How O.P. Smith (UC Berkeley class of 1916) saved 15,000 Marines

good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is Philip Spieth I am an emeritus professor of genetics at Berkley I'm also the chair of the Military Officers Education Committee which has the job of making sure that all our professors of naval science aerospace science and military science are academically qualified and because of that they always are and we have a good strong ROTC program here welcome to the second of the 2011 Nimitz lectures if any of you were not here on Monday and I'm not ever heard in the miss lecture before I strongly recommend that you look at the program it's got a good description of the Nimitz lecture ship that started back in 1985 what it's all about and where it's going the one thing I might make a statement about those changed in the last couple years in fact I think this is the third year we switched to trying to pick a Nimitz lecturer by doing a smart thing and this actually came from a marine lieutenant colonel originally we asked the Midshipmen and cadets to have a committee and to provide to my committee which serves as an image lectureship committee half a dozen or so possible speakers for them as lectureship and they then make a presentation to us PowerPoint slides and all this good stuff and that is how we go and that has been my strongest selling point in inviting an image lecturer the fact that the students initiated nomination is worth a lot of brownie points and I am very pleased with the results we've seen over the last few years including this year this your speaker how many people were not here on Tuesday night a few all right for you that we're not here on Tuesday night I'm not going to repeat a lot of the introduction so I again refer you to the program which has the details about you know Pulitzer Prizes and things like that our speaker is Thomas Rix he's a journalist by profession Wall Street Journal Washington Post many years many Wars covered he's an author my students can identify he's a blogger and even mentioned the Faculty Club at Berkeley on his blog yesterday which I was pleased to see because he was talking to somebody and he is also a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security a basically think-tank back in Washington he spends about half a year he tells us up in Maine or he can go and hide and paddle a kayak to get over having written for you know 6 a.m. till 3 p.m. or something like that this is where he does his writing the rest of his times in Washington with the blog for those of us who are members of the military officers Education Committee or otherwise Berkeley faculty members in ball with ROTC we have a variety of things that motivate our interest in the ROTC program one of those things is the concept of leadership in particular it's our ROTC programs at Berkeley that are one of the few probably not the only but close to it one of the few places that actually teach leadership to students on the campus and we are all very proud of that fact aware of that fact and it's an important thing to us and I think in terms of our speaker tonight it's fair to say that what I've learned about him is that leadership tends to be what his books and writings are all about making of the core one of his first books is about leadership that's exercised by that greatest of all the Marine Corps institutions the drill instructor more recently his book fiasco and gamble are about leadership for better or for worse at the highest levels of military command the book he's currently working on he says is about generals American modern American generals in his first lecture two nights ago he asked the question of why were the American generals of World War two more successful than their successors that have followed them since then his thesis on that was that it was because of the leadership of general Marshall as a general of the General Corps tonight he's going to change gears a little bit and talk about one of the great Marine Corps generals of recent times who faced rather different circumstances than what Marshalls based but the common denominator I think is going to prove to be leadership the title for tonight's lecture is how Opie Smith UC Berkley class of 1916 saved 15,000 Marines please welcome Tom Rix thank you all for coming tonight I want to begin it by asking one question before you heard about this lecture how many people here actually had ever heard of Opie Smith about five or so okay well my mission tonight is to make you remember who this guy is because he really is what am I hear us Opie Smith class of 1916 is almost forgotten today it's a shame Marines talk a lot about the Chosin Reservoir campaign it really is one of the great moments in marine history but ask a marine who was in command there as I did recently in my office talking to every lieutenant lieutenant currently said I don't know chesty puller ray Davis I know it was Opie Smith oliver prince smith who even in the marine corps is largely forgotten the decisions he made there as i promised in the title saved depending on how you count them 10,000 to 15,000 marines I would say I want to talk about him tonight because he provides a fascinating case of what good generalship looks like I've talked a lot about bad generalship getting generals fired he is an example probably I think in American history perhaps the greatest example of what a good division commander does especially in an extraordinarily difficult circumstance when your commanders his commanders above him were wrong and we're pushing him to do the wrong thing in fact interestingly Opie Smith is a lot like Chester Nimitz the namesake for this series both men were born in Texas lived in California at various points in their lives both were associated with Berkley and both like the bay area so much that they lived out their days here in fact also in the 1920s both lived in the same apartment building in San Pedro California you can look it up the sunset court apartments general Smith knew in light I was reading an oral history he gave it to the Marine Corps historian and he said of Nimitz he was a very fine gentleman and I admired him greatly that's high