The Eighth Army in Korea: The Value of Intangible Leadership - General Matthew Ridgway; Human Dimension of War, The Character to Lead and the Courage to Lead an Follow, Competence in Action

This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. Relevant to the study of leadership is the study of past leaders and their methods. Thus, the study of Matthew B. Ridgway upon becoming the commander of Eighth Army during the Korean War is intriguing for both the brevity and way in which he turned a defeatist army into a capable fighting force. Ridgway characterized leadership as requiring three qualities; character, courage, and competence. It is under these lenses, which this monograph dissects his leadership style to harness for future leaders methods that still apply today.

American historians tend to focus on data points depicting the turnaround of the Eighth Army in Korea to artillery rounds and napalm, rather than to the true nature of how Ridgway managed to turn a rout into the strategic answer required and desired by the Truman Administration. Artillery and napalm did not come into being when Ridgway arrived in Korea they had been available, to some degree, to Walker. The difference became that Ridgway knew how to couple technology to soldiers. The late David Halberstam wrote one of the best intertwined histories of the Korean War in his, The Coldest Winter, bringing to life personal stories, connecting them to the facts, and to the equipment they used. Bruce Cummings, in his revisionist book, The Korean War, focuses most of his attention on the strategic happenings, dates, guerilla warfare, brutality, and the air war. Allan R. Millet's masterpiece, The War for Korea, 1950-1951: They Came from the North, adds attention to the coalition hardships particularly of integrating commands by focusing on the Republic of Korea Army, the Korean Augmentees to the US Army, and the Korean Military Advisory Group. The historians with a military background place more emphasis on the leadership side of the argument, but it is a side story in Roy Appleman's Ridgway Duels for Korea. The one book that deals directly on leadership in the Korean War, Kenneth Hamburger's Leadership in the Crucible: The Korean War Battles of Twin Tunnels and Chipyong-ni is another take from a veteran on the leadership of Colonels Paul Freeman and the French Officer Ralph Monclar. The international history witnessed in Andrew Salmon's, To the Last Round: The Epic British Stand on the Imjin River, while about the normal equipment and capabilities resounds with the preponderance of the history on the people, leadership, and courage.