Early Military Career and Korea
Forrest entered the United States Military Academy in 1945 during the closing days of World War II. As a West Point cadet, he played B-Squad football and fought on the A-1 boxing team. His roommates were Samuel S. Coursen, Joe Toomey, Murray Williams, Collier Ross, and Jim Scholtz. In his Third Class year, at the "Hop" dance party, Jack met Patricia Smith of Long Beach, New York, whom he married in July 1949 after graduation. Forrest proceeded to Fort Riley, Kansas and Fort Benning, Georgia where he attended the Infantry Basic Course before being sent to the Korean War.
Forrest led a platoon of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division through the darkest days in Korea. After fighting in the Battle of the Pusan Perimeter, his command was the first to enter North Korea and the North Korean capital Pyongyang. He earned the Combat Infantryman Badge, two Purple Hearts, and two Silver Stars. Two of his West Point roommates, Lt. Samuel S. Coursen, a fellow 5th Cavalry Regiment company commander and Medal of Honor recipient, and Lt. Joe Toomey, were killed in action in Korea.
From Forrest's Silver Star citations: "Courageously gathering his six remaining men, he briefed them on his plan of surprise action to rout the enemy group... he led them yelling and shouting into the enemy's midst. This ruse... completely baffled and surprised the enemy into believing their main position had fallen..." Although wounded in the leg during the early part of the action, Lieutenant Forrest refused to be evacuated and moved from position to position, in the face of heavy enemy fire, to encourage and reorganize his men. He directed a defense of his position and led a successful counterattack.
Read more about this topic: John F. Forrest
Famous quotes containing the words early, military and/or career:
“Love is the hardest thing in the world to write about. So simple. You’ve got to catch it through details, like the early morning sunlight hitting the gray tin of the rain spout in front of her house. The ringing of a telephone that sounds like Beethoven’s “Pastoral.” A letter scribbled on her office stationery that you carry around in your pocket because it smells of all the lilacs in Ohio.”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Who are we? And for what are we going to fight? Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the Great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian Czar? No—we are the free born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world; and the only people on earth who possess rights, liberties, and property which they dare call their own.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)