This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Now, a certain senior colonel of the Inmun Gun, the ranking POW in Compound 76 and on Koje-do, had a staff at hand. All Lee Hak Ku had to do was use it. But while the Russian-trained Lee remained the senior officer on paper, the real power among the captives was probably in the hands of a small, evil-faced officer called Hong Chol.

  Lee Hak Ku, by surrendering, had shown himself capable of weakness, and the inner cadre would never again wholly trust him. And Hong Chol was where he could keep an eye on Colonel Lee.

  Together, these two began to organize and control the compounds. When the Americans told the prisoners to elect representatives from each compound, Lee and Hong were ready. The campaign was brief, violent, and secretly bloody.

  Occasionally, the guards would find a corpse in the latrine, or a body stuffed down the sewer line. Now and then a roll call turned up someone short, and the POW's would seem to be uneasy, talking and muttering in small groups.

  The missing men were often listed as escapees.

  And the Lee-Hong slate was elected. Whatever the non-Communist POW's had learned from reading the U.S. Constitution, the Lee-Hong forces were better organized at the precinct level.

  Meeting with U.N. representatives, the new representatives of the prisoners slowly became more confident. The new chief honchos, or head knockers, met daily with the guards, and began to demand things.

  To their delight, they were never disappointed.

  They asked for whitewash, and got it. Soon, pretty rock designs of Chinese, Korean, and U.S. flags adorned the compound yards. They asked for record players, paper, ink, mimeograph machines, and work tools.

  Because the U.N. Commission felt it was good therapy to let them work, they got everything they asked for, at U.S. expense.

  There was no appropriation for extra barbed wire, or for more compounds to case the crucial housing shortage, which made the existing compounds so large as to be almost unmanageable. But there was money for sheet metal, saws, hammers, and nails for the prisoners, who went studiously to work, making things. Some of the items they made they buried underneath the floors of their huts before the Americans had a chance to admire them.

  Happy with their work, a certain amount of spirit returned to even the most apathetic Communist POW. Now some of them ignored their guards when ordered to work for their own benefit, such as in the kitchens, and spat in the guards' faces if the Americans became insistent.

  One day a sergeant approached Bill Gregory. The sergeant was an old Army man, wooden-faced with his consciousness of duty. "Sir, you told us to let you know if anyone hit a POW—"

  "Well?"

  The guard wiped his face. "Major, I just hit one myself."

  "Don't tell me, boy—don't tell me," Gregory said quickly.

  The N.C.O. saluted and went away.

  This kind of crisis Bill Gregory had to learn to live with.

  One day, the flags went up, blue and yellow and made of clean new mattress covers donated by the U.S. Army. Seeing the myriad banners flying over each compound, each with its Communist propaganda slogan, a gi remarked to Gregory: "Boy, aren't they pretty sir? These people are sure artistic!"

  "They sure are," Gregory said.

  Since the POW's seemed to enjoy putting them up, the flags were allowed to stay.

  Bill Gregory had other things on his mind, however. He was busy installing automatic flushing commodes in the four-holers that served the compounds.

  And he had a problem on the beach, where one of his sewer lines emptied into Korea Strait. The mouth of the line, made of 55-gallon drums, ran out three hundred feet beyond the water's edge—but Korean tides were extreme, and at low tide the sewer mouth was exposed.

  The problem was caused by rice. The prisoners ate rice as if they had never eaten before, and kept the new toilets busy. And rice feces, among the various kinds, are unique. They come out as small hard balls, tough as cement, insoluble in water. They will not float, nor will they wash away. They lay by the hundreds of millions on the beach, like dark, ugly snails.

  The beaches of Koje-do, at low tide, were a sight to behold.

  It was one engineering problem Bill Gregory was never to solve.

  With the prisoners learning about democracy in lectures, and happily at work the remainder of the time, turning out mimeographed newssheets or banging away in the metal shops, Colonel Fitzgerald could turn his attention to the U.S. personnel on the island. It had come to the C.O.'s notice that many of the POW's looked better than his own troops.

