Korean War - Years
of Stalemate
Introduction
The Korean War was the first major
armed clash between
Free World and Communist forces, as the so-called Cold-War turned hot.
The half-century that now separates us from that conflict, however, has
dimmed our collective memory. Many Korean War veterans have considered
themselves forgotten, their place in history sandwiched between the
sheer size of World War II and the fierce controversies of the Vietnam
War. The recently built Korean War Veterans Memorial on the National
Mall and the upcoming fiftieth anniversary commemorative events should
now provide well-deserved recognition. I hope that this series of
brochures on the campaigns of the Korean War will have a similar
effect.
The Korean War still has much to
teach us: about military preparedness,
about global strategy, about combined operations in a military alliance
facing blatant aggression, and about the courage and perseverance of
the individual soldier. The modern world still lives with the
consequences of a divided Korea and with a militarily strong,
economically weak, and unpredictable North Korea. The Korean War was
waged on land, on sea, and in the air over and near the Korean
peninsula. It lasted three years, the first of which was a seesaw
struggle for control of the peninsula, followed by two years of
positional warfare as a backdrop to extended cease-fire negotiations.
The following essay is one of five accessible and readable studies
designed to enhance understanding of the U.S. Army's role and
achievements in the Korean conflict.
During the next several years the
Army will be involved in many
fiftieth anniversary activities, from public ceremonies and staff rides
to professional development discussions and formal classroom training.
The commemoration will be supported by the publication of various
materials to help educate Americans about the war. These works will
provide great opportunities to learn about this important period in the
Army's heritage of service to the nation.
This brochure was prepared in the
U.S. Army Center of Military History
by Andrew J. Birtle. I hope this absorbing account, with its list of
further readings, will stimulate further study and reflection. A
complete listing of the Center of Military History's available works on
the Korean War is included in the Center's online catalog:
www.army.mil/cmh-pg/catalog/brochure.htm.
JOHN S. BROWN
Brigadier General, USA
Chief of Military History
Years of Stalemate
July 1951-July 1953
The first twelve months of the
Korean War (June 1950-June 1951) had
been characterized by dramatic changes in the battlefront as the
opposing armies swept up and down the length of the Korean peninsula.
This war of movement virtually ended on 10 July 1951, when
representatives from the warring parties met in a restaurant in Kaesong
to negotiate an end to the war. Although the two principal parties to
the conflict-the governments of the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea)-were
more than willing to fight to the death, their chief patrons-the
People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union on the one hand and the
United States and the United Nations (UN) on the other-were not. Twelve
months of bloody fighting had convinced Mao Tse-tung, Joseph V. Stalin,
and Harry S. Truman that it was no longer in their respective national
interests to try and win a total victory in Korea. The costs in terms
of men and materiel were too great, as were the risks that the conflict
might escalate into a wider, global conflagration. Consequently, they
compelled their respective Korean allies to accept truce talks as the
price for their continued military, economic, and diplomatic support.
For the soldiers at the front and
the people back home, the
commencement of negotiations raised hopes that the war would soon be
over, but such was not to be. While desirous of peace, neither side was
willing to sacrifice core principles or objectives to obtain it. The
task of finding common ground was further complicated by the
Communists' philosophy of regarding negotiations as war by other means.
This tactic significantly impeded the negotiations. And while the
negotiators engaged in verbal combat around the conference table, the
soldiers in the field continued to fight and die-for two more long and
tortuous years.
Strategic Setting
The advent of truce talks in July
1951 came on the heels of a
successful United Nations offensive that had not only cleared most of
South Korea of Communist forces but captured limited areas of North
Korea as well. By 10 July the front lines ran obliquely across the
Korean peninsula from the northeast to the southwest. In the east, UN
lines anchored on the Sea of Japan about midway between the North
Korean towns of Kosong and Kansong. From there the front fell south to
the "Punchbowl," a large circular valley rimmed by jaggd mountains,
before heading west across the razor-backed Taebaek Mountains to the
"Iron Triangle," a strategic communications hub around the towns of
P'yonggang, Kumhwa, and Ch'orwon. From there the front dropped south
once again through the Imjin River Valley until it reached the Yellow
Sea at a point roughly twenty miles north of Seoul. Manning this line
were over 554,000 UN soldiers-approximately 253,000 Americans
(including the 1st Marine, 1st Cavalry, and 2d, 3d, 7th, 24th, and 25th
Infantry Divisions), 273,000 South Koreans, and 28,000 men drawn from
eighteen countries-Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Ethiopia,
France, Great Britain, Greece, India, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, and the
Union of South Africa. Facing them were over 459,000 Communist troops,
more than half of whom were soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation
Army (PLA).
Since the political leaders of the
two warring coalitions had signaled
their willingness to halt the fighting, the generals on both sides
proved reluctant to engage in any major new undertakings. For the most
part the commander of UN forces, General Matthew B. Ridgway, and his
principal subordinate, General James A. Van Fleet, Eighth Army
commander, confined their activities to strengthening UN positions and
conducting limited probes of enemy
lines. Their Communist counterparts adopted a similar policy.
Consequently, the two sides exchanged artillery fire, conducted raids
and patrols, and occasionally attempted to seize a mountain peak here
or there, but for the most part the battle lines remained relatively
static.
So too, unfortunately, did the
positions of the truce negotiators, who
were unable to make any progress on the peace front during the summer.
The chief stumbling block was the inability of the parties to agree on
a cease-fire line. The Communists argued for a return to the status quo
ante- that is, that the two armies withdraw their forces to the prewar
boundary line along the 38th Parallel. This was not an unreasonable
position, since the combat lines were not all that far from the 38th
Parallel. The UN, however, refused to agree to a restoration of the old
border on the grounds that it was indefensible in many places. Current
UN positions were much more defensible, and a more defensible border
was clearly advantageous, not only in protecting South Korea in the
present conflict, but in discouraging future Communist aggression.
Consequently, UN negotiators argued in favor of adopting the current
line of contact as the cease-fire line.
A deadlock immediately ensued, with
the Communists employing every
conceivable artifice to undermine the UN position. They argued over
every point, large and small, procedural as well as substantive, in an
effort to wear down the UN negotiators. They hurled insults and engaged
in hours of empty posturing. They released scurrilous propaganda,
staged provocative incidents, and exploited any misstep or accident on
the part of the UN to their full advantage, all in an effort to
embarrass, discredit, and entrap the UN negotiators. While more
restrained in their behavior, the American-led negotiating team refused
to be intimidated by Communist negotiating tactics. When the two sides
finally tired of trading accusations, they would sit and stare at each
other over the conference table in absolute silence for hours on end.
Finally, on 23 August the Communists broke off the negotiations.