praise coming from Smith there's very few other people he really praises that highly in his oral history the Korean War began in mid 1950 in the fall of 1950 Opie Smith was operating in northeastern Korea what is now North Korea and in Korea Opie Smith had the misfortune to report to someone very different from Chester Nimitz his immediate superior was a corps commander named Ned almond who would turn reported to General Douglas MacArthur Ned almond worshipped MacArthur almost as much as Douglas MacArthur did and in late 1950 MacArthur was dead wrong about the key fact of the Korean War he believed that the Chinese government would not send the Chinese military into Korea he assured President Truman of this at a meeting on Wake Island in October 1950 we have the transcript of the meeting MacArthur later said that was too sneaky to take transcripts of his promises at that meeting not only did MacArthur say the Chinese would not intervene he said if they did the Chinese would be wiped out by American aircraft it would be the greatest slaughter he told the president but as I will discuss now that is not what happened Opie Smith was not in MacArthur man he was a marine I talked a lot about George Marshall the other night and interestingly Opie Smith was more of a George Marshall man than were the army generals to whom he reported there was a fundamental split in the army at this time the McArthur men and the Marshall men MacArthur and Marshall did not have much time for each other at one point in George Marshall and MacArthur were meeting and MacArthur referred to his staff and Marshall said Douglas you don't have a staff you have a court interesting side fact here is that the Medal of Honor the Douglas MacArthur so desperately wanted because his father had had one also was given to Marshall but to MacArthur by Marshall for very cynical political reasons Marshall figured that since MacArthur had abandoned his troops or left had been ordered to flee ordered to leave his troops at Bataan and go to Australia that there might be some objections among the Allies about putting this guy in charge so he said let's give him a Medal of Honor it'll make it look like we think he's really brave so they did he wrote the citation himself Marshall and Smith were similar men they were quiet in reserved you can almost see the quiet in this guy's face he's not a demonstrative man he was a pipe smoking Christian Scientist when he was seven years old his father a lawyer and Texas died his widowed mother took him to California she raised him here in poverty Opie Smith arrived in Berkeley in 1912 I guess it was or minting 1911 he had $5 in his pocket when he got here he worked his way through college here as a gardener keep that in mind the next time you walk past a gardener here what Amarjit greatest generals tilled that same soil he graduated in 1916 and he joined the Marines now I said he's a marshal man and I mean that not just a sort of personality of an actual experience in the early 1930s unusually for a Marine officer at the time Smith attended the Army's infantry school at Fort Benning which was then run a lieutenant colonel named Georgia marshal Smith there was in his classmates were instructed and the use of machine guns by Omar Bradley and then tactics by Joseph Stilwell Smith maintained his reserve through World War two people tend to forget about the Battle of Peleliu Chester Nimitz later said that it was probably the bloodiest amphibious landing in American history the Marines who did the assault suffered a 40% casualty rate by the way if you've never read a terrific book one of my two or three all-time favorite men was with the old breed by EB sledge is having a lot of it's about Peleliu Smith was the deputy commander for the Peleliu landing on the night before the landing which he knew would be tough he diverted himself by reading a biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes I just admire that to have the ability to put aside your worries and read about Oliver Wendell Holmes so in the fall of 1950 Opie Smith is commanding the 1st Marine Division he was ordered to attack North and go all the way to the Chinese border to the Yellow River now there's a saying that the essence of leadership is what a general what the essence of generalship is what a general does before the fight begins that is certainly the case with Opie Smith the chosen he made four important decisions in the beginning before the campaign begins all four decisions grew out of his profound distrust of his own commanders almond and MacArthur another little-noticed aspect of generalship is the task of understanding the people to whom you report every general reports to someone else either another general or at the highest level the president of Prime Minister the leader the king a good commander will think about what did that what is that person above me and you any you go into the military should think about that what are the concerns of the person to whom I'm reporting what are their equities what do they want what are their skills what are their shortcomings MacArthur was exceedingly poor at this for example at one point in 1944 lecturing Franklin Roosevelt on politics this is like an amateur chess player lecturing a grandmaster on politics s MacArthur also was not very good at understanding the temper of Harry Truman a significant aspect of the Chosun campaign is that Smith began it by soberly assessing the combat skills of lieutenant general almond almond had a good record in World War one where he commanded a machine gun battalion it'll lousy record and World War two as a division commander asked about the failings of the division he commanded he blamed it on his soldiers never a good sign in this case almond a Virginian with a deep streak of racism in him blamed it on his soldiers he commanded a segregated black division he said black Americans just didn't want to fight for this country so the four decisions Smith made first he insisted on consolidating his regiments so they could support each other and explain this I was going to draw a little diagram here this red represents the Chosun reservoir by the way I'm using the term chose and cuz that's