Always take the Englishman’s word over the USA.

As for soldiers not shooting in a war… contrary to movies and television, most humans have an inborn aversion to killing other humans. You’ll notice I said most. It seems to be somewhere around 95%. And if they do kill someone, say in a fit of jealous rage, they will deeply regret it.

So, how to get them to do something they really don’t want to do? You make them fire their weapons at roughly man shaped targets which pop up and go down. The brain is ok with it because you’re not shooting at people and there are minor rewards for doing well. Best of all you instill the HABIT of pulling your trigger when the silhouette of a man appears in your field of fire.

It’s what psychologists call operant conditioning. And the reason US soldiers had such problems doing it in the Korean era was because their training was too short, the targets were the standard “bullseye” and it was just assumed that troops would know what to do. That last is because officers and generals like to watch movies too.

Then you add in the 5% of humans that have no strictures about killing and those guys have no problem pulling the trigger. Also, you have crew served weapons, mortars, machine guns, anti-tank missiles and so on. These are under greater supervision than the average rifleman. There’s a sergeant or junior officer making sure these weapons are being used to good effect. These crew served weapons combined with artillery and air support do the vast majority of the killing.

Lol, I feel like I should write Cliffs Notes.

What kind of moron doesn’t shoot their gun in a war??!!! Hard to believe, very hard.

Yank bashing; we yanks deserve it.

Nowhere in here does the US government factor except when they acknowledged (shamefully to be sure) that their riflemen weren’t quite up to par. Perhaps you doubt that on the principle that the US government never told a single truth- ever. Your choice.

Now here is my theory: you’re addicted to Yank bashing. You’re making us choose one option, that some guy that some other guy heard one time say some stuff, and that stuff overshadows all logical thinking on the matter. You should be a salesman.

Here is my theory; They ran out of ammo because they dropped in on the ground while they were running away.

The ammunition was different and an entire battalion sized unit calling for .45 ACP ONLY would have strained the supply system, nevermind the entire US force (upwards of twelve divisions).

See, this is what the point of the story was supposed to be: those stupid Yanks had nothing but rock’n’roll rifles and zero fire discipline, blowing their ENTIRE allotment upon engaging the NK forces (most of the war was actually fought against Chinese forces) and then getting routed by said NKs. EVERY TIME. If this fails to happen, the point of the story gets blunted.

To be sure the Yanks didn’t win. Nobody won. Matter of fact it’s still a state of war between North Korea and the UN forces, only a cease fire having been signed ( said cease fire having been violated well over 1500 times since 1953).

And, as I pointed out before, the US forces had real problems getting those selfsame battle rifle carriers to actually PULL THE FUCKING TRIGGER IN COMBAT. Training was not quite up the task of conditioning individual riflemen to engage though it was improving. By the time Vietnam rolled around the problem was solved.

This isn’t a technical argument about the existence of some rifle capable of automatic fire. It’s about calling bullshit on some anecdotal story.

maybe you’re both right.