Honor, Courage, and the Korean War with Stephen Vogel | BRI Scholar Talks

0:04 For this episode of Scholar Talks,

0:06 we will be discussing the honor, courage, and virtue of the U.S.

0:11 Army in the Battle of the Chosen Reservoir during the Korean War.

0:15 Our guest, Steve Vogel, is an author, historian,

0:18 and former military correspondent for The Washington Post.

0:22 His books include The Pentagon, The Pentagon,

0:26 also Through the Perilous Fight Six Weeks That Saved the Nation,

0:31 and a task force called Faith The Untold Story of the U.S.

0:35 Army Soldiers Who Fought for Survival at Charleston Reservoir

0:40 and Honor Back Home, which is the topic of today’s discussion.

0:45 I am Tony Williams, senior fellow at the Bill of Rights Institute,

0:48 and I want to welcome you to another episode of Scholar Talks in Our America.

0:53 250 series.

0:55 Steve, I want to thank you very much for joining me.

0:57 Well, thank you, Tony, it’s an honor to be with you.

1:00 I mean,

1:01 come on, can you, write a more compelling book than this?

1:05 I mean, I was riveted, every single page.

1:09 Just the story.

1:12 The men involved, all of,

1:15 their their, great struggle,

1:18 during these, was it 4 or 5, six days of battle?

1:22 Just an incredible story.

1:23 And you just bring it alive.

1:25 Almost like no other book I’ve read.

1:27 I’ve read. It’s an incredible cook.

1:30 Well, thank you, Tony, I appreciate that.

1:31 Thanks.

1:32 All right.

1:33 So so let’s go ahead and dive in, then.

1:36 So who was Don Faith and the men of Task force Faith, as you call it?

1:41 And why did you want to tell their story?

1:44 Yeah.

1:45 So, Don Faith was an Army lieutenant colonel.

1:48 We’re talking about 1950, the Korean War.

1:52 So we’re five years out of World War two, and,

1:55 South Korea has, has been invaded by the North.

1:59 And, all of a sudden, the United States is involved in a ground war in Asia.

2:05 And Don Faith,

2:07 Lieutenant Colonel is in charge of a small army task force

2:12 that, had been put up into North Korea,

2:16 along with, larger 10th Corps force of Marines and Army

2:21 soldiers and South Korean forces that were,

2:25 trying to drive the North Korean army back,

2:28 you know, and eventually try to destroy it and unify Korea.

2:32 And, Task Force faith was a,

2:36 in those days, you often had a an Army task force,

2:39 which could be usually maybe a, regimental,

2:42 enforced team or RCT,

2:46 and they would sometimes, name the task force after the commander.

2:50 And Don Faith was thrust into command of this

2:54 task force when, during the course of the battle, his

2:57 his commander, Alan McLean, was taken, captured, and never, never seen again. So,

3:04 the the

3:05 reason I chose the name Task Force Base,

3:08 apart from the fact that that was sort of

3:10 how was known informally was also just some of the,

3:14 the faith that these men had to have,

3:16 in their leader in themselves,

3:19 because of the situation that they found themselves in, where they were.

3:23 You know, as you read, thrust into really one of the most harrowing,

3:28 and unbelievable

3:30 military battles in American history and,

3:35 that’s a lot of people have forgotten about today.

3:37 And the reason I wanted to do this story,

3:41 was, as, as you mentioned, I was a reporter for the Washington Post.

3:45 So back at the 50th anniversary of the Korean War,

3:49 you know, I, I thought I knew a fair amount about military history.

3:53 I certainly was familiar with chosen as just one of these legendary moments

3:57 in Marine Corps history, because it was the Marines were were up there at Chosen

4:03 Reservoir, in this unbelievable cold,

4:07 surrounded by a much larger Chinese force.

4:09 But they managed to to fight their way out.

4:12 And that’s where you get the famous, you know, retreat.

4:14 Hell, we’re just attacking in a different direction, and it’s just a legendary.

4:18 And, moment in Marine Corps history and one of the proudest and justifiably so.

4:23 But I didn’t really know anything about the fact that the Army

4:26 had been there, too, and somebody had told me about them.

4:29 Hey, you know,

4:29 there was an Army unit that was up there that had kind of a different, fate.

4:34 And, I found some of these soldiers, some of them, veterans, you know,

4:38 who were living in, in Maryland DC area and went out and interviewed some of them.

4:44 And, you know, I was just amazed at what I heard,

4:47 just the the harrowing battle that they went through,

4:51 you know, the terrible casualties they took

4:53 and then the fact that they were afterwards

4:56 labeled as cowards because their unit, task force,

4:59 faith, was largely destroyed and these stories came out,

5:04 basically accusing them of cowardice, saying they’d drop their weapons and run.

