This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Willoughby tried to allay their fears. He stated that only a few volunteers were in Korea, and it was most likely that only a battalion of each identified division was actually across the border.

  To which Ned Almond asked bluntly, "What happened to the 8th Cavalry over in Eighth Army?"

  Willoughby was of the opinion that the regiment had failed to put out adequate security, and had therefore been overrun by a small, violent attack.

  As the month progressed, however, FECOM came more and more to the conclusion that there were Chinese troops in Korea. Their numbers were placed at between 40,000 and 70,000. Whether "volunteers," as the Chinese Government claimed, or otherwise, the big question remained as to what they were doing in Korea.

  There seemed to be three possibilities, all of which were suggested:

  The Chinese had come over in limited fashion to help the NKPA hold a base south of the Yalu;

  They had entered as a show of force to bluff the U.N. into halting south of the river;

  At the worst, they were a screening force to cover the advance of the main Chinese armies.

  No one, either in FECOM or the two commands in Korea, suggested that the CCF were already in Korea in massive force.

  But as November passed, and the Chinese did not appear again, gradually American fears and suspicion died. More and more, intelligence officers at FECOM reached the conclusion that the Chinese action was limited, and confined to a mere bluff to deter the U.N. final victory. Willoughby and his chief never wavered from their conviction that the Chinese threats were a form of political blackmail. Their influence on the Eighth Army—which was not so sanguine—was naturally decisive.

  Time magazine reported in a November issue, as its own view, that the CCF action in Korea might really be in the nature of political blackmail to win U.N. recognition for Red China at Lake Success—where a delegation of Chinese Communists was already headed, by way of Moscow, to complain of United States "imperialist" policy in North Korea.

  Washington did not interfere, whatever information it may have had. Washington still had not learned that while war itself is best left to the generals, international politics are much too important to be so left. But while Washington had numerous political evidences of Chinese intervention, in effect both the CIA—weak in Asia—and the Administration concurred in MacArthur's views. At least they permitted MacArthur to proceed as he saw fit.

  Eighth Army consolidated along the Ch'ongch'on; its supply situation, while not good, got better. The first two Marine regiments, the 5th and 7th, moved south and west of Changjin Reservoir. Both left and right wings of the United Nations command were now in position fifty miles south of Manchuria; all that seemingly remained was the final pinching out of a small bit of enemy territory. Once on the Yalu, or a few miles south of it, the U.N. could form a solid defensive line and hold all Korea, come what may.

  MacArthur, left with the decision, had the U.N. forces deployed halfway through North Korea. He felt he could not sit still, and allow U.S. troops to be tied up for the winter. The CCF plan might be to make Korea a permanent running sore, and to tie up more than a hundred thousand U.S. ground troops indefinitely. With winter already howling down out of one of the coldest spots on earth, he had to retreat or attack. He attacked.

  MacArthur ordered the offensive resumed on 24 November, the day following Thanksgiving. He flew to Korea, and sent a message to the troops, assuring them that the war was almost won and that a final effort would see them home before Christmas. In fact, plans were now being laid to redeploy some of the divisions to other theaters.

  High in the bitter land, Americans ate Thanksgiving dinner. Depending on their tactical position, they ate well or plainly—but most received turkey and all the trimmings, brought into this savage country at great effort.

  Morale was high, not because they relished the final offensive but because everyone thought they would soon be homeward bound.

  Because he had used the magic word "home," the troops believed MacArthur implicitly. Even the staffs and commanders, who had seen harsh evidence of Chinese interference in the "First Phase Offensive," were reasonably confident—after all, for nearly three weeks the enemy had not been seen.

  And nothing is more revealing of Douglas MacArthur's frame of mind than the messages and communiqués he released as the new offensive jumped off. To the JCS he wrote:

  "I believe that with my air power, now unrestricted so far as Korea is concerned … I can deny reinforcements coming across the Yalu in sufficient strength to prevent the destruction of those forces now arrayed against me in North Korea."

