The US Army lieutenant general who signed the Korean Armistice as UNC delegate after 158 truce meetings
In June 1952, seeing the meeting was going nowhere, Harrison stood up and walked out, leaving General Nam Il flabbergasted at the table.
A cavalry officer decorated for valor in Normandy and the Bulge, he became the senior UNC delegate at Panmunjom in May 1952 and led the truce talks through more than a year of stalemate. On 27 July 1953, scarcely acknowledging his counterpart General Nam Il, he signed eighteen copies of the Korean Armistice Agreement and ended three years of open combat. A devout evangelical Christian who served as president of the Officers' Christian Fellowship, he lived by the discipline of a man under orders to the last.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1917Graduated West Point, commissioned cavalry 2nd lieutenant
- 1944ADC 30th Infantry Division, Normandy and Battle of the Bulge
- 1946–1949Chief of Reparations Section, GHQ, occupied Japan
- 1950–1951Commanding General, 9th Infantry Division, Fort Dix
- 1951.12Deputy Commander, Eighth Army, Korea
- 1952.05–1953.07Senior delegate, UNC Armistice Delegation, Panmunjom
- 1953.09Deputy CG & Chief of Staff, Far East Command
- 1954–1957Commander-in-Chief, Caribbean Command; retired
Related historical events
Delegate in the Panmunjom Armistice Talks
Harrison joined the armistice negotiations, which had begun in the summer of 1951, in January 1952 and became the senior delegate for the United Nations forces that May. Believing the Communist delegation was using the conference for propaganda, he instructed his team to wear fatigues rather than dress uniforms. When talks ended without progress, he secured approval to extend recesses from overnight to several days; after a settlement deadline was missed in October 1952, he obtained authority to recess the meetings indefinitely. The military-history account in the Hoover Institution's records describes these measures and the course of the negotiations. Talks resumed in spring 1953. On July 27, Harrison signed 18 copies of the armistice at Panmunjom with Nam Il, senior delegate for the Korean People's Army and Chinese People's Volunteers. The agreement suspended hostilities, established a military demarcation line and demilitarized zone, arranged prisoner repatriation, and created a Military Armistice Commission, but it was not a peace treaty.