This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  In the last days of November 1950, MacArthur wired Washington: We face an entirely new war … this command has done everything humanly possible within its capabilities but is now faced with conditions beyond its control and strength. MacArthur now wanted to accept Chiang Kai-shek's offer of Nationalist Chinese troops, but Washington told him such a move would have to be cleared with the U.N.—which was obviously hostile to the idea.

  On 28 November, in a Security Council meeting, Omar Bradley informed President Truman that the JCS did not think the situation in Korea was "such a catastrophe as our newspapers were leading us to believe." At the same time George Marshall, Secretary of Defense, stated that in his opinion it was essential for the United States to go along with the United Nations and that all the service secretaries had agreed that neither the U.S. nor the U.N. should become involved in a general war with Red China if it could be avoided. Dean Acheson, Secretary of State, said that the nation should try to find some way to end the conflict.

  He added that if the United States went into Manchuria and bombed bases and airfields there as part of a successful action, "Russia would cheerfully get in it."

  The United States' entire foreign policy rested on the containment of Soviet Russia—not bringing her to battle.

  Averell Harriman thought careful consideration had to be given to the opinions of the rest of the free world. Truman himself said it was going to be hard to convince the free world that United States policy was going to remain calm in the face of the cries of alarm and distortions of "three of our biggest publishers."

  The Cabinet, the next day, agreed with the Security Council.

  The United States must continue to fight in Korea, hoping for the best, but it would not send orders to MacArthur to bomb Manchuria or in any way carry the war to the Chinese mainland. The conflict would still be an attempted police action.

  The Korean conflict—it would still not be dignified by Washington by the name of war—had escalated, but perhaps not fatally. South Korea must still be held. The holding would take more time, money, and men than anyone had realized, but the mission had not changed.

  To MacArthur went no orders to attack the criminals in their lair; the prohibitions upon his air and sea power were not lifted. As before, he was to hold the far frontier. He might punish the Chinese all he desired—as long as he did so within the confines of the Korean peninsula.

  If World War III were to begin, it would be by Communist initiative.

  Now, at Christmastime, a new wave of apprehension swept over the American people, for unlike the old wars on the frontier, this one was reported daily by electronic means.

  Time magazine stated: The nation received the fearful news from Korea with a strange calmness—the kind of confused, fearful, half-believing matter-of-factness with which many a man has reacted on learning he has cancer.… The news of Pearl Harbor … pealed out like a bell. But the numbing facts of Korea seeped out of a jumble of headlines, bulletins, and communiqués.

  The people could not remain indifferent in the face of incessant newscasts. Again scare buying was in progress, and even dealers of unpopular makes of automobiles sold out their stocks.

  Millions resolved to enjoy one last great Christmas before the deluge, and for hundreds it was the last Christmas, as the holiday traffic toll rose to a record level.

  There was still no problem of money or machines, guns or butter, despite the increased effort Chinese intervention now required. But the problem of the men—never solved—remained. President Truman called the militia of Minnesota and Mississippi, the Viking and Dixie divisions, into Federal service, and induction calls soared. Thousands more reservists were ordered to the colors, of all services.

  Still the clarion call to arms was not sounded to the people, who waited in confusion. Men were again taken from each city, town, and village, but the bugles did not blow, the drums did not resound, for there is no glory to a war on the far frontier.

  This kind of war, however necessary, is dirty business, first to last.

  It took, perhaps, more courage for Harry Truman not to sound the angel's trumpet than to mobilize the nation, for the people would never understand.

  It must be emphasized that the decision to withdraw from North Korea was a strategic one. Once contact had been broken both in east and west, American and ROK forces were under no immediate pressure forcing them backward. But the stance in the mountains of North Korea was exceedingly perilous with unknown numbers of Chinese in the war. The supply situation had never been good, and the transportation network was completely incapable of standing up under the needs of a large-scale campaign. MacArthur wanted to pull back.

  And there was always the haunting fear that a bigger war might start, elsewhere. If the Russians came in, fully, all the men in Korea might be cut off as Russian submarines and air interdicted their lifeline; and forgotten in the general chaos, they might be slaughtered at leisure.

  On 3 December 1950 MacArthur sent a message to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the Eighth Army situation was "becoming increasingly critical.…" He stated that he and General Walker agreed, as part of a very long and thoroughly gloomy report, that a withdrawal to the Seoul area was necessary. He wrote of the weakness and tiredness of his command, and of the freshness, complete organization, and splendid training of the Chinese divisions. He ended: The directives under which I am operating based on the North Korean Forces as an enemy [no bombing of Manchuria, and so on] are completely outmoded by events.… This calls for political decisions and strategic plans in implementation thereof, adequate fully to meet the realities involved. In this, time is of the essence as every hour sees the enemy power increase and ours decline.

  The evidence is very strong that the continually gloomy reports that MacArthur regularly sent from this time forward were written with the motive of influencing United States policy. MacArthur wanted "political decisions and strategic plans" that would permit him fully to engage the Chinese enemy, and he continued to hint and ask for them. His own feelings on what should be done were closer to those of the publisher of Time than to those of the United States Government—but the President of the United States, and neither Time nor public opinion, was General MacArthur's boss.

