The men of the Inmun Gun and the CCF were peasant boys, tough, inured to hunger and hardship. One-third of them had been in battle and knew what battle meant. They had been indoctrinated in Communism, but no high percentage of them were fanatic. Most of them, after all, were conscripts, and unskilled.
They were not half so good soldiers as the bronzed men who followed Rommel in the desert, or the veterans who slashed down toward Bastogne.
They were well armed, but their weapons were no better than those of United States design, if as good.
But the American soldier of 1950, though the same breed of man, was not half so good as the battalions that had absorbed Rommel’s bloody lessons, or stood like steel in the Ardennes.
The weapons his nation had were not in his hands, and those that were were old and worn.
Since the end of World War II ground weapons had been developed, but none had been procured. There were plenty of the old arms around, and it has always been a Yankee habit to make do. The Army was told to make do.
In 1950 its vehicles in many cases would not run. Radiators were clogged, engines gone. When ordered to Korea, some units towed their transport down to the LST’s, because there was no other way to get it to the boat. Tires and tubes had a few miles left in them, and were kept — until they came apart on Korean roads.
In Japan, where the divisions were supposedly guarding our former enemies, most of the small arms had been reported combat unserviceable. Rifle barrels were worn smooth. Mortar mounts were broken, and there were no longer any spare barrels for machine guns.
Radios were short, and those that were available would not work.
Ammunition, except small arms, was “hava-no.”
These things had been reported. The Senate knew them; the people heard them. But usually the Army was told, “Next year.”
Even a rich society cannot afford nuclear bombs, supercarriers, foreign aid, five million new cars a year, long-range bombers, the highest standard of living in the world, and a million new rifles.
Admittedly, somewhere you have to cut and choose.
But guns are hardware, and man, not hardware, is the ultimate weapon. In 1950 there were not enough men, either — less than 600,000 to carry worldwide responsibilities, including recruiting; for service in the ranks has never been on the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s preferred list of occupations.
T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness, 1963.
