Download or read book Firefight at Yechon written by Charles M. Bussey and published by Potomac Books. This book was released on 1991 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is Bussey's story, the first personal account of the African-American experience in the Korean War, told by a man whose commander said he would have received the Medal of Honor if not for the color of his skin. 16 black-and-white photographs

Download or read book Firefight at Yechon written by Charles M. Bussey and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Firefight at Yechon is the harrowing story of Charles M. Bussey, a former Tuskegee airman and one of the first American combatants in the Korean War. He led the Seventy-seventh Engineer Combat Company for 205 days filled with almost continual fighting, during which he and his fellow American soldiers served with distinction. They also felt the effects of racism in the U.S. Army and wartime media, which singled out African American units for blame in the early days of the war. Firefight at Yechon sets the record straight about the contribution of African Americans in the Korean War. It also paints an unforgettably realistic portrait of the terrifying first days of fighting in 1950, when American soldiers, both black and white, were reeling under the assault of the North Korean People's Army. The Seventy-seventh Engineer Combat Company played an instrumental role in the retaking of Yechon on 20 July, the first major victory for the U.S. Army. The carnage of that fight and the shining courage of his fellow soldiers would never be forgotten by Bussey.

Download or read book Firefight at Yechon written by Charles M. Bussey and published by . This book was released on 1998-10 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Firefight at Yechon" is the harrowing story of Charles M. Bussey, a former Tuskegee airman and one of the first American combatants in the Korean War. He led the Seventy-seventh Engineer Combat Company for 205 days filled with almost continual fighting, during which he and his fellow American soldiers served with distinction. They also felt the effects of racism in the U.S. Army and wartime media, which singled out African American units for blame in the early days of the war. "Firefight at Yechon" sets the record straight about the contribution of African Americans in the Korean War. It also paints an unforgettably realistic portrait of the terrifying first days of fighting in 1950, when American soldiers, both black and white, were reeling under the assault of the North Korean People's Army. The Seventy-seventh Engineer Combat Company played an instrumental role in the retaking of Yechon on 20 July, the first major victory for the U.S. Army. The carnage of that fight and the shining courage of his fellow soldiers would never be forgotten by Bussey.

Download or read book Let Us Fight as Free Men written by Christine Knauer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, the military is one the most racially diverse institutions in the United States. But for many decades African American soldiers battled racial discrimination and segregation within its ranks. In the years after World War II, the integration of the armed forces was a touchstone in the homefront struggle for equality—though its importance is often overlooked in contemporary histories of the civil rights movement. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from press reports and newspapers to organizational and presidential archives, historian Christine Knauer recounts the conflicts surrounding black military service and the fight for integration. Let Us Fight as Free Men shows that, even after their service to the nation in World War II, it took the persistent efforts of black soldiers, as well as civilian activists and government policy changes, to integrate the military. In response to unjust treatment during and immediately after the war, African Americans pushed for integration on the strength of their service despite the oppressive limitations they faced on the front and at home. Pressured by civil rights activists such as A. Philip Randolph, President Harry S. Truman passed an executive order that called for equal treatment in the military. Even so, integration took place haltingly and was realized only after the political and strategic realities of the Korean War forced the Army to allow black soldiers to fight alongside their white comrades. While the war pushed the civil rights struggle beyond national boundaries, it also revealed the persistence of racial discrimination and exposed the limits of interracial solidarity. Let Us Fight as Free Men reveals the heated debates about the meaning of military service, manhood, and civil rights strategies within the African American community and the United States as a whole.

Download or read book Assembly written by West Point Association of Graduates (Organization). and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Level Playing Field written by Gerald L. Early and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-29 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The noted cultural critic Gerald Early explores the intersection of race and sports, and our deeper, often contradictory attitudes toward the athletes we glorify. What desires and anxieties are encoded in our worship of (or disdain for) high-performance athletes? What other, invisible contests unfold when we watch a sporting event?

