This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  In effect, Truman had engaged the nation in war by executive action.

  Some of the leaders were understandably shaken.

  In the afternoon, President Truman issued a terse statement to the press, terming the Korean venture a "police action."

  At about the same time, Warren Austin addressed the Security Council in New York, and told the world that the action taken by the United States in Korea was strictly in conformity with the resolutions passed on 25 and 27 June.

  Something new had happened. The United States had gone to war, not under enemy attack, nor to protect the lives or property of American citizens. Nor was the action taken in crusading spirit, as in World Wars I and II, to save the world. The American people had entered a war, not by the roaring demand of Congress—which alone could constitutionally declare a state of war—or the public, but by executive action, at the urging of an American proconsul across the sea, to maintain the balance of power across the sea.

  Many Americans, who had never adjusted to their country's changed position in the world, would never understand.

  Harry Truman had ordered troops into action on the far frontier. This was the kind of order Disraeli might have given, sending Her Majesty's regiments against the disturbers of Her Majesty's peace. Or the emperor in Rome might have given such a command to the legions when his governor in Britain sent word the Picts were over the border.

  This was the kind of war that had bleached the bones of countless legionnaires on the marches of the empire, and had dug the graves of numberless Britons, wherever the sun shone.

  In 1950 there was only one power and one people in the world who could prevent chaos and a new, barbarian tyranny from sweeping the earth. The United States had become a vast world power, like it or not. And liking it or not, Americans would find that if a nation desires to remain a great and moral power there is a game it must play, and some of its people must pay the price.

  Truman, sending the divisions into Korea, was trying to emulate the Roman legions and Her Majesty's regiments—for whether the American people have accepted it or not, there have always been tigers in the world, which can be contained only by force.

  But Truman and the American Republic had no legions.

  The President and the American people had ten Army divisions, the European Constabulary, and nine separate regimental combat teams, all of which, except the one in Europe, were at 70 percent strength. Each regiment had, instead of its normal three battalions, only two, and each artillery battalion had not its proper three firing batteries, but two.

  No division had its proper wartime quota of weapons and equipment, and each had only light M-24 tanks. What equipment each division had was World War II worn, and old.

  But the greatest weakness of the American Army was not in its numbers or its weapons, pitiful as they were.

  The United States Army, since 1945, had, at the demand of the public, been civilianized. The men in the ranks were enlistees, but these were the new breed of American regular, who, when they took up the soldier, had not even tried to put aside the citizen.

  They were normal American youth, no better, no worse than the norm, who though they wore the uniform were mentally, morally, and physically unfit for combat, for orders to go out and die.

  They wore the uniform, but they were still civilians at heart.

  The ancient legions, and the proud old British regiments, had been filled with taverns' scum, starvelings, and poor farm boys seeking change. They had been inducted, knocked about, ruled with a rod of iron, made into men of iron, with iron discipline. They were officered by men wholly professional, to whom dying was only a part of their way of life. To these men the service was home, and war—any war—their profession.

  These legions of old, like the sword itself, were neither moral nor immoral. Morality depended upon the use to which their government put them. But when put to use, they did not question, did not fail. They marched.

  In 1950 America, imperfectly understanding her position in this new world, had no legions. She had even no men in "'dirty-shirt blue," such as had policed the Indian frontier. She had an army of sorts of citizens, who were as conscious of their rights and privileges as of their duties. And she had only a reserve of more citizens to fall back upon.

  Citizens fly to defend the homeland, or to crusade. But a frontier cannot be held by citizens, because citizens, in a republic, have better things to do.

  In 1950, as later, President Truman and his Cabinet might have sounded the clarion call, aroused the nation to frenzy, ushered in World War III. But they saw no profit in holocaust, nor was there any.

  The balance of power can be maintained short of holocaust, but only if the trumpet is not sounded. The world of 1914 learned that lesson much too well.

  The foreign policy of the Administration had never been that of destroying Communism, which could not be done without Armageddon, but to contain it until the natural balance of world power was restored and there was no void imperialist Communism could fill.

  By attacking the Republic of Korea, the Communist world was not proclaiming jihad; it had not sounded its own trumpet of war to the death. It was probing. It was playing the game of limited war and power politics as the kings and tyrannies of old had played them.

  The American Government would have preferred not to play. But the game was thrust upon them. There was no alternative to playing, other than surrender or holocaust.

  The single greatest weakness of a free people is always their moral doubts. Fortunately for the world, in 1950 the men in the United States Government overcame theirs.

  Harry Truman, President, ordered the legions to the frontier. He prepared to back them up with the civilian might of the nation. He sent them not to destroy the unholy, but merely to hold the line.

  But Harry Truman, President, had not true legions. He had a citizen army, backed by civilians who neither understood nor approved the dangerous game. Few of them preferred surrender; but most thought of war only in terms of holocaust. They were not prepared.

  Citizens, unless they hear the clarion call, or the angel's trumpet, are apt to be a rabble in arms.

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  Part II

  Battle

  7

  Task Force Smith

  No commander likes to commit troops piecemeal, and I'm no exception.

