The Korean War (62 page)

It was only at night that intense muffled activity began, with men shuffling forward in the darkness to work on improving defences, or leading patrols through the wire into no-man’s-land. Down the slope from the bunkers, a host of ingenious and intricate devices had been created and deployed to break the energy of an assault: wire, minefields, trip flares, booby traps, and a few uniquely Korean innovations, such as barrels of napalm or white phosphorus, that could be unleashed and ignited by a wire pulled from a foxhole. The slightest movement observed or imagined in no-man’s-land attracted the sudden pop and dazzling light of a flare. For no apparent reason, a sector of the front would suddenly erupt into an artillery duel that might last for weeks, with men lying in their bunkers while shells pounded overhead for four, five, six hours a day. Even the knowledge that the positions could withstand bombardment on this scale was scant comfort for the nerves of those within, or for the patience of the unit signallers who knew that they must emerge, when it was all over, to replace every telephone wire in the area for the hundredth time of their tour.

On the reverse slopes behind the position, more open movement was usually possible. Here, company headquarters were sited,
with telephone wires running back to battalion, perhaps a ridge line further to the rear. By day, files of men seemed to be toiling up and down incessantly in the sisyphean labour of moving food, water and ammunition from the nearest point in the valley below that a truck could reach. American or Commonwealth fatigue parties were assisted by hundreds of the inevitable ‘Chiggies’, the Korean porters with their A-frames on their backs, whose dogged support even under fire became one of the most vivid of all foreign veterans’ memories of Korea. Most units spent between two and three months at a time ‘on line’, before being withdrawn into reserve, or to a rest camp. Even when there was little fighting, it was extraordinary how great remained the strain and exhaustion of maintaining positions, standing watch, mounting patrols. There were aircraft recognition panels to be set out each day in different patterns, laundry to be gathered for the Korean ‘dhobie-wallahs’, PT sessions in most British units, and always digging, digging, and more digging. It was a modified animal existence. When there were scant facilities for washing, many men did not trouble to shave, and almost relished their shagginess. Some of the British cooked and heated their bunkers, at some personal risk, with tins of petrol. For the men of all the UN formations in winter, life centred upon the precious space heaters that were among the vital weapons of survival. They carried a spoon on a D-ring on their belts as a universal eating tool, occasionally supplemented with a bayonet. They wrote interminable letters home, detailing the tedium of their existences and the weary speculation about the end of the war. After a time, they scarcely noticed the tinny bellow of the propaganda loudspeakers from the Chinese lines: ‘Come over, British soldier [or American, or Australian, or Turk, or whoever he might be], you are on the wrong side!’ Radio operators sometimes found a Chinese voice coming up on their frequencies: ‘Hello, Tommy. You must be very cold. Missing your wife?’ It was all very odd. But young Private Alan Maybury was frightened on his first day in the line, when he heard the communist tannoy proclaim: ‘Welcome, 1st Battalion Durham Light Infantry!’
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The
enemy did his best to create a propaganda impression of omniscience.