Download or read book Understanding the Korean War written by Arthur H. Mitchell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a study of the Korean War of 1950-1953 from the inside--the nuts and bolts of armed conflict. The perspective is American, with the principal focus on the relationships of the people involved: North and South Koreans, the Chinese and Soviets, and how the U.S. and its allies engaged with them all. The lives of ordinary soldiers are examined--U.S. forces, with attention paid to the other side as well. The book examines such important aspects of military operations as supplies, equipment and weapons, tactics and strategy, intelligence, and psychological warfare, as well as the effective elimination of racial segregation in the U.S. military. Also studied is the vexing matter of prisoners of war, on both sides. Finally, there is an effort to fit Korea into the generalities of American military experience in Asia, from the war with Japan to Vietnam.

Download or read book Dark Horse written by Larry Spencer and published by Naval Institute Press. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gen. Larry O. Spencer, USAF (Ret.), was born and raised on the Horseshoe--a tough inner-city street in southeast Washington D.C. Both parents lived in the rural south under Jim Crow and "separate but equal" laws. Spencer's father was a career Army soldier who lost his left hand during the Korean War, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and worked two jobs. His mother completed tenth grade, had no driver's license, and was left alone during the week to raise their six children. The Horseshoe was a hard neighborhood where fights were common, and the school systems were second-rate. The expectations of living in an all-Black neighborhood were to be good at sports while shunning academic prowess. Spencer met those expectations: he struggled in school, but teachers who did not want to see him repeat their class would pass him to the next grade. That environment resulted in poor self-esteem and a bleak outlook for the future. Quite by chance, Spencer enlisted in the U.S. Air Force where he continued to struggle with the racial turmoil of the 1970s. A senior non-commissioned officer saw promise in Spencer and guided him to obtain a college degree and apply for Officer Training School where he excelled. As a very young first lieutenant, he was assigned to a tough job in the Pentagon, but Spencer earned an early reputation as a fast burner. In 1990 he took command of a squadron that won accolades and awards for their performance during Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Spencer went on to serve at the White House, and then successfully commanded a Group and a Wing before being assigned as the chief financial officer (comptroller) for Air Combat Command, the largest command in the Air Force. During that assignment, Spencer was promoted to brigadier general and was tasked to set up a new Directorate at Air Force Materiel Command. Spencer later returned to the Pentagon where he led Air Force Budget. He ultimately became the Air Force's thirty-seventh vice chief of staff, making him one of only nine African Americans promoted to four stars. Spencer concludes his historic climb with life lessons learned on his journey from the inner city to the Pentagon.

Download or read book African American Army Officers of World War I written by Adam P. Wilson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In April 1917, Congress approved President Woodrow Wilson's request to declare war on the Central Powers, thrusting the United States into World War I with the rallying cry, "The world must be made safe for democracy." Two months later 1,250 African American men--college graduates, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, reverends and non-commissioned officers--volunteered to become the first blacks to receive officer training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. Denied the full privileges and protections of democracy at home, they prepared to defend it abroad in hopes that their service would be rewarded with equal citizenship at war's end. This book tells the stories of these black American soldiers' lives during training, in combat and after their return home. The author addresses issues of national and international racism and equality and discusses the Army's use of African American troops, the creation of a segregated officer training camp, the war's implications for civil rights in America, and military duty as an obligation of citizenship.

Download or read book I Cannot Forget written by Judith Fenner Gentry and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eighteen-year-old Johnny Moore was an energetic, self-confident private first class when he entered combat with a heavy-weapons platoon in Korea. Four and a half months later, after surviving heavy attacks on the Pusan Perimeter and in one of the forward units of the western column advancing on the Yalu River, he was captured by the Chinese infantry. Moore and other American POWs suffered from starvation rations, bitter cold, and mental torment. Although the intense Chinese efforts to change the prisoners’ ideologies were largely unsuccessful, they were very effective in engendering distrust among the prisoners and abandonment of duty by the officers. Encouraged by an American sergeant, Moore worked with his captors to obtain better sanitation, a fairer distribution of food, and, on two occasions, medicine for the sick. Twice he tried to escape from imprisonment. Just four days after his twenty-first birthday, in 1953, the Chinese released him. Moore cooperated fully with US military interrogators, giving as much information as he could on the prison camp and the methods his captors had used. But two years later, army officers arrested him at his home and charged him with treason. Although the charge was dropped and a Field Board of Inquiry returned him to regular duty, the army’s treatment of him left Moore further traumatized. He eventually went AWOL and turned to drinking, gambling, and other self-destructive behaviors. Military historian Judith Fenner Gentry has worked with Moore’s memoirs of his experiences during and after the war to corroborate, clarify, elaborate, and situate his story within the larger events in Korea and in the Cold War. She has consulted records from courts-martial, newspaper interviews with returning POWs, and Freedom of Information Act documents on the Army Criminal Investigation Division and the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps.

