On Desperate Ground

by Hampton Sides

  While the demolitions experts moved forward to locate and disable the buried mines, other teams of men hunted enemy gunmen perched in their myriad hiding places. As the Marines skulked through the back alleys, a Molotov cocktail or a satchel charge might rain down from any window. The tension from these forays “whittled us pretty keen,” said one Marine. “If one’s own mother had suddenly leapt out in front of us, she would have been cut down immediately, and we all would have probably cheered.”

  Slowly they worked their way along Ma Po, toward the embassies and the main government offices, toward the train station and the Duk Soo Palace of the ancient rulers. One company of Marines had to storm a Catholic church that was being used by North Korean snipers. The church, these Marines discovered, had been converted into a Communist Party headquarters. Its walls had been stripped clean of religious iconography, and huge posters of Stalin and Kim Il Sung leered from the altar. There were propaganda posters, too, depicting American soldiers slaughtering Korean women and children.

  While the battle progressed in and around the church, bullets clanged off the large bell that hung on a wooden beam outside the edifice. When the firing began to subside, four brave Korean civilians climbed the tower and tiptoed onto the beam. They stood “boldly against the sky, swinging the bell,” wrote Marguerite Higgins, and it resonated “clearly over the racket of the battle…a strange, lovely sound there in the burning city.” The bell ringers crawled down, and one of them explained to the American troops, “That was for thank you.”

  As the Marines pressed into the wrecked heart of Seoul, more and more civilians began to spill into the street. Some seemed elated—“hysterically babbling words unknown and offering gifts unwanted to the embarrassed men,” said David Douglas Duncan. Other civilians, wrote Reginald Thompson, had “tears streaming down their withered walnut faces, sobbing the most pitiful thanks.” But most eyed the new liberators with what Thompson called a “curious impassivity,” the look of a shell-shocked people who had endured incalculable hardships and held a tenuous trust in their good fortune. “It was difficult to ignore these people we had come to save,” said Thompson, “for the saving had taken on a bitter and terrible flavor.”

  * * *

  Speed was what General Ned Almond most cared about now. He was determined to realize MacArthur’s wish of seizing Seoul by the twenty-fifth of September. So Almond was constantly on the move across the battlefield, dropping into command posts by jeep and helicopter, surveying the city from a spotter plane, agitating for quicker and bolder modes of attack. The X Corps commander thought Smith was dallying—as he put it, Smith “wasn’t in the speed of mind that I was.” He later said of the Professor that he “always had excuses for not performing at the required time the tasks he was requested to do.” Almond’s operations officer insisted that the Marines “were exasperatingly deliberate” at a time when “rapid maneuver was imperative.”

  Smith was deliberate. By instinct and by training, he was a fastidious planner, and he resented Almond’s constant goading. But this was only one factor souring the relationship between the two men. The rift had deepened since the Inchon landing. Smith’s initial impressions of Almond had been confirmed: The X Corps general was full of swagger. He strutted into meetings, made pronouncements based on a minimum of intelligence after a minimum of discussion, then strutted out. Alexander Haig, who did admire the general for many of his qualities, had to concede that he was an impossible man to work for. “He had to be experienced to be believed,” Haig wrote. Almond was “irascible” and “volcanic,” said Haig. “Curtness was his hallmark.” He had “frosty blue eyes in which there was a perpetual glint of skepticism…he drove subordinates unmercifully.” When things went wrong, Ned the Dread seemed incapable of self-critique and was quick to blame his subordinates.

  In fact, Almond was already famous for this tendency. During World War II, he had been put in command of the Ninety-second Infantry Division, which was composed entirely of African Americans. A curious belief then obtained within the armed forces that white officers from the South were the best prepared to deal with what were considered the peculiar needs and mannerisms of black soldiers. Almond, a native of Luray, Virginia, and a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, agreed. “Being from the South,” he said, “people think we don’t like Negroes. But we understand [their] capabilities.” At the same time, he added, “We don’t want to sit at the table with them.”

