This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  The ROK divisions were not mechanized or mobile. Most of their transport was on deadline for lack of spare parts, and they were not organized for rapid movement. But they did the best they could, beginning to move north in piecemeal fashion.

  As his orders went out, "Fat" Chae grew more nervous. Accompanied by his American staff adviser, Captain Hausman, he made two trips up to the

  In Seoul there was no more talk of rain and rice. As word of the Communist attack spread, the people rose in a spasm of patriotic fury. There was relief in their fervor, too—all Koreans had considered the division of their country unbearable; from cranky old Syngman Rhee in the government palace to the landless peasant in the south ran strong agreement on that issue.

  Now the puppet state to the north had attacked, and it would soon be over. North Korea would be overrun by the victorious troops of the Taehan Minkuk. It would be united again. The people, fed on statements by their government and the broadcasts of the Voice of America, believed implicitly in their army. They believed implicitly in the mountains of military aid the Americans had promised, and in final victory.

  At 0900 Kimpo Airport reported that it was under air attack, and at mid-morning Russian-built yak fighters screamed over Seoul's main avenue, strafing—but no one understood the significance of this. The only people in Seoul who were shaken by the appearance of the enemy aircraft were some members of the American colony—who knew the true status of the ROK forces where equipment was concerned.

  By midday, ROK Army units were streaming north through Seoul. They came through in long columns of trucks, rail cars, jeeps, bicycles—and oxcarts. To the people of Seoul the oxcarts did not seem odd. Nor did they seem to notice that their army had no combat vehicles, such as tanks.

  The soldiers sang as they poured through Seoul, and vast crowds of civilians gathered at every street corner, cheering them. From Taihan Mun to the solid stone of the railway station, Seoul went wild with emotion.

  Peasants in traditional white, elderly yangban graybearded in black hats, and neat businessmen in Western suits screamed their encouragement. The sight of the khaki-clad ROK troops moving north suddenly united all the segments of Seoul in one vast frenzy.

  Manzai! Victory! Manzai! Unification! Manzai! Manzai!

  All day Sunday, the khaki columns rode, pedaled, or limped by, moving north.

  But among the American colony of Seoul, which had its women and children far from home, men were growing nervous. A fish merchant named John Caldwell, who had once been attached to the embassy staff, called a high embassy official, asking for news, just after the yak fighters had been reported over Seoul.

  The embassy man was very angry. He said: "John, this thing is serious. They strafed an American plane at Kimpo. That's destruction of American property!"

  At four o'clock on Sunday afternoon Ambassador John J. Muccio went on the air over the embassy radio station, WVTP, to reassure the American Uijongbu area, trying to hammer out a plan of action. Chae was certain that something had to be done very quickly, or it would be too late.

  In that surmise he was correct—but what he would do was wrong. It would lose the war. colony. He stated that there was no reason for anyone to be afraid and that the ROK army had already contained the Communist offensive. There was to be no evacuation.

  But KMAG officers, who were getting frantic reports by telephone from the length of the 38th parallel, were hardly so sanguine. They began to argue with the ambassador, who was still in command. At least the women and children should be flown out, many of them said.

  All afternoon and far into the night, an argument raged. Ambassador Muccio cannot be blamed for his attitude. A diplomat, he was suddenly in command during a military disaster, with no instructions from home, no clear-cut policy, no idea of the course the United States should follow. Muccio felt he must continue to show confidence, and at the same time he sincerely believed the United States would not become involved, at least not directly.

  At midnight, Muccio suddenly yielded to the pleading for evacuation. But he would not listen to a plan for removal of the American civilians by air; Communist planes were in the air, and if one of them should shoot down a plane loaded with refugees it would become an international incident.

  There was a small Norwegian ship at Inch'on, and all 682 women and children would have to sail for Japan aboard this. The Norwegian ship carried a full load of fertilizer, and it had accommodations for only twelve passengers.