Operations
The
UN Summer/Fall Offensive, July-November 1951
If the Chinese and North Koreans
had hoped to intimidate the United
Nations into making concessions, they were very much mistaken. Rather
than rewarding Communist misbehavior by beseeching the enemy to return
to the bargaining table, the United Nations Command decided to chastise
him by launching a limited offensive in the late summer and early fall
of 1951. Militarily, the offensive was justified on the grounds that it
would allow UN forces to shorten and straighten sections of their
lines, acquire better defensive terrain, and deny the enemy key vantage
points from which he could observe and target UN positions. But the
offensive also had a political point to make-that the United Nations
would not be stampeded into accepting Communist proposals.
Much of the heaviest fighting
revolved around the Punchbowl, which
served as an important Communist staging area. The United Nations first
initiated limited operations to seize the high ground surrounding the
Punchbowl in late July. By mid-August the battle had begun to intensify
around three interconnected hills southwest of the Punchbowl that would
soon be known collectively as Bloody Ridge. Three days after the
Communists walked out of the Kaesong talks, the ROK 7th Division
captured Bloody Ridge after a week of heavy combat. It was a
short-lived triumph, for the following day the North Koreans recaptured
the mountain in a fierce counterattack. Determined to wrest the heavily
fortified bastion from the Communists, Van Fleet ordered the U.S. 2d
Infantry Division's 9th Infantry to scale the ridge. The battle raged
for ten days, as the North Koreans repulsed one assault after another
by the increasingly exhausted and depleted 9th Infantry. Finally, on 5
September the North Koreans abandoned the ridge after UN forces
succeeded in outflanking it. Approximately 15,000 North Koreans and
2,700 UN soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured on Bloody Ridge's
slopes.
After withdrawing from Bloody
Ridge, the North Koreans set up new
positions just 1,500 yards away on a seven-mile-long hill mass that was
soon to earn the name Heartbreak Ridge. If anything, the enemy's
defenses were even more formidable here than on Bloody Ridge.
Unfortunately, the 2d Division's acting commander, Brig. Gen. Thomas de
Shazo, and his immediate superior, Maj. Gen. Clovis E. Beyers, the X
Corps commander, seriously underestimated the strength of the North
Korean position. They ordered a lone infantry regiment-the 23d Infantry
and its attached French battalion-to make what would prove to be an
ill-conceived assault straight up Heartbreak's heavily fortified slopes.
The attack began on 13 September
and quickly deteriorated into a
familiar pattern. First, American aircraft, tanks, and artillery would
pummel the ridge for hours on end, turning the already barren hillside
into a cratered moonscape. Next, the 23d's infantrymen would clamber up
the mountain's rocky slopes, taking out one enemy bunker after
Bloody Ridge (National Archives)
another by direct assault. Those
who survived to reach the crest
arrived exhausted and low on ammunition. Then the inevitable
counterattack would come-wave after wave of North Koreans determined to
recapture the lost ground at any cost. Many of these counterattacks
were conducted at night by fresh troops that the enemy was able to
bring up under the shelter of neighboring hills. Battles begun by bomb,
bullet, and shell were inevitably finished by grenade, trench knife,
and fist as formal military engagements degenerated into desperate
hand-to-hand brawls. Sometimes dawn broke to reveal the defenders still
holding the mountaintop. Just as often, however, the enemy was able to
overwhelm the tired and depleted Americans, tumbling the survivors back
down the hill where, after a brief pause to rest, replenish ammunition,
and absorb replacements, they would climb back up the ridge to repeat
the process all over again.
And so the battle
progressed-crawling up the hill, stumbling back down
it, and crawling up once again-day after day, night after night, for
two weeks. Because of the constricting terrain and the narrow confines
of the objectives, units were committed piecemeal to the fray, one
platoon, company, or battalion at a time. Once a particular element had
been so ground up that it could no longer stand the strain, a fresh
unit would take its place, and then
another and another until the 23d Infantry as a whole was fairly well
shattered. Finally, on 27 September the 2d Division's new commander,
Maj. Gen. Robert N. Young, called a halt to the "fiasco" on Heartbreak
Ridge as American planners reconsidered their strategy.
The 23d Infantry's failure to
capture Heartbreak Ridge had not come
from a lack of valor. It took extreme bravery to advance up
Heartbreak's unforgiving slopes under intense enemy fire. And when
things did not go right, it took equal courage to take a stand so that
others might live. One person who took such a stand was Pfc. Herbert K.
Pililaau, a quiet, six-foot-tall Hawaiian. Pililaau's outfit, Company
C, 1st Battalion, 23d Infantry, was clinging to a small stretch of
Heartbreak's ridge top on the night of 17 September when a battalion of
North Koreans came charging out of the darkness from an adjacent hill.
The company fought valiantly, but a shortage of ammunition soon
compelled it to retreat down the mountain. After receiving
reinforcements and a new issue of ammunition, the Americans advanced
back up the ridge. North Korean fire broke the first assault, but
Company C soon regrouped and advanced again, recapturing the crest by
dawn. The pendulum of war soon reversed its course, however, and by
midday the men of Company C were once again fighting for their lives as
the North Korean battalion surged back up the hill. Running low on
ammunition, the company commander called retreat. Pililaau volunteered
to remain behind to cover the withdrawal. As his buddies scrambled to
safety, Pililaau wielded his Browning automatic rifle with great effect
until he too had run out of ammunition. He then started throwing
grenades, and when those were exhausted, he pulled out his trench knife
and fought on until a group of North Korean soldiers shot and bayoneted
him while his comrades looked on helplessly from a sheltered position
200 yards down the slope. Determined to avenge his death, the men of
Company C swept back up the mountain. When they recaptured the
position, they found over forty dead North Koreans clustered around
Pililaau's corpse.
Pililaau's sacrifice had saved his
comrades, and for that a grateful
nation posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor. Yet his valiant act
could not alter the tactical situation on the hill. As long as the
North Koreans could continue to reinforce and resupply their garrison
on the ridge, it would be nearly impossible for the Americans to take
the mountain. After belatedly recognizing this fact, the 2d Division
crafted a new plan that called for a full division assault on the
valleys and hills adjacent to Heartbreak to cut the ridge off from
further reinforcement. Spearheading this new offensive would be the
division's 72d Tank Battalion, whose mission was to push up the
Mundung-ni Valley west of Heartbreak to destroy enemy supply dumps in
the vicinity of the town of Mundung-ni. It was a bold plan, but one
that could not be accomplished until a way had been found to get the
72d's M4A3E8 Sherman tanks into the valley. The only existing road was
little more than a track that could not bear the weight of the
Shermans. Moreover, it was heavily mined and blocked by a six-foot-high
rock barrier built by the North Koreans. Using nothing but shovels and
explosives, the men of the 2d Division's 2d Engineer Combat Battalion
braved enemy fire to clear these obstacles and build an improved
roadway. While they worked, the division's three infantry
regiments-9th, 38th, and 23d-launched coordinated assaults on
Heartbreak Ridge and the adjacent hills. By 10 October everything was
ready for the big raid. The sudden onslaught of a battalion of tanks
racing up the valley took the enemy by surprise. By coincidence, the
thrust came just when the Chinese 204th Division was moving up to
relieve the North Koreans on Heartbreak. Caught in the open, the
Chinese division suffered heavy casualties from the American tanks. For
the next five days the Shermans roared up and down the Mundung-ni
Valley, over- running supply dumps, mauling troop concentrations,
Heartbreak Ridge (National
Archives)
and destroying approximately 350
bunkers on Heartbreak and in the
surrounding hills and valleys. A smaller tank-infantry team scoured the
Sat'ae-ri Valley east of the ridge, thereby completing the encirclement
and eliminating any hope of reinforcement for the beleaguered North
Koreans on Heartbreak.
