Ridgway still had his foot firmly on Van Fleet's neck on the matter of casualties, and Van Fleet made sure his corps commanders got the word.
Just before Colonel Adams was wounded, he had got permission to stage a limited tank attack across the frozen paddies—actually, a hit-and-run raid with two sections from the regimental tank company.
The raid, with a total of five tanks, started off on schedule.
But out in the Kumwha Valley, the schedule blew up, along with the AT mines the right two tanks rolled over. While Boatner watched from a hill within friendly lines, the crews of the two disabled tanks, between three hundred and four hundred yards in front of their own positions, abandoned their vehicles and ran to safety, before the enemy could zero in on them.
Then the platoon leader in charge led his remaining tanks to within about twenty-five yards of them, and proceeded to blow them to hell with his 76mm cannon. They were left out in no man's land, ruined and smoking.
Now, Bull Boatner was no politician. If he had been, he would have written his own regimental situation report for the day. As it was, the sitrep went forward, listing the events of the day with appalling clarity.
That night, General Young called him on the phone. 'Haydon, your friend'—Young's inveterate manner of referring to the corps commander—'is madder than hell!'
'Who's he mad at?'
'He's mad at you!'
'What the hell's he mad at me for?' Boatner wanted to know.
'You lost two tanks—and Bill says his corps does not lose tanks!' Boatner fortunately remained silent.
'Haydon, you're in for it—you're in a hell of a jam. He's madder'n hell. I mean it, Haydon!'
Though BullBoatner was no politician, he was no fool, either.
'Bob,' he said, 'what are you talking about? What's this about my having two tanks destroyed?'
'Goddamit, that's what your sitrep says!'
'Oh, hell, that's a mistake. Those two tanks were disabled, not destroyed. Hell, I can turn 'em in. Please scratch out that part on the sitrep about 'destroyed' and make it 'disabled.''
After Young hung up, Boatner thought,
He got the Regimental Tank Company C.O., Captain Juno, in front of his desk, next morning.
'Juno, we're in a jam. We've got to go recover those two tanks we left out there. Now, I'll give you all the support you need—mortars, engineers, division artillery—'
'General,' Juno said, 'those tanks are no goddam good!'
They were obsolete M-4A3E8's, and there were thousands of them rusting in depots in the States, from Detroit to Red River. And these two had exploded and burned to black hulks when their basic load of ammunition blew under the tank officer's shelling.
'Juno, you tend to your goddam business and I'll tend to mine—I'm telling you you got to go get those two tanks back! Now, I don't want anybody hurt—I'm going to get you all the support you need. You go rack up a plan —but it's got to be this afternoon.'
'This makes no sense to me, General,' Juno said.
'It's not supposed to—just do it,' Boatner snapped.
It made plenty of sense to him.
Juno did it. He took out his tank retrievers under a curtain of friendly fire and dragged the burned-out hulks back smoothly and efficiently, without a casualty. The CCF were too surprised to shoot. It was no sweat at all.
As the two blackened hulks were pulled within the edge of his main line of resistance, Bull Boatner was on the horn to the division ordnance officer. 'Come get these goddam disabled tanks out of my area—'
What the division ordnance officer said or what he did with the 'disabled' tanks is not recorded.
But it was one way to satisfy a newly arrived corps commander who tried to get down and operate on tank- section level.
As the winter wore on, General Van Fleet, feeling continual pressure, continued to raise hell with the divisions for losing too many men.
And the 2nd Division, while it inflicted more casualties during the Korean War than any other, always had the misfortune of losing 50 percent more men than other divisions.
There was the matter of the 38th's platoon raid.
Colonel Rowny's regiment was authorized to stage a one-platoon raid on the extreme left flank of the division, toward a hill that had been firing into the division lines. From a friendly hill, General Boatner, Ed Rowny, and the battalion commander of the selected infantry platoon watched the attack proceed. From this hill they could see clear to P'yong gang, in enemy hands.
The platoon assaulted the hill, which was neither completely within one MLR or the other. And it ran into a hell of fire from machine guns and mortars, and was pinned down, helplessly.
Eighth Army orders, all across Korea, read that no more than one platoon could be committed without express approval from jurisdictional Corps HQ. The company commander of the pinned-down platoon, however, ordered a second platoon into action, and finally his whole company, to bail his first platoon out.
To do so, he had to take the disputed hill and knock the enemy off it. Then, his boys relieved, he had to relinquish the hill, since it was too close to CCF lines to be tenable. No one wanted to start a new Bloody Ridge.
And in saving his platoon, he took heavy casualties.
Boatner, Assistant Division CG, Rowny, the regimental commander, and the battalion commander saw the whole operation, watching in an agony of suspense. Not one of them jumped into the action, however—to do so would have been the best way in the world to destroy the confidence and command ability of the junior officers, who, like children, have to learn to make their own mistakes however desperately it pains their parents.
However painful it is to contemplate, officers have to learn in battle. There simply is no other feasible way to learn experience commanding men in battle, except in battle.
Whatever else he had done wrong, the company commander had done the right thing by committing his full company to extricate the men in trouble. But the next day, when the casualty reports reached higher HQ, all hell broke loose. Major General Young called Boatner in.
'Haydon, what's this all about?'
Boatner explained the whole matter to him.
'Well, go up to the 38th and make a complete investigation. We'll have to make a report.'
Boatner did so, and reported back. The raid had been a mistake. It never should have been undertaken—but then who could tell beforehand what would have happened?
The company C.O. involved had made some mistakes—but his decision to commit his entire company had been the only one. How could he have stood by while his one platoon was cut to pieces before his eyes?
Maybe Bull Boatner was out on a limb, for not taking over as he watched—but what kind of brigadier general or regimental commander would it be that got down on company level and started commanding platoons?
The whole trouble stemmed from one thing: in the year 1952 the division had got men killed, during offensive action, and in this year if anything was anathema to the men running the Republic it was that.
Now, here they were. They had lost men, and that was that. Young asked, 'What're we going to do about it?' He was concerned over Ed Rowny, who was a fine officer, and could be ruined if the ball bounced the wrong way.
In higher echelons the urge to seek scapegoats as slowly becoming irresistible. As Boatner said, what was often not understood about the Army was that while it threw someone to the wolves frequently, it was civilian pressure that was often the cause.
Now, Boatner told Young, who the hell was more interested in those young men—besides the parents—than their immediate officers, the officers who knew these kids, who lived and ate with them? Some staff officer, some corps or army commander, or the theater commander in Tokyo?
'It's simply goddam ridiculous and absurd for a combat man to be put in a position where his own subordinates that he's known—youngsters that he's eaten with—get killed or wounded, and someone thousands of miles back puts the bite on him, as though he were callous about it!'
