There’s nothing in that document to support Ezra’s assertion. If you read page 13, it pretty much demolishes the idea of any such thing, as it outlines the facts, which were that recruits were sent to the recruit training depots if they had not undergone Basic.

Army? Yeah, maybe some of the reserve units activated with as-yet untrained junior enlisted took them with, but it was neither policy nor official intent. The claims that some guys showed up in Korea without having attended Basic training are ones I’d take with a grain of salt. Even the hastily mobilized Reserve and National Guard units worked hard to ensure that the guys they mobilized were at least somewhat trained, although they didn’t always succeed. I’ve met a couple of guys who said they went to Korea after enlisting in the Guard or Reserve, and then didn’t get a chance to do the full course of initial entry training required, but they’re damn few, and I’m not sure how reliable their stories were.

Got a citation for that? Other than rumor, that is?

None of the sources I’ve ever read have said anything like that, at all–US Army reservists? Yes, absolutely–Seen the documentation, heard the first-hand stories. Marines? Oh, hell no–They were noted for this not being a “thing”. Lots of Marine reservists were sent over without actual MOS skill training, but I’ve never heard that any were sent over having bypassed boot camp for the Corps. At least one WWII Army vet I met had to go through Marine boot camp before he was allowed to go to Korea, and he’d finished WWII as an Army NCO. So… I would very much like to see some evidence for what you’re saying.

Harry Jones,

You need to read the book. Fehrenbach does an outstanding job of outlining everything that the Army/DOD did wrong during that short period of demobilization. Doolittle Board effects, logistics, weapons, all of it. There’s a lot more depth to be had, but you have to go to a dozen or more sources to find all the pieces. The bibliography in This Kind of War is invaluable.

Big problem with it all is that the US military does not like to self-examine or self-criticize. Things they do wrong are usually glossed over, and ascribed to “Shit happens…”. Look at the utter lack of anyone really doing anything about the WWII torpedo issues, or anyone actually examining things like “Why the hell didn’t we have MRAPs before we were years into Iraq and Afghanistan, and why was none of our equipment prepared for the IED war?”. The rare occasions when the errors get examined are actually seriously anomalous. Cases like the Ichord Committee looking into the M16 issues in Vietnam are damn rare, and ever rarer when they actually accomplish anything.

The US military is anything but a “learning organization”.