 the very end of the peninsula and the u.s entered this war to defend the south koreans and their anemic 1.00

00:06:23.700 army and we held on for dear life for a few months in the summer of 1950 and then finally got involved

00:06:31.380 in a big way in september of 1950 by invading the port of incheon and we retook seoul we pushed

00:06:40.820 kim il-sung's forces all the way back to the 38th parallel and if we stopped right there it would

00:06:47.600 have been a three-month war we would have accomplished all our goals millions of lives

00:06:53.600 would have been spared and it would have been i think perceived universally as a great success

00:06:59.940 but we got greedy we we pushed beyond the 38th parallel we decided to do in reverse what kim 0.76

00:07:06.360 had done which was take all of the peninsula but this time for the south and for the american

00:07:13.900 interests and we pushed all the way to the yellow river the border with manchuria and that the chinese

00:07:20.780 got very nervous about that and manchuria is china so mal having recently won his civil war the most 0.97

00:07:30.000 populous nation on earth decided to enter this conflict in a big way and that's sort of setting

00:07:35.780 the stage for the battle of chosen reservoir all right so let's there's a lot to unpack there and

00:07:40.300 there's also a lot of personalities going on here and which you get into a lot in the book so sort of

00:07:46.220 the mastermind of the this invasion to repel the north korea was macarthur who had a controversial

00:07:53.820 career in world war ii but during this time he was i guess kind of he was like the uh sort of like

00:08:00.240 general eisenhower of the pacific correct except a much more dramatic a much more grandiose form of

00:08:06.080 eisenhower you know he could this point seemingly could do no wrong he i don't think we've ever had a

00:08:12.600 commander that had concentrated in you know in his office in his person so much power because he was

00:08:20.020 the head of the u.n forces he was the head of the army of the far east he was running the occupation of

00:08:26.160 japan he was essentially functioning as an emperor and he was yeah he kind of had an imperial personality

00:08:31.940 to begin with a very dramatic guy very old school military leader you know whose command style you

00:08:40.800 know frankly just doesn't hold up very well in sort of today's culture you know it was all about him

00:08:46.140 he they used to say he loved the vertical pronoun i shall return you know it was all about him

00:08:53.900 and you know the way he used media and the way he had an entourage everywhere he went and the way he

00:09:01.460 you know surrounded himself with yes men who just told him what he wanted to hear he was a little past

00:09:06.600 his expiration date at this point he had a long and interesting and an amazing career but this was

00:09:11.760 near the very end and i think it had all gone to his head and he just thought he could just you know

00:09:18.780 kick ass and and just just take korea and it would be super easy and didn't think the chinese would 1.00

00:09:25.560 intervene and even if they did it'd be so easy to you know and and of course he wanted to use nuclear

00:09:32.240 weapons against china when they when they did intervene they just blow up beijing no problem you know he 0.74

00:09:38.840 he'd by this point become a very i think a very scary dude in the sense of just being you know so

00:09:45.220 much power in this one guy and and truman president truman didn't really know how to handle him and

00:09:49.880 the joint chief of staff in washington didn't really know how to handle him it was uh it was like a one

00:09:53.860 man show well this initial idea of invading or you know repelling the americans coming in and

00:10:00.960 helping the south koreans that was macarthur's idea correct well no not just macarthur i think everyone

00:10:06.000 agreed that we you know we had pledged in various ways to defend this fledgling democracy we certainly

00:10:12.980 didn't want it to become a communist peninsula i think history has proven that we were right that 1.00

00:10:18.020 you know that kim was an unusually malevolent dictator and you only have to go to korea today 1.00

00:10:24.220 to see the difference between south korea and and north korea and and and certainly you know

00:10:30.800 seoul has become this just amazingly dynamic city it's it's a south korea's 11th largest economy in

00:10:38.720 the world so you know i think if you ask veterans of the korean war today should we have been there

00:10:44.560 were we doing the right thing almost invariably they'll all say yes up to the point where we

00:10:49.780 came to the 38th parallel going beyond the 38th parallel is where all the problems really

00:10:55.840 you know begin but anyway yeah macarthur wanted to do this but so did truman and and and you know

00:11:02.520 everyone wanted to defend south korea it's just that line it's like once you cross that line you go

00:11:08.660 into a much more complicated narrative and that's where macarthur he said we were successful here we

