This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Other men joined them. In a thunderous small-arms fire fight, Chinese and Americans were wandering about all over Bunker Hill in the dark.

  Captain Brownell, in a superb defensive position, was suddenly in command of complete confusion, for men heard that the line was falling back, and began to pull out.

  Colonel Hanes met some of these at the bottom of the hill. "Get back upon the hill—we don't give up a position until we're beaten, and we're not beaten if every man does his share!"

  The men went back. The green lieutenant who had started the pull-out got back into his position with several wounds.

  Meanwhile, Captain Brownell had organized his reserve platoon for a counter attack to hurl the Chinese off the hill—many of them were already in some of the abandoned bunkers. They waited for artillery to fall in support—but commo was still spotty, and the artillery did not arrive.

  "Hell with it," one of Brownell's officers snapped. "We can take the damned hill ourselves!"

  Forming a long skirmish line, they advanced through the dark, firing rifles and carbines. They had many white phosphorous grenades, and they hurled these into bunkers and trenches as they passed. As each grenade exploded on the hill, advancing infantry stood out sharply in the ghastly light; then the men went blind again.

  After sharp, close-in fighting, Brownell threw the scattered, disorganized Chinese off his hill. Sometime after midnight, the position was restored.

  But numerous Chinese had flowed around King Company, and were heavily engaged with I in its rear. With daylight some two hundred of them burrowed into bunkers between K and I, and Colonel Hanes realized this force had to be reduced before nightfall 18 May, or his entire line might break.

  Hanes personally led the counterattack under extremely heavy mortar fire from his supporting 4.2's. The Chinese broke and ran. Many were killed fleeing, while Hanes lost no one.

  During the day, King Company strengthened its defense once more, while on its right the entire X Corps line was swinging southwest, to prevent a possible CCF envelopment.

  Bunker Hill was becoming more exposed by the moment. With dark, Brownell and his men crawled deep into their strong holes. And with dark, they heard the sound of horns again.

  Not like the British at Boston, marching arrogant and erect, but padding cat footed, hunched over, their buttocks near the earth, the horde of Chinese ran forward to Bunker Hill.

  Brownell called for artillery. This time he had communication.

  But the enemy walked in over his own dead, and reached King's bunkers. Brownell told his platoon leaders what he planned to do, then asked for variable-time shells directly on the hill.

  The shells whooped in, bursting a few feet above ground, spraying the area with sizzling shards. It was recorded in the Division Operations Journal that 2,000 rounds of 105mm shell burst over Bunker Hill within eight minutes.

  Gradually, it grew quiet. Then Chinese artillery began to probe the hill; the CCF was not yet ready to accede.

  The Chinese, climbing over their dead, came again.

  When they were firmly on his hill, Brownell called for every inch of 800 to be seared with fire. The 38th Field Artillery, that night, fired ten thousand rounds alone, and other artillery units supported, too.

  Nothing above ground could live. Brownell and his men, who had built well, were untouched. At dawn, the CCF broke and streamed north, leaving only their dead behind.

  King company was king on Bunker Hill.

  It was not easy for Hanes and Brownell to give up, on 19 May, when orders from General Almond forced the 3/38 to move south out of what had become a dangerously exposed position, as part of a general consolidation of the corps lines.

  By 21 May, Ned Almond realized that the massive CCF thrust against Ruffner's division had been contained. By swinging wide the door but holding the hinges, the X Corps had led the CCF into a bottomless pit; it rushed into the valleys, ran short of ammunition and supply, and died in windrows under the pounding of U.N. air, artillery, and armor.

  It had no chance of cracking the whole line, or of exploiting. It had struck against a division very different from its old acquaintance of the Ch'ongch'on. Understanding that the CCF had been stopped and was faltering, Almond ordered X Corps to counterattack. He talked Van Fleet out of an additional division and the 187th Airborne RCT, and on 23 May, attached to the 2ndDivision, he sent the paratroopers north.

