This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  Oddly, in America, both pacifists and jingoes combined in anger against the Administration. Legislators who had never voted favorably on a single military budget cried for victory; while professional anti-Communists hinted that the POW's should be abandoned as the U.S. withdrew back into its own Festung America.

  Inside the government there was considerable sentiment to accede to the Communist demands on the POW question in order to achieve peace before the election. All this sentiment was centered in the domestic, or "political," area of the Cabinet. The guts of the Cabinet—State and Defense—remained adamant that the United States would have to continue present policy, however politically unbearable.

  The opposition was also deeply split. Some wanted peace at any price; some wanted complete victory at any price; some wanted escape into a world with less danger and fewer insolvable problems. But an opposition party—as each party discovers periodically in America—has certain shining advantages: it can carp and criticize all past and current mistakes without being too specific with its own remedies.

  In the presidential election of 1952, the majority of words and arguments did not concern Korea. The majority of words and arguments—on both sides—had no relevancy to any current problem.

  Men tend to repeat political slogans and arguments a generation after they have become obsolete. There were Democrats running against Hoover, and Republicans opposed to Franklin Roosevelt, though 1929 was a generation gone, and the New Deal had sputtered and died for all practical purposes in 1938.

  Yet, there is little doubt that political historians will grant the Korean War, and its side pressures, such as fear of Communism both international and domestic, the principal credit for the Republican victory.

  There were inflation and high prosperity in America; there were guns, autos, and margarine in high plenty; there were millions of people happily content, unconcerned with the Far East.

  But there were too many millions, touched in some way by the men holding the grim and dangerous battle line, who were troubled.

  On its foreign policy, as opposed to its domestic, the Democratic Administration still could not effectively communicate. It was not that so many people did not approve; it was that they did not understand what had to be done and what had been done. Within the Administration there had always been a reluctance to use the hard sell on its foreign policies; the government had preferred to act in secret where possible rather than submit delicate questions to public debate.

  In the middle of the century, this course was impossible. Neither Metternich nor Talleyrand's various bosses had had to stand for election. Harry Truman's boy Stevenson did.

  Perhaps a little blunt speech, a declassification of government communications prior to the first week of November 1952, when it was much too late, a certain amount of public screaming by the Secretary of State that Communism was the Antichrist—however he personally would have detested such an emotional display—and the throwing to the wolves of a few cronies and misguided officials who in the thirties and forties had mistakenly thought that Communists were human beings, would have saved the architects of containment.

  But perhaps it was time for a change, and nothing could have saved them. As it was, they won the election everywhere in the free world except where the votes were counted.

  The Republican attack was many-pronged, but in its van were men trumpeting the traditional American views toward war: never get involved if possible, but once you're in, give 'em hell.

  The moral issue, which sounded metallic and out of place in the mouth of an Acheson, rang cold and righteous in the tones of a Dulles. Americans had always fought for moral issues since 1776, not for the balance of power, not to restore world order. And they had always struck hard for victory, not balance, even if such victory left the world in ruins.

  The Republican leaders, saying and implying that they would either end the war, or in one great upsurge end the evil underlying it, struck much closer to the hearts of the public than had the framers of containment.

  They called for a rolling back of the iron curtain, which the architects of containment knew to be patently impossible, short of general war, and emotionally satisfied millions, who accepted a Soviet veto on U.S. actions only with frustration and grave disquiet.

  Their views and their calls to action were far more in line with those of Wilson and Roosevelt, Democratic saints, than those of the Democratic leaders of 1952. The new Democratic leaders were much more inclined to accept the fact that the outside world had changed, in 1952, than were the Republicans.

  It was probably necessary for the opposition to win, in 1952.

  Whatever the domestic issues, only a Republican Administration could have dragged the American liberal middle classes into world affairs—an entanglement they violently distrusted. Only a Cabinet of men who never once, not even in college, had seen anything attractive in the far left could have brought to Americans understanding that Communism must be lived with, even while it is opposed.

  This Republican Administration would do damage—it would toy with solutions such as "massive retaliation," and it would seek cheap answers: "More bang for a buck." It would continue to dislike professional legions, and try to do away with them. It would find, painfully, that all the old ideas dear to business-liberal society would not work.

  It would, after a year or two, adopt containment, and continue virtually unchanged, every foreign policy of the Truman Administration.

  They found, as would a new Democratic champion in the future, that despite the call for new looks, new solutions, such looks still revealed only the stone face of Communism and Soviet power; and new solutions, however appealing, remained too dangerous.

  And therein continued the tragedy of Americans of these years. Containment of Communism could never be a solution, of itself; it could be only a ploy for time, a stopgap, a pragmatic attempt to hold a dangerous line as long as possible.

  But the destiny of America, hopefully, did not lie in pragmatism or stopgaps. The pragmatic man worries about today or tomorrow, never the day past tomorrow. He rarely seeks, and he seldom creates.

  Pragmatists create no new ways of life; they found no new religions, nor do they become martyrs to them. They believe in balance, compromise, adjustment. They distrust enthusiasms; they trust what works.