  On receipt of MacArthur's message on 3 December, Truman approved the following terse reply: We consider that the preservation of your forces is now the primary consideration. Consolidation of forces into beachheads is concurred in.

  Truman had decided that until the United Nations clarified its position, or decided to support a major United States move, it seemed best not to sacrifice men trying to hold a tenuous position in North Korea.

  The new U.N. Command plan now was to try to hold a line across South Korea north of Seoul—or if worse came to worst, to hold two beachheads, one in the Seoul-Inch'on area, the other the old Pusan Perimeter.

  With more than a quarter-million Allied ground troops in Korea, heavily mechanized and possessing all supporting weapons, the JCS felt the Chinese could be contained despite their seeming advantage in numbers.

  But over a defeated—even though not shattered—army lies a grayness of spirit. A retreat, once started, is the most difficult of all human actions to reverse. Most of the thousands who had come to Korea had never been interested in the action; now, most of them would have willingly departed the peninsula forever.

  The grayness spread upward, to staffs and even to commanders. Men who had burned their fingers were now wary of the flame.

  After coming through the CCF gauntlet on the Kunu-ri-Sunch'on road, the movement south was nothing but a truck ride for George Company, 9th Infantry, 2nd Division. The division was shattered, its equipment gone. It would be rebuilt and rebuilt well, but the process would take time.

  On 5 December 1950, disgusted and in a low mood, Captain Frank Muñoz and his company reached Seoul. He realized the Chinese had not been supermen; in many instances they hadn't even been good. Frank Muñoz would always believe that if the division could h
ave maintained battalion integrity, set up mutually supporting strongpoints, and held on to them until hell froze over, the Chinese would have been beaten. But what was done was done.

  Arriving in Seoul, Muñoz found the AP cable offices were still open. He sent a wire home. It was something of a puzzle what to send—there were security regulations, and he didn't want to frighten anyone. Finally he sent the wire in his daughter's name. "Happy Birthday. I'm fine."

  He figured that took care of everything.

  Then his unit went to stage and recoup at the old ASCOM City, between Seoul and Inch'on, where it rebuilt from the ground up until Christmas Eve. Now it was getting warm in Seoul, as thousands of CCF pressed down, and the divisions holding the line were backing up. Muñoz went to Ch'unch'on, and finally, his company once again reconstituted, to a hill north of Wonju.

  Moving south from the vicinity of the Yalu, Corpora James B. Mount, aid man with Item Company, 21st Infantry, had been too busy to worry much over where the company was going, until he saw a stopped tank doused with gasoline and set afire. Now he thought, There's more to this than they're telling us.

  There was. The 24th Division was going south, a long way south. As far as the eye could see, long columns of trucks threw up frozen dust on the coastal roads, and beside the roads every village burned smokily as the Americans retired. Scorched-earth policy, Mount understood they called this.

  By New Year's Eve, Mount's Company was dug in along the 38th parallel some fifteen miles north of Seoul, a broad valley stretching out before them. It was as cold as hell, and nobody was in a celebrating mood.

  In front of them were more Chinese than Mount or anyone else liked to think about.

  Mount was aid man with the 2nd Platoon, Lieutenant Pritchard. Pritchard was a West Pointer, of the recent class that had been pretty well decimated already in Korea. Mount understood that the losses in this class had been a matter of argument at home—as if the public thought the function of a military academy was to make future generals rather than men capable of ably leading platoons in action.

  Mount himself knew that battle was a series of platoon actions, each of which went toward deciding the battle as a whole. The best general in the world couldn't succeed without good men in his small units, however high the loss of skilled manpower. And realistically, Mount knew that the men who survived platoon combat would make better generals, however many were killed.

  The 2nd Platoon was centered on high ground to the right of the Seoul highway. Across the road, on the left, stood some old Quonset huts that had been used by the occupation forces years ago.

  About dark, artillery began to search Item Company's lines. Fortunately, most of the incoming stuff fell behind them. But snipers had moved in close, under the shelling, and two enlisted men of 2nd Platoon had been killed. As Mount and an aid man from an adjoining platoon struggled with a third man, shot through the shoulder, a bullet clipped the other aid man in the heel. Then Mount had two casualties on his hands.

  Captain Porter, who had taken the company upon the former commander's breakdown, was hit in the leg by the first round that came in. Porter refused to stop long enough for an aid man to look at him, hobbling up and down furiously.

  As dark deepened, all the company could hear heavy firing off to the left, where the 19th Infantry held their flank. It sounded like the 19th was getting clobbered.

  The company radio man reported, "I've lost all contact with the 19th—"

  Porter sent out patrols to try to contact the units on his left flank. The patrols went as far as they dared, came back to report no contact. "Hell," said Porter, "get in your holes and stay there. Shoot anything that moves!"

  Mount, sticking tight now with Pritchard's platoon, heard one report come to the lieutenant from company HQ. "There's 50,000 Chinks out there. Stay loose!" The boys at Company were getting puckered.