5:09 They were they were not given the

5:10 the Presidential Unit Citation that the Marine Corps was given,

5:14 which they had earned, of course.

5:17 So I, I did the story back then, 25 years ago

5:21 and always thought that, you know, I really want to write a book

5:24 about these guys because this story, you know, needs to be known.

5:28 And, you know, I finally took it, got it done.

5:31 It took me a 25 years because we’re now at the 75th anniversary.

5:35 So I, I’m a slow worker, I guess, but, yeah, it’s a it’s an amazing story.

5:40 I’m happy to talk about it with you.

5:42 Great great.

5:43 Yeah. Just just in time for the 75th. Right.

5:45 And I think

5:46 I think it goes a long way, if I may say so, toward sort of rehabilitating,

5:51 sort of the, their great courage,

5:54 and, and role in the battle.

5:57 So, so thinking about sort of the context, the war you mentioned,

6:00 sort of the start of the Korean War, if you can kind of maybe provide

6:03 a little bit of historical background, you know, how did the the U.S.

6:07 Army find itself in the Truce and Reservoir?

6:11 Yeah.

6:12 So the, the first six months, of this war

6:16 were just an unbelievable seesaw,

6:19 dramatic swings back and forth, when,

6:23 the North Koreans invaded in, late June in 1950, they,

6:27 they rolled over the South Korean forces quickly captured Seoul.

6:33 President Harry Truman decided pretty quickly that the United States,

6:37 along with the United Nations, should intervene. And,

6:42 MacArthur, Douglas MacArthur, the great American hero from World War II

6:45 who was still the Allied commander, for the occupation forces in Japan.

6:50 And, you know, he sends forces in first.

6:54 He tries, you know, naval and air power, and he tells Truman,

6:57 we’re going to need ground forces.

6:59 So, before you know it, some of the occupation, Army

7:04 forces, four divisions that were based in Germany are being sent.

7:09 I’m sorry, based in Japan,

7:12 are being sent into, South Korea, but they’re they’re initially rolled

7:17 over to the North Koreans, were equipped with Soviet tanks and,

7:22 you know, weaponry.

7:23 And they’re they’re well trained.

7:25 And the the American forces had been an occupation force.

7:28 They weren’t, they weren’t really on a war footing at all.

7:31 A lot of their equipment was bad.

7:34 And, they were being pushed back to the, the very toenail

7:39 of South Korea and in danger of being pushed into the sea.

7:42 And then MacArthur comes up with just one of the great bold strokes

7:47 that he was so fond of, where he puts together a landing force,

7:52 that lands at Incheon, near Seoul,

7:55 well behind the North Korean lines. And,

7:59 this includes the soldiers of of Task Force Faith.

8:02 They’re part of the seventh Division.

8:05 And they, along with the first Marine Division, make up this force.

8:09 And the Inchon succeeded beyond most people’s dreams.

8:13 Everybody but MacArthur and,

8:16 the North Korean army was suddenly in full retreat.

8:19 And the the aims of the war quickly expanded.

8:23 You know, initially it just been to let’s let’s, put the border back

8:28 where it was and, you know, restore the South Korean government.

8:31 And by virtue of the success they were having,

8:36 Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff back in Washington

8:39 approved expanding the aims of the, the, the, the war

8:43 to unify Korea, destroy the North Korean army. And,

8:48 and that’s how Task Force Faith, the seventh Division,

8:51 the first Marine Division, which made up 10th Corps under General Ned

8:55 Almond, are sent into the north,

8:58 another amphibious landing, and they’re starting to push up towards

9:01 the Manchurian border and chosen Reservoir,

9:05 was in the highlands of North Korea, very, very rugged,

9:11 land, and starting to approach the Chinese border.

9:14 And really, with only one road in and,

9:19 as, as the, American forces are pushing north,

9:23 there’s, there are warnings from China coming in saying, you know, basically,

9:28 the U.S.

9:28 forces should not be in North Korea.

9:31 Some warnings are issued.

9:33 MacArthur pretty much ignored, some, along with,

9:37 Truman and, the Joint Chiefs.

9:40 So there’s some concern, but they they decide that,

9:43 well, the Chinese aren’t going to do anything big.

9:46 And that that proved to be wrong.

9:49 And as, as, the Army Task force faith

9:53 was rushed up to, chosen to to guard the Marines flank.

9:57 And just when that happened,

10:00 the Chinese intervened in a major way.

10:03 They had they had basically infiltrated two enormous forces into North Korea.