what the US military Maps at the time it's not actually what the Korean name is it's the Japanese colonial name here's the west side of the reservoir here's the east side the initial troop layout was that Smith was told to put his troops on either side he had two regiments off ahead to put one regiment on one side one on the other side Smith insisted on consolidating his force getting the fifth Marines out from the east side of the reservoir and bringing them around the east side of the reservoir was then turned over the army with disastrous consequences for the army regiment second Smith made it his top priority to have his engineers scrape out two air strips one here and what about here Markham like this this was an incredibly important move it meant that when things got rough he could fly in supplies and reinforcements they could fly out his wounded and not have to try to haul them out ultimately 4,300 wounded were flowing out of this airstrip in a five-day period almond told him to forget about the airstrip why would you want an airstrip he said to him as Smith was trying to get it built Smith said in case I have casualties almond said you're not gonna have any casualties don't worry about it almond by the way in his oral history given many years later to the Army lies about this and it's I found the evidence for the lie because you can go back and read Smith's letters to his wife at the time in which he's saying a month before he goes in I'm not heading north without some air scripts here he had told his wife he's gonna do it almond later claims it was his idea and he had to make Smith do it I do not believe almond third looking at this layout Smith decided to locate himself right there you always want to have a sense of what the key point of action is Smith decided that was the place to be he understood that if the Marines held up here but lost this key Junction this is the only Road to the sea if you lose this it doesn't matter if you win up here because you just cut off an isolated you've got a hold this Junction you've got to hold this airstrip so on the morning of November 28th 1950 he left his rear headquarters and flew to that Junction by helicopter that spot he ordered would be held at all cost which is not an idle term it meant we die here if we have to but we're not we can't give that up almond flew in to visit Smith here looked at the map here up to the yaalo another 100 miles or so and said and I quote because we have records of these meetings quote we've got to go barreling up that road Smith bit his tongue waited till almond left and then turn to his staff consent and I quote we're not going anywhere until I get this division together in the airfield built you wanted to consolidate his forces remember Smith also wrote a personal letter to the Commandant of the Marine Corps a very unusual step several national laws of command above him he put his on ease on the record to the Commandant in his letter he writes quote our left flank is wide open I have little confidence in the tactical judgment of ten corps tank or being almond or in the realism of their planning there was a continual splitting up of units and assignment of missions which puts them out on a limb in fact at this point Smith's Marines had a gap of 80 miles on their left to the next American unit and 120 miles on their right they were out here alone just the Marines on the west side and that one army regiment up on the east side Smith so distrusted almonds understanding of combat and of the situation that he made his forth decision expecting that despite the order to attack that he would be forced to retreat he established along the road back to the c3 fortified base camps what about one day's march apart loaded with supplies and well-protected by small infantry detachments Smith's distrust vomit is well known to historians less recognized is that he also distrusted his own Marine Corps chain of command though to a lesser degree and with these actions these four decisions he took he was bucking his own chain of command the Marines had a commandant at the beginning of November he had met with Lieutenant General Mills Shepherd chief of the Marines in the Pacific you told him his concerns about almond shepherd told him to get with the program Shepherd said and I'm quoting from the oral history Shepherd gave to the Marine Corps I talked to him and I said Opie play the game don't get so mad with almond he's trying to do the right thing Shepherd believed by the way correctly that he would be the next Commandant of the Marine Corps and I think he probably did not want to rock the boat much at this point and make it appear like he could not get along with the army also old boy networks Shepard was Aviana VMI man Virginia Military Institute as was net almond and then Alma's chief of staff Clarke Ruffner even as almond was telling them to charge north of the Yalu the Marines were collecting disturbing intelligence the marine intelligence officer by the way this is why having people posted overseas can come back and be handy the marine intelligence officer for the division spoke Chinese and has lived in China they were noticing that the children the Korean kids who had been begging that for candy constantly had disappeared not to be seen deer were moving down off the ridges like they were being displaced by something when Smith learned that the Chinese had left a bridge intact over a chasm he was alarmed because he believed it must be part of an enemy plan to lure the Marines northward toward the island when another Army General was visiting and a junior intelligence opera's were asked to brief on what they thought the Chinese were doing the the American intelligence officer said sir all I can tell you is there is a shitload of Chinese in those mountains since no it's not a technical term but I think it described at the Marines we're beginning to feel at this point we now know the Marines the suspicions about the Chinese strategy are exactly correct over the last 20 years interestingly the Chinese have released a lot of documentation about the Korean War and a lot of it's been translated we now know that on November 13th 1950 about two weeks before the