This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History Page 8

  All during the 26th of June, KMAG HQ in Seoul was getting confused but accurate reports from its officers in the field. The reports were not good.

  And during the hours of darkness on 26 June, the Government of the Taehan Minkuk was getting accurate reports, too, despite what the people were told. And the Government of the Taehan Minkuk began to grow increasingly nervous. During the night it planned to move from Seoul to Taejon, ninety miles to the south. The members of the National Assembly engaged in acrid and shouting debate in the early morning; the National Assembly voted to remain in Seoul no matter what the ministers did.

  Just after midnight on the morning of the 27th, Ambassador Muccio received orders from the Department of State to leave Seoul. He planned to take his staff south of the Han to Suwon, while Colonel Wright and his selected KMAG officers crossed to Sihung-ni, a town some five miles south of Yongdungp'o, to which ROK Army HQ had already gone, without notifying the Americans.

  Now the American evacuation, which had been held in abeyance for two days, began in a sort of panic. Ambassador Muccio and his staff went to Suwon at 0900 Tuesday, 27 June. Under American fighter cover from Japan, the civilian and KMAG staff began to fly from Suwon Airfield. Behind them, the American evacuation of Seoul was both hasty and chaotic, and in some respects, tragic.

  The fifteen hundred vehicles belonging to Americans, both government and private, were abandoned; no effort was made to turn them over to the ROK Army, which desperately needed them. More than twenty thousand gallons of gasoline were abandoned in the embassy motor pool. A tremendous amount of food, valued at $100,000, and the entire July quota of liquor-$40,000 worth, tax free—were left for the Inmun Gun.

  But these losses, aid to the enemy aside, were replaceable. The ghastly mistake made during the early hours of 27 June was that the personnel records of more than five thousand Korean employees of the embassy were left in their files. While the confidential records of the American Mission were burned, no one thought of the dossiers of its loyal Korean workers—or more likely, no one on the embassy staff really understood the nature of the Communist foe they faced.

  These files would fall into the hands of the Inmun Gun, and none of the employees who remained at their homes in Seoul would survive the Communist occupation.

  But the 2,202 American citizens were evacuated from Korea, without loss of life.

  Colonel Wright, as Chief of KMAG, drove to Sihung-ni to hunt up General Chae and the ROK Army HQ, who had taken off from Seoul without informing him.

  On the way, Wright received a radio message from General MacArthur in Tokyo. MacArthur stated that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had directed him to take command of all United States military personnel in Korea, including KMAG. He was sending an advance command and liaison group—called ADCOM—into Korea at once. KMAG was home again.

  Arriving at Sihung-ni, Wright received a fresh message from MacArthur: "Personal MacArthur to Wright: Repair to your former locations. Momentous decisions are in the offing. Be of good cheer."

  Colonel Wright had no idea what was; up, but at least he recognized MacArthur's hand in the message. With both messages as authority, he began arguing with General Chae to return the ROK HQ to Seoul. It was not an easy task, but by evening of the 27th the HQ had returned to the capital.

  But inside Seoul itself panic was erupting. The people had not been told of the failure of the counterattack at Uijongbu, but civilian refugees and wounded soldiers were streaming down into the city, and slowly a feeling of panic spread. North Korean planes flew over the city, dropping surrender leaflets. Fear grew. Then Marshal Choe Yong Gun, field commander of the Inmun Gun, beamed a broadcast into Seoul: "Surrender!"

  By nightfall 27 June the city was in turmoil, and thousands of civilians began to flee southward over the Han bridges.

  The military authorities in Seoul had devised a roadblock and demolition plan that was supposed to blow all bridges north of Seoul, and, on order, destroy the great modern spans leading south across the Han. But by dark on 27 June the civilian terror had spread to the soldiers, too. Men falling back from the north told of the terrible tanks that could not be stopped. It must be recalled that Korean soldiers had not even been told much about tanks, let alone given them, and the tanks assumed the proportions of invincible monsters as the tales spread. And the ROK Army had not even one antitank mine.

