The Korean War (26 page)

In reply, Bradley told Tedder, Britain’s senior military representative in Washington, that UN forces on the Parallel were already making just such a final appeal to reason to the communists. The British, their fears a little abated, sought to strengthen the American diplomatic position by securing the passage through the UN General Assembly, on 7 October, of a resolution calling for ‘all appropriate steps . . . to ensure conditions of stability throughout Korea’, and the formation of a unified government elected under UN auspices. This passed by forty-seven votes to five, with seven abstentions. Its purpose was to provide a cloak of UN support for military operations in North Korea, while preserving some vagueness about what form these operations would take. A growing body of moderate opinion in the West believed that action by Syngman Rhee’s army operating alone in the North, confining the conflict to an encounter between rival bodies of Koreans, presented a much lesser threat of Chinese or Russian intervention than a Western presence. In this, they probably deluded themselves. Given the doubtful military abilities of the ROK army, the communists could almost certainly have driven Rhee’s unaided forces out of the North, with or without Chinese intervention. The dilemma for Washington and its allies would then have been even worse.

But to Acheson’s dismay, MacArthur now declared openly and directly to the North Koreans that unless they laid down their arms, he would take ‘such military action as may be necessary to enforce the decrees of the United Nations’. Yet again, the general had swept aside diplomatic niceties, ignored critical political sensitivities, overridden fundamental constitutional limitations upon his own powers. And yet again, however unhappily, the Administration in Washington muffled its own doubts and fears. The
insuperable difficulty of containing or controlling MacArthur remained the same as ever: the general commanded in Tokyo upon his own terms, as he always had. Either MacArthur was endured, or dismissed. Yet how could he be removed without devastating damage to the image and authority not only of the Truman Administration, but of the United States? Now, he was not merely the Pacific victor of World War II, but the sole begetter of triumph at Inchon, heroic arbiter of the destinies of a free Korea. It is not only with hindsight that it is apparent that MacArthur’s gigantic hubris could lead only to tragedy. Many men in Washington and Tokyo also perceived this in the autumn of 1950. But they could see no realistic means of ridding themselves of this old man of the sea. The play must be acted out to the end.

Washington continued to share with Tokyo the most fundamental misconceptions about the enemy’s behaviour and intentions. The Administration based its policy now, as from the outbreak of war, upon the conviction that the communist powers were acting in concert. Available intelligence about Chinese thinking was negligible. It was much more plentiful, both from covert and diplomatic sources, about Moscow’s frame of mind. By the winter of 1950, it was apparent that the Russians greatly regretted the North Korean adventure, were eager to distance themselves from it, and to prevent any widening of the war. Soviet signals to this effect were received, and understood, in Washington. Yet these entirely blinded the Administration to the danger of unilateral action by Peking. For the first, but by no means the last time in Korea, a preoccupation with ideological confrontation deflected the attention of the leaders of the United States from the nationalistic considerations at play. They simply did not entertain the prospect that the Chinese might act in Korea for their own reasons, quite heedless of Soviet wishes or policy.

On 9 October, Eighth Army at last advanced in full force across the 38th Parallel. For almost a week, they encountered serious resistance. Then the North Koreans broke, and fled north in full retreat. The 1st Cavalry and 24th Infantry began a headlong pursuit,
the long convoys’ road race interrupted only for spasmodic small unit actions against isolated enemy rearguards.

At this moment, with military victory imminent and Eighth Army heavily committed, MacArthur was astonished to receive a message from Washington, informing him that the President sought his presence at a personal meeting on Wake Island, in the mid-Pacific between Tokyo and the west coast of the United States. On the morning of 15 October 1950, nursing acute disgust for what he regarded as a piece of political grandstanding by Truman, the general and his staff took off from Haneda aboard his Constellation.

Truman wrote simply in his memoirs that a moment had come at which he considered his lack of personal contact with MacArthur a handicap: ‘I thought that he ought to know his Commander-in-Chief, and that I ought to know the senior field commander in the Far East.’ Yet there is little doubt that for once, MacArthur’s scepticism about Washington’s motives was justified. Truman was politically beleaguered at home, under fire from the right for supposed softness towards the communists. There were indeed good reasons for President and Supreme Commander to meet. But the timing was such that it remains difficult to doubt Truman’s desire to associate himself in the public mind with victory in Korea, and with the victor.