  The first attack proved that the U.N. now held the initiative. Almond ordered the 187th, with the 72nd Tank Battalion, to form Task Force Gerhardt—named for the C.O. of the paratroopers—to advance to the Soyang, seizing the bridges there and killing as many Chinese as possible on the way.

  While the Chinese still defended from roadblocks, and their men still wandered armed through the hills, the main body of the Chinese armies was in full retreat. As Task Force Gerhardt pursued them, the Chinese displacement became a rout.

  U.S. tasks roared past abandoned supply, pack animals, ammunition. They went by burning villages and dead Chinese lying beside the roads, killed by tank fire or air strafing.

  The CCF, which had come across the Soyang singing, fled back in disorder. On 28 May, Inje fell.

  By launching a powerful counterattack almost before the end of what was to be the most spectacular defensive stand of the war, X Corps had suddenly, sharply, changed the course of war. The Chinese had now completely lost the initiative; worse, they had been hurt almost beyond recovery.

  Against the 2nd Division had been committed at one time or another ten CCF divisions, and during the month of May an estimated 65,000 Chinese and North Koreans had died under its guns.

  In one valley, alone, where the artillery had done its work, 5,000 corpses were counted.

  At the end of the May Massacre, the Eighth Army again moved north.

  When it stopped, it would not be stopped with guns, but with words.

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  Part III

  Blundering

  29

  Truce Talks

  To my mind it is fruitless to speculate on what might have been. If we had been ordered to fight our way to the Yalu, we could have done it—if our government had been willing to pay the price in dead and wounded that action would have cost.

  — General Matthew B. Ridgway.

  ON 1 FEBRUARY 1951 the U.N. branded Red China as an aggressor, and at the same time passed a resolution in effect abandoning the objectives it had set forth on 7 October 1950, for it now stated such objectives should be accomplished through peaceful means.

  Since action in the Security Council had been blocked by a Malik veto, the General Assembly voted 44-7, with 9 abstentions, that, noting the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China has not accepted United Nations proposals to bring about a cessation of hostilities in Korea with a view of peaceful settlement, and that its armed forces continue their invasion of Korea and their large-scale attacks upon the United Nations Forces there:

  [The General Assembly] Finds that the Central People's Government … has engaged in aggression in Korea;

  Calls upon the Central People's Government … to cause its forces … in Korea to cease hostilities … and to withdraw from Korea;

  Affirms the determination of the United Nations to continue its action in Korea to meet the aggression;

  Calls upon all states … to continue to lend assistance to the United Nations action in Korea;

  Calls upon all states to refrain from giving any assistance to the aggressors in Korea;

  Requests a committee composed of the members of the Collective Measures Committee … to consider additional measures to be employed to meet this aggression … ;

  Affirms that it continues to be the policy of the United Nations to bring about a cessation of hostilities in Korea and the achievement of United Nations objectives in Korea by peaceful means, and requests the President of the General Assembly to designate forthwith two persons to meet with him … to use their good offices to
this end.

  The U.N. refused to impose sanctions or other punitive measures against the Communist Chinese.

  The United States, facing at the time a very poor tactical situation in Korea, finding the U.N. action backed by each of its European allies, had begun to explore the means of ending the fighting that brought Truman into conflict with MacArthur.

  But while the Western world was willing to talk peace, and from this time continuously put forth feelers to the Communist bloc, the Red Chinese still hoped for a favorable decision on the battlefield. When they would hint of terms at all, these included withdrawal of all foreign troops from Korea, leaving North and South to settle their own affairs, withdrawal of U.S. protection to Taiwan, and admission of Red China to the U.N., all of which were strategically and politically impossible for the United States.

  Here the matter rested during March, April, and early May, while a violent war of maneuver flowed up and down the middle part of the Korean peninsula. Encouraged by their success in the North, the CCF briefly engaged in open battle with the U.N. forces, in one massive assault after another, in February, April, and again in May.