The armored thrusts turned the tide
of the battle, but plenty of hard
fighting remained for the infantry before French soldiers captured the
last Communist bastion on the ridge on 13 October. After a month of
nearly continuous combat, the 2d Division was finally king of the hill.
All totaled the division suffered over 3,700 casualties, nearly half of
whom came from the 23d Infantry and its attached French battalion.
Conversely, the Americans estimated that they had inflicted 25,000
casualties on the enemy in and around Heartbreak Ridge.
While the Punchbowl was the scene
of some of the hardest fighting
during the UN's summer-fall offensive, the United Nations was not idle
elsewhere. Along the east coast South Korean troops succeeded in
pushing north to the outskirts of Kosong, while in the west five UN
divisions (ROK 1st, British 1st Commonwealth, and U.S. 1st Cavalry and
3d and 25th Infantry) advanced approximately four miles along a
forty-mile-wide front from Kaesong to Ch'orwon, thereby gaining greater
security for the vital Seoul-Ch'orwon railway. By late October UN
operations had succeeded in securing most of the commanding ground
along the length of the front. The price of these gains had not been
cheap-approximately 40,000 UN casualties. Yet the enemy had suffered
even more, and the determination demonstrated by the United Nations
Command in taking the offensive was probably a key factor in persuading
the Communists to return to the bargaining table.
Renewed Talks,
Diminished Fighting: The Second Korean Winter, November
1951-April 1952
On 25 October UN and Communist
negotiators reconvened the truce talks
at a new location, a collection of tents in the tiny village of
P'anmunjom, six miles east of Kaesong. After some sparring, the
Communists dropped their demand for a return to the 38th Parallel and
accepted the UN position that the cease-fire line be drawn along the
current line of contact. In exchange, the UN bowed to Communist demands
that a truce line be agreed upon prior to the resolution of other
outstanding issues. To avoid the danger that the Communists might stop
negotiating once a line had been established, the Americans insisted
that both sides be permitted to continue fighting until all outstanding
questions had been resolved. The two sides also agreed that the
proposed armistice line would only be valid for thirty days. Should a
final truce not be arrived at within that time, then the agreement over
the line of demarcation would be invalid. Still, the willingness of the
United Nations to accept the current line of contact as the final line
of demarcation between the two Koreas represented a significant
windfall for the Communists, for it served as a fairly strong indicator
that the United Nations had no desire to press deeper into North Korea.
The termination of the UN offensive
and the resumption of truce talks
in late October had a noticeably calming effect on the front. On 12
November Ridgway instructed Van Fleet to assume an "active defense."
Thereafter, offensive operations were to be limited to those actions
necessary to strengthen UN lines. When the armistice negotiators
formally embraced the line of demarcation accords on 27 November, Van
Fleet went one step further by prohibiting his subordinates from
initiating any offensive operations other than counterattacks to
recapture ground lost to an enemy attack. The Communists likewise
refrained from undertaking major actions, and the resulting lull gave
the United Nations the opportunity to accomplish a major change in
battlefield lineup.
Between December 1951 and February
1952 the United States withdrew the
1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry Divisions from Korea and replaced them
with two National Guard formations, the 40th and 45th Infantry
Divisions. Ridgway had been reluctant to make the swap, fearing that
the newly trained divisions would not be as effective as the two
veteran units they were replacing. In fact, the UN commander had
recommended that the two Guard divisions be kept at their staging areas
in Japan as a source of individual replacements for the divisions
already in Korea. But Army Chief of Staff General J. Lawton
Collins insisted that the National
Guard divisions deploy to Korea
intact. Not to do so, Collins maintained, would trigger a rancorous
public debate over the Guard's role and fuel allegations that the Army
did not trust its own mobilization training system. Fortunately the
changeover went smoothly, and soon the two new divisions-which largely
consisted of draftees led by a cadre of National Guardsmen-were
performing just as well as the Regular units they had replaced, units
that by this time in the war likewise contained large numbers of
replacements and draftees. While the Army realigned its order of
battle, the P'anmunjom negotiators struggled to finalize the truce
agreement in time to meet the thirty-day deadline. When they failed in
this, they agreed to extend the deadline by an additional two weeks,
but this deadline also came and went without noticeable progress. By
this point, however, winter had fully set in, making a renewal of major
operations problematic
at best.
P'anmunjom truce tents (National
Archives)
Raids and patrols continued, if for
no other reason than to prevent
inaction from dulling the troops' combat edge, but overall the level of
combat was minimal. The decline in activity was accompanied by a
precipitous drop in UN casualties, from about 20,000 during the month
of October to under 3,000 per month between December 1951 and April
1952. All in all, the commanders on both sides seemed content to sit
out the winter and let the negotiators do the heavy fighting. And fight
they did.
Although a number of issues
separated UN and Communist negotiators, the
chief stumbling block to the arrangement of a final armistice during
the winter of 1951-1952 revolved around the exchange of prisoners. At
first glance, there appeared to be nothing to argue about, since the
Geneva Conventions of 1949, by which both sides had pledged to abide,
called for the immediate and complete exchange of all prisoners upon
the conclusion of hostilities. This seemingly straightforward
principle, however, disturbed many Americans. To begin with, UN
prisoner-of-war (POW) camps held over 40,000 South Koreans, many of
whom had been impressed into Communist service and who had no desire to
be sent north upon the conclusion of the war. Moreover, a considerable
number of North Korean and Chinese prisoners had also expressed a
desire not to return to their homelands. This was particularly true of
the Chinese POWs, some of whom were anti-Communists whom the Communists
had forcibly inducted into their army. Many Americans recoiled at the
notion of returning such men into the hands of their oppressors, and
for several months American policymakers wrestled with the POW
question.
Acquiescing to a total exchange of
prisoners as called for by the
Geneva Conventions would quickly settle the issue and pave the way for
a final agreement ending the hostilities. On the other hand,
the desire of enemy soldiers not to return to their homelands was
clearly a useful propaganda weapon for the West in the wider Cold War.