  They make good politicians, excellent bankers, superb diplomats.

  They never build empires, either of the earth or of the spirit.

  They often preside, wisely and temperately, over their liquidation.

  Pragmatists did not land at Plymouth Rock, nor did they "pledge their lives, property, and sacred honor," at Philadelphia.

  Containment, forged in the forties and carried through the fifties and into the sixties, was a pragmatic policy. It was necessary, for there is a time for defense, even as there is a season for all things. But it was sterile; it could afford only time, and time, of itself, solves some problems, but not many.

  In the middle of the century, hopefully, as Democrat and Republican hammered at each other on the hustings, mouthing moth-eaten arguments, and as men held high and lonely hills along the battle line of civilization in Korea, a new policy might have come forth.

  It seemed the hour, now, for a concept as brilliant as Wilson's world democracy—so glorious in vision, so utterly impossible of attainment—without Wilson's flaws, or a crusade with a base as practical as that of containment, without its emptiness of spirit. For the one thing no American might have, in the middle of the century, was the status quo ante quem. He could hold the far frontiers, with money, guns, men, or trade. He could try to soothe a worsening world as the hour demanded, day to day, year to year, from Acheson to Dulles, to Herter and Rusk.

  But so long as he had no new policy, so long as he sought only to contain, the enemy without would always hold the initiative.

  In Washington, in November 1952, there was a changing of the guard. There was nothing new, but that changing of the guard affected history.
It did one thing good and one thing bad—it froze in men's minds the political dangers of sending men to hold the far frontier, and every future government would be reluctant to order it, but it hastened the end of the Korean War.

  In Korea, it was stalemate.

  Neither side could advance; neither side would retreat. Each side held its own hills and valleys in depth, but from November 1951 onward, the enemy continued to be more aggressive than the U.N.

  He patrolled aggressively, and he launched limited attacks, again and again. He took hills, and he took the platoons and companies that had been on them. And he killed more men when the U.N. attacked to take its property back. Usually, the action was minor, except to the men hip-deep in swarming Chinese, or pounded by artillery fire falling at the rate of hundreds of shells per minute.

  One division commander in Korea recognized that the warfare resembled that of the Western Front, 1915-1918. And like that trench fighting, it was more costly than those unfamiliar with it would think.

  Exactly half as many men were killed and wounded during the stalemate as were lost during the violent war of maneuver that surged up and down the peninsula.

  By summer 1952, the enemy had grown more aggressive. He waged a bitter struggle over a number of U.N. outposts from Mabang to Kumsong to Oem'yon. On 17 July at 2200 hours, after devastating artillery preparation, a CCF battalion overran the U.N. outpost on Old Baldy, west of Ch'orwon, a hill neither completely inside one defensive system nor in the other.

  For four days a seesaw battle raged for the blasted, denuded hill. The 23rd Infantry eventually had elements of E, F, I, L, B, K, and G companies on the hill at one time or another; it took hundreds of casualties. Its commander, trying to control the action day after day, without rest, lost control and had to be relieved.

  The battle for Old Baldy, which the CCF eventually lost, proved that the enemy had as many, if not more, field guns as the U.N. He could not, however, switch their fires of employ them as effectively as the Americans.

  It was not until 31 July that a full battalion attack of 1/23 retook the hill—a position that could accommodate comfortably only a single rifle company.

  Here, and elsewhere, the U.N. defenders learned that they would have to dig deeper. Soon, more and more positions were completely underground, and all of the bunkers—which tended to collapse under rain or artillery—were reinforced with logs.

  On 16 September the CCF tried for Old Baldy again. First, an estimated 1,000 rounds of artillery fell on the small hill in a ten-minute period; then a battalion of CCF surrounded it and assaulted it from all sides. They took Baldy, and K Company, 38th Infantry on it, with lightning speed, while a diversionary attack overran Pork Chop Hill, to the northeast of Old Baldy.

  On the night of 20 September, after heavy artillery preparation, 2/38 attacked to retake their property. Plunging through a hail of enemy fire, the battalion cleared the crest and was in control 21 September. The attack was well coordinated and well-pushed home, and it killed or wounded more than a thousand Chinese.

  But the American losses, overall, were nearly as high.

  The pattern of this hill fighting, which resembled that of Heartbreak and Bloody ridges, was repeated again and again. Aggressive, the CCF would plaster a forward hill or outpost with tremendous concentrations of artillery, then assault it with large forces, and overrun it.

  Soon, most of the artillery fires of two to four divisions would be falling into one tiny area, as a seesaw battle raged. The U.N. would not initiate such attacks, as a rule, but it would not permit the enemy to push it about. Given an inch, it was the custom of the Chinese to strike for a mile. The U.N. forces had to return the CCF maneuver, in spades.

  During these immense artillery and infantry duels, in which thousands of men were hurt or killed, the crowning horror was that usually units on either side of them, or beyond regimental HQ on the front, were completely unaware there was a war on.

  Again and again the CCF felt free to attack, into a limited area.

