Author: Xiao Yu
On the evening of December 23, 1950, while visiting a friend's home in Washington, D.C., Ridgway received a phone call from Collins, chief of staff of the Army, and received sudden bad news that General Walker, commander of the 8th Army, who was fighting in the Korean theater and The Chinese Army, had been killed in a car accident, and that Ridgway would succeed Walker according to the option macArthur had long laid out.
Early three days later, Ridgway showed up at the UN headquarters in Tokyo and met MacArthur, who was "extremely talented in acting." The conversation was specific and frank, and MacArthur wanted Ridgway to hold on to Seoul for a long time and warned him not to underestimate Chinese.
Ridgway also asked MacArthur a series of questions, the last and most crucial one: If I were to attack, would you object? MacArthur's answer satisfied Ridgway: "The 8th Army is yours now, Matthew, do whatever you think is good."
Captured American soldiers
With the authorization and support of the governor, Ridgway has a broad space to display his talents. History has long proved that Ridgway was indeed a key figure in saving the U.S. military from the quagmire of defeat, and he was respected by many people, including his opponents.
The new commanders are here to fight
On the day Ridgway went to Seoul to take up his post, the last day in 1950, the Volunteers suddenly launched a third campaign in the snow and ice, breaking through the Rinjin River defense line overnight. In order to restore the morale of the American troops, Ridgway gave the officers a harsh order: "All officers must be with the vanguard battalion, and the place where the gunfire is loud is where you must go!"
U.S. soldiers operating Bazooka rocket launchers
Unlike MacArthur, who often smoked a cigar, Ridgway always had two melon-style grenades pinned to his military jacket wherever he went. Although it was just a show, the soldiers could sense that the new commander was here to fight, not the officer who would only patrol and investigate.
On his way from Tokyo to the peninsula, Ridgway saw north Korea's complex terrain clearly from the air, which made him realize that it was an ideal battlefield for light infantry, but for mechanized troops, "it would be a miserable place."
The officers and men were in desperate need of regaining confidence, so Ridgway never uttered the word retreat in his mouth, and on every occasion he talked about attack and victory. This is not only a psychological deterrent, but also because in his view, the US military, which has absolute superiority in mobility, firepower, and logistics, should have the ability to switch from defense to attack.
Mountains of American artillery shells
Before Ridgway was ready to attack, the large-scale attack of the volunteer army on Seoul began, and the intensity of the offensive surprised Li Qi, the position was broken everywhere, and the two divisions of the Rok army had collapsed.
In this situation, Ridgway had to order the abandonment of Seoul. Syngman Rhee asked Ridgway, "Is it true that the army under your command will only retreat?" Ridgway asked Someone to speak back to Syngman Rhee, asking him to listen to the harsh military trumpets of the Chinese army, see for himself the swarming storm troops, and see how his South Korean army "fled like a flock."
The Americans did not suffer much loss in the third campaign, and their retreat was organized in an orderly manner, especially the complete withdrawal of a large number of artillery, tanks and vehicles south of the Han River, showing Ridgway's extraordinary organizational ability.
It was during this retreat that Ridgway accurately identified the Achilles heel of the Volunteers
Using "Magnetic Tactics" to Defuse the "Worship Offensive"
Ridgway, a staff officer, is a rare strategist in the US military that advocates technological superiority, and the veteran who has commanded airborne operations in Sicily and Normandy has an extremely keen observation of the battle situation. He found from the dry food bags of the volunteer soldiers that the Chinese soldiers were completely self-sufficient in logistics, and the dry food and light weapons and ammunition they carried with them could usually last for a week, after which they must be replaced by new troops, otherwise they would be trapped in the predicament of no food and no ammunition.
Volunteer soldier armed with an anti-tank grenade
This feature of the Volunteer Army was summed up by Ridgway as a "worship offensive". He also observed that the limit of the volunteer army's combat distance per day was 20 kilometers, so he only withdrew his troops to a distance of 22 kilometers, and while maintaining close contact with the Chinese army, he used high-intensity artillery and aviation fire to kill and injure the active strength of the volunteer army. This tactic is known as "magnetic tactics".