00:11:14.340 kicked butt why don't we just keep going yeah the incheon invasion was enormously successful 0.61

00:11:19.260 surprise the north koreans kim was on the run you know but he said well we need to pursue kim 1.00

00:11:25.020 into his own territory and destroy the remnants of his army so he can't do this again okay fair

00:11:31.640 enough but let's keep going let's take pion gang let's take other cities in north korea and then 0.99

00:11:36.740 ultimately let's go all the way to the border with china well the analogy the chinese would use is that

00:11:41.680 you know what if the chinese had invaded mexico and pushed all the way to the rio grande what would 0.89

00:11:48.480 we have done well we would have entered the war preemptively and that's what they did in a big 0.83

00:11:53.760 way and you know was the beginning of what people feared would be world war three and but were there

00:11:59.360 people around macarthur like other generals and chiefs of staffs who were like that's not a good

00:12:03.460 idea you should not do that uh you know there were some people who voiced concerns but his immediate

00:12:09.440 his immediate staff know that you know he had surrounded himself with with sycophants who told

00:12:16.160 him what he wanted to hear and agreed with them and the foremost among them was this guy general ned

00:12:20.860 almond who is his commander on the ground in korea and this is part of the problem you see macarthur

00:12:26.900 was not on the ground in korea he would fly over occasionally for a photo op from tokyo and you

00:12:35.340 know it's said that he never slept a single night on korean soil during the korean war so he's a classic 1.00

00:12:41.280 example of an absentee commander and you know he just was out of touch with reality and and really

00:12:49.460 that's where a lot of the problems lie so he didn't have he didn't have people disagreeing with

00:12:53.760 them in a you know vigorous way to adjust his view of things well you mentioned like you know

00:12:59.840 truman didn't know how to handle macarthur you also had marshall who seemed like he didn't really

00:13:05.140 know how to handle macarthur either and he kind of gave him the rubber stamp on on this does you know

00:13:09.880 going past the 38th parallel why do you think marshall did he just didn't know what to do with

00:13:13.140 macarthur just well just let him do it it's complicated a lot of different reasons uh certainly people

00:13:19.020 didn't know how to handle macarthur's personality in general and there was of course a political

00:13:23.400 dimension to that which is that it was thought widely thought that macarthur was gearing up to

00:13:29.080 run for president back in the states you know after the war so he was a live wire in that sense

00:13:36.140 mccarthy had just sort of risen his ugly head that year mccarthyism was a factor in american politics and

00:13:42.480 the democratic party and truman in particular had been accused widely of of being soft on communism

00:13:49.600 so that was another factor you know that plays into the calculus here you went up here to be soft on

00:13:55.600 communism so you know push to the yalu go all the way and then the fact is everybody wanted to unite

00:14:03.000 korea as a democratic capitalistic pro-american peninsula everybody wanted that truman certainly 0.59

00:14:11.400 wanted that it would have been great i think ultimately for the north korean people as we've

00:14:16.860 come to see under kim what has happened but the intelligence began to trickle in in the fall of

00:14:23.600 1950 that the chinese not only were going to enter but had entered in hundreds of thousands of chinese and

00:14:31.320 millions were were moving to manchuria to get in place and macarthur didn't want to hear this didn't

00:14:38.540 want to believe the intelligence and actually his lieutenants actively doctored a lot of this

00:14:44.080 evidence so you know really it's one of the greatest military intelligence failures in our history

00:14:49.740 and ultimately it's macarthur's fault yeah there was you mentioned a meeting that truman and macarthur had

00:14:56.220 and truman you know straight up said if the chinese ever get involved like we're not doing this 0.90

00:15:01.440 anymore right and macarthur's like well yeah it's not going to happen that's we're yeah fine yeah i mean

00:15:06.820 these two men whose fates are so closely intertwined actually only met one time only once and they flew

00:15:15.300 in opposite directions to this little island in the middle of the pacific wake island and had this

00:15:22.720 very strange meeting for a couple hours they talked about this very question what to do if the chinese

00:15:28.880 enter the war and macarthur was quite confident he said they will not enter don't worry they're not going

00:15:36.440 to enter and even if they do we'll slaughter them you know basically they're just a bamboo army you 1.00

00:15:42.120 know they're just a you know peasant army we've got planes we got tanks we got you know we got modern 0.95

00:15:48.660 communications we're gonna we're gonna kick them back across the yellow very quickly it'll be over by

