Wizard of Woodstock wrote:
On Fri, 03 Jul 2009 21:12:36 -0400, HK wrote:

Apparently Sarah can't google, either.

Apparently neither can you.

"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction."

Douglas MacArthur

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/au...carthur_2.html

Fourth from the bottom.

Of course as a former top secret super DIA agent and Vietnam Veteran,
you should have known that.

Moron.


Moron? I wasn't stupid enough to sign up for the marines so I could kill
vietnamese. You were.

This is from Time Magazine.

Oh...how's that high mileage etec doing?


"Retreat, hell!" snapped Major General Oliver Prince Smith, commander of
the 1st Marine Division, with which he had fought on Guadalcanal, New
Britain, Peleliu, Okinawa (TIME, Sept. 25). "We're not retreating, we're
just advancing in a different direction."*

"We're gonna get out of here," said Lieut. Colonel Raymond L. Murray,
commander of the 5th Marine Regiment. "Any officer who doesn't think so
will kindly go lame and be evacuated, but I don't expect any bites for
that offer." There were no bites.

Said Colonel Lewis ("Chesty") Puller, famed battle-scarred commander of
the 1st Marine Regiment: "We'll suffer heavy losses. The enemy greatly
outnumbers us.

They've blown the bridges and blocked the roads . . . but we'll make it
somehow."

The running fight of the marines and two battalions of the Army's 7th
Infantry Division from Hagaru to Hamhung—40 miles by air but 60 miles
over the icy, twisting, mountainous road—was a battle unparalleled in
U.S. military history. It had some aspects of Bataan, some of Anzio,
some of Dunkirk, some of Valley Forge, some of the "Retreat of the
10,000" (401-400 B.C.) as described in Xenophon's Anabasis. The retreat
of the 20,000 in Korea would not have been possible without General
Tunner's ultramodern airlift, which supplied them with all the
ammunition and food they could use, and even with bridging equipment

Bulldozers for the dead. Assembled in Hagaru, south of the frozen,
blood-stained beaches of the Changjin Reservoir, the 1st Marine Division
and the 7th had already suffered heavy casualties in battles with the
encircling Communists. They had heard the screams of their comrades when
the Reds lobbed phosphorous grenades into truckloads of U.S. wounded.
When the order came to start south, the enemy was already closing in on
Hagaru's makeshift airstrip, whence thousands of wounded and frostbite
victims had been flown out. The last plane waited an extra hour for one
desperately wounded man.

The marines abandoned none of their disabled men, but bulldozers pushed
the dead into mass graves by hundreds.

The fight to Koto, six miles down the road, was the worst. The crawling
vehicles ran into murderous mortar, machine-gun and small-arms fire from
Communists in log and sandbag bunkers. The U.S. answering fire and air
attacks killed thousands of the enemy and held the road open. When the
lead vehicles reached Koto, the rearguard was still fighting near Hagaru
to keep the enemy from chewing up the column from behind.

Beyond Koto there was a bad stretch of road winding through steep
gorges. Moving at 3 m.p.h., the column halted several times while
engineers filled shell craters in the road. At one point there was a
four-hour stop while the engineers built abutments on both sides of a
chasm so that a bridge span would reach across. The airplanes silenced
much of the enemy fire, except on one agonizing day when the air cover
was grounded by a driving snowstorm.

The commanders were informed that 80,000 to 120,000 Chinese were in the
country around them. General Smith said that as soon as one Chinese
division ran out of ammunition, another came up to take its place. The
enemy was reported to have set up four strong roadblocks along the road
ahead, and one officer feared what he called a "double envelopment."

"Wave & Look Happy." Meanwhile, the port of Wonsan was evacuated by
elements of the Army's 3rd Division, which were moved 50 miles north by
sea to help hold a perimeter around Hamhung and Hungnam. The R.O.K. 3rd
and Capital Divisions, which had also been evacuated by sea far up the
northeastern coast, arrived to strengthen the defense arc around
Hamhung. The U.S. 3rd formed a rescue force which rolled up the Changjin
road and joined the hard-pressed marines and G.I.s of the southbound
column, a few miles from Koto. The rescue party had been given the
formidable job of opening the road and holding it open all the way down
to the coastal perimeter.

Enemy resistance seemed to be lessening. On their way to the junction,
the 3rd's fighting men had dispersed one roadblock and nothing more was
heard of the other three. One day 100 cold and famished Chinese came out
of the hills and surrendered. Some said they were former Nationalist
soldiers who had been dragooned into the Red army, and that they now
wanted to join Chiang Kai-shek on Formosa.

For the first time it looked as if most of the 20,000 would get through.
A vast armada of ships—freighters, transports, LSTs, carriers and other
warships of the Seventh Fleet—were waiting for them. Vice Admiral
Charles T. Joy, Far East naval commander, held a secret conference on
his flagship with the X Corps' Major General Edward M. Almond and other
brass. Joy said the Navy was ready for "any eventuality"—which was
official doubletalk for evacuation.

At week's end some 8,000 marines broke through the last thin crust of
enemy resistance and poured into Hamhung. More kept coming in every hour
as tanks bringing up the rear rolled across the coastal plain. Frantic
photographers called to the bedraggled men, asked them to "wave and look
happy." They obliged. The triumph was marred by more than 30%
casualties, but the bulk of the marine division's and the 7th's
survivors had reached safety and warmth. It was an epic of great
suffering and great valor.

*An echo of a 1918 statement that has become a part of Marine Corps
legend. Moving up to Belleau Wood at the head of a company of marines,
Captain Lloyd Williams was overtaken by a courier, told that the order
of the French area commander was to retreat. "Retreat, hell," snapped
Captain Williams, "we just got here," and took his troops into battle.