10:09 And, one of them attacks the Eighth Army

10:12 to the west and quickly has that in retreat.

10:16 And then the other force of, 150,000

10:20 Chinese troops, some of the best they have surround

10:23 the Marines and the Army, who are on both sides of the reservoir,

10:27 the small army force on the east side and the larger

10:31 marine, force on the on the west side.

10:33 And that’s, that kind of sets the stage for, for the battle of Chosen Reservoir.

10:39 Right.

10:39 And what are they, outnumbered, what, 10 to 1 or 12 to 1 or something like that?

10:43 It it changes and it gets worse as it gets along.

10:47 The, the Chinese, outnumbered,

10:51 generally at least five to 6 to 1 at the start of the battle,

10:56 the army forces on the east side, because they were much

10:59 smaller, were outnumbered by at least 6 to 1.

11:02 And then,

11:04 as the battle continues,

11:06 the Chinese decide to devote more force to trying to destroy the army.

11:10 And so by the, the the, the latter part of the battle,

11:13 the last two days, nights, they’re outnumbered 9 to 1.

11:17 Just, unbelievable odds.

11:21 And they’re also running out of ammunition.

11:24 You know, as I describe in the book, there’s there’s all kinds of,

11:28 complications that, that they’re facing.

11:31 Right.

11:31 And, and fighting in the snow and, and ten -2030 and -30 degree weather.

11:37 I mean, it’s just horrifying.

11:39 Yeah.

11:40 That’s one of the the the things that, the people,

11:44 I think if they, if they stop to think about what that must have been like

11:50 essentially fighting in 20 below zero in these guys,

11:53 on both sides, I’m including the Chinese and also the South Koreans

11:57 fighting alongside the Americans.

12:00 We’re not equipped for this kind of warfare.

12:02 They had a lot of them had, you know, summer type uniforms.

12:07 They didn’t have warm sleeping bags.

12:10 The Army guys in particular had been rushed up there.

12:14 So haphazardly by that, and,

12:18 that, they hadn’t had time to, to bring up a lot of their warm

12:22 weather gear, you know, warming tents and these guys,

12:27 not only are they freezing themselves, their their weapons are freezing up.

12:32 Their guns won’t fire in that type of cold.

12:34 Their,

12:36 their food is is frozen.

12:39 Their water is frozen. The water in their canteens is frozen.

12:41 So these guys are fighting without any types of sustenance.

12:44 So they are,

12:46 you know, when you think about Valley Forge or the battle of the bulge,

12:51 which were some of the, you know, most horrendous conditions,

12:55 cold conditions that American forces have ever, faced?

12:59 This was even worse.

13:01 The cold was even greater. There.

13:03 And, yeah, they paid a price.

13:06 Everybody did.

13:06 A lot of soldiers of Americans, Chinese and Koreans froze to death.

13:11 Marines as well.

13:13 Right? Right.

13:14 Well, well, in that vein, so you describe

13:17 in just, amazingly vivid detail, just the 4 or 5 days of some of the most

13:22 relentless, most harrowing fighting against Chinese forces

13:26 and then a fighting break out in retreat,

13:30 or at least the other way.

13:33 Can you give the viewers a sense of the intense fighting they endured

13:36 and how they survived it? I mean, I’m

13:39 going to encourage our viewers, you have to read the book, but it can.

13:42 You just give us some sense of of of the fighting that hap.

13:46 Sure.

13:47 Yeah yeah.

13:48 The, the, the Chinese, army.

13:51 This is a force that had, just a year earlier,

13:56 you know, completed the Chinese Civil War.

13:58 And, you know, Mao’s People’s Republic of China

14:01 had just been, a place for about a year at this point.

14:04 So these guys are hardened fighters.

14:07 They’ve, you know, been fighting the, the Civil War

14:10 for, you know, 17 years.

14:13 And, their commanders were very, skilled.

14:16 And they had, you know,

14:19 tried and true techniques where they would,

14:22 you know, attack an enemy head on, but then would send another force

14:26 behind around the, the enemy force to cut them off.

14:31 They were really expert at that.

14:33 They were also expert night fighters.

14:35 So they were almost exclusively attacking at chosen at night.

14:40 Not entirely, but mostly at night, because,

14:44 the Americans had airpower.

14:46 Marine corsairs, were, were flying

14:50 close air support.

14:51 And it was very close, on both sides of the reservoir.

14:54 They they provided a lot for the,

14:57 the American forces.

14:58 So it was,

15:00 at the same time, the combat was unbelievably close,

15:04 particularly at night,

15:05 you know, because the Chinese would try to infiltrate through the American lines

15:09 and then they would send, you know, people sometimes use

15:12 the term human wave attacks, and this isn’t really what was going on.