  On this point Ambassador Muccio, a tall, dark, bespectacled man, given to wearing bow ties, was adamant. Generally, too, he was set against any evacuation, since he felt that even if the Inmun Gun should by some miracle capture Seoul, the Americans there would be granted diplomatic immunity by the Communists. The British, who had recognized Red China, also planned to keep their diplomatic staff in Seoul.

  The British, some of whom would not live to see England again, also did not fully understand the nature of the Communist foe.

  Radio Station WVTP ordered all dependent American women and children to assemble at certain designated locations to be picked up by embassy busses for the trip to Inch'on. From there the tiny freighter Reinholt would take them to Kokura, Japan.

  Three days later, when the Reinholt docked, fifty of its passengers had to be removed to hospitals by stretcher. Exposure, lack of food, crowding, and the horrible odor of commercial fertilizer had prostrated the majority. But at that the women and children were lucky.

  On late Sunday, with the sound of the guns coming ominously closer to the vital center of Uijongbu, General Chae held a hurried conference with his major subordinate commanders. Chae had formed his plan of battle.

  Yu Jai Hyung's 7thDivision, which was holding both approaches to Uijongbu, was to swing to the west, onto the Tongduch'onni road, up which it would attack at dawn.

  The arriving 2nd Division, under Brigadier General Lee Hyung Koon, would take over the entire P'och'on sector, and attack up the right-hand road in a coordinated effort with that of 7th Division.

  Counterattacked, the advancing Inmun Gun would be halted short of Uijongbu, and, with luck, destroyed.

  Brigadier General Yu accepted his orders, and began to move his units westward at midnight.

  Lee Hyung Koon did not buy the plan at all. He explained that his division was still on the road and that only his Division HQ and two infantry battalions had closed in on Uijongbu. He said he could not possibly deploy the entire division north of Uijongbu by morning—it would not even have arrived.

  Chae told him, "You will attack with whatever troops you have available."

  "But I shall have to attack piecemeal, throwing in small units one at a time. And my men cannot march all night and fight at dawn. We must defer the counterattack until all my division, or at least most of it, is in position!"

  Chae said, "No. You are overruled. The attack will proceed as I have planned."

  Lee looked at Captain Hausman, the American KMAG officer. Hausman agreed with Lee, and said so. Lee's 2nd Division would be in no position to make a major effort; in fact, such a commitment risked its destruction.

  But Hausman had no command here. He was an adviser lent by a friendly government, and at the moment even his status was not clear. Even had he been a major general, he could not overrule, and would not have felt justified in an attempt to overrule, the ROK chief of staff.

  Chae, his huge bulk sweating, would listen to no more argument. Furious, Geeral Lee departed for his command post at Uijongbu.

  The hours of remaining darkness passed swiftly. General Yu, with his weary, half-demoralized troops strung out along the Tongduch'on-ni road after many of them had made a night march, gave orders for a counterattack to be launched at daylight, and when the orders had gone out, paced up and down inside his CP, watching the intermittent flashes of gunfire to the north. At dawn, he would see to it that his 7th Division attacked.

  But on his right flank, at Uijongbu, General Lee Hyung Koon, surrounded by his Division H
Q, with two tired battalions dozing along the road, did nothing.

  He had made up his mind, and he had no intention of doing anything.

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  5

  Disaster

  Do something, even if it's wrong.…

  — Unofficial doctrine of the United States Army Infantry School.

  BECAUSE OF THE International Date Line, there is a day's difference in time between Korea and the United States; it was still Saturday, 24 June, in Washington when word of the North Korean attack arrived.

  Early Sunday morning, Korea time, both the military attaché and Ambassador Muccio had cabled the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and the State Department, respectively. Muccio said, in part:

  "It would appear from the nature of the attack and the manner in which it was launched that it constitutes an all-out offensive against the Republic of Korea."

  Meanwhile, newsmen from the various wife services sent their own messages from Seoul.

  The word, from varying sources, first reached Washington at about eight Saturday night; Muccio's cable came in at nine-thirty. On Saturday night in Washington, particularly in summer, things were slow. It was not until the next day, Sunday morning, that even a good panic could get organized.

