When the Inmun Gun had collapsed along the Naktong, in September 1950, approximately twenty thousand North Koreans had neither been killed nor captured; they had faded into the rugged hills surrounding Pusan, and made contact and common cause with the guerrillas in the region.
When the frontier was violated, two ROK divisions had been deployed on counterinsurgency missions—and during the course of the war the problem was never completely solved. While the great majority of South Koreans were loyal to the Syngman Rhee government, elements in the mountainous South continued in armed opposition, with the support of some of the peasantry. Because of this support, and the broken terrain, where each valley remained almost a world to itself, the survivors of the NKPA and the guerrillas melted into the population. They were seemingly peaceful agriculturists by day, becoming armed marauders by night.
U.N. convoys continued to be fired on; individual soldiers were sometimes killed. The troop and hospital trains running between Pusan and Taegu—inspite of frequent railside patrols, sentry posts, and flatcars filled with infantry on each train—were fired on almost daily, sometimes with casualties.
A favorite trick of the insurgents was to slip close to the rails by night, set up a machine gun, wait until a well-lighted hospital train—its passengers strapped helplessly in berths—puffed by. Then, in a matter of seconds the train could be sprayed with bullets, the gun dismantled, and the guerrillas, in white peasant garb, gone into the night.
The mountain villagers knew which men went on these nocturnal excursions—but it was no simple matter to make them talk. The ROK Government, with American advice, grappled with the problem, but never completely solved it. There had always been a sort of banditry in the southern hills, and probably always would be.
It could not affect the war, but it could be a nuisance.
In December, the 2nd Division moved back into line north of Kumwha, on the central front in the area known as the Iron Triangle. Hopes at this time for a negotiated peace were high, and the mission was to hold the line, no more. The division relieved the 25th, which now passed into Army reserve for rest and training.
By now, the lines had been stable for months, and improved positions were constructed. Units, on relief, left their positions intact, and overhead cover was constructed for every position on the MLR, and heated shelters and mess tents protected all men from the fierce winter weather.
As General Bull Boatner said, 'Aside from being cold as hell, it was as easy and plush a winter as could be expected in combat. The division took an average of only two casualties a day, and that was peanuts.'
And by any standard of actual war, peanuts it was—yet human lives are not potatoes, and it was now almost 1952, an election year. A good argument could be made that men who died now on line in Korea died for nothing, and Washington was adamant that none must die, if it could be so ordered.
While patrols had to be run nightly, and the enemy shelled, and kept off balance if possible, no attacks above platoon size were permissible short of Corps' approval. And Corps was very chary with its approval of anything that might result in soldiers being hurt.
With one eye always on Panmunjom, the old noncoms running the patrols grew wise, too. They quickly understood the nature of this new war, and of all the thousands of patrols run by the division—some for the express purpose of capturing prisoners—few ever made contact with the enemy. Each night there were hundreds of Americans and Chinese slipping out of the hills into the broad valleys that ran between the two main lines of resistance, listening, waiting, each supposed to ambush the other.
The operation journals record that contact, and resultant fighting, occurred with remarkable regularity, and when it did, it was often by CCF initiative.
General Boatner and the new division commander, Major General Robert N. Young, knew these things, just as the company and battalion commanders knew them; but there are some things, like this and one's relations with one's wife, that gentlemen do not discuss.
When the 23rd Infantry took over the 27th Infantry, 25th Division's sector, the Wolfhounds had told Colonel James Y. Adams, commanding the 23rd and the son of the Army adjutant general, that the Chinese up on Papa- santo the north would not shoot unless three or more vehicles got on the roads near the front. The CCF, while it had plenty of artillery, continued to show a marked reluctance to fire on any unprofitable target, or any target its observers could not see. It had to bring its ammunition over a long and painful route—thus, while U.S. artillery shelled Communist areas behind the lines regularly, American areas back of the immediate front were normally as safe as San Francisco.
The Wolfhound officers explained that it was fine to run two jeeps or trucks down the road, anytime—but three or more pulled the plug.
Colonel Adams thought he knew a line when he heard one. A few days later he went down the road under Papa-san in a convoy of three jeeps.
During the resulting uproar, Adams' buttocks were made a bloody sieve. The exec of the 23rd took over the regiment. This officer was told to make no personnel changes for the moment, since he was junior to one of the battalion commanders. Unheeding, the exec moved a senior lieutenant colonel up to his old job, probably feeling he was getting rid of a potential rival—and four hours later, Brigadier General Boatner was sent down to assume control of the regiment, until a new eagle colonel could be rounded up.
Christmas came while Boatner still commanded the 23rd. There had been talk of a Communist attack on the 25th, and during the morning, in a light snowfall, Boatner went out to inspect his forward lines.
At 1000 hours, he couldn't find a man on line in one area.
He went into a platoon CP, dug into a heated bunker, and found one enlisted man by the phone. 'Phone your platoon leader,' Boatner barked.
'Yes, sir—only the phone's out of order, sir—'
Boatner, mad as a snapping turtle, placed the platoon leader under arrest. That young man, as so many others, had not had the moral courage to force his men to stay alert and ready out in the snow on Christmas Day.
A little later, Boatner was on the phone to the lieutenant's battalion commander. 'You hear about this, Colonel?'
'Hear about it? Hell, the whole regiment's heard about it, General! Don't come up here—everybody's running for their holes!'
Boatner growled, 'All fight, I, want you to chew that platoon leader out, and when you have, take him off arrest. I don't want him KIA while under arrest—'
He had made his point, and it was still Christmas Day.
A few days later, Boatner was inside a bunker with the same second lieutenant, under heavy shelling. When the enemy fire eased, the young officer started for the exit.
'Where the hell are you going?'
'Sir, I've got to make up my shellrep—' After shelling, regulations required a report of the number and caliber of shells that had come in, and the craters had to be inspected.
Now, that was the last thing Bull Boatner wanted to do—but to keep up appearances he had to accompany the young officer outside.
The lieutenant was wounded, and Boatner was wondering if he hadn't almost been hoisted by his own petard.
A continuing problem of this static war was that senior officers did not have enough to do to make them keep their hands off their junior's affairs. Or they had time to think up new projects, from painting fire buckets red to promulgating the color of name tags on enlisted fatigues.
Just before Clark Ruffner turned over the division to Bob Young, he had told Boatner: 'Haydon, we ought to get out a division history. Since I'm leaving, you take it over.'
As clearly as Boatner could remember later, his own comment was, 'Jesus Christ!'
'Now, I want you to do it.'
'Yes, sir,' Boatner said. Fortunately, in the 72nd Tank Battalion was an officer who had been editor of the Texas A&M newspaper, and Boatner was able to get rid of this jewel fast.
And then there was the problem of the new corps commander. This general had been in the CBI with Boatner and Stilwell, and had been junior to Boatner. But he had had the good fortune to be transferred to Europe, and now returned to the Far East as lieutenant general. Bob Young, the 2nd Division commander, considered it great fun to kid Boatner about this.
And this new corps commander had been brainwashed as he came in, as they all were in Tokyo, and in Seoul.
