[100 Days Mr Arrogant 2004 Korean
Berry Spitsberg
First Lieutenant Charles B. (Brad) Smith was at Schofield Barracks on 7 December 1941, when the 24th Infantry Division was the major Army ground unit Aca,!A"first to fightAca,!A? and fire upon the Japanese in World War II. After the warAca,!a,,cs end the Division was assigned to occupation duty in Japan.
On 25 June 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea. President Harry Truman ordered American forces to intercede. General Douglas MacArthur believed showing the U.S. Flag and making an Aca,!A"arrogant display of strengthAca,!A? would intimidate the North Koreans.
On 30 June, Brad Smith, by then a lieutenant-colonel in the 24th, began assembling a task force to go to Korea. Aca,!A"Task Force SmithAca,!A? comprised two understrength rifle companies of the 21st Infantry Regiment and some recoilless rifle, mortar, and bazooka teams, soon reinforced by part of the 52nd Field Artillery Battalion. Its 540 men included many combat veterans among its officers and NCOs, while the rest of the soldiers were mostly postwar enlistees. Now they and the 24th would be Aca,!A"first to fightAca,!A? in Korea.
On the 5th of July, SmithAca,!a,,cs men were overwhelmed by North Korean tanks and infantry and had to fight their way back in small groups. For the next fifteen days, they and other elements of the 24th continued a fighting withdrawal to gain time for reinforcements to secure the port of Pusan. Desperate actions leading back to the Kum River line slowed but did not stop the enemy. By 18 July, General Walton Walker, commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, was assembling a cohesive defensive perimeter around Pusan, but he needed the 24th Division to delay the enemy for two more days. Major General William Dean accordingly set up a last ditch defense at Taejon. His men fought heroically, and gave Walker the time he needed, but at a terrible price. The division lost 1150 men out of 4000 engaged there, including General Dean, who later won a Medal of Honor for his actions, including leading bazooka teams to attack enemy tanks, and evading capture for thirty-six days.
Task Force Smith and the rest of the 24th division were unprepared, poorly supplied, and suffered from the lethargy of occupation duty. FailureAca,!a,,cs bitter lessons were not forgotten. General Gordon R. Sullivan, Army Chief of Staff, 1991-1995, decreed there would be Aca,!A"no more Task Force Smiths.Aca,!A? In the 1980s the Army developed the Rapid Deployment Force, preparing it to go anywhere in the world to face any threat. For many years 24th Infantry Division was the heavy mechanized component of that force.
No blame for Task Force SmithAca,!a,,cs failure was attributed to LTC Smith or the 24th. Yet the cloud of Task Force Smith still remained -- until finally dispelled in 1990-91. As the second American division to deploy to Saudi Arabia in the late summer of 1990 during Operation Desert Shield, the 24th faced circumstances reminiscent of Korea forty years earlier: a relatively small and isolated forward force facing a numerous and potentially powerful enemy. This time, however, American forces were stronger, and the enemy did not attack them. Half a year later, the 24th and other American and coalition forces launched their own attack to liberate Kuwait. Operation Desert Storm was a triumphant moment for the 24th Infantry Division, the US Army -- and the Soldiers of that division who had gallantly faced overwhelming forces over 40 years earlier. Their sacrifices were not in vain, and their legacy still resonates within the US Army.
"The proper role of government, however, is that of partner with the farmer -- never his master. By every possible means we must develop and promote that partnership -- to the end that agriculture may continue to be a sound, enduring foundation for our economy and that farm living may be a profitable and satisfying experience."
Special Message to the Congress on Agriculture, 1/9/56
"There is -- in world affairs -- a steady course to be followed between an assertion of strength that is truculent and a confession of helplessness that is cowardly."
State of the Union Address, 2/2/53
"Thank goodness, many years ago, I had a preceptor, for whom my admiration has never died, and he had a favorite saying, one that I trust I try to live by. It was: always take your job seriously, never yourself."
