As summer ripened, there was no progress at the table. The Communist delegations seemed willing, even eager, to delay forever. They had transferred their war largely to the truce table, and now were as happily waging it as before, while they put the time they had bought to good use, if another round at arms should come.
As summer deepened, and the hopes of the world slowly withered, another round at arms was bound to come. In the green and muddy hills of Korea, the war had not ended. It had begun a new and terrible phase.
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30
Bloody Ridge
— Remark by a French general on the Western Front, 1916.
— Quote from the French general's first assault battalion commander.
FOR ALL PRACTICAL purposes the Korean War ended 30 June 1951, when United Nations Supreme Commander Matthew Ridgway radioed his willingness to discuss truce terms with the Communist forces. The end was stalemate.
At heavy cost, the original aggression and the fresh intervention of the Chinese had been contained. The aggressor in each case had suffered frightful losses and had gained nothing material.
Having eschewed the goal of victory, the United States had nothing further to gain from continued fighting. It had accomplished its original purpose in going into Korea, the salvation of the Taehan Minkuk.
The Communist World had gained no territory, wealth, or peoples—but by opposing American arms, by defying the United Nations, with some success, Red China had undoubtedly neared great-power status. Her prestige among Asian peoples, still smarting from Western humiliations, was enhanced, whatever moral questions were involved.
A nation that had been continually harassed and humiliated by all powers since 1840 had actually defied the world, and fought it to a standstill. It was this Asian feeling of solidarity with China that Americans found so hard to understand, as typified by the statement of one Captain Weh, of the Nationalist Chinese Army on Taiwan:
'We listened to the radio, and the Communists were defeating the Americans. All of us in this room were officers who had fought with the Generalissimo for many years. Most of us had fought the Communists all our adult lives. One officer had been captured and tortured by them. In a world the Communists won, there could be no place for any of us, or our families.
'It was very bad for us to have the Communists win. But we had very queer feelings, listening to the news of disaster in Korea. It was almost like a certain exaltation. I do not know how to explain it to you Americans.
'For our Colonel, who hated Communists with all his soul, kept saying: 'The Americans are being beaten by
It was this feeling, shared by most Asians, that China, though unable now to conquer in battle, wanted to exploit. As long as China could hold a U.N. Army at bay, she stood to gain enormous prestige in Asia.
And because the United States Government took a certain naivete and almost total lack of understanding of Asian Communism to the conference table, the Korean War, stalemated June 1951, would go on for two more years, and half as many men again as were maimed and killed in its first twelve months had yet to suffer and die.
During the fourteenth plenary session at Kaesong, 30 July 1951, all parties agreed that hostilities should continue even while negotiations were in progress.
But it was from this time forward that political reality in Korea diverged from military, and from this time forward the frustration of American soldiers grew. From now till the end of fighting, political considerations, both international and domestic, would shadow all combat operations.
An army in the field, in contact with the enemy, can remain idle only at its peril. Deterioration—of training, physical fitness, and morale—is immediate and progressive, despite the strongest command measures. The Frenchman who said that the one thing that cannot be done with bayonets is to sit on them spoke an eternal truth.
Unwilling to strike for victory, but equally unable to clutch the elusive dove of peace the Communists tantalizingly held forth and then withdrew, time and again, American commanders and American government leaders began to writhe in frustration.
The situation was hard on the generals, for it was the very antithesis of the American tradition of generalship, cutting across everything it had been taught to believe and do. Their new orders seemed to read:
These were directives desperately hard for men brought up to take positive action, and quickly, even if wrong.
But it was harder still for the riflemen and tankers and weapons squads dug in along the scarred, dirty hills. Now they knew less than ever why they dug their holes or why they died. Hoping for the war to end at any moment, they kept one eye on Kaesong or on Panmunjom. When they were ordered to defend a hill or to take one, they knew the action was a limited one, and they knew in their hearts, whatever brave words were said, that such action probably would not affect the outcome of the war at all.
No man likes to give up his life for an inconsequential reason, and there is no honor—only irony—to being the last man killed in a war.
Still the Eighth Army, dug in along what they called the Kansas Line, could not sit idle forever.
When the advance had stopped in June, it had not been along any carefully preplanned battle line. There were bulges, salients, and vague areas of no man's land along the whole front. From a military standpoint, corrections were needed. In many places the Eighth Army held disadvantageous ground.
As the talks droned on at Kaesong, the U.N. Command became more convinced the enemy was stalling. And U.N. commanders agreed that a little pressure, judiciously applied, might have wholesome effect. The decision was made in FECOM, but approved by Washington.
By the first of August, they were ready to apply such pressure. There was no intention of striking for the Yalu or of opening up the battlefront for a new war of maneuver.
The new attacks would be limited in zone, for limited objectives, a hill here, or to erase a bulge there, or to deny enemy observation in yet another place.
The attacks would serve two other purposes—to pressure the enemy into sincerity at the peace table, and to keep the Eighth Army on its toes.
It was not an ambitious program, or an unreasonable one, in the situation. Policy was guided by restraint, and limited.
The only thing that would not be limited were the casualties.
In any democratic society, equality of sacrifice is a cherished ideal. Yet in war nothing is more difficult of attainment.
Soldiers know that it is never possible to share the load completely. One man went to Korea; another—who equally served—never went west of San Francisco. While American units were decimated in the Far East, others went through training in the European Command, without hearing a shot fired in anger.
Soldiers know the reasons this must be so, and accept them. But they also like to think they are getting an even break.
In modern war, short of ending the fighting, combat troops have only three means of escape from incessant action: death or injury, insanity, or rotation. In modern war there are no winter quarters or lengthy withdrawals from action until the harvests are in. In Korea by early 1951, thousands of wounded men had been returned to