  His communiqué of 24 November read:

  "The United Nations massive compression envelopment in North Korea against the new Red Armies operating there is now approaching its decisive effort. The isolating component of the pincer, our Air Forces of all types, have for the past three weeks, in a sustained attack of model coordination and effectiveness, successfully interdicted enemy lines of support from the North so that further reinforcement therefrom has been sharply curtailed and essential supplies markedly limited."

  To the U.N. in New York he sent:

  "The giant U.N. pincer moved according to schedule today. The air forces, in full strength, completely interdicted the rear areas, and an air reconnaissance behind the enemy line, and along the entire length of the Yalu River border, showed little sign of hostile military activity."

  It is obvious that MacArthur's reliance on air power was almost absolute. Whatever the weaknesses of his ground forces, whatever their difficult and exposed positions, U.N. mastery of the skies was complete, and air would be the decisive arm. It was a typically American viewpoint.

  MacArthur and the men around him had a great deal to learn about Chinese Communist armies.

  In the hidden fastness of his screening mountains, Lin Piao knew almost everything there was to know about American fighting men. He did not despise American power. He knew the strengths of the American Army, and Chinese officers read these in a pamphlet distributed to the "Chinese People's Volunteer Army":

  "The coordinated action of mortars and tanks is an important factor.… Their firing instruments are highly powerful.… Their artillery is very active.… Aircraft strafing and bombing of our transportation have become a great hazard to us.… Their transport system is magnificent. Their rate of infantry fire is great, and the long range of that fire is even greater."

  Americans, Chinese Intelligence said, had machines and knew how to use them well.

  Then the pamphlet, entitled "Primary Conclusions of Battle Experience at Unsan," talked of the men behind the machines:

  "… Cut off from the rear, they abandon all their heavy weapons.… Their infantrymen are weak, afraid to die, and have no courage to attack or defend. They depend always on their planes, tanks, artillery… . They specialize in day fighting. They are not familiar with night fighting or hand-to-hand combat. If defeated, they have no orderly formation. Without the use of their mortars, they become completely lost.… They become dazed and completely demoralized. They are afraid when the rear is cut off. When transportation comes to a standstill, the infantry loses the will to fight."

  The Chinese, knowing they could not slug it out with American planes, tanks, and artillery, in which they themselves were weak, planned to tailor operations to fit what they considered were American weaknesses. They would plan attacks to get in the enemy rear, to cut escape and supply roads, and then to flail the enemy with pressure from both front and rear. They would use what they called the Hachi-Shiki—a V-formation, which moved open and against the enemy, then closed about him, while other forces slashed through to his rear, engaging any unit that tried to relieve the trapped enemy. Simple tactics, they were suited to the violently broken Korean terrain—and they could be coordinated with flares and bugle calls, the only means of communication the Chinese possessed.

  "As a main objective, one of our units must fight its way quickly around the enemy and cut off hi
s rear.… Route of attack must avoid highways and flat terrain in order to keep tanks and artillery from hindering the attack operations. Night warfare in the mountains must have a definite plan and liaison between platoon groups. Small, leading patrols attack and then sound the bugle. A large number will at that time follow in column."

  The Chinese soldiers to whom the instructions were read were well fed, well clothed, and sturdy. They wore warm quilted jackets of white, mustard-brown, or blue; many had fur-lined boots. They were tough. They did not fear to leave their own lines; they carried their supply and food, even mortar rounds, with them, over hills, through valleys. Their minds were conditioned by the vast, flowing landscapes of China itself; they would move over the land as if it were the sea, caring little whether they were before the enemy or behind him, for on the sea all position is relative.

  They possessed courage, and they would obey orders unto the death.

  But they were illiterate, simple peasants, and they had almost none of the things a modern army required to make it a scientific instrument. They had no radios, no tanks, very little artillery, and that little they were inept in using. They had no mechanized system of supply, nor any vast stockpiles of goods or equipment; their food and their ammunition they were forced to carry on their backs.