Winter in Korea (National
Archives)
Establishing the right of prisoners
to chose their own destinies might
also pay significant dividends in any future war with the Communists,
as many enemy soldiers might desert or surrender if they knew that they
would not be forced to return to their Communist-controlled homelands
afterward. But no one suffered any delusion about how the Communists
would react to the voluntary repatriation concept. The newly
established governments of North Korea and the People's Republic of
China were extremely sensitive to anything that even remotely
challenged their legitimacy. This was especially true of the Communist
Chinese government in Peking, which would undoubtedly recoil at the
suggestion that some of its former soldiers be turned over to its
mortal enemy, the rival Chinese Nationalist government on Taiwan.
Clearly then, any attempt to assert voluntary repatriation would
complicate the truce negotiations and prolong the war.
Ultimately, it was the moral aspect
of the question which decided
President Harry S. Truman. In the name of allied amity, President
Truman had dutifully repatriated Soviet citizens who had fallen into
American hands after World War II. Much to his dismay, the Soviet
government had mistreated, imprisoned, or even killed many of the
returnees. Truman had no desire to repeat this heart-wrenching
experience if he could avoid it. In a war that was being fought in the
name of national self-determination and human liberty, he found it
unconscionable to forcibly return people to totalitarian societies.
Consequently, after much soul searching, Truman made voluntary
repatriation a central tenet of America's negotiating position in
February 1952.
Truman's decision met with cries of
anger from the Communists, who
accused the United States of violating the Geneva accords, despite the
fact that they themselves routinely violated that treaty's most basic
precepts regarding the treatment of prisoners. Undaunted, the United
Nations proceeded to lay the groundwork for allowing anti-Communist
prisoners to avoid involuntary repatriation. To begin with, it
reclassified the more than 40,000 South Koreans being held in UN
compounds as "civilian internees" rather than prisoners of war, a
categorization that would allow them to be eventually released in the
South. Next, the United Nations began to screen all of its prisoners to
identify those who wished to return to their homelands after the war
and those who did not. The screening process aggravated tensions inside
the POW camps, which were already the site of frequent altercations
between pro- and anti-Communist prisoners. Guided by Communist agents
who had deliberately allowed themselves to be captured in order to
Repatriation screening of
Communist POWs. 1952 (National Archives)
infiltrate the camps, pro-Communist
prisoners staged a series of
increasingly violent uprisings during the spring of 1952, much to the
embarrassment of UN officials. Nevertheless, the screenings continued,
and in April 1952 UN officials revealed the results-only 70,000 of the
170,000 civil and military prisoners then held by the United Nations
wished to return to North Korea and the People's Republic of China.
The results of the initial survey
stunned Communist and UN officials
alike. While the Communists were willing to accept the reclassification
of South Koreans who had served in their ranks as civilian internees,
the sheer number of POWs who purportedly wished to avoid repatriation
represented an affront that they dared not ignore. The report thus
drove the Communists to dig in their heels even further on the
repatriation question, and they refused to accept anything short of a
complete return of all of their nationals to their control. Conversely,
the survey also served to lock the United Nations into its position.
Having asserted the principle of voluntary repatriation and
demonstrated that a large number of individuals wished to take
advantage of it, any retreat would represent a major political and
moral defeat for the UN. With neither side willing to compromise, the
armistice talks became hopelessly deadlocked over the POW question.
To gain additional leverage on this
issue, Communist authorities
instructed their agents in the POW camps to step up their disruptive
activities. Armed with a startling array of homemade weapons,
pro-Communist elements deftly employed intimidation and violence to
gain control of the interiors of many POW camps. Then, in early May,
Communist prisoners scored a stunning coup when they succeeded in
capturing Brig. Gen. Francis T. Dodd, the commandant of the UN's main
POW camp on Koje-do. To achieve his release, American authorities
pledged to suspend additional repatriation screenings in a poorly
worded communique that seemed to substantiate Communist allegations
that the UN had heretofore been mistreating prisoners. The episode
humiliated the United Nations Command and handed Communist negotiators
and propagandists alike a new weapon that they wielded with great zeal,
both within the negotiating tent and on the larger stage of world
public opinion.
A Return to War:
The Summer/Fall Campaigns, May-November 1952
As positions at the negotiating
table hardened, spring thaws offered
the prospect for renewed military operations. Neither side, however,
showed much enthusiasm for such undertakings. Since the tempo of the
war had first begun to ebb after the initiation of truce talks in July
1951, both sides had expended enormous amounts of effort to solidify
their frontline positions. The United Nations' main line consisted of a
nearly unbroken line of bunkers, trenches, and artillery emplacements
that stretched for over one hundred fifty miles from one coast of Korea
to the other. Communist defenses were even more impressive. Because of
their overall inferiority in firepower, the Chinese and North Koreans
had taken extraordinary efforts to harden their positions. They
burrowed deep into the sides of mountains, creating intricate warrens
of tunnels and caves capable of housing entire battalions of infantry.
Communist bunkers were often more solidly built than UN emplacements
and were usually impervious to anything but a direct hit by bomb or
shell. They were also generally better sited than UN bunkers and better
concealed to avoid the prying eyes of hostile aviators, something UN
soldiers did not have to worry about. Finally, the Communists built in
greater depth than their adversaries, not just below ground, but on top
of it, as they typically extended their fortifications up to twenty
miles behind their front line. These emplacements were manned by over
900,000 men, approximately 200,000 more soldiers than the United
Nations had under arms in Korea. Over the winter the Communists had
also more than doubled the number of artillery pieces they had on the
front lines, while the static nature of the war had like wise permitted
them to improve their overall supply situation, notwithstanding the
best efforts of UN aviators to interdict Communist supply lines. Thus,
by the spring of 1952 the UN faced a well-trained, battle-hardened,
robust opponent who could not be easily defeated.
Since both sides had already
indicated their willingness to settle the
conflict roughly along the current front lines, neither side had any
incentive to risk a major offensive against the other. This was
especially true for the UN commanders, who unlike their totalitarian
adversaries always had to keep public opinion foremost in their minds.
Too many friendly casualties could undermine support for the war at
home and force the United Nations to acquiesce to Communist demands at
the negotiating table. Consequently, General Mark W. Clark, who
replaced General Ridgway as overall UN commander in mid-1952, kept UN
offensive operations to a minimum to avoid unnecessary losses. The
Communists, for whom human casualties were of less consequence,
likewise eschewed the big offensive in the belief that they could just
as easily erode the UN's will to continue the struggle through the
daily grind of trench warfare. Raids, patrols, bombardments, and
limited objective attacks thus remained the order of the day, as both
sides contented themselves with making light jabs at their adversary
rather than attempting to land a knockout blow.
The absence of grand offensives and
sweeping movements notwithstanding,
service at the front was just as dangerous in 1952 as it had been
during the more fluid stages of the war. By June Communist guns were
hurling over 6,800 shells a day at UN positions. During particularly
hotly contested actions, Communist gunners occasionally fired as many
as 24,000 rounds a day. UN artillerists repaid the compliment five-,
ten-, and sometimes even twenty-fold, and still not a day went by when
Communist and UN soldiers did not clash somewhere along the front line.