Chosun campaign began marshal Peng do i and I forgive me for my pronunciation the who was the top Chinese commander in the war had called together his subordinate commanders for a campaign planning meeting he said at that meeting quote we will employ a strategy of luring the enemy forces into our internal lines and wiping them out one by one job one that he put before his subordinate commanders was wiping out the Marine force this was explicitly decided that what they wanted to do was send a message to Uncle Sam we can take out the Marines we can take out anybody you don't want to do this get out of North Korea Chinese commanders were told to quote encircle and exterminate the US Marines around the reservoir this is how the battle began on the night of November 27th the two marine regiments isolated at the northwest side of the regiment you see it says 5th Marines 7th Marines around.you Downey on the west side there they were attacked by two Chinese divisions each of those red arrows up there represents a Chinese division so you've got two regiments being attacked by two divisions then look down to the left where you see another People's Liberation Army regiment coming in it to cut their lines and you see below that a fourth division is coming in to hagaru-ri this key junction point and another one is coming in above koduri to try to cut their that is a whole lot of Chinese coming after this one Marine Division on the east side over there you see there's the final Chinese division attacking the army units 132 infantry 331 basically a regiment sized Task Force on the east side of the reservoir put in there to replace the fifth Marines who Smith had moved over to the west side of the reservoir I also just want you to know one other thing on this map if you look on the left side can you see where Fox Company is yeah it says f7 marine right above signal knee that little green that little blue circle there that's important the confidence of the Marines to the initial wave of attacks was really striking and infectious between the troops between the Marines the Marines were very self-confident about this they knew they had lavish and accurate close air support lined up army soldiers and Marines had chosen both recall in interviews looking down from him from ridges and waving to the Corsair pilots below them that's close air support when you can look down and see the pilot coming through at night when those planes could not operate Smith had ordered a lot of fast artillery standing by preset to fire on the draws the little valleys in which the Chinese were most likely to launch night attacks Smith called up chesty puller who's down at koto re and asked him how he was doing and puller who was not a joker responded with no irony fine we have enemy contact on all sides combat is an extremely difficult thing to go through I actually think it's almost a form of walking collective psychosis one of the hardest places to be in this whole thing was that little blue circle where you see Fox Company F seven Marines the Sabbath Marines Fox Company they've been dropped off to try to hold that key pass you see there it was a reinforced company I think is about 220 Marines they were surrounded on their little hillside above the pass for five days they were resupplied by air while they hailed off enemy attacks they built barricades of boxes of trash and of Chinese corpses frozen corpses he was so cold that wounds remain pink instead of turning brown and coagulating they pink and red because the blood froze before it could coagulate the Marines also killed the wounded Chinese around them made no bones about it and subsequent interviews it was so icy one morning the one marine recalled the milk had been heated up it was poured over cereal and bowls by the time he sat down the milk at frozen there's about 24 below zero at night and windy one marine in this fight not at Fox Company but in another fight discovered his foot was aching it had been so cold he couldn't really feel his feet and he was hobbling along and a medic said sit down I want to look at your foot that took off his boot looked up and said and I'm quoting you dumb you're shot he had a bullet in his foot and hadn't known it he just thought it was aching a bit Fox Company 220 Marines over the course of five days killed 450 Chinese soldiers most of them just at an arm's length away the Marines you'd omni made two attempts to move down and relieve Fox Company through the road but there were so many Chinese roadblocks thrown up on these divisions coming in you know it's not just those two arrows what you get is the divisions breaking down and establishing a series of roadblocks that both attempts to move south and open up the past and risk rescue fox were thwarted but they were being supplied they were getting food ammunition medicine in by air finally and one of the really striking moments another great great Marine general ray Davis at that point a battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel was told to try to attempt to relieve Fox Company by going overland and so he goes east of that blue line and takes his battalion over several icy ridges through knee-deep snow some of it some so steep that they after have to pull themselves up by roots up the hills and they March for 24 hours and come in and attack the besieging Chinese forces from behind and come in and we leave Fox Company that then enables them others to come down the road once the Chinese force has been driven off and open up the road for the retreat that was the next step Almond agreed yeah you know after a couple of days he said this attack thing isn't working so well here he agreed that it was time for the Marines to retreat so the two marine regiments up on that west side of the reservoir had to get from their outpost down to the junction where Smith and his airstrip were waiting it took these two regiments the fifth Marines in the 7th Marines 4 days and 3 nights to fight their way 14 miles to Hagaru 7 Chinese Road walks big sophisticated heavy roadblocks blocked the way moving carefully and slowly which is the way you want to retreat the two regiments brought with them 1500 casualties 600 of them stretcher