At the moment when the Chinese and North Koreans were celebrating their victory and preparing to turn to repairs, Ridgway unexpectedly chose to counterattack. The attack, code-named Operation Thunderbolt, put enormous pressure on the heavily depleted and material-strapped volunteers. Mr. Peng did not expect the U.S. military to launch a counterattack at this point, which he later admitted was one of four major blunders in his military career.
Peng Dehuai inspected the artillery unit
When the Volunteer Army's eastern counterattack group made a breakthrough in Hengcheng, the eastern support point of Pingli became the focus of the entire war. Ridgway firmly rejected the request of Colonel Freeman, the leader of the 23rd Regiment, to retreat, and forced the lone army that was about to be surrounded to die. Ridgway's gamble was successful, and the U.S. army held Tonpyeong-ri, inflicting heavy casualties on the volunteers, thus eliminating the fear of the volunteers and re-establishing confidence in victory.
On 14 November 1951, Ridgway succeeded him as Commander of the United Nations Forces. Only 11 days later, the Volunteers launched an unprecedented fifth campaign, attempting to take advantage of the superiority of the two newly recruited corps to regain the initiative on the battlefield.
At this time, Ridgway had fully figured out the tactical routines of the volunteer army, and once again used magnetic tactics, intending to use the Han River that was about to thaw to block the back road of the volunteer army. Peng Dehuai saw this poisonous move and ordered the troops to retreat, but the troops caught in the bitter battle could not get out at this time. The Lack of Response by the Volunteers to Ridgway's tactical changes led to heavy losses in the final stages of the Fifth Campaign.
On 12 May 1952, Ridgway stepped down as Commander-in-Chief of the United Nations Forces and succeeded Eisenhower as Commander-in-Chief of NATO's European Allies. Although he stayed on the Korean battlefield for only a year and a half, it had a huge impact on the war. He was called "the most valued and respected opponent" by Peng Dehuai, and was praised by his colleagues as one of the most outstanding american generals of the 20th century.
The Volunteers relied on field fortifications to block the Americans
Salute to the Chinese military
When the U.S. troops withdrew from Seoul as planned, Ridgway did not forget to show off his chivalry demeanor and personally wrote a sentence on his desk: "Salute to the commander of the Chinese army!" Only by respecting and learning from the opponent can we ultimately defeat the opponent. In this regard, Ridgway and Peng Dehuai are very similar, they are real soldiers.
Ridgway conducted in-depth research on the volunteer army, and in his memoirs, there is no shortage of praise for the Chinese army.
Ridgway was quite impressed by the volunteers' ability to conceal the enemy, and he saw chinese soldiers as "mostly marching on foot at night, avoiding roads during the day, or hiding in tunnels, mines, or villages." In order to avoid aerial reconnaissance, they "sometimes set fires in the forest and used smoke as cover." Under the battlefield situation in which the US military holds absolute air supremacy, hundreds of thousands of troops of the Volunteer Army were able to complete a large-scale dispatch and assembly of troops, and Ridgway could not help but be amazed.
Melee combat and night combat are the housekeeping skills of the volunteer army, and they are also the only way for the inferior side to offset the opponent's firepower advantage. Ridgway praised the Volunteers' ability to fight in close combat at night: "Soldiers guarding lonely bunkers were often surprised to find that four or five Chinese in rubber-soled shoes had quietly infiltrated the area between them and the outpost cordon. Then the flares would rise from the enemy line, and the frantic sound of the military trumpets would scare our sentries into the bunkers."
The Volunteers attacked the enemy at Hengcheng
The clamor of the Chinese military's unique military trumpet has become a nightmare for the AMERICAN military participating in the war for a lifetime. To Ridgway, the brass looked like a horn used in rugby, "with a tone mixed with frantic whistles, as if heralding the beginning of a new phase of the battle." He sees it as a Chinese-style psychological warfare that is "both familiar and uncomfortable." Accompanied by the mournful sound of military trumpets, "incessant shooting, fighting bayonets, throwing grenades... It's like a cowboy beating an Indian..."
The Volunteer Army is a righteous soldier, a mighty division, and a civilized division. Even their opponents do not deny this. In Ridgway's eyes, the Chinese soldiers were not only "strong and fierce warriors, often fighting to avoid death", but also "they were more civilized enemies" than the North Korean army.
The volunteers pursued the enemy in the Battle of Unsan
An army that can win the respect of its opponents is a truly powerful army. The Volunteers, on the other hand, did just that.