This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  The cream of the Communist armies had been destroyed, from the Naktong to the Imjin, and from the Imjin to the Soyang.

  Replacements coming down the mountains were recent inductees, impressed from rice field and village, untrained, in some cases unarmed and badly clothed.

  But though they might not be expert at war, these men were used to hard work and hardship all their young lives. Their leaders set them to work, digging. From the Sea of Japan, on the east, to the Yellow Sea on the west, they burrowed into the earth. They entered mountains from the rear slope, tunneling through to make gun positions opening on the front. They dug bunkers in which a company could safely and warmly bivouac. They dug so deeply into the earth that no conventional gun or cannon could reach them.

  They dug bunkers and trenches and firing steps.

  And when they had dug these, they went backward and dug a new defensive line, and one beyond that, stretching into the north. They dug a line such as the world had never seen—ten times the depth of any in World War I.

  They dug positions that could—and might have to, their leaders reasoned—stand against nuclear explosion.

  With their mountains, hollowed out, the training of the new CCF and Inmun Gun could begin. They were taught all the tricks the older men had learned: to move and attack by night, when the terrible American air was impotent; not to rush down valleys, as the CCF had learned to its sorrow on the Imjin and across the Soyang, but again to become phantoms, lurking in the hills, never letting the enemy see them until they chose.

  They learned to use their bright new weapons, carried laboriously down from the Yalu, and to load, aim, and fire the huge numbers of cannon with Cyrillic inscriptions on their tubes, now coming into Korea for the first time.

  They were sent on patrol, to learn to move quietly and effectively, and to learn the taste of blood.

  Over the months, beginning in the summer of 1951, the tough, squat peasant boys from China and Korea learned well.

  In the Communist armies there was no rotation.

  In February, when MacArthur had again and again pressed for reinforcements for FECOM, Washington had authorized him to arm and train some 200,000 to 300,000 more ROK's.

  More than 100,000 South Koreans were in arms, and other thousands served with United States forces, as KATUSA—a program that was quietly being abandoned; the cultural gulf between Korean and American was too great for them to use the buddy system—or laborers.

  Each American battalion and company had its indigenous personnel, from barbers to houseboys, paid in native currency and eating Korean rations furnished by the Army. They might add little to the effective fighting ability of the units, but they helped a great deal with the laundry problem.

  But American planners were still looking forward to the day of their eventual displacement from Korea, and the twice-shattered ROK Army had to be once again rebuilt. Men—tough, patient, hill-padding Korean peasants—there were in plenty. Surplus weapons from the big war, food, and money to pay them, America could easily furnish.

  What neither Korea nor America could furnish was leadership.

  A nation that for forty years had been made into hewers of wood and haulers of water could not put forth competent, educated officer material overnight. What little the Tachan Minkuk had enjoyed had mostly died north of the Han in 1950.

  Thousands of new Korean officers were sent to the United States, to Army schools like Berming and Sill. But these schools could not graduate enough men to officer an army quickly.

  And there was another problem, aside from the lack of officer material, common to most imperfectly democratic societies. Military preferment in the ROK Army often followed political preferment. The politicians in primitive societies want no generals they cannot trust. They prefer a politically reliable man at the head of a division to a competent one who may happen to belong to the wrong family or team.

  In almost all non-Communist Sinic countries, armies tend to be paternal, also. The discipline and punitive code of the ROK Army was severe, in large part inherited from the Imperial Japanese Army—but it was another form of paternalism that constantly gave American KMAG officers gray hairs.

  A ROK general was paid 60,000 won per month; a ROK private 3,000. With the won varying between 4,000 and 6,000 to the dollar, no ROK soldier could offer much to his family. His pay included a U.S.-bought ration of 3,165 calories, canned fish, biscuit, barley, kelp, rice, and tea; but his family had to eat, too.

  Frequently when the transport of a ROK division was vitally needed to haul ammunition at the front, the trucks were back in the interior carrying firewood for soldiers' dependents, or on private hire to build the divisional welfare fund. Gasoline disappeared regularly into the civilian economy.