  They could move, in any direction, no faster than their legs might bear them. They could not shift rapidly to meet a changing situation, nor could they at once exploit a breakthrough.

  In open battle, openly arrived at, an American army might have slaughtered them. On the fields of Europe, or in the deserts of North Africa, they would have died under the machines and superior firepower of a mechanized host. But now, Lin Piao's hosts were not going to engage in open battle, openly arrived at, with the West.

  They would fight, in their own way, in their own mountains, and they would inflict upon American arms the most decisive defeat they had suffered in the century.

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  19

  Kunu-ri

  Lordy, Lordy, listen to me,

  While I tell of the battle of Kunu-ri!

  We're buggin' out—

  We're movin' on!

  — From the "Bugout Boogie," a folk ballad preserved in the 2nd Division despite its proscription by the powers that be.

  SOUTH OF THE broad, shallow Ch'ongch'on, some thirty miles northwestward from the Yellow Sea, the forlorn village of Kunu-ri—on some maps shown as "Kunmori"—sat drably across the junction of the north-south road from Sunch'on and the lateral road running from Huich'on to a connection with the main coastal highway at Sinanju.

  To the east, or right, of Kunu-ri the mountains rose, high and terrifying in a foggy sky, becoming virtually impenetrable at Huich'on. And to the east, along the road, on both sides of the river, spread the 2nd Infantry Division, from Kunu-ri to Kujang-dong to Sinhung-dong. On their right were deployed the two divisions, the 6th and 8th, of the II ROK Corps. West of them the rifle regiments of the 25th Division held the line, on a front generally facing northwest toward Huich'on and the forbidding mountains.

  Generally behind the 2nd Division's rifle regiments, facing eastward, the artillery dug in its supporting base on the only flat terrain they could find, an exposed flat draw near Kujang-dong.

  The battalions and companies were scattered along the river in weird array, for this was no country for a modern, mechanized army. The hills were not high here, but they were endless. There were no side roads, and no flat spaces anywhere, where command posts, medical aid stations, or anything else could be set up. The hills ran into each other; they overlapped; they blocked vision and hearing in every direction.

  Because the terrain was compartmented by the hills, some units stood too close to others; others were out of sight and hearing of those supporting them. Wire often did not reach; the ancient radios did not work. The units of the 2nd Division were not far from each other in yards and miles—but each moved, fought, and worried in almost complete isolation, in a tormented vacuum of its own.

  Men who have never walked these hills will never adequately understand what happened to the 2nd Division. Because among these endless ridges the 2nd Division was brought to battle the day after Thanksgiving, 1950, and it was, in detail, defeated.

  During the next five days every unit of the division, combat and support alike, would know its moments of danger, of fear and death and destruction. All would suffer, some more than others. What each company, each platoon suffered, is a story in itself.

  Enough of the whole, perhaps, can be glimpsed from the ordeal of a few.

  The 2nd Division sat on the hill,

  Watchin' Old Joe Chink get set for the kill—

  Captain Frank E. Muñoz, commanding George Company, 9th Infantry, knew that his division was attacking across the Ch'ongch'on. He had no idea that across that same river another, hostile, army was also poised to attack.

  In ninety days all the faults of the American Army had not been corrected—there were still men in the ranks who were poorly trained, and replacements who had no stomach for Korea, north or south. The old men had learned, the hard way, but many of the older men were gone. The inexorable law of combat is the disintegration and replacement of rifle companies, and the pool from which replacement came was the same as that which had furnished the first men into Korea.

  Because the fighting had lessened in recent weeks, because all believed the war was ending, the hard-won discipline in the ranks had lessened, too. Men had discarded their steel helmets, because they were heavy and awkward over their pile caps. Disdaining their use, most men of the 9th Infantry had tossed aside their bayonets. Few carried grenades, or much ammunition. There were few entrenching tools, and not much food, because in these goddam hills, man, you had to go light.

