paid for none the less. In Seoul, the Inmun Gun had captured the South Korean Government mints, and the printing presses ran off all the currency the Inmun Gun could ever use.
In a country where 90 percent of the people are peasants, the Communist regime had every expectation of success—because peasants they understood. From the first, the peasantry saw little to lose through Communist rule, and perhaps much to gain. Only much later, when the land is collectivized and the iron hand shows through the paternal glove, and when it is too late, does the peasant who has been Communized realize his loss. Communized, he ceases to be an individual man, losing an identity that even the most abject poverty could not take from his before.
Communism had really nothing to offer the peasant but propaganda—the Communist has no more use for the peasant in his scheme of things than does a purveyor of Rolls-Royces—but Asian Communism has always realized that the good will of the peasant was necessary above all else for its eventual success. Americans, in turn, have been slow to understand the peasant, let alone mix with him.
Americans, who cannot understand or even communicate with peasantry, are growing lonelier in a world where the great majority of men are peasants.
Shooting the members of the
Communism came to stay below the parallel, and had it not been thrown back by force it would be there yet.
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12
Fire Brigade
.…
— From a wire dispatched 16 August 1950 by a British military observer at Miryang.
IN FRONT OF almost three-quarters of the Pusan Perimeter of August 1950 wound the Naktong River. Flowing south, the Naktong is Korea's second river; it bends and folds its way between rice paddies and the hills running down to the water's edge. The Naktong averages more than one-quarter mile in width, and more than six feet in depth. At low water, as during the hot, dry summer of 1950, large sandy beaches and bars appear in the river, but it is at all times a formidable obstacle.
Behind the river to the east, the hills rise to twenty-five hundred feet, and on its north, across the top of the Perimeter, they reach three thousand or more. It was here, on the highest hills, that the United Nations Forces, the United States and ROK armies, organized their defense.
There was no hope of organizing a strongly held line; there were still not enough troops for that. Troops dug in on hills that overlooked the Naktong and the major avenues of approach leading east from it. By day these strongpoints served as observation posts, and by night they buttoned up into small tight defense perimeters, acting as listening posts. Between these outposts along the river ran jeep and other mechanized patrols to screen the terrain.
Some miles back from the Naktong the reserve troops were held in readiness to attack against any successful crossing by the enemy. Supporting weapons, artillery and mortars, were also emplaced back in the hills, and registered on all likely crossing sights, and prepared to mass fire against any threatened point.
The object of the defense was to hold the commanding ground east of the river, and the vital road net. There could be no practical hope of holding each inch of ground, as in the position defense, but now the mobility of the American defenders could be brought in play. If the enemy broke across the river at any point, men and firepower could be quickly assembled against him from other parts of the Perimeter.
There were four natural attack routes into the Perimeter. One was on the south through that port of Masan; another through the so-called Naktong Bulge to the important rail and road network at Miryang. A possible corridor of advance ran through the roads and rails to Taegu. Finally, on the far northeast, a valley ran down the seacoast through Kyongju.
As the enemy plan of maneuver developed, it became obvious that the NKPA would attempt all four corridors, almost simultaneously. The NKPA plan assumed that by making a multiple attack against the entire thinly manned line, a breakthrough could be made in at least one area. Because of this plan, the men defending east of the Naktong would be stretched to the breaking point, and the pressure would be felt everywhere.
There was fighting—hard, bitter fighting, along almost all the Perimeter in August. The most dangerous threat developed against the Naktong Bulge, however, and here the action was typical of the whole bitter, desperate month.
After July 1950, it becomes impossible to detail the actions of each division or regiment. Every unit in Korea had its moments of desperation, and many their moments of glory. But by detailing to some extent the experiences of certain units, to a great extent the flavor of the whole action is revealed. For what happened in one stinking paddy valley was very much like what happened in the next, from here to the end of the war.
A few miles north of the confluence of the Naktong and the Nam, the Naktong forms a wide bow to the west, enclosing a loop of land measuring four miles by five, with the town of Yongsan at its eastern base. The territory within the river bend was called by its American defenders the Naktong Bulge.
The terrain enclosed on three sides by the Naktong is at first hilly, then flattening out to the east, with three large lakes in front of Yongsan. The town of Yongsan itself is a road intersection, with good dirt roads leading east, west, north, and south.
The first serious penetration of the Pusan Perimeter was into the Naktong Bulge.
On 4 August Major General Lee Kwon Mu, Inmun Gun, surveyed the east side of the river from his command post at Hyopch'on. By August, Lee Kwon Mu was already among the greatest heroes of the North Korean People's Army. He had been made a Hero of the Chosun Minjujui Inmun Kong-whakuk, and awarded the Order of the National Flag, First Class.
His 4th Division, NKPA, had, with the 3rd, spearheaded the drive south, taking Seoul and shattering the American 24th Division at Taejon. The 4th had been given the honorary title 'Seoul' Division by Premier Kim II Sung.
Lee Kwon Mu, as all the senior commanders of the Inmun Gun, had been fighting most of his life. Born in Manchuria of Korean refugee stock, he had joined the Chinese Communist 8th Route Army, fighting both Japanese and Nationalists. He had attended an officers' school in Russia. Now, at the age of forty, Lee stood at the apex of his military career.
His veteran 4th Division still contained 7,000 men, and to it came orders to attack. With almost no preparation, Lee sent his battalions boiling across the Naktong.
At midnight, 5 August, on the signal of a red and a yellow flare, the 16th Regiment, 4th Division, plunged into the broad river at the Ohang ferry, where the water ran only shoulder deep to an adult Korean. Some of the soldiers crossed on makeshift rafts, but most stripped naked, and with both clothing and rifles held high over their heads, waded into the river.
They caught General Church, 24th Division CG, by surprise. Church had felt the blow would fall farther north
