”Korea: The First War We Lost” by Bevin. Alexander
PREFACE TO THE UPDATED EDITION
Who would have thought that the only important conflict of the Cold War that would cast its terrible shadow into the twenty-first century would be Korea? All the other major problems that seemed more intractable at the time have been resolved for years---the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, the Iron Curtain has disappeared, Germany has reunified, Red China is back in the comity of nations, even the United States and Vietnam have reconciled. But the problem of a divided Korea seems as intransigent today as it did that fateful day of June 25, 1950, when North Korean tanks rolled over the 38th parallel and commenced a war exceeded in violence, death, destruction, and despair only by the First and the Second World Wars.
More than half a century has passed since that wretched war was fought, yet its ramifications are as palpable today as they were during the darkest days of the fighting. Indeed, the so-called Demilitarized Zone or DMZ that separates North Korea from South Korea is only the former main line of resistance or MLR of the actual war. The MLR has gone silent, but the front line is still there, just as it was on the last day of the war, July 27, 1953. Troops still line both sides of the DMZ. Guns point in both directions. The fighting has stopped, but the war goes on; it’s merely suspended. This is an armistice, not a peace. The only things that have changed along the front are the hills. During the war they were stripped bare of their trees and their vegetation by shellfire. Now the trees and the shrubs have grown back. The hills, at least, have recovered from the war. But North and South Korea still lie locked in a strange love-hate relationship. The animosity is tangible and inescapable, but the people on both sides yearn for reunion, for an end to the horrible separation, enmity, and invective.
This yearning is shown in the tremendous efforts in recent years to bring about reunions of families separated by the war and division, of numerous demonstrations on the streets of South Korea calling for unity, and by efforts of South Korea to open rail and road communications with North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s totalitarian regime has prevented public expressions in the north, but much evidence points to the same longing for close ties with the south among the North Korean people.
Since the fighting stopped, South Korea has grown into a tremendously successful, democratic, industrial state. Its capital, Seoul, is a vibrant city of eleven million people, filled with Korean-made cars, prosperous citizens, dynamic businesses, and a downtown that looks like Atlanta. North Korea has remained a closed Communist dictatorship, its economy paralyzed by rigid production quotas and tightly controlled by rules that give the people no freedom and few incentives. For onwards of a decade, North Korea has been unable to feed its people or to provide them even a modestly adequate standard of living. North Korea is slowly dying as a state. But its tyrannical leader Kim Jong Il, son of the late first dictator, Kim Il Sung, is still defiantly trying to follow the Communist ideology of a command economy, a system long since proven to be ineffective and long since rejected by Russia and China.
The North Korean leadership is trying desperately to survive by developing long-range rockets and other weapons it can sell abroad, especially to the few other rogue states left on the planet. It has been threatening to produce atomic weapons, in order to leverage economic and political concessions from the United States. How bizarre! Here is a nation that is menacing war as a way of obtaining food for its starving people! Kim Jong Il’s choice of confrontation rather than cooperation with the rest of the world demonstrates the same illogical madness that made his father defy the United States and try to conquer South Korea.
Thus, in a real sense the Korean War has not ended at all. It has entered a new and quite dangerous phase. There’s no indication Kim Jong Il harbors dreams of conquering South Korea. But his threat to renounce the armistice of July 1953 and his labeling as an act of war any move the United States might make to counter him is extremely confrontational. Hopefully, sane voices will prevail on both sides, and the terrors and tragedies of another armed conflict will not come to pass. Nevertheless, the divisions that split the peninsula half a century ago still exist with all their venom. This poison must be drained away, and the divided people must find a formula to come together. Korea was known for a thousand years as the Land of the Morning Calm. It is long since past time for serenity to return to this tragic, tortured country.
Reunion could come about in a number of ways, by two separate states that work together in the manner Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg cooperated for years, a confederation on the Swiss model, a closer federal union, or even a return to a single unified state. It will be up to the Korean people, south and north, to seek their own destiny. The whole world hopes that the process will be happy, peaceful, and tranquil.
The sad situation in which Korea finds itself can be traced back directly to the conflicts and disagreements that precipitated the Korean War. Most Americans today know little of the war’s origins or its dramatic course. For this reason, it seems to be an especially appropriate time to bring out this revised edition of the story of the war, for the two generations that have arrived since the conflict was fought.