00:15:54.300 christmas and truman you know loved hearing that of course and but what truman said is as soon as you

00:16:01.820 get an inkling that the chinese really are entering in large numbers stop halt in your tracks and 0.95

00:16:08.460 take a position you can hold and go no further well macarthur didn't do that so you mentioned

00:16:15.160 macarthur sort of an absentee commander didn't sleep a night in north korea but there was one guy

00:16:20.520 who was the most involved in the initial evasion and also you know moving the men past 38th parallel

00:16:26.600 and that was major general oliver smith now i never knew about smith until i read your book

00:16:31.040 but this guy was amazing tell us about him yeah well he's kind of a not kind of he's definitively the

00:16:38.080 the protagonist of of the book he's an amazing general that you say you hadn't heard of most

00:16:45.080 people hadn't heard of i hadn't heard of him until i got into this project he is the commander of the

00:16:50.360 first marine division he's a field general and you know he's one of those guys that we need to

00:16:55.840 listen to more often in these battles and these wars the field generals on the ground who know

00:17:00.260 what's happening and know how to fight at the ground level and and care about the fate of their

00:17:06.140 men general smith was known as the professor he was not your typical gung-ho marine you know macho guy

00:17:15.840 he was an academic he was constantly smoking a pipe he was fluent in french he'd studied all over the

00:17:21.480 world he taught classes at quantico and uh you know at pendleton and and had um he graduated from

00:17:29.300 berkeley and you know he's kind of cerebral guy and but he had also fought in some ferocious battles

00:17:36.320 of world war ii including uh peluru and okinawa and he was a master of uh amphibious landings that was

00:17:44.060 really what he knew the most about and and so consequently with the incheon invasion he was a

00:17:50.880 guy called in to to design the landing and amphibious landing is a very very complicated thing

00:17:57.120 you know it's three-dimensional and there's planes there's artillery there's ships there's you know

00:18:02.300 men coming in from from the seawall it all has to be timed perfectly and there's huge tidal

00:18:08.900 fluctuations at incheon that had to be you know figured out and he and in tandem with the navy

00:18:17.460 you know figured this thing out it worked brilliantly they got ashore the first day and they took incheon

00:18:23.620 very quickly and surprised the north koreans so smith i followed smith through incheon into seoul they

00:18:30.640 take seoul and you know very quickly the war is going to be over they think but then they start going

00:18:36.760 north into north korea his first marine division actually is brought onto ships again and they go

00:18:44.220 around the peninsula and then up the east coast of north korea and land at a place called hungnam

00:18:52.440 and we follow them as they they push up this narrow road into the mountains of north korea toward a

00:18:59.920 man-made lake a reservoir the chosen reservoir where where this battle ultimately takes place

00:19:06.780 we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show we're gonna

00:19:13.480 talk about this battle because it's one of the most epic battles in the way you describe it's

00:19:16.560 it's just it was so it was captivating but let me let's talk about smith and macarthur these two

00:19:22.360 personalities that were almost like polar opposites right how did how did smith manage macarthur because

00:19:28.520 there was instances where you know he'd hear something from macarthur and he'd go through

00:19:31.940 almond and then smith would kind of be like yeah i'm not gonna do that but still like make it look

00:19:37.240 like he was doing it yeah well there's always been this rivalry between the marines and you know

00:19:42.940 other branches of service and here's a marine being told to do something that smith fundamentally

00:19:49.660 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

00:19:56.640 mountain road twisting through this and it's the only way to go there's only one road so his army

00:20:03.640 is going to get and so his marines are going to um disperse along this road and it's a perfect 0.84

00:20:10.820 situation for an encirclement and an entrapment you know and by this point he knew the chinese were 0.66

00:20:16.640 there in large numbers somewhere in those mountains so but you know but but general smith doesn't want to

00:20:22.660 be accused of insubordination he can't really violate the order so he he kind of meets halfway

00:20:29.400 he slows down deliberately and macarthur is saying go go go as fast as you can go but smith is slowing

00:20:37.440 down he's he's starting to fortify certain towns and create strongholds for a battle that he knows is

00:20:45.560 coming he decides to start building an airstrip up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere

00:20:50.300 why do you need an airstrip up there they said well he said well you know just in case we need to

00:20:55.680 bring in planes for a battle and to bring out the casualties that we're going to have from a battle