Download or read book American Soldiers written by Peter S. Kindsvatter and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2003-04-03 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some warriors are drawn to the thrill of combat and find it the defining moment of their lives. Others fall victim to fear, exhaustion, impaired reasoning, and despair. This was certainly true for twentieth-century American ground troops. Whether embracing or being demoralized by war, these men risked their lives for causes larger than themselves with no promise of safe return. This book is the first to synthesize the wartime experiences of American combat soldiers, from the doughboys of World War I to the grunts of Vietnam. Focusing on both soldiers and marines, it draws on histories and memoirs, oral histories, psychological and sociological studies, and even fiction to show that their experiences remain fundamentally the same regardless of the enemy, terrain, training, or weaponry. Peter Kindsvatter gets inside the minds of American soldiers to reveal what motivated them to serve and how they were turned into soldiers. He recreates the physical and emotional aspects of war to tell how fighting men dealt with danger and hardship, and he explores the roles of comradeship, leadership, and the sustaining beliefs in cause and country. He also illuminates soldiers’ attitudes toward the enemy, toward the rear echelon, and toward the home front. And he tells why some broke down under fire while others excelled. Here are the first tastes of battle, as when a green recruit reported that “for the first time I realized that the people over the ridge wanted to kill me,” while another was befuddled by the unfamiliar sound of bullets whizzing overhead. Here are soldiers struggling to cope with war’s stress by seeking solace from local women or simply smoking cigarettes. And here are tales of combat avoidance and fraggings not unique to Vietnam, of soldiers in Korea disgruntled over home-front indifference, and of the unique experiences of African American soldiers in the Jim Crow army. By capturing the core “band of brothers” experience across several generations of warfare, Kindsvatter celebrates the American soldier while helping us to better understand war’s lethal reality--and why soldiers persevere in the face of its horrors.

Download or read book Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U S Military 2 volumes written by Alexander M. Bielakowski and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 905 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopedia details the participation of individual ethnic and racial minority groups throughout U.S. military history. Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S. Military: An Encyclopedia is unique in its coverage of nearly all major ethnic and racial minority groups, as opposed to reference works that have focused only on individual ethnic or racial minority groups. It acknowledges the military contributions of African Americans, Asian Americans, French Americans, German Americans, Hispanic Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans. This timely work highlights the individuals and events that have shaped the experience of minorities in U.S. conflicts. The work provides a comprehensive encyclopedia covering the role of all major ethnic and racial minorities in the United States during wartime. Additionally, it considers how the integration of servicemen in the U.S. military set the precedent for the eventual desegregation of America's civilian population.

Download or read book Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War written by Lewis H. Carlson and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2003-03-01 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War presents a devastating oral history of Korean War POWs. The Korean War POW remains the most maligned victim of all American wars. For nearly half a century, the media, general public, and even scholars have described hundreds of these prisoners as "brainwashed" victims who uncharacteristically caved in to their Communist captors or, even worse, as turncoats who betrayed their fellow soldiers. In either case, these boys apparently lacked the "right stuff" required of our brave sons. Here, at long last, is a chance to hear the true story of these courageous men in their own words-- a story that, until now, has gone largely untold. Dr. Carlson debunks many of the popular myths of Korean War POWs in this devastating oral history that's as compelling and moving as it is informative. From the Tiger Death March to the paranoia here at home, Korean POWs suffered injustices on a scale few can comprehend. More than 40 percent of the 7,140 Americans taken prisoner died in captivity, and as haunting tales of the survivors unfold, it becomes clear that the goal of these men was simply to survive under the most terrible conditions. Each survivor's story is a unique and personal experience, from missionary teacher Larry Zeller's imprisonment in the death cells of P'yongyang and his first encounter with the infamous killer known as The Tiger, to Rubin Townsend's daring escape from a death march by jumping off a bridge in a blinding snowstorm. From capture to forced marches, isolation, permanent camps, and torture, Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War is one of the most fascinating and disturbing books on the Korean War in years-- and a brutally honest account of the Korean POW experience, in the survivors' own words.

