U.S. soldiers in Korea in late 1950 were getting their butts kicked.

China's army had poured south across the Yalu River, North Korea's border with China. The Red army pushed United Nations forces, led by the Americans, into an ugly retreat.

Exhausted, freezing U.S. and South Korean troops soon reached stockpiles of their own supplies in Pyongyang. But they couldn't take advantage of them. They had to torch them to keep the food and gear out of communist hands. It was another blow to the southward-fleeing U.N. forces' battered morale.

The Korean War, sparked by North Korea's invasion of its southern sibling the prior June, was going badly for the U.S. and its allies. A desperate situation threatened to turn worse on Dec. 23, 1950. Lt. Gen. Walton "Johnnie" Walker, top ground commander of U.S. forces, was killed when his speeding jeep collided with a civilian truck.

During World War II, Walker had been hailed by no one less than Gen. George Patton as "my fightiest son of a bitch."

Walker's replacement to command the 8th Army in Korea was, at the moment, a mere desk jockey.

Matthew Bunker Ridgway had been on the Army staff in the Pentagon as deputy chief of staff for operations and administration.

Yet within weeks Ridgway reversed the tide of war.

When President Truman sacked the legendary but insubordinate Gen. Douglas MacArthur in April 1951, he put Ridgway in command of all U.N. forces in Korea.

Despite being vastly outnumbered by Chinese and North Koreans, the new commander drove the invading troops out of South Korea.

Doing What's Right

Ridgway (1895-1993) was also a leader in civil rights. Truman ordered the armed forces integrated in 1948. But foot-dragging brass largely avoided fulfilling that order. It was Ridgway who finally mixed black and white soldiers in Korea, the Army Times recalled in a 2003 report.

Ridgway's military success in Korea built on earlier achievements. In World War II he reorganized the 82nd Infantry Division into America's first airborne division of parachuting soldiers. He led troops through some of the heaviest combat in that war. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Service Medal and Bronze Star with V for valor.

After his stint in Korea, he succeeded Dwight Eisenhower as head of NATO troops in Europe. And in 1953 he became Army chief of staff.

Ridgway was raised as a typical Army brat. His father was a career artillery officer. Young Matthew grew up on a series of military bases.

He showed perseverance early. On his first try, he failed the geometry part of his entrance exam to West Point. He boned up and won his way into the academy in 1913.

There, he excelled in languages. Skilled in Spanish, he was stationed on the Mexican border during World War I. After that, his fluency won him postings in Latin America and the Philippines. In 1927 he was part of a U.S. mission that oversaw elections in war-torn Nicaragua.

One strength as an officer was his ability to read battlefield terrain. Some of that stemmed from boyhood days spent camping and hunting with his dad.

He put that talent to work on his second day in Korea. He toured the front by airplane. He saw how hilly the terrain was. Valleys between steep slopes were narrow and twisted. Lowlands were spiked with tough oak trees and stunted pines. The terrain favored enemy riflemen and guerrillas, Ridgway wrote in his memoirs. It was an obstacle course clotted with choke points for his own motorized troops.

So he adapted. He took his men off the roads, where they were open to ambush, and put them in the hills.

Another strength was his hands-on approach. In World War II he had jumped from airplanes with his troops. Typically in the thick of action, he took shrapnel in one shoulder from a German grenade in March 1945.

Such firsthand knowledge of peril and pain taught him not to be reckless. In planning for the invasion of Italy in 1943, the 82nd Airborne was told it would take Rome. But Ridgway opposed the plan. It called for his men to drop into the midst of two German heavy divisions. Operation Giant II was scrubbed just hours before launch.

In Korea, Ridgway began his command by learning why his predecessors failed. He toured the front by jeep. He talked with field commanders. He talked with soldiers.

Struck by their low morale, he took steps to reverse that. He moved kitchens forward to give his men hot food and larger rations. And he paid attention to small but key details. He loaded his jeep with gloves. In Korea's bitter winter cold, he handed them to any bare-handed soldier he met, wrote Leif Gruenberg, author of "The Korean War."

Wherever Ridgway went, he was easy to recognize. He always wore a hand grenade strapped to one shoulder of his battle jacket. But it wasn't showmanship. It was one way a veteran paratrooper covered his own butt. "(The grenades) were purely utilitarian," he once wrote. "Many a time in Europe and Korea, men in tight spots blasted their way out with hand grenades."

Ridgway saw the big picture. He regrouped forces. He gave more infantry armor-piercing punch by placing artillery between units rather than isolating them behind just one, according to Lt. Col. George Collins in Air University Review.

Also, he spread his his can-do, offense-oriented spirit throughout his command.

During one briefing, he listened while officers explained their defensive strategies. Finally, he asked about the attack plan. The startled staff said it had none. Within days, Ridgway replaced key officers.

Ridgway put out the word. Officers were to spend more time at the front, less time at command posts in the rear. And Ridgway made it clear he wanted more offense, less defense. Find the enemy and engage, were his watch words.

Collins wrote that Ridgway focused his men on attack: "I repeated to the commanders as forcefully as I could the ancient Army slogan: 'Find them! Fix them! Fight them! Finish them!' "

A reborn allied fighting force did exactly that. Rebounding under Ridgway, the U.N. and South Korean troops pushed the North Koreans and Chinese to negotiations that ended the fighting in 1953.

Drawing The Line

Unlike MacArthur, Ridgway had no designs on taking all of North Korea, much less pushing into China.

Freeing South Korea was the prize, he wrote in his book, "The Korean War." He achieved the U.S. goals: "The defeat of the aggression, the expulsion of the invaders, the restoration of peace in that area, and the prevention of an expansion of the conflict into a third world war."

Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, marveled at the war's turnaround under Ridgway. "It is not often in wartime that a single battlefield commander can make a decisive difference," he wrote in "A General's Life." "But in Korea, Ridgway would prove to be the exception. His brilliant, driving, uncompromising leadership would turn the tide of battle like no other general's in our military history."

BY PAUL KATZEFF