Memories of a Simpler War

THE KOREAN WAR by Matthew B. Ridgway. 291 pages. Doub/eday. $6.95.

The Korean War was frustrating, messy and bloody, but compared with Viet Nam, it was simple. For one thing, the Communists struck across a clear demarcation line, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind about the nature of the aggression. For another, Russia and China were still united, and while this made them a formidable enemy, it also made them easier to cope with in the American mind; there was little thought then of "building bridges" to Communist nations or of betting on Titoism in Asia.

General Matt Ridgway, that once familiar figure with the fur cap and the hand grenades dangling from his field jacket, was the man who took over from Douglas MacArthur after President Truman fired the aging hero. (As a younger generation of hawks and doves now scarcely remember, MacArthur had publicly criticized the President for not allowing him to strike back at Red China across the Yalu.) In a brisk personal and military memoir, Ridgway, who is now 72 and retired, reviews the U.S.'s first major confrontation with Communism in Asia.

Ridgway's achievement in Korea was to rescue a scattered, retreating, demoralized and outnumbered army from defeat, and to mount five spring offensives that drove the Chinese back beyond the 38th parallel--where international politics at last fixed a truce line. Retracing what by now must be one of the most overdiscussed personnel changes in modern history, Ridgway comes down hard on MacArthur for his refusal to accept the fact that the Chinese Communists wt:e massing for their invasion. "This wholly human failing of discounting or ignoring all unwelcome facts," writes Ridgway wryly, "seemed developed beyond the average in MacArthur's nature." He adds: "I cannot help drawing a parallel with Custer's behavior at the Little Big Horn, when the commander's overriding belief that he alone was right closed his mind to all counsel."

Korea, writes Ridgway, "taught us that all warfare from this time forth must be limited. It could no longer be a question of whether to fight a limited war, but of how to avoid fighting any other kind." Yet he suggests that a major military test with Communism is still to come--offering no speculation on how or where. Viet Nam, in his view, is not the place. That war, he believes, represents an overdraft on American resources that is disproportionate to the national interest in that part of the world. He fears that the U.S. may find itself "unduly weakened when we need to meet new challenges in other, more vital areas of the world." That said, the general remains curiously unspecific when it comes to suggesting solutions or even alternatives to U.S. policy in Viet Nam.

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