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                                                                              ╚January 1, 1951

Man of the Year:The American Soldier

Destiny's Draftee



    The man of 1950 was not a statesman; Dean Acheson and his
fellow diplomats of the free world had, in 1950, notably failed
to stop the march of Communism. Nor was 1950's man a general; the
best commander of the year, MacArthur, had blundered and been
beaten. Nor a scientist, for science -- so sure at the century's
beginning that it had all the answers -- now waited for the
politicians (or anyone else) to find a way of controlling the
terrible power that science had released. Nor an industrialist,
for 1950, although it produced more goods than any other year in
the world's history, was not preoccupied with goods, but with
life & death. Nor a scholar, for the world of 1950 was surfeited
with undigested facts, and sought its salvation not in the
conquest of new knowledge but in what it could relearn from old
old, old lessons. 1950's man might turn out to be the aging
conspirator, Joseph Stalin but as the year closed, that dreadful
prospect was far from certain; if he was winning the game and not
just an inning, Stalin's historians would record that 1950 -- and
all other years from the death of Lenin -- belonged to him. Or
1950's man might turn out to be an unknown saint, quietly living
above the clash of armies and ideas. Him, too, the future would
have to find.

    As the year ended, 1950's man seemed to be an American in
the bitterly unwelcome role of the fighting-man. It was not a
role the American had sought, either as an individual or as a
nation. The U.S. fighting-man was not civilization's crusader,
but destiny's draftee.

    The Peculiar Soldier. Most of the men in U.S. uniform around
the world had enlisted voluntarily, but few had taken to
themselves the old, proud label of "regular," few had thought
they would fight, and fewer still had foreseen the incredibly
dirty and desperate war that waited for them. They hated it, as
soldiers in all lands and times have hated wars, but the American
had some special reasons for hating it. He was the most comfort-
loving creature who had ever walked the earth -- and he much
preferred riding to walking. As well as comfort, he loved and
expected order; he yearned, like other men, for a predictable
world, and the fantastic fog and gamble of war struck him as a
terrifying affront.

    Yet he was rightly as well as inevitably cast for his role
as fighting-man in the middle of the 20th Century. No matter how
the issue was defined, whether he was said to be fighting for
progress or freedom or faith or survival, the American's heritage
and character were deeply bound up in the struggle. More
specifically, it was inevitable that the American be in the
forefront of this battle because it was the U.S. which had
unleased gigantic forces of technology and organizational ideas.
These had created the great 20th Century revolution. Communism
was a reaction, an effort to turn the worldwide forces set free
by U.S. progress back into the old channels of slavery.

    The American fighting-man could not win this struggle
without millions of allies -- and it was the unfinished (almost
unstarted) business of his government to find and mobilize those
allies through U.N. and by all other means. But the allies would
never be found unless the American fighting-man first took his
post and did his duty. On June 27, 1950, he was ordered to his
post. Since then, the world has watched how he went about doing
his duty.

    He has been called soft and tough, resourceful and
unskilled, unbelievably brave and unbelievably timid, thoroughly
disciplined and scornful of discipline. One way or another, all
of these generalizations are valid. He is a peculiar soldier,
product of a peculiar country. His two outstanding
characteristics seem to be contradictory. He is more of an
individualist than soldiers of other nations, and at the same
time he is far more conscious of, and dependent on, teamwork. He
fights as he lives, a part of a vast, complicated machine -- but a
thinking, deciding part, not an inert cog.

    "In Our Time. . ." A British officer who has seen much of
the U.S. fighting-man in Korea last week gave this shrewd,
balanced appraisal:

    "Your chaps have everything it takes to make great
soldiers -- intelligence, physique, doggedness and an amazing
ability to endure adversity with grace. The thing they lack is
proper discipline. They also would be better off with a little
more training in the art of retreat. I know they like to say that
the American soldier is taught only offensive tactics, but if
Korea has proved nothing else it has proved the absolute
necessity of knowing how to retreat in order. Your marines know
how, but your Army men just don't. In our time, you know, we were
able to make quite a thing of the rearguard action.

    "Also, it seems to me that you are a little too reluctant to
take casualties for your own good. I've seen an entire American
division held up all day because a regimental commander was
unwilling to risk what at most would have been ten or 20
casualties. I don't want to sound blood-thirsty, but 20
casualties in a light action today may frequently save 100 or so
tomorrow."

    Like all British observers of the U.S. Army, this observer
was both envious and appalled at the bulk and variety of U.S.
equipment and its "amenities." One Briton in Korea says that he
saw tanks held up for hours by beer and refrigerator trucks.
Another, who had been with U.S. troops landing in Southern
France, said last week. "In France, I thought someone was just
having his little joke when they brought the office wastebaskets
ashore from the ship. But damned if they didn't do the same thing
in Korea, too."

    Night Into Day. The American fighting-man who went forth to
battle, brandishing his chocolate bars, his beer cans and his
wastebaskets, was (contrary to the expectations of many) no lily.
He had proved himself able to endure the tortures of climate and
the thrusts of a brave and well-led enemy. His soldierly virtues
were attested by the fact that he had been able to stay in Korea
at all.

    His defects were many, serious -- and understandable. Unless
he was in an extremely well-trained outfit, he was prone to inner
panic at the opening of a night attack. On several occasions, Red
units had broken up American units by night charges accompanied
by shouting and bugle calls. Old soldiers, aware that the Army
needs sterner training before it goes to battle, said that the
answer to this was more night training. A more typically American
answer was in practice last week around the Hungnam beachhead:
lavish use of star shells, which changed night to day. Another
defect was that the U.S. Army was roadbound by its enormous
supply train, a defect that grew out of the very strength of U.S.
technology. The relative security of American life had dulled the
U.S. fighting-man's caution, made him unwary about taking cover
in the presence of the enemy. Said a sergeant instructing new
arrivals in Korea: "If you see anyone on the skyline, don't
shoot. He's probably one of our guys."

    These were explainable demerits. More surprising -- and
disgraceful -- was the fact that the American fighting-man in
Korea, despite his country's vaunted industrial superiority,
found that his government had not given him weapons as numerous
or as good as he needed and had a right to expect.

    The Men. More important than the weapons in 1950, as in
1066, were the men who used them. What were they like? Better
trained, more experienced and older than the G.I.s of World War
II, the U.S. Army in battle in Korea was the nearest approach to
a professional army that the U.S. had ever sent into war. The men
in it did not lend themselves to easy characterization. Nobody
could find a typical U.S. soldier of 1950. There was no one type;
there were as many types as there were men. Here are some of the
men:

    PRIVATE KENNETH SHADRICK,