The Korean War endured for three years as an official, international act of violence. It ended only after one and a half million men, women and children had died and two and a half million people had been wounded or injured. It was the third most devastating war in history, and, as we see all around us, the consequences of its hate, distrust and division abide with us today. This book is an attempt to show that the war need not have been protracted for so long, nor to have demanded so much in lives and treasure, nor to have left behind such hostility between nations that had much to lose and little to gain by enmity.
This book is an effort to demonstrate that Western leaders, especially those from the United States, received ample signals that, had the leaders responded to them, could have prevented the entry of Red China into the war and, even after Communist China did enter, could have ended the war much sooner and at much less cost.
This book attempts to show that the United States---with the aid of South Korea and the support of some United Nations members---won one war against the North Koreans, and lost another war against the Red Chinese. The causes of these two wars were essentially and totally different. The North Koreans were bent on overt aggression and were thwarted. The Red Chinese were trying to protect their homeland from the potential threat of invasion and were successful.
Finally, this book tries to show the Korean War as it actually was fought and as the tactical and strategic decisions, good and bad, were made. In this, the dedication and devotion of men on both sides to what they believed to be their nations’ needs were demonstrated in such full measure as to suggest the awesome powers of human sacrifice and endeavor that leaders everywhere hold in their hands, and what immense responsibility for the exercise of those powers they assume.
The Korean War became the arena for the fateful clashes of national wills, in which leaders at all levels made decisions ranging from remarkable sagacity to desolating error. Korea thus is a human story of mortals in high and low places acting in crisis as their individual lights directed them.
按Bevin Alexander 的说法，朝鲜战争是两场战争，美国赢了第一场(对朝)，输了第二场(对中）
Korea: The First War We Lost by Bevin. Alexander
PREFACE TO THE UPDATED EDITION
............
This book attempts to show that the United States---with the aid of South Korea and the support of some United Nations members---won one war against the North Koreans, and lost another war against the Red Chinese. The causes of these two wars were essentially and totally different. The North Koreans were bent on overt aggression and were thwarted. The Red Chinese were trying to protect their homeland from the potential threat of invasion and were successful.
《朝鲜：我们第一次战败》第57章“喋血山岭”部分描述：
“经过两星期损耗惨重、枉费心机的战斗，23团团长亚当斯上校对师长扬格将军说，如照原计划再继续打下去，将无异于自杀。他的第23团已经遭受到950 人的死伤，而全师这时总共死伤1670人之多。”
“10月13日黎明时分，法国营猛攻851 高地，占领了“伤心岭”上最后一个高峰。经过30天的残酷战斗，联合国军终于攻下了“伤心岭”。代价极为惊人。第2 师死伤达到3700人，第23团和法国人几乎占整个损耗的一半。估计中国和北朝鲜死伤数高达2.5 万人之多。那么得到的是什么呢？只不过是为战线填了一个小小的缺口罢了。而在“伤心岭”背面又赫然耸立着另一座大山，山上布满了就像在“喋血山岭”和“伤心岭”上一样要付出重大代价的地堡和火力点。双方军人都表现出了高昂的英雄主义和坚强决心，但可悲的是他们所参与的这些战斗却像在第一次世界大战中打的消耗战那样残酷。这就不免使人们要问，这究竟算不算得不偿失？我想最后经过判断，双方都会认为如此。”
“到10月份作战结束时，已可清楚看出这样一种情况，即：如要对敌人主防线取得任何实质性进展，都必将蒙受难以计数的重大伤亡。那么，既然联合国军掌握着制海权，难道不可以在后方两栖登陆，并从侧翼攻击共产党防线吗？不行，仁川那种决定性打击行不通，因为可资共产党利用的中国人力极为庞大( 用在北朝鲜者只是极少数) 。另外，中国人已在鸭绿江上空与美国争夺空中优势，尽管尚没有到达前线。”
http://www.shuku.net:8082/novels/wars/cxwmdycsb/cxwmdycsb57.html
https://bbs.wenxuecity.com/memory/1667504.html
https://archive.org/details/koreafirstwarwel00alex/page/n9/mode/2up
哈
PREFACE TO THE UPDATED EDITION
Who would have thought that the only important conflict of the Cold War that would cast its terrible shadow into the twenty-first century would be Korea? All the other major problems that seemed more intractable at the time have been resolved for years---the Soviet Union has ceased to exist, the Iron Curtain has disappeared, Germany has reunified, Red China is back in the comity of nations, even the United States and Vietnam have reconciled. But the problem of a divided Korea seems as intransigent today as it did that fateful day of June 25, 1950, when North Korean tanks rolled over the 38th parallel and commenced a war exceeded in violence, death, destruction, and despair only by the First and the Second World Wars.
