"But here’s where grandad has a lesson for those of us who have never served. Had he known earlier what the intel really showed – that Communist China cared a great deal about what happened the other side of the Yalu river - it wouldn’t have mattered. It must not be allowed to matter. "Like all who serve, grandad was owned by the United States lock, stock, and barrel, to be used as his nation deemed necessary. Even if ordered to march into Hell itself."

1. CHARLES BLOESER · MONDAY, MAY 28, 2018 55 Reads
Owned Lock, Stock, and Barrel
I[1] recently heard a former operator remark that his generation suffers from a kind of moral
relativism that assumes all purported “truths” are equally valid. He pointed out that it
matters little that someone disagrees with the proposition that “2 + 2 = 4.” Mathematicians
don’t waste time listening to arguments otherwise.[2] And neither does the military, he
explained.
Calculating and acting on the correct answer to complex mathematical equations was the job
of, among others, World War II bombardiers. And tens of thousands of Allied navigators and
radiomen and pilots and gunners died getting bombardiers to their job sites, so they could do
what they’d been trained and tasked to do. More people than anticipated died 20,000 feet
below when a bombardier got the math wrong.
Of course, the mathematics of calculating the correct and desired damage to a target –
computer assist or not – has never been the only part of the military’s mission that’s nothing
more than a car on blocks if alternative, or preferred, truths are given the time of day.
Facts no one in our family ever talked about, truths about where and why and how my
grandad was critically wounded in combat, have made me reflect on another non-negotiable
fact of military service that is both unknown and unfelt by most of the 92.7% of us in this
country who have never served under arms[3]: the fact of being government property to be
used as the nation deems necessary.
What I’ve learned by researching the Korean combat experiences of other soldiers from the
U.S. Army’s 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division has told me much I never knew about
what grandad was made of. It’s given me a narrow space in a fence through which I can see
part of why this World War II drill instructor I called “grandad” was never the same after
Korea. And what I’ve seen has forever axed the thought that I might one day change my hard-
to-spell surname from that of a soldier from Queens with an 8th grade education who
adopted two Tennessee boys and then raised my dad and his kid brother as best he knew
how.
In a September 13, 2017 Brookings’ blogpost, “Catastrophe on the Yalu: America’s
Intelligence Failure in Korea,” Bruce Riedel, the Director of Brookings’ Intelligence Project,
suggests that the bloodletting at Unsan - during which U.S. Army Master Sergeant Charles
Edit Note

2. Bloeser was forever wounded – didn’t have to happen. Three days of fighting legions of battle
– hardened Communist Chinese troops who weren’t supposed to be there was due to “a
catastrophic intelligence failure. . .. the result of terrible intelligence management, not the
poor collection or analysis of information.”
Casualty records at the National Archives report that grandad was “[s]eriously wounded in
action by missile” on November 2, 1950. In an excerpt in Vanity Fair from The Coldest
Winter: America and the Korean War, David Halberstam explains what happened one day
earlier, when the two-star general commanding grandad’s division asked for permission to
pull back:
On the afternoon of November 1, Major General Hobart R. "Hap" Gay, the First Cav
division commander, was in his command post with General Charles Palmer, his artillery
commander, when a radio report from an observer in an L-5 spotter plane caught their
attention: "This is the strangest sight I have ever seen. There are two large columns of
enemy infantry moving southeast over the trails in the vicinity of Myongdang-dong and
Yonghung-dong. Our shells are landing right in their columns and they keep coming."
Those were two tiny villages five or six air miles from Unsan. Palmer immediately ordered
additional artillery units to start firing, and Gay nervously called First Corps, requesting
permission to pull the entire Eighth Cav several miles south of Unsan. His request was
denied.
The Army’s Military History Center describes what happened next: “Thousands of Chinese []
attacked from the north, northwest, and west against scattered U.S. and South Korean units
moving deep into North Korea. The Chinese seemed to come out of nowhere as they swarmed
around the flanks and over the defensive positions of the surprised [] troops.” As the lead to
the Halberstam excerpt puts it, “hundreds of Americans got slaughtered at Unsan, one of the
worst defeats of the Korean War.”
In "one of the most shameful and little-known incidents in U.S. military history," writes
Charles J. Hanley (quoting Korean War historian Jack J. Gifford), some 600 of the 3rd
Battalion's 800 men” were “[t]rapped by two Chinese divisions,” and “left to die in far
northern Korea.”[4]
“The Yalu disaster was completely predictable,” writes Riedel in his Brookings blogpost. “The
intelligence failure was the result of a policy maker’s determination that intelligence support
his preconceived views, not challenge them. It is a timeless lesson.”
Knowing that men my grandad trained with and fought to keep alive – men from what
Sebastian Junger would call his “tribe”[5] - died in or after a battle that looks like it never had

3. to go down the way it did, infuriates me. And I regret that I didn’t know these things when
grandma was alive and might have found in this history at least some solace after living
through some very dark years with her husband after he came home.
To my way of thinking, the men who fell at Unsan died with honor.[6] But the likelihood that
their lives were wasted is disturbing.
And knowing that many of these men would have died on other battlefields on the Korean
peninsula before two years of peace talks would bring an armistice is no comfort. Quite the
opposite.
The warriors ordered into a Chinese hornets’ nest with grandad were sons and brothers and
husbands and fathers – all soldiers who deserved to fight where they could do the most good.
Not here. Not this way.
Ms. Elizabeth M. Collins writes in a November 2016 retrospective at Army.Mil that “[a] 1954
Congressional report termed the Korean War "one of the most heinous and barbaric" periods
in history, citing some 1,800 cases of war crimes involving thousands of victims: "Virtually
every provision of the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of war prisoners was
purposely violated or ignored by the North Korean or Chinese forces."
But here’s where grandad has a lesson for those of us who have never served. Had he known
earlier what the intel really showed – that Communist China cared a great deal about what
happened the other side of the Yalu river - it wouldn’t have mattered. It must not be allowed
to matter.
Like all who serve, grandad was owned by the United States lock, stock, and barrel, to be
used as his nation deemed necessary. Even if ordered to march into Hell itself.
The thing about that is this. We who are civilians might see such an order as time for a career
change without giving notice. U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, airmen, and members of the
U.S. Coast Guard who refuse to obey lawful orders breach the law and threaten the order,
discipline, and unit cohesiveness without which the nation can neither defend itself nor
otherwise pursue its interests.
That was true for grandad, who had solemnly sworn, among other duties, that he would
“observe and obey the orders of the President of the United States of America, and the orders
of the officers appointed over [him]."[7]

