Word: ridgway
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This week, with the precision of a machine, the marines and other divisions of Ridgway's Eighth Army ground their way northward over the mountains of central Korea. Their general's orders were simple: "Use every daylight hour to seek out and destroy the enemy. Inflict maximum casualties and sustain a minimum of your own. Withdraw to strong defensive positions at night. Search every piece ground. Do not push on until you have eliminated every Communist...
Such a tone may have sounded over-optimistic for an army facing an enemy three times its size, with huge reserves ot trained manpower behind him. But in fact, it sensibly understated the Eighth Army's present capability. In the last two weeks battle Ridgway's men had inflicted an estimated 30,000 casualties on Chinese and North Korean Communists, at small to themselves...
When last week's U.N. attack began, Matt Ridgway, an austerely handsome man of 56, tramped alongside the lead tank of a column, critically watching the two lines of infantrymen shuffle up the road a few hundred yards ahead. Neatly hooked to the web harness he wore over his trench coat were a paratrooper's first-aid kit and the hand grenade that has become as famous a trademark as George Patton's pearl-handled pistols...
...Quite Impossible. Each day Ridgway shuttled across the front in his helicopter, marshaling his troops as carefully as a Roman general. When he left the column on Thursday, he headed for the landing strip where Captain Mike Lynch picked him up in an L17 liaison plane. Back at his headquarters, he said goodbye to General Mark Clark, Army Field Forces commander, who had visited Korea on an inspection trip. Then he went out to do some more inspecting...
...brought to his G.I. a complaint that the envelopes G.I.s used for letters home were sticking together.* He ordered a division G-4 to provide fresh meat for his units seven out of ten days. When the G-4 mentioned the lack of refrigerators, Ridgway snapped, "The winter will give you time to work out the refrigeration problem." Back at his headquarters, he called in to his aide, Lieut. Colonel Walter Winton, "Walter, get word to Signal Corps to brush up on message pickups...