This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  The conference was high-level, and five-star General Bradley took its notes.

  There was very little talk about the fighting. It was taken for granted that the conflict was almost over and that now the main concern was the rehabilitation of Korea, north and south, most of which lay in ruins.

  MacArthur said he expected formal resistance would end around Thanks-giving. He hoped to have the Eighth Army back in Japan by Christmas.

  General Bradley, with problems around the world, wanted to know when MacArthur might be able to release a division for Europe.

  Then the talk came around to a different matter. "What," asked Harry Truman, "are the chances for Chinese or Soviet intervention?"

  Sonorously, MacArthur replied, "Very little."

  He went on to say that had they interfered during the first or second months it would have been decisive. "But we are no longer fearful of their intervention. We no longer stand with hat in hand."

  He mentioned that the Chinese had 300,000 men in Manchuria, of which not more than 200,000 were along the Yalu River. Of these, not more than 60,000 could be got across.

  "The Chinese have no air force. If the Chinese try to get down to P'yongyang there will be the greatest slaughter."

  No one, civilian or military, disagreed with MacArthur's view.

  But it was not what was said, but what was left unsaid on Wake Island, Sunday, 15 October, that would change the course of history.

  General MacArthur was operating on purely military assumptions that the Chinese did not have the ability to intervene. And one of these assumptions was that, if the Chinese dared oppose the righteous march of U.N. forces, the United States would retaliate with all its righteous wrath and fury—that American air would strike at China, interdict its long and painfully vulnerable supply lines across Manchuria, destroy the fledgling industry of which the Chinese were so proud.

  He firmly believed such a fear would deter the Chinese from action. He firmly believed, also, that upon a Chinese move, America would cry havoc and loose the dogs of war. China, even with its millions, could not hope to gain by general war with the West.

  These things he believed, but did not mention.

  Quiet, modest Omar Bradley, with one of the best military brains in the business, was thinking of the massive Soviet divisions—at least 175 in the Satellite countries alone—positioned in Europe. To him, all-out war with China would be war with the wrong enemy, at the wrong place, at the wrong time. The United States had to bear the load in Asia, true, but its vital interest lay in Europe, and its greatest danger in Soviet Russia.

  There was no occasion to discuss the matter.

  And President Truman, with his civilian advisers, the architects of containment, had his own ideas. He saw no hope of, or profit in, America's trying to subdue the endless land masses of Russia and China. It could only be done—if at all—by such holocaust as mankind had never known.

  Harry Truman was ready to defend his country at all costs. If the enemy attacked the United States, or its treaty allies, America would go to war, at once. But Harry Truman would do nothing to precipitate Armageddon.

  It was one thing to attempt to prevent the further expansion of Communism, even at the cost of blood, but quite another to seek a global victory over world Communism. Harry Truman doubted that victory would be worth the price.

  There was talk, high-level talk, at Wake Island, Sunday, 15 October, but there was not enough communication.

  And while these men talked, unknown to any of them, the hordes of Red China, marching by night, wailing the minor keys of Sinic music, were stream-ing across the Yalu and barren wastes of North Korea.

  The punishment the U.N. and its agent, the United States, proposed to visit upon the Communist world was greater than the Communist world was willing to accept. Just as the United States had not been able to stand idly by in June as a friendly dependency was overwhelmed, in October the men of Peiping and the Kremlin felt they could not permit the forcible separation of North Korea from their own sphere.

  One gambit had failed; now they must attempt another.

  In 1950 Soviet Russia wanted general war no more than did the United States. Stalin and his associates held no illusions that the United States could be conquered. Russia's own wounds from World War II were hardly healed, and the nuclear balance of power in American hands was as yet overwhelming. But the Soviets were still willing to accept grave risks.

  If the U.S.S.R.'s stance were different from America's, if it could not cease pushing, probing, and risking, it was because Soviet foreign policy was aggressive and expansionist. Communist ideology was far more than a tool to such expansion. It remained a taskmaster forcing the Soviets to it. Unless, with time, Communist ideology could be diluted, or diverted from the narrow precepts of Lenin, there could never be any true peace between Communists and the West. Westerners, tending to be pragmatic and liberal in viewpoint, often miscounted the driving reality of Communist dogmatism.

  Russians, determined to oppose the American action in Korea, saw clearly that a confrontation of American troops with Russian, a direct clash, must inevitably escalate into general war, whether the governments wanted it or not. But the West had accepted Soviet arms in the hands of a satellite people; even though they had been drawn into the bloodletting themselves, the Americans had tacitly accepted war at secondhand with the Communist center of power. To substitute another Communist people, the Chinese, for the North Koreans, was not to change materially the tenuous rules of the game. And because of China's contiguous border with North Korea, even some sort of moral case for Chinese intervention could be made.

  The Communist leaders, desperate to save both their face and North Korea, felt that if new forces were hurled into the Korean cockpit, so long as the move did not seem to be a direct confrontation of the major powers, the conflict could still be limited to the peninsula.

  And on the peninsula they felt they still might win.

  Equally important, Red China was ready and spoiling for war.