15:15 It wasn’t just, you know, a bunch of people suddenly rushing forward.

15:18 They would send more like a, you know, a battering column of men.

15:23 At one point, a point, you know, maybe between two companies or, point

15:27 they’d identified as being, weak for, for whatever reason

15:30 and try to break through the line and just relentlessly attack.

15:35 And they they suffered terrible casualties doing that.

15:38 But their manpower advantage was so great that they, you know, they could often

15:43 succeed in breaking through and that, you know, that caused a lot of,

15:47 chaos and casualties and confusion, friendly fire, everything.

15:52 Because this is a lot is happening at night. And,

15:56 you know, they’re not,

15:58 they’re not using lights or, fires or anything like that because,

16:03 they don’t want to give away their position.

16:04 So it’s it’s a real, terrifying

16:07 experience for, for soldiers on all sides of it.

16:11 And as mentioned earlier, they are also, running low on ammunition.

16:17 The Americans had a really,

16:20 great weapon.

16:21 Defensive weapon, you know, that was, anti-aircraft guns,

16:25 which they weren’t using for against aircraft.

16:28 They were actually using them against the attacking Chinese.

16:31 And they were really terribly effective,

16:34 but they were running low on that type of ammunition.

16:38 And the there’s so much chaos, going on in their,

16:42 their communications, we should mention we’re extremely bad.

16:46 Both, radios within the, the American, excuse me, the American units

16:51 as well as with, very little communication with higher headquarters.

16:56 And so they are running low on ammunition.

16:58 They need,

17:00 more of these,

17:03 40 millimeter shells for the, the anti-aircraft weapons.

17:07 But the, those, shells, when they’re dropped or dropped

17:12 somewhere else where some American, Army tanks were, and vice versa.

17:16 So they’re not getting the right stuff.

17:17 They don’t get the ammunition they need.

17:20 They’re also running out of small arms fire.

17:22 Weapons, and ammunitions,

17:25 you name it, they were running out of even maybe

17:28 one of the most horrible things was the medical supplies.

17:32 They, a medical convoy had been ambushed

17:34 by the Chinese on its way up to to join with task Force base and,

17:40 their medical supplies because of the number of casualties

17:43 they were suffering, were almost entirely exhausted.

17:49 Really, the the doctors, the medics were just,

17:54 you know, using anything they could to try to to, treat these wounds.

17:58 But, you know, there were a lot of soldiers who bled or froze

18:02 to death because, you know, because of the conditions,

18:05 you know, it was just just a terrible situation.

18:10 Yeah. It’s, just chilling. Chilling.

18:12 But but it’s such, such an important read, in the book. So.

18:16 So you mentioned this a bit.

18:19 So, digging in a little bit more.

18:21 So at times it seemed like the higher ups

18:24 did not really know what was going on on the ground.

18:28 And later the Marines seem to get all the credit.

18:31 And then, you know, Task Force faith was sort of discredited, as you mentioned.

18:35 Can you talk about why some of these controversies happened?

18:40 Yeah.

18:41 And a lot of it was that that lack of communication,

18:45 and part of it was, you know, the historic rivalry between the the Army

18:49 and the Marines, there was already kind of bad blood between them.

18:54 You know,

18:55 General Opie Smith, commander of the first Marine Division,

18:59 you know, he really resented being under

19:01 under, Army General Net Arm and the commander of 10th Corps.

19:05 And they were, you know, Ormond was trying to drive them forward.

19:08 And Smith was a much more cautious commander who wanted to make sure

19:12 that he had

19:14 his his supply lines secure, his,

19:18 you know, enough ammunition, on hand,

19:21 which proved to be invaluable in saving the Marines.

19:25 Chosen, by the way.

19:26 And Armond was, a lot less cautious and than he wanted to,

19:30 you know, do more of the pattern, like, you know, just attacks,

19:34 across the country and then that country, that type of terrain in North

19:38 Korea didn’t really lend itself to that.

19:40 And in fact, the tanks that the, the Americans had,

19:44 you know, weren’t able to, to reach them

19:46 because of that terrain and the slippery, icy roads in the mountains,

19:50 they were able to to get far enough to, to help. So,

19:55 that communication,

19:57 led to sort of an ignorance of what Task

20:00 Force Faith had been facing,

20:03 in terms of both the numbers of, of troops

20:07 that they were facing, you know, the conditions that they were fighting in.

20:10 And then, you know, as the the breakout,

20:14 as a disaster on the Army side,

20:17 the Marines down at the southern tip of Chosen Resort, who, you know,

20:22 they just see these, these stragglers coming in and in terrible condition.