  At nearly the same time, members of the United Nations Commission that was still in Korea reported to U.N. Headquarters in New York. Secretary General Trygve Lie was at his Long Island estate; receiving the news by telephone, the rotund Norwegian blurted, "This is war against the United Nations!"

  Lie, furious, called an emergency meeting of the Security Council to convene at 2:00 P.M. Sunday.

  Official Washington, meanwhile, had been taken completely by surprise. As General Lyman Lemnitzer reported to :an angry Secretary of Defense a few days later, while United States Intelligence knew that North Korea had had the capability to attack the South, similar capabilities had existed all along the Soviet periphery, and not one intelligence agency had singled out Korea as an imminent danger point.

  When the Soviet pressure had relaxed in Europe in 1949, with the ending of the Berlin blockade and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Washington had tended to relax also. Owing to American commitments and atomic superiority, no war seemed imminent in Europe—and Asian policy had not been completely firmed.

  The shift of Soviet strategy away from Europe, which after all remained the major prize, to the periphery of Asia had not been understood in the West. And the West tended to think only in terms of an all-out Soviet attack, of which there was no evidence. Almost no one had considered the possibility of limited military operations, for which the Western powers were completely unprepared.

  Now, on 25 June and later, Washington could never be sure that Korea was not merely a smokescreen, to divert American attention and troops while an assault against Europe was being prepared. For this reason, even after it had committed itself to the defense of Korea, the United States Government was reluctant to throw any major portion of its strength into the peninsula.

  Only gradually did American planners realize that the Soviets might attempt to achieve their ends by bits and pieces rather than in the traditional American way, with one fell swoop. Soviet strategy, like Soviet thinking, has always been devious where American has been direct.

  On Sunday, 25 June, the government was stunned by the Communist action, In the climate of opinion prevailing in Washington, such an overt military operation was unthinkable.

  The surprise pointed up a continuing of American Intelligence. The various intelligence agencies poured a vast amount of information into Washington; they knew the numbers of divisions, guns, tanks, and naval craft of potential enemies. But this intelligence could not be evaluated because Washington had not even one pipeline into official circles of enemy capitals; they could not even estimate what the potential aggressor was thinking or might do.

  This was no change from the past. In December 1941, American Intelligence knew that strong carrier task forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy had left port. But not understanding official Japanese thinking, the fact had meant nothing to Washington.

  The situation in 1950 was no change from the past, and there would be little change in the future.

  Now, Sunday morning 25 June, there were observers in Washington who recalled a similar shock on another Sunday eight and one half years before.

  President Truman was in Independence for the weekend. He immediately prepared to fly back to the capital and called a conference of high Defense and State officials at Blair House that evening.

  But the shock in Washington was more of anger and annoyance than of alarm. No one yet could know the real extent of the military disaster that had already overtaken the Taehan Minkuk.

  As the shock wave set off by the overt Communist aggression against the Republic of Korea reverberated through the West, Seoul began its second day of war, and by now the city was relatively calm.

  Confidently, their initial hysteria drained away, Seoul's million and a half inhabitants waited for word of their army's victories in the North. Troops still streamed through Seoul toward Uijongbu and other points north, and soothing statements came over the national radio.

  The day passed quietly; then in the afternoon of 26 June, Seoul broadcast the news that the 7th Division had counterattacked north of Uijongbu.

  Fifteen hundred enemy soldiers had been killed, fifty-eight tanks destroyed, and a mountain of other matériel had been captured. Listening, the people shouted with enthusiasm.

  But as evening fell, an ominous tide of frightened, fleeing refugees began to pour into the suburbs from the north, and, by listening closely, men could hear the distant mutter of cannon on the wind. The sound seemed to be coming closer.

  On the morning of 26 June both the 3rd and 4th Divisions of the Inmun Gun were poised above Uijongbu, spearheaded by powerful armored elements. After pausing briefly for reorganization during the night, both divisions attacked on a converging axis toward the Uijongbu Corridor, the 3rd along the P'och'on road, and the 4th down the road from Tongduch'on-ni.

