This is an amazing document. It was wrong on many different aspects of the real situation, as revealed disastrously in the next few days. It reflects a colossal misjudgment of the military situation in Korea. One British correspondent with the British 27th Brigade wrote later that "this document filled us with alarm and despondency."23
On the heels of this communique, General MacArthur arrived in Korea. He had just obtained a new Constellation airplane, the only one in the Far East Command. His parry, flying from Tokyo on the morning of 24 November, included key members of his staff-Gcn. Courtney Whitney; General Wright, his G-3; General Willoughby, his G-2; General Stratemeyer, commander of the Fifth Air Force; and several chiefs of US news bureaus in Tokyo. The Constellation landed at the Sinanju airstrip near Gen. Frank Milburn's I Corps headquarters on the lower Chongchon River. General Walker was there to meet MacArthur's party. There was the customary round of visits to the Eighth Army higher and subordinate headquarters and briefings there. These told him and his party that the attack was already under way and that nothing unusual had happened. But Milburn told the group of officers he thought the Unsan area at the right side of I Corps was heavily defended and would be a tough place for the IX Corps, on his immediate right. The party went next to Maj. Gen. John Church's 24th Division Headquarters at Anju, where there was another briefing. Church told MacArthur and the others present that the attack was going well in his division zone, on the army left, and that there had been no opposition. Optimism and enthusiasm prevailed.'' MacArthur's group then went to General Coulter's IX Corps CP at Unhung-ni, near Kunu-ri. The MacArthur party left there at 1 P.M. for Sinanju and the flight back to Japan.
While the party was at Anju, an incident took place that the news media took full advantage of and essentially falsely reported. At the 24th Division CP, Generals MacArthur, Church, and Coulter and some other ranking officers were engaged in general conversation while standing alongside a jeep. Church had just told MacArthur that he thought the troops could go all the way to the border. MacArthur replied in a light vein, "Well, if they go fast enough, maybe some of them can be home by Christmas."
The journalists standing a little distance away heard part of the conversation -MacArthur's remark about troops being home by Christmas. On the basis of that fragment, they filed reports that were printed in nearly every important newspaper in the United States the next day. Many newspapers attributed their version to either the UP or the AP dispatches from Korea on 24 November. These dispatches said that General MacArthur had told Generals Church and Coulter that the soldiers would be home by Christmas. The New Work Times on its front page for 24 November (a day behind Far East time) quoted the Associated Press as alleging that MacArthur said, "I hope to keep my promise to the GI's to have them home by Christmas." The New York Herald Tribune on its front page for 25 November, citing a United Press dispatch from the northwestern front on 24 November, reported MacArthur as having said to General Coulter, "You tell them when we get up to the Yalu River they can all come home. I want to make good my statement that they will eat Christmas dinner at home." This widely circulated story is a good example of inexact and exaggerated news dispatches. One Pentagon official, when he read the press accounts of the remarks attributed to General MacArthur, let forth with the witticism that "General MacArthur has been in the Far East so long he's come to think of Japan as home." The storm of comment on the inaccurate quotation led MacArthur a few days later to assert that his alleged "home by Christmas" was a misquote. And indeed it was.=s
By midafternoon General MacArthur and his party were back at the Sinanju airstrip and aboard the Constellation for the three-hour flight back to Tokyo. When Lt. Col. Anthony F. Story, MacArthur's personal pilot, was ready to take off, MacArthur surprised everyone by telling "Toney" Story to head for the mouth of the Yalu River. The Constellation was unarmed and would be an easy target at the border for the MiG fighter planes just across the border in Manchuria. MacArthur said he wanted to reconnoiter behind the enemy's lines. He would not don a parachute, and he would not be diverted from his intention to fly to the border (though no one tried very hard to change his mind).
Fortunately, no MiGs rose to meet the Constellation as it approached the Yalu. Once there, MacArthur ordered Story to turn east and follow the river at an altitude of 5,000 feet. MacArthur later described the scene that spread out below them:
At this height we could observe in detail the entire area of international NoMan's Land all the way to the Siberian border. All that spread before our eyes was an endless expanse of utterly barren countryside, jagged hills, yawning crevices, and the black waters of the Yalu locked in the silent death grip of snow and ice. It was a merciless wasteland. If a large force or massive supply train had passed over the border, the imprints had already been well covered by the intermittent snowstorms of the Yalu Valley.:6
The next day, 25 November, MacArthur sent a long and persuasiveargumentative message to the Joint Chiefs of Staff about their continuing concern of driving to the border and the possibility of spreading the conflict by such action. In this message MacArthur alluded to his flight over the Yalu basin the preceding day. He said in part:
... from a mil standpoint my personal rcn of the Yalu River line yesterday demonstrated conclusively that it would be utterly impossible for us to stop upon commanding terrain south of the river as suggested and there be in a position to hold under effective control its lines of approach to North Korea. The terrain ranging from the lowlands in the west to the rugged central and eastern sectors is not adaptable to such a system of defense were we, for any reason, to sacrifice the natural def features of the river line itself, features to be found in no other natural def line in all of Korea....
