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With a Black Platoon in combat : a year in Korea / Lyle Rishell.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Texas A & M University military history series ; 29.Publication details: College Station : Texas A & M University Press, ©1993.Edition: 1st edDescription: 1 online resource (xvi, 176 pages) : illustrationsContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 0585175136
  • 9780585175133
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: With a Black Platoon in combat.DDC classification:
  • 951.904/2/092 20
LOC classification:
  • DS921.6 .R57 1993eb
Online resources:
Contents:
Korean War chronology -- Alpha phase -- Mobilization and movement -- Korea, the hermit kingdom -- First contact -- The Pusan perimeter -- The fight continues -- Perimeter breakout -- Mop-up operations -- Redeployment -- Time out -- Call it homecoming -- The Han River crossing -- Thrust and counterthrust -- Phase omega -- Appendix A. 24th Infantry Regiment -- Appendix B. Composition of second platoon.
Action note:
  • digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve
Summary: The first year of the Korean conflict was a dark and humiliating period for many of the troops who fought there. Against a backdrop of U.S. political indecision and reduced military capability, American soldiers fought a dedicated and numerically strong enemy force that was determined to overrun South Korea. One of these units, the segregated 24th Infantry Regiment, was made up of black soldiers, commanded for the most part by white officers. Lyle Rishell, an infantry platoon leader, led a black platoon of Able Company in that regiment. This book tells the dramatic, often frustrating, sometimes heroic story of that platoon in that first, fateful year of war. From detailed notes he made at the time, and from his memories of those days, Rishell reconstructs the deployment and tactics of his unit, its day-to-day actions and survival. The story that unfolds is one of honor, fear, fighting spirit, fierce combat, and the cries of wounded men. The 24th Infantry Regiment has received bad press from many historians of the Korean conflict, who claim that the black soldiers and noncommissioned officers were undisciplined and even cowardly in battle. Rishell's moving account, based on his own experiences, describes his men as no better or worse than any other infantrymen in the first year in Korea. His troops fought well from July, 1950, to May, 1951, in nearly constant front-line action against the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists, despite a variety of significant fundamental obstacles, including the racial prejudice of much of their own army. It is a unique and compelling story of the relationship of a white officer and black soldiers before integration of the services and the civil rights legislation of the sixties. It is also an important corrective to a poorly understood aspect of one of America's most dismal conflicts.
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Includes index.

The first year of the Korean conflict was a dark and humiliating period for many of the troops who fought there. Against a backdrop of U.S. political indecision and reduced military capability, American soldiers fought a dedicated and numerically strong enemy force that was determined to overrun South Korea. One of these units, the segregated 24th Infantry Regiment, was made up of black soldiers, commanded for the most part by white officers. Lyle Rishell, an infantry platoon leader, led a black platoon of Able Company in that regiment. This book tells the dramatic, often frustrating, sometimes heroic story of that platoon in that first, fateful year of war. From detailed notes he made at the time, and from his memories of those days, Rishell reconstructs the deployment and tactics of his unit, its day-to-day actions and survival. The story that unfolds is one of honor, fear, fighting spirit, fierce combat, and the cries of wounded men. The 24th Infantry Regiment has received bad press from many historians of the Korean conflict, who claim that the black soldiers and noncommissioned officers were undisciplined and even cowardly in battle. Rishell's moving account, based on his own experiences, describes his men as no better or worse than any other infantrymen in the first year in Korea. His troops fought well from July, 1950, to May, 1951, in nearly constant front-line action against the North Koreans and the Chinese Communists, despite a variety of significant fundamental obstacles, including the racial prejudice of much of their own army. It is a unique and compelling story of the relationship of a white officer and black soldiers before integration of the services and the civil rights legislation of the sixties. It is also an important corrective to a poorly understood aspect of one of America's most dismal conflicts.

Korean War chronology -- Alpha phase -- Mobilization and movement -- Korea, the hermit kingdom -- First contact -- The Pusan perimeter -- The fight continues -- Perimeter breakout -- Mop-up operations -- Redeployment -- Time out -- Call it homecoming -- The Han River crossing -- Thrust and counterthrust -- Phase omega -- Appendix A. 24th Infantry Regiment -- Appendix B. Composition of second platoon.

Print version record.

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Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2011. MiAaHDL

Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. MiAaHDL

http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212

digitized 2011 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL

English.

WorldCat record variable field(s) change: 600

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