MacArthur was anyway the least tractable of men. The consequence of this apparently blatant political act by the President was to cause him to approach the meeting in a mood of cynicism bordering upon contempt. He flew to Wake Island on 15 October, unreceptive to frank discussion of serious issues. When Truman stepped down on to the tarmac the following morning to be greeted by his theatre commander, the general did not salute. He shook hands, as an equal. ‘I’ve been a long time meeting you,’ said Truman. ‘I hope it won’t be so long next time,’ said MacArthur with historic triteness. The two men talked alone for an hour in a
quonset hut on the edge of the airstrip. Both Acheson and Marshall had declined to join Truman on the trip. Acheson afterwards shook his head about the folly of private talks, ‘the sort of lethal things which chiefs of state get into’, that lead to disastrous misunderstandings about points of view and decisions. On this occasion, according to Truman’s subsequent account, MacArthur assured him that the Chinese would not attack; that victory was imminent; that he himself had no political ambitions. Then the two men emerged into the mounting Pacific heat, and drove across to an airport office building for a full-dress meeting with their entourages.

Even at this, no formal record was taken. MacArthur told the gathering that ‘formal resistance will end throughout North and South Korea by Thanksgiving’. He planned to withdraw Eighth Army to Japan by Christmas, leaving X Corps as an occupation force. He reiterated his view that even in the unlikely event that the Chinese intervened, ‘now that we have bases for our Air Force in Korea, if the Chinese tried to get down to Pyongyang there would be the greatest slaughter.’ If the Russians provided the Chinese with air support, their competence was so limited ‘that I believe the Russian air force would bomb the Chinese as often as they would bomb us’. There was some desultory discussion about the political future of Korea, in which MacArthur warmly supported Syngman Rhee’s claims to primacy. Truman agreed: ‘We must make it plain that we are supporting the Rhee government, and propaganda can go to hell.’ An hour and a half after it began, the meeting broke up. Truman invited MacArthur to stay for lunch, but the general demurred. Urgent military business called him to Tokyo. To his surprise, he found himself facing a brief awards ceremony, at which Truman presented him with his fifth Distinguished Service Medal. Amid eager public protestations of goodwill towards his commander in the field, Truman took off from the airstrip, declaring to reporters, ‘I’ve never had a more satisfactory conference since I’ve been President.’

MacArthur left for Tokyo in a rage. He considered himself diminished by the summons to be cross-questioned by a group of political hacks for whom he felt only contempt. ‘Who was that young whipper-snapper who was asking questions?’ he demanded insistently, until his staff divined that he referred to Dean Rusk, the Assistant Secretary of State. ‘That conference,’ wrote MacArthur later, ‘made me realize that a curious, and sinister, change was taking place in Washington. The defiant, rallying figure that had been Franklin Roosevelt was gone. Instead, there was a tendency towards temporizing rather than fighting it through.’
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With hindsight, the Wake Island conference can be seen as a disastrous landmark in the Korean conflict, as fatal to the interests of the Truman Administration as to those of the tenant of the Dai Ichi. Before Wake, Washington had been given ample grounds to doubt the tractability and judgement of MacArthur. Having summoned the general to meet the President, however, the Washington delegation signally failed to use the opportunity to drive home to MacArthur his responsibility to accept instructions from his own government. Instead, they allowed themselves to be profoundly impressed by his charisma, his sublime assurance, his omniscience about unfolding events in the Far East. They went home reassured that Chinese or Soviet intervention in Korea were not significant dangers. MacArthur, meanwhile, returned to Tokyo with all his antipathy towards the leaders of the Administration confirmed. Whatever Truman and his party had done at Wake, this would have been unlikely to deflect the victorious MacArthur from his chosen course. Yet, by failing to use the opportunity to pursue a serious, prearranged agenda; by causing the Supreme Commander to fly 2,000 miles from his headquarters in the midst of a campaign merely to exchange banalities, Truman and his associates diminished, rather than reasserted, their authority over the general. It is difficult to regard Truman’s initiation of the Wake meeting as other than a serious error of judgement, prompted by uncharacteristically frivolous political considerations. Its cost to his stature in
dealing with MacArthur, his weakening of his own position in the months that followed, are hard to overestimate.

