The Korean War (44 page)
Truman’s greatest difficulty was that his own political authority was too weak to explain to his own people the realities of the new world in which they lived, where immense military power could not always be translated into effective foreign influence. Perhaps more than any other conflict in history, the outcome of World War II could be claimed as a simple triumph of good over evil. Yet in 1951, only six years later, such clear-cut decisions already seemed obsolete. Americans were learning to come to terms with a world of constant crises, of problems chronically resistant to solutions. The finest minds in the Administration understood all this, but it was a wholly unwelcome message to convey to Middle America – or to such a man as Douglas MacArthur. It was Truman’s misfortune that MacArthur chanced to be commanding in Tokyo when the Korean conflict began. The accident was compounded by the hesitation and weakness with which Washington handled this Olympian figure through the months that followed. Inchon was indeed a masterstroke, but it was a perverse tragedy for MacArthur and those around him, because its success prevented them from confronting the fact that his judgement was gone. He was too remote, too old, too inflexible, too deeply imprisoned by a world vision that was obsolete, to be a fit commander in such a war as Korea. It was fortunate that his removal was achieved before he could inflict a historic military, moral, or political disaster upon the West’s cause in Asia.
Acheson and Truman endured phlegmatically the emotional scenes that followed MacArthur’s recall. The Secretary of State told a story, of a family with a beautiful daughter living just outside an army camp. Her mother worried constantly about her daughter’s virtue, and nagged her husband incessantly about the perils to which she was exposed. One day, the daughter came home in tears and confessed that she was pregnant. The father mopped his brow and said: ‘Thank God that’s over.’
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11 » THE STRUGGLE ON THE IMJIN
On Sunday 22 April 1951, the new commander of Eighth Army, General James Van Fleet, held his first press conference. ‘General,’ a correspondent demanded, ‘what is our goal in Korea?’ Van Fleet replied, memorably: ‘I don’t know. The answer must come from higher authority.’ Yet the most obvious goal of the United Nations forces – survival in the face of enemy assault – required no definition. That same Sunday, the Chinese launched their fifth offensive of the Korean War. Eighth Army was well advised of its coming, and anticipated that the enemy’s main attack would fall upon the centre of the front in the Pakyong–Chunchon area, against IX Corps. For three weeks, the United Nations had been pressing cautiously northwards with the intention of securing a line of commanding ground around the 38th Parallel – the KANSAS Line. The Chinese proposed to arrest the UN advance, and throw Van Fleet’s army back southwards. Chinese prisoners declared that their commissars were promising the celebration of May Day in Seoul.
The 1st Marine Division in the so-called ‘Iron Triangle’ between Chorwon, Pyongyang and Kumhwa received two hours’ tactical warning of the Chinese assault, which fell most heavily in the west, against the 7th Marines, who were engaged a few minutes into the darkness of 22 April. Their position deteriorated rapidly when the ROK 6th Division, on their left, collapsed and began streaming to the rear, impeding the advance of American supplies and reinforcements. The Marines were compelled to hinge back their line, to cover the open flank to the west. By the morning of 24 April, they had been obliged to give substantial ground. But
they had broken the impulse of the Chinese advance, and inflicted the usual huge casualties on the enemy’s massed frontal assaults.
The gunners of the 16th New Zealand Field Regiment, who were firing for 6th ROK Division, found themselves in a desperate position when the South Korean infantry broke in front of them. DC Corps insisted that the New Zealanders must continue to support the ROKs. But they gained permission to take a British battalion, 1st Middlesex, to protect their positions. For a few perilous hours, the two units held their ground. Then, when it became apparent that the ROK collapse was irreversible, they were allowed to pull back down the Kapyon river. Here, they were joined by the rest of 27 Commonwealth Brigade, brought out of reserve to fill the gap opened by the Koreans’ precipitate departure. Between the nights of 23 and 25 April, the British, Australian and Canadian battalions fought a fine defensive battle against repeated attacks by the Chinese 118th Division. For almost twenty-four hours, the men of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry were surrounded and cut off, dependent on air-dropped supplies and ammunition. Their achievement has been overshadowed by the bloodier and even more dramatic action that took place further west at this time. But 27 Brigade won much professional admiration from their allies for the fashion in which they broke the communist attack north of Chongchon-ni. It is a typical irony of history that, because their battle ended in success at small cost in Commonwealth lives, it is little remembered. There, at the centre of the UN front, the line stabilised, and held. The surviving attackers withdrew. One arm of the Chinese offensive was shattered.
But even as 27 Brigade and the US Marines were fighting their battle, twenty-five miles further west on the I Corps front, another action was taking place, which passed into the legend of Korea. The British 29 Brigade – three infantry battalions with a fourth, Belgian unit under command – was holding positions along the line of the Imjin river, just over thirty miles north of Seoul. Throughout the war, the contribution of the lesser United Nations contingents was dwarfed by the dominant role of the Americans.
But just once, the British played a part which captured the imagination of the Western world: the battle of the Imjin river in April 1951.