Amidst it all, there remained the ceaseless danger of a sudden Chinese attack, a night when, without warning, a wave of screaming, bugle-blowing communist infantry would hurl themselves upon the wire, seeking to rush a position before its inhabitants could call down their devastating artillery fire support. Each platoon on each hill lived a self-contained existence, very conscious of its isolation. Few men took off their boots at night, and many slept on top of their sleeping bags rather than inside them, for fear of being surprised. The Commonwealth Division circulated repeated warnings to units about the need never to relax vigilance: ‘. . . Constant occupation of the same defensive positions tend to make infantry over-confident of their defensive works. Few positions will stand up to concentrated shelling, and many fire bays, weapons and stocks of ammunition are bound to be buried during the softening-up stages of an enemy attack’. ‘. . . counter-attack troops must be moved into assembly positions immediately there is the slightest real suspicion of an enemy attack, and must be launched BEFORE or AS the enemy penetrates the position. False alarms will be many, but this must be accepted.’
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Major John Sloane of the Argylls had formed his knowledge of the Chinese soldier in Burma, ‘where they were always half an hour late for the attack’. But those men had been Kuomintang. Their successors of the PLA ‘Volunteers’ in Korea were vastly different. Western respect for the enemy had increased immeasurably: ‘The Chinese infantryman is well-trained, well-equipped and efficient,’ declared a Commonwealth Division report. ‘He is an excellent night fighter, very brave, with good morale and good at finding his way in the confusion of battle. His limitations are due to lack of equipment and communications. The Chinese are prepared to take casualties and can therefore patrol in strength . . . There is little doubt that the war in Korea has been fought to suit the Chinese. His limitations in communications, his lack of air
support and absence of heavy equipment and vehicles would make him a very vulnerable opponent in a war of movement.’
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On the night of Sunday 4 November 1951, the Commonwealth Division suffered a characteristic surprise Chinese attack. 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers were manning their positions on Hill 355, seized from the Chinese during Van Fleet’s October limited offensive. For three hours, an intense bombardment rained down upon their bunkers. Then, with the usual horn and bugle accompaniment, the Chinese infantrymen stormed through what remained of their protective barbed wire. The KOSB’s mortars ran red-hot as they fired their counter-bombardment, until the mortar platoon commander felt compelled to order his men to pour their precious beer ration down the tubes to cool them. Two platoons of B Company were driven from their positions. In the early hours of the morning, the company runner, a vast, slow Cheshireman named Bill Speakman, with a fearsome record of disciplinary offences, clambered to his feet in company headquarters, stuffed his pouches, shirt and pockets with grenades, and strode purposefully out into the darkness. ‘And where the hell do you think you’re going?’ demanded the Company Sergeant-Major. ‘Going to shift some of them bloody chinks,’ replied Speakman. He charged alone on to the ridge, grenading as he went, then returned for more ammunition. This time, others went with him. After repeated counter-attacks through the night, at first light the KOSB’s positions were once more in British hands, at a cost of seven killed, eighty-seven wounded, forty-four missing. Four DSOs were awarded for the night’s work. Private Speakman, twice wounded, received the Victoria Cross. The story of his lonely action – and the legend of the alcoholic stimulus that played some part in it – passed into the history of the British Army. The battle? The battle was nothing, in the context of Korea: the kind of local action that units up and down the front found themselves compelled to fight at regular intervals through two years of positional war. If they won, they could pride themselves on a job well done. If they lost, the
communists had gained another hill, and some other hapless unit would sooner or later have to pay the price for displacing them from it.

The UN troops were frequently impressed by the extraordinary dedication with which many Chinese soldiers would fight, and the lengths to which they would go to avoid being taken prisoner. Wounded communists sometimes struggled to resist the attentions of British or American medical orderlies. Nor did this always appear to be the product of mindless fanaticism, but of skilled indoctrination: ‘On the average,’ concluded a British intelligence report on deserters, ‘the Chinese Communist soldier disposes of more information regarding commanders’ plans and intentions than would normally be available to similar ranking soldiers in non-Communist armies. Once again this is believed to be the result of the frequent political meetings, when all ranks are encouraged to discuss future operations, even to the extent of criticising commanders’ plans.’
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The familiar military routine of briefing took on a new meaning in Chinese hands. It was an article of faith among the leaders of the PLA’s ‘Volunteers’ in Korea that hours each week were devoted to before and after action discussions on tactics, and political education. Such familiar slogans as ‘Aid Korea to Fight America and Defend Our Motherland’; ‘Love the Korean People, Love Everything in Korea’, provided texts for regular harangues in a fashion not so very different from that in which verses from the Bible armed Christian padres for their sermons. It remains a measure of the success of political indoctrination that it proved so difficult for the UN forces to take prisoners, and that defectors remained few in number, despite the torrent of propaganda leaflets, promising good treatment, with which the UN deluged the Chinese lines.

For the communists, life on the line was troglodyte in an even more absolute fashion than for the UN. The UN’s command of the
air made it possible for its soldiers to move with relative freedom during daylight, as long as they were out of direct sight of the enemy. The Chinese had no artillery ammunition to waste upon random barrages. For Peng’s men, however, every inch of territory in the forward areas was under constant threat from the air. Camouflage became an obsession, for they knew that if the Americans observed even a single moving figure in the open, a devastating barrage of bombs or artillery would follow. The Chinese lived, until darkness fell and often beyond, in the incredible honeycomb of tunnels that they created along their front, exceeding all that mechanical ingenuity achieved on the UN side. ‘The tunnel became a great Chinese institution,’ Hu Seng, one of Marshal Peng’s staff, said wryly. Within its confines, the men of the ‘Volunteers’ passed their day in a mirror image of life on the UN side: listening to Peking Radio; reading; playing poker; singing and dancing to music made on Chinese violins, and instruments fashioned out of shell cases. Many men who went to Korea as illiterates used the opportunity lent to them by boredom, to learn to read and write in the flickering candlelight beneath the mountains. Disease, in those dripping caverns, was a chronic problem. Fever thrived in summer, and men welcomed the healthier chill of winter. If they were ill, or wounded, they depended upon traditional Chinese herbal remedies for a cure. Modern drugs were almost non-existent. Many men, much of the time, went hungry.