cases as well as their dead first they stacked all their dead like cordwood in their trucks when the trucks were full they tied more dead across the hoods of their vehicles finally when the hoods were covered they hung the dead Marines they were bringing out from the barrels of their artillery pieces they fought their way as I said four days and three nights they marched in the Hagaru finally when Smith was sitting outside having a quiet talk with his chief of staff and it was snowing it was 90 so it was actually quite lovely it's quiet for a moment and he said he heard a bunch of voices singing and this is the great thing if you will excuse the phrase marine macho these guys have been through hell right they march in the Hagaru singing the Marine Corps hymn in formation it was not inevitable that they would be able to make it out remember look at all those red arrows each one each one of those boxes as a Marine Division with orders to get these cars and wipe them out how do we know it was not inevitable they would not make it out well see those little blue circles on the east side of the reservoir that's the army unit regimental combat team up there they were in unfortunate position they didn't have a general leading them and they were an army unit so they're more beholden to general almond it was more necessary for them to follow those orders general almond flew up there to that middle little blue squiggle and that represents an isolated unit and tried to talk they put this point the regimental commander was dead he'd been replaced by a lieutenant colonel named our faith and he said to faith what faith said look up I think I'm facing a full Chinese division that's what it feels like and he was right so he's vastly outnumbered and almond flew in and said to him and I'm quoting again don't let a bunch of Chinese laundrymen stop you never was such a racist advice so ill-advised eventually this army regiment like the Marines on the West tried to retreat but almond had been put in command of a battalion having never commanded a battalion accompany a platoon or a squad in combat in fact he had never been in a battalion Atun company or squad he had spent World War two as a generals aide he had been promoted to lieutenant colonel while having never been in a combat unit except at the division level as a generals aide and I think this was just criminal he looked good but he wasn't very good and I'm always wary and scared of the military that looks good but doesn't know how to be good when I say didn't ought to be good what didn't know he didn't know how to organize a retreat he didn't know how to protect your flanks in a retreat he didn't know what worked in a retreat which is bringing your firepower with you all the firepower you have he didn't even we know this for a fact he didn't even use the radios he had available to talk to the marine air over sit over his head to ask them about what was down the road all along his line of retreat they would have told him just nobody asked the word that never came through the army regiment tried to retreat faith was killed of the 3,300 men who were on the east side of the reservoir ninety percent were lost killed wounded missing or taken prisoner the 10% who survived and got out did so generally by walking out onto the ice of the reservoir which is frozen solid of course and walking south and a little no an act of heroism a lieutenant colonel named Olin Bell marine Lieutenant Colonel a support guys a transport officer and actually a former minor league pitcher took some jeeps but put stretchers behind them and drove out on the ice to police up the wounded the walking wounded coming in did this for two full days and finally actually went to this spot where the convoy had come to it the retreating army convoy had come to its end and had been torched by surrounding Chinese troops and actually counted the dead and so on interestingly the Chinese never fired on him at this point I think they kind of knew what he was doing we're just coming in trying to figure out he was seeing if there were any survivors up there there were not so at this point finally Smith has consolidated his forces here he's brought down two regiments here he has I think a battalion - here not a whole lot of troops and he's got the survivors off the east side the next step was to walk at the bottom of the why to the sea about 40 miles away on December 6 Smith had about 10,000 Marines and a few hundred army troops at that this wide Junction they began their march south this was planned even more carefully than an attack people always talk about the Marines saying retreat hell we're just attacking in another direction it's not just boasting because normally when you retreat you're just running away from the enemy here they were running into the enemy they still had these divisions down across their line of retreat and this was the only Road out so the Chinese knew they'd have to come through there he had a thousand trucks tanks and other vehicles in his column but he ordered that no one walked except drivers radio men medics and the badly wounded just cuz you had a bullet in you did not mean you were badly wounded by the way everyone what else would walk for two reasons first the better to stay warm people were freezing to death and second to ward off enemy attacks to stay alert to stay be up on the ridges Smith actually said he was quite confident coming on it never had any doubt about it and his explanation was this this is actually an explanation he wrote for the Marines this was a very powerful force it was well supplied with the ammunition fuel and rations was powerfully supported by marine and carrier-based air possessed organically artillery tanks in the whole gamut of infantry weapons and had dedicated officers and men to carry the fight to the enemy and that's what they did it took 39 hours to fight their way takoto Rhee in the course of this fight that's 11 miles from our guru Rita koto read they suffered an additional 600 casualties there were nine roadblocks almost one a mile once you were a mile out of camp and then a mile before Co Theresa basically every mile a major roadblock Smith again said let's move