  KMAG fought a losing battle against five thousand years of Oriental custom. Most of them, it must be admitted, developed a frustrated respect for the Chinese Reds who overnight destroyed the "silver bullets" tradition of the Chinese Army—the old situation when Chinese generals fought not with bullets of lead, but silver, meaning they could be bought—and who delivered supplies from Canton to Mukden, and from Mukden to Korea without pilfering, tampering, or diversion to private use according to sacred custom. But the Chinese Communists, puritan like all human revolutionists, had means not available to KMAG.

  In the CCF it was very easy to have a man shot.

  KMAG itself had difficulties. Traditionally, a nation instructing another should send its best men abroad, traditionally, from Athens to the America of 1950, nations do not. There was little prestige, promotion, or hope of glory in serving with the Korean Military Advisory Group. The United States Army tended to forget these men. Most officers who could avoid KMAG duty did so, preferring to serve among their own troops, where food, companionship, and the chances of recognition were all considerably improved.

  Unfortunately, a certain number of KMAG, understandably, became more interested in Korean seikse and the whiskey-run to Seoul on Saturday night than in the future of the Republic of Korea Army.

  But with all its deep-seated troubles, the ROK Army grew. Eventually it would stand at 600,000 men, and man two-thirds of the Korean line, and take more than two-thirds of the total casualties.

  It would remain weak in combat support, such as engineers and communications men. Korea produced no trained men. And it would remain weak in artillery; it would have no armor, and almost no air.

  It would depend upon transportation built in Japan on American order, and it would totally depend on American munitions, fuel, and supply, other than food.

  The United States wanted an army that could defend its homeland, but not one grown so independent it might follow its own course, or listen to its own leader, Syngman Rhee.

  As the Korean War lengthened, the ROK Army would, as Rhee said, "hold fifty-one percent of the stock," bought with its blood.

  But its U.N. and American directorate, firmly united on the point, would never allow the Korean majority stockholders voting rights, from now to the end of fighting.

  Brigadier General Haydon L. Boatner, United States Army, arrived in Korea in August 1951, just at the time the Eighth Army had decided, with irrefutable military logic, to lean on the CCF and NKPA before it occurred to the otherside to lean on them.

  It took Haydon Boatner four and one-half days to come from the Commandancy of Texas A&M, where he had picked up the odd sobriquet of "The Bull," to Bloody Ridge.

  Boatner, a Louisianan, was a professional soldier from a family of professional soldiers. Some observers, eyeing the undeniable hereditary cast of American generaldom, have voiced fears that this tendency may become in time a caste—but the fact that sons follow the career of their fathers in the military is no more unusual, or deplorable, than the fact that lawyers' sons become lawyers, or a Ford makes autos in Detroit.

  And just as family-owned corporations in the main are as well-managed as others, a Douglas MacArthur or a young Van Fleet, missing in action in Korea—both the sons of gene
rals—make as good soldiers as the next fellow.

  There is nothing wrong with a caste so long as it remains open-end, and competent.

  Haydon Boatner had graduated first in the West Point Class of 1924. In 1928 he went to the Far East, beginning what was to be a long career on the China station. Young Boatner, of an active mind, began the study of Chinese on the boat, and continued it while on duty with the mounted scouts of the old 15th Infantry at Tientsin.

  After two years there, he transferred to Peking, where he took a Master's degree in Chinese at the Evangelical Missionary Language School. His thesis, naturally enough, dealt with war: the Manchu invasion of the Middle Kingdom in the seventeenth century.

  In 1942, it was natural enough that old China Hand Boatner should end up in Burma, on General Stilwell's staff. Here he was among the first of his class to make brigadier, and here he spent thirty-eight months, going finally up to China, where he drew up the original surrender terms for the Japanese Army in China.

  But with Stilwell, he was run out of Burma in 1942, and serving with Vinegar Joe—who, like Krueger, was sometimes given to referring to the commander in chief as a horse's ass—was not the most advantageous place to be in World War II. Europe, not the CBI, was where the guns, glamour, girls, and fresh new stars were. Men who were junior to Boatner, and who got a transfer to the European Theater, ended up with more stars than the single one he still wore in 1945.