The Chinese suffered almost as acutely from the sense of distance from home as the men of the UN. ‘Because we were fighting abroad, it was more difficult to sustain morale than during the Liberation War,’ said Li Ben Wen, a regimental propaganda officer.
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Few men even possessed a photograph of their families, for cameras were a rare luxury. Once a fortnight, they might receive mail from home – letters written, for the most part, by their village’s professional letter-writer. Leave was almost unknown. Rarely, a man might be allowed to visit his village for compassionate reasons, if a close family member died. Wang Zhu Guang, a staff officer at 23rd Army Group, spent six years in Korea,
and went home only twice. His wife, a factory worker, sent him such occasional remittances as she could spare from the upkeep of herself and their small daughter. Wang, like the rest of the ‘Volunteers’, received negligible pay, supplemented by cigarettes.

In assault, the Chinese specialised in infiltration and envelopment, at least one attacking group making immediately for the defenders’ line of reinforcement. Thus, all-round defence was essential. As the war progressed, organisation and training improved markedly, with rehearsals for attacks being carried out behind the lines. Messages were passed in plain language over such radios as they possessed, or more often, by telephone. ‘Encirclement and deep penetration are standard,’ in the words of a British assessment of Chinese tactics.

The Chinese claimed to find
met juin
– the Americans – less formidable foes than the Japanese – ‘they lacked the fighting will of the Japanese,’ according to Li Hebei of the 587th Regiment. The communists developed night fighting to a fine art, because only in darkness could they overcome the overwhelming problem of UN air superiority. As the war progressed, their anti-aircraft capability increased dramatically: 35mm, 37mm, 100mm guns provided by the Soviets. ‘We also became more and more experienced in dealing with “choke points”,’ said Wang Zhu Guang. ‘We became accustomed to the way the Americans would bomb in fixed places at fixed times, and more skilled in moving trucks during the intervals.’ Asked what shortages the Chinese felt most acutely, he replied unhesitatingly, ‘aircraft’. The size of China’s forces in Korea was restricted by the number of men for whom supplies could be moved south across the Yalu. Manpower as such was never a problem: thus the vast, ruthless sacrifice of lives in attack. ‘We suffered very heavy casualties,’ conceded Wang Zhu Guang, ‘but it was worth it. We won the battle.’
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More objective observers might reject his assessment. Even many Chinese officers today appear to look back on the crude, costly tactics of the Korean period with some embarrassment.

On the UN side of the line, opinion varied from unit to unit about the scale of risk that was acceptable in pursuit of the domination of no-man’s-land by night. Among the Americans, Southerners often seemed the most enthusiastic soldiers. There was a West Virginian in PFC Mario Scarselleta’s platoon of the 35th Infantry who was constantly volunteering for patrols: ‘He’d say: “Oh Lord, please send over fifty gooks!” He loved it. I wish we’d had 50,000 like him, so the rest of us could have gone home.’ Many men felt infinitely less inclined to take risks after the armistice negotiations began. ‘It made it awfully hard to get people to do things, to go out on patrol,’ said Corporal Bill Patterson of the 27th Infantry. ‘A man would just say, “Aw, I’m on short time.” ’
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The British placed a high premium upon patrolling, in the interests of unit morale. The Commonwealth Division customarily occupied some nine miles of the line, each of its three brigades deploying one battalion back in reserve. Every unit organised frequent two-or three-day ‘lie-up’ patrols, and fifteen-man fighting patrols, supported by a ‘flying squad’ which remained on alert in the unit lines all night, ready to reinforce the men in the field if they got into trouble. But as a British report admitted: ‘The enemy advantage of numbers means that in patrol battles, he almost always ends up dominating the ground, thus getting his own casualties out.’
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