  He ordered officers to wear pinks and greens on duty, and all personnel were to don ties. After all, the eyes of the world were on Koje-do.

  And with the compounds slapped together, he ordered work commenced on the officers' club. This went up quickly, a huge, barnlike structure of sheet metal and native island timber. While it was built, somebody arranged for Koean barmaids, in freshly starched dresses, to be imported from Pusan.

  Things were looking up all over.

  There was even a rumor that the Eighth Army was now winning the war on the mainland.

  During this period, Major Gregory noticed that the population of Koje-do, aside from the POW's, was increasing. More and more Koreans showed up, to get jobs as servants, houseboys, laundrymen, barbers. The U.S. payroll, after the manner of such rolls, continued to increase geometrically each month. In Colonel Fitzgerald's HQ there were more Koreans than GI's.

  The Koreans who still hadn't made the payroll were opening new business ventures, selling souvenirs to both GI's and pow's. Each day tradesmen surrounded the compounds, doing a brisk trade through the barbed wire.

  It would have been cruel, and a blow to the local economy, to interfere with them.

  The ROk's of the two guard battalions were doing well, too. Most of them had brought in their families. Some had also opened up new businesses. All were busily engaged in erecting new quarters, complete with landscaping.

  Two alert Koreans noticed that the traffic between Pusan and Koje had increased tenfold since 1950. They dug up two diesel barges to supplement the official ferry on the end of the island, and they soon grew rich.

  A great many of the young women refugees from North Korea, who had been dumped on Koje by the ROK government, found steady employment, at compensation formerly undreamed of in East Asia.

  Colonel Fitzgerald inspected the officers' club daily, and it was coming along real well.

  The POW's continued to make things in their shops. They put out more flags, some of them artistic triumphs. They sang and chanted in their compounds, and seemed content. Now and then a battered body blocked one of Bill Gregory's sewers, which was a hell of a nuisance until they removed it.

  But it was understood that the Asians weren't too well checked out on modern plumbing, and no one worried.

  The POW press turned out more and more newssheets, flooding the island. Many began to turn up in Pusan, as the paper ration was increased. One evening Major Gregory found one in his quarters. He asked his houseboy what it said.

  He was told, "Oh, the Communists are telling the people what fools the Americans are."

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  28

  May Massacre

  It is a necessary to provide soldiers with defensive arms of every type as to instruct them in the use of offensive ones. For it is certain men fight with greater courage and confidence when they find themselves properly armed for defense.

  — From the Latin of Vegetius, MILITARY INSTITUTION OF THE ROMANS.

  AFTER THE MASSIVE failure of the CCF First Step, Fifth Phase Offensive, the front, which now almost evenly divided the Korean peninsula, enjoyed two weeks of uneasy quiet.

  May Day came, but the CCF had turned to limited retreat on 30 April, and the expected blow did not fall. Always, during the Korean War, U.N. observers tensed at the approach of May, fearing action on the traditional pagan holiday, sacred both to ancient Anglo-Saxons and modern Communists. But the Communists showed no more disposition, if conditions wer
e not right, for action on I May than the Americans did to start their own ruckusses on July Fourth.

  But U.N. intelligence, warned by aerial observation of troop and supply movement, felt that a new CCF offensive was brewing and that this time it would fall against General Ned Almond's X Corps, in the center.

  Air power, in the mountains of North Korea, could not stop the continuing reinforcement of the CCF front any more than it had been able completely to choke off the German armies in Italy during World War II.

  The CCF, relying on night movement and muscle power, were always able to move sufficient supply forward. Air interdiction could cripple the forward flow from time to time; it could not kill it.

  The CCF, as others before then, had learned to live with a hostile sky. They clung to hills and mountains, and they dug deep. They moved by night, when it was difficult even for the night-flying fighter-bombers to seek them out in the bristling terrain.