  — Major General William Frishe Dean, CG, 24th Infantry Division.

  AT A LITTLE PAST eight on the morning of 1 July 1950, Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith, commanding 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, reported to his division commander, General Dean, at Itazuke Air Base. Standing behind Brad Smith in the slanting monsoon rain were just over four hundred officers and men, the first troops designated to go into Korea by air. They stood in fatigue uniforms and steel helmets, holding rifles and a conglomeration of old and worn supporting weapons. Each man carried 120 rounds of ammunition and two days' C rations.

  Most of them were not yet twenty, and hardly one in six had heard a shot fired in anger.

  Major General Dean, tall and close-cropped, his face serious under his sandy short hair, shook hands with Smith.

  "When you get to Pusan, head for Taejon. We want to stop the North Koreans as far from Pusan as we can. Block the main road as far north as possible. Make contact with General Church. If you can't find him, go to Taejon and beyond if you can. Sorry I can't give you more information—that's all I've got. Good luck, and God bless you and your men!"

  Smith, a good-looking young man of thirty-four, West Point class of 1939, saluted and ordered his men into the waiting C-54 transports.

  They were Task Force Smith, which MacArthur termed an arrogant display of strength, sent ahead into Korea to give the Communists pause. General Dean had been ordered to move his entire 24th Division to the peninsula, but it was scattered the length and breadth of Japan, near six separate ports, and there were no ships immediately available. It would have to go in bits and pieces, of which Task Force S
mith was the first.

  Five days later, Task Force Smith was dug in along the main highway between Suwon and Osan, which lay a few miles south. Two understrength infantry companies, with headquarters and communication personnel, it had, in addition to its rifles, two 75mm recoilless rifles, two 4.2-inch mortars, six 2.36-inch rocket launchers, and four 60mm mortars. A battery of six light howitzers from the 52nd Field had joined them, and these went into place two thousand yards behind the infantry.

  They dug in on low rolling hills, on a ridge that ran at right angles to the road, commanding it. The weather was rainy, and cold, but from the highest point of the ridge, some three hundred feet above the highway, Smith could see almost into Suwon.

  Brigadier General Church, of ADCOM, had told him: "We have a little action up here. All we need is some men up there who won't run when they see tanks. We're going to move you up to support the ROK's and give them moral support."

  Now, waiting confidently at dawn on 5 July, Task Force Smith covered approximately one mile of front. As soon as the light was good, the riflemen test fired each of their weapons, and the artillery registered on the surrounding hills. Then everyone went to breakfast, which consisted of cold C rations.

  One of the artillerymen was worried. He knew the battery had only six rounds of antitank ammunition—one-third of all that could be found in Japan—and he asked, "What will happen to the guns if the North Korean tanks get through the infantry up there?"

  One of the infantry officers told him smiling, "Don't worry; they'll never get that far."

  It was generally agreed that the North Koreans, when they found out who they were fighting, would turn around and go back. The young soldiers of Task Force Smith were quite confident; at this point none of them felt fear. At Pusan, when they had boarded the train, the Koreans had unfurled gay banners and bands had played in the station yard.

  They had been told that this was a police action, and that they'd soon be home in Japan. It was a happy thought—life in Japan was very good. Almost every man had his own shoeshine boy and his own musame; in a country where an American lieutenant made as much as a cabinet minister, even a PFC could make out. And the training wasn't bad. There were no real training areas in crowded Nippon, so there wasn't much even General Walker of Eighth Army could do about that, though he made noises.

  The young men of Task Force Smith carried Regular Army serial numbers, but they were the new breed of American regular, who, not liking the service, had insisted, with public support, that the Army be made as much like civilian life and home as possible. Discipline had galled them, and their congressmen had seen to it that it did not become too onerous. They had grown fat.

  They were probably as contented a group of American soldiery as had ever existed. They were like American youth everywhere. They believed the things their society had taught them to believe. They were cool, and confident, and figured that the world was no sweat.

  It was not their fault that no one had told them that the real function of an army is to fight and that a soldier's destiny—which few escape—is to suffer, and if need be, to die.

  At about 0700, through the sweeping rain, Colonel Smith saw movement on the road in the direction of Suwon. By 0730, he could clearly see a tank column, eight in all, grinding toward his ridge.

  At 0800, or thereabouts, the forward observer with the infantry along the road picked up his field phone and called, "Fire Mission!"

  The rounds went into the stubby 105's; breechblocks clicked home. Gunners set their sights, leveled the bubble, and section chiefs' arms went up. At 0816, Number 2 howitzer spat flame into the murky sky, one round, two. All guns joined in the barking chorus.

  The tanks were now about two thousand yards in front of the infantry holes, and still coming. Bursting HE shells walked into the tank column, spattering the advancing armor with flame and steel and mud.

  "Jesus Christ, they're still coming!" an infantryman shouted.

  Colonel Smith knew that the 75mm recoilless rifles he had placed covering the highway had very little ammunition; he now ordered them to hold their fire until the tanks got within 700 yards.