  On 6 October they struck east of Baldy and Pork Chop, against Arrowhead and White Horse Mountain—now, with long occupancy, every hill along the battle lines had its own name—and the preparatory fires there exceeded anything yet seen. Jim Fry, CG of the 2nd Division, said they were beyond anything he had known in his previous considerable military experience.

  The artillery fires laid down in Korea during the latter periods normally far exceeded anything fired in either of the two world wars, day after day. The average fire falling on U.N. lines was 24,000 per day.

  The CCF sent two divisions piecemeal into White Horse and Arrowhead. The French Battalion held Arrowhead for four days, under incessant attack, losing no ground. White Horse, held by ROK's of the 9th Division, changed hands twenty-four times between 6 and 15 October. When the battle ended, all U.N. territory was back in friendly hands.

  And the hillsides were dotted with the bodies of thousands of ROK's and Chinese.

  On White Horse, and on the central front, around the Iron Triangle, the ROK Army now proved it had come of age. With only a few American tanks, and generally with American artillery in support, the ROK's were weaker in firepower than American units, and at first more easily overrun. The CCF preferred to hit them, given a choice. But the ROK's had had two years to prepare; they counterattacked with stubborn courage, and time after time threw the CCF back.

  On the Kumwha sector, ROK's and CCF locked in heavy combat, all over limited objectives. On Sniper Ridge, changing hands daily during November 1952, the ROK soldier proved he had lost all his superstitious horror of his ancient masters.

  He killed thousands of Chinese, while that fall he himself suffered forty thousand casualties. But the front hardly changed at all. In front of the ROK position, the ground was cleared of Chinese only to the extent of six hundred yards.

  During these bloody battles there was some comment that KMAG was presiding over the slow death of the ROK Army, to preserve American lives.

  The hill battles that raged all across the front, though mostly in the western zone, accomplished little, except again to provide revulsion in American ranks against the casualties suffered. When the totals reached Washington, there was a certain amount of despair. Quietly, some men began to talk of taking the offensive, and even more quietly, of the use of the atomic weapon.

  The Chinese, seemingly, had no regard for the lives of their conscript soldiers; the West did.

  But doing its best to preserve lives, the U.N. Command still had to defend its ground. And while men died, the names of blasted, forsaken humps of ground, outposts Reno, Carson, and Vegas, of the Marines; Baldy, Arrowhead, and Pork Chop of the 2nd Division; Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge and Big Nori of the ROK's, and dozens of others, became infamous. U.S. and ROK divisions went on line and off it; they turned over their prize property to other units; then, weeks later, came back to reclaim it.

  When enough men had died on a hill, their comrades began to hold a grim fondness for it. "Take good care of our Pork Chop," soldiers of the Thai Battalion wrote on their bunker walls when they turned it over to the 7th U.S. Division on relief.

  The intense attacks on the U.N. outposts during 1952 were undoubtedly political in nature. The Chinese, balked on the POW question, took this means during an election year to pressure the United States out of the war. The policy was a costly failure.

  The American soldier and officer who held the line in late 1952 and early 1953 was yet another breed from the man who had gone into Korea, who had fought during the massive battles of 1951, or who had watched the front during the second Korean winter.

  The recalled reservists were largely gone now, their time—seventeen months for veterans, twenty-four for others—expired. The National Guardsmen of the 40th and 45th divisions had gone home, though these two divisions remained on the FECOM trooplist, as Army of the United States units, filled with other personnel.

  The average man of the infantry companies was a selectee, and rapidly, he
was becoming a special sort of selectee.

  The first of draft call, in the summer of 1950, was a vacuum cleaner—sprung without warning, it took skilled and unskilled alike, high-school senior and college teacher together; there was no time to escape.

  The Army got a great number of highly skilled men, which it badly needed. Throughout all history, only the pinch of poverty or the pressure of the draft board has made men in large numbers enter the ranks; this has always been the defensive weakness of a mercantile society, whether Carthage, Britain, or America. But by 1951, there was little poverty, and the draft pressures had relaxed.

  Thousands of young men, with no stomach for infantry war, entered other services to avoid it, generally in the following priority: Coast Guard, which could pick and choose the best; then Navy and Air Force, where skills were more at a premium, and combat dangers—in this particular war—less. The Marine Corps, which had written some of its most glorious history at Changjin, and which kept its standards high, had difficulty recruiting up to authorized strength. For as one high-school student, who had been at the reservoir as a reservist, returned to his old school and said: "For God's sake, watch where you enlist—the Marines will kill you!"

  There was exemption for students, and anyone who could get into college and keep his marks up, or join ROTC, had it made. Parenthood—even ex post facto—was a good out.

  Understandably, with an unpopular war that had little public enthusiasm or support, the quality of men left over for the Infantry declined.

  By May 1952, of over 5,000 new trainees entering the 1st Armored Division at Fort Hood, Texas, slightly over half had Army General Classification Test scores of 80 or under—by Army standards unfit for training at any Army school, including cooks and bakers. It seemed an unmistakable trend that only those too stupid to figure an out were coming into the ground forces.