  The roadblocks were not defended; the bridges to the north were not blown. Thousands of defeated ROK troops began to pour into Seoul, and as they did so, the rearguard detachments left to delay the enemy melted away.

  And now a new menace appeared. Thousands upon thousands of Communists and Communist sympathizers had infiltrated Seoul during the years, and as the Inmun Gun approached, these men came out into the open. Suddenly no one could be trusted; even on the ROK Army Staff men began to shout "Communist!" and "Traitor!" at each other.

  By midnight the ROK Army Staff was close to a state of funk.

  The leading units of the Inmun Gun had already entered Seoul at 1930, but desperate fire from the defenders forced them back temporarily. At 2300 a single T-34 and a platoon of soldiers reached the gardens of the Chang-Duk Palace in the north of the city. Somehow, amazingly, the Seoul Police Department was able to destroy the tank and disperse the accompanying infantrymen.

  On the ground, the situation in Seoul was far from hopeless. There were thousands of heavily armed ROK troops within the walls, and the city itself was an immense obstacle. Fighting street by street, using delaying tactics, the ROK's Army could delay the Inmun Gun for days, while more of their reserves moved north.

  The bulk of the ROK Army was still north of the Han River.

  But the ROK Army was at this moment almost devoid of leadership.

  At approximately midnight, an American lieutenant colonel named Scott was on the G-3 (Operations) desk at ROK Army HQ. The phones were beginning to report breakthroughs all along the northern edge of the city. As the reports came in, Scott saw ROK officers of the G-3 Section start to take down and fold their maps.

  Going to General Chae Byong Duk, Chief of Staff, Scott asked "Have you ordered this headquarters to leave?"

  "No," Chae said.

  At about this time, Colonel Wright issued orders that most of his principal KMAG officers try to get a little sleep. The majority of KMAG, including Colonel Wright, had been on their feet since Sunday morning, and were nearing exhaustion. The KMAG quarters were a little distance from ROK HQ, connected by phone.

  Colonel Wright, and his Chief of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Greenwood, turned in. Almost immediately Colonel Greenwood's phone rang. It was Major Sedberry, G-3 Adviser to the ROK Army, who now had the desk over at ROK HQ.

  "My God, Colonel, the ROK's are going to blow the Han bridges," Sedberry said. "I'm trying to get the Deputy Chief of Staff, General Kim, to hold off until all the troops and supplies in Seoul can be removed to the south side—"

  The KMAG officers on duty in ROK HQ now tried to reach Colonel Wright, but the officer who took his calls refused to disturb his chief. The solicitude was understandable, but it would almost cause Wright to lose his life.

  There had been a firm agreement between KMAG and General Chae that the Han bridges south of Seoul would not be blown until enemy tanks reached ROK HQ itself. But when Colonel Greenwood rushed to ROK HQ, he could not find Chae.

  There were three ROK divisions still holding Seoul, with all their arms and military transport. It did not appear that the enemy could reach the center of the city before noon the following day, and there was plenty of time to blow the bridges later.

  But Chae Byong Duk was gone—he had been hustled out of the HQ, apparently against his will, and put on a :southbound truck. General Kim Paik II was now in charge.

  Kim Paik II told Greenwood that the Korean Vice-Minister of Defense had ordered that the bridges be blown at 0130 and that he had no authority to countermand the order.

  A few minutes later General Lee Hyung Koon, commander of the 2nd Divi
sion, which had now finally arrived in Seoul, entered the HQ and was told that the bridges were to be blown. Lee rushed to Kim and began to plead with him.

  "At least let me evacuate my troops, with their equipment, to the south side of the river! This order does not make sense!"

  Shaken by Lee's arguments, Kim at last turned to the ROK Army G-3, Major General Chang Chang Kuk.

  "Drive to the river and tell the chief engineer to stop the demolitions!"

  As soon as he had ordered this, Kim directed the HQ to pack up and depart.

  The KMAG officers were still not able to reach Colonel Wright.