  In 1951, still a one-feather chieftain, he returned to the Far East.

  With ten years of service in the Orient, with Asian troops, Boatner figured he would go with KMAG. He was deeply gratified, however, when General Milburn, FECOM G-1, told him in Tokyo, "You're being assigned to the 2nd Division."

  Later, he heard that Van Fleet had been told Boatner should go to Koje-do as commandant of the pow compounds. Haydon Boatner would always thank God he did not. The time to go into a ball game is when the last pitcher has cleared the bases—not when he has walked them full. Though in August 1951 General Boatner had only vaguely heard of the island of Koje-do.

  At 2nd Division, Boatner became Clark Ruffner's Assistant Division Commander.

  As part of the leaning operation, the Eighth Army was making what were designed as limited attacks here and there along Battle Line Wichita, which Eighth Army had prepared when the talks began at Kaesong. The objectives of these attacks were a hill here, such as Fool's Mountain or the Punchbowl of the 2nd Division zone, or to deny vital ground to the enemy, such as Million Dollar Hill in the 24th's area.

  But the mountains, here in east-central Korea were growing steeper. The North Koreans, defending here, had, like the Japanese of World War II, gone underground.

  In these hills armor could normally only support by fire, and air was not wholly effective. And here, abruptly, the war of maneuver ended.

  In a four-day battle for Hill 1179, both sides lost heavily. And when 1179 fell, beyond it lay one more hill, or rather three, 983,940, and 773, forming a steep ridge several thousand yards long.

  This ridge, parallel to the battle line, lay directly athwart the U.N. advance. It had little value to anyone, except as a vantage point for superior observation over the defensive line hostile to whoever held it.

  But it was there, and that seemed reason enough to take it.

  And it seemed an excellent opportunity for the ROK Army, newly revitalized, to show the world what it could do.

  To the 36th ROK Regiment, 7th Division, supported by the tanks of B Company, 72nd Tank Battalion, American air, and 2nd Divarty, came orders on 17 August, to assault and seize this ridge.

  As liaison with them, Clark Ruffner detached his Chief of Staff, Colonel Rupert Graves, to give the ROK's all the help they needed to convince the world that they had come to maturity.

  Behind the 36th ROK's stood Colonel Lynch's 9th Infantry, ready to support by every means of fire available to an American regiment.

  The ROK's were brave, and they tried hard.

  They advanced onto steep slopes plowed by a maze of deep trenches, thorny with hidden bunkers. The bunkers were fortified to withstand air and artillery pounding, and some had room for two platoons of NKPA. Others sheltered small cannon and mortars. Dug into a rubble of partially wooded slopes, obscured by morning mists, the North Korean positions were almost impossible to detect.

  Until it was too late.

  The ROK's were brave, and tried hard, and in ten days the 36th took a thousand killed and wounded. They also took the middle peak, 940, and spread over the ridge that by now ran freely with their blood, on 25 August 1951.

  Seeing the decimation of the ROK's, and the desperateness of the NKPA defense, American observers reported to Major General Ruffner that the ROK's needed help. Ruffner called Lieutenant General James Van Fleet for permission to move 9th Infantry onto the ridge with the ROK regiment.

  Van Fleet was furious. He had made the rehabilitation of the ROK Army a personal project, and he was determined to demonstrate the project's success to the United Nations and the world. He told Ruffner, "You're trying to hog the glory from the ROK's!"

  A few hours later, a massive NKPA counterattack rolled out of the east and sent the ROK survivors of the 36th Regiment stumbling from the hills.

  Now there was nothing to do but commit the 9th. The demonstration was shot to hell, but at least the Americans could come in and save the ball game. On 27 August the 2nd Battalion, 9th Infantry, attacked toward Peak 983 of the ridge. It went forward with utter confidence that somehow the rok's had managed to blow an easy one.

