Combat Ready?: The Eighth U.S. Army on the Eve of the Korean War (Volume 129)

Williams-Ford Texas A&M University Military History Series #129

by Thomas E. Hanson

In the decades since the “forgotten war” in Korea, conventional wisdom has held that the Eighth Army consisted largely of poorly trained, undisciplined troops who fled in terror from the onslaught of the Communist forces. Now, military historian Thomas E. Hanson argues that the generalizations historians and fellow soldiers have used regarding these troops do little justice to the tens of thousands of soldiers who worked to make themselves and their army ready for war.

In Hanson's careful study of combat preparedness in the Eighth Army from 1949 to the outbreak of hostilities in 1950, he concedes that the U.S. soldiers sent to Korea suffered gaps in their professional preparation, from missing and broken equipment to unevenly trained leaders at every level of command. But after a year of progressive, focused, and developmental collective training—based largely on the lessons of combat in World War II—these soldiers expected to defeat the Communist enemy.
By recognizing the constraints under which the Eighth Army operated, Hanson asserts that scholars and soldiers will be able to discard what Douglas Macarthur called the "pernicious myth" of the Eighth Army's professional, physical, and moral ineffectiveness.
 

Genres: Military Fiction, History, Military History

232 pages, Hardcover

First published February 25, 2010

Reviews

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hanson argues that the U.S. Eighth Army did their best with the supplies, missions and staffing policies handed to them by the Truman presidency and budget to prepare their soldiers and commands for combat. After WW2, basic training dropped from 14 weeks to 7, and most training was supposed to be taught at the command level. Frequent rotations of staff, meant that squads, companies and battalions had to train and retrain, and retrain.

Why I started this book: Recently added to Audible, this book has been on my Professional Reading list for a while.

Why I finished it: Pretty dense about all the units and the training that they did in 1947-1950. Hanson is very firm in detailing and showcasing that it wasn't lack of effort or desire that thwarted the Army's readiness for the Korean War. It was politics, budgets and staffing policies that ensure meager supplies, large turn over and the need to retrain the basics. I was also fascinated at all the various bases mentioned that are no longer used in Japan.

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This concise little monograph is mostly an attempt to reframe the image of the American ground force that was thrown in the way of the North Korean invasion of 1950, in that the author details for how over a year out U.S. 8th Army worked hard to achieve a semblance of combat readiness after the the post-WWII crash demobilization of the military. This is despite the distractions of occupation duty in Japan and the joint failures of the Truman Administration and the U.S. Army itself to establish a force structure it could live with and properly maintain. The efforts detailed are actually quite impressive (considering the poverty of resources and manpower) and reflect well on the theater command; particularly Gen. William Walker.

Originally written: March 9, 2018.

[Aaron Bright · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book had some really great nuggets of advice on leadership, for me it was tough to get through. I'm sure those that enjoy this kind of historical reading will be fully engrossed. However, I was not.

[Gary Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book attempts to dispel the common narrative that Soldiers of the Eighth U.S. Army were untrained and soft due to prolonged occupation duties following WWII. Commanders felt the residual effects of occupation duty and post-WWII policies leading up to the Korean War, but they made considerable efforts to prepare their units for war in the final 12-18 months leading up to the North Korean Army's attack into South Korea on June 25, 1950.

This book does not attempt to single out any one aspect of the U.S. Army's struggles early in that conflict, but it shares a number of challenges related to post-WWII policies: personnel challenges related to the rapid WWII drawdown, supply and maintenance challenges related to the hasty dismantling of supply depots in the Pacific Theater, collective training challenges exacerbated by personnel turbulence, and a lack of suitable training areas in Japan.

This book details the Eighth Army's efforts across the lenses of personnel, supply, maintenance, and training readiness. It contains three introductory chapters, four chapters that detail the training and personnel efforts of four regiments - the 27th Infantry Regiment (25th Infantry Division), 31st Infantry Regiment (7th Infantry Division), 19th Infantry Regiment (24th Infantry Division), and the 8th Cavalry Regiment (1st Cavalry Division) - and finishes with a concluding chapter. [The four regimental chapters provide a good history for anyone assigned to these units.] Admittedly, those four chapters start to get repetitive after reading the first two, but they provide good support for the books thesis, which is that commanders in these units made significant efforts to prepare their units for the Korean War.

Some of the Eighth Army's successful initiatives include:
1. Operation Round-Up, which refurbished equipment and supplies from throughout the Pacific/Far East Command to issue them to under-equipped units (often using Japanese Labor so U.S. Soldiers could focus on training).
2. Training Directives Number Four (published April 1949) and Five, which shifted the emphasis from occupation duties to directed training gates for 1949 and 1950.
3. Divisions created provisional training companies to train newly assigned Soldiers on basic Soldier skills prior to sending them forward to operational regiments and companies. They created leadership schools as well, to train Soldiers with NCO potential and newly promoted NCOs. [The book argues that HQ Army Ground Forces (AGF) and Office, Chief of Army Field Forces (OCAFF) did not adequately prepare new Soldiers for their initial assignments and units had to assume training responsibility for both basic Soldier skills and collective proficiency.]
4. The Constant Flow Program, which cross-leveled personnel across the divisions and transformed the 1st Cavalry Division from a square to a triangular division when it deactivated the 12th Cavalry Regiment. This program helped units with aggregate manning levels, but it caused some additional personnel turbulence; a challenge to collective training.