My latest is at 411mania.com
Most of us are familiar to some degree with the military history of George Washington and his shoeless Continental Army hunkered down and starving at Valley Forge during the War of Independence. From that position, he would go on to rally his ragtag army to victory. But there are much more modern examples for us to draw from if we want to examine the issue of our military readiness in the context of related history.
A good place to start is the Korean War. One of the most glaring historical inaccuracies taught in most public schools regarding military history is that this nation kept a standing army in fighting shape since the First World War. Not so. The US's involvement in the Korean War, less than a decade after this nation's largest expeditionary military mobilization during WWII began with a surprise attack against a modest American contingent in South Korea. As North Korean tanks smashed into South Korea, the US Army began to rush armor to the peninsula. Or at least, it wanted to. The problem was, the US army didn't have many operational tanks.
To solve the problem, the US Army in Japan went to Pacific beaches and pulled rusting hulks from WWII battles into maintenance bays. There they refurbished them and sent them to Korea. At Fort Knox, Kentucky - the home of armor for the US army – soldiers went to memorial parks and pulled tanks from their pedestals and sent them to combat in Korea.
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