On 19 October, Pyongyang fell. General Paek Sun Yup led 1st ROK Division into the city, the infantry clinging to the hulls of American armour. They swept aside the flimsy communist barricades, and clattered through almost empty streets. Most of the civilians had fled, or were in hiding. Paek felt ‘utterly exhilarated. I had left five years earlier as a refugee. Now, I was back with 10,000 men, 100 guns and a battalion of M-46 tanks.’
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Kim Il Sung and his government had fled into the northern fastnesses. Fascinated, the South Korean and American officers poked among the chaos of his abandoned office in the old Japanese provincial governor’s residence. There was an orgy of mutual souvenir photograph-taking, for this was the first war in which every soldier – among the UN forces at least – carried a camera in his pack. An American civil affairs officer, Colonel Archibald Melchoir, chose a council of ‘representative non-communist citizens’ to run the enemy’s capital, from North Koreans plucked almost arbitrarily from the streets. ‘We thought the war was over,’ said General Paek. ‘The North Koreans were now completely wiped out, throwing away their weapons as we met them.’ On 20 October, from MacArthur’s headquarters Colonel Charles Willoughby circulated an intelligence summary throughout Far East Command:

Organized resistance on any large scale has ceased to be an enemy capability. Indications are that the North Korean military and political headquarters may have fled into Manchuria. Communications with, and consequent control of, the enemy’s field units have dissipated to a point of ineffectiveness. In spite of these indications of disorganization, there are no signs, at the moment, that the enemy intends to surrender. He continues to retain the capability of fighting small scale delaying actions against UN pressure . . .

While Eighth Army pushed north from Seoul, X Corps was in motion in the east. 1st Marine Division had embarked at Inchon. Alongside the Marines, 7th Division was assigned to move south to Pusan to embark for Wonsan. Spirits in the formation were not high. The 7th’s limited experience of combat during the advance from Inchon had done little to convince them of their own effectiveness. Lieutenant Jim Sheldon and his platoon of the 17th Infantry were sent on a motor patrol to secure an ammunition factory, which they found deserted. But a few hours after their arrival, they were dismayed to encounter a column of North Koreans arriving to replenish their stocks, which provoked a little firefight in which the Americans lost four wounded. There was much wild firing at shadows in the darkness that night. In the days that followed, a succession of successful minor skirmishes with communist stragglers began to persuade them that they were quite competent soldiers. Their commanders thought otherwise, and embarked upon a hasty field training programme. This ended abruptly when sixteen men were killed and eighty wounded by white phosphorus bombs from their own 4.2-inch mortar company during a demonstration exercise before spectators. It was in the aftermath of this grim fiasco that they were ordered to move to Pusan: ‘Morale in the regiment was pretty low,’ said Sheldon.

On the LSTs, ploughing north towards Wonsan, the Marines cleaned their weapons and equipment, talked and slept with little sense of stress. O. P. Smith was exultant about the showing of his men in the battle for Seoul, optimistic that even when the war was over, the division had staked a formidable claim to be retained under arms. Smith’s Operations Officer, Al Bowser, nursing a bad cold, was chiefly preoccupied with the problem of where the formation might spend the winter. He had no thought for the far northern mountains or the Yalu, but merely for some coastal location where conditions might be made endurable if they had to remain. But with luck, they would not. With the North Koreans in
headlong retreat, the war could be over in a matter of weeks. If that was the case, the Marines had already been told that two regiments would return at once to the United States, leaving only one for garrison duty in Japan.

The Marine landing at Wonsan was seriously delayed by communist mines blocking the harbour entrance. On 12 October, two minesweepers were lost, impacting on Russian-built mines. It took two weeks, and cost three more minesweepers, before the field was cleared. To the intense irritation and discomfort of Smith and his men, they wallowed offshore in the transports while the navy bustled hither and thither. Then, to their embarrassment, the Americans learned that the South Koreans were there before them. The ROK 3rd and Capital divisions had entered Wonsan on 10 October, after a dramatic two-week dash from the 38th Parallel. The Capital Division was already fifty miles northwards, and still going. 1st Marine Division staged its amphibious landing at Wonsan on 25 October, twelve days after its own advance and technical parties had arrived by land and air. Even Bob Hope was there before them. To their profound chagrin, by a stroke which entered Marine legend, the entertainer staged a USO show in Wonsan the night before the division stormed ashore to take possession. The 7th Division suffered even more acute delays and counter-orders before being put ashore at Iwon in the last days of October and first of November. X Corps was at last deployed, in time for MacArthur’s last act. Men’s thoughts were chiefly addressed to going home.