  General Chang, who well understood the situation, ran outside and started his jeep. He headed for the great highway bridge, but by now the streets were so clogged with refugees and frightened ,civilians, men, women, children, and animals, that he could make no progress. Cursing and blowing his horn, he pushed his way through. He had to reach a police telephone box on the north end of the bridge, which was the only point from which the ROK engineers on the south side could be contacted.

  At 0214 he had arrived at a point only 150 yards from the northern end of the highway bridge. The highway and the bridge itself were jammed with masses of vehicles and pedestrians—fleeing refugees, army trucks, soldiers, and civilians filling all eight lanes of the road and the three lanes of the bridge. Chang could see that there were many thousands of civilians and soldiers actually crossing the bridge itself. Sweating, he angrily bulled the jeep foot by foot across the stream of traffic.

  He knew he had very little time.

  Two of Wright's KMAG officers, Colonel Hazlett and Captain Hausman, had been sent south at midnight to Suwon, there to establish communications with Tokyo. They had just jeeped across the highway bridge when Hausman looked at his watch: 0215.

  At that moment the bridge blew. A sheet of orange fire burst across the dark night, and the ground shook. With an ear-shattering roar, two long spans on the south side of the river dropped into the swirling dark water.

  No one will ever know how many soldiers and civilians died in the explosion or were hurled screaming into the Han to drown. The best estimates indicate the number was near one thousand.

  There had been no warning of any kind to the traffic thronging the bridge. Later, the ROK chief of engineers would be tried by court-martial and summarily shot for his part in the demolitions. But no one in the Rhee Government ever brought up the matter of the Vice-Minister of Defense, who had given the order that ensured the destruction of the ROK Army.

  Trapped by the premature blowing of the Han bridges, 44,000 men of the divisions north of the river would die or disappear. Their vital artillery and equipment would be lost with them.

  A few got out. Brigadier Yu Jai Hyung, whose 7th Division had charged the buzzsaw, reached the south side of the river with 1,200 men and four machine guns. Colonel Paik, whose 1st Division soldiers had fought tanks with iron bars, brought 5,000 men across the Han near Kimpo, but had to leave his artillery behind.

  At Ch'unch'on to the east, the gallant 6th Division heard the news, and prepared to abandon its pillboxes and bunkers north of Peacock Mountain. At Samch'ok, on the Sea of Japan, the 8th began its own retreat. These two divisions were the only ones of the ROK Army still intact, and they were isolated.

  General Lee got out, and lived to explain to Colonel Wright why he had not obeyed Fat Chae's orders. But the majority of the Korean officers died with their men.

  On the 28th of June, only a rabble held the south shores of the Han. The ROK Army Command could account for only 22,000 men of the 98,000 its rolls had carried out on the 25th.

  The Army of the Taehan Minkuk, which had been called "the best damn army outside the United States," had not merely been defeated.

  It had been destroyed.

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  6

  The U.N. Cloak

  We see, therefore, that war is not merely a political act, but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.…

  — From the German of Karl von Clausewitz, ON WAR.

  AT THE UNITED NATIONS, Secretary-General Tryve Lie had already established a tradition that was to last and that perhaps would eventually allow the world body to survive. As the first man to hold the office of Secretary-General, the Norwegian Lie considered that he was no mere lackey of the member powers, great or small, nor even an executive agent at the Council's beck and call. He considered himself an executive, much as the President of the United States is an executive, and as such, he might place questions in consideration before his legislature, composed of the Security Council and the General Assembly. Like the President, his power must stem from those legislatures' consent—but like the President, also, he could propose, direct, and ask for support.

  From the moment he was informed of the Communist assault upon the Republic of Korea, Trygve Lie saw the immediate crisis and inherent danger to the future of the U.N. A body like the U.N. had been formed to keep the peace of the world—perhaps a hopelessly ambitious gesture—and each breach of peace inevitably carried it to the edge of the abyss. If the U.N. succeeded, it merely bought a little more time. But if it failed completely, then it was dead in the hearts of men, and its formal death, like that of the League of Nations, was only a matter of time.