More than half a century has passed since that wretched war was fought, yet its ramifications are as palpable today as they were during the darkest days of the fighting. Indeed, the so-called Demilitarized Zone or DMZ that separates North Korea from South Korea is only the former main line of resistance or MLR of the actual war. The MLR has gone silent, but the front line is still there, just as it was on the last day of the war, July 27, 1953. Troops still line both sides of the DMZ. Guns point in both directions. The fighting has stopped, but the war goes on; it’s merely suspended. This is an armistice, not a peace. The only things that have changed along the front are the hills. During the war they were stripped bare of their trees and their vegetation by shellfire. Now the trees and the shrubs have grown back. The hills, at least, have recovered from the war. But North and South Korea still lie locked in a strange love-hate relationship. The animosity is tangible and inescapable, but the people on both sides yearn for reunion, for an end to the horrible separation, enmity, and invective.
This yearning is shown in the tremendous efforts in recent years to bring about reunions of families separated by the war and division, of numerous demonstrations on the streets of South Korea calling for unity, and by efforts of South Korea to open rail and road communications with North Korea. Kim Jong Il’s totalitarian regime has prevented public expressions in the north, but much evidence points to the same longing for close ties with the south among the North Korean people.
Since the fighting stopped, South Korea has grown into a tremendously successful, democratic, industrial state. Its capital, Seoul, is a vibrant city of eleven million people, filled with Korean-made cars, prosperous citizens, dynamic businesses, and a downtown that looks like Atlanta. North Korea has remained a closed Communist dictatorship, its economy paralyzed by rigid production quotas and tightly controlled by rules that give the people no freedom and few incentives. For onwards of a decade, North Korea has been unable to feed its people or to provide them even a modestly adequate standard of living. North Korea is slowly dying as a state. But its tyrannical leader Kim Jong Il, son of the late first dictator, Kim Il Sung, is still defiantly trying to follow the Communist ideology of a command economy, a system long since proven to be ineffective and long since rejected by Russia and China.
The North Korean leadership is trying desperately to survive by developing long-range rockets and other weapons it can sell abroad, especially to the few other rogue states left on the planet. It has been threatening to produce atomic weapons, in order to leverage economic and political concessions from the United States. How bizarre! Here is a nation that is menacing war as a way of obtaining food for its starving people! Kim Jong Il’s choice of confrontation rather than cooperation with the rest of the world demonstrates the same illogical madness that made his father defy the United States and try to conquer South Korea.
Thus, in a real sense the Korean War has not ended at all. It has entered a new and quite dangerous phase. There’s no indication Kim Jong Il harbors dreams of conquering South Korea. But his threat to renounce the armistice of July 1953 and his labeling as an act of war any move the United States might make to counter him is extremely confrontational. Hopefully, sane voices will prevail on both sides, and the terrors and tragedies of another armed conflict will not come to pass. Nevertheless, the divisions that split the peninsula half a century ago still exist with all their venom. This poison must be drained away, and the divided people must find a formula to come together. Korea was known for a thousand years as the Land of the Morning Calm. It is long since past time for serenity to return to this tragic, tortured country.
Reunion could come about in a number of ways, by two separate states that work together in the manner Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg cooperated for years, a confederation on the Swiss model, a closer federal union, or even a return to a single unified state. It will be up to the Korean people, south and north, to seek their own destiny. The whole world hopes that the process will be happy, peaceful, and tranquil.
The sad situation in which Korea finds itself can be traced back directly to the conflicts and disagreements that precipitated the Korean War. Most Americans today know little of the war’s origins or its dramatic course. For this reason, it seems to be an especially appropriate time to bring out this revised edition of the story of the war, for the two generations that have arrived since the conflict was fought.