carefully and slowly we're not going to believe behind Marines we're going to attack and clear spots before we try to move through this will not be a route general almond and by this point you get the sense I don't really like this guy general almond doesn't like that he flies over the Marines of where it says hell fire Valley he flies over them and he's outraged to see the Marines stopped and moving slowly he learns his aircraft at Kota re and braces Smith and lectures him on the need to move rapidly at this point I think Smith demonstrated his greatest self-control he did not strangle almond the codori Smith collects the third of his regiments which it was their keep keeping that area open in another airstrip there they finally have a very weird battle they're in a raging snowstorm a blizzard one marine wrote quote the tracers were weird streaks of orange that flew out flew out at us from blinding snow clouds a firefight in a blizzard you can't even see the enemy all you know as you're getting shot at by these bullets coming through ultimately of course the Marines made it out they got to see they got on Navy ships at Opie Smith not made these hard decisions and stuck to them decisions which likely risked his career I believe at least 10,000 Marines and probably 15,000 all told would have been wiped out it's not just my opinions the opinion of some of the other generals who were there like Ridgeway I think of what he did it would have been easy to simply follow his orders but he believed his orders were wrong if he had simply followed them done the easy thing this probably would have been the greatest military disaster in our history 10,000 Marines lost that's Little Bighorn times 50 think of the possible implications of that it's not just embarrassing it's not just bad it's not just a military disaster if the 1st Marine Division had been wiped out the course of the Korean War probably would have been far different possible the United States would have withdrawn from the peninsula and become isolationist more likely the Douglas MacArthur would have prevailed in his desire to use nuclear weapons he had asked for the use of 36 nuclear weapons against the Chinese along the Yalu neither prospect is very appealing the Chinese have suffered great losses out of the total of CHOP 12 Chinese divisions that ultimately were thrown into the attack there were 25,000 Chinese killed 12,000 wounded and tens of thousands more frostbitten one of the really sad aspects of this fight is one of the divisions Chinese divisions thrown in have been a tropical fighting division I believe based on Hainan Island they were they had sneakers and cotton jackets and they literally were freezing to death where they sat even when they moved ray Davis and talks about coming across a Chinese soldier in a foxhole you can see his assault he's alive in his eyes because his eyes are moving but he can't move he's basically frozen and he did freeze to death the Chinese forces thrown into chosen it were withdrawn from fighting until March of the following year so in tactical terms this ultimately was a defeat for the Chinese the Marines will tell you we want it chosen yeah they did not achieve their their mission the Chinese but it was a strategic victory for the Chinese remember the Communist Chinese government only taken over a year earlier in the year after taking power they were confronting post-world War two this great power the United States and they forced it to retreat I think this was really China's stepping onto the world stage you know these guys weren't just gonna you know don't believe Chiang kai-shek that these guys can be knocked right off here they were taking on American forces and prevailing by the way I just want to mention because the Chinese did not know about the consolidation they were surprised to find the army troops there they didn't realize that army regimen had been put up there either there's a good argument to be made that the disastrous situation that the army and it had there slowed down that division coming down the east side of the reservoir enough so that the Marines were able to get their regiments down because holiday at hagaru-ri so I actually think the army sacrifice here may have been the thing that enabled Smith to prevail and it's worth keeping that in mind especially because the official Marine histories don't say it one military historian called Smith's performance at shows and quote perhaps the most brilliant divisional feat of arms in American history I find it really difficult to just disagree with that assessment he's a really striking officer bopi Smith's career after that point was unremarkable he retired from the Marines in 1955 he lived quietly near here for another 22 years and he died on Christmas Day 1977 please join me in applauding him I believe we are open for questions for a while do we have some mics going around med Shipman well who's got a big voice yeah there's some mics here yes please speak up loud question is what kind of reputation did Ned Allman have before the campaign basically a tough not very smart but a tough commander interestingly Matthew Ridgway who comes in not long after this it becomes the American commander in the Korean War on the ground fired a whole bunch of generals he did not fire almond he said the only problem I've ever had as a corps an army commander his generals who aren't aggressive enough and the one thing you know about almond is that he'll always be aggressive enough to which another general famously or another officer famously responded you can always count on almond to be aggressive when the situation warrants it you can also count on him to be aggressive in the situation does not warrant it but Ridgeway said that's not bad in fact it goes back to something I was talking about earlier today Winston Churchill's saying that the one thing he would never fire General for was being too aggressive that they might lose people but aggression and warfare consistent determined persistent aggression is a terrific quality to have personally I actually think almond was not all that I mean I'm really struck reading his oral histories he just really comes off to me as a big jerk