  It was only—as in Italy, at Anzio and other places—when ground action put inexorable pressure on enemy ground forces, forcing them to move or to displace, that conventional tactical air could come into its own. Massed to attack, the CCF became vulnerable. When they broke through U.N. lines, and their artillery and supply were forced to move out into the open, to displace, U.N. air could pounce upon them and chew them mercilessly. When they were forced by U.N. ground pressure to retreat, to stream down the roads and corridors of escape, air again could inflict deadly wounds.

  Conventional air action, in Korea, could be decisive only when coupled with decisive ground action. It is impossible to interdict the battlefront, in mountains, of an army that eats only a handful of rice and soya beans and carries its ammunition forward piggyback.

  But when the Chinese came down out of their brooding hills, either to attack or retreat, U.N. air, armor, and artillery, all vastly superior in the spring of 1951, more than offset their advantage in manpower.

  For the first two weeks of May, feeling the enemy would strike again, Lieu-tenant General Van Fleet kept Eighth Army on the defensive, dug in behind its "No Name Line." As it turned out, this was an eminently sensible maneuver. In the center, behind prepared positions, crouched the CCF's old friend, the United States 2nd Division.

  The division's line ran along the crest of a huge hill mass in East Central Korea, separating the Hongch'on and Soyang rivers. The main line of resistance ran in most places a mile or more beyond the ends of the nearest supply roads, and all matériel of war had to be hand-carried up the thousand-foot slopes.

  The 38th Infantry held the left of the division line, and on the regimental left, firmly fixed on a hill mass known as Hill 800, the 3rd Battalion, 38th,dug in.

  Lieutenant Colonel Wallace Hanes, the C.O. of the 3/38, gave explicit orders to cut fields of fire, to dig bunkers, and to build covered positions for every man of the rifle companies.

  Colonel Hanes discovered what many had discovered before and since—that while the American soldier is among the best in the world at getting his tents up and his socks dry, he has no love for digging in the earth. Inspecting, Hanes found that most men had merely dug a foxhole, put a poncho over it to keep out the cold spring rain, and a few leaves over the poncho as concealment. American troops always despise physical labor.

  Hanes roared at his company commanders: "Damn it, I want solid bunkers with cover to protect you from artillery fire!"

  Under Hanes' lashing, the 3/38 cut down trees, to build solid bunker walls. On top of these they put earth, and rock as a bursting pan. They dug deep trenches from firing position to position, and they dug great holes in the mountainsides in which to hide their bunkers.

  Still, some positions stuck out, and Hanes insisted on their being covered over with sandbags, by the thousands. He wanted positions that would stand under enemy artillery—or friendly, if the 3/38 were overrun.

  With the deep positions ready after a week of Hanes' prodding, wire was strung across the front, and mines emplaced along the forward hill slopes. All of the matériel was carried up the steep slopes on the backs of Korean laborers and laboriously emplaced by the grudging U.S. troops.

  When Hanes had first explained to them what he wanted, many had thought him joking.

  When Colonel Hanes was satisfied, they had used up 237,000 sandbags,385 rolls of barbed wire, more than 6,000 steel wire pickets, and 39fougasse drums. A fougasse was an improvised land mine, consisting of a55-gallon POL drum filled with napalm, a small explosive charge, usually white phosphorous shells, and a detonator. When exploded, the crude mine threw a mass of 3,000-degree Fahrenheit flame over an area ten by thirty yards long, with extremely salutary effects on any CCF who might be nearby.

  In addition to fortifications, the 3/38 had to carry its water, food, and ammunition up the hill. It took three to four hours for a round trip.

  The only way Colonel Hanes found to get his heavy 4.2-inch mortars up was by the use of Korean oxen.

  With his front completely wired in, Hanes now insisted on trip flares and AP mines being strewn over the forward slopes, and his wire communications being placed underground.

  The 3/38, which already figured it knew how to fight, now learned how to work. On 12 May Hanes was halfway satisfied.

  And the 2nd Division knew that something was in the wind. Enemy patrols were thick out along the Soyang River; refugees and line crossers were pouring in; air reported vehicular traffic and new bridges deep in the enemy mountains.

