To continue to utilize the forces of our Air and Navy without an effective ground element cannot be decisive. - T. R. Fehrenbach

Because the American people have traditionally taken a warlike, but not military, attitude to battle, and because they have always coupled a certain belligerence - no American likes being pushed around - with a complete unwillingness to prepare for combat, the Korean War was difficult, perhaps the most difficult in their history.

The problem is to see not what is desirable, or nice, or politically feasible, but what is necessary.

For the first time in recent history, American ground units had been committed during the initial days of a war; there had been no allies to hold the line while America prepared. For the first time, many Americans could understand what had happened to Britain at Dunkirk.