status.
The International Red Cross would assist those released to find new homes, if no other provisions had been made.
Now, with the Communists and the U.N. in agreement, only the Republic of Korea and aging Syngman Rhee stood in the way of armistice. And during the days of June, Syngman Rhee alternated between despair and defiance.
Emotionally and politically, Syngman Rhee could not accept the armistice terms. They left his nation and people divided; they left a million South Kore ans dead seemingly in vain. Americans who grew bitter at old Syngman Rhee during these days, when it seemed he might wreck the peace, should have been able to imagine what Abraham Lincoln would have felt, or done, had Britain and France imposed an armistice upon the United States in 1863, leaving it forcibly divided, perhaps forever.
The tragedy of Syngman Rhee and the Taehan Minkuk was simple—while they could not go on fighting without American support, acceptance of the truce doomed the Korean people to permanent division, and the Taehan Minkuk to continued existence as a rump state, permanently incapable of sup- porting itself economically.
Every American pressure, from cajolery to blunt talk, was used to make Syngman Rhee come around. Rhee continued the same refrain in reply: Never, never, never.
Then, on 18 June, Rhee almost destroyed the armistice. He removed South Korean troops from Clark's command, and ordered the release of 27,000 anti-Communist Korean POW's held in camps in the Pusan area. Most of these POW's melted immediately into the Korean population, and many, inducted into the ROK Army, came back as guards for the few who had not escaped.
In Korea, American guards whose heads had been kept down by South Korean fire while the POW's broke out, as at Camp Number 5, Wonju, regarded the release as a big joke. Shortly after the mass uproar at Wonju, when thousands of POW's had run out, South Koreans and American sergeants threw a big party, using up the stock of the N.C.O. club.
But in Washington, for a time, there was consternation. Criticism of Rhee poured in from all over the world. The Communists screamed in self- righteous agony, even though none of the men released would have ever been returned to them. And the Communists asked some very disturbing questions: Could the United States control its Korean ally if Syngman Rhee refused to accept truce?
But, significantly, the Communists directed their anger and propaganda diatribes not at the United States but at the 'murderer Rhee.' They still wanted cease-fire.
Walter S. Robertson, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, was dispatched by the President to Seoul. He arrived in the Korean capital 25 June 1953, the third anniversary of the Communist invasion, and across every thoroughfare Walt Robertson saw antiarmistice streamers and printed slogans. Many of them cried,
Thousands of demonstrators, on order of the ROK Government, poured through the streets. They shouted '
Outside the correspondents' quarters, hundreds of schoolgirls sat in the dirt, and wept.
For twelve days Robertson and Rhee engaged in what came to be called the Little Truce Talks. For the United States now had to make peace also with its Korean ally. And the Taehan Minkuk's price was high, despite the fact that it had no hope of going north without the United States Army, and that the United States could sell it or not, regardless of how its young women wept.
However painful, Korea, a helpless nation, had to accept the fact that it was to be the principal loser of the Korean War. But in return Rhee got the promise of a U.S.-ROK Mutual Security Treaty, agreement to expand the ROK Army to twenty divisions, at American expense, and long-term economic aid, with a down payment of $200,000,000 and 10,000,000 pounds of food, worth $9,500,000, at once.
In exchange for peace along the parallel, the United States agreed to accept the Republic of Korea as its ward, perhaps forever. For without the United States the Taehan Minkuk could not exist.
In exchange, Syngman Rhee agreed not to obstruct the armistice. He would not sign—nor did South Korea ever ratify the eventual agreement—but he would now support a cease-fire.
While Robertson and Rhee bargained, the Chinese, angered, threw vicious pressure against the line, at a cost to the U.N. of nine hundred casualties per day. A massive offensive crashed against the ROK zones, rendering two ROK divisions unfit for further combat, though the fixed position of Chinese artillery, buried underground, and the quick maneuver of American divisions in support stopped any hope of a CCF breakthrough.
Though the pressure was against the ROK's, American and other U.N. units were caught in the backwash. American artillery units supporting the ROK's were overrun; American tankers with ROK infantry were lost in a Chinese sea. These men, those who survived, would never afterward be admirers of President Rhee.
But the CCF had proved its point, and perhaps taught the ROK's a lasting lesson—without outside aid, the Republic of Korea not only could not mount an offensive; it could not even hold its own frontier.
In this way, with the battlefront ablaze, with most Americans, the scent of peace entrancingly before them, uncaring of the gaping losses inflicted on the ROK's, the final negotiations went forward. The United Nations on 19 July gave the Communist powers solemn assurance that the Republic of Korea would not upset the terms already agreed upon.
Along the weary battle line, green and hot now with the midsummer of 1953, U.N. troops licked their wounds and wondered if they dared hope. A hundred times in two years the peace rumors had waxed strong; a hundred times they had been cruelly dashed. And while they wondered, the big guns continued to flame.
But the talking was done. Each side had accepted a situation that was virtually unchanged from what it had been on 11 July 1951, a truce line upon which they had agreed 27 November 1951, and a POW question that they had settled on 4 June 1953, after each of which dates thousands of men, on either side, had continued to be maimed and killed.
Each side had, perhaps, learned something: the Communists, that the will of free men is not easily broken, even when they are of peaceful intent; the West, that the Communist world holds human life cheaply, if there is aught to be gained.
For that knowledge, and little else, many men, of all nations, had died.
On Monday, 27 July 1953, Lieutenant General William K. Harrison, of the United Nations Command, and Nam II, of North Korea, entered the wooden building the Communists had erected at Panmunjom during the long 1952 recess, from which the Picasso doves had been removed at U.N. demand. At 1001 they signed the first of eighteen documents prepared by each side. It took them twelve minutes to sign them all. Then, each man got up and left the building, without speaking.
Later, the documents, in English, Chinese, and Korean, were signed by Kim II Sung, Peng Teh-huai, and Mark Wayne Clark.
Wayne Clark, putting away the golden pen the Parker Company had sent him specially for the signing, said: 'I cannot find it in me to exult in the hour.… If we extract hope from this occasion, it must be diluted with recognition that our salvation requires unrelaxing vigilance and effort.'
Now, to the units along the line came the words, 'Shoot 'em up, boys—it's done!'
In a burst of wild enthusiasm—yet restrained, in many men, as it was in General Clark, by a certain sadness—the U.N. units burned up what ammunition they had on the ground.
For the last time—all men hoped—the dark Korean hills rocked with flame and noise.
Then, twelve hours after the pens scratched at Panmunjom, the hills lay quiet. At sea ships put back from the cold gray waters off North Korea, and the silvery aircraft stood silent on their fields.
There was no more war—but there was no peace. There was no victory.
It was called cease-fire.
At Prisoner Camp Number 4, Wewan, Sergeant Charles Schlichtef had been handling sick call for POW Company 1 since August 1952. He had Turks, British, French, Niseis, and Puerto Ricans, with all of whom, in varying degrees, he had made friends.
With some of the Turks, especially Beli Hassan, and Hilmi Andranali, the sergeant who interpreted for him with the Turks, while Schlichter spoke to the Chinese doctors in English, he became very friendly.