  Such were the widespread prejudices within the Army that, on the basis of his dubious qualifications, Almond was promoted to the rank of major general and put in command of a division of black soldiers in Italy. When his Ninety-second Infantry performed poorly, Almond blamed his division’s shortcomings entirely on race, citing what he called certain “characteristics of the Negro and his habits and inclinations.” Blacks were piss-poor soldiers, he insisted—lazy, disorganized, apathetic, and cowardly. “Negro soldiers learn slowly and forget quickly,” Almond said in a top-secret report after World War II. The white man, Almond asserted, “is willing to die for patriotric reasons. The Negro is not. No white man wants to be accused of leaving the battle line. The Negro doesn’t care.”

  “He was not a believer in the racial integration of the Army,” wrote Alexander Haig, “and thought that those who were, such as myself, were in need of education, or perhaps something stronger, to wake us up to reality.” Whatever may have been deficient in the training of the black soldiers under Almond’s command, whatever may have gone awry on the battlefield, he had nothing to do with it. The problem was that he had been given what he called “defectives.” Almond, proving a master of damage control, found his way to promotion. He vigorously recommended to his superiors that the Army should never again employ blacks as combat troops, a position he held firmly until his death in 1979.

  Now this same man was in charge of a large, polyglot, fully integrated invasion force—one composed not only of African Americans but also Puerto Ricans, South Koreans, and troops from numerous other nations. His views on the inferiority of nonwhites hadn’t budged an inch. Almond’s racial biases extended to the adversary, too; he had a habit, not uncommon throughout the American armed forces in Korea, of calling enemy soldiers “gooks,” “chinks,” and “laundrymen.” He didn’t think much of Asian troops and made little effort to disguise it. He was convinced that, in the end, they would not stand and fight—a view that sharply contradicted Smith’s own experiences with the Japanese defenders at Peleliu and Okinawa.

  By contrast, Smith, who’d long held progressive attitudes toward civil rights, had personally overseen the integration of the First Marine Division. Under his watch, the induction and training of black troops had taken place without fuss or fanfare. Smith’s reasoning was stark in its simplicity: Once a man entered the ranks of the Corps, race played no role whatsoever. A Marine, he said, was a Marine.

  * * *

  Now, as Smith’s men fought their way into Seoul, a development in the American media—something that should have been quite trivial—served to deepen the animus between Almond and Smith. That week, for its blockbuster story on the Inchon invasion, Time magazine chose to put Smith on its cover. Almond was miffed by this glowing article on Smith and his leathernecks. The Marines may have spearheaded the invasion, but the operation technically had fallen under the aegis of Almond’s X Corps. Almond felt that if Time hadn’t picked MacArthur—the obvious choice—for its cover, then it should have picked him. The influential newsmagazine’s decision to single out Smith as the hero of Inchon only excited interservice jealousies between the Marines and the Army, already a source of tension within the ungainly construct that was X Corps. (Smith, ever modest, took a jaundiced view of the Time story, grousing that although the recognition was nice, it caused “probably more trouble than it was worth.”)

  As his regiments bored into the capital, Smith began to entertain more serious differences with Almond—differences h
aving to do with tactics. The X Corps commander kept suggesting ways for Smith to attack Seoul by splitting his division into various advancing prongs that would divert and then boldly reconverge deep within the city. Not only were such schemes logistically convoluted, Smith felt, but they seemed likely to produce casualties from friendly cross fire: If these maneuvers were not executed with pinpoint precision, his units would effectively be shooting at each other. Smith repeatedly expressed concerns about what he called the “coordination of fires.” The Professor was a proponent of keeping a division intact as a cohesive fighting force—with each regiment closely supporting the next, advancing in lockstep. He believed in concentrating his men, not fraying them into multiple independent strands. But when Smith raised these various issues, Almond dismissed them.