  Each time the CCF were spectacularly unsuccessful.

  At the end of May 1951, the CCF had proved they could not prevail in open warfare in the more maneuverable ground of southern and middle Korea. But the U.N. Command had no burning desire to push and pursue them back into the horrendous terrain girdling the Yalu. Unless Manchuria could be interdicted, the CCF would fight here from a base of strength, while the U.N. would again be restricted and far from its sources of supply.

  On the Yalu, the U.N. defensive line would be four hundred miles long, almost four times the distance it covered in the area of the 38th parallel.

  In the spring of 1951 a movement against Red China itself was politically unfeasible in the U.N. As Winston Churchill, soon to return to power in Great Britain, put it, the thought of an Anglo-American army mucking about through Manchuria gave him nightmares. Ridgway, well aware of the processes that had brought him his fourth star, was content to take his direction from Washington.

  Washington was seeking any means out of the Korean conflict that might be achieved without surrender, and with honor.

  The fighting had escalated from a small limited war to a very large—though still limited—war, and it had poised the world on the brink of a general holocaust.

  On 26 May, Lester Pearson of Canada, President of the U.N. General Assembly, stated that surrender of the aggressors might not be required to end the war; the U.N. would be satisfied if the aggression could be brought to an end. On 1 June, Trygve Lie, understanding completely the mood of his charges, mentioned that the time seemed right for stopping the bloodshed, since on this date the Chinese and North Koreans had been driven back across their line of departure. If a cease-fire could be made along the 38th parallel, Lie said, the Security Council resolutions of 25 and 27 June, and 7 July 1950, could be considered carried out.

  On 2 June, Dean Acheson publicly agreed with Lie. He said there were actually two problems, one political, one military. While the long-term political approach of the United States, desiring a united, free, and independent Korea had not changed, the immediate problem of concern to Washington was the stopping of the shooting, with assurances it would not begin again. On 7 June, in response to vigorous grilling by a Senate committee, Acheson further stated that any reliable armistice based on the 38th parallel would be acceptable to the United States.

  The United States had come full cycle, back from its position of October 1950, to its position of the previous June. The goal was containment, not victory.

  And in June, with the CCF very close to real disaster in Korea, Communist thinking altered, too. The Soviet Union wanted neither defeat nor a big war, whatever the firebrands in Peiping desired. The battle lines, except in the west, where they neared the parallel, already stood well above the old line of demarcation, and the situation for the Communist powers was worsening.

  It was very clear to Soviet observers that the CCF could not win a decision in South Korea; they could not now even halt the slow, steady U.N. advance northward.

  It was also clear that the continuing hot war in the Far East was jangling Western nerves and hastening the slow rearmament of Europe under NATO. The West obviously desired peace—but continued Communist intransigence could tend only to unite the Western allies in the long run.

  When Communists cannot win by force, they are prepared to negotiate. If, in 1951, they could stop the U.N. advance by talking, they would firm an increasingly fluid and dangerous situation and in effect achieve a tactical victory.

  On 23 June, almost one year from the hour that the Inmun Gun deployed above the parallel, Soviet delegate Yakov A. Malik made a remarkable speech before the U.N. He claimed not to be speaking for the real belligerents, North Korea and Red China, but as a sort of amicus curiae for everyone. He made certain his speech was carried by radio to the gallery at large, the Western public.

  The greater part of the speech was the usual Soviet reiteration of charges and complaints—but Malik ended on a new note:

  "The problem of armed conflict in Korea could … be settled …; as the first step, discussions should be started between the belligerents for a ceasefire and an armistice providing for mutual withdrawal of forces from the 38th parallel … provided there is a sincere desire to put an end to the bloody fighting in Korea."

  If the government Malik represented was sincere, it had apparently now agreed to the present goals of the United Nations Command.