yes please considering the next comment at a little Shepherd's advice to Oliver Smith which Smith did not take and subsequently Smith's career which was rather bland after his career as the first range mission commanding officer did that have any reflection I mean Shepherd's in other words the Smith recognized at that point in time at all not really can in fact his daughter I think his adopted daughter wrote a biography of him which says there actually was a little bit of bitterness about this that Smith commented to her one day later on in a retirement he said you know they invite a lot of officers to come to Quantico to lecture at the command of Staff College unchosen he said they've even invited officers who weren't there to lecture on chosen he said they never invited me and in fact I think he was somewhat distant from the Marine Corps in his retirement in his oral history they that he's asked what has been your relationship with the Marine Corps since he retired he says not much he and Shepard had been kind of rivals and I think he thought Shepard played Harry Truman better and that that was why Shepard became the Commandant there was he's such a gentleman I wouldn't call it bitter but I think there was a bit of puzzlement that he was not more recognized even within the Marine Corps and certainly outside the Marine Corps for his achievement it Chosin Reservoir I hope to change that with this book yes please but he was totally prepared and totally General Patton was a piece of work I really like Patton I've read a lot of Patton I've read his Diaries I do wonder whether he was technically insane I'm sure that's what he said I'm trying to think yeah paten Patton was a great commander he really was a great combat commander sorry yeah I'm not a Montgomery fan and I want to get into defending or attacking Montgomery what was really striking me if you read Eisenhower's World War 2 memoir crusade in Europe by the way I wasn't always memoirs I think it very good they're not much read these days but he's a couple of books of memoirs as presidential memoirs are kind of stinkers but is what war - memoir in the later one I think they did he didn't after the presidency I think it's called stories I tell the friends are both actually very enjoyable books in the world war two men walk crusade in Europe he dams Patton with faint praise and basically says he preserved him for one thing when people were saying Marshall said look you could fire him or not it's up to you he said I need him for the pursuit he never says he's great office of the Germans said after the war the American general they feared most was Patton there's a series of interviews with German generals I preserved him for that pursuit they knew that eventually at some point the war they would be chasing the Germans across Europe and that's what he wanted Patton for but he actually did not have a high opinion of Patton in some other forms Patton did not do very well what's the city of Metz I guess when he bangs into Metz a big Citadel near the German border in France he just beat his head against it for like weeks and another I mean when Patton sends a task force deep into German territory to rescue son-in-law nor the POWs the task force got wiped out Patton made a lot of mistakes but yeah if you're not making mistakes you aren't trying that's what they say in skiing if you're not falling down you're not skiing hard enough a lot of what I knew about Armour Patton trained him I can do a lot of other things a friend walked in Eisenhower's apartment in the late 1920s in Washington DC and said what are you reading all these books about northern France in Belgium for and Ike said because that's where the next World Wars gonna be fought the night he sent the next great Wars to be fought thank you for coming today lieutenant Hutchins you talked a lot about Opie Smith strategy in his relationship with Arnold what about his leadership of his own men and his subordinate commanders did you come across any of that in his research and did they always get along and what did he say to them when Arnold's telling them hey we're gonna hard charge and he says no guys were not going to do that yeah it's a good question actually because the record is a little bit mixed he had three regimental commanders puller his most aggressive one is down south down here up in the northwest he has Ray Murray and Homer Lichtenberg listen Burke you'd much like he thought listen Burke was a grouser and he thought about relieving him but decided against it he said just says in his oral history listen brings a bellyache err he's always complaining about stuff he didn't like him that much in an interesting problem also here's the interesting sort of situation he's got the two regiments up here right he puts neither one in command he actually says you guys are up there you figure it out and they actually had command of the two regiments by basically handshake and cooperation they discussed together what to do but neither one was in command which generally would be seen as a terrific mistake I think because he understood his subordinates and also because if you had to put one in command OB litsen burg he didn't a risky move one that goes against the conventional wisdom have one person in charge in this case it worked quite well so I think know what the rules are but also think about when to break them is the lesson there he also knew that Ray Davis was up there and Brett Davis was a terrific battalion commander and that he be used well the reason by the way typically in a division you'd have an assistant division commander around and as it happened that the assistant division commander had been sent home to United States because his father at just thought he was very close to him and so he had no with the assistant division commander present and so we just left the two regiments up there without one in command and it worked out for him he had a very good chief of staff by the way into the Alpha Bowser if I recall and he and Bowser worked very closely together talked constantly but most of all what I would leave with you with on the command relationship is the terrific confidence that he expressed and that permeated