To an inexpert eye, the hill range south of the Imjin offers a defensive position of such overwhelming strength that it appears almost impregnable. The highest peak, Kamak-san, rises to 2,000 feet. The river bows north in front of the British line, almost every yard of its banks plainly visible from the high ground. The ROK 1st Division occupied positions to the west. The American 3rd Division stood to the east. Yet the Imjin position was by no means as strong as at first appeared. The river at this point was shallow enough to be easily forded, and thus to offer little difficulty to an attacker. The brigade relied for fire support upon the 25-pounders of 45 Field Regiment, RA, but lacked ready access to medium or heavy artillery, always in chronic short supply. Any position is only as strong as the force that defends it. 29 Brigade possessed pitifully small numbers to cover almost seven and a half miles of front. If they were to do so, indeed, there was no possibility of holding a continuous line. Brigadier Tom Brodie determined to deploy his men in separate unit positions, centred upon key hill features. He placed the Belgian battalion on the far right, north of the river. On the south bank, the Northumberland Fusiliers took the right flank, with the Gloucesters on the left, the Royal Ulster Rifles in reserve. Up to two miles separated each of the Northumberlands’ company areas from its neighbour. Their positions were neither deeply dug, nor wired, nor mined, because the British did not expect to hold them for long. They were merely a springboard from which the advance to the KANSAS Line would be continued. Though some work had been done to clear fields of fire, the thick scrub covering the hillsides throughout the area offered plenty of useful cover to an attacker. It is difficult to overstate the influence of the lack of defensive preparations upon the British difficulties that were to follow. Infantry with good overhead protection, and minefields
and wire to impede assaults, can achieve miracles even against overwhelming enemy forces, especially when these lack artillery support. Infantry without these things are critically handicapped in their own defence.
Some officers were most unhappy about the scattered deployment of the small force, when 29 Brigade’s position lay across the historic route southwards to the Korean capital. They argued in favour of concentrating the battalions where they could provide effective mutual support, for instance on the dominant heights of Kamak-san, where there were superb natural defences and ready access to water. Major Tony Younger, commanding the British engineer squadron, was in Japan on leave when he saw speculation in the US Army newspaper
Stars and Stripes
about a possible Chinese thrust towards the Imjin. He flew hastily back to Seoul, and rejoined the brigade. He was dismayed to find that no special precautions were being taken: ‘We were not really in a defensive frame of mind. We been crawling forward, probing forward for months. We didn’t even really know exactly where on our front the Imjin was fordable.’
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Guy Ward of 45 Field Regiment, the gunner battery commander with the Gloucesters, found the atmosphere ‘relaxed. Too relaxed’. Despite all the intelligence indications of an imminent Chinese offensive, the extraordinary absence of enemy activity in front of Brodie’s men suggested that the blow would fall elsewhere. The Imjin position was deemed safe.
During the days following their arrival in the line on 5 April, the British probed north in search of the enemy. On the 14th, the Belgians and tanks of the 8th Hussars skirmished with a Chinese patrol four miles north of the river, and took a prisoner. On the 16th, the Northumberland Fusiliers and the British Centurions carried out a reconnaissance in force nine miles into no-man’s-land. Again, they met only token Chinese fire. Their officers carried out laborious interrogations of local villagers through interpreters. ‘In a language which required eight minutes to say “perhaps”,’ wrote one of the participants irritably, ‘battleground interviews of this nature were often more exasperating than instructive’. On
20 April, yet another ‘armoured swan’ drove eighteen miles north. ‘Lowtherforce’, led by the CO of the 8th Hussars, again skirmished with a small Chinese force which withdrew at once under pressure. Aerial reconnaissance reported no sign of significant enemy forces on the British front. All the evidence suggested that the Chinese possessed only a few observation posts, keeping a cautious eye upon 29 Brigade.
On the morning of 22 April, patrols of the Gloucesters and the Northumberland Fusiliers north of the Imjin reported the astonishing news that major enemy forces were on the move on the British front. By afternoon, the Gloucesters’ CO was at ‘Gloucester Crossing’ on the river bank, personally directing mortar fire on Chinese parties moving on the north side. By 6 p.m. that evening, the Belgian battalion also reported contact with the enemy. The brigade adopted a 50 per cent stand-to for the night hours. But the Chinese were still expected to open the battle with their customary local probing attacks, before committing themselves to a major assault. At 10 p.m., on Brodie’s orders the Ulsters’ battle patrol was sent hastily forward in Oxford carriers to secure the bridges at Ulster Crossing, the ford by which they had been passing the Imjin for three weeks, and to protect the Belgians’ line of retreat.
Few young men had gone to as much trouble to arrange their own presence on the Imjin as Lieutenant P. J. Kavanagh, the battle patrol’s twenty-year-old second-in-command. The son of a well-known comedy scriptwriter, Kavanagh found the tedium of National Service at the regimental depot intolerable, and volunteered for Korea. Once in the country, he lobbied incessantly for a transfer from the rear areas to a fighting battalion. His wish had been granted a few days earlier. Now, he stood with the patrol commander, Lieutenant Hedley Craig, peering warily into the darkness north of the river.
‘Looks a bit fishy.’
‘Yes.’
‘Better push on a bit, though.’
‘Right.’
He screwed his eyes up so tight he saw stars, private semi-voluntary comment on fatuousness [Kavanagh wrote later]. Slowly they move off again, pressing into the tautening membrane of the night. Grind, whirr, whine go the tracks, the engines, a defined envelope of noise in the white moon-silence.
Penetration! The membrane snaps. Flames, rockets, yells, a thousand Cup Final rattles, Guy Fawkes, one of the carriers in front goes up, whoosh! Christ! Fifty of us have run into a bloody army! Weapons, helmets, wireless sets, all go flying in the mad scramble to get out, back into the womb of the dark away from the red bee-swarms of the tracers.
‘Come back,’ he shouted. Not quite sure why, except that he didn’t particularly fancy being left sitting there alone. Anyway it annoyed his schoolboy sense of order to see them running off into nowhere. Run home by all means, I’ll come with you except the river’s in the way, but not into the meaningless no-direction dark.
