A CHRISTMAS FAR FROM HOME

The tragic tale of how the arrogance of a general led to disastrous consequences for the American troops in North Korea in 1950.

“Home by Christmas” was Gen. MacArthur’s precipitous forecast to President Harry S. Truman and the U.S. troops stationed in the mountains of North Korea during that first bitter winter of the Korean War. Prolific historian and Korean War veteran Weintraub (Young Mr. Roosevelt: FDR’s Introduction to War, Politics, and Life, 2012, etc.) concentrates on the incongruous movement of two enemy armies: The United Nations forces (most of which were American, under MacArthur’s leadership) had been divided after the invasion at Inchon in September, with the Eighth Army moving up the west coast and the newly created X Corps having sailed all the way around South Korea to land on the east coast well above the 38th Parallel, despite the warning by the Chinese. The North Koreans and their Chinese helpers, under the brilliant direction of Mao Zedong, who was amassing his troops at the Manchurian border, secretly slipped across the Yalu River by night. MacArthur’s initial success at Inchon had allowed him carte blanche in subsequently directing the U.N. effort, though he was stationed in Tokyo and only occasionally flew in and around Korea, usually boasting to reporters. Determined to unify the country, ignoring intelligence sources that reported Chinese movement toward the border, and confident in his public relations coup to bring home the troops by Christmas, MacArthur, with his “diminishing reserves of shrewdness” and “disproportionate ego,” was sure that he “could not be wrong.” The general was abetted by his yes men, such as Edward “Ned” Almond of the X Corps, and passive acceptance by Truman.

Weintraub expertly delineates the unraveling disaster for the entrapped, frozen, dispirited troops on the ground.