Well, as you look back with the hindsight of thirty years, I think that a farsighted statesman could have seen that this little sliver of land, the K… - Matthew Ridgway

Physical fitness comes under competence, the third of my three basic ingredients of leadership. It plays a great part. My own earlier training at Fort Leavenworth, Fort Benning, Fort Sam Houston with the 2d Division, with the 33d Infantry in the Panama area, and with the airborne paid off in battle-first as a division, then as a corps, and, finally, as an army commander. Because of strenuous and unremitting physical training, I was able to keep up with the best of my troops in the hottest sec- tors and the toughest terrain and cli- mate. Let me mention briefly what I think the standards should be for commanders of large units. The division commander should have the physical endurance, stamina, and reserves of his best infantry battalion commanders, because that is where he belongs- with them a good part of the time; the corps commander, those of his infantry regimental commanders; and the army commander just about the same. And remember this, since no one can predict today when you may be thrown into combat, perhaps within hours of deplaning in an overseas theater-as happened to thousands in Korea, and as I have no doubt to many in Vietnam-you will have no time to get in shape. You must be in shape all the time.

I've seen some pretty damned bloody engagements myself. You don't pile bodies up in a wall at all. It reminds me of one marine who said to the sergeant, "Sergeant, you used the word 'hordes,' attacking in 'hordes.' How many platoons does it take to make a horde?" In other words, while the Chinese, and the North Koreans to an even greater extent, attacked with a fanaticism which was hard for us to understand attacks in the face of our superior firepower which no American commander would have countenanced for a moment the bodies still would be scattered according to their approach. You don't build a wall of bodies. Maybe you did in a medieval city when you were trying to breach a wall or something.

Well, we like to sign a check and say that the bill is paid, you see; then we realize that the payment's going to come later and be more painful still. We like to think that when we sign an agreement, the other party is going to keep it. We keep our part but the Russians have no intention of keeping it, none whatever. Duplicity, secrecy, and every form of deceit is in- grained in their working methods and their handling of peoples. They've always been that way when I say always, I mean about two or three hundred years at least.