00:21:01.240 it's almost like you know all these places all these pieces are coming into place for a major battle that

00:21:07.100 only general smith seems to be able to see the others macarthur and allman just doesn't think there's

00:21:14.620 going to be a battle just just don't worry about it just go as fast as you can headlong to the yalu

00:21:21.280 so you know their personalities are very different i spent a lot of time kind of comparing and

00:21:26.680 contrasting smith's very cautious personality with the rash and reckless personality of general allman

00:21:34.440 who is really just doing the bidding the ultimate commander macarthur i mean speaking of you know

00:21:40.220 the chinese and their their military strategy i mean it seems like yeah they were setting the

00:21:45.460 americans up for an ambush like they like mao was using sun tzu and all that's like he was a big 0.88

00:21:50.620 you know disciple of these guys and he was really thinking hard that was another i thought that was

00:21:54.580 interesting i didn't know that about this part of military history yeah well mao was quite actively

00:22:00.340 involved in the strategy and prided himself on being a great military strategist and during the civil war

00:22:07.000 his long prolonged civil war against the nationalist forces under chai and kai-shek mao had proved to

00:22:13.400 be you know quite adept and yeah he like he liked to read the classics he liked to read he liked to read

00:22:18.740 sun tzu and you know using the element of surprise you know guerrilla tactics marching overland avoiding

00:22:27.740 the roads moving only at night stealth flexibility of movement all these things he was going to employ

00:22:35.240 in the battle of chosen reservoir as well mao is following these movements from afar he's in

00:22:41.420 beijing at this point of course but his generals are in close contact with him and the chinese you

00:22:47.480 know and this is i have to say that you know in fairness to macarthur the chinese were very difficult

00:22:54.080 to spot from the air and one of the reasons for this intelligence failure was that in the first month or so

00:23:00.120 they they were just they were almost impossible to detect they came across the yalu they moved only

00:23:06.800 at night they slept during the day they foraged off the land they didn't build fires that could be

00:23:12.920 spotted from the air and so consequently they had moved into place very surreptitiously and they were

00:23:18.540 they were just really good at what they what they did they they didn't have great weapons they didn't

00:23:22.480 have great communications they didn't have modern you know a modern army or vehicles of any sort

00:23:27.960 but they had the element of surprise and they had overwhelming numbers and and that's sort of

00:23:32.840 setting the stage for for for the battle well just to reiterate like they went undetected and there's

00:23:37.640 like hundreds of thousands of them which is mind-boggling mind-boggling that we still didn't know

00:23:43.280 that they were there and and we we started to find out we we had skirmishes and we'd capture some

00:23:50.760 of these guys and they would say very frankly you know we're from china we're chinese we're

00:23:57.060 mao's troops there's thousands hundreds of thousands of us we were gonna they had actually

00:24:04.340 been trained to attack taiwan and we're almost you know to the point of getting on ships to go to

00:24:12.760 taiwan when they got this other order no we're gonna go north to manchuria and we're gonna cross 0.97

00:24:18.460 the yellow and we're gonna defend kim and his communist forces and we're gonna attack the imperialist 0.94

00:24:24.680 americans that's what they did they were very frank about all this and the marine intelligence folks

00:24:31.200 would send it up the food chain to tokyo and and macarthur's guys would just look at this and say no

00:24:38.240 these aren't chinese they can't be chinese chinese aren't there they're volunteers there must be north 0.99

00:24:46.060 korean north koreans who speak chinese or manchurian volunteers who've just come across the border for

00:24:53.080 their own you know just to help their brethren they aren't mao's troops don't worry about it and

00:24:58.740 it's a that's that's where it just it ceases to be an intelligence failure and it becomes a leadership

00:25:05.040 failure i think you know it's just willful ignorance all right so the marines they head up they they get

00:25:11.760 near the chosen reservoir like summer fall or summer like through september in north korea you know

00:25:19.040 it's warm pretty temperate but then like november hits and the weather changes dramatically tell us

00:25:24.440 about the conditions about at the chosen reservoir yeah you know i i just don't think that any of us

00:25:29.920 realized then and still today i don't think people realize how cold it gets in north korea you know

00:25:35.780 bitter bitter bitter cold uh suddenly in november winter fell and it got down to 20 below zero

00:25:44.380 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 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 0.97

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

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The Art of Manliness - May 22, 2019

#510： The Greatest Battle of the Korean War

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