  He was immediately challenged by the United States delegate to put up or shut up. Truman repeated the American position in a broadcast. And on 30 June General Ridgway, as U.N. Commander in Chief, radioed the commander of Communist Forces in Korea as follows:

  I am informed that you may wish a meeting to discuss an armistice providing for the cessation of hostilities and all acts of armed forces in Korea, with adequate guarantees for the maintenance of such armistice.

  It was a remarkable statement for an American commander, triumphant in the field, to make to an as yet unhumbled enemy. It occurred less than a decade after an American pronouncement of a goal of unconditional surrender of its enemies, but it revealed an aeon of diplomatic and political change in American thinking on the matter of war.

  And here, on 30 June, a certain amount of love between the United States and the Taehan Minkuk ended. For the Republic of Korea saw no honor in the proposed cease-fire, which left its people ravaged and still divided. A settlement along the 38th parallel, for all the American and U.N. protestations of continuance of the goal of uniting Korea by peaceful means, meant the separation of Korea into two blocs for as long as man could count, possibly for centuries.

  Syngman Rhee was spurred not only by economic and national reasons to oppose peace now, but also by those same reasons that bound Europe's leaders into an emotional straitjacket in 1916-1917, when the Great War stalemated and it seemed sensible to end it. The Taehan Minkuk had gone into the war with its whole heart; it had been devastated, and one in twenty of its people killed or injured. Millions of orphans and homeless wandered its ruins.

  To end the war after such wholesale sacrifice with nothing but the status quo ante was more than aging Rhee or the Koreans could bear.

  Dr. Rhee issued a statement on 30 June 1951.

  The Republic of Korea's conditions for peace were as follows: the CCF must withdraw north of the Yalu; all North Korean Communists must be disarmed; Soviet and Chinese arms assistance to the North must end, under a U.N. guarantee; full ROK participation in any settlement; and no settlement conflicting with the sovereignty or territorial integrity of the Republic of Korea.

  From this time on, Syngman Rhee continued to be a patriot or became a major nuisance, depending on the vantage point from which he was viewed. Rhee never materially changed his demands, and he was to experience a continually worsening press in both Europe and America. Rhee, threatening again and again to
block an armistice desired by most, became less and less a heroic old resistor of Communism and more and more a stubborn, opinionated old tyrant, determined to keep the West from getting what it wanted.

  Actually, both Rhee and Korea were largely helpless. Not a U.N. member but a ward of that body, completely dependent upon American arms, fuel, munitions, and economic aid, the Taehan Minkuk had no chance of materially influencing U.S. policy. Willingly or not, Dr. Rhee had to continue as an American puppet or cease to exist.

  But a certain amount of love was lost. With divergent aims, neither Washington nor Seoul now fully trusted the other.

  Kim II Sung, Supreme Commander of the Inmun Gun, and Peng Teh-huai, Commander of Chinese Volunteers—whose name until that day was unknown to U.N. intelligence—radioed on 1 July 1951, agreeing to a meeting, not at sea, as Ridgway desired, but at Kaesong.

  Kaesong was three miles below the parallel and a few miles inside Communist lines; north of Seoul, it lay athwart the main north-south corridor through western Korea, along the main invasion route.

  The United Nations Command, not caring to be technical, accepted Kaesong. It was to learn that Communists propose nothing, not even truce sites, without an eye to their own advantage.

  On 8 July Colonel James C. Murray, USMC; Jack Kinney, an Air Force colonel; and Colonel Lee Soo Young, ROK Army, representing the U.N. command, met with a Colonel Chang of the Communists at a teahouse on the outskirts of rubble-strewn Kaesong. All agreed that the principals to negotiate a possible cease-fire would meet at Kaesong at 1100 on 10 July.

  On that date, Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy designated by General Ridgway as the Senior UNC Delegate, said to newsmen as he left Munsan-ni:

  "We, the delegates from the United Nations Command, are leaving for Kaesong fully conscious of the importance of these meetings to the entire world. We are proceeding in good faith prepared to do our part to bring about an honorable armistice, under terms that are satisfactory to the United Nations Command."