Milestones: 53 Years Ago In TIME

When TIME named the AMERICAN FIGHTING-MAN Man of the Year at the end of 1950, few women served in the military. It was a time when G.I.s were facing new dangers in Korea.

The American fighting-man could not win this struggle without millions of allies ... and it was the unfinished (almost unstarted) business of his government to find and mobilize those allies ... But the allies would never be found unless the American fighting-man first took his post and did his duty. On June 27, 1950, he was ordered to his post. Since then, the world has watched how he went about doing his duty.

He has been called soft and tough, resourceful and unskilled, unbelievably brave and unbelievably timid, thoroughly disciplined and scornful of discipline. One way or another, all of these generalizations are valid. He is a peculiar soldier, product of a peculiar country. His two outstanding characteristics seem to be contradictory. He is more of an individualist than soldiers of other nations, and at the same time he is far more conscious of, and dependent on, teamwork. He fights as he lives, a part of a vast, complicated machine--but a thinking, deciding part.

--TIME, Jan. 1, 1951