  The night grew colder. With Pritchard, Mount helped check the outposts. In the bitter weather, the sentries were having trouble staying alert. It was cold enough to keep a man's teeth chattering all night long—but Pritchard had learned a lesson earlier in the campaign. At first, every man had been issued a sleeping bag—and this had proved a mistake, fatal for a lot of Americans who could not resist the temptation to crawl in the bag, even on guard, and fall asleep.

  The Chinese had learned the expensiveness of bugling and tootling their way into American lines. Now they came quietly, padding on rubber-soled feet. The only way for the outposts to have a chance was to issue only one arctic sleeping bag to each two men. This way, one man would be too miserable to go to sleep, and he would damn well see to it that his buddy didn't sleep too long.

  It was not a popular ruling, but it saved lives.

  Shivering but alert, Item Company held during the night. At daybreak, Porter found that the units adjacent to him had pulled out. He checked for a reading with Battalion, and was ordered to pull back, too.

  The company moved out after New Year's Day dinner, which for the line companies was a fiasco. Mount got no dinner, but did grab a handful of cigars, which he preferred. Now the regiment pulled back to a line five miles north of Seoul, from which it was ordered to retreat no farther. A thorough defensive position was completed—holes, wire, minefields.

  But immediately the regiment was hard hit by Chinese. Neither air nor artillery could completely stop them from scrambling over the ridges, dropping down into the valleys. Mount saw that some attacking Chinese had no rifles; as they advanced, they waited until a companion was hit, then took his weapon.

  But they had plenty of manpower, and manpower—and the grayness that was sinking over Eighth Army—pushed them out.

  They held north of the Han exactly four days. When they withdrew, they went back thirty miles.

  On a gray day in December 1950, riding in his jeep with its handrail and autoloading shotgun, Walton Walker was spilled and killed in a collision on the dusty road.

  Walker, dying on the frozen dirt, was spared a worse fate. For days a whisper had run through command channels of the Eighth Army that Walker was through.

  The reverse of the coin that nothing succeeds like success is that in battle there is no prize for second place.

  Walker, an armored leader of some note in the big war, had done his best, against great odds, in Korea. He fought in a way completely new to his experience, with an army passionately preferring not to fight. Before Pusan, his blunt, bulldog outspokenness and stubbornness had much to do with the successful defense of the Perimeter.

  Given his plan of maneuver in the North, it is doubtful that any leader, with the same troops, could have done much better. But the one thing a democracy has in common with a dictatorship is that when there is military failure, heads must roll. Perhaps, as Voltaire remarked, it is not a bad policy, since it tends to encourage the remaining leaders.

  Some days before, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, CG in the Canal Zone, had been briefed for Korea. But with Walker's death, this would never be publicized.

  But the man who could dissipate the grayness arrived in Korea, to assume command of the Eighth Army.

  History has tended to prove that, like bishops, generals need a certain flamboyance for public success. Walker had none; he could never have been a public figure, win or lose.

  Flamboyance in itself is worth nothing, but when it is coupled with genuine ability, history records the passage of a great leader across the lives of men. It is no accident that the names of Clausewitz, Jomini, von Franqois, or Gruenther—brilliant minds all—are known only to students of warfare, while all the world remembers Ney and his grenadiers, Patton's pearl-handled pistols, and Matt Ridgway's taped grenades.

  For while Karl von Clausewitz, Henri Jomini, and Kurt von François influenced the history of warfare, Patton and Ridgway made an indelible mark upon the hearts of men.

  Ridgway, a well-built, bald soldier with the look of eagles about his strong-nosed face, was the kind of leader the Eighth Army needed. For as the comma
ndos say, "It is all in the mind and in the heart," and battles, more often, are won not on the drawing boards but in the hearts of men. Ridgway was a strong man, and an articulate one. He could think, and he could put his thoughts across with pen and tongue.

  He was possessed of such personal courage that, caught in artillery shell-fire, he was always the first man out of the ditch—a habit that caused his aide, a Medal of Honor winner, once to remark, "Oh, Jesus, I wish the Old Man would wait a little longer!"

  Ridgway came to an army gray with the habit of defeat, strong but no longer sure of itself. He said to his staff, who had caught enough brickbats to last them a lifetime in the past weeks, and had grown cautious: "There will be no more discussion of retreat. We're going back!"

  But habits are hard to break. Shortly after this, Ridgway's G-3, Dabney, said, "Here, General, are our contingency plans for retreat—"

  Ridgway relieved him upon the spot.

  The staff got the message. It took only a little longer for it to seep down to the ranks. Seventy-five miles below the 38th parallel, the U.N. line got "straightened out." It would never move south again, except under local pressure, for the balance of the war.

  Into Frank Muñoz's new George Company flowed dozens of replacements, many of them recalled reservists from the States. These last, as Muñoz said later, didn't want to be there.

  He integrated and oriented his newcomers. He told the N.C.O's and old men: "No war stories to scare hell out of these people. I don't want a bunch of scared rabbits. Let's get 'em trained and on the team."

  When he was fully manned again, one half of his company, including N.C.O.'s, had never seen combat. He had some new officers, some of them recallees. These men were not eager. They were patriotic men, with good records. But listening for the trumpet, they had received instead orders to Korea, telling them to go and serve, not saying why.