This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

the Han in 1950.

Thousands of new Korean officers were sent to the United States, to Army schools like Berming and Sill. But these schools could not graduate enough men to officer an army quickly.

And there was another problem, aside from the lack of officer material, common to most imperfectly democratic societies. Military preferment in the ROK Army often followed political preferment. The politicians in primitive societies want no generals they cannot trust. They prefer a politically reliable man at the head of a division to a competent one who may happen to belong to the wrong family or team.

In almost all non-Communist Sinic countries, armies tend to be paternal, also. The discipline and punitive code of the ROK Army was severe, in large part inherited from the Imperial Japanese Army—but it was another form of paternalism that constantly gave American KMAG officers gray hairs.

A ROK general was paid 60,000 won per month; a ROK private 3,000. With the won varying between 4,000 and 6,000 to the dollar, no ROK soldier could offer much to his family. His pay included a U.S.-bought ration of 3,165 calories, canned fish, biscuit, barley, kelp, rice, and tea; but his family had to eat, too.

Frequently when the transport of a ROK division was vitally needed to haul ammunition at the front, the trucks were back in the interior carrying firewood for soldiers' dependents, or on private hire to build the divisional welfare fund. Gasoline disappeared regularly into the civilian economy.

KMAG fought a losing battle against five thousand years of Oriental custom. Most of them, it must be admitted, developed a frustrated respect for the Chinese Reds who overnight destroyed the 'silver bullets' tradition of the Chinese Army—the old situation when Chinese generals fought not with bullets of lead, but silver, meaning they could be bought—and who delivered supplies from Canton to Mukden, and from Mukden to Korea without pilfering, tampering, or diversion to private use according to sacred custom. But the Chinese Communists, puritan like all human revolutionists, had means not available to KMAG.

In the CCF it was very easy to have a man shot.

KMAG itself had difficulties. Traditionally, a nation instructing another should send its best men abroad, traditionally, from Athens to the America of 1950, nations do not. There was little prestige, promotion, or hope of glory in serving with the Korean Military Advisory Group. The United States Army tended to forget these men. Most officers who could avoid KMAG duty did so, preferring to serve among their own troops, where food, companionship, and the chances of recognition were all considerably improved.

Unfortunately, a certain number of KMAG, understandably, became more interested in Korean seikse and the whiskey-run to Seoul on Saturday night than in the future of the Republic of Korea Army.

But with all its deep-seated troubles, the ROK Army grew. Eventually it would stand at 600,000 men, and man two-thirds of the Korean line, and take more than two-thirds of the total casualties.

It would remain weak in combat support, such as engineers and communications men. Korea produced no trained men. And it would remain weak in artillery; it would have no armor, and almost no air.

It would depend upon transportation built in Japan on American order, and it would totally depend on American munitions, fuel, and supply, other than food.

The United States wanted an army that could defend its homeland, but not one grown so independent it might follow its own course, or listen to its own leader, Syngman Rhee.

As the Korean War lengthened, the ROK Army would, as Rhee said, 'hold fifty-one percent of the stock,' bought with its blood.

But its U.N. and American directorate, firmly united on the point, would never allow the Korean majority stockholders voting rights, from now to the end of fighting.

Brigadier General Haydon L. Boatner, United States Army, arrived in Korea in August 1951, just at the time the Eighth Army had decided, with irrefutable military logic, to lean on the CCF and NKPA before it occurred to the otherside to lean on them.

It took Haydon Boatner four and one-half days to come from the Commandancy of Texas A&M, where he had picked up the odd sobriquet of 'The Bull,' to Bloody Ridge.

Boatner, a Louisianan, was a professional soldier from a family of professional soldiers. Some observers, eyeing the undeniable hereditary cast of American generaldom, have voiced fears that this tendency may become in time a caste—but the fact that sons follow the career of their fathers in the military is no more unusual, or deplorable, than the fact that lawyers' sons become lawyers, or a Ford makes autos in Detroit.

And just as family-owned corporations in the main are as well-managed as others, a Douglas MacArthur or a young Van Fleet, missing in action in Korea—both the sons of generals—make as good soldiers as the next fellow.

There is nothing wrong with a caste so long as it remains open-end, and competent.

Haydon Boatner had graduated first in the West Point Class of 1924. In 1928 he went to the Far East, beginning what was to be a long career on the China station. Young Boatner, of an active mind, began the study of Chinese on the boat, and continued it while on duty with the mounted scouts of the old 15th Infantry at Tientsin.

After two years there, he transferred to Peking, where he took a Master's degree in Chinese at the Evangelical Missionary Language School. His thesis, naturally enough, dealt with war: the Manchu invasion of the Middle Kingdom in the seventeenth century.

In 1942, it was natural enough that old China Hand Boatner should end up in Burma, on General Stilwell's staff. Here he was among the first of his class to make brigadier, and here he spent thirty-eight months, going finally up to China, where he drew up the original surrender terms for the Japanese Army in China.

But with Stilwell, he was run out of Burma in 1942, and serving with Vinegar Joe—who, like Krueger, was sometimes given to referring to the commander in chief as a horse's ass—was not the most advantageous place to be in World War II. Europe, not the CBI, was where the guns, glamour, girls, and fresh new stars were. Men who were junior to Boatner, and who got a transfer to the European Theater, ended up with more stars than the single one he still wore in 1945.

In 1951, still a one-feather chieftain, he returned to the Far East.

With ten years of service in the Orient, with Asian troops, Boatner figured he would go with KMAG. He was deeply gratified, however, when General Milburn, FECOM G-1, told him in Tokyo, 'You're being assigned to the 2nd Division.'

Later, he heard that Van Fleet had been told Boatner should go to Koje-do as commandant of the pow compounds. Haydon Boatner would always thank God he did not. The time to go into a ball game is when the last pitcher has cleared the bases—not when he has walked them full. Though in August 1951 General Boatner had only vaguely heard of the island of Koje-do.

At 2nd Division, Boatner became Clark Ruffner's Assistant Division Commander.

As part of the leaning operation, the Eighth Army was making what were designed as limited attacks here and there along Battle Line Wichita, which Eighth Army had prepared when the talks began at Kaesong. The objectives of these attacks were a hill here, such as Fool's Mountain or the Punchbowl of the 2nd Division zone, or to deny vital ground to the enemy, such as Million Dollar Hill in the 24th's area.

But the mountains, here in east-central Korea were growing steeper. The North Koreans, defending here, had, like the Japanese of World War II, gone underground.

In these hills armor could normally only support by fire, and air was not wholly effective. And here, abruptly, the war of maneuver ended.

In a four-day battle for Hill 1179, both sides lost heavily. And when 1179 fell, beyond it lay one more hill, or rather three, 983,940, and 773, forming a steep ridge several thousand yards long.

This ridge, parallel to the battle line, lay directly athwart the U.N. advance. It had little value to anyone, except as a vantage point for superior observation over the defensive line hostile to whoever held it.

But it was there, and that seemed reason enough to take it.

And it seemed an excellent opportunity for the ROK Army, newly revitalized, to show the world what it could do.

To the 36th ROK Regiment, 7th Division, supported by the tanks of B Company, 72nd Tank Battalion, American air, and 2nd Divarty, came orders on 17 August, to assault and seize this ridge.