Address at the New England "Forward to '54" Dinner, Boston, Massachusetts, 9/21/53
"I was raised in a little town of which most of you have never heard. But in the West it is a famous place. It is called Abilene, Kansas. We had as our marshal for a long time a man named Wild Bill Hickok. If you don't know anything about him, read your Westerns more. Now that town had a code, and I was raised as a boy to prize that code. It was: meet anyone face to face with whom you disagree. You could not sneak up on him from behind, or do any damage to him, without suffering the penalty of an outraged citizenry. If you met him face to face and took the same risks he did, you could get away with almost anything, as long as the bullet was in the front."
Remarks Upon Receiving America's Democratic Legacy Award at a B'nai B'rith Dinner in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of the Anti-Defamation League, 11/23/53
"Well, it is very important, and the great idea of setting up an organism is so as to defeat the domino result. When, each standing alone, one falls, it has the effect on the next, and finally the whole row is down. You are trying, through a unifying influence, to build that row of dominoes so they can stand the fall of one, if necessary."
The President's News Conference of 5/12/54
"When I was a boy, I was one of six in my family. We had a quarrel daily as to who could go up and do the chore of bringing the groceries down home. They had a practice then, in grocery stores, that I understand growing efficiency has eliminated -- always hoping that the grocer would say you can have one of the dried prunes out of the barrel over there. But better than that was the dill pickle jar that you could dive into, sometimes arm deep almost, and try to get one. I understand that they are not that accommodating anymore; we have got too efficient. When you go around picking things off the shelf, you pay for them. These, you understand, were free. That meant a lot to young boys to whom a nickel looked about as big as a wheel on a farm wagon."
Remarks at the Convention of the National Association of Retail Grocers, 6/16/54
"Now I realize that on any particular decision a very great amount of heat can be generated. But I do say this: life is not made up of just one decision here, or another one there. It is the total of the decisions that you make in your daily lives with respect to politics, to your family, to your environment, to the people about you. Government has to do that same thing. It is only in the mass that finally philosophy really emerges."
Remarks at Luncheon Meeting of the Republican National Committee and the Republican National Finance Committee, 2/17/55
"Today there is a great ideological struggle going on in the world. One side upholds what it calls the materialistic dialectic. Denying the existence of spiritual values, it maintains that man responds only to materialistic influences and consequently he is nothing. He is an educated animal and is useful only as he serves the ambitions -- desires -- of a ruling clique; though they try to make this finer-sounding than that, because they say their dictatorship is that of the proletariat, meaning that they rule in the people's name -- for the people. Now, on our side, we recognize right away that man is not merely an animal, that his life and his ambitions have at the bottom a foundation of spiritual values."
Remarks at 11th Annual Washington Conference of the Advertising Council, 3/22/55
"One American put it this way: 'Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith'."
Address at the Cow Palace on Accepting the Nomination of the Republican National Convention, 8/23/56
"I believe when you are in any contest you should work like there is always to the very last minute a chance to lose it. This is battle, this is politics, this is anything. So I just see no excuse if you believe anything enough for not putting your whole heart into it. It is what I do."
The President's News Conference of 9/27/56
"I belong to a family of boys who were raised in meager circumstances in central Kansas, and every one of us earned our way as we went along, and it never occurred to us that we were poor, but we were."
Television Broadcast: "The People Ask the President," 10/12/56
"The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers. I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds."
Address, National Education Association, Washington, DC, 4/4/57
"I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
Remarks at the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference, 11/14/57
"But these calculations overlook the decisive element: what counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight -- it's the size of the fight in the dog."
Excerpts From Remarks at Republican National Committee Breakfast, 1/31/58
"But finally, there is one other quality I would mention among these that I believe will fit you for difficult and important posts. This is a healthy and lively sense of humor."
Address at U. S. Naval Academy Commencement, 6/4/58
"A famous Frenchman once said, 'War has become far too important to entrust to the generals.' Today, business, I think, should be saying: 'Politics have become far too important to entrust to the politicians'."
Remarks, Business Council, Hot Springs, Virginia, 10/20/62
"Censorship, in my opinion, is a stupid and shallow way of approaching the solution to any problem. Though sometimes necessary, as witness a professional and technical secret that may have a bearing upon the welfare and very safety of this country, we should be very careful in the way we apply it, because in censorship always lurks the very great danger of working to the disadvantage of the American nation."
Associated Press luncheon, New York, New York, 4/24/50