Korean Bugouts

tgoc:

I think we hammered this particular thread on the 'Longest Day' Board...


nickm

In the summer of 1950 some American units that may have become lax during occupation duty of South Korea did not respond properly to the invasion and fell back in disorganized fashion. That American units beginning in Sept 1950 began to push back the North Koreans with the landing at Inchon is testimony to the fighting that took place.

In Sept 1950 British, Canadian, and Aussie infanty units had not yet entered the fray.

For a take on British, American, Australian, and Canadian soldiers, read Max Hastings books on the ends of the Pacific War, the ETO, and D-Day in WWII. You'll find a lot about troops, equipment, training. Such as in WWII, when Canada finally instituted a draft, 75% of the draftees deserted when just called up. (Hastings is British, by the way.) American INFANTRY (not the rest of the services and elite units) were never staffed with the best soldiers, often performed less-than-perfectly under fire, and were usually under-trained. They still got the job done.

I'd only enter into a heated debate if you can cite actual scholarly research that says that only the Americans ever ran. Perhaps the Canadians (far fewer than the American presence) never made it to combat, and still had the WWII system where only volunteers could be sent into combat. All four nations had valorous and not-so-valorous personnel, so let's not generalize so much.

And the Civil War? Why not go back to the Seven Years War?

Sometimes life is like asking strangers for directions to the Susquehanna Hat Company.

Because the troops hastily thrown into battle could not be greener :
those on occupation duty in Japan.
The veterans of the Pacific War have all gone home and settled down
to well deserved quiet lives .
The USMC was as good as disbanded.
Later to reactivate the First Marine Division for the Inchon Landing,
US Embassies around the world had to be scoured for Marine Guards
to fill in its ranks.

Task Force Smith, the first American combat force thrown in the cauldron,
was destroyed in battle and its Colonel killed while fighting the enemy
and not bugging out.
Later, General William F. Dean commanding the 24th Infantry Division was
captured by the "North Korean People's Army"(NKPA) while securing his
troops withdrawal from Taejon.
Before that, intrepid war reporter Marguerite Higgins while covering the
battle of Chinju, was witness to one of the American worst string of defeats
in this early phase of the conflict.

It was these badly battered troops however, along with the brave remnants
of the Taehan Minkuk Army, who held the line against the ferocious NKPA
during its rampage drive toward the Naktong River.

The only tanks the Americans had on hand at the time were a few lightweight
M-24(playing American armor in "The Battle Of The Bulge")
whose 3-inch guns failed to impress the giant Soviet-built T-34/85
(American-engines-powered !) the NKPA so lavishly used.
General Walker commanding the 8th Army, once during the Pusan Perimeter fighting
had to stop a young US Army Tank Squadron commander in his puny M-24
from foolhardily "slugging it out" with the giant NKPA T-34s !
Only later, when the 90mm-gun-Pershing tanks came with
the Marines, was the firepower balance reestablished.
What those bugouts - both Americans and South Koreans - accomplished was
really astonishing given the ferocity - and the savagery - of the North Korean onslaught.

When the first US Marines landed on the docks of Pusan Harbor, their boots
remained dry because the soil bordering the defense perimeter was soaked with
the blood of those so-called Korean Bugouts, including that of their own comrades hastily thrown in battle in July 1950.
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Were they all bugouts there would be neither a prosperous nor powerful
South Korea aka Taehan Minkuk today.

Were bugging out an American tradition, there would be no Free World
for you to live in and write your anti-American posts, OP.

An Oxford degree is no guarantee of realistic insight,
but surely one for the post of armchair strategist.