  The Chinese Communists, newly come to power, were driven by that dynamic puritanism that accompanies all great revolutions. Like the French in 1793, they not only desired conflict with the "evil" surrounding them; they needed it. Their hold on the millions of the sprawling Middle Kingdom was far from consolidated, and a controlled, limited war would consolidate it as nothing else could do.

  However lacking in Communist enthusiasm the hordes of China might be, there was both a sullen sense of grievance against the West and a passionate national pride in China's millions. Both these passions have been too often overlooked by foreigners.

  Just as the northern states of the American Union have overlooked and forgotten their occupation and reconstruction of the southern states, the West has dismissed the painful humiliations repeatedly visited upon the ancient Sinic culture in the past hundred years.

  Neither the South nor the Middle Kingdom has forgotten. The Chinese, a proud and very ancient people, never willingly accepted their domination by foreign powers. They never accepted the extraterritoriality, the quartering of foreign troops on their soil, the control of their commerce. Unable to fight the gunboats the foreign powers sent to quell their resentment, they could only smolder, and await the day when the Middle Kingdom was again a world power.

  Even Chinese who detested Communism would thrill if the Middle Kingdom emerged from its long impotence, and the men in Peiping understood this.

  If they could engage the West, defeat it, or fight it to a standstill, they would gain face as no Chinese rulers had gained for generations.

  When the United States had entered the war in Korea, the Chinese had well understood the inevitable result. After all, China had supplied the hard core of the Inmun Gun; the Chinese were hardly blind to that Army's weaknesses. Early in September Chinese forces began the long march from the south, where they had been deployed against Taiwan, to the mountains along the Yalu. The early successes of the Inmun Gun had surprised the rule
rs of China—and now those successes gave them renewed confidence.

  If the "imperialists" moved north, the Chinese would have a severe shock awaiting them.

  On 1 October 1950 Mao Tse-tung stated publicly:

  The Chinese people will not tolerate foreign aggression and will not stand aside if the imperialists wantonly invade the territory of their neighbor.

  Red China had no relations with the United States, but on 3 October small, grave-faced Chou En-lai ordered the Indian ambassador, Sardar K. M. Panik-kar, to his office. Here the foreign minister told Panikkar, "If the United States, or United Nations forces cross the 38th parallel, the Chinese People's Republic will send troops to aid the People's Republic of Korea. We shall not take this action, however, if only South Korean troops cross the border."

  Panikkar was deeply impressed. He called New Delhi at once, and the Indian Government passed this word both to New York and to Washington. The Indian delegate to the U.N. announced that his government felt U.N. forces should remain south of the parallel.

  Washington took no action except to inform MacArthur's HQ in Tokyo.

  Meanwhile, other Chinese officials dropped pointed hints to members of the few Western missions in Peiping. All these views were reported to Wash-ington, which in turn forwarded them to Tokyo.

  On 10 October, Peiping Radio broadcast Chinese intentions precisely as Chou-En-lai had stated them.

  On 14 October, from Tokyo, Major General Charles Willoughby, Far East Command Intelligence Officer, issued a detailed study of the question of Soviet or Chinese intervention in Korea. The question had long been one of concern to FECOM Intelligence, and already reams of reports, analysis, and estimates had been written. There was a great deal of evidence—pointing either way.

  Evidence, however, signifies nothing unless evaluated, and evaluation is always more difficult than collection.

  It was Willoughby's view on 14 October that the Soviet Union, in any case, had no military advantage in intervention, and such intervention could be dis-counted. Then Willoughby took up what the Chinese would do, which was the real problem.

  The Chinese had at least 38 divisions in 9 field armies garrisoned in Manchuria north of the Yalu. Of these, 24 divisions were disposed along the border in position to intervene. This estimate of CCF strength was reasonably accurate.

  But FECOM knew that 14 October the U.N. forces in North Korea stood very close to total victory. The Inmun Gun had deteriorated into remnants. The ROK's had seized the important port of Wonsan on the east coast, and in FECOM there was a definite feeling that the moment for fruitful Chinese intervention had passed. Most of the vital areas of North Korea had been overrun.

  Willoughby's analysis described the open failure of the North Koreans to rebuild their forces, and suggested that this indicated the CCF and Soviets had decided against further investment in a losing cause. Willoughby's views unquestionably reflected those of his chief, and portions of his intelligence analysis are revealing:

  Recent declarations by CCF leaders, threatening to enter North Korea if American forces were to cross the 38th parallel are probably in a category of diplomatic blackmail. The decision, if any, is beyond the purview of collective intelligence: it is a decision for war, on the highest level.

  Charles Willoughby, while devoted to MacArthur, had always been personally unpopular in the American Army. The time would come when the storm would break over his head—because General Willoughby, in truth, was wrong.

  But it should never be overlooked that FECOM's views, as stated by Willoughby, were never contested by Washington. The decision, if any, is beyond the purview of collective intelligence. FECOM was at best a collective agency, not an evaluative one for matters of international policy; if Washington permitted FECOM both to collect and to make decisions, then whatever happened the fault was Washington's.