One of the most common missions
performed by UN infantrymen was the
small raid for the purpose of capturing enemy prisoners for
interrogation. These operations were usually launched at night and were
extremely dangerous-indeed, relatively few succeeded in capturing any
prisoners. At this level, the war was a very personal affair-it was man
against man, rifle against grenade, fist against knife. Small-unit
fights required a great deal of courage, and sometimes the bravest men
were those who did not carry a rifle at all-the medics. One such man
was Sgt. David B. Bleak, a medical aidman attached to the 40th Infantry
Division's 223d Infantry.
On 14 June 1952, Sergeant Bleak
volunteered to accompany a patrol that
was going out to capture enemy prisoners from a neighboring hill. As
the patrol approached its objective the enemy detected it and laid down
an intense stream of automatic weapons and small-arms fire. After
attending to several soldiers cut down in the initial barrage, Sergeant
Bleak resumed advancing up the hill with the rest of the patrol. As he
neared the crest, he came under fire from a small group of entrenched
enemy soldiers. Without hesitation, he leapt into the trench and
charged his assailants, killing two with his bare hands and a third
with his trench knife. As he emerged from the emplacement, he saw a
concussion grenade fall in front of a comrade and used his body to
shield the man from the blast. He then proceeded to administer to the
wounded, even after being struck by an enemy bullet. When the order
came to pull back, Sergeant Bleak ignored his wound and picked up an
incapacitated companion. As he moved down the hill with his heavy
burden, two enemy soldiers bore down on him with fixed bayonets.
Undaunted, Bleak grabbed his two assailants and smacked their heads
together before resuming his way back down the mountain carrying his
wounded comrade.
Sergeant Bleak's actions were so
distinctive that June day that they
won him one of the 131 Medals of Honor awarded during the Korean War.
Yet a day did not go by in which some American soldier did not risk his
life for his comrades on some nameless Korean hillside. This was
particularly true for those soldiers assigned to the outpost line-a
string of strongpoints several thousand yards to the front of the UN's
main battle positions. The typical outpost consisted of a number of
bunkers and interconnecting trenches ringed with barbed wire and mines
perched precariously on the top of a barren, rocky hill. As the UN's
most forward positions, the outposts acted as patrol bases and early
warning stations. They also served as fortified outworks that
controlled key terrain features overlooking UN lines. As such, they
represented the UN's first line of defense and were accorded great
importance by UN and Communist commanders alike. Not surprisingly, the
outposts were the scenes of some of the most vicious fighting of the
war. While most of these actions were on a small scale, some of the
biggest battles of 1952 revolved around efforts either to establish,
defend, or retake these outposts.
Operation Counter provides one
example of some of the larger outpost
battles. During Counter the 45th Infantry Division sought to establish
twelve new outposts on high ground overlooking the division's main
battle line outside of Ch'orwon. The division easily seized eleven of
its twelve objectives during a night assault on 6 June, with the
twelfth falling into American hands six days later during a
second-phase attack. But if capturing the new outposts had been
relatively easy, holding them would not be. The Chinese reacted
violently to the
American initiative, and by the end of June the 45th Division had
repulsed more than twenty Communist counterattacks on the newly
established positions. Still the enemy came, and in mid-July his
persistence paid off when Chinese troops succeeded in pushing elements
of the 2d Infantry Division off one of these outposts-a key mountain
nine miles west of Ch'orwon known as Old Baldy. Two companies from the
23d Infantry recaptured the hill after bitter hand-to-hand fighting on
1 August, but in mid-September the enemy again seized the hill, only to
lose it several days later to a determined counterattack made by the
38th Infantry and a platoon of tanks.
The savage, seesaw struggle atop
Old Baldy was repeated in one way or
another on countless mountain peaks and ridges during 1952, as the two
sides struggled to gain ascendancy over the rugged no-man's-land that
separated their respective battle lines. The heavy casualties incurred
in these bitter outpost battles discouraged General Clark from
authorizing any new offensives after Operation Counter. This
defensive-mindedness rankled General Van Fleet, who believed that the
high casualties the United Nations was experiencing were due in part to
the UN's allowing the enemy to launch attacks when and where he wished.
Van Fleet therefore pressed Clark to authorize additional limited
offensives that would allow UN forces to regain the initiative from the
enemy and compel him to fight on American terms.
One potential candidate for such an
operation was Triangle Hill, a
mountain three miles north of Kumhwa. The United Nations was suffering
heavy casualties in the area on account of the proximity of the
opposing battle lines, which in some cases lay only 200 yards apart.
Seizing Triangle Hill and its neighbor-Sniper Ridge-would force the
enemy to fall back over 1,200 yards to the next viable defensive
position, thereby strengthening UN dominance over the sector and
reducing friendly casualties. Finally, an offensive would also serve a
political purpose. On 8 October UN negotiators had walked out of the
armistice talks out of frustration over being unable to reach an
accommodation with the enemy on the prisoner issue. With the talks now
officially recessed and no hope in sight for a resolution of the
conflict, a demonstration of UN resolve seemed in order. Van Fleet was
confident that, given sufficient support, two infantry battalions would
be able to capture the Triangle Hill complex in just five days with
about 200 casualties. Swayed by Van Fleet's arguments, Clark agreed to
authorize the attack.
On 14 October, 280 artillery pieces
and over 200 fighter-bomber sorties
began pummeling Triangle Hill. Unfortunately, Communist
Soldiers of Battery C, 936th Field
Artillery Battalion, fire at
Communist positions near Ch'orwon: below, artillery may have dominated
the battlefield, but ultimately it was infantry that captured and held
ground. Here, Company F, 9th Infantry, advances in central Korea.
(National Archives)
defenses proved tougher than
expected, and reinforcements had to be
funneled in-first one battalion, then another, and another. When the
smoke finally cleared several weeks later, two UN infantry divisions
(the U.S. 7th and the ROK 2d) had suffered over 9,000 casualties in an
ultimately futile attempt to capture Triangle Hill. Estimates of
Chinese casualties exceeded 19,000 men, but the Communists had the
manpower for such fights and did not flinch from flinging men into the
breach to hold key terrain. The United Nations did not have such
resources.
The Third Korean Winter,
December 1952-April 1953
By the time the battles for
Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge had wound
down in mid-November, both sides had begun the now familiar pattern of
settling down for yet another winter in Korea. As temperatures dropped
so too did the pace of combat. Still, shelling, sniping, and raiding
remained habitual features of life at the front, as did patrol and
guard duty, so that even the quietest of days usually posed some peril.
