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Leadership in Battle:
At the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, junior field grade officers receive instruction aimed at helping them make an important transition. This transition is from the mostly direct leadership role they enjoyed as platoon leaders and company commanders to the more indirect organizational leadership role in which they will find themselves when they return to troop units as executive officers and operations officers. Several important themes underscore the importance of effective leadership at the organizational level. The best organizationa it leaders link their own personal success to the Army's, success. These leaders always do the right thing. They try to maintain a long-term focus. They build disciplined, cohesive, battle-focused units while working hard to develop junior officers capable of aggressive, disciplined, individual thought who will win our nation's wars. A portion of "doing the right thing" is the obligation officers have, as members of the profession of arms, to continually seek self-improvement as leaders through military schools, comprehensive unit leader development programs, staff rides and dedicated self-study. For me, the best historical insights came from the focused study of accounts of operational maneuver and tactics that contain vivid examples of the leadership required to lead soldiers successfully in combat on terrain similar to that which I would encounter as the operations officer of the 44th Engineer Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea. One of the more interesting and useful of these accounts concerned the actions of the 23rd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) under the command of Col. Paul Freeman at the battle of Chipyong-ni. Col. Freeman's exploits deserve close study by all officers who may one day lead or support soldiers in combat at the organizational level.
In military annals, the siege of Chipyong-ni is described as one of the most bitterly contested engagements of the Korean War. Amid the snow-covered hills encircling the small town of Chipyong-ni in the X Corps sector, Col. Paul Freeman's 23rd Regimental Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division made a decisive stand from February 13-15, 1951. In an extended period of brutal close combat, the battlehardened 23rd RCT, consisting of the regiment's three organic infantry battalions, the well-respected French battalion, the 1st Ranger Company, a combat engineer company, heavy mortars, a battalion of 105...