4. It was true for grandad’s commanding general whose request to pull the Army back had been
denied.
ENDNOTES
[1] Charles Bloeser is a trial and appellate lawyer with advanced training and research
activities in comparative politics and international relations, as well as research design and
quantitative methods. Among his published research are works re foreign-funded Jihadi
terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, civilian-military law enforcement relations, federal
criminal law, and Federal court procedure.
His previous work has been cited, among other places, in publications of the CATO Institute
(2009) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine (2006), as well as in
the Mississippi Law Journal (2016), Small Wars Journal (2011), Georgetown Law Journal
(2008), George Mason Law Review (2007), William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2006),
University of Florida Journal of Law & Pub. Policy (2006), and Indiana Law Review (2003);
also cited in: James Seger, The Occupy Movement: Signs of Cultural Shifts in Group
Processes Shaped by Place, PhD. diss., Pacifica Graduate Institute (2017), Spencer Mawby,
Ordering Independence: The End of Empire in the Anglophone Caribbean, 1947-69. Palgrave
Macmillan UK (2012), and in Brandon Oliveira & Darby Avilas, Disrupting Emerging
Networks: Analyzing and Evaluating Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM) and the Development of
an Extremist Threat in the Caribbean, M.S. thesis, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (2012).
The author’s research and writing agenda seeks to translate the experiences of combat-
wounded veterans into language his fellow civilians might understand. A research article
telling the stories of combat - wounded Allied airmen flying bombing missions over occupied
Europe – crafted around the successful escape and evasion of a B-17 bombardier from
Memphis, Tennessee – is in the works.
[2] (“. . . what if we told you that 2 +2 = ? has stumped even some of the smartest
mathematicians because it doesn’t necessarily have to equal 4?”) Elena Holodny. “Here’s
How Your Watch Can Prove that 2 + 2 Doesn’t Equal 4.” Businessinsider.com (June 24,
2014).
[3] Mona Chalabi. “What Percentage of Americans Have Served in the Military?”
Fivethirtyeight.com (March 19, 2015).
[4] “Sixty years later those fallen soldiers, the lost battalion of Unsan, are stranded anew.

5. “North Korea is offering fresh clues to their remains. American teams are ready to re-enter
the north to dig for them. But for five years the U.S. government has refused to work with
North Korea to recover the men of Unsan and others among more than 8,000 U.S. missing in
action from the 1950-53 war.
“Now, under pressure from MIA family groups, the Obama administration is said to be
moving slowly to reverse the Bush administration's suspension of the joint recovery program,
a step taken in 2005 as the North Korean nuclear crisis dragged on.
"If I had a direct line in to the president, I would say, `Please reinstitute this program. There
are families that need closure,'" said Ruth Davis, 61, of Palestine, Texas, whose uncle, Sgt. 1st
Class Benny Don Rogers, has been listed as MIA since Chinese attackers overran his
company -- I Company, 8th Cavalry -- at Unsan in late 1950.
“It was one of Rogers' I Company comrades, Pfc. Philip W. Ackley of Hillsboro, New
Hampshire, whose identifying dog tag appeared in a photo the North Koreans handed over at
Korea's Panmunjom truce village in January of this 60th year since the war started. The
North Koreans also delivered photos of remains, a stark reminder that Unsan's dead still wait
to come home.” Charles J. Hanley, “Lost Korean War battalion awaits US MIA decision,”
Associated Press (July 18, 2010).
[5] Sebastian Junger. Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (London: 4th Estate 2017).
[6] Another soldier from the “First Cav” whose honorable service at Unsan was recognized
publicly was Tibor Rubin. Mr. Rubin had survived the Holocaust while his family did not. He
thanked the United States for his rescue by enlisting in the Army shortly after he arrived in
the States and when he could barely speak English. Mr. Rubin was awarded the
Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor in combat at Unsan, but his official citation
describes in detail how the soldier single-handedly kept alive as many as 40 of his fellow
POWs during 2 years he spent in a Chinese prison camp.
[7] “The first oath under the Constitution was approved by Act of Congress 29 September
1789 (Sec. 3, Ch. 25, 1st Congress). It applied to all commissioned officers, noncommissioned
officers and privates in the service of the United States.” Information courtesy
history.army.mil, accessed May 28, 2018.

6. [Cover image courtesy Associated Press: “This undated photo provided Wednesday, July 14,
2010 by the U.S. Defense Dept. shows Pfc. Philip W. Ackley's Korean War dog tag. The tag,
which was found in North Korea's Unsan battlefield area where Ackley is believed to have
been lost, was handed over to the U.S. by North Korean at the Panmunjom truce village in
January, 2010. Since 2005, the U.S. government has refused to work with North Korea to
recover the men of Unsan and others among more than 8,000 U.S. missing in action from
the 1950-53 war. (AP Photo/U.S. Defense Dept.)” Charles J. Hanley, “Lost Korean War
battalion awaits US MIA decision,” Associated Press (July 18, 2010).]