A description of selected small unit actions, written primarily to acquaint junior officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted soldiers with combat experiences in Korea.

The history of the 24th Infantry regiment in Korea is a difficult one, both for the veterans of the unit & for the Army. This book tells both what happened to the 24th Infantry, & why it happened. The Army must be aware of the corrosive effects of segregation & the racial prejudices that accompanied it. The consequences of the system crippled the trust & mutual confidence so necessary among the soldiers & leaders of combat units & weakened the bonds that held the 24th together, producing profound effects on the battlefield. Tables, maps & illustrations.

“Passing the Test completes the story of ground combat during the Chinese offensives of 1951 . . . This is combat history at its best.” —Lt. General Julius W. Becton, Jr. (Ret.) For US and UN soldiers fighting the Korean War, the spring of 1951 was brutal. The troops faced a tough and determined foe under challenging conditions. The Chinese Spring Offensive of 1951 exemplified the hardships of the war, as the UN forces struggled with the Chinese troops over Line Kansas, a phase line north of the 38th parallel, in a conflict that led to the war’s final stalemate. Passing the Test: Combat in Korea, April–June 1951 explores the UN responses to the offensive in detail, looking closely at combat from the perspectives of platoons, squads, and the men themselves. Editors William T. Bowers and John T. Greenwood emphasize the tactical operations on the front lines and examine US and UN strategy, as well as the operations of the Communist Chinese and North Korean forces. They employ a variety of sources, including interviews conducted by US Army historians within hours or days of combat, unit journals, and after-action reports, to deliver a comprehensive narrative of the offensive and its battles. Passing the Test highlights the experiences of individual soldiers, providing unique insights into the chaos, perseverance, and heroism of war. The interviews offer a firsthand account that is untainted by nostalgia and later literature, illuminating the events that unfolded on the battlefields of Korea. “Serves as a monument to the fighting spirit of the individual soldier.” —Army

One of the cherished beliefs of those who do not know is that the logistical services of the Army lead a safe and boring life, even in the combat zone. The Combat Engineers and the Signal Corps began to cloud this belief in World War I. The Medical Corps, the Chemical Corps and the Bomb Disposal squads of the Ordnance Corps began to demand respect as dangerous assignments in World War II. In Korea all the services won the right to be shot at. War becomes increasingly a matter of logistics. The thin cutting edge of infantry, armor and artillery still contains the larger proportion of heroes, dead and alive, but these combat arms depend more and more on the services to provide them not only with the traditional beans and bullets, but with gasoline, transportation, medical service, concealing smoke, communications equipment, graves registration, potable water, laundry service—the list is endless. Here are some true accounts that tell how the services fulfilled their missions in a tough and dirty little war. There are tales of devotion to duty that match those of any combat arm. There are roles of technical proficiency combined with the foresight to seize opportunities as they arose. But because these are true stories, there are descriptions of actions whose only value is to indicate what should not be done, what lock of preparedness means in lives and dollars. Here is an honest book—one that had to be honest because it was conceived to tell the whole truth, for the education of our army. This is a book for every soldier, every youth who might become a soldier, every parent of every such youth. He succeeded, and the fruit of his labors is here.

Explains how the Chinese Army drove MacArthur and the U.N. forces out of North Korea, and tells why the Chinese decided to intervene.

Men. The 24th Infantry Regiment has received bad press from many historians of the Korean conflict, who claim that the black soldiers and noncommissioned officers were undisciplined and even cowardly in battle. Rishell's moving account, based on his own experiences, describes his men as no better or worse than any other infantrymen in the first year in Korea. His troops fought well from July, 1950, to May, 1951, in nearly constant front-line action against the North.

This paper focuses on the formulation of doctrine since World War II. In no comparable period in history have the dimensions of the battlefield been so altered by rapid technological changes. The need for the tactical doctrines of the Army to remain correspondingly abreast of these changes is thus more pressing than ever before. Future conflicts are not likely to develop in the leisurely fashions of the past where tactical doctrines could be refined on the battlefield itself. It is, therefore, imperative that we apprehend future problems with as much accuracy as possible. One means of doing so is to pay particular attention to the business of how the Army's doctrine has developed historically, with a view to improving methods of future development.