For most frontline soldiers, home was a "hootchie," the name soldiers
gave to the log and earth bunkers that were the mainstay of UN defenses
in Korea. Built for the most part into the sides of hills, the typical
hootchie housed from two to seven men. Each bunker was usually equipped
with a single automatic weapon which could be fired at the enemy
through above-ground firing ports. Inside, candles and lamps shed their
pale light on the straw-matted floors and pinup-bedecked walls of the
cramped, five-by-eight-foot areas that comprised a hootchie's living
quarters. Oil, charcoal, or wood stoves provided heat, bunk beds made
of logs and telephone wire offered respite, and boxes of extra
ammunition and hand grenades gave comfort to the men for whom these
humble abodes were home. However Spartan, the hootchie provided welcome
shelter from the daily storms of bomb, bullet, rain, and snow that
raged outside.
Keeping up morale is difficult in
any combat situation, but when the
fighting devolves into a prolonged stalemate, it is particularly hard
to maintain. Consequently, the Army developed an extensive system of
personnel and unit rotations to combat soldier burnout and fatigue.
Rotation began in a modest way at the small-unit level, where many
companies established warm-up bunkers just behind the front lines.
Every three or four days a soldier could expect a short respite of a
few hours' duration back at the warm-up bunker. There he would be able
to spend his time as he saw fit, reading, writing letters, washing
clothes, or getting a haircut. When operations were not pressing, many
companies also arranged to send a dozen or so men at a time somewhat
farther to
A soldier from the 180th Infantry
mans a machine gun from inside a
bunker; below, living quarters inside a "hootchie." (National Archives)
the rear for a 24-hour rest period.
The ultimate rest and recuperation
(R and R) program, however, was a five-day holiday in Japan that Eighth
Army tried to arrange for every soldier on an annual basis. Eighth Army
complemented these individual R and R activities with an
extensive unit rotation program. Companies regularly rotated their
constituent platoons between frontline and reserve duty. Similarly,
battalions rotated their companies, regiments rotated their battalions,
divisions rotated their regiments, and corps rotated their divisions,
all to ensure that combat units periodically had a chance to rest,
recoup, retrain, and absorb replacements. Last but not least, the Army
maintained a massive individual replacement program in an effort to
equalize as much as possible the burdens of military service during a
limited war.
In September 1951 the Army had
introduced a point system that tried to
take into account the nature of individual service when determining
eligibility for rotation home to the United States. According to this
system, a soldier earned four points for every month he served in close
combat, two points per month for rear-echelon duty in Korea, and one
point for duty elsewhere in the Far East. Later, an additional
category-divisional reserve status-was established at a rate of three
points per month. The Army initially stated that enlisted men needed to
earn forty-three points to be eligible for rotation back to the States,
while officers required fifty-five points. In June 1952 the Army
reduced these requirements to thirty-six points for enlisted men and
thirty-seven points for officers. Earning the required number of points
did not guarantee instant rotation; it only meant that the soldier in
question was eligible to go home. Nevertheless, most soldiers did
return home shortly after they met the requirement.
The point system was a marvelous
palliative to flagging spirits, as it
gave every soldier a definite goal in an otherwise indefinite and
seemingly goalless war. Every man knew that typical frontline duty
would enable him to return home after about a year of service in Korea.
The system also helped boost the spirits of loved ones back home. This
was of some consequence in helping to maintain public support for what
was an increasingly unpopular war. Yet for all of its psychological and
political benefits, the program was not without its costs. The constant
turnover generated by the policy-approximately 20,000 to 30,000 men per
month-was terribly inefficient from the vantage point of manpower
administration and created tremendous strains on the Army's personnel
and training systems. The program also hurt military proficiency by
increasing personnel turbulence and by producing a continuous drain on
skilled manpower. No sooner had a soldier become fully acclimatized to
the physical, mental, and
technical demands of Korean combat than he was rotated home, only to be
replaced by a green recruit who lacked these skills.
This was true not only of the
enlisted men, who were rushed to the
front with little or no field training, but of the officers as well.
Indeed, by the fall of 1952 most junior officers with World War II
combat experience had been rotated home and replaced by recent Reserve
Officers' Training Corps graduates who had neither command nor combat
experience. In a sinister twist, the system also reduced the
effectiveness of many veteran soldiers, who became progressively more
cautious and unreliable in combat as their eligibility for rotation
neared. All of this meant that combat proficiency tended to stagnate in
American units during the course of the war. This contrasted sharply
with those Communist units that had avoided heavy casualties and
managed to keep their morale intact. In these units battlefield acumen
steadily increased as the war progressed thanks to the Communists'
rather Draconian personnel policies. In the Red Army, victory or death
were the only ways home.
The disparity in combat experience
between the typical American and
Communist combat unit was just one factor that contributed to the
Eighth Army's heavy reliance on air and artillery support. Political
sensitivity at home to the war's mounting body count, the stagnant,
siege-like nature of the war, and a natural desire on the part of
commanders to spare the lives of their men also contributed to the
United Nations Command's preference for expending metal rather than
blood. The Communists understood the terrible power of America's
industrial might and attempted to compensate for it in a variety of
ways. They steadily increased the size of their own artillery park
until it exceeded that of the UN's, though they never managed to match
the technical proficiency and ammunition reserves enjoyed by American
artillerists. They dug deep, moved at night, and became masters of the
arts of infiltration, deception, and surprise, all to minimize their
vulnerability to the awesome destructive power wielded by the UN's air,
land, and naval forces. Yet when push came to shove, the Communists
also had the political will, the authoritarian control, and the
manpower reserves to indulge in human wave attacks. American industrial
might could and did obliterate many such attacks, but ultimately it was
the infantry who held ground, and, when the Communists wanted a piece
of terrain badly enough, they generally had the human wherewithal to
take it.
The Final Summer,
May-July 1953
The year 1953 found 768,000 UN
soldiers facing over one million
Communist troops along battle lines that had not materially
changed for nearly two years. Spring thaws brought the customary
increase in military activity, as Communist soldiers emerged from their
winter dens to probe UN outposts. But the new year also brought with it
some fresh developments on the political and diplomatic
fronts-developments that would dramatically alter the annual rites of
spring at the battlefront.
In January 1953 Dwight D.
Eisenhower succeeded Harry S. Truman as
President of the United States. Eisenhower's ascension to the
presidency created an air of uncertainty among Communist leaders.
Though he had campaigned on a platform promising to end the war, some
Communists feared that Eisenhower, a former five-star general whose
Republican Party contained some rabidly hawkish elements, might seek to
end the war by winning it.
Communist uncertainty about the
future increased in March, when one of
North Korea's preeminent patrons, Soviet leader Joseph V. Stalin, died.
Stalin's death triggered a succession struggle inside the Soviet Union.
Preoccupied with their own political affairs, Kremlin leaders sought to
minimize Soviet involvement in potentially destabilizing activities in
the outside world. Chief among these was the war in Korea which, should
it escalate, might lead to a direct conflict with the United States-a
conflict which the inward-looking Soviets desperately wanted to avoid.
