Old Ways of War

Last week the conservative military textbooks, the old ways of war, caught up with the U.S. and with a daring champion of new ways of war, Douglas MacArthur. He had beaten the textbooks again & again; last week they beat him.

His defeat contained many of the elements of his great September victory. Then he was holding the Pusan perimeter with a force that was numerically inferior to the enemy. When talk of an impending offensive began to buzz around, military analysts called it rash. They said that MacArthur did not have nearly as many men as he needed.

According to the textbooks that was correct. MacArthur, however, relying on the combination of sea-air-ground power (as he had in scores of battles from New Guinea to Luzon) confounded the conservatives with the brilliant Inchon landing, the capture of Seoul and the consequent collapse of the North Korean army. In North Korea, he tried what he called a "massive compression envelopment" against greatly superior forces. He undoubtedly underestimated the size and the quality of the Chinese troops. Their lack of tanks, artillery and transport looked like fatal weakness to exponents of current U.S. military doctrines. Specifically, MacArthur overestimated the effect of his air power on the Chinese troops.

The enveloped Chinese broke through the envelopment. Their thrust was so wide, deep and strong that his inadequate reserves (grouped around the 1st Cavalry Division) could not check it. MacArthur's center was gone and the Reds lapped around the two inside flanks of his divided army, pushing both wings back toward the sea.

His forces on the west began pulling back early, but on the east, four days seem to have elapsed between the Red breakthrough and the order to the X Corps (7th and 3rd Divisions and the marines) to try to fight their way to the coast. At week's end, it seemed doubtful that the U.N. forces could get out of Korea without a very severe mauling.

The bold new ways of war had given the U.S. so many victories that they could not be abandoned because of one defeat, however calamitous. But the new ways of war were not infallible, would not always be a substitute for massed, trained manpower.

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