On 27 December 1950 the commanding general began a three-day tour of Eighth Army units at the front. He talked to hundreds of soldiers ranging from privates to unit commanders. There was nothing the matter with the Eighth Army, he assured them, that confidence wouldn’t cure. “I told them their soldier forbears would turn over in their graves if they heard some of the stories I had heard about the behavior of some of our troop leaders in combat. The job of a commander was to be up where the crisis of action was taking place. In time of battle, I wanted division commanders to be up with their forward battalions, and I wanted corps commanders up with the regiment that was in the hottest action. If they had paper work to do, they could do it at night. By day their place was up there where the shooting was going on.” [Illustration: MAP 2 EUSAK DISPOSITIONS 31 DEC 1950] It could never have been said that this professional soldier, the son of a Regular Army colonel, had failed to set an example in his own career. As the commander of an airborne division, he had jumped along with his men in Normandy. Seldom seen in Korea without a grenade attached to his harness, Ridgway insisted that it was not a gesture of showmanship. In mobile warfare a man might be surprised by the enemy when he least expected it, he said, and a grenade was useful for blasting one’s way out of a tight spot. _Ridgway’s Declaration of Faith_ After completing his tour of the combat area, the commanding general concluded that one thing was still lacking. Soldiers of the Eighth Army hadn’t as yet been given an adequate answer to the questions, “Why are we here?” and “What are we fighting for?” In the belief that the men were entitled to an answer from their commanding general, he sat down in his room and wrote this declaration of faith: To me the issues are clear. It is not a question of this or that Korean town or village. Real estate is here, incidental.... The real issues are whether the power of Western civilization, as God has permitted it to flower in our own beloved lands, shall defy and defeat Communism; whether the rule of men who shoot their prisoners, enslave their citizens and deride the dignity of man, shall displace the rule of those to whom the individual and individual rights are sacred; whether we are to survive with God’s hand to guide and lead us, or to perish in the dead existence of a Godless world. If these be true, and to me they are, beyond any possibility of challenge, then this has long since ceased to be a fight for freedom for our Korean allies alone and for their national survival. It has become, and it continues to be, a fight for our own freedom, for our own survival, in an honorable, independent national existence....[11] [11] Memorandum from commanding general to all troops of Eighth Army, 21 Jan 51.