The New Army Combat Fitness Test: An Opportunity to Improve Recruitment and Retainment

Abstract

On July 5, 1950, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Smith led United States soldiers against an advancing North Korea at the Battle of Osan. The US soldiers recently arrived from constabulary duty in Japan, where they had been conducting peacetime service and were not accustomed to Korean mountain combat. The Task Force Smith soldiers became "winded and overwhelmed" as they moved across the hilly terrain, and the Army partly attributed the massive casualties resulting from the action to reduced fitness and increasing obesity...