Consequently, shortly after Stalin's death, Soviet officials began to
signal a new interest in seeing the Korean conflict put to rest. These
sentiments were echoed by Mao, who likewise found that the conflict in
Korea was detracting from his ability to address pressing domestic
issues inside the newly formed People's Republic of China.
The convergence of these events-
the death of Stalin, the ascension of
Eisenhower, and the growing desire on the part of all sides to find a
way out of a seemingly unending and unprofitable conflict- created an
environment conducive to a settlement of the Korean imbroglio. On 26
April UN and Communist negotiators returned to the truce tent at
P'anmunjom after a six-month hiatus. This time Communist negotiators
expressed a willingness to allow prisoners of war to decide whether or
not they wanted to return to their homelands. This key concession
opened the door to fruitful negotiations. As a goodwill measure, both
sides quickly agreed to an immediate exchange of sick and wounded
prisoners. The exchange (dubbed Operation Little Switch) resulted in
the repatriation of 684 UN and 6,670 Communist personnel. The two
parties then sat down to the laborious task of hammering out all of the
many technical details pertaining to the actual implementation of a
cease-fire and a final, full exchange of prisoners. Even at this late
date, American negotiators found that their Communist counterparts were
determined to seek every possible advantage, and the talks dragged on,
week after week, month after month.
In June South Korean President
Syngman Rhee, who opposed any resolution
of the conflict that left North Korea in Communist hands, jarred
negotiators on both sides when he unilaterally released about 25,000
North Korean prisoners who had previously voiced a desire to remain in
South Korea after the war. The release, which Rhee thinly disguised as
a prison "breakout," angered American and Communist negotiators alike
and temporarily disrupted the negotiations.
Yet the act also helped the North
Korean government save face, for by
allowing many anti-Communist North Koreans to "escape," South Korea
spared the North Korean government some of the embarrassment of having
to admit that a large number of its captured soldiers did not want to
return home. Thus, after some compulsory sputtering, the Communists
chose to remain at the negotiating table, and the talks proceeded
despite Rhee's attempts at disruption.
One might have expected that the
Communists' newfound interest in
seeking a cessation of hostilities would have translated to inaction on
the battlefield, especially as prospects for a final settlement became
progressively more imminent. Unfortunately, such was not the case.
Rather, the Communists chose to increase the tempo of the war. In part
the heightened activity reflected the natural desire of Communist
generals to secure the best possible ground before the armistice went
into effect. But the Communist offensives of the spring and summer of
1953 also served a broader political purpose. Ever mindful of the wider
propaganda aspects of the struggle between East and West, the
Communists were determined to end the war on a positive note. A final
offensive that seized additional territory would give the Communists
the opportunity to portray themselves as victors whose martial prowess
had finally compelled the United Nations to sue for peace. Such claims
would also allow Communist propagandists to paper over some of the more
bitter pills the Communists would have to swallow in the upcoming
accords.
Communist military activity had
begun in early March with company-size
probes of various UN frontline positions. By mid-month the Chinese had
escalated to battalion-size attacks. After a failed attempt to capture
a UN hill outpost nicknamed "Little Gibraltar," the Chinese turned
their gaze onto one of the central battlefields of the previous
year-Old Baldy. On the evening of 23 March a Chinese battalion
supported by mortar and artillery fire overran a Colombian company on
Old Baldy. Repeated efforts by the 7th Infantry Division to regain the
mountain failed to dislodge the Chinese, who were determined to
7th Infantry Division trenches, July
1953 (National Archives)
cling to the pulverized rock
regardless of the cost. Although the UN
had killed or wounded two to three Chinese for every UN soldier lost on
Old Baldy, General Maxwell D. Taylor, who had recently replaced Van
Fleet as Eighth Army commander, decided that the mountain was not worth
additional UN lives, and on 30 March he suspended UN efforts to retake
the hill.
April brought a lull in Communist
activities, but in May the front
began to heat up as company and battalion attacks gave way to
regimental-size assaults. Then in June, as the P'anmunjom negotiators
sat down to draw up a final cease-fire line, the enemy launched a
major, three-division offensive against the ROK II Corps in the
vicinity of Kumsong. The Chinese succeeded in pushing the South Koreans
back about three miles before the front restabilized, a significant
advance after two years of stagnant trench warfare.
Elsewhere UN forces largely
succeeded in repulsing more limited
Communist attacks, and by the end of June the intensity of the fighting
had once again subsided. The Communists, however, were by no means
done. After consolidating their gains and bringing up additional
supplies and reinforcements, the Communists launched what was to be
their biggest offensive operation since the spring of 1951.
The offensive began on 6 July.
After hammering South Korean lines south
of the Iron Triangle, the Chinese turned their attention to Pork Chop
Hill, a company-size 7th Division outpost that over the past year had
seen about as much fighting as its neighboring peak, Old Baldy.
Following a ferocious artillery and mortar barrage, wave after wave of
Chinese infantrymen stormed up Pork Chop Hill. Backed by some heavy
artillery fire of their own, the beleaguered defenders valiantly held
on. Both sides funneled in reinforcements, with the Chinese committing
a new battalion for every fresh company the Americans sent in. By 11
July General Taylor reluctantly decided to abandon Pork Chop Hill. As
had been the case on Old Baldy, Taylor could not justify risking more
lives for a hill that was of minimal strategic significance, especially
given the fact that an armistice was just around the corner.
Communist commanders operated under
a different calculus-one that held
potentially unnecessary losses of life to no account. Two days after
Taylor withdrew from Pork Chop Hill, six Chinese divisions slammed into
UN lines south of Kumsong. The ROK II Corps once again bore the brunt
of the assault, falling back in confusion for eight miles before
regrouping along the banks of the Kumsong River. UN counterattacks
regained some of this lost ground, but there seemed little point in
pressing the issue. On 20 July the negotiators reached an armistice
agreement which they signed seven days later in a ceremony at
P'anmunjom. At 2200 on 27 July 1953, an eery silence fell across the
front. The Korean War was over.
Analysis
The last two months of the war had
been some of the most horrific of
the entire conflict. In less than sixty days Communist artillery had
fired over 700,000 rounds at UN positions, while UN artillery had
repaid the favor nearly sevenfold, sending over 4.7 million shells back
at their tormentors. Approximately 100,000 Communist and nearly 53,000
UN soldiers were killed, captured, or wounded during those final two
months of combat. For their trouble the Communists had gained a few
miles of mountainous terrain and some grist for their propaganda mills,
but these gains could not mask the speciousness of Communist claims
that they had won the war.
In truth, the Korean War had been
rather inconclusive. Under the
leadership of the United States, the United Nations had successfully
defended the sovereignty of a free and democratically elected
government from totalitarianism while simultaneously demonstrating the
ability of the international community to stand up effectively against
aggression. On the other hand, UN action had been possible only because
the Soviet Union had chosen to walk out of the UN Security Council in
1950, a costly miscalculation that the Soviets were unlikely to repeat
in the future. Nor had the UN been able to obtain its optimistic goal
of liberating North Korea.
