World War II; VOLUME 9 * NUMBER 1 * MAY 1994; PERSPECTIVES

Two generals with key D-Day roles, Jimmy Doolittle and Matt RIDGWAY, left a legacy of bravery and service to their country. By Blaine Taylor  

On a leafy side street in present-day Brooklyn, a faint echo of the Civil War can still be heard.

By John A. Barnes

The Episcopal Church of St. John, in Brooklyn, New York, is considerably less quiet today than it must have been in the days when Captain Robert E. Lee and 1st Lieutenant Thomas J. Jackson (who would not be called "Stonewall" for another 12 years) worshiped there. Now the church is overshadowed by the thundering concrete and steel approach ramps of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which tower hundreds of feet overhead, just above the little church's front steps.

The military connections between St. John's and Fort Hamilton did not end with the Civil War. Many officers who achieved battlefield fame in later wars were parishioners at St. John's early in their military careers. These include General Matthew B. RIDGWAY, the World War II paratroop commander who went on to lead U.S. forces during the Korean War; General Walter Bedell Smith, chief of staff to General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Europe during World War II, and later director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Air Force General Hubert Harmon, the first superintendent of the U.S. Air Force Academy. St. John's is thus well-deserving of its nickname, "the Church of the Generals." St. John's is located at 9818 Fort Hamilton Parkway in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. For additional information, call (718) 745-2377.

Forty-five years after shipping out to fight in Korea, Harry Summers got new insight into what the war had been all about.

By Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., U.S. Army (ret.)

Dismissed as the "forgotten war," Korea was in actuality one of America's most significant conflicts. Although born of a misapprehension, the Korean War triggered the buildup of U.S. forces in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), began American involvement in the Vietnam War, and, although seen as an aberration at the time, now serves as the very model for America's wars of the future.

What made the difference was Lt. Gen. Matthew B. RIDGWAY, who took command of EUSA on December 26, 1950, replacing Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker, who had been killed in a jeep accident. RIDGWAY turned EUSA from dejection and defeat into a tough, battle-ready force within a matter of weeks. "The Eighth Army," wrote Fehrenbach, "rose from its own ashes in a killing mood... By 7 March they stood on the Han. They went through Seoul, and reduced it block by block... At the end of March, the Eighth Army was across the parallel."