Clinging to Creature Comforts

I’ve recently finished reading John Toland’s In Mortal Combat, what a book! It carves a unique narrative-style account of the Korean War from memoirs and other first-hand sources. I’m struck by a letter from General Matthew Ridgeway to then Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army General J. Lawton Collins.

There is a marked absence of [the] vaunted American resourcefulness. We still cling to creature comforts which have to be carried by truck. We, therefore, stick to the roads. Our infantry has largely lost the capabilities of their honored forefathers in American military annals.… Unless you have seen this terrain, not only from the air, but from a jeep, it will be hard to visualize the difficulty of operations. Yet the other fellow manages and he seems never to lack ammunition, the heaviest load in his logistics stream, though, of course, he uses impressed human carriers and every local form of transportation—oxen, camels, ponies and two-wheel carts. The evil genius behind all this is some type of [E]astern mind and whether Russian or Chinese, we shall inevitably find many of the same methods applied on major scales, if and when we confront the S-l in battle. I would say, let’s go! Let’s wake up the American people, lest it be too late!

This observation that behind all of our technology, we’ve perhaps lost a certain level of grit we once had, is as true now as it was in 1950.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of We were winning when I was there.