Word: 2nd
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...2nd account for roughly one-third of the 42,000 U.S. servicemen still stationed in South Korea. Strung out across 159 installations, exposed to sub-zero cold and vulnerable to blitz attack from crack North Korean units, they are probably the toughest, best-trained and most combat-ready American forces anywhere. They are also among the most important politically. On the one hand, Pyongyang views them as the major obstacle to its unifying the Korean peninsula under Communist rule; on the other, Seoul sees the American presence (although reduced considerably from its 1953 peak of 325,000 men) as both...
...2nd Division is no longer assigned to guard an extended sector of the 150-mile-long DMZ, as it was until 1971 Still, its location near the oft-used mountain passes at the western edge of the truce line means that its units would be engulfed by the fighting almost immediately if North Korea ever invaded in strength. Moreover, the 2nd Division is counted on to provide a strategic reserve for I Corps Group-a 175,000-man force that includes twelve ROK (Republic of Korea) divisions as well as the U.S. 2nd...
...keep U.S. combat forces in top shape, Stilwell has ordered an exhausting training regimen, and no outfit has carried his orders further than the 2nd Division. Each quarter, every unit of the 2nd undergoes two weeks of training in night fighting; the men sleep during the day and maneuver at night in rugged terrain to accustom themselves to the night attacks employed by Communist troops 25 years ago. Every six months the division's infantrymen participate in air-mobile exercises complete with artillery support, helicopter gunships and fighter-bombers-and live ammunition...
...G.l.s must also devote at least 18 hours of duty time each month to some kind of formal education. Observes Sergeant Dale McLaughlin at Camp Casey, headquarters of the 2nd Division: "A man here is almost forced to get educated. You're hounded until you take something." Courses include high school subjects leading to a diploma and college-level studies...
...time-killing formula of training, education and recreation seems to have significantly reduced the racial tensions and drug problems that plagued U.S. forces in Korea and elsewhere in the 1960s and early 1970s. (Nearly half the 2nd Division's G.l.s are black and other minorities.) Morale also seems high in most places. A young lieutenant compared his life at Camp Casey with that at a "jock college." Closer to the DMZ, soldiers suffer from isolation, primitive facilities (hot baths once a week) and sheer boredom. It is at these bleak forward outposts that the U.S. would suffer its first...