The Korean War endured for three years as an official, international act of violence. It ended only after one and a half million men, women and children had died and two and a half million people had been wounded or injured. It was the third most devastating war in history, and, as we see all around us, the consequences of its hate, distrust and division abide with us today. This book is an attempt to show that the war need not have been protracted for so long, nor to have demanded so much in lives and treasure, nor to have left behind such hostility between nations that had much to lose and little to gain by enmity.
This book is an effort to demonstrate that Western leaders, especially those from the United States, received ample signals that, had the leaders responded to them, could have prevented the entry of Red China into the war and, even after Communist China did enter, could have ended the war much sooner and at much less cost.
This book attempts to show that the United States---with the aid of South Korea and the support of some United Nations members---won one war against the North Koreans, and lost another war against the Red Chinese. The causes of these two wars were essentially and totally different. The North Koreans were bent on overt aggression and were thwarted. The Red Chinese were trying to protect their homeland from the potential threat of invasion and were successful.
Finally, this book tries to show the Korean War as it actually was fought and as the tactical and strategic decisions, good and bad, were made. In this, the dedication and devotion of men on both sides to what they believed to be their nations’ needs were demonstrated in such full measure as to suggest the awesome powers of human sacrifice and endeavor that leaders everywhere hold in their hands, and what immense responsibility for the exercise of those powers they assume.
The Korean War became the arena for the fateful clashes of national wills, in which leaders at all levels made decisions ranging from remarkable sagacity to desolating error. Korea thus is a human story of mortals in high and low places acting in crisis as their individual lights directed them.
另有105毫米口径以上火炮300余门，坦克170余辆，飞机约100架，消耗炮弹190余万发，航空炸弹5000余枚。志愿军先后投入了两个精锐野战军的9个团，11个炮兵营，一个火箭炮营，共计4．3万余人，一共打炮弹45万发。原本双方都以为是一场小规模的攻防战，而后来却演变为一场惨烈的肉搏。整个战役志愿军阵亡7100人，伤残8500人；联合国军阵亡11300人，伤13600 人。
恰在这时，参谋长联席会议与李奇微将军之间出现了分歧。李奇微对共产党在争辩中采用痛骂与折磨的策略极为恼火。他提出联合国要对共产党“强硬”起来，又说外交辞令在这种军事谈判上毫无用处。8 月6 日，他向参谋长联席会议抱怨说：“同这些人坐在一起，将他们看做是开明的人，等于嘲弄我们自己的尊严，结果其背信弃义的行为给我们造成了灾难。”他指示联合国军代表要采用针锋相对的方式和语言，来对付这些“背信弃义的野蛮人”。联席会议的参谋长们持不同态度，叫他平静下来，这样谈判才得以进行下去。
作战方面也是一样。经杜鲁门批准，由李奇微于7 月30日派飞机对北朝鲜首都平壤进行了一次猛烈袭击。他同时还要求对北朝鲜的港口城市罗津进行一次海、空军联合攻击。因该港距苏联边境只有几英里，因此攻击罗津的决定一直报到总统那里。总统批准参谋长联席会议进行空袭的建议，但未批准海军炮轰。8 月25日，35架B29 轰炸机在海军飞机掩护下轰炸了罗津。
李奇微也批准了范·弗利特将军的“魔爪战役”。制定的这次进攻计划，是准备在中线和东线防区内，从金化到东海岸杆城，拉直第8 集团军的防线。但“魔爪”作战计划却一直没有打算执行，原因是范·弗利特在第10军防线内所发动的有限攻势就已付出了十分惊人的代价，记者叫做“喋血山岭”，可谓名副其实。从这次有限攻势中可以看出，如要攻破重兵固守的防线将会出现什么样的严重情况。
如果您读不了，只能读地摊货的中文翻译，那就没办法了。到此为止吧，不然没完没了，版主又要删你我的贴了。
Korea: The First War We Lost by Bevin. Alexander
PREFACE TO THE UPDATED EDITION
............
This book attempts to show that the United States---with the aid of South Korea and the support of some United Nations members---won one war against the North Koreans, and lost another war against the Red Chinese. The causes of these two wars were essentially and totally different. The North Koreans were bent on overt aggression and were thwarted. The Red Chinese were trying to protect their homeland from the potential threat of invasion and were successful.
哈