From the Communist viewpoint, the
war likewise brought mixed results.
Not only had the North Koreans failed to conquer the South, but they
had actually suffered a net loss of 1,500 square miles of territory as
the price of their aggression. On the other hand, the Communists had
successfully rebuffed UN attempts to liberate the North, while the
conflict had propelled the young People's Republic of China to a place
of prominence on the world stage. Finally, for good or ill, the war had
calcified Cold War animosities and fueled a wider geopolitical
confrontation between East and West that would dominate world affairs
for the next forty years. Thus the Korean conflict would have great
repercussions, despite the fact that little territory changed hands as
a result of it. Perhaps the greatest repercussions of the Korean
conflict, however, were the effects the war had on the human beings it
touched-the soldiers it maimed, the civilians it displaced, and the
families around the world who lost their sons and brothers, fathers and
lovers to bomb, bullet, and shell.
For the Korean War was as
bloody as it was inconclusive. United
Nations forces suffered over 559,000 casualties during the war,
including approximately 94,000 dead. America's share of this bill
totaled 36,516 dead and 103,284 wounded. The enemy had taken prisoner
7,245 Americans during the war. The UN estimated that Communist
military casualties exceeded two million dead, wounded, and prisoners.
Civilian losses were even more appalling-approximately one million
South Korean and up to two million North Korean civilians either died,
disappeared,
Lt. Gen. William K. Harrison, Jr.,
U.S. Army and Lt. Gen. Nam Il, North
Korean People's Army,
sign the armistice agreement on 27
July 1953. (National Archives)
or were injured during the course
of the war, while millions more
became refugees.
While territorial losses and
disproportionate casualties belied
Communist claims of victory, no facet of the war exposed the bankruptcy
of communism more clearly than the prisoner issue. In accordance with
the final armistice agreement, both sides directly exchanged all
prisoners who desired to return to their homelands. All told, 75,823
Communist and 12,773 UN personnel (including 3,597 Americans) returned
home from captivity under this arrangement (Operation Big Switch).
Prisoners who had expressed a desire not to be repatriated were sent to
a temporary camp at P'anmunjom. There government representatives were
allowed to talk with their respective nationals under the impartial
supervision of a five-member Neutral Nations Repatriation Commission.
The interviews served to ensure that soldiers had not been coerced into
refusing repatriation. They also gave the governments involved the
opportunity to try and persuade their nationals to return home. When
the interviews were over, each man was free to chose whether or not he
wanted to return home. The numbers were revealing. Of the 359 UN
personnel sent to the camp, ten decided to come home, two decided to go
to neutral third countries, and the remainder-347-decided to live among
the Communists. Included among these were twenty-one Americans who
chose to remain with their captors. In contrast, 22,604 Communist
soldiers initially chose not to be repatriated. After being processed
by the Repatriation Commission, 628 relented and returned home. The
rest-over 21,000 Chinese and North Koreans-chose to remain in the
non-Communist world, with the Koreans going to South Korea and the
Chinese to Nationalist-controlled Taiwan. When added to the roughly
25,000 North Koreans Rhee had freed in June, this meant that over
46,000 Communist soldiers had refused repatriation. No better testimony
as to the merits of life under communism existed than this.
The United States had taken a noble
stand in asserting that prisoners
had a right not to return to societies they found objectionable, but
the price of establishing this principle had been high. After the
P'anmunjom negotiators had agreed to use the line of contact as a
cease-fire line in November 1951, the repatriation question had been
the only substantial issue over which the two sides remained at
loggerheads. By insisting on voluntary repatriation-a right that had
heretofore not existed in international law-the United States had
adopted a course that had prolonged the war by fifteen months, during
which 125,000 United Nations and over 250,000 Communist soldiers had
become casualties. The 46,000 Chinese and North Koreans who escaped
communism as a result of American opposition to forcible repatriation
had truly been given a precious, if dearly bought, gift.
Yet the nonrepatriates were not the
only ones to have benefited from
America's willingness to fight for principles in which it believed. In
Korea, the real struggle had never been about the control of this hill
or that hill. Rather, it had been about the principles of national
self-determination and of freedom from oppression. By successfully
defending the fledgling Republic of Korea, the American GI, together
with his comrades in arms from South Korea and eighteen other nations,
had secured the freedom of millions of South Korean civilians from
Communist oppression.
This was a great achievement, but
it was not a job that, once done,
could stand by itself. For while the armistice of 27 July 1953 ended
the fighting in Korea, it had not truly ended the war. The armistice
was just that-a temporary cease-fire-and not a treaty of peace. It
reflected the realization by all parties that neither side had either
the will or the means to compel the other to bow to its political
agenda. Hence the warring parties had agreed to disagree-to stop the
shooting and to transfer the war from the battlefield to the diplomatic
field. There the conflict has remained, despite sporadic incidents and
border clashes, for half a century.
The inability of the two sides to
resolve their differences has meant
that the two Koreas and their allies have had to remain on a war
footing along the inter-Korean border ever since. Fifty years after the
North Korean invasion, Communist and United Nations soldiers still
glare at each other across the demilitarized zone established in July
1953. Together with the South Koreans, U.S. Army troops continue to
make up the bulk of the UN contingent in Korea. The burdens of
protecting South Korea from the threat of renewed Communist aggression
over the past half-century have been great for the United States.
Billions of dollars have been spent and some additional lives have been
lost, the latter as a result of sporadic Communist violations of the
cease-fire. Yet by standing unswervingly behind its commitments, the
United States in general-and the millions of men and women of the
United States armed forces who have served their country in Korea since
1953 in particular-has guaranteed that the sacrifices made by men like
Private Pililaau, Sergeant Bleak, and thousands of other American
fighting men during the Korean War were not made in vain.
Further Readings
Alexander, Bevin. Korea: The First War We Lost. New York:
Hippocrene,
1986.
Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-53. New York:
Doubleday, 1987.
Brune, Lester H., ed. The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and
Research. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
Edwards, Paul M., comp. The Korean War: An Annotated Bibliography.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1998.
Fehrenbach, T. R. This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness. New
York: Macmillan, 1963.
Gugeler, Russell A. Combat Actions in Korea. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Army Center of Military History, 1970.
Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Hermes, Walter G. Truce Tent and Fighting Front. United States Army in
the Korean War. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History,
1988.
Hinshaw, Arned. Heartbreak Ridge: Korea, 1951. New York: Praeger, 1989.
Marshall, S. L. A. Pork Chop Hill. New York: Permabooks, 1959.
Rees, David. Korea: The Limited War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1964.
Stueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Westover, John G. Combat Support in Korea. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army
Center of Military History, 1987.
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