  Because most men equated discipline with the infrequent nonsense of digging six-by-six trenches to bury cigarettes, or scrubbing coal bins white, practices the Army had wisely discarded, many men had discarded discipline, too. They—those who lived—would have to learn again that discipline means keeping a full bandoleer of ammunition and a full canteen, despite their weight, and all the equipment men wiser than they had issued to them.

  Over George Company Frank Muñoz and his trusted deputies, such as Sergeant Long, worked to exercise their will. It was a never-ending and a thankless job.

  But George Company had good clothing: OD trousers, with field cotton pants to go over them, field jackets, parkas, combat boots with overshoes, and arctic sleeping bags. They were eating good food as yet, and they had no real trouble with the bitter weather.

  Muñoz knew very little of the tactical situation. He knew the Chinese were in. He thought: We'll have to fight them. We'll push them back to the Yalu, and there we'll draw a line to keep them out.

  He figured the enemy units in front of George were only a screening force. For that matter, so did Colonel Foster, the Division G-2.

  On the night of 25 November, 9th Infantry's front began to come apart, but Frank Muñoz and company didn't know it. Baker was hard hit; King and Love virtually wiped out. Chinese were pouring into the 2nd Division along the natural corridors by night, seeking the American rear. Where they met no opposition in the dark, they flowed through; where they hit, sometimes by accident, an American unit, they flailed it from all directions. Some, decimated and shaken, held; some broke.

  Men could hear the firing, but not even the regimental commanders, with no communication, knew what was happening.

  At dawn, 26 November, 9th Infantry, except for 2nd Battalion, which was separated from the other units by the river, was ready for the scrapheap. The 23rd and 38th regiments were heavily engaged in their own areas. And 2nd Battalion's turn was coming.

  Dug in along a high hill beside the river, George and Fox companies had been missed by the Chinese as they streamed through. With daylight, the dawn cold and clear, they made contact. Fortunately, George saw them first.

  In the first, shadowy winter's light, Master S
ergeant William Long, leading George's 3rd Platoon, saw a body of men walking openly along a creek from the area where K and L of the 3rd Battalion should be. Because the troops moved in the open, with no attempt at concealment, the men with Long decided they must be Americans, and ignored them.

  Warned by the sixth sense old hands develop in battle, Long kept his eye on the approaching men. They closed to within three hundred yards, and suddenly Long yelled, "Chinks! They're Chinks!"

  Quickly, men holding rifles and BAR's swiveled toward the visitors. Long let them come within two hundred yards; then he leveled his own carbine, and let fly.

  The first burst of fire knocked down nearly half the Chinese. The remaining jumped behind rocks of the creek bed or plunged into the half-frozen rice paddies. There was a small village nearby, and a few Chinese raced for cover among the huts.

  Quickly, a furious fire fight built up.

  Muñoz tapped his runner. He sent the man scurrying to First Lieutenant Kavanaugh of Fox, dug in farther along the hill, to get Fox to hit the Chinese in the flank.

  Kavanaugh sent one of his supporting tanks rumbling down toward the village. The tank opened fire, killing at least ten Chinese. Others came out with hands up.

  Meanwhile, Sergeant Long led his platoon around the ambushed men and struck them in the rear. In a brief, sharp fire fight, Long wiped out the enemy column: seventy-odd killed, and twenty captured.

  Frank Muñoz and Long looked over the dead Chinese carefully; they were the first they had seen. The corpses were clean-looking, solid, muscular. Each soldier had carried a pack complete with entrenching tool, blankets, and extra ammunition; they had had a miscellany of weapons—American, Japanese, Russian—and plenty of stick grenades. Some of them had carried a pot and a great quantity of rice—their rations.

  Because they had thought all the American line companies had been wiped out during the night, the Chinese had walked blithely into a trap.