Moreover any failure on our part to prosecute the mil campaign thru to the achievement of its public and oft repeated obj of destroying all en forces south of Korea's northern boundary as essential to the restoration of unity and peace to all of Korea would be fraught with most disastrous consequences. It would be regarded by the Korean people as a betrayal of their sovereign and territorial integrity and of the solemn undertaking entered into in their behalf... .
The entry of CC into the Korean conflict was a risk we knowingly took at the time we committed our forces. Had they entered at the time we were beleaguered behind our Pusan perimeter beachhead, the hazard would have been far more grave than it is now that we hold the initiative and have a much smaller area within which to interdict their hostile moves. Our forces are committed to seize the entire border area, and indeed in the east have already occupied a sector of the Yalu River with no noticeable political or mi. Soviet or Chinese reaction.... It is my plan just as soon as we are able to consolidate psns along the Yalu River to replace as far as possible American forces with those of the ROK and publicly announce orders affecting:
(1) the return of American forces to Japan;
(2) the parole of all prisoners of war to their homes;
(3) the leaving of the unification of Korea and the restoration of the civil processes of govt to the people, with the advice and assistance of the UN authorities."
After he had returned to Tokyo from his visit to Korea, MacArthur issued a further and special communique to the United Nations, which recorded his optimism. He said in part:
The giant U.N. pincer moved according to schedule today. The air forces, in full strength completely interdicted the rear areas and air reconnaissance behind the enemy line, and along the entire length of the Yalu River border, showed little sign of hostile military activity....
Our losses were extraordinarily light. The logistics situation is fully geared to sustain offensive operations. The justice of our course and promise of early completion of our mission is reflected in the morale of troops and commanders alike.="
The Far East commander was living in a dream world. Rarely in warfare was the reality on the "other side of the hill" so different from that contemplated by an opponent. Rarely in military history has a commande
r made so erroneous a mistake of the capability of the enemy he expected to encounter.
Saturday, 25 November was a day of brilliant sunshine after a cold night that left streams frozen along their edges. The movement of men and transports and of artillery and their trains on the Chongchon valley road and tributary roads leading northward into the hills had crumbled road shoulders to a powder. Murky dust palls hung in the air. They were particularly noticeable where heavy movements up the Chongchon River road supported the advance of the 9th and 38th regiments of the 2nd Infantry Division northeast of Kunu-ri.
On the army's left, the US 21st Infantry Regiment of the 24th Division had easy going. Just before noon it reached the southern outskirts of Chongju on the west coastal road. It had secured the town by 2:25 P.m. without enemy contact. During the afternoon, however, it captured 60 North Korean soldiers in the vicinity of the town. Elements of the 52nd Field Artillery Battalion, which was supporting the 21st Infantry, captured two Chinese soldiers. In the late afternoon, K Company sent out a patrol that encountered an enemy force on Hill 192. In the ensuing fight the patrol lost one man killed. The patrol estimated an enemy company held the hill. During the day the regiment had traveled almost due west from its starting point before the coastal road turned north toward the Manchurian border.'
The condition of the 24th Division troops at this time was similar to that of most American troops in Eighth Army. They had not received their winter clothing of parkas, shoepacs, ski socks, pile liners, and pile caps, although the temperature was often near or below freezing. The situation was so desperate that the division kept trucks at the Pyongyang airstrip to bring forward as fast as possible any winter clothing that arrived there by airlift. If no clothing came, then the trucks would haul rations. The division had exhausted its B ration by 18 November, and after that it had to use combat rations, which it had been hoarding for the expected advance. Some unit messes also had to drain gasoline from vehicles to cook food.'
The 5th RCT, 24th Division, moved to the right of the 21st Infantry to protect the 24th Division's cast flank and to maintain contact there with the ROK 1st Division. Intelligence gained from civilians indicated strong CCF forces were to its northeast in the Taechon area, squarely in the line of advance of the ROK 1st Division, just eastward across the division boundary. I Corps, as a precau tion, moved the 19th Infantry Regiment to Pakchon to protect the 24th Division rear.'
On line immediately cast of the 5th RCT were two regiments of the ROK 1st Division. They followed the axis of the main road leading north to Taechon, with the 12th Regiment on the left and the 11th Regiment on the right. Both regiments halted for the night just below Taechon. The 12th Regiment, south of the town, had a quiet night, but CCF strongly attacked the 11th Regiment after midnight. The story of the enemy attacks at Taechon will be told in a later chapter. The ROK 1st Division was well aware by evening of 25 November, on the basis of its own observations, aerial reports, and civilian reports obtained during 24-25 November, that there was a very heavy enemy concentration just north of Tacchon, directly in its path.
Although the ROK 1st Division had no important action during the day, it did figure in an important event on the twenty-fifth-it captured a Chinese captain early in the morning about two miles south ofTaechon. It was the most revealing, and at the same time the most ominous, event of the day for the ROK 1st Division, and for Eighth Army as well.