  Waiting in their deep positions, Hanes' men were now proud of their handiwork, and confident. It had dawned on them, that while they had never had positions half so good, they had seen some the Chinese had made that were as good, or better. Once the work was over, they were at last glad they had done it.

  Hanes, talking to Major General Ruffner, the division commander, said, "I'm worried about only one thing now, General—I'm afraid the bastards won't hit us!"

  Wallace Hanes need not have worried. On 16 May, after nightfall, the bastards launched their Second Step, Fifth Phase Offensive, which the United Nations Command designated the "The Second CCF Spring Offensive," X Corps called "The Battle of the Soyang," and the soldiers of the 2nd Division remembered ever afterward as the May Massacre.

  On 16 May 1951, the III and IX Army groups, comprising the 12th, 15th,60th, 20th, and 27th armies, CCF, moved 137,000 Chinese and 38,000 North Koreans southward like a muddy, coffee-colored sea. The sky was heavy and overcast, and American air blind and impotent.

  The Chinese "volunteers" had been told of great victories in the offing. They knew they faced the ROK's, of whom they were contemptuous, and the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, whose blood they had tasted before.

  The long, undulant, columns chanted and grunted and sang, after the manner of all Chinese at work or on the march, until the hills were hideous with their noise.

  At night, on the flare and bugle call, they went into the ROK's holding No Name Line to the east of the 2nd Division. The ROK's, outnumbered, outgunned, and badly led, came apart.

  Like a door swung sharply inward, the line east of the 3/38 fell to the south-west, toward Wonju. The ROK's did not run, at first. They fought; they were overwhelmed. They fell back.

  By 17 May once again, as at Kunu-ri, the 2nd Division was gaping and exposed on its right flank.

  By daylight, the Chinese had struck into the 1st and 2nd battalions of the38th, and had run full into Task Force Zebra, a 2nd Division force whose steel tip was the 72nd Tank Battalion.

  They struck fire such as they had never faced before.

  Infantrymen held to their hilltops; tanks moved along the valley corridors with machine gun and cannon. Tank gunners and artillerymen fired until they were exhausted from loading shells, and tubes were close to burning out.

  On the right flank of the division, finally, the advance was stopped.

  The CCF, hurt, milled and coiled about, seeking an easier way. Striking farther to the west, on the left flank of the 2nd Division, the Chinese threw a division against th
e 38th Infantry's solid hills.

  By the prodigal spending of men against wire and flame, C Company of the38th was overrun. East of Colonel Hanes' positions, 1/38 pulled back to the left, and 2/38 also moved back.

  The French Battalion was sent forward to plug the gap between Task Force Zebra and the 38th Infantry caused by the loss of C Company. The French could not restore the line, but they held the Chinese at bay until the 72ndTank moved back, and the 23rd Infantry assumed their mission.

  Now the Chinese went for the apex of the U.N. defensive line, the hills held by 3/38, which were rapidly assuming the character of a salient, with enemy on either side of them.

  The CCF route of approach led them directly into Hill 800, the anchor about which the 3rd Battalion was centered. Dug in atop 800, which they already called Bunker Hill, was Company K, Captain Brownell.

  The men of Bunker Hill were deep inside more than two dozen bunkers, the positions Colonel Hanes had forced them to build so painfully a week before.

  Shortly after dark, 17 May, waiting in a cold mountain fog, King Company heard the sound of bugles. Soon, then, the men on Bunker Hill heard the Chinese at their first wire barrier; several mines exploded, and the Chinese opened fire on the hill.

  Gradually the firing increased as the Chinese neared; some of King's men could even hear querulous Chinese words shouted back and forth. The attackers slipped around the side of the hill, cut the wire, and climbed up the steepest part, where few mines had been laid.

  Now King opened fire, with a crackling roar.

  Brownell, however, owing to poor communication, was unable to call down artillery fire. A shell landed directly on his command bunker, damaging his radio; and a number of men from Mike, the supporting Weapons Company, under a new, green lieutenant, had left their positions and were falling back across the hill.