down to the lowest level you'd see comments that he made would be repeated you see it in memoirs people would pass down into the company level oh yeah general Smith came through yesterday and he said he said this his battalion commanders were very good about constantly moving and talking to the Troops one of my favorite moments is as they're finishing the retreat with the bridges at cote de re where they actually had to airdrop bridges in it's still very cold but they know they've made it out and Ray Davis runs into a young marine he knows and they have the most casual conversation hey how's it going great you know colonel and they just talked for a few minutes you know this is after just two weeks of the sheerest hell oh yeah the young Marines knows things great and they actually as they come down out of the mountains they're up in this sort of plateau by the time they get down to the coastal plains it's almost tropical to them it's about 40 degrees about above zero instead of 24 below it's kind of funny to watch them as they come out a lot of it they're still getting shot at a lot all the trucks because the Chinese have been trained very well to shoot at drivers and at the engines so all the trucks have a lot of holes and their radiators and stuff they found that these huge tootsie rolls that they had were perfect for plugging the holes so the Marines trucks are coming down with like 20 the radiator sound like 22 Tirol jammed into them they also fed it warmed up the tootsie rolls that were the frozen and so the Marines would walk up and pull them out and eat them ray Davis recalls when he finally gets to the sea and something that people tend to ignore both here than when they got to the sea Smith had huge vats of coffee stew and pancakes and he made sure that this was waiting for these guys as they came in because he knew that when they would be arriving and again down here ray Davis says and his own memoirs when he finally got to the sea he realized he really hadn't eaten much in about four days except tootsie rolls he had seven plates of pancakes yes please you mentioned general Marshall a number of times even if I'm from beatnik Berkeley I had taken a number of military science courses when I went here and one of the things they were very proud of about general Marshall is that he came from ROTC he wasn't an academy person also I think it was he was not ROTC he was VMI right it was commissioned out of the Virginia Military Institute right so in effect he was a ROTC not unlike most people hear an interesting story that they told about him at the time famous conversation between him and Roosevelt where they were planning the Normandy invasion they were almost done with it and it was a question who was going to lead the invasion mm no one had been assigned to that yet and so the president told Marshall you know you've been the architect the assumption was that Marshall would that have been the goin assumption of the British and the American staffs yeah well right the president tells Marshall you know you've been the architect of all of our success and no one else could have done these things except you and if you want to go and do this I'll give you leave to go you know and the subtext is kind of it if he does this he's going to become famous if he doesn't he's going to be forgotten and the president says you and I know the name of the chief of staff in World War one but no one else does and so if you want to go and lead this invasion I'll give you leave to go and then he paused and he said but I really must say that I couldn't sleep at night if you were not here in the capital with me and you can see Marshalls great devotion to his duty and that he stayed in the Capitol thinking that he would be forgotten and of course if Harry Truman hadn't insisted on making him Secretary of State he probably would have been forgotten anyway my question to you as a military historian is do you know the name of the chief of staff in the World War one I'd like to present this to all of you as a gift from the ROTC department ah 1975 I actually read his memoirs and they're awful Peyton March from what I understand looking it up it was a guy named James D hardboard no hard words it's hired by the equipment because there's a huge fights between the army chief of staff and and Pershing in Europe partly over Pershing relieving so many officers general officers great at trivia when you were relieved as an officer not as a general but just they relieved a couple of thousand field grade officers officers who were relieved were sent to a Chateau named wat Biello is I think it's propelled but the Americans hacked it up and they pronounced it bluey and that's the origin of the expression going bluey really they say hey what happened company commander he went Blooey this is the other thing I wanted to ask you let's thank our speaker we want have a reception in the Faculty Club and he's good for about 15 minutes over there because we've working pretty hard this week I hope he's enjoyed it I have enormous I wanna thank everybody but we need to do two more things why does it give him another round of applause the second the second is to let the Navy that this really is the naval science show have the last word captain well I want to thank everyone for participating in the Nimitz lecture series obviously but I'd also like to thank especially mr. Tom Rix for for gracing us with his his his presence and also his very informative lectures over the last couple of days not only did he spend time here giving a couple lectures to the public and everywhere else but he also spent some fantastic time with our cadets and Midshipmen this afternoon some you know good opportunity for them to ask some pretty thought-provoking questions I thought today and then also we had lunch with him you know throughout the course of the week so mister ricks thank you very very much for being our 27th lecture and we'd like to present you with a plaque on behalf of the cadets and Midshipmen to you for for being our lecture this week you

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Length: 64min 42sec (3882 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 22 2011