  Immediately the 4th Division ran into trouble. The ROK 7th Division struck them with a violent counterattack, and during the morning a bitter fight developed in the west. Genera Yu Jai Hyung's division was not making anything like the progress the Seoul radio later claimed, but it was at least containing the attack.

  But to the east, on the 7th's right flank along the P'och'on road, American advisers entering Brigadier General Lee Hyung Koon's 2nd Division command post found the general sitting among his staff officers. He had placed his two infantry battalions along the road approximately two miles north of Uijongbu, told them to dig in, and now Lee Hyung Koon did nothing.

  Believing an attack by his feeble battalions futile, he never ordered it. And at 0800, his men saw the NKPA columns advancing south on the road. They opened fire with artillery and mortars.

  A column of forty tanks led the NKPA attack, and when the artillery first crashed among them, the tanks halted momentarily. Then, spotting the ROK infantry along the road, the tanks clanked. forward, firing.

  The light fieldpieces of the ROK's scored some direct hits, but even these could not halt the thickly armored. T-34's. The tanks rumbled through the ROK lines and crashed into Uijongbu.

  Behind them, bayonets fixed, charged. the North Korean infantry. As the tanks overran their positions, the soldiers of the ROK 2nd Division began to leave their holes. Within minutes, the survivors had melted into the encircling hills.

  Brigadier Genera Lee and his staff fled south.

  Fighting stubbornly along the Tongduch'on-ni road, Yu Jai Hyung heard that the enemy was in Uijongbu. Flanked, about to be cut off, Yu ordered his attack broken off. Raggedly, the 7th Division fell back south of Uijongbu.

  The 2nd Division had virtually disappeared; it was fighting now with disorganized small units. And during the unexpected retreat, 7th Division also began to come apart. Only the best traine
d and best led troops can execute an orderly withdrawal under heavy pressure. Outnumbered, outgunned and with no way to counteract the freezing terror—which the Germans call panzer fever—caused by the unstoppable Russian tanks, the 7th took frightful losses.

  The NKPA 3rd and 4th divisions joined in Uijongbu, and again the tanks of the 105th Armored Brigade rolled south.

  But now, as darkness fell on 26 June, there no longer remained any effective ROK force above Seoul that could affect the situation.

  General Lee had disobeyed orders—but the complete shattering of his forces, even in defensive positions, revealed that even had he obeyed Chae and attacked, he would have failed. The ROK plan of maneuver had been hasty, ill advised, and impossible. A competent, adequately trained basic rifleman could be made in eleven months. Competent, well-schooled commanders and staffs could not.

  There was nothing wrong with either the stamina or courage of the ROK soldier. Too many thousands of them died above Seoul proving otherwise.

  On Sunday, 25 June, Colonel Wright, KMAG Chief of Staff and senior officer of that group now that Brigadier General Lynn Roberts had left, was in Japan. On Saturday night his wife had sailed from Yokohama for home, and Colonel Wright expected to follow her in a matter of days. But as he attended church services on Sunday morning, a messenger sought him out, bent over and whispered, "Colonel, you'd better get back to Korea right away!"

  Wright left church and telephoned Seoul. What Seoul told him caused him to hop a plane, and he flew into Kimpo Airport just before dawn on Monday 26 June.

  Before leaving Japan he set in motion a plan to evacuate American dependents from Korea. American ships were diverted to Korea, and Air Force cover was ordered for such ships. Planes were to screen the Norwegian fertilizer ship Reinholt as it left Inch'on early on Monday morning.

  Now, in Seoul, Wright conferred with his boss, Ambassador Muccio, and they agreed to evacuate all of KMAG, too, with the exception of thirty-three officers Wright wanted to keep in ROK Army HQ. The word was passed, and KMAG officers began to leave the front. Most of them were flown to Japan from Suwon Airfield early the next morning.