  It went into the maze of trenches, hidden bunkers, and stubbled trees along the slope, and it was stopped cold.

  Bleeding, the battalion pulled back, out of range.

  The 3rd Battalion struck from the east, toward Peak 773. The 3/9 failed to reach even its initial objectives. When night came, the North Koreans counterattacked, and 3/9 fell back on top of 2nd Battalion.

  As 1/9 prepared to make its own attack, no part of the hill mass was in friendly hands. And a number of people in high places were becoming distinctly annoyed.

  On 30 August, 1/9 and 2/9 attacked the spiny ridge frontally, determined to overwhelm the stubborn resistance quickly. In recent months Eighth Army had grown unaccustomed to this kind of difficulty, and there was complete determination up above to end it at once. The four organic battalions of 2nd Division Artillery, supported by three additional howitzer battalions, two heavy-mortar companies, two regimental tank companies, and a company from the 72nd Tank, registered in on the ridge, and stood ready.

  In all, artillery fired 451,979 rounds. The ridge turned into a flaming hell of whining steel and searing flame. The trees were splintered to stubs, and fresh earth gaped where communications trenches were tumbled.

  North Koreans died, by the hundreds. But many were deep in bunkers where no shelling could reach them, until they came out to close with the advancing Americans. And they had artillery of their own, too, firing to protect the ridge—more than any American had so far seen in Korea.

  And something else had happened. While the enemy had dug into the hill, the U.S. Army had gone down it. Rotation had removed too many men who had learned the answers; companies were shot through with new, green men and, worse yet, new green officers.

  The 9th Infantry was no longer a team. And even the All-Stars, most days, can be licked by any team in the league.

  Attacking onto the ridge, the situation grew worse. Able Company, 1/9, was 100 percent casualties three days running. New replacements were fed into the shattered companies while they were still in action, and teamwork and cohesion became even more sporadic.

  Conventional supporting weapons have not been invented that can dislodge a stubborn enemy from deliberately prepared positions. The only way to reduce the long ridge was bunker by bunker, at close range, with rifle and grenade. It was horrible, bloody work.

  And each night, from ridges running to the north, the NKPA sent fresh men pouring into the disputed positions. Soon, 9th Inf
antry identified corpses from six separate regiments of the Inmun Gun.

  All the artillery, and most of the energy, of an American division and an NKPA corps, were being focused on one small area of bloody earth. Here, at what the correspondents were now calling Bloody Ridge, a new pattern of Korean warfare was being set—one that resembled more than anything else the hideous, stalemated slaughter on the Western Front in World War I.

  The 9th Infantry was being decimated. Ruffner sent "Bull" Boatner forward, up to the 9th. Ruffner felt that perhaps the difficulty with the regiment lay with its C.O., and one job of an assistant division commander is to act as hatchet man for his chief. Besides, General Ruffner was eager to promote the executive officer of the 38th Infantry, and was not loath at having a chicken-colonel vacancy in the division.

  All this Bull Boatner, a light-haired hooked-nose man, small for a general, whose pale eyes could stab like ice daggers from behind his glasses, and whose high voice could cut like a whip, understood.

  Boatner found trouble, and lots of it.

  Pushing against Bloody Ridge, the men of 1/9 and 2/9 were being cut to pieces. The troops and leaders were often green. They were brave and, like the ROK's, they were trying hard. It wasn't enough.

  They needed flamethrowers to reduce the deep enemy bunkers, and they didn't have them. Worse, few if any men knew how to use them. Boatner set up a school in the use of the flamethrower, and ran men through, quickly. Now, deep in hitherto safe bunkers, soldiers of the Inmun Gun died shrieking in searing flame, as American infantrymen crawled close under fire and sprayed them with newly issued weapons.

  Replacements were wandering up to engaged units, and getting killed the first hour, before they could report in. Boatner ordered replacements to be kept in the replacement company at least one day, and to have five or six days' special training before being sent into combat. Men new from the States were often soft. They were to get conditioning exercises, and it was mandatory that they zero their weapons.