  It was true that Washington had no pipeline—not then, not later—into the Kremlin. It was true that the CIA had become woefully spotty in East Asia since the Communist takeover. It was true that the picture of both Peiping and Moscow remained vague, distorted, and open to argument in Western capitals. Nevertheless, the responsibility to evaluate intelligence touching the highest political levels remained in Washington.

  Yet throughout the whole uneasy fall of 1950, Washington kept relaying information to Tokyo. And Tokyo, very early, had made up its mind, as expressed by MacArthur: The Chinese would not dare to intervene.

  Because Washington permitted soldiers to make and to act on decisions that were beyond the purview of the military, because it forced them to bring purely military thinking into matters that remained in essence political—in short, because Washington still sometimes acted as if there could be a separation between war and politics, the United States, intoxicated with the heady taste of triumph, was heading for disaster.

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  18

  In the Never-Never Land

  We should not assume that Chinese Communists are committed in force. After all, a lot of Mexicans live in Texas.

  — Lieutenant General Walton W. Walker, Commanding Eighth Army, Korea, November, 1950.

  AS OCTOBER waned, and the winds blowing off the roof of the world down into the mountains of North Korea turned dry and cold, American and ROK forces advanced steadily northward. Beating its drums, proclaiming its every objective and movement to the world, its every detail, composition, and minute location reported faithfully by its war correspondents, the United Nations Force raced to the Yalu. The war that was not a war continued, but everyone agreed that it was almost over. Somehow, even the men had read MacArthur's words at Wake Island, and everyone expected to be home—or at least in Japan—by Christmas.

  But behind the open book of the armies' progress, behind the glowing communiqués, were controversy and confusion.

  When the Eighth Army had approached the Han in September, General Walker had begun to worry about the future of X Corps, which had been created to command the Inch'on invasion forces. He felt that it should now cease to report separately to Tokyo and come under his command. But while Walton Walker expressed himself to his staff, he did not formally put his ideas in writing to MacArthur's GHQ.

  But on 26 September MacArthur dashed whatever hopes the Eighth Army commander may have had, by informing him that X Corps would pass into GHQ reserve and ready itself to proceed with a GHQ-directed mission, of which Johnny Walker would be apprised in due course.

  Instead of merging X Corps with Eighth Army, MacArthur decided to employ it on the east coast of Korea, and to keep it subordinate not to Walker but to himself in Tokyo. The X Corps was embarked for Wonsan, an important port of North Korea on the Sea of Japan—though the ROK Army, moving overland, beat it there—and then went into action, marching toward the far reaches of the north, where the Yalu roared through its gloomy gorges, and where Korea touched Manchuria and the maritime province of Siberia.

  No decision was to come under such controversy as this splitting of the U.N. Command on the ground. For as Schlieffen had written, "It is better to surrender a province than to split an army." But MacArthur felt he could coordinate the advance of each column, Eighth Army in the west, X Corps in the east, better from Tokyo than could Walker from Korea. MacArthur's reasoning was based, simply enough, on the Korean terrain.

  Above the Seoul-Wonsan Corridor, there is only one good lateral route of communication running across Korea—the P'yongyang-Wonsan road and rail line. North of this, the Taebaek Mountains rise to dizzy heights. Running north and south, they cross the land with rugged crests and vast, dark gorges, forming a trackless waste across which even Koreans do not go. Until the valley of the Yalu is reached, there is no lateral road connecting east and west.

  The only routes of advance to the north are in the valleys on either coast. Up these, Walker on the west, Almond on the east, the main bodies had to advance, with junction possible only on the Yalu itself.

  Because of the horrendous mountains in east c
entral Korea, contact between the two forces was tenuous, at best. Japan, remaining the staging base, supplied both forces.

  Whatever the order of battle, X Corps and Eighth Army were forced to live, advance, and fight in virtual isolation from each other. No matter who had been given command, the mountains would have remained.

  As the U.N. advanced to the Yalu, this mountainous gap, approaching sixty miles in places, drew apprehension from the JCS and military men all over the world. But it was never important. The enemy, already in Korea, never utilized it in his plan of action, because the terrain was virtually impassable.

  More important than the gap separating Eighth Army and X Corps were the maneuver formations of the armies themselves. The farther north they marched, the more nonexistent roads became. The advance had to proceed up single dirt roads, along parallel valleys. Nothing like a contiguous line or solid front could be maintained. Within regiments and battalions, units began to live and move in virtual isolation, separated by the ever-present hills. As they neared the Yalu, divisions were strung out, as Ned Almond put it, from hell to breakfast.

  What the U.N. did, it did in the light of the restricting terrain, and in the view that no real enemy opposed it. And above all else, it was the terrain and a complete failure of Intelligence that brought disaster. Marching north, the U.N. trumpeted to the world its composition, its battle plan, and even the hour of its execution.

  Without effort, the enemy knew everything there was to know about the U.N. forces.

  The U.N., in turn, never knew the enemy existed—until it was much too late.

  For more generations than men could count, soldiers in the Middle Kingdom had ranked low in the orders of society, far down the scale from the scholar and the poet. And for more generations than men could count, China had had no skill or success in war. For more than a hundred years, Chinese military forces had been objects of contempt, possessing neither skill, means, nor the will to fight.