  A native of a small and powerless nation that in his lifetime had been brutally treated by a more powerful neighbor, Trygve Lie believed deeply in the purposes and necessity of the United Nations. If the U.N. proved it could not offer at least some protection to the weak, then it was useless, and would disappear.

  And Lie, who as Secretary-General had helped set up the U.N. Commission on Korea, which had brought the Taehan Minkuk into vigorous life, also took the bald Communist assault as a personal affront.

  Moving swiftly, and with the complete backing of the United States—whose own feelings were affronted—Lie convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council at 2:00 P.M. 25 June, New York time. With unprecedented swiftness—for there was only one "neutral" on the Council in 1950—that body proposed, debated, revised, and adopted a resolution on the Korean crisis.

  But for all his determination and swiftness of action, only one fact allowed Lie to succeed: the Soviet Union, which with the other four great powers enjoyed the veto, was not in attendance. On 10 January 1950, the Soviet delegate had not only pulled one of the now famous Soviet walkouts but had also continued to boycott the Council meetings over the issue of seating Red China.

  If Andrei Gromyko or his ilk had been in New York on Sunday afternoon, the U.N. would not have taken action on the Korean question. And the U.N. might not have enjoyed another dozen years of life.

  Taking advantage of the Soviets' tactical mistake, Lie and the Western powers passed a strong resolution stating that the armed assault upon the Republic of Korea constituted a breach of the peace. The resolution called for:

  an immediate cessation of hostilities, and

  the authorities of North Korea to withdraw their forces back to the 38th parallel, and

  all members to render every assistance to the United Nations in the execution of this resolution and to refrain from giving assistance to the North Korean authorities.

  Voting for the resolution were Nationalist China, Cuba, Ecuador, Egypt, France, India, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States. At the time both Cuba and Egypt, untroubled by revolution, were in the Western bloc. Only Communist Yugoslavia, which hated Americans because they were capitalists and Russians because they were Russians abstained.

  Shortly after 6:00 P.M. the resolution was released.

  A few hours afterward, in Blair House across from the White House—which was undergoing repairs—President Truman met with the "guts" of his Administration, the important members of Defense and State.

  Here, by 10:30 P.M. American policy in the Far East had solidified. The real, if uneulogized, foreign policy of the Truman Administration w
as the containment of Communism, and there was general agreement that the United States had better begin containing.

  While the immediate security of the United States was not threatened, its political order in the world was. China had disappeared into the hostile camp, provoking great unease not only among Americans but also among many of the Cabinet who had not dared act, for with its loss the balance of power in Asia had shifted. Now, if Korea were lost, Japan would hang by a thread—and if Japan went, America would be back where it was after Pearl Harbor.

  By teletype, the Joint Chiefs of Staff authorized General MacArthur, Commanding General, FECOM, to send ammunition and military equipment to Korea to prevent the loss of the Seoul-Kimpo area, and to provide requisite air and naval cover to assure its arrival, to provide ships and aircraft to evacuate American civilians from the peninsula, and finally to dispatch a survey party to see the situation at firsthand and to decide what aid the Republic of Korea might require.

  At the same time orders were received by the Seventh Fleet to sail from its bases in the Philippines and Okinawa to Sasebo, Japan, there to come under the operational control of Commander United States Naval Forces, Far East.

  MacArthur immediately sent his radiogram to Colonel Wright, KMAG Chief, at the time on the road from Seoul to Sihung, telling him to be of "good cheer."

  A few hours later three Russian-built YAK fighters, sighting American Air Force planes over Inch'on, opened fire on them. The Americans were over Korea only to provide air cover against attack on the evacuating civilians and dependents—but with the bullet holes in their wings, the American pilots declared open season. They shot down all three YAK's.

  A few hours later, four more YAK's were shot out of the skies over Seoul. That day the 68th and 339th All-Weather Fighter Squadrons, and the 35th Fighter-Bomber Squadron, Fifth Air Force, flew 163 sorties from Japan. The ancient YAK fighters of the Inmun Gun proved no match for the F-80 and F-82 jets.