Capt. Lui Ping Chang was the operations officer of the 590th Regiment, 197th Division, of the Chinese 66th Army. His regiment and division had crossed the Yalu from Antung to Sinuiju on 24 October. Since that time they had not been in combat but had moved south by mountain trails, never far from the front. On the morning of 25 November the 66th Army had concentrated in the area north of Tacchon, and it was then that Capt. Lui Ping Chang had deserted. He had a wealth of information and was interrogated all the way back up the echelon of Eighth Army command. There exist in the official records many translations of his interrogations. They are generally consistent throughout, and later events proved them remarkably accurate.
Chang (as the interrogation reports refer to him) revealed that the entire 66th Army, with its three divisions-the 196th, 197th, and 198th-was in position north and northeast of Taechon, from three to five miles above the town. He gave the 66th Army's strength as being about 26,600 men, division strength as 6,600, regimental strength as about 2,000, and battalion strength as about 600 men. The 66th Army's plan, he said, was to wait in its position above Tacchon until UN forces walked into its trap, then cut them off, surround them, and annihilate them. Chinese troops were entrenched on both sides of the road north of Tacchon, he said, with demolitions and bangalore torpedoes ready for use against tanks. Antitank guns had been emplaced at favorable places, and some artillery in the hills overlooked terrain corridors, ready to place interdicting fire on them.
Chang said rifle companies in the 197th Division were armed with nine light machine guns, two 60-mm mortars, and ten submachine guns. The rifle companies of 160 to 170 men were well equipped with small arms, most of them being American-made weapons taken from Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist soldiers when they surrendered or were captured in 1949 or earlier. The Heavy Machine Gun Company had six heavy machine guns, two 82-mm mortars, and four antitank rifles.
In addition to describing the strength and positions of the 66th Army, Chang gave a rather complete order of battle and the general locations of the entire CCF XIII Army Group that faced Eighth Army. He said the 39th Army was behind and north of the 66th Army, that the 38th and 40th armies were spread out for an unknown distance west of the railroad running from Kujang-dong toward Kanggye, but that many of their units were concentrated in the Kunu-n area. He did not know where the 50th Army was, nor did he know that the 42nd Army had arrived on the cast flank of the XIII Army Group. Otherwise, his information was correct, except he was unaware that the 39th Army had moved from behind the 66th Army to southeast of it. He also described in great detail the manner of CCF night marches.` Chang's information, speedily borne out by developing events, must have had a stunning effect on those of the Eighth Army staff who learned of it in the days immediately following his defection to the ROK 1st Division.
At the same time that Capt. Lui Ping Chang was undergoing his first interrogation, Col. Henry G. Fisher's 35th Infantry Regiment, minus B Company, which had been attached to Task Force Dolvin, was advancing along the west side of the Kuryong River straight toward Unsan, known to have been one of the CCF assembly areas. On the way, some of his troops came upon the bodies of members of the US 8th Cavalry, some still in their sleeping bags. They had been killed when a CCF force overran a battalion of the 8th Cavalry a month earlier, during the CCF 1st Phase Offensive.
During the day, Fisher's troops passed through Yongsan-dong, a major road center on the west side of the Kuryong River, connecting Taechon with Unsan and Yongbyon. The regiment stopped for the night a few miles north of Yongsandong. Fisher expected to reach Unsan the next day. He expected to encounter Chinese in its vicinity. But throughout 25 November, the 35th Infantry had almost no opposition.' Thus far the western side of Eighth Army's advance had been singularly free of enemy resistance.
When Task Force Dolvin moved out on the morning of 25 November from its overnight positions just north of Ipsok, the 25th Reconnaissance Company relieved E Company, 27th Infantry, in its position along the Kuryong River. E Company now took the lead on the left (west) side of the road, while B Company, 35th Infantry, led off on the right side. The 1st Platoon of the 25th Reconnaissance Company then relieved the 8213th Ranger Company and B Company, 89th Tank Battalion, on Hill 222 on the west side of the road close to the Kuryong River. Supporting division artillery and ammunition trains were grouped around Ipsok.
The road slanted east of north, pushed in that direction by the course of the Kuryong River, which meandered mightily in this area. The Camel's Head bend of the river was just ahead to the west. The road tried to find the easiest course through the h
ills and avoided following the tortuous course of the river, but it was never far from it. The hills eastward gave little room for passage.
The Ranger Company, freed from Hill 222, joined E Company in leading the advance northward between the road and the river. The two units encountered delaying, screening Chinese forces most of the day and were under longrange small-arms fire at intervals, which caused no damage. Task Force Dolvin's advance units made slow but steady gains during the day, reaching a point about nine road miles north of Ipsok by dusk. E Company, 27th Infantry, occupied Hill 201 west of the road, which overlooked the Kuryong River. The Ranger Company was immediately west of the road on Hill 205, a little farther north than E Company. It was the most advanced unit of Task Force Dolvin. Hill 205 was northeast a distance of about one mile and across a flat valley from E Company on Hill 201.
Disaster in Korea Page 9