  The NKPA tanks, dark and wicked and low-slung on the road, advanced arrogantly, seeming unconcerned by the exploding HE shells about them.

  Antitank mines placed in the road would have stopped them. But there was not a single antitank mine in Korea. Air support might have stopped them, but because of the rain the planes could not fly.

  Now the troops dug in along the ridge could count more than thirty tanks strung out on the road.

  At 700 yards, both recoilless rifles slammed at the tanks. Round after round burst against the T-34 turrets, with no apparent effect. But with this opposition, the tanks stopped and turned their 85mm cannon on the ridge. They fired, and their 7.62mm coaxial machine guns clawed the hillsides. Suddenly, American soldiers pulled their heads down.

  Lieutenant Ollie Connor, watching, grabbed a bazooka and ran down to the ditch alongside the road. Steadying the 2.36-inch rocket launcher on the nearest tank, only fifteen yards away, Connor let fly. The small shaped charge burned out against the thick Russian armor without penetrating. Angrily, Connor fired again, this time at the rear of the tank where the armor protection was supposed to be thinnest.

  He fired twenty-two rockets, none of which did any damage. Some of the rounds were so old they did not explode properly. The tankers, thinking they were up against only a small roadblock, made no real attempt to engage Task Force Smith, but continued down the road.

  The enlisted men of Task Force Smith stuck their heads out of their holes and watched them disappear around the bend, heading for the artillery positions.

  There was nothing mysterious about the Russian T-34, as some newspapers later claimed. Of obsolescent design, it had been used against the German panzers in front of Moscow in the early forties; perhaps it was the best all-around tank developed in World War II, with very high mobility, a good low silhouette, and very heavy armor plating. It could be stopped—but not with the ancient equipment in the hands of the ROK's—or Task Force Smith.

  The American Army had developed improved 3.5-inch rocket launchers, which would penetrate the T-34. But happy with having designed them, it hadn't thought to place them in the hands of the troops, or of its allies. There just hadn't been enough money for long-range bombers, nuclear bombs, aircraft carriers, and bazookas too. Now, painfully, at the cost of blood, the United States found that while long-range bombers and aircraft carriers are absolutely vital to its security, it had not understood in 1945 the shape of future warfare.

  To remain a great power, the United States had to provide the best in nuclear delivery systems. But to properly exercise that power with any effect in the world—short of blowing it up—the United States had also to provide the bread-and-butter weapons that would permit her ground troops to live in battle.

  If it did not want to do so, it had no moral right to send its troops into battle.

  The two lead tanks rumbling down on the howitzer positions were struck head on by HEAT rounds, damaging them. They pulled off the road, so the others could get around them. One of the damaged tanks burst into flames. Two of its crew leaped from the turret with their hands up; the third came out holding a burp gun.

  This soldier, seeing an American machine-gun crew dug in beside the road, fired at it, killing an assistant gunner. The Americans immediately shot down all three tankers. But the first American had been killed in Korea.

  Very soon the dead American would have company.

  The other tanks still did not stop, but continued on down the road. The howitzer gunners relaid their pieces directly on the tanks, and fired. At ranges from 300 to 1.50 yards, the 105's just bounced off.

  But the tankers had buttoned up, and could not locate the artillery's firing position. Answering the fire only haphazardly, they continued down the road, past the artillery site and beyond. One more tank was hit in the track and immobilized. But the antitank ammuniti
on was now gone, and a badly shaken group of American gunners watched the Communist armor rumble on.

  After the main body of the tanks had disappeared, Colonel Perry, commanding the 52nd Field, who had come up to fight with his single engaged battery, organized a squad of men to destroy the halted tank. He called for its crew to surrender, and was shot through the right leg for his efforts.

  The howitzers slammed at the tank until its crew deserted it. The two men who got out were killed in a brief fire fight with some of Perry's men.

  Now it was found that the tanks had cut all the wires leading up to the infantry positions farther north. The radios were wet and old and wouldn't work, and the gunners had no idea of what was happening up ahead. They knew only that a hell of a lot of tanks had come through, and that wasn't supposed to happen to them.

  Ten minutes later, another long string of tanks poured down the road toward the guns emplaced alongside it. They came singly, in twos, and threes, apparently without any organization, and, like the first, not accompanied by enemy infantry.

  To any troops with solid training, armed with the weapons standard to any advanced nation at the middle of the century, they would have been duck soup. But Task Force Smith had neither arms nor training.

  As the new wave of tanks burst into view, the artillery battery started to come apart. Officers ordered fire on the tanks, but the crew members began to take off. Some men scuttled off; others simply walked away from the guns. The officers and senior sergeants suddenly found themselves alone.

  Cursing, commissioned officers of the battery grabbed ammunition and stuffed it into the tubes. The noncoms laid the guns and pulled the lanyards.

  Again, the tanks did not pause to slug it out with the battery but passed through the gap to the south.

  Colonel Perry, hobbling on one leg, leaning against a tree, together with First Lieutenant Dwain Scott, talked the men into coming back on the guns. Many of the second echelon of tanks did not fire on the battery at all, and the guns were able to knock out one more by disabling its track.