20:27 And, you know, 90% plus of the army officers had been killed or captured.

20:33 So there were very few people who could tell them,

20:36 you know, what the heck happened to you guys?

20:38 What what was going on?

20:40 And so, you know, there were some

20:44 these rumors are, that, oh, well, the the officers abandoned them

20:48 and just drove back to safety in the jeeps, which was ridiculous.

20:51 There wasn’t a single vehicle

20:52 that got out of, from the east side of the reservoir and that this,

20:58 Navy chaplain who was with the Marines,

21:01 there were these stories that.

21:02 Oh, the the soldiers are feigning injuries so they can get evacuated on, on planes.

21:07 A lot of stuff that, you know, where sometimes there might have been a colonel.

21:11 You know, I’m not.

21:12 Of course, there were some soldiers who, you know, who collapsed and

21:16 did anything they could to get out, but, it kind of,

21:19 that overshadowed the, you know, the heroism

21:22 that the great majority of these men showed. So,

21:28 the the Marine Corps story becomes very quickly

21:31 the stuff of legend, just because of, you know, you had the correspondents

21:35 who were able to join them at Hikaru and,

21:38 you know, accompany them on this fighting retreat out.

21:40 And the, you know, the Marines, the first Marine Division.

21:43 It was one of the great performances of any military unit in American history.

21:47 And that you contrast that with, you know, the remains of of the Army task force

21:52 who were much worse shape. And so,

21:55 there soon like there’s a movie, you know,

21:57 Hollywood is making a movie about, the Marines

22:00 within a month of after the battle, you know, it’s called retreat hell.

22:04 And, you know, the Army guys are sort of shunted aside

22:08 and then the Navy chaplain makes these, public accusations of cowardice.

22:13 And this this was carried in newspapers and magazines around the country.

22:17 And, you know, those guys suffered such terrible casualties.

22:21 I mean, a lot of them,

22:23 you know, they never really had a chance to defend themselves, in many ways.

22:28 So that became kind of the the common narrative of chosen,

22:33 in a lot of histories that were written in subsequent years

22:36 where the Marines were were heroes and the Army guys, they folded it.

22:42 So that that was kind of the common narrative.

22:44 Yeah.

22:45 You know, so but and Charlie, final question.

22:49 How did the soldiers of Task Force fate, demonstrate honor

22:54 and courage and virtue, during this battle?

22:58 The chosen reservoir during the Korean War.

23:01 You know,

23:01 there were so many individual acts of heroism,

23:05 that mostly unrecorded, you know, because a

23:09 so many of them, we’re talking 85% casualties.

23:12 A lot of them were taken prisoner,

23:15 that,

23:17 most of them went unrecorded, but there were so many,

23:21 acts that I was able to find,

23:23 you know, just from witness accounts of soldiers sacrificing themselves, to,

23:29 to rescue, a wounded buddy to, you know, try to,

23:34 you know, drag people to safety.

23:37 Once they’d been overrun by the Chinese,

23:40 soldiers who were, you know, fighting for their buddy,

23:44 they did feel like they’d been abandoned, by the.

23:48 You know, the fourth night, because in many ways, they had been,

23:52 and yet they continued to fight

23:55 as long as humanly possible.

23:58 They,

24:00 you know, I think they in some of the,

24:03 things they did in,

24:05 trying to, prevent the Chinese from,

24:09 destroying the convoy of 600 wounded soldiers that they and

24:13 the rest of the soldiers were trying to get out.

24:16 You know, where they just, you know, ran up, hill 1221, in the face of,

24:20 you know, heavy, heavy Chinese fire, you know, up the snow,

24:24 you know, soldiers all around them, being shot and killed, but

24:29 still going forward, I mean, some of the the heroism,

24:33 I think one of the officers,

24:36 later said, you know, the heroism

24:39 was was so commonplace that, you know, it almost went unnoticed.

24:44 It was just, you know, everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people doing

24:49 whatever they could to get, their buddies out and,

24:54 many of them dying in the effort.

24:56 Oh. Right.

24:57 Reminds me of the, what is a quote on,

25:01 uncommon valor was a common virtue, on the.

25:04 Yeah.

25:04 You know, more memorial. Yeah, absolutely.

25:06 So I want to thank you very much for coming in and sharing this incredible

25:12 story of courage and resilience in the Korean War as we celebrate America.

25:17 250 my pleasure.

25:19 Thanks very much, Tony.

25:21 And thank you all for joining us on this episode

25:24 of Scholar Talks and the America to 50 series.

25:27 Please check out the other videos on our channel and click subscribe.