Korean War Tour of Duty

[emccomas]

OK,

 

For someone who was drafted in the US Army in 1950, and was sent to Korea an an infantryman, three questions:

 

1. How long would this person normally have served in country in Korea.?

2. How long would this person have served in the Army total, assuming he did not re-enlist?

3. If this solder was subsequently assigned as an instructor on the M1917 water cooled .30 caliber machine gun, where

would that assignment have taken place (what base, assuming it was stateside).

[bobgee]

2, Two years

1. No tour - he would have served from arrival until it was time to come home for discharge. Tours began in VietNam.

3. Any Infantry Training Base where he nay have been assigned.

My 2-cents -----Bobgee

[S.ChrisKelly]

Hope this helps.  It dispels the myth that there was a "points system" (the Adjusted Service Rating or ASR) only during World War Two.  Check out the additional information in the sources.  The narrative below is quoted from source 1).

 

In September 1951 the Army had introduced a point system that tried to take into account the nature of individual service when determining eligibility for rotation home to the United States. According to this system, a soldier earned four points for every month he served in close combat, two points per month for rear-echelon duty in Korea, and one point for duty elsewhere in the Far East. Later, an additional category-divisional reserve status-was established at a rate of three points per month. The Army initially stated that enlisted men needed to earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the States, while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army reduced these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and thirty-seven points for officers. Earning the required number of points did not guarantee instant rotation; it only meant that the soldier in question was eligible to go home. Nevertheless, most soldiers did return home shortly after they met the requirement.

 

The point system was a marvelous palliative to flagging spirits, as it gave every soldier a definite goal in an otherwise indefinite and seemingly goalless war. Every man knew that typical frontline duty would enable him to return home after about a year of service in Korea. The system also helped boost the spirits of loved ones back home. This was of some consequence in helping to maintain public support for what was an increasingly unpopular war. Yet for all of its psychological and political benefits, the program was not without its costs.

 

The constant turnover generated by the policy-approximately 20,000 to 30,000 men per month-was terribly inefficient from the vantage point of manpower administration and created tremendous strains on the Army's personnel and training systems. The program also hurt military proficiency by increasing personnel turbulence and by producing a continuous drain on skilled manpower. No sooner had a soldier become fully acclimatized to the physical, mental, and technical demands of Korean combat than he was rotated home, only to be replaced by a green recruit who lacked these skills. This was true not only of the enlisted men, who were rushed to the front with little or no field training, but of the officers as well.

 

Indeed, by the fall of 1952 most junior officers with World War II combat experience had been rotated home and replaced by recent Reserve Officers' Training Corps graduates who had neither command nor combat experience. In a sinister twist, the system also reduced the effectiveness of many veteran soldiers, who became progressively more cautious and unreliable in combat as their eligibility for rotation neared. All of this meant that combat proficiency tended to stagnate in American units during the course of the war. This contrasted sharply with those Communist units that had avoided heavy casualties and managed to keep their morale intact. In these units battlefield acumen steadily increased as the war progressed thanks to the Communists' rather Draconian personnel policies. In the Red Army, victory or death were the only ways home.

 

Sources:

1)

https://history.army.mil/brochures/kw-stale/stale.htm#:~:text=According to this system%2C a,of three points per month.

2)

https://greensboro.com/point-system-flaws-become-evident-in-korea/article_7f0fb634-350a-5b25-a076-8ed37f1a4c32.html