This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

Colson was very solemn, very courteous, and very decent.

Colson, it appeared, was in no way feeling under tension or pressure. He had no idea that his actions were under question or that they had stirred up a raging hornets' nest in Washington and Tokyo.

Talking to Boatner, he was like the old officer of the day passing on the special orders to the new, quite dry and relaxed.

Boatner, newly come from the press and propaganda storm in Tokyo, was amazed.

Colson asked, 'By the way, have you seen Clark?'

'Yes, I saw him yesterday, and he's mad as hell.'

'Why, what's he mad about?'

'About the agreement you made with the prisoners of war.'

'Why, Clark approved it—Clark approved all that agreement—how can he be mad about it?'

Boatner, amazed, asked, 'Colson, can you prove he approved it?'

'Why, yes. I've got it right here in my desk.' Colson pointed to his upper right-hand drawer.

'What's that?'

'Those are stenographic notes of my conversation with Pusan.'

Boatner said slowly: 'Well, stenographic notes of a conversation with Pusan don't prove that General Clark approved anything. I'm afraid you'd better take those with you to Tokyo—you're going to have to prove all this.'

It was certain that Charlie Colson never realized he was under any criticism or fire whatever, and whatever this said for his judgment, many people, including Bull Boatner, regarded his subsequent demotion to colonel and retirement to verge on the criminal.

In democratic societies as well as totalitarian it never pays to embarrass the powers that be.

But Boatner, coming in at the lowest ebb of the ball game, was under no illusions as to how Washington and Tokyo felt. He also knew that higher HQ, willy-nilly, had to support him, in spite of NITS, IRC, UNCORK, or the Associated Press.

General Yount had moved the International Red Cross from the island on 7 May, and he was making it hard for newsmen to cross over from Pusan. But Boatner knew it was not in publicity that the trouble lay. He rather wanted the Red Cross and newsmen about; he wanted witnesses.

He was not going to seek trouble, but he was going to meet it head on when it came, firmly but fairly.

Now the correspondents asked him, 'Are you glad to have us here?'

Boatner said, 'Christ, I'm not that stupid—but I know I've got to have you here—so tell General Yount I have no objections.'

He sat now at Colson's desk, and within two hours the Military Police executive officer of the command, who had been on Koje throughout the entire tenure of Boatner's fourteen predecessors, came in and asked: 'General, what uniform do you want to prescribe for the cocktail party we're having for you?'

Boatner looked at him. 'What cocktail party?' The colonel said, 'Sir, we give a cocktail party for every newly arriving general officer—'

'I'm not so sure about this,' Boatner said.

The colonel smiled, figuring Boatner was thinking of the cost. 'General, this won't cost you a thing. We make so much money at the Officers' Club out of liquor that this is one way we have of using up our excess profits.' Boatner thought, My God. He had just come from Japan; he'd been reading the papers; and everyone was furious at the propaganda beating the U.S. had been taking—and here on Koje-do they were worrying about cocktail parties!

'Colonel, there'll be no cocktail party.'

Meanwhile, Boatner had noticed that everyone on the island was in different uniform. His exec was wearing tropical worsted semidress; some men were in fatigues. The uniform for the guard detachment specified combat fatigues. 'Fitzgerald, speaking of uniforms, why are there so many different kinds around?'

'General, you wouldn't want your own headquarters wearing the same uniform as the troops!'

Boatner, who had been on Heartbreak Ridge, was speechless. But only for a moment. 'Dammit, that's exactly what I want! Furthermore, some of the troops are wearing side arms, some aren't. Put everybody under arms.'

'Oh, please, General, don't do that. You'll be sorry.'

'Why?'

'There'll be so many accidental discharges around here, somebody's going to get hurt.'

'Goddamit!' the Bull roared. 'Goddamit, if a soldier can't handle his weapons, what the hell kind of outfit have we got? Put 'em under arms!'

'General, I wish you'd reconsider—'

The summation of Boatner's further remarks was No.

Boatner looked around his HQ. There were combat troops down the road, the 38th Infantry, one battalion of the 9th. But everywhere else there were MP troops, engineers, quartermasters, most of whom were unaware there was a war on. Nor were many of these service troops typical of their services—many officers relieved on the line as unfit had been sent to Koje-do as POW guards, and the replacement pipeline had funneled some of its worst into the island, considering the need there the less.

Boatner loved the Army, and he loved the American soldier, though he had a firm belief that the American soldier was only as good as his officer made him. A man unconsciously profane, Boatner thought, Jesus Christ, what a mess!

Some of his old boys from the 38th and 9th had told him what a lousy, snotty, overbearing HQ he had inherited, in their opinion. The feeling between the regular service troops party on Koje and the combat battalions sent in to supplement them was like that between the blue and the gray.

Charlie Colson had taught him a lesson, too, about getting it in writing. He began to write letters and send telegrams: In all my experience I have never seen such a poor group of American soldiers. … He asked permission to screen out four hundred of the worst troops for return to the mainland.

Pusan, angry, had to agree. Boatner's wires, and his strong stand, had them on the spot. It was a shot in the arm to the good troops.

The problem on Koje and at Pusan was that none of the people on the ground there seemed to realize how prominent they had become, that the eyes of the world were focused on them, and that what happened here could affect the whole course of the war.

And Boatner sensed that he was not in command of the island, though he sat at the commandant's desk. Somewhere, in secret, hidden within a hard core of Communist officers behind the wire, sat the real commander of Koje-do, with the initiative in his grasp.

Boatner had seen the flimsy compounds, had seen the thousands upon thousands of rioting, singing prisoners crammed into a few square yards surrounded by one apron of wire and a handful of armed troops, and he had seen what had to be done.

In his mind, he broke his job down into three phases: Phase I, to show the will to command, to let the POW's know who was boss, and to get more armed strength on the island; Phase II, to build new, secure compounds to hold the prisoners; Phase III, the actual movement of the POW's into their new wire prisons.

Boatner was sitting on a volcano, in danger of a mass break at any hour. The resulting slaughter would be a black eye from which the U.N. Command might never recover. The POW's had been encouraged to argue, to assert their rights, and this had played into the hard-core Communists' hands. Boatner knew he had to let these men know the old days were over; he had to beat their arrogance down, but little by little, or risk explosion.

There was almost no time left. How little time there was, even Bull Boatner did not guess. In Compound 76, a date had already been set for wholesale slaughter. Boatner did what any competent commander might have done, had he Boatner's two priceless assets: Boatner had backing from above, and Boatner knew Chinese.

He asked Clark for more power, quickly. From Japan he got the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, and from Eighth Army a Canadian company, a British company, some Greeks, and a company of Turks, and tanks to display on the hills above the compounds. The sending of the Commonwealth troops raised a stink; Van Fleet caught hell for ordering them to Koje, and the Canadian Brigadier, whose nation had never accepted the enmity of Red China, was relieved. Van Fleet figured the POW's were just as much a U.N. problem as the battle line, but few