  Then Smith learned, to his dismay, that Almond had been going behind his back and personally issuing orders to his Marine regimental commanders in the streets of Seoul. This violation of the chain of command incensed the Marine commander—it could only sow confusion on the battlefield. According to one eyewitness, Smith “hit the ceiling.” He pulled Almond aside and, with “the fury of a patient man,” told him to desist. “If you’ll give your orders to me,” Smith said, “I’ll see that they’re carried out.”

  Almond protested that there must be some misunderstanding and denied that he’d given any such orders to Smith’s subordinates.

  “My regimental commanders are under that impression,” Smith countered tersely.

  “Well, then I’ll correct that impression,” said Almond.

  The moment lingered in painful awkwardness, and some who witnessed it thought Smith’s truculent tone was tantamount to insubordination. He was well aware that the quick-tempered Almond was famous for summarily removing those who crossed him—as one account put it, he had a “propensity to relieve subordinates who gave him dissatisfaction.”

  But if he had gone too far, Smith didn’t care. Almond, he felt, was a creature of hot impulses and raw prejudices, a political tool overly focused on public relations, and someone whose energies were consumed with pleasing a certain august man back in Tokyo. Worst of all, Smith believed that Almond was being reckless—not only with the lives of the men of the First Marine Division but with the lives of the citizens of Seoul.

  * * *

  When the twenty-fifth of September arrived, the North Korean defenders of Seoul still had not capitulated—the Marines were enmeshed in brutal firefights all over the city. But that did not prevent General Almond from releasing a communiqué officially announcing that the capital had been seized and liberated. It read: “Three months to the day after the North Koreans launched their surprise attack south of the 38th Parallel, the combat troops of X Corps recaptured the capital city of Seoul.”

  The Marines responded to Almond’s pronouncement with snickers of derision. Men were still fighting and dying in the streets of the burning city. But MacArthur was going to have his conquest by the magical date, even if it wasn’t true. Sneered one correspondent for the Associated Press, “If the city had been liberated, the remaining North Koreans did not know it.”

  Then, on the evening of September 25, an incident occurred that crystallized Smith’s worst suspicions about Almond. That night, Smith received a deeply confusing order from Almond to pursue large numbers of the “retreating enemy.” Smith’s regiments saw no evidence of a retreating enemy. On the contrary, that night the North Koreans had been launching stout counterattacks. But Almond demanded that Smith’s men disengage from their active battle situation and execute a foolhardy pursuit, through the pitch-black precincts of a foreign city, to chase down thousands of “escaping” North Korean troops who, as far as Marine reconnaissance was able to ascertain, did not exist.

  Smith knew the order smelled wrong. It seemed to be based on faulty intelligence fueled by wishful thinking. He believed that Almond had issued it “on impulse without serious consideration of all implications.” In Smith’s estimation, the assignment bordered on the insane.

  But an order was an order, and Smith knew he had no alternative but to pass it on to his subordinates. He radioed one of his regimental commanders, Lieutenant Colonel Raymond Murray, and gave the order. Murray protested vehemently. “I can’t pursue anybody,” he yelled over the radio. “I’m having a helluva fight to take what I’m supposed to take right now.”

  General Smith chose his words carefully. “I understand your problem,” he said, “but there is a direct order from X Corps to launch a pursuit.” Something in Smith’s even tone conveyed the diplomatic subtext: This was an order to be heard, then promptly forgotten.

  Murray got the message. “Aye, aye, Sir,” he said, and then returned to his fighting, which consumed his regiment’s energies for the rest of the night and well into the next day. He would never pursue a “retreating” enemy.

  The whole matter was disturbing, but Smith had learned an important lesson: In the future, he was going to have to walk a fine line with General Ned Almond. Whenever he got an order from Almond, he would sift and he would scrutinize. He would have to find a way to respect the X Corps commander while taking his own precautions. The lives of his Marines depended on it.

  6

  THE SAVIOR OF OUR RACE

  Seoul

  Early on the morning of September 29, General MacArthur and his wife, Jean, boarded a plane in Tokyo, and a few hours later, at 9:30, they touched down at Kimpo Field. The supreme commander had come to preside over an official ceremony in which he would symbolically hand over the keys of the South Korean government to President Syngman Rhee. It was to be a triumphant day, a day of pomp and circumstance—which is to say, the kind of day Douglas MacArthur loved most.

