Word: hills
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...action at Pork Chop Hill began on April 16, 1953, when . two Chinese Communist companies swarmed over the small U.S. garrison. Militarily, the hill was of small importance; morally, it had immense significance. By taking it, the Communists posed two questions that were crucial to the course of the peace talks at Panmunjom: 1) Was the U.S. high command, with a war-weary public at its back, still willing to incur large casualties merely to hold a little ground? 2) Was the U.S. infantryman, his morale weakened by a Congress-coddling rotation policy that moved him out of the line...
...answered by the Far East command. But even before King Company can reach the first Chinese defenses, the rusty U.S. chain of command has snapped. The assault group is caught in the full glare of an Allied searchlight battery that has confused Pork Chop with "some other hill," and before the lights go out, a dozen or more Americans lie dead or wounded. Shocked and bewildered, the green troops nevertheless hold firm, then make a wild charge that carries the Communist outworks...
Nevertheless, demons and his men push forward. Several hours later they swarm, exhausted but triumphant, into a bunker just below a fortified crest on Pork Chop Hill. A few seconds later, the U.N. barrage blasts the bunker to rubble. Morale collapses. Lieut, demons tonguelashes his men into the firing line, counts what is left of them (35 men), calls up his small reserve, charges the top of the hill and takes...
...back in the headquarters of the Far East command, a little group of earnest, greying generals are solemnly debating a question that may carry, for the unmilitary observer, some suggestion of the impersonal horror, the mindless irony of war. The question: "Do we really want to hold Pork Chop Hill...
...years thereafter, Eleanor Alexander Roosevelt* was determined that her husband, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the ex-President's oldest son, should derive the deep strengths of the T.R. tradition from his father without being blotted out by it. "You know. Father," she said to T.R. one day at Sagamore Hill, "Ted has always worried for fear he would not be worthy of you." T.R. replied: "Worthy of me? I walk with my head higher because...