Download or read book Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare written by David Ulbrich and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book fills a gap in the historiographical and theoretical fields of race, gender, and war. In brief, Race and Gender in Modern Western Warfare (RGMWW) offers an introduction into how cultural constructions of identity are transformed by war and how they in turn influence the nature of military institutions and conflicts. Focusing on the modern West, this project begins by introducing the contours of race and gender theories as they have evolved and how they are employed by historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars. The project then mixes chronological narrative with analysis and historiography as it takes the reader through a series of case studies, ranging from the early nineteenth century to the Global War of Terror. The purpose throughout is not merely to create a list of so-called "great moments" in race and gender, but to create a meta-landscape in which readers can learn to identify for themselves the disjunctures, flaws, and critical synergies in the traditional memory and history of a largely monochrome and male-exclusive military experience. The final chapter considers the current challenges that Western societies, particularly the United States, face in imposing social diversity and tolerance on statist military structures in a climates of sometimes vitriolic public debate. RGMWW represents our effort to blend race, gender, and military war, to problematize these intersections, and then provide some answers to those problems.

Download or read book The Ashgate Research Companion to the Korean War written by Donald W. Boose and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-23 with total page 627 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential companion provides a comprehensive study of the literature on the causes, course, and consequences of the Korean War, 1950-1953. Aimed primarily at readers with a special interest in military history and contemporary conflict studies, the authors summarize and analyze the key research issues in what for years was known as the 'Forgotten War.' The book comprises three main thematic parts, each with chapters ranging across a variety of crucial topics covering the background, conduct, clashes, and outcome of the Korean War. The first part sets the historical stage, with chapters focusing on the main participants. The second part provides details on the tactics, equipment, and logistics of the belligerents. Part III covers the course of the war, with each chapter addressing a key stage of the fighting in chronological order. The enormous increase in writings on the Korean War during the last thirty years, following the release of key primary source documents, has revived and energized the interest of scholars. This essential reference work not only provides an overview of recent research, but also assesses what impact this has had on understanding the war.

Download or read book The Korean War written by Stanley Sandler and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-09-15 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Korean War has been termed "The Forgotten War" or the "Unknown War." It is a conflict which never assumed the mythic character of the American Civil War or World War II. However, this book asserts, it would be impossible to understand the Cold War and indeed post 1945 global history without knowledge of the Korean War. Providing a history of the Korean peninsula before the war and including a detailed analysis of the fighting itself, The Korean War goes beyond the battlefield to deal with the war in the air, ground attack, and air evacuation. The study also evaluates the contributions of the UN naval forces, the impact of the war on various homefronts and issues such as defectors, opposition to the war, racial segregation and integration, POWs and the media. Recently-released Soviet documents are used to assess the role of China, the Soviet Union, North and South Korea and the allied forces in the conflict. This fascinating work offers a unique analysis of the Korean War and will be invaluable to students of twentieth-century history, particularly those concerned with American and Pacific history.

Download or read book Black Soldier White Army written by William T. Bowers and published by U.S. Government Printing Office. This book was released on 1996 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seven Boys Held Captive for 22 years!When Daniel Ciarletta and his father, Pete, boarded a boat in 1947 bound for Italy, to visit Pete's ailing father, they could not have known what awaited them. Everything changed for Daniel and the Ciarletta family.Daniel was abducted and taken to Opi, a rural mountain community that had survived for centuries by sheep herding until 1943, when retreating German soldiers seized all the boys and able-bodied young men as work prisoners. Daniel soon became a work prisoner as part of a devious plan by the citizens of Opi-including the local priest who had evidentially lost his "moral compass"- to abduct young foreigners to take the place of the men they had lost.With no idea of where he was or why, and unable to speak Italian, Daniel began working in the fields and plotting his possible escape.Meanwhile, back in America, the once happy and loving Ciarletta family began to slowly disintegrate under the burden of conflict, anger and guilt caused by Daniel's mysterious disappearance.