  MacArthur had long been a master of military theater, someone who had a knack for putting himself at the photogenic nexus between the military and the political. He had done it in the Philippines, when he waded ashore at Leyte and announced to the world that “he” had returned. He had done it again aboard the USS Missouri, when he accepted the Japanese instrument of surrender from Emperor Hirohito. Today was to be yet another histrionic moment in a long career of histrionic moments, another laurel for the American Caesar.

  Technically, Seoul still had not fallen, and it was quite disingenuous for MacArthur to proclaim to the world that it had. There was fighting yet to do, but his people had declared the ground situation stable enough to stage a photo-op. They had cleared the roads leading from the airport. They had doused the worst of the fires and sprayed the ditches with disinfectant. They had filled in craters and potholes, raked away debris, and carted off the snarls of downed telegraph wire. They had removed the posters of Stalin, the statues of Kim, the North Korean flags. Now Seoul was ready to receive her liberator.

  MacArthur and his wife, along with President Rhee, slipped into a Chevrolet sedan with a license plate that sported five stars. They roared off, followed by a motorcade of forty jeeps. They crossed the Han with ease—over the past few days, Marine engineers, working around the clock under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel John Partridge, had constructed an excellent pontoon bridge. Along the route toward Seoul, military sentinels stood at attention every twenty-five yards. Hundreds of cheering children waved paper Republic of Korea flags. MacArthur seemed in high spirits, grinning and gesturing to the jubilant crowds.

  But as the convoy slipped into the city, his expression turned grave. He hadn’t realized how much of Seoul had been utterly ravaged. Block after block after block, the skeletal buildings lay gauzed in smoke. The cavalcade had to swerve to avoid slag heaps of rubble. It was a swatch of Armageddon, a jumble of charred stones and crackling ruins. The absentee general seemed sobered by the sight, yet he gave no hint of awareness, then or later, that this circumference of destruction had anything to do with him or decisions he had made.

  The closer the motorcade drew to the center of Seoul, the more MacArthur and his entourage
could smell the stench of death. In the final days of the battle, Seoul had descended into internecine madness. Before quitting their positions, the Communist forces had wreaked revenge on the families of known South Korean soldiers, on anyone viewed as pro-American—women, children, and the elderly all fell victim. Thousands had been executed. American troops had uncovered mass graves and found houses piled with the dead.

  Finally MacArthur and his entourage reached the Duk Soo Palace, where a ring of MPs, wearing sheeny helmets, immaculate white gloves, and spit-polished boots, directed the flow of traffic. At the capitol building, MacArthur pinned medals on some of his favorite officers—including his most favorite of all, General Ned Almond. MacArthur awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross, citing him for his “fearless example” in exploiting the decisive pincer movement at Inchon.

  Then, at the stroke of noon, MacArthur entered the main council chamber of the capitol, a great room whose windows were draped in sumptuous purple velvet. As he eased down the staircase with Rhee on his arm, a hush descended over the hall. Photographers snapped away from the balustrades. The room had a large glass rotunda, its shattered panes hanging loose in shards. With every crack of distant artillery, pieces of glass were dislodged from the dome and smashed on the floor, a jarring reminder that the fight for Seoul was not over.

  Oliver Smith stood at attention in his dusty green uniform, watching the proceedings along with a few of his officers. Smith disapproved of the whole affair. He thought it unwise to stage a formal public ceremony like this in the middle of the still-smoking city. Worse, he and his Marines had been given the unenviable mission of providing security for the event. Smith’s men had had to cordon off and patrol large swaths of the city around the palace, and they were personally responsible for the safety of MacArthur and his entourage. It was a stressful assignment: One sniper in one hiding spot, one well-placed bomb, could cause an international tragedy for which Smith would be held accountable. In his view, this unnecessary pageant had siphoned off large numbers of Marines who should have been fighting.