On June 25, 1950, as he was flying back to Washington D.C. to deal with
the outbreak of war in Korea, US President Harry Truman thought, "In my
generation, this was not the first occasion when the strong had attacked
the weak. I recalled some earlier instances: Manchuria, Ethiopia,
Austria. I remembered how each time that the democracies failed to act
it had encouraged the aggressor to keep going ahead. Communism was
acting in Korea just as Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese had acted,
ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier.... If this was allowed to go
unchallenged it would mean a third world war."
In response to North Korea's invasion of South Korea, the United Nations
sent an urgent plea to its members for military assistance. Sixteen
nations answered the call by contributing combat troops. Ethiopian
Emperor Haile Selassie, a stalwart advocate of collective security,
dispatched an infantry battalion composed of his Imperial Bodyguard to
affirm this principle which had been abandoned in favor of appeasement
when the League of Nations (the predecessor to the United Nations) gave
Fascist Italy a free-hand to invade Ethiopia in 1935.
The unit designated "Kagnew Battalion" was actually successive
battalions which rotated yearly and fought as part of the US 32nd
Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. When they arrived, these
warriors from an ancient empire were viewed with suspicion by their
American allies as they were untested in modern warfare. Their arrival
in Korea also coincided with the desegregation of the US Army.
However, the Ethiopians eventually earned the respect of their comrades
after countless bloody, often hand-to hand battles, with all three
battalions which served during the war earning US Presidential Unit
Citations. Remarkably, Kagnew was the only UN contingent which did not
lose a single man as prisoner of war or missing in action.
Until now, few have heard the story of their stand for collective
security and against aggression. The Emperor's Own provides insight into
who these men and women were as well as what became of them after the
war.
