NAVY NEWS KOREA WAR SUPPLEMENT 2000
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THE FIRST time as pursued the defeated army of North Korea to the Yalu river in October 1950, UN forces began to encounter Chinese troops - not initially in any number and seemingly wary of making determined attacks. The true significance seemed to have been lost on Washington, where the tentativeness of the Chinese was misread as weakness. In fact, it was most likely that Mao's army was, in a sense, firing warning shots. Whatever else they were, the first wave of Chinese troops to be committed to Korea were no novices. Unlike the majority of the men they faced across the Yalu, most were steel-hardened veterans of over eight years of war against a formidable foe - the Japanese. They may have lacked equipment and resources, hut they were tough and committed. And, unlike the Americans, they were not tied to the roads along which would come the rations; a Chinese soldier needed less than onesixth the daily supplies required by an American. The West's second great shock of the war broke with the sound of bugles, whistles, drums, rattles and bullets echoing in the Chongchon Valley on the night of November 25. The Dragon had awoken. The Chinese were attacking in strength, and there was nothing tentative about it. The US Eighth Army and the ROK II Corps on the western side of the Korean peninsula, were soon falling back in chaos, abandoning their equipment in their flight before an attack by 18 communist divisions. Ironically, the fact that the Chinese were lacking in radio communications and modern equipment contributed to the stealth their build-up had been able to achieve. And Mao's troops were able to move with seeming case in the hills, cutting off the US roadbound units and achieving psychological, if not material, superiority. They cut the US 2nd Division to pieces; it suffered 3,000 casualties in retreat under fire, down a valley - an event that became known as their Death Ride. In one of the greatest defeats suffered by American arms, Eighth Army fell apart, retreating 120 miles in ten days, and recrossing the 38th parallel on December 15. They were followed by a pathetic, human tide of refugees, starving, freezing, their clothes in tatters, and being repeatedly strafed by US aircraft which probably mistook them for Chinese columns. Among the units covering the retreat was the British 29 Brigade whose men found themselves in hand-to-hand combat with Chinese troops in the inaptly named Happy Valley north of Seoul. The South Korean capital was taken again - this time by the Chinese. By now the desperate cold - as low as minus 20C at night - added to the misery of the retreating troops, their casualties swollen by cases of frostbite. Graves for the dead had to be blasted out of the frozen ground. Oil and blood plasma froze, and medical orderlies had to keep morphia syrcttcs in their mouths to keep the drug fluid. On the eastern side the Chinese offensive was faced by X Corps comprising 1st US Marine Division and 7th US Army Division. They were advancing towards the Yalu along the large Chosin Reservoir when the Chinese offensive began. The beleaguered corps conducted a painfully slow, staged, fighting retreat towards the port of Hungnam - and salvation. At each step they were surrounded, losing men to the Chinese and to the cold. At Hagaru, at the southern apex of the Chosin Reservoir. X Corps was being re-supplied by air. It was there that the commander of 1st Marine Division, Lt General O. P. Smith, famously told news correspondents: "We are not retreating, we are merely advancing in another direction." The Royal Marines of 41 Cdo - now numbering 235 - joined X Corps on November 28, arriving at Koto-Ri, 17 miles south of Hagaru, with orders to march north with a company each of US
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THE DRAGON STRIKES i
A Royal Marines machine-gun team await the Chinese on a hill in Korea. Marines and US Army. Smith badly needed them to reinforce the Hagaru perimeter. The combined group under Lt Col Drysdale, came under attack almost immediately they started out. The US Army unit retreated back to Koto-Ri while the British and US Marines fought it out all night beside the road. In the morning Drysdale led fewer than 100 of his Marines into Hagaru. He and many of his men were wounded or were suffering from frostbite. Eventually, Smith's force began its withdrawal south from Hagaru to the port of Hungnam on December 6. With them went Drysdale's Marines who impressed the Americans with their self-
discipline, not least because they insisted on shaving each morning, despite the sub-zero temperatures. But their fighting ability was held in renown, too, the depleted unit acting as rearguard, and having to fight its way through an estimated seven Chinese divisions before reaching the coast. On December 10 the first of the 100,000 men of X Corps reached Hungnam where the US Navy was waiting. By Christmas Eve, evacuation from the port was complete. The US Marines alone had suffered almost 12,000 casualties - over half as a result of frostbite. But they had come out in good order and with most of their equipment intact. It is believed that the
Picture: Royal Marines Museum.
Chinese lost 37.500 casualties in the Chosin campaign, many as a result of the cold. At sea at the end of 1950 the frigates HMS Mounts Bay and HMS Whitesand Bay took turns to keep the enemy approaches from Amgak and the Chinnampo estuary illuminated by starshell during critical periods - and they kept a watch on Taewha-do, the only island in the Yalu gulf in the hands of friendly guerrillas. Among the US casualties in Korea at that time was the commander of Eighth Army, General Walker, killed in a road accident. His successor was the dynamic
General Matthew Ridgway who had led the 82nd Airborne Division in the Normandy campaign. He had inherited a shattered force, but with typical diligence and fresh impetus he set about putting it back on its feet and restoring morale, partly through improved supplies, but mainly by better tactics. From now on his troops would not be road-bound, but would employ the sound military doctrine of taking and holding commanding terrain. They would fight for the hills. It was Peking, now, that had miscalculated. Like MacArthur, the Chinese believed that the conflict in Korea could be won outright by military means alone, that the US imperialists and their lackeys could be expelled entirely from the peninsula and that Korea could be united under the Red banner. But their offensive was running out of steam, and with Ridgway's arrival, UN resistance was stiffening. In the early months of 1951 the UN forces not only halted the enemy drive south, but in a series of well-planned counter-attacks recaptured Seoul for the last time, and drove the Chinese back over the 38th parallel and over the Imjin river. There was soon to be another big change at the top which was to influence the course of the war. For some time MacArthur had been stepping outside military bounds to force the political pace over Korea. He now pressed openly for full-scale war with China which, though it struck a chord with impatient public opinion in America, worried Washington and scared the pants off many of its allies - including Britain. MacArthur's was not a lonely voice at that time in urging that China should be bombed - including nuclear strikes. And he pressed Washington to take up Chiang-Kai-Shek's offer of Chinese Nationalist troops for Korea, which alone would be seen as a major escalation by Peking. It seems that to support his case he played up the difficulties being faced by his forces in Korea at a time when, thanks in large part to Ridgway, the situation was stabilising. Diplomatically, it was clear to governments that escalation at best was likely to severely damage the moral standing of the UN and USA and lead to a protracted war with China which would be difficult to end. At worst it could mean Soviet intervention - and another World War. All-out war with China was unthinkable to Truman, and he had the courage to settle the debate by dismissing his popular but over-mighty Supreme Commander. It was an action which sent Shockwaves through the American public and diminished the President's own popularity. But it was viewed with great relief by the British government and others. MacArthur was replaced by Ridgway, the man he had appointed to command Eighth Army, the man who had had to sit back that spring while MacArthur took the credit for Ridgway's operations which turned the Chinese tide. Eighth Army's new commander was to be General James Van Fleet, who at his first press conference on April 22 voiced what was an increasing sense of a lack of purpose among the UN's forces. Asked by a journalist, "What is our goal in Korea?" he replied: "I don't know. The answer must come from higher authority." That day a new Chinese offensive opened in west Korea. But this time. Ridgway's men stood on commanding terrain, and although they were slowly forced back in many places, they inflicted unsustainable losses on the Chinese whose human-wave attacks had lost their psychological edge against a wellequipped and well-positioned enemy with air and artillery support. Though the spring fighting produced no disasters of the magnitude of those suffered in the previous winter, it was tough going. Best remembered is the story of the courageous stand by the 1st Battalion The Gloucester Regiment against three Chinese divisions attempting to force the Imjin river. The battalion, part of British 29 Brigade, held out, surrounded, for three days, battling on without hope of relief. Only 169 of the battalion's 850 managed to break out. In total 29 Brigade suffered 1,000 casualties - but in the same action the Chinese lost ten times that number. The next month Eighth Army began another successful offensive to drive back the Chinese and to control the industrial 'Iron Triangle' in central Turn to next page
SECOND OF A TWO-PART EXTRA MARKING THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF THE KOREAN WAR