GI Korea on MG William Dean

Don’t miss this one.

The division was at less than 50% strength, morale extremely low, the division had no communications, few vehicles, little equipment, short on food, running low on ammunition, and completely surrounded by 20,000 pissed off North Koreans. So MG Dean did what any good general would do in these circumstances, he grabbed a bazooka.

Several excerpts have particular signficance for what we would be facing if our ground troops have to fight in another Korean War, one of which I will graf here:

Ultimately in Taejon the biggest problem ended up not being the T-34s but the amounts of North Korean infantry infiltrating into the city dressed in the white clothes of South Korean civilians. This caused confusion and hesitation from many US soldiers to fire against them. Remember these soldiers just three weeks prior were lounging around doing occupation duty in post-World War II Japan and now not even a month later they are in the fight of their lives against a ruthless enemy with more men, weapons, and armor who are more than willing to dress like civilians in order to gain a tactical advantage. This willingness to dress like civilians would lead to later controversies as the US was blamed for killing civilians; claims that still resonate to this day from some elements in South Korean society.

The other part is how MG Dean was captured, but I’ll let you read that part on your own. It’s a three–parter.