It seemed the hour, now, for a concept as brilliant as Wilson's world democracy—so glorious in vision, so utterly impossible of attainment—without Wilson's flaws, or a crusade with a base as practical as that of containment, without its emptiness of spirit. For the one thing no American might have, in the middle of the century,
But so long as he had no new policy, so long as he sought only to contain, the enemy without would always hold the initiative.
In Washington, in November 1952, there was a changing of the guard. There was nothing new, but that changing of the guard affected history. It did one thing good and one thing bad—it froze in men's minds the political dangers of sending men to hold the far frontier, and every future government would be reluctant to order it, but it hastened the end of the Korean War.
In Korea, it was stalemate.
Neither side could advance; neither side would retreat. Each side held its own hills and valleys in depth, but from November 1951 onward, the enemy continued to be more aggressive than the U.N.
He patrolled aggressively, and he launched limited attacks, again and again. He took hills, and he took the platoons and companies that had been on them. And he killed more men when the U.N. attacked to take its property back. Usually, the action was minor, except to the men hip-deep in swarming Chinese, or pounded by artillery fire falling at the rate of hundreds of shells per minute.
One division commander in Korea recognized that the warfare resembled that of the Western Front, 1915- 1918. And like that trench fighting, it was more costly than those unfamiliar with it would think.
Exactly half as many men were killed and wounded during the stalemate as were lost during the violent war of maneuver that surged up and down the peninsula.
By summer 1952, the enemy had grown more aggressive. He waged a bitter struggle over a number of U.N. outposts from Mabang to Kumsong to Oem'yon. On 17 July at 2200 hours, after devastating artillery preparation, a CCF battalion overran the U.N. outpost on Old Baldy, west of Ch'orwon, a hill neither completely inside one defensive system nor in the other.
For four days a seesaw battle raged for the blasted, denuded hill. The 23rd Infantry eventually had elements of E, F, I, L, B, K, and G companies on the hill at one time or another; it took hundreds of casualties. Its commander, trying to control the action day after day, without rest, lost control and had to be relieved.
The battle for Old Baldy, which the CCF eventually lost, proved that the enemy had as many, if not more, field guns as the U.N. He could not, however, switch their fires of employ them as effectively as the Americans.
It was not until 31 July that a full battalion attack of 1/23 retook the hill—a position that could accommodate comfortably only a single rifle company.
Here, and elsewhere, the U.N. defenders learned that they would have to dig deeper. Soon, more and more positions were completely underground, and all of the bunkers—which tended to collapse under rain or artillery— were reinforced with logs.
On 16 September the CCF tried for Old Baldy again. First, an estimated 1,000 rounds of artillery fell on the small hill in a ten-minute period; then a battalion of CCF surrounded it and assaulted it from all sides. They took Baldy, and K Company, 38th Infantry on it, with lightning speed, while a diversionary attack overran Pork Chop Hill, to the northeast of Old Baldy.
On the night of 20 September, after heavy artillery preparation, 2/38 attacked to retake their property. Plunging through a hail of enemy fire, the battalion cleared the crest and was in control 21 September. The attack was well coordinated and well-pushed home, and it killed or wounded more than a thousand Chinese.
But the American losses, overall, were nearly as high.
The pattern of this hill fighting, which resembled that of Heartbreak and Bloody ridges, was repeated again and again. Aggressive, the CCF would plaster a forward hill or outpost with tremendous concentrations of artillery, then assault it with large forces, and overrun it.
Soon, most of the artillery fires of two to four divisions would be falling into one tiny area, as a seesaw battle raged. The U.N. would not initiate such attacks, as a rule, but it would not permit the enemy to push it about. Given an inch, it was the custom of the Chinese to strike for a mile. The U.N. forces had to return the CCF maneuver, in spades.
During these immense artillery and infantry duels, in which thousands of men were hurt or killed, the crowning horror was that usually units on either side of them, or beyond regimental HQ on the front, were completely unaware there was a war on.
Again and again the CCF felt free to attack, into a limited area.
On 6 October they struck east of Baldy and Pork Chop, against Arrowhead and White Horse Mountain—now, with long occupancy, every hill along the battle lines had its own name—and the preparatory fires there exceeded anything yet seen. Jim Fry, CG of the 2nd Division, said they were beyond anything he had known in his previous considerable military experience.
The artillery fires laid down in Korea during the latter periods normally far exceeded anything fired in either of the two world wars, day after day. The average fire falling on U.N. lines was 24,000 per day.
The CCF sent two divisions piecemeal into White Horse and Arrowhead. The French Battalion held Arrowhead for four days, under incessant attack, losing no ground. White Horse, held by ROK's of the 9th Division, changed hands twenty-four times between 6 and 15 October. When the battle ended, all U.N. territory was back in friendly hands.
And the hillsides were dotted with the bodies of thousands of ROK's and Chinese.
On White Horse, and on the central front, around the Iron Triangle, the ROK Army now proved it had come of age. With only a few American tanks, and generally with American artillery in support, the ROK's were weaker in firepower than American units, and at first more easily overrun. The CCF preferred to hit them, given a choice. But the ROK's had had two years to prepare; they counterattacked with stubborn courage, and time after time threw the CCF back.
On the Kumwha sector, ROK's and CCF locked in heavy combat, all over limited objectives. On Sniper Ridge, changing hands daily during November 1952, the ROK soldier proved he had lost all his superstitious horror of his ancient masters.
He killed thousands of Chinese, while that fall he himself suffered forty thousand casualties. But the front hardly changed at all. In front of the ROK position, the ground was cleared of Chinese only to the extent of six hundred yards.
During these bloody battles there was some comment that KMAG was presiding over the slow death of the ROK Army, to preserve American lives.
The hill battles that raged all across the front, though mostly in the western zone, accomplished little, except again to provide revulsion in American ranks against the casualties suffered. When the totals reached Washington, there was a certain amount of despair. Quietly, some men began to talk of taking the offensive, and even more quietly, of the use of the atomic weapon.
The Chinese, seemingly, had no regard for the lives of their conscript soldiers; the West did.
But doing its best to preserve lives, the U.N. Command still had to defend its ground. And while men died, the names of blasted, forsaken humps of ground, outposts Reno, Carson, and Vegas, of the Marines; Baldy, Arrowhead, and Pork Chop of the 2nd Division; Triangle Hill and Sniper Ridge and Big Nori of the ROK's, and dozens of others, became infamous. U.S. and ROK divisions went on line and off it; they turned over their prize property to other units; then, weeks later, came back to reclaim it.
When enough men had died on a hill, their comrades began to hold a grim fondness for it. 'Take good care of our Pork Chop,' soldiers of the Thai Battalion wrote on their bunker walls when they turned it over to the 7th U.S. Division on relief.
The intense attacks on the U.N. outposts during 1952 were undoubtedly political in nature. The Chinese, balked on the POW question, took this means during an election year to pressure the United States out of the war. The policy was a costly failure.
The American soldier and officer who held the line in late 1952 and early 1953 was yet another breed